“Do not trouble yourself about my head. It is an old one. Rather think of your own,” said the King, with the shadow of a scornful smile, as he moved away. But Stambulivski replied: “My head matters little, sire; I am only thinking of the country’s.” But Ferdinand chose to disregard the warning. His choice was already made, and a few days later he was figuring before the world once more in the uncongenial guise of Ferdinand the War Lord. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FERDINAND AS WAR LORD “_Your Majesty’s nation in arms, under the guidance of its illustrious War Lord, has added one sublime leaf of glory to another in the history of Bulgaria._”—THE KAISER. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXVI FERDINAND AS WAR LORD The world has recently been treated to the sublime spectacle of a meeting of the Shoddy Czar and the Bloodstained Kaiser at Nish, the ancient capital of down-trodden Serbia, where the two monarchs, united only by the nefarious nature of the enterprise in which they are engaged, exchanged compliments of a dangerous irony. It was characteristic of Ferdinand that he should veil his impudent jibe under the screen of a dead language, and refer to his partner in crime as “Victor et gloriosus,” which, if it means anything, signifies, “Conqueror and braggart.” The Kaiser, for his part, stooped to no such refinement of sarcasm. He made Ferdinand a field-marshal of the German Army, referring to the “glorious triumphal march of his nation, under its illustrious War Lord.” In conferring his new rank upon Ferdinand he said, “I am, with my army, happy that you, by accepting it, have become ‘One of us.’” The brutal irony of Wilhelm II was probably accepted by crafty Ferdinand as one more added to the long list of insults he has received at the Kaiser’s hands. The Czar of Bulgaria has had all sorts of good qualities claimed for him by his admirers, but the most servile of his flatterers has never ventured to claim that he has anything of the soldier in him. That he neglected the common employment of the youth of his time and his class for the fascination of the study of nature, and that military matters roused in him the deepest aversion, is conceded by friend and foe alike. He has never been able to understand the elements of military theory or practice, and as Stambuloff pointed out in the Press interview which gave him so much offence, he was incapable of understanding his Minister for War. Add to that the fact that he is a timorous man, and the whole force of irony contained in the apparent fulsomeness of the Kaiser’s words can be grasped. His own Commander-in-Chief, the great General Savoff, summed up his military qualifications in an interview shortly after the conclusion of the Treaty of Bucarest, that is a standing testimonial to the Bulgarian Czar’s soldier-like qualities.