BRITISH LEGATION,

SOFIA.

May 21st, 1930.

(8/136/30)

27 May, 1930.

С 4187

My dear Van,

The Macedonian problem is so great a danger that we ought, I think, to explore every possibility of creating such an atmosphere between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria as will some day make a real solution possible. That is my excuse for dropping the following seeds into the mind of the Foreign Office.

In your “Aspect of International Relations in 1930” you say that Bulgaria “has no territorial grievances or ambitions of any real importance”. Ambitions I agree that she has none, but it seems to me slightly misleading, if I may say so, to say that she has no important territorial grievances. Apart from Macedonia, there is the Dobrudja, and there are three northern districts where the Treaty of Neuilly incorporated a purely Bulgarian (not Macedonian) populations in Serbia by pushing the frontier eastwards for strategic reasons. Absolutely, neither the Dobrudja nor those districts are important. But for Bulgaria they are extremely important – the Dobrudja for its rich lands developed by Bulgarian energy, the three districts just mentioned for the complication which their annexation has imported into the Macedonian problem. My suggestion is that we might work for the ultimate retrocession of these districts to Bulgaria. I enclose a note explaining what they are.

It was my Yugoslav colleague who started this train of thought, by telling me that when he was acting as Secretary to Pashitch at the Peace Conference he urged that statesman to drop these annexations, since they were perfectly useless to Serbia and would only serve to increase and perpetuate Bulgarian bitterness. Pashitch replied “Je suis tout-a-fait de votre avis, mais allez dire cela aux militaires”. And the same view, I gather, is widely held among intelligent Yugoslavs, who deplore an injustice which violates the spirit of the peace settlement, helps to keep Bulgaro-Serb animosity alive and gives Belgrade nothing but the privilege of administering a few thousand acres of desolate mountain country and of forcing a few hundred Bulgarian peasants to change their patronymics from “off” to “itch”, I doubt whether a clearer case could be found of gratuitous evil done by the general-staff mind.