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Bulgaria Quits: Peace

Peace demonstrations.

The tales of Bulgarian prisoners.

The capitulation.

But just a month after Malinov's accession came the dramatic shift of fortune in the West. The German offensive broke down, and the Allies began their astounding succession of victories. Instantly the Balkan situation altered. Bulgaria knew that the spring offensive had been Germany's supreme bid for victory. To fill the ranks for the rush on Paris and the channel ports the last German veterans had been withdrawn from the East. Gone were those field-gray divisions which had stiffened the Macedonian front and kept down popular discontent by garrisoning Bulgarian towns. The peasant voice was at last free to speak, and it spoke in no uncertain terms for an end of the war. Agrarian disturbances increased in frequency. Peace demonstrations occurred in Sofia. In fact, some of these demonstrations were tinged with revolutionary red. Bolshevism, that wild revolt against the whole existing order to-day manifest in every quarter of the globe, had not passed Bulgaria by. Of course there was the army, but the army itself was not immune. By early July, Bulgarian deserters and prisoners taken on the Macedonian front were telling the Allied intelligence officers strange tales--tales of midnight soldiers' meetings at which "delegates" were chosen in true Russian fashion, and which Bulgarian regimental officers found it wisest to ignore. Such was the situation in early summer. By the first days of autumn Bulgaria was cracking from end to end. It was in mid-September that General Franchet d'Esperey, the Allied commander, ordered the Macedonian offensive. Small wonder that within a fortnight Bulgaria had surrendered and retired from the war. Turkey's doom sealed.