I think Gibbon was responsible in the first instance for ascribing to the Bulgarians a low moral character. But all the evidence that came under my notice suggested that the Bulgarians were exceptionally virtuous. In their hospitals I found no cases of disease arising from vice. In their camps they had no women followers. I passed through many villages which their troops had traversed, and never observed any evidence of women having been interfered with. [Illustration: A BULGARIAN FARM] The young Bulgarian, married--without much romance in the wooing, but perhaps none the less happily married for that according to his ideas--tilling his little farm, joins now in the main current of the national life. He is exceedingly industrious, rising early and working late. His food is frugal--whole-meal bread, hard cheese, soft cheese (which is like rank butter), vegetables, very occasionally meat and eggs. From his Turk cousins he has acquired a love of sweetmeats, and so for his treats lollies and cakes are essential. But also he is a Slav and likes a glass of _vodka_ on Sundays and feast days. He is very sober, however, and drunkenness is rare. His chief drink is water, with now and again tea made in the Russian fashion, or coffee made in the Turkish fashion. At the village _cafes_ these are the chief refreshments--_vodka_, tea and coffee. But a light beer is also brewed in Bulgaria, and drunk by the inhabitants. Both as regards food and drink, however, the Bulgarians' habits are usually governed by an intense frugality. The country gives no very rich return to the peasant. He almost invariably marries young and has a large family. The household budget thus leaves very little margin over from the strictly necessary food-expenses. That margin the Bulgarian prefers in the main to save rather than to dissipate. The Bulgarian is economical, not to say grasping. He dreams always of getting a little richer. In his combination of the instincts of a cultivator and of a trader he resembles a great deal the French Norman peasantry. The duties of national defence make heavy demands on the national industry in Bulgaria. Training for military service is universal and compulsory. There is no hope at all that there will be any lightening of military burdens for some time to come, since the 1914 wars have left Bulgaria in a position which the national pride refuses to accept as final. The burdens are borne cheerfully. The patience of the Bulgarian peasant soldiery during the awful campaigns of 1913 and 1914 was heroic, and their steadiness in the field showed how well they had profited by their training.