who has made it his duty to sacrifice himself to benefit his adopted nation. The gulf between him and his people in all the small nothings of life which make existence pleasant or a torment, though hidden, still exists, although it has been possible to throw temporary bridges across and screen the dizzy depths.

ARISTOCRATIC RULER OF DEMOCRATS.

The most typical example of the "grand seigneur " now existing stands on the one side, and on the other an independent proletariat, suspicious of new ideas and intensely patriotic in the narrowest sense of the word. Often the blood of his illustrious ancestors must have boiled at the difficulties thrown

in the way by those whom he wished to aid or by the insolent assumption of power by the earlier Russian diplomats. Time has brought the necessary control, and the Prince mingles a most charming tact with the necessary brusqueness and decision towards his subjects. Towards foreigners his amiability knows no limits, indeed at such moments he is able to be natural, far more so than in dealing with things Bulgarian. Possessing a mind trained to note every detail of every possible situation, Prince Ferdinand is an indefatigable worker in kingcraft. Satisfaction over what he has done has, however, been marred by a feeling that the Bulgarians were apparently not grateful nor even responsive. Many of the national works which the Prince inaugurated, worked for, and carried through were bitterly opposed by the Bulgarians, although now they are ready enough to acclaim the finished results as creditable to themselves. It was thus with the construction of railways and of the two ports of Bourgas and Varna, to mention no further instances. This apparent ingratitude must not have made the task of the ruler any easier.

CONSTITUTIONAL PREROGATIVES: ON PAPER—

Apart from his own personal power and ability, the Bulgarian constitution confers upon the Prince very considerable attributes and prerogatives :

The executive power belongs to the Prince. All the administrative organs act in his name and under his supreme control. In virtue of his prerogative the Prince appoints and dismisses the Ministers, and through these latter all the civil and military functionaries. He is the supreme chief of the military forces of the country in time of peace, and their commander-in-chief in time of war. He represents the country in its international relations and at the national solemnities. All the treaties with foreign States are concluded in his name and by authority of the National Assembly. The person of the Prince is sacred and inviolable.

Once a year, from October 15th to December 15th, the Prince convokes the National Assembly in ordinary session; he summons it in extraordinary sessions whenever there are important State matters requiring immediate decision. The Prince has the right, after convoking the Assembly, to prorogue its session, but the prorogation may not extend beyond two months, and must not occur more than once in the course of the same session. He may also dissolve the Assembly and order new elections.

The direct power of the Crown over the legislative activity of the Assembly is considerable. The Prince may, through his Ministers, initiate bills and propositions. The Prince may issue regulations and order measures, having the obligatory force of laws, whenever the State is threatened with immediate internal or external danger. All such measures, however, must be

adopted by the Cabinet Council, and entail the collective responsibility of all the Ministers. They must be submitted to the approval of the National Assembly in the course of its earliest session.

The Judiciary Prerogative of the Crown includes: (a) the right of pardon, or the right of relieving persons condemned by the law courts of the whole or of parts of their punishment. No capital sentence may be executed unless it has been approved by the Prince, who may substitute in its place a lighter penalty: (b) the right of amnesty, which the Prince exercises jointly with the National Assembly, every act of amnesty presupposing a special law sanctioned by the Prince.

In special circumstances the Prince, acting on the advice of the Council of Ministers, may authorise a loan not exceeding three million francs or sanction an expenditure not exceeding one million francs for extraordinary expenses not foreseen in the Budget.

-AS SEEN BY THE BULGARIANS.

It is interesting, however, to quote the interpretation of the value of these powers from the pen of a prominent Bulgarian professor. He writes :

The Prince is invested with a large authority, but always a limited one. He is the supreme representative and head of the State. To him belongs the executive authority, but it has to be exercised only through the Ministers, responsible to the Assembly; the legislative authority he shares with the ordinary National Assembly, composed of representatives of the people, all of them directly elected by the people; the judiciary authority is exercised in his name, but by independent institutions and persons. He is the supreme chief of the army, in time of peace as in time of war, but the real responsible head of the army is the Minister of War. It is in his name that treaties are concluded with foreign Powers, but this can be done only through the direct authorisation of the National Assembly. Thus the authority of the Prince is limited in all directions. When accepting the throne, the Prince of Bulgaria vows fidelity to the Constitution and the laws of the country in the presence of the Great National Assembly-a token that he receives his power from the people. Each of his ordinances repeats that he is Prince of Bulgaria "by the grace of God and the will of the people."... The Prince is a monarch but with limited power. The difference between him and the President of a republic lies alone in the attribute of heredity.

