Situation in Bulgaria.

Increase in the Bulgarian Armed Forces.

The Bulgarian armed forces аs limited by the Treaty of Neuilly are 33,000 men. At the moment when the Bulgarian government asked for an increase they were some five or six thousand men below strength. The increase therefore of 3,000 did not bring them above treaty strength. There would have been no necessity for the Bulgarian government to apply for authority for the increase through the organ of liquidation had it not been for the fact that the treaty makes it essential that recruitment shall take place on a voluntary basis for a period of 2 years. The Bulgarian government considered that men were urgently necessary to face a possible emergency in the shape of internal (communist) disorders. There would have been no time for them to take the necessary dispositions to enrol men on a twelve-year basis, and they therefore asked permission to enrol the men for a short time. They made application in this sense to the organ of liquidation, who, although not convinced as to the reasons given by the Bulgarian government for the necessity of these troops, referred the request to the Military committee at Versailles, who recommended favourably. As far as we know, however, the Ambassadors’ Conference has not yet finally agreed. In any case, however, the organ of liquidation extracted an undertaking from the Bulgarian government to the effect that the men would be in any case disbanded by May 31st at latest, or within eight days of an injunction to that effect from the organ of liquidation. The Bulgarian government also undertook that the measure was a preventive and not a repressive one, and that troops would only bе used in case of emergency. It would appear that the Bulgarian government were startled by the alarming series of political murders now going on in Sofia, but there are two points to notice.

• (1) Last year they incorporated a number of men in view of a similar emergency which did not materialise, without consulting the organ of liquidation, and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's government, confronted with a fait accompli, considered there was no other course to take but to agree.