The murder of Franz Ferdinand and the ranging of all the Great Powers of Europe in a struggle for life or death opened up to Ferdinand a new vista of opportunity. He could see at any rate that opportunities would soon come his way to retrieve the losses of the second Balkan war. When Turkey plunged headlong into the quarrel, the opportunities of Bulgaria were multiplied tenfold, and for the first time in its existence this newest of European nations occupied a position of great importance by reason of its geographical position.

To appreciate to the full the real importance of Bulgaria’s position it is necessary to take a glance at the map of Europe, as it appeared after the Treaty of Bucarest, and before Europe was convulsed by the Great War. One quick glance will show that the only European country with a frontier adjoining that of Turkey in Europe is Bulgaria, and that it lies like a wedge between the territory of the Central Powers and that of Turkey.

In a word, a hostile Bulgaria would cut Turkey off from its allies of Germany and Austria; a neutral Bulgaria would make communication most difficult; while an allied Bulgaria would permit free passage of goods and troops between Berlin and Constantinople.

Ferdinand was quick to see the new importance he had assumed in the struggle of the nations, and eager to push his advantage to the utmost. From the very outset he was wooed most assiduously by his old friend Austria, and by Germany through Austria. On the other hand his traditional friendship with France, and the deep obligation of Bulgaria to Russia and Great Britain, caused the Allied Powers to regard the position with some complacency. The hostility of all the Balkan States to Turkey, and therefore to the Teuton Powers, was assumed, though it appears to have been recognized from the outset that Ferdinand would set a price, even upon his neutrality.

But Ferdinand was already committed to a scheme which promised him far more than he could expect from his French friends and their allies. The service demanded was no small one, for he had not only to appear in arms on behalf of the Central Powers when the appointed time came, but before then he had to destroy the trust of the other Balkan States in the justice and the cause of the Entente Powers.

To this end it was necessary to retain the confidence of France, Great Britain, and the Powers allied to them. The task was no easy one, since his duplicity was a matter of notoriety; and he had need to preserve a very specious air to cover the real cunning of his plans. How far he went in his double dealing it is not yet possible to say; but it is certain that he must have gone to extreme lengths to win the confidence and trust of the Entente diplomatists in the face of the warnings that were showered upon them.

The demands he made as the price of his friendship were for concessions at the expense of his neighbours, Serbia and Greece. Serbia was to yield 6,000 square miles of that part of Thrace which was wrested from Turkey in the Balkan war. The demand was an unconscionable one, for in the territory he wanted was a considerable section of the railway that linked Belgrade to Salonica, and formed the only outlet that Serbia possessed to the sea. That link was to be entrusted to the acknowledged enemy of Serbia, the Czar of Bulgaria.

It is not very pleasant to reflect that Serbia was forced to consent to this demand by her allies. The use made by Germans of the incident, and of the pressure that had to be applied to Serbia, was a very deft one. Rumania and Greece were told that they were mere pawns in the game, and that the Powers of the Entente would willingly sacrifice them to their own desire to retain the friendship of Bulgaria.

Greece was soon to have a practical illustration of the German argument, for Ferdinand, emboldened by his first diplomatic success, then demanded a strip of Greek territory on the Ægean, including the Greek seaport of Kavalla. Greece strenuously objected, but was told that she must give way and that it was only due to Bulgaria. “What did we tell you?” whispered the Germans in Greek ears, and were justified of their previous insinuations.

It has never been disclosed whether Ferdinand asked for instant delivery of this territory, or whether the compliance with his demands was followed on his part by the signing of a treaty with the Entente Powers. It would have been like the disregard Ferdinand had always shown for “scraps of paper” if he had committed Bulgaria to a pact which he had already broken when it was signed. For at this time, when by some means he had won the trust of the Entente Powers, he had actually entered into treaty obligations with their enemies.

Who can measure the duplicity of this man? It is certain that the trust reposed in him by both sides was very great, and that in the end he was certain to betray one or the other. That he had already chosen to betray the Entente is fairly certain, for already the expedition against the Dardanelles had been launched, and he well knew that its success would mean the total extinction of his long-cherished scheme for obtaining possession of Constantinople.

With Germany and Austria, on the other hand, he was dealing with Powers lavish of their promises. To them, and to Turkey also, a free passage through Bulgaria had now become vital. They were at a standstill in the western area of war, and their great effort against Russia was now expending itself. The only outlet offering was to the east and south, and to that outlet the assistance of Bulgaria was imperative. So Germany promised far more than the Entente Powers could give, and Ferdinand sold himself to the biggest bidder.

It was a dangerous game he played, for the success of the attempt on the Dardanelles would have made it impossible for him to carry out his arrangement with his friends the Huns. The failure of that enterprise, on the other hand, allowed him to break his obligations to the Entente Powers, after they had strained the loyalty of Serbia, Greece and Rumania, in trying to meet his demands.

Such was the double treachery of which Ferdinand was guilty in 1914 and 1915. His treaties with the Teuton Powers appear to have been two. The first was made with Austria in 1913, when he pledged himself to common action against Serbia with that Power; and so, it may be, paved the way to the assassination of the heir-apparent to the Austrian throne. The other was made with Germany in July, 1915, when Ferdinand was guaranteed Thrace, and a strip of Greek territory along the Ægean, including the ports of Kavalla and Salonica.

In April of 1915 the Rumanian Minister at Sofia warned his government that the agreement had been made, and Rumania in its turn warned the Entente Powers. Later Greece warned the Entente of what was going on at least twice. In the face of these warnings, the Entente Powers continued to believe in Ferdinand. The Serbians, who knew his villany, and were certain that he was casting in his lot with their oppressors, wished to take the bull by the horns and attack Bulgaria while its powerful friends were fully occupied with Russia and on the western front. They were restrained by the Entente Powers; otherwise they would have altered the whole course of the war.

I repeat that the Entente must have had better assurance than mere protestations from Ferdinand to have trusted him so implicitly. His reputation and his past career were for any one to read; yet in face of all suspicious circumstances he was trusted. M. Joseph Reinach states that when the documents of the negotiations are published by the Entente Powers they will constitute a record in baseness and treachery. For my own part, I conceive that nothing less than a treaty signed by Ferdinand and his ministers will be brought forward in justification of the latitude that was allowed to him.

The mobilization of the Bulgarian army was finally ordered upon the flimsiest of pretexts, and its concentration upon the Serbian frontier, concurrently with the advance of the German and Austrians upon the doomed kingdom, follows inevitably. The rest is a matter of recent history, still an incomplete chapter in the story of the Great War.

One effect of Ferdinand’s intervention was to unite Constantinople with Berlin, and to make the British evacuation of the peninsula of Gallipoli a necessity. Thus the Czar of Bulgaria was instrumental in striking the hardest blow at the prestige of the British arms that has been inflicted in the memory of living man. He effected it, not by prowess in the field, but by an act of base and shameless treachery, which involved his turning his back upon all the nations which he had extolled as liberating influences, to which Bulgaria owed its very existence. It involved him in an alliance with Turkey, the Power against which he had been for a generation declaiming. But it was a shrewd blow nevertheless, and it will be the fault of Great Britain itself if the punishment for it is not conceived on a similar scale of magnitude.

It must not be supposed that Ferdinand stood alone in Bulgaria in this act of dissimulation and treachery. He acted in connivance with a ministry which represented a very powerful pro-Hun section of Bulgarian opinion. For by this time a large section of Bulgaria, embittered by the reverse of the second Balkan war, had renounced its Slavonic sympathies, and had openly pronounced for the Kultur of the Kaiser and his generals and professors.