The chances of war between Turkey and Bulgaria remain as
last week. General Petroff obviously expects it, and even talks of a levy en masse, which would yield three hundred thousand men. Prince Ferdinand, however, and some leading Bulgarians are still in favour of waiting to see whether the pressure from Great Britain and France will not induce the Powers to extend greatly the area of reforms, perhaps even so far as to demand the appointment of a Christian Governor- General. The Sultan, though greatly alarmed, still holds out, declaring his Army maligned, but the Powers can if they please apply effective pressure, and they may. The point of urgency is whether they are willing to send fleets or despatch troops, and on this there is as yet no light. They are reported to desire to postpone action to the spring; but as by that time the Macedonians will have perished, an ex- plosion in Bulgaria, through which the stories told by twenty thousand refugees are now filtering, may force their hands. They now admit that the mock reforms have failed, and that "European control" of some kind must be established. We shall know next week whether the Sultan will concede this, or whether the group of Mussulman soldiers round him will succeed in urging him to risk all rather than sacrifice direct control over his European provinces.
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