Bulgaria e-book - iMedia

2. To revise the Constitution.
3. To elect a new Prince when the reigning family becomes extinct,
owing to absence of descendants who can occupy the throne.
4. To appoint regents during the minority of the heir to the throne.
5. To authorise the Prince to accept the government of another
State. Every Order must bear, in addition to the signature of the
Prince, that of one minister or of all the ministers, these latter being
the responsible representatives of the executive authority. The
ministers are held responsible to the Prince and to the National
Assembly for all their acts. This responsibility is collective for all the
ministers in the case of measures which have been decided by the
Council of Ministers, and individual with respect to the acts of the
ministers as heads of the various State Departments.
What I have described represents in effect a complete system
of representative and responsible government. But observation of
Bulgarian politics during and since the war has suggested to me that
the King and his ministers really can exercise a practical oligarchy:
and it is probably necessary that they should.
In the Bulgarian National Assembly there is a very strong Socialist
party, and the Parliamentary life of the Kingdom is stormy.
Chapter XII
The Future of Bulgaria
It is impossible, in my opinion, to doubt the future of Bulgaria. The
disasters of 1914 would seem to suggest that the Bulgarian nation
was without the moral balance to withstand the intoxication of
victory. But whilst the events of that unhappy year showed the lack
of that balance, the fault was with the leaders of the people rather
than with the people themselves.
The misfortune of Bulgaria in this generation of the nation’s
life—a misfortune which is being rapidly repaired—is that she has no
middle class: and no class with any “tradition” of leadership behind
it. There are the peasants—admirable material for nation-making—
heroic, thrifty, moral, industrious, practical. Above the peasants
there is no class from which to draw a good supply of competent
administrators, law-makers, officers, professional men. The peasant
has his own limited capacities for leadership; but they are limited. I
have encountered him frequently as Mayor of some little commune,
as captain of an infantry regiment, and admired his administrative
abilities, within a narrow and familiar scope, exceedingly. But the
peasant does not go higher than that. It is the son of the peasant
with some extra gift of cleverness who is “given an education,”
who becomes legislator, official, cleric, diplomat. In many cases he
does not take his polish well. Advanced education for the ambitious
Balkan lad has in the past generally meant education abroad; and
in Paris or Vienna or Petrograd the young Bulgarian, plunged into
an altogether new life of luxury and of frivolity, often suffered a
loss of natural strength of fibre for which no book-learning could
compensate.
That evil will pass away. It is now possible to get a fairly advanced
liberal education without going beyond Bulgaria. Also the people
are becoming more immune to the effects of Western civilisation.
Measles is a dangerous, indeed generally fatal, disease in countries
to which it is first introduced. But in time immunity comes to
make it almost harmless. Bulgaria’s material for a modern national
organisation is being quickly improved by the upgrowth of a middle
class whose sons will be able to keep their Bulgarian qualities even
under the circumstances of life in Paris or other great modern city. In
future, then, the courage of the people is likely to have a wiser, more