So reasoned the suave German diplomats.  The effect upon Bulgarian sensibilities can be imagined.  How far removed was this drab reality from roseate dreams of imperial Bulgaria dominating the entire Balkans and treating with Teutonic partners as a respected equal!  The grim truth was this:  Bulgaria’s promised gains were being whittled away according to the shifting exigencies of German policy.  Was anything certain for the future?  No.  Because German interests came first, and the junior colleagues must “do their part.”  Here once more appeared the Nemesis of Prussian Realpolitik, that sinister heresy the crowning demerit of which is that it is not even “real,” since it reposes on short-sighted egoism and disregards those moral “imponderables,” good faith, fair-dealing, etc., which weigh most heavily in the end.  Having turned the neutral world into enemies, Realpolitik was now ready to turn Germany’s allies into neutrals.

[Sidenote:  Bulgaria is discontented.]

[Sidenote:  Bulgaria suffers also from previous wars.]

Thus by the opening months of 1918 Bulgaria was no longer a contented member of central Europe.  Most of her political leaders were profoundly disillusioned, and uncertain as to the future.  Of course these political matters were still somewhat veiled from the masses.  But meanwhile the Bulgarian peasant had been undergoing a little educative process of his own.  German diplomats might ask Bulgaria to make sacrifices.  The Bulgarian peasant could answer roundly that this was already the case.  For Bulgaria was suffering—­suffering in every fiber of her being.  When she entered the European struggle in 1915, Bulgaria was still weak from two bloody wars.  True, the Bulgarian conscripts had marched gladly enough once more, because they were told that it was a matter of a single short campaign, ending in a speedy peace.  But two long years had now passed, and Bulgaria’s manhood still stood mobilized in distant Macedonia, while at home the fields went fallow, and the scanty harvests, reaped by women and children, had to be shared with the German.  Everywhere there was increasing want, sometimes semi-starvation.  Bulgaria, like Russia, was proving that a primitive agricultural people may make a fine campaign, but cannot wage prolonged modern war.

[Sidenote:  Premier Radoslavov resigns.]

All this discontent, both above and below, presently focused itself in the parliamentary situation.  The opposition groups in the Bulgarian Sobranje steadily gained strength until on June 17, 1918, Premier Radoslavov was forced to resign.  Radoslavov had been in power since 1913.  He had been the architect of the Teuton-Bulgar alliance and was known to be a firm believer in the Mitteleuropa idea.  His successor, Malinov, naturally gave lip-service to the same program, but his past leaning had been toward Russia, and he had never displayed marked enthusiasm for the Teutons.