|
Bulgaria
capitulates
|
 |
|
Although the exact terms
of the agreement are not yet known in this country, it is clear from its
general features that it places Bulgaria completely under Allied control
|
|
At noon yesterday Bulgaria ceased to be an enemy of the Allies. The Bulgarian envoy sent to Salonka for the purpose of negotiating peace with General Franchet d’Esperey, the French Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Orient, signed with him at that hour an armistice which will last until the final peace settlement. Although the exact terms of the military agreement which is the basis of the armistice are not yet known in this country, it is clear from its general features that it places Bulgaria completely under Allied control. It therefore involves a breach between Bulgaria and Turkey on the one hand, and between her and the Central Powers. on the other.
|
The main terms laid down by General Franchet d’Esperey, and accepted by the Bulgarian representatives, are that the Bulgarian Army be immediately demobilized, its arms, munitions, and equipment being stored at given centres and placed in Allied custody; that all Greek and Serbian territory still occupied by Bulgarian forces be at once evacuated; that all Bulgarian means of transport, including the railways and Bulgarian ships and other craft on the Danube be placed at the disposal of the Allies; that Bulgarian territory be available for Allied operations against the enemy, and that, in particular, strategic points be occupied by the Allied Armies, each occupation to be reserved to British, French, or Italian troops, and that Bulgaria cease henceforth to be a belligerent, save with the complete consent of the Allies.
The Agreement is essentially military. It appears not to deal with political issues, and leaves frontier questions in suspense. These, indeed, can only be decided as a part of the general peace settlement. For this moment, at any rate, the boundaries of Bulgaria on the west and the South will be those of 1913. The armistice appears not to refer to any evacuation of Rumanian territory occupied by Bulgaria, possibly because its evacuation might place such territory immediately in the power of the enemy.
Broadly speaking, the most important effects of the armistice are that the direct German route to Constantinople is cut and placed under Allied control. The Lower Danube ceases to be available for enemy traffic, and it becomes impossible for Germany or Austria-Hungary to reinforce or supply Turkey except through the Rumanian or Russian Black Sea ports. Nothing is yet known as to the effect of these developments upon Turkey, but they are expected to be profound and immediate. Nor is it possible yet to forecast the influence of the Bulgarian capitulation upon Rumania, where the German and Austro-Hungarian tenure has seemed for some weeks to be growing precarious.
The evacuation of Serbian and Greek territory by the Bulgarian forces is regarded as one of the most satisfactory features of the arrangement. Besides vindicating to the full the patriotic foresight of M Venizelos, who made a revolution in his own country in order to range it alongside of the Allies, the Agreement will restore to the gallant Serbians large stretches of their own country beyond those they have already reconquered. How much Serbian territory is occupied by Austro-Hungarian troops is not precisely known; but it is evident that Austria Hungary will now be compelled to divert to the defence of whatever positions she may try to hold a considerable proportion of the troops hitherto stationed on the Italian front.
In a word, the armistice with Bulgaria is regarded as shifting the whole centre of military gravity in South-Eastern Europe.
|
Ferdinand
of Bulgaria
|
 |
|
Ferdinand of
Saxe-Coburg-Kohary combined the brains and the vices of the worst type of the
Italian condottiere of the Middle Ages, without the redeeming virtue of personal
courage
|
|
To the Editor of The Times
|
Sir, For the future redemption of the Bulgarian people, there is one condition that the Allies must keep irrevocably in mind in their dealings with Bulgaria. So long as we remember that our first duty is to our Allies in the Balkan Peninsula, we can treat the Bulgarian people leniently, but in the interests of the Bulgarians themselves we cannot deal too sternly with the Catilinarian ruler whose sinister influence and example have blighted the fair promise which Bulgaria held forth during the early years of her emancipation from the Turkish yoke.
I was a good deal in Bulgaria in those days, and had many friends amongst the small group of educated men upon whom had suddenly devolved the task of raising a peasant nation, endowed with many excellent qualities, out of the slough of Turkish misrule. Many of them had brought from Robert College and other missionary schools, mostly American, a high standard of public duty and integrity. They worked hard and they lived frugally. Their first ruler. Prince Alexander of Battenberg, set an equally good example to the young officers of the Bulgarian Army.
