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Tamoskaro-2 Directory 14
Page 05
To obtain such a meagre result, the Government of Bulgaria maintains a policy contrary to popular sentiment and to the racial bonds of the people, and a policy contrary to the further interests of Bulgaria, which are incompatible with the building up of a strong Turkey in the Balkans, a Turkey that would be the bulwark of Germany. The most essential part of it is that this policy is based on a most improbable hypothesis, that is to say, the final triumph of the Austro-German arms. If the Bulgarian Government had left prejudices to one side and looked clearly at the events, they would not have been slow to understand that from the moment England stepped into the war and Italy abandoned her allies, the Austro-German alliance politically lost the game. Each passing day diminishes more and more the hopes of success of the Dual Alliance, and permits England and Russia to expand their inexhaustible forces. It is not difficult to foresee from now the terms of peace that England and Russia will impose. Any policy which expects to profit from the defeat of these two powers is doomed to failure, and because such is the policy of the Bulgarian Government, we think that it is against the interests of the country.
On September 10th--that was the seventh day of our involuntary fast--we had another dreary march, again without a morsel of food. My men were so downhearted that I really thought they would not last much longer. Hunger was playing on them in a curious way. They said that they could hear voices all round them and people firing rifles. I could hear nothing at all. I well knew that their minds were beginning to go, and that it was a pure hallucination. Benedicto and Filippe, who originally were both atheists of an advanced type, had now become extremely religious, and were muttering fervent prayers all the time. They made a vow that if we escaped alive they would each give L5 sterling out of their pay to have a big mass celebrated in the first church they saw.
There is another figure of earlier date who seems to have had the same magnetic gift in an even more pre-eminent degree. There is a portrait by Lawrence of Lord Melbourne that certainly gives a hint, and more than a hint, of the extraordinary charm which enveloped him; the thick, wavy hair, the fine nose, the full, but firmly moulded, lips, are attractive enough. But the large, dark eyes under strongly marked eyebrows, which are at once pathetic, passionate, ironical, and mournful, evoke a singular emotion. Every gift that men hold to be advantageous was showered upon Melbourne. He was well born, wealthy, able; he was full of humour, quick to grasp a subject, an omnivorous reader and student, a famous sportsman. He won the devotion of both men and women. His marriage with the lovely and brilliant Lady Caroline Ponsonby, whose heart was broken and mind shattered by her hopeless passion for Byron, showed how he could win hearts. There is no figure of all that period of whom one would rather possess a personal memoir. Yet despite all his fame and political prestige, he was an unhappy, dissatisfied man, who tasted every experience and joy of life, and found that there was nothing in it.
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