PARLIAMENTARISM IN BULGARIA,

The final word always rests with the people, not with the Prince, according to the constitution; but in actual practice it is the Prince alone who rules Bulgaria, and it is his will which decides the policy of the country. The Bulgarian people have universal suffrage, but are not yet ripe for it. The Parliamentary system has tended to hinder rather than to further national progress. The years of Bulgarian independence have been marked by constant Parliamentary change, and the frequent exercise of the right of dissolution. From 1879 to 1893 there were six assemblies elected, although the term was for three years. From 1893 to 1903 there were also six, although the legislative period had been extended to five years. Only two assemblies completed the full term of three years, all the others being dissolved. Only once has a vote of censure on a Government been carried, and then the Cabinet retired without making new elections. From 1879 to 1905, counting only changes of Prime Ministers and ignoring the frequent reconstructions of Cabinets, there have been nineteen

Cabinets. Thus it will be seen that had Bulgaria had to rely only upon its elected representatives for the direction or even inception of policy it would have fared badly in this Parliamentary chaos. The elections, although conducted by secret ballot, frequently show the influence of the Government actually in power, in the return of only a very insignificant fraction of the Opposition. But all these details are inevitably attendant upon the possession of full Parliamentary privileges by an unprepared people, and undoubtedly things must improve as time goes on. In the past, however, the one stable point in Bulgaria has been the Prince, and he has succeeded in maintaining a definite policy despite the constant Parliamentary confusions.

ONE MAN IN SEVEN A SOLDIER.

Inevitably one of the principal cares of the Prince has been the military forces of the country, since it is largely by its army that a small European State remains independent. Other reasons, notably the Macedonian question, have tended to induce the Bulgarians to create an enormous army of very considerable value, although there has only been the short campaign against the Servians to enable its merits in practice to be judged. The Bulgarian people, numbering about four and a half millions, are able to put into the field over 300,000 men in time of war-at least that is the paper strength. This means three out of every forty-five of the population, or one man out of every seven, would be under arms-a great burden financially and economically, but, as the Prince once said, "the army should be placed in that position which it should always occupy as protector of the integrity of our country and of the national independence." Before the Russo-Japanese war, General Kuropatkin, on inspecting the Bulgarian troops, made them the compliment of calling them "the Japanese of Europe." It would, however, be easy to find fault with that description, since the Bulgarian soldier lacks many of the qualities of the Japanese, and the officers still have to struggle with the drawbacks which the former Russian instructors left behind them. It is customary to praise the Bulgarian army without stint, but it is perhaps well also to quote the views of a most competent military observer: "The force of the Bulgarian army lies in the defensive, it is not certain that they would show equal qualities in attack; the officers are not so highly trained or so efficient as formerly owing to promotion being more a question of influence than of merit; the artillery, even the new quick-firers from Krupp, is not as good as had been expected; the munitions of war are not above suspicion, and, most important of all, it is doubtful whether there is a war chest at all commensurate with the size of the army to be supported in a war.” How far these criticisms are justified time alone can tell, but undoubtedly there is no tendency, either in Constantinople or Belgrade, to underestimate the military force of Bulgaria.

You should work for the progress of the country, the advancement of national ideals, and the greatness of the Fatherland. The tranquillity and order with which the elections were conducted show that the Bulgarian nation has made progress in its political education and do high honour to the free institutions with which our country is endowed.

It is now incumbent on you to labour with zeal and efficiency for the introduction of order and stability in all branches of the administration, and to give a powerful impulse to economic progress and moral culture in Bulgaria. You will thus justify the hopes which the nation and the Crown repose in you.

On the occasion of the opening of the port of Bourgas the Prince said that "it constituted a national success, and one of economic importance to the country, since it tended to improve the means of communication between Bulgaria and more advanced countries." He referred to the fact that "harbours and other means of communication were being opened in order that the country might become a centre of progress in the Near East, thus bestowing upon civilisation a work of general usefulness." As a faithful servitor of the country" he was happy to offer to the people a point of rapprochement calculated" to advance the cause of human progress."

RAILWAYS, ROADS AND FINANCE.

