[Sidenote: The opportunity for revenge.]
The opportunity was not long in coming. The Pan-German devil was already
preparing his stroke for world dominion, and when the blow fell in 1914,
Bulgaria's alinement was almost a foregone conclusion. The military
losses in the recent Balkan Wars had of course so weakened her that
cautious diplomatic jockeying was a preliminary necessity, but when
Russia had succumbed to Hindenburg's hammer-strokes in the summer of
1915 and the Germanic hosts menaced Serbia in the autumn, Bulgaria threw
off the mask, struck Serbia from the rear, and joined the Teutonic
powers. Thus did the "Berlin-Bagdad" dream grow into solid fact, and
Mitteleuropa became a hard reality.
[Sidenote: The people give hearty assent.]
[Sidenote: Germany promises cessions from Turkey.]
[Sidenote: Victory over Serbia and Rumania.]
There can be no question that when Bulgaria entered the war on the
Teutonic side in the autumn of 1915 she did so with the hearty assent of
the vast majority of her people. The Germans had promised Bulgaria those
things which Bulgarians most desired. A Teutonic alliance offered
Bulgaria immediate possession of Serbian Macedonia, where lived the bulk
of the Bulgarian element still outside Bulgaria's political frontiers,
together with the practical destruction of the Serbian arch-enemy. The
Teutonic alliance likewise offered prospects of reclaiming the Bulgarian
populations of Greek Macedonia and of the southern Dobrudja, annexed by
Rumania, in 1913, should Greece and Rumania, both notoriously pro-Ally,
strike in on the Entente side.
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