The Allies did not fraternise. For that I blamed the Bulgarians. The positions in regard to the Serbian aid at Adrianople, as I understood it, was this: that originally the Bulgarians engaged to help the Serbians in their campaign, but this was found not to be necessary: that the Bulgarians, later, asked for aid against Adrianople, and it was promptly given without any conditions being imposed, though there then already existed in the Serbian mind a desire to modify the territorial partition arrangement they had with Bulgaria and this request for aid might have been taken as a good opportunity for raising that question. I believe those to be the facts, but since in Balkan diplomacy it is always a matter of finding out the truth of comparing and weighing and deducing from a series of lies, I cannot state them with absolute certainty. If they are true, the Serbians behaved like gentlemen in not raising against an ally an awkward question at a time when help was asked. Quite certainly the Bulgarian authorities behaved like boors to their Serbian friends. Things were made as unpleasant as was reasonably possible for them in all kinds of niggling ways around Adrianople. The Serbians behaved well under great provocation. During the first sessions of the Balkan Peace Conference I had opportunities of observing the same good behaviour on the part of the Serbians. Bulgarian diplomacy was, as usual, very exasperating. It was not only that Bulgaria was insisting on having the hide, horn, and hoofs of Turkey, but also on rubbing salt into her bare carcase. The Turkish delegates approached the Serbians--whose territorial demands as far as Turkey was concerned were satisfied, but who had a pending controversy with the Bulgarians--hoping to get some moral support against Bulgaria and being prepared to offer something in return. The Serbian attitude was sharply loyal, to stand by Bulgaria absolutