Long before the war-cloud burst, the history makers of Berlin recognized the fact that the key to the Dardanelles lay in Sofia, and not only to the Dardanelles, but also the key to the Near East. The statesmen of Austria and Germany discerned that the Bulgars under their guidance could be got to do for Turkey what Japan hoped, and still hopes, to effect for China. It is a work of complete transformation, a sort of political transubstantiation whereby the Bulgars would infuse ichor into the limp veins of the Ottoman organism and recreate a strong political entity which would be an instrument in the hands of the Central Empires. The Bulgar knows the Turk, to whom he is more akin by race habits and temperament than to any of the Slav peoples, understands his psychic state, his mode of feeling and thinking, and is therefore qualified to serve as link between the Oriental and the Western. It was in view of this eventuality that the slow, plodding work of grafting Kultur on the Bulgar people was undertaken. Two German schools, one in Sofia and the other in Philippopolis, were the centres whence it was radiated to the ends of the land. In Bulgaria there are many preparatory grammar schools in which tuition for both sexes is free. All scholars who have passed through one of the German schools are admitted without any examination into the Grammar School, or Gymnasium, a privilege which works as a powerful attraction. Since Turkey retroceded Karagatch[61] to Bulgaria there are three such centres of Teutonic propaganda in Bulgaria, and I am informed that a fourth will shortly be established in Rustschuk. [61] One of the suburbs of Adrianople ceded in July 1915.