Every Order must bear, in addition to the signature of the Prince, that of one minister or of all the ministers, these latter being the responsible representatives of the executive authority. The ministers are held responsible to the Prince and to the National Assembly for all their acts. This responsibility is collective for all the ministers in the case of measures which have been decided by the Council of Ministers, and individual with respect to the acts of the ministers as heads of the various State Departments. What I have described represents in effect a complete system of representative and responsible government. But observation of Bulgarian politics during and since the war has suggested to me that the King and his ministers really can exercise a practical oligarchy: and it is probably necessary that they should. In the Bulgarian National Assembly there is a very strong Socialist party, and the Parliamentary life of the Kingdom is stormy. CHAPTER XII THE FUTURE OF BULGARIA It is impossible, in my opinion, to doubt the future of Bulgaria. The disasters of 1914 would seem to suggest that the Bulgarian nation was without the moral balance to withstand the intoxication of victory. But whilst the events of that unhappy year showed the lack of that balance, the fault was with the leaders of the people rather than with the people themselves. The misfortune of Bulgaria in this generation of the nation's life--a misfortune which is being rapidly repaired--is that she has no middle class: and no class with any "tradition" of leadership behind it. There are the peasants--admirable material for nation-making--heroic, thrifty, moral, industrious, practical. Above the peasants there is no class from which to draw a good supply of competent administrators, law-makers, officers, professional men. The peasant has his own limited capacities for leadership; but they are limited. I have encountered him frequently as Mayor of some little commune, as captain of an infantry regiment, and admired his administrative abilities, within a narrow and familiar scope, exceedingly. But the peasant does not go higher than that. It is the son of the peasant with some extra gift of cleverness who is "given an education," who becomes legislator, official, cleric, diplomat. In many cases he does not take his polish well. Advanced education for the ambitious Balkan lad has in the past generally meant education abroad; and in Paris or Vienna or Petrograd the young Bulgarian, plunged into an altogether new life of luxury and of frivolity, often suffered a loss of natural strength of fibre for which no book-learning could compensate.