The prevailing note in those days was a sturdy sense of independence - too sturdy for the jealous ambitions of Russia and of Austria. In an evil hour for Bulgaria, Prince Alexander was driven to abdicate; in a still more evil hour, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary was selected to fill a vacant throne which was going a-begging. He combined the brains and the vices of the worst type of the Italian condottiere of the Middle Ages, without the one redeeming virtue of personal courage which they usually possessed. His first achievement was to procure within a few years of his accession the murder of the strong man Stambuloff, to whom he chiefly owed his throne. Affection or respect he was incapable of inspiring, but with devilish ingenuity he set to work deliberately and systematically to debauch and corrupt the small governing class, in order to secure the blackmailer’s hold upon them.
When I was last in Bulgaria, in the summer of 1915, only a few weeks before Ferdinand threw off the mask and sold Bulgaria to the Germanic Powers, he had surrounded himself with men whose more than dubious antecedents which he held in terrorem over them, had fitted them to be his willing tools and the zealous disciples of Teutonic Kultur. All that was best in Bulgaria, and the bulk of the peasant people, were being dragged reluctantly down the inclined plane, and unfortunately there was no unity of purpose, no strong leadership amongst the Allies, to which they could rally. The very failure of Ferdinand’s treachery to the Balkan League, which precipitated the second Balkan War, had enabled him to bait with a specious appeal to Bulgarian nationalism, still smarting under defeat. the fatal bargain he had struck with Berlin, whilst the Bulgarian Army, which he had saturated with the spirit of Prussian militarism, was only too ready to believe with him that, in following the German War Lord, they were treading the path to easy victory and assured revenge.
If ever there has been a ruler personally and directly responsible for having plunged his country in disaster it is Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and if it is one of the chief war aims of the Allies to make the world safe against militarism and autocracy. Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who is the living embodiment in the Balkan Peninsula of all that is worst in them, cannot be allowed to retain his throne. On one occasion when, soon after his accession, he was talking to me about his predecessor, I said that in my opinion Prince Alexander had been much misunderstood, and that, far from being an ambitious adventurer, his qualities were rather those of the heart than of the head. Ferdinand interjected, with a cold, thin smile: “Eh bien, Monsieur, L’histoire ne dira pas cela de moi!”
For once he spoke the truth. History will say of him that, prostituting his undoubted abilities to the basest purposes, he gambled heartlessly not only with the blood and the fortunes, but with the very soul, of a people worthy of better things. Let us help history to place it on record, as soon as may be, that he ended by paying some part at least of the penalty he has so richly earned.
Yours obediently, VALENTINE CHIROL, 34, Carlyle-square, Chelsea, SW, Sept. 28.
|
The
Submission of Bulgaria
|
 |
|
This is the beginning of
"the end," but it is not the end
|
|
With the complete submission of Bulgaria we have, come to a solemn moment in the history of this greatest of all wars and in the long process of civilization. It is no time for exultation; the end is not yet, but with proud and thankful hearts we may recognize in this great event the first clear and unmistakable presage that the confederacy of our enemies is tottering to its fall. The bond of self interest which united them is shattered. The motives which have decided Bulgaria to quit the ranks are appealing to others, whose plight is in some respect even graver than hers, and her example may not improbably be followed in the near future.
|
The entire surprise which her desertion is to the peoples, if not to the Governments, of the Central Powers cannot fail to enhance the moral consequences of the shock. The surrender takes the form of an armistice which is to last from midday yesterday until the conclusion of the final settlement at the peace, Its broad result is to sever Bulgaria from her former partners and to place her whole territory under Entente control. By concluding it she breaks with Germany and Austria-Hungary to the north, and with her old adversary and recent accomplice, Turkey, to the south.
The peace is a dictated peace. The Commander of the Allied forces, General Franchet D’Esperay, prescribed the terms, and the representatives of Bulgaria accepted them without modification. They comprise, in the first place, the immediate demobilization and disarmament of the Bulgarian Army, and the custody of its arm and equipment by the Allies; the delivery of all means of transport, including the railways, ships, and craft on the Danube, for the service of the Allies; the surrender of all strategic points for Allied occupation, and the use of Bulgarian territory by them for military operations; They exact, further, the immediate evacuation by the Bulgarians of all Greek and Serbian territory which the invaders still hold, and they impose on Bulgaria the obligation to take no further part in the war, save with the assent and permission of the Allies.
