The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-12-26
BULGARIAN NEUTRALITY
From the New York Evening Sun.

From the New York Evening Sun.
 HH HE positive statement from London
 that allied diplomacy has succeeded
 4 in persuading Bulgaria to declare her unconditional neutrality for the wal that is, to give her pledge that under no circumstances will she attack her old enemies Greece and Roumania, is one of the most interesting and significant state ments that have come from Europe in re- cent days.
 rron Austria in a dozen different ways reports are coming that the dual mon archy is at the limit of it's endurance that disasters, misery, internal weak nesses and external reverses have com bined to shake the whole structure of Francis Joseph's empire. and peace or ruin is on the minds of many Austrians, becoming the alternative.
 Such being the apparent fact, the ar rival on the Austrian frontier of nearly 100000 Greek and Roumanian troops might easily prove the final blow to Aus trian resistance and have a decisive eff feet upon the fortunes of the German armies now fighting in Poland and in trance and Belgium.
 Such an attack upon Austria by Rou- mania and Greece would be based upon self-interest, patent to all observers and expressed in the alliance between Servia, Greece and Roumania which immdiately followed the second Balkan war. The pur- pose of the alliance was to defend the territories each state had acquired by that war directly at the expense of Bull garia, but actually in the face of Aus trian intrigue and opposition.
 Under the terms of that alliance it might have been expected that Roumania and Greece would immediately come to the aid of Servia when the great war began. But to do this in the early months would have been to risk the appearance of both Bulgaria and Turkey on the other side, Bulgaria eager to recover her Mace donian lands lost in the recent war, to take Monastir and retake Kavala and the lower reaches of the Struma river, Turkey still claiming the Aegean Islands.
 Accordingly. while from the outset Rou- manian and Greek sympathy was with Servia and her great allies, both states preserved their neutrality and by so doing kept Bulgaria neutral, for Germany and Austria would hardly care to enlist Bulgaria when this enlistment insured the appearance of Roumanian and Greek armies on the other side.
 Ttus it immediately became the mission of German and allied diplomacy to obtain the support of Bulgaria. If the allies could procure from Bulgaria a promise of neutrality Greece and Roumania were fairly certain to join their ranks. Ger many on the other hand, labored to preserve the Bulgarian menace to Greece and Roumania.
 To Germai diplomacy there was this immediate advantages: Bulgaria had re- gently Been despoiled of most of her Turk ish conquests by her three neighbors. Ser via, Roumania and Greece. Having borne the brunt of the Turkish war she found herself after the peace of Bucharest de- prived of all but tiny front upon the Aegean. Servia had taken Macedonia, with some hundreds of thousands of Bulgar inhabitants, who had long fought the Turk in the hope of ultimate union with Bulgaria. Roumania seized the De- brudja marshes from Silistria to the Black sea, inhabited by Bulgars, and one of the richest of Bulgarias agricultural dis tricts.
 Utterly exhausted by her two wars Bull garia had yielded but never accepted as final her terrible defeat. It was conceiv- able, ,-then, that Germany by promising the Bulgars Macedonia and the Kavala sea coast, by working on her natural re- sentiment over her wrongs, might enlist her as a recruit.
 On the other hand it was equally plain that allied diplomacy could persuade Ser via to surrender the Macedonian district east of the Vardar in return for a guar antee that she should have Bosnia after the war. if they could persuade Rou-