The very considerable resources of the country are still to be developed and worked, but as the new roads and railways intersect the land this will become increasingly easy. It is a boast in Bulgaria to-day that home-built railways are far more cheaply built and equally serviceable than those entrusted to foreign contractors. Many new roads are being constructed with the advent of the motor-car, and the Prince by his devotion to automobilism has brought lasting benefit to the country. His support of the arts and his really considerable excavation works for the unearthing of the very numerous Roman and other remains in Bulgaria deserve mention. It is indeed rather remarkable how little is known about the antiquities of Bulgaria, even by prominent authorities in our own country. Financially, Bulgaria has made great strides, especially with regard to her foreign credit, and this although the people are as heavily burdened as are the Japanese, even after the recent war with Russia. Practically Bulgaria's credit is on a five per cent. basis, which for the former despised and rejected vassal Principality is remarkably good showing.

Adrian Tuffield.

IF

IF the world still doubts that Esperanto exists, that it is a living language, harmonious, easy to understand, and, what is more important, pronounced in a manner almost precisely the same by all the nations of the earth, it must be because the world did not go to Cambridge.

representative of an important London newspaper who did go, expressed the thoughts of many. when he said, "I confess I went to Cambridge to make fun of Esperanto, but I have returned converted, and mean to set to work and learn the language." At Cambridge, while the Congress lasted, it was as in the days when the people dwelt in the plains of Shinar, "the whole earth was of one language and of one speech." The barrier of the confusion of tongues was removed, and representatives of thirty different nationalities met together in friendly intercourse, united by their common interest in a common language.

DELEGATES FROM THIRTY NATIONS.

The most picturesque of the representatives of the thirty nations who fraternised in our ancient seat of learning was certainly the delegate from Venezuela. Nestor Volcan is scarcely yet fourteen, knows already four languages-Spanish, French, Portuguese and Esperanto-and, as he naïvely remarked, "will soon learn a few more." As he is staying in France, he was delegated to be the representative of the Esperanto Groups of his native country. When on the opening day of the Congress he made his speech along with the other delegates, many supposed that he had simply learned it by heart. But those who met him in the streets afterwards, and at various gatherings, found that he knew Esperanto perfectly, and used it with surprising precision and elegance, due largely, no doubt, to the fact that his mind is not saturated, as those of older persons often are, with national idioms and habits of expression. In striking contrast to this youthful

delegate was Lieutenant Cardinal, the official representative of the Belgian Government, a tall and burly man in uniform, also a fluent Esperantist. So much has been said about the certainty of variety in the pronunciation of the language by differing nationalities, that too much stress cannot be laid upon the fact that the pronunciation of these two, from widely separated countries, differed only in the way that two persons of the same nationality might do-that is, the Venezuelan sounded his "r's" sonorously and musically, whilst those of the Belgian were somewhat guttural. The first Congress at Boulogne proved convincingly that this much-talked-of variety in the pronunciation of Esperanto did not and cannot exist in a language which possesses only five vowels. The Cambridge Congress has simply confirmed this fact. Sergeant Gates, for instance, the famous Cambridge policeman, a typical Englishman who has never been out of his own country, draws out his "o's" and "e's," but that did not prevent one of the delegates from so thoroughly understanding him that in his joy he shook his hands up and down like a pump handle. After a journey of nearly thirty-six hours, and a bewildering crossing of London from Victoria to King's Cross, he had arrived at Cambridge, tired and hungry, with a crowd of other Esperantists. It was quite dark. How was he to find his lodging in this strange town? Great indeed was his relief when Sergeant Gates, addressing him in fluent Esperanto, carefully explained where he was to go, and despatched him with a guide and his luggage to his lodging.

CHURCH SERVICES IN ESPERANTO.

The programme of the Conference was given in the last number of the REVIEW, and it will not be necessary to go into details here. Everything was carried out as arranged. The services in the churches on the Sunday preceding the opening of the Congress were very impressive. Clergymen generally would rejoice if in their churches the responses were as ready, the hymns as hearty, and the attention as entire. The services were, of course, wholly in Esperanto. At Great St. Mary's (the University Church) the Rev. J. C. Rust preached from Ephesians i. 9: "Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself." At the Roman Catholic Cathedral, Abbé Richardson, of Belgium (in the unavoidable absence of Monsignor Giambene), took for his subject, " And there shall be one fold and one Shepherd." The text of the Rev. W. B. Selbie, of the Congregational Church, was, "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (St. John vii. 17).