The Treaty of Neuilly presupposed, as did the other treaties of the Paris settlement, the complete encirclement of the victim by neighbors bound together by the common interest of keeping her permanently in a position of inferiority. It did not take into account, moreover, two possibilities: the intervention of Russia and the drifting apart of Rumania, Serbia, and Greece. A patchwork peace, a peace based on expediency, could ignore these possibilities. A durable peace would have to take them into account. Already we have seen the Turks back in Eastern Thrace, with a common frontier once more with Bulgaria. We have seen Greece, strong in 1920, grievously weakened, internally and internationally, in 1923. Greater Serbia and Greater Rumania are not really friends. They still claim against each other the Banat of Temesvár. Greater Serbia is not at the end of her difficulties with Italy. Greater Rumania holds Bessarabia in defiance of Russia. If Italians and Serbians, or Russians and Rumanians, come to blows, the aid of Bulgaria would once more be solicited by great powers. If the war between Greece and Turkey is renewed, Turkey, perhaps with Russia behind her, will once more solicit the aid of Bulgaria in a war that would be bound to spread to western Europe. Instead of saying that the Bulgarians would be foolish to try for the third time to change their luck in a war, is it not wiser and saner, in view of the mischief Bulgaria could still accomplish, to insist upon a peace of justice, so that Bulgaria could not again be tempted? We cannot get rid of the latent power of any of our former enemies simply by damning them, the Bulgarians least of all. Their progress during the last half-century has been remarkable. They were the last of the Balkan peoples to be allowed to establish a separate national life, free from Turkish interference. Despite this handicap, Bulgaria has developed more rapidly than her neighbors in literacy, communications, cultivation of the land, and peasant ownership of farms. Out of every hundred inhabitants thirteen children go regularly to school, while Greece counts but six, Rumania five, and Serbia four. Among European countries Bulgaria is second only to France in distribution of the ownership of land. The World War did not seriously affect the prosperity of the people, and the crushing defeat of their hope made slight, if any, difference in their productive energy. Since the war they have forged ahead fast; their Government has succeeded in maintaining its stability against great odds; and in the spring of 1923 Bulgaria, first of all the vanquished, was able to make definite and satisfactory reparations arrangements with the victors.