Bulgarian character

I may confirm to some extent these testimonies to the Bulgarian character by statements which were made to me in the course of casual conversation by foreign residents, who have had long personal experience of the country and its people. The managing director of one of the leading railways assured me that Bulgaria was the only place he had ever known where you could leave money about your offices or rooms with perfect safety, even if the doors were open—a statement which, on a small scale, I could corro-borate from my own observation. The manager of a foreign bank in Bulgaria remarked to me that in all his experience as a banker in many parts of the world, he had never known bank customers who repaid loans made to them so honestly as the Bulgarian peasant farmers. An English gentleman, who has resided in Bulgaria and owned land there for the greater part of a long life, gave me as the result of his experience that, if you wanted work done in Bulgaria, you got it done more quickly and more cheaply if you engaged Bulgarian workmen by the day, than if you contracted for the job by piecework. It would be absurd to say that these various statements are conclusive proofs of the general honesty of the Bulgarians. But they go some way to show that, to say the least, they are not less honest than their neighbours.

It should be borne in mind that the persons from whom an ordinary traveller derives most of his information in Bulgaria are generally people connected in some way or other with the diplomatic service. All this class of infor-mants, no matter what their nationality, are unconsciously biased by their partiality for the Turks. I do not wonder at this partiality. I suspect that in their place I should enter-tain much the same sentiment. Whatever the defects of the “unspeakable Turk” may be as a master, it is difficult to overrate his merits as an acquaintance. He is an infinitely more satisfactory personage to deal with than the average Levantine, or Sclav, or Greek. He has a value for truth which renders him unwilling, to say the least, to tell a lie without a motive; he has a sense of self-respect which makes him dislike being detected in double dealings, even if it is not strong enough to ensure his uprightness; he is polished in manner, dignified, and courteous. In fact, to put the matter briefly, the Turk is the gentleman of Eastern Europe; and therefore all diplomatists who have to do with the East are prejudiced in his favour, and are disposed to side with him as against the native races which have revolted, or are endeavouring to revolt, against his rule.

Progress of Bulgaria

It happens, too, that from a variety of reasons the progress of Bulgaria is viewed with extreme jealousy, not only by Russia, but by Greece and Servia. In consequence, Russians, Greeks, and Serbs, who come into much closer contact with the West than the Bulgars, are only too glad to join in any outcry against the Piedmont of the Balkans. The Bulgarians are not, I admit freely, an engaging or a particularly attractive people; they have no literature, no artistic tastes, no great intellectual culture, and no dramatic qualities. They are simply a race of peasants with all a peasant’s meannesses and prejudices, but also with all the peasant’s virtues of industry and frugality. I remember many years ago, when travelling in the Western States of America that, as we crossed the prairies of Illinois in the tram, there was an old Irishwoman seated in the comer of the car I occupied. Somebody in the car made a disparaging remark about the dreary monotony of the endless plains over which we were passing. The old woman seemed to take the comment as an insult to the country, and, pointing to the homesteads rising out of the prairie, remarked rather to herself than to anybody else, “ Sure and it is a blessed country; I think God made it for the poor.” And as I travelled through Bulgaria the memory of this incident often came back to my mind, and I thought that this, too, was a blessed country, made by God for the peasant.