There is but one limitation to these conditions. It has been thought just and expedient, in the present temper of the Balkan peoples, to restrict the occupation of Bulgarian territory to British, French, and Italian troops. Decisions upon questions of frontier and other matters of a political character would have been out of place in a military convention. They are necessarily reserved for the general peace settlement but it would seem that for the present the frontiers of Bulgaria to the south and west are to be those which were laid down in 1913.
Our Correspondent on War discusses in another column the chief military consequences which this breach in the union of Germany’s vassal States seems likely to entail. She has once more the “war upon two fronts”, which her strategists particularly dread, and the temporary deliverance from which was the chief advantage that she gained by her treaty with the Bolshevists. It is indeed a war upon three fronts, if the Italian front be retarded as distinct from that in Belgium and in France. Bosnia and Herzegovina are directly threatened, and to defend them, and any positions which he may attempt to hold in Serbia, Austria Hungary will have to deplete her forces on the Piave and in the Alps. And this new danger comes upon the Central Powers at the moment when they are suffering defeat after defeat in their “elastic defensive” in the West and exhausted by terrible losses there.
But the most important gain to the Allies, the most serious blow to Germany’s “world-policy,” and the fullest disappointment of her fondest hopes is that henceforth the direct road to Constantinople and the East is blocked. The “corridor State” is in our hands. The spinal cord of all the grand “Berlin to Baghdad and beyond” ambitions is cut. The Lower Danube will no longer be a safe waterway for the dispatch of munitions and stores to the Turkish capital; the Black Sea has ceased to be a safe German lake, though its Rumanian and Russian ports open to her.
It remains to be seen whether she will or will not make some desperate effort to recover a position which is the pivot of her Eastern and Far Eastern policy. What is plain is that she cannot engage in such an adventure without a terrible increase of the dangers which confront her with growing intensity in the West. The recent speech of her chief statesmen in the Reichstag show how tenaciously they cling to their ambitions in Asia and how firmly they have relied on the assistance of their vassal states for the execution of their boldest projects. Are they to renounce their patronage of the new Republic of. Georgia, and to drop their promise to the Bolshevists that they will protect Baku? An extract from an eminent professor’s article, which we give elsewhere, insts on the need of “purging the differences between Bulgaria and Turkey”, and of carrying out “the German-Turkish-Russian-Persian agreement on the Black Sea and in the Caucasus” as a step to challenging England’s position in India. To abandon all these schemes because a subordinate ally whose “unshakable loyalty” was praised by the King of Bavaria in Sofia only three weeks ago, has deserted, would be a crushing blow to German prestige throughout the East and to that of the governing classes at home.
Mr Bonar Law in his excellent speech at the Guildhall informed his hearers that Turkey has just lost another Army with 10,000 prisoners - the Army, doubtless. which has surrendered beyond the Jordan. He added that “there was something in connexion with Turkey which he could not say, but which we could all think”. A good many people, are doubtless thinking it at Main Headquarters in Berlin and in Vienna, as well as Constantinople, where, as we know from Enver Pasha, it has been thought for some time that “there is nothing more to be got out of the war”. The capitulation of Turkey’s northern neighbour is not unlikely to stimulate and to multiply reflections of the kind.
Great and significant as is this event, we would insist upon the warnings of the Prime Minister and of Mr Law that the struggle is yet far from over. The “spring tide of victory has begun to flow” but it is for us to take it at the flood and to bear in mind that in war nothing is done until all is done. “We must put victory through,” writes Mr Lloyd George, and we cannot put it through unless all do their bit.
Though one of Germany’s confederates is out of the fray, it is the weakest and the smallest who has laid down her arms. German “militarism” will fight to the death, because it knows that its very existence, its power, wealth, honours, and position, are at stake and cannot be saved but by victory in the field. It has still its grip upon the German people, and apparently upon Austria. They are two great military Powers who may yet offer a prolonged and obstinate resistance. The final victory of the Allies we have always believed to be assured - even in the darkest hours of the last four terrible years.
This is the beginning of “the end,” but it is not the end. The joybells may be ringing in our hearts, but it behoves us, as we showed no ignoble depression in failure and defeat, to indulge in no undue elation at the first fruits of our victories in the domain of politics. It is for us to drive the blow home; to press on by unrelaxing effort in these islands as well as in the field until Germany sues for a dictated peace as humbly and unreservedly as Bulgaria. Then, and then only, will be the time for rejoicing and for rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment