Balkan Affairs
Bulgarian Conspiracy. By J. Swire. (Robert Hale. us. 6d.) MR. S WIRE is his own worst enemy as a writer. His deplorable preface goes out of its way to give its readers the impression that here is another crank venting extravagant opinions, or another disgruntled journalist working off his spite, at a safe distance, against the government which expelled him from the country for writing tendentious news against it, and for meddling in its internal politics. This impression is strengthened by his own account of the events which led up to his expulsion, from which it becomes abundantly clear that he had in fact been so meddling. Nor, if his despatches were anything like his book, could the Bulgarian Government be blamed for taking exception to their tone. He is completely. almost ingenuously, one-sided. As between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia it is always Bulgaria who is wrong ; who commits all the atrocities, earns all the disparaging adjectives. But the contrast is even more glaring between Mr. Swire's friends and his enemies in Bulgaria itself. As regards the rival causes for which they stand—pan-Yugoslav solidarity, with an autonomous Macedonia on the one hand, Bulgarian supremacy over Macedonia on the other—the one seems to Mr. Swire so obviously nobler than the other that he never even stops to
isider why. What he dislikes is abominable ; and if it is sible to hiss the word " Italophile " he certainly did so on each of the many occasions on which he penned it.
All this is the more pity, because his book is genuinely worth reading ; it is even important to the student and the historian of Balkan affairs. The story is not always very well told. There is a mass of confusing detail in some places, while other important events are passed over much too quickly. There are certain unfortunate lapses into neo-American journalese. Nevertheless, Mr. Swire knows his subject, and it is probable that almost alone among recent writers on Bul- garia he has got hold of the right end of the stick. All Bulgarian politics, internal and external, have been dominated for almost half a century by the Macedonian question ; but such has been the obscurity in which the Macedonian leaders and their allies have worked, such the atmosphere of terror which has surrounded their doings, that a coherent account of the move- ment, and of its reactions on Bulgaria and on Bulgaro- Yugoslav relations, has not yet appeared in any language. Mr. Swire has at last published the details which, when allowance is made for his prejudice and his exaggerations, yet do make it possible to understand the roles played in Bulgarian politics by the main actors: the King, the murdered peasant leader Stambuliiski, the Officers' League, the Zveno movement and Mr. Swire's own particular hero, Damian Veltchev.
One may add that except for the superabundance of names, often practically identical (for which their chronicler is not to blame), the story makes excellent reading. It is a story with a plot, in the most literal sense of the words and would be worth reading, even by those not especially interested in Balkan affairs, for the sheer sensational character of the events which it records. Mr. Swire is not guilty of exaggerating this. Indeed, if we have described his book as one-sided, this is not because he has laid the colour on too thick when writing about his enemies, but rather that he has painted far too dainty a pastel of the doings of his friends.
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