BULGARIA

The problem of Bulgaria is a very difficult one. It ought certainly not to be overlooked on that account, for strategically Bulgaria's position in the centre of the Balkans is of vital importance in the organisation of any Balkan bloc to oppose German and Italian penetration.

• 2. Up till now we have been working with and through The Balkan Entente but it must be remembered that the original purpose of the Balkan Entente and the reason for its creation was to ostracise Bulgaria.

• 3. From the very outset wе have striven to bring about a reconciliation between Bulgaria and the Balkan Entente, in the hope that eventually they might be able to collaborate. For this purpose we worked last year through Turkey, who, of the four neighbours of Bulgaria, is the one most in sympathy with our object. We eventually, with the help of Turkey, succeeded in bringing about the Salonika Agreement of last July, by which the Balkan Entente recognised Bulgaria's right to rearm, notwithstanding the military clauses of the Treaty of Trianon, and Bulgaria entered into a non-aggression agreement with the members of the Balkan Entente, thereby renouncing any intention to recover her lost territories by force.

• 4. Unfortunately the subsequent penetration of Germany into Central Europe as a result of the Munich Agreement, far from helping to bring about the entry of Bulgaria into the Balkan Entente, has aroused once again the old suspicions which all the Balkan States feel of Bulgaria in her capacity as the one unsatisfied Power in the Balkans with irredentist claims against Greece, Yugoslavia and Roumania. The reappearance of Germany in Central Europe was bound to arouse the hopes and ambitions of those elements in Bulgaria who have never given up the hope of reconquering the territories lost as a result of the Balkan wars and of the Great War, and last autumn it took the particular form of an agitation for the recovery of the Southern Dobrudja from Roumania.