THE BULGARIAN PROJECT. T HE entire indifference with which Englishmen have
regarded the recent rumours from the Balkan Peninsula points to a change in public opinion which will one day greatly affect the permanent lines of our foreign policy. We no longer care whether Turkey is threatened or not, and therefore hear of the latest menace to her authority with inattentive ears. It is a serious one, too. Few informed men in Eastern Europe seem to doubt that the Prince of Bulgaria intends at the first convenient moment to run the risk of declaring himself independent, and calling himself a King. He thinks, perhaps rightly, that a crown will strengthen his position, not only in the European hierarchy but among his own people, and he desires a crown as English states- men desire Cabinet office, or English professionals desire success. He is a Coburg by race, and he has the Coburg luck, the Coburg ambition, and the Coburg habit of mind, in which—as he showed in the Stambouloff and Boris incidents—unscrupulousness seems to be restrained rather by intelligence than by virtue. He has recently been greatly excited by perceiving that Alexander of Servia is regarded and treated in Vienna as an actual crowned head, while he himself was received there as only de facto ruler of his State. Sensitiveness about their rank within the caste never quits the mind of Princes. There is, however, no need to inquire closely into his motives. From the Counts of Maurienne downwards every Prince of the Marches—and that is Prince Ferdi- nand's relation to Turkey and Russia—has always sought the closed crown, and the Prince does but obey an irre- sistible historic tendency. From the moment, however, that he succeeds in his ambition the power of Russia over Turkey will be enormously increased. A King of Bulgaria without hereditary claim cannot defy the rage of the Ottomans (who see clearly enough what the change means for them) and the fury of defeated factions among his own people, and at the same time mature plans for getting half Macedonia, unless he receives the cordial and unwaver- ing support of the Government of St. Petersburg. A King of Bulgaria in existing circumstances must be a vedette of Russia, and the Prince is already assuming that posi- tion. His Commander-in-Chief was trained in Russia, his scientific officers are mostly Russians, his best guns are from Russian arsenals, and he is reported this week to be about to receive what is really a Russian loan. He will be an ally of Russia in the sense in which the .1.N.Tizam is an ally of Great Britain ; and though the fact may not greatly strengthen the Russian position as regards the world at large, it will immensely strengthen it as regards the Ottoman dominions. When Bulgaria is Russian in sympathy, the Balkans are swept away. Not only could a Russian army traverse them without the resistance Turks have so often offered. there—resistance as of the Boers on the Modder—but Bulgaria includes the port of Bourgas ; and with that landing place open to a descent from the Black Sea, there is nothing between Russia and Constantinople except the lives which Mussulman fanatics will waste in vain. Fanaticism is a grand fighting quality, but it can do nothing against Maxim guns and m4linite shells. With Bulgaria Russian Constantinople is un- tenable, unless Austria or England fights for the city; and as we have predicted for years, Austria either has made, or has arranged all preliminaries for making, a bargain which will render her a calm spectator of the great event. The wise old Emperor sees that with half his people Slav, and all his people desirous of more trade, expansion to Salonica will pay him better than a terrible war, and to Salonica he will go, " to secure by material guarantees the safety of the many populations entrusted by Providence to his house." As for England, while the majority of her people will refuse to defend the Power which uses massacre as an instrument of government, which massacred the Armenians, and but for the European fleets would have massacred the Cretans, the minority, in spite of the bitter distrust which now prevails among them as to the advance of Russia, will, when the crisis arrives, perceive that the interests of this country lie elsewhere. The position, if Constantinople ever falls to a Russian general, and Austria advances to Salonica, will for Great Britain be this. India will be as safe or unsafe as ever, for with Cairo in our hands our road will always be open. and Egypt protected by two great Monarchies, England and India, will be, or at all events can be made, a fortress beyond attack. No power on earth could cut Cairo off from both bases of supply at one and the same time. By blockading the Dardanelles when at war we could shut up the Russian Fleet as completely as if the Black Sea were a dock, far more completely indeed than we can now, and with far greater consequences to her commerce and prestige. Moreover, we should acquire in the Eastern Mediterranean an ally such as we most of all need, an ally with an almost limitless supply of men. With a long flank exposed to Russian attack, and a weak fleet, it would be simply impossible for Austria to maintain herself without the alliance of a strong sea Power, and Great Britain is not only the strongest of sea Powers, but the only one which can scarcely by possibility have interests that clash with her own. We, and we only, could protect the whole Adriatic and Salonica, and thus liberate the entire Austrian Army for the defence of the long and penetrable land frontier which the Hapsburgs would then be under obligation to defend. This alliance might or might not involve the alliance of Germany, but resting, as it would, upon permanent interests and unalterable geographical conditions, it would be beyond change from any change of governments or any mutations of popular opinion. We fail to see what there is formidable for us in such a posi- tion, more especially if Germany in the great redistribution which must follow any defeat of the Ottoman Army should realise her Emperor's dream, seat herself in Anatolia, and call to those half-ruined but fertile plains which once fed groups of cities some of the millions of her cultivators who now find life so hard for them that they are willing to cross the Atlantic in order to change its conditions. With Germany on the Euphrates it would be a vital interest of Germany that Russia should not be predomi- nant in Western Asia. We should, in fact, have the friends in Europe whom, if newspapers may be trusted, we seem so sadly to lack now.
But as the Ottomans see these things as clearly as Englishmen, the Sultan's advisers may run all risks to defeat Prince Ferdinand's ambition ? They may, though we think they will not ; but if they do, they will com- pletely justify us in considering Prince Ferdinand's ambition of importance to Europe. For Russia must defend Bulgaria if attacked by the Turks, and another war in Eastern Europe would not end, like the last one, without great political changes. Three Empires held the ring while Turkey punished the chivalrous but inept effort of the Greeks to protect their compatriots in Crete from their imminent danger of extinction ; but the Bul- garian Army is not a half-trained mob, and interests would be involved which press great Courts more closely than those of mere humanity. For the Sultan to refuse absolutely a request of Prince Ferdinand supported by Russia and not negatived by the Triple Alliance would be a very serious event indeed, and it may occur sooner than we, who are all looking southward instead of east- ward, are ready to suppose.
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