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Pan-European. Boris of the Bulgars is an amiable man. He is a peace lover who likes to mount butterflies' wings and study delicate mountain petals, to step on automotive accelerators and pull locomotive throttles—to work at nature and play at science. At 18 he graduated from the Sofia Military Academy, and he fought in both Balkan Wars and in World War I. But he prefers his pastimes of peacetime: traveling about his countryside incognito, walking around the streets of Sofia in sloppy civilian clothes, tinkering with machines, exercising his proud borzois, chatting with peasants. He gives the impression of wishing he weren't King. He has said: "It would not frighten me if I were to lose my throne. If that were to happen, I would go right to America and get a job as a mechanic." Now that the strategy of war has put Bulgaria on the spot, Boris, man of peace, is the focus of manifold pressures. He rules over a nation of Slavs. His blood is mostly French. His relatives belong to the royal families of Britain, Belgium, Portugal, Rumania. His wife is a daughter of the King of Italy. He is of the Greek Orthodox faith. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was his godfather. For 22 years his father, ex-King Ferdinand, has been a refugee in Germany.
Besides these personal ties of Boris, Bulgaria has long been the closest European friend of Russia, has long been the route of Germany's hoped-for expansion into the Near East. Recently someone is said to have asked the King what Bulgaria's foreign policy was. Boris answered: "My ministers are pro-German, my wife is pro-Italian, my people are pro-Russian — I am the only neutral in the country." Boris was not just making a phrase.
His people have bonds of speech, culture, tradition, blood and sentiment with Russia, and they will never forget that it was Russia which delivered them from the Turkish yoke, and created the short-lived Big Bulgaria of 1878. But Boris' ministers — especially Premier Bogdan Filoff and the man who controls Bulgaria's police, Minister of Interior Peter Gabrovsky —think that realism demands that Bulgaria play the Nazi game, even if it means a humiliation like Rumania's. Naturally, Queen loanna thinks Bulgaria should put one foot in the Italian boot even if it means the other foot goes into the grave Only Boris has the very simple aim: Bulgaria for the Bulgars—if possible. But Boris may have to face the fact that in 1941 it is not possible. Shortly after he visited Berlin in November, Hermann Göring very pointedly remarked to a Bulgarian correspondent: "Your king is entirely too neutral to suit us. Anyway, there is no place for kings in the new European order."
The Threat. Last week it appeared that Germany's patience with Italy's bungles had just about sapped away. The Berlin correspondent of the Belgrade Politka wrote: "The impression is that Berlin no longer considers the Italo-Greek conflict as a mere local incident, but one that is daily becoming more disagreeable. German circles warn Greece to think well and take a lesson from the fate of Finland."