In the chief square of Sofia, near the Newski Cathedral, stands a great statue, the work of the Bulgarian sculptor Zocchi. It is erected to the Russian Czar, Alexander the Second, “the Czar Liberator.” A similar statue has been erected in the ancient Bulgarian capital of Tirnovo. In every peasant hut in Bulgaria a portrait of the same benefactor is hung; sometimes it disputes wall space with pictures of Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. These are some of the outward signs that Bulgaria has allowed a despicable foreigner to lead them into the deadliest ingratitude, and to make them pay their debt for national existence by the basest perfidy of which a whole nation has ever been guilty.

When the Russians discovered the survival of the ancient Bulgarians they found a race of hopeless outcasts, groaning under a Turkish tyranny that has its recent parallel in the Turkish treatment of the Christian Armenians. Later, when the most enterprising Bulgarians sought to free themselves from this intolerable oppression, the only means open to them were those resorted to by outlaws and murderers. They became modern Robin Hoods, without any of the elementary decency which characterized the behaviour of that legendary English hero.

Russia from the very outset recognized the claims imposed upon her by racial and religious affinity to the Bulgarians. How generously she paid that obligation may be read in the terms of the treaty of San Stefano. The Powers of Europe saw fit to revise the terms of that treaty, and Britain’s sympathy for small and oppressed people ensured that the nation so revived by Russia should not be blotted out of existence.

The Bulgaria created by the treaty of Berlin was a small and unimportant Principality. Its aggrandisement has been effected by innumerable breaches of that compact, one of which was the very assumption by Ferdinand of the throne. For that reason the new Prince, as I have already told, was not recognized by the Powers, and his vanity made their recognition all important to him.

The policy of Stambuloff, who then guided the destinies of Bulgaria, was to free the young State from any preponderance of Russian influence. Adherence to that policy would have delayed the recognition Ferdinand sought, and for that elementary reason he betrayed Stambuloff, and became morally guilty of his assassination. By contriving the apostasy of his heir, he so far placated Russia that his position was recognized. From that time forward he always professed the most profuse gratitude to the great Slav Power to which he owed his place and Bulgaria owed its very existence.

Is there any need to elaborate the sordid treachery of his conduct? As a bachelor Prince his life was not worth a day’s purchase at any time. In order that he might marry, Stambuloff had the Constitution amended, thereby earning an unpopularity with the Church party which contributed largely to his fall. He had already made himself detested by the army because of the severity with which he crushed out the plots against the life of his ungrateful Prince.

The services he had rendered to Ferdinand were made the weapons of his undoing. Dismissed, impoverished and persecuted with the vilest charges, Stambuloff was imprisoned in Sofia until such time as his murder could be contrived. And while his minister’s unavenged blood was yet warm this monster of ingratitude was concluding with the dead man’s enemies a pact in which blasphemy and treachery played equal parts. For the patronage of Russia he caused a child of three to become an apostate from the faith in which he had been baptized, and broke the heart of his gentle Princess.

That he lived to betray the friendship for which he paid such an infamous price will be made abundantly clear. In the meantime Bulgaria’s lip service to Russia is worth considering.

“We find Russian graves scattered all over our country,” wrote the Mir at the time of Stambuloff’s fall. “The men who rest in them shed their blood for us. But where are the English, Italian, Austrian, German graves?”

When Ferdinand entered Bulgaria and was received in Sofia, the Metropolitan Bishop reminded him of the national debt, after a few words of personal welcome, saying, “This people is grateful to Russia, who made immense sacrifices for our deliverance, and to whom we owe our liberty and independence. Do not then forget these sacrifices, and use your best efforts to re-establish relations between Russia and Bulgaria—to reconcile the Liberator and the liberated.”

A quarter of a century later the Mir was writing: “The healthiest minds among the Bulgarian people, realizing that they were freed by Russia in the name of the same idea which at this moment is creating a great Slav Empire, are conscious of the existence of a bond of blood, but are unable to act in accordance with it.”

They were unable, because Ferdinand had made it impossible. How he had done this is explained by M. Buroff, once a minister and a leading Bulgarian publicist. In the Almanac of the National Party, for 1915, he explains that the Court gave strong support to all opposition to Russia. All other views lead their holders to persecution and dismissal. In the Army “the higher the rank held by an officer, the more dependent he is upon his expressed hatred of Russia. It is the means by which officers may secure the dignity of generalship. It is from the Court that this poison spreads as if by some mysterious agency.”

How widespread this poison was, and how effectively Ferdinand had broken all ties that should have bound Bulgaria to the great Mother of the Slav races was recognized in Russia. The fact provoked an outburst from the Russian poet Andreef, which might well have shamed a less cynical people to some revolt against a king so monstrously treacherous.

“The Slav world is stricken with shame, and turns its eyes earthward whenever the name Bulgarian is mentioned, in the same way as an honourable family is ashamed of the unworthy member. You Bulgars have a Slav heart but German brains, and your tongue, like that of the snake, is split in twain.... If the Germans keep you fastened like sheep within the fold while your brothers’ blood is being spilled, or if your shepherds lead you along the pathway of treachery and you, like other belligerents, commence to banish the Russians from Bulgaria, then first of all, take from your midst the monument of Alexander’s tomb—he who freed you—for he also was a Russian.”

M. Joseph Reinach, who was first introduced to Ferdinand by King Edward VII, and who maintained a correspondence with him, has declared that when the time comes for the final publication of the documents relative to the Bulgarian treachery, they will furnish an example of disloyalty and treachery unexampled in the records of the chancellery.

“I am very sure,” adds this authority, “that if the Russians, instead of being conquered in Poland and Galicia, had won, the Czar of the Bulgarians would have treated with the Triple Alliance instead of betraying his past and his honour in selling his armies to the Germans.”

“Russia was trusting, and I myself was deceived into believing with Shakespeare, that there is no such thing as an utterly bad man. The Serbians have a proverb which explains Russia’s blind faith in the Shoddy Czar. ‘A woman who has wet-nursed a calf loves it like her own child.’ So Russia loved Bulgaria, a circumstance which makes Bulgaria’s crime more detestable still.”