The Coolidge examiner., 1933-09-01

Prepared by National Geographic Society.
Washington. ID. C.-WNU Service.
| N ETWEEN the Danube and the
n Macedonian mountains the
- traveller sees hardly a single
farmhouse yet "Bulgar" means
man with a plow, and four of every
five Bulgarians are farmers. Sofia,
founded by Trajan, just missed be-
coming Constantinople, since Con
stantine seriously considered it as
his capital. Still a small town in
1880, it is now a flourishing city of
quarter of million inhabitants,
the progressive capital Of a land
of villages.
Although, since hoary antiquity,
tidal waves of humanity have swept
south through the Balkan passes
or east and west along the route
to Byzantium, this crossroads coun-
try is still far from the beaten
path.
Yet the Orient express passes
through Sofia every day, and on
the Orient Arrow it Is a days flight
from Paris, whose styles 1t has be-
gun to copy. Before daylight you
don the seven-league boots await
ing you at lie Bourget, airport of
Paris; touch earth at Strasbourg,
Nurnberg. Prague, Vienna, Buda-
pest and Belgrade, and end the day
in your sixth European capital.
Despite the increase in numbers
of city dwellers, seeking to buy
amusement in the open market,
scanning movie posters and photo
graphs of sleek cabaret girls, Bull
garia is an agricultural land, with
peasant conservatism and thrift.
Among the more or less formal
Thanksgiving proclamations of re-
cent times, surely one of the most
arrestlng was Bulgaria's Our poy-
erty Is our riches" A land Of home
spun may be proof against not only
spiritual but also economic depres-
sion.
Were one to seek a symbol for
economics and spiritual stability,
the Bulgarian woman, plying her
dlstaff as she leads meek-eyed oxen
through bucolic scenes worthy Of a
Rosa Bonheur, might well serve as
model. But even the Bulgarian
Maud Muller has glanced to the
far-off town."
Going Ahead Rapidly.
The rural Bulgarians, whose
riches are poverty, are awaking to
new desires. Bulgarians have long
fostered schools, literature, music,
and the drama. But progress" now
means something different-not a
lifting up. but speeding up. City
styles and pleasures are stealing
the spotlight An old Bulgarian
proverb says, Easier to start the
piper than to stop him." and Bull
garia has begun to tread a faster
measure than ox-team or buffalo
have set or can follow.
One finds in Bulgaria many grad
rates of Constantinople WOman's
college, and Of Robert college In
Tstanbul. There are also several
excellent American schools in Bull
.aria itself. American educators
have approached the problems of
Bulgaria with sympathetic under
standing. The boys and girls
schools of SamOkov have been
united to form a cO-educational
American college; but, in Difference
to Bulgarian conservatism, an imag-
mary line. cutting the campus In
two. still separates the sexes.
In Pordim there Is a more un-
usual school with one-year course
designed for dirt farmers, who there
learn to do by doing. Future moth
ers practice on real babies before
having babies Of their own. Even
IN land Where veterinary schools
and hospitals rival those for human
beings, there is no other institution
quite like the American farm
school. which gains prestige from
its American patronage.
Tirnovo, former capital at a time
when defense was more than trade
routes, straddles neck of land
tunneled by the railway and rises
above wild mid-city gOrges as does
Luxembourg. On the Mount of
Eagles stands the city Of today.
linked by a narrow isthmus with
the Hill of the Tsars. walled re-
gioa CT the former royal palaces.
4 co;cCy Of monasteries occupies