The Times of Tuesday publishes a somewhat alarming article from
its Sofia correspondent on a Bolshevik scheme for a great proletarian rising in the Balkans. Arms, he tells us, have been smuggled into Bulgaria in large quantities, and Bulgaria is to be made the jumping- off place for the movement. While there is nothing inherently impossible in such an idea, it is perhaps as well to remember that the present Bulgarian Govern- ment is by no means a Democratic one. It seized power from the peasant leader, Stambuliski, and it is therefore apt to be faced with an opposition whose methods are as violent as its own. As the Times correspondent says, 80 per cent. of the Bulgarian population is peasant, and, after all, Stambuliski was an agrarian leader. Thus we do not feel that the present Bulgarian Govern- ment is as effective a bulwark against Bolshevism as one based,. like the last, on the peasant and agrarian movement. But the Balkans are troubled waters which Russian diplomacy has always regarded as its quite especial fishpond, and the Bolsheviks, who in foreign policy, at any rate, seem to show the greatest reverence for Tsarist tradition, are more than likely to be at work there once again. *
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