In the course of the year 1915 Ferdinand of Bulgaria, with his
henchman Radoslavoff, was arranging to come into the War. Public
opinion in that country was smarting under the drastic Treaty of
Bucharest, which had been imposed by the victors of the second Balkan
War. It was Roumania which had inflicted the shrewdest wound by taking
the whole of the Dobrudja as a recompense for a military promenade,
during which she lost a few men who deserted, and a few officers who
were shot in the back. The Dobrudja is a land whose people cause it to
resemble a mosaic--Greeks, Turks, Roumanians, Tartars, Bulgars,
Armenians and gipsies are to be found--but the southern parts are
undoubtedly Bulgarian. After the great outcry which the Bulgars had
raised over the surrender of one town, Silistra, it can be imagined
that the loss of the whole land came as an unendurable sentence. Quite
apart from Bulgaria's Macedonian aspirations, it was felt in Belgrade
that Ferdinand, by pointing to the Dobrudja, would be able to drive
his kingdom into an alliance with the Central Powers, an alliance
whose aim, as far as he was concerned, was to leave him Tzar of the
Balkans. The photograph which he circulated of himself, seated in a
splendid chair upon a promontory by the Black Sea, wearing the
appropriate archaic robes, and with a look of profound meditation on
his otherwise Machiavellian features, was exactly what he thought a
Balkan Tzar should be.
The Serbs were in favour of delivering an attack upon the Bulgars
before they had mobilized and concentrated their troops. This would
not have warded off the Teutonic invasion, but the Serbs would have
been able to maintain contact with Salonica, thus facilitating the
evacuation of their army. And who knows whether this diversion would
not have induced the Greeks and the Roumanians to change their
attitude? However, the proposal was vetoed by Serbia's great Allies,
who thought that their diplomacy might work upon the Bulgars. Many
worthy people said that it would be quite inconceivable for the
Bulgarian army to oppose the Russian, seeing that this would be
terrible ingratitude. But they forgot that if the Russians had been,
not for purely altruistic motives, the kind patrons of the Bulgars,
they had recently--when the Tzar Nicholas and the Tzarina came to the
Constanza fetes--made open cause with Bulgaria's opponents. They were
also forgetting, rather inexcusably, that the Bulgars were averse to
the idea of the Russians securing Constantinople. On the other hand,
the old pro-Russian sentiments of the people still survived: the
Russian Legation at Sofia received numerous applications to serve in
the army; large contributions were made to the Russian Red Cross, and
public prayers were offered for the success of the Russian arms. But
the Muscovite Minister at Sofia was a man unfitted for the post, and
Ferdinand's task was made easier. The Allied diplomats could argue,
later on, that they failed by a narrow margin, since Radoslavoff only
succeeded in gaining a majority by means of the help of the Turkish
deputies; but if the Sobranje had been hostile to Ferdinand and
Radoslavoff they would simply have dissolved it. As a pattern of
morals Dr. Radoslavoff is not worth quotation--the offences for which
during a previous Premiership he was convicted were rather
flagrant--but his views on international politics are quite
instructive. On November 14, 1912, he wrote to his friend Mavrodieff,
the prefect of Sofia, a letter which was afterwards reproduced in
facsimile. "It is clear," he said, "that Russian diplomacy is
disloyal. It wants Constantinople.... But it is not only Russia which
envies Bulgaria; the same thing is true for Austria-Hungary and
Germany. The Balkan Union has surprised them, and they will seek a new
basis in their future politics...." But then the second Balkan War and
the Treaty of Bucharest enabled Ferdinand to commit his country to an
alliance which various of his statesmen and generals vehemently
deprecated. "If the Germans should win," telegraphed Tocheff, the
Minister at Vienna, in August 1915, "that would be still more
dangerous for Bulgaria."
Ferdinand was sure that the Austro-Germans would succeed in conquering
the Serbs. On October 6, after a treacherous artillery preparation,
the two armies began to cross at various points the Danube, the Save
and the Drin. Their losses in the hand-to-hand engagements may have
reminded them of a phrase in the official explanation that was issued,
after the rout of the previous December, by the Viennese authorities:
"The retirement of our forces after their victorious offensive in
Serbia has given birth to divers rumours for the most part entirely
without foundation.... It was inevitable that we should have important
losses in men and material." So it was on this occasion--at Belgrade,
for example, thousands were killed as they struggled to the shore--in
a broad street leading down to the harbour a brigade of Skoplje
recruits plunged through the Austrians with their knives. But in the
end, on October 10--and in spite of heroic work on the part of some
French and British naval detachments--Belgrade fell. On October 12 the
Bulgars attacked. "The European War is drawing to its close," said
Ferdinand's proclamation. "The victorious armies of the Central Powers
are in Serbia and are rapidly advancing." They advanced less rapidly
than they had planned, thanks to the wonderful exploits of the Serbian
army, which was heavily encumbered by the growing stream of fugitives.
The Austro-Germans failed to encircle the Serbian troops--slowly and
keeping in touch with those who were on the Bulgarian frontier, the
Serbs retired to the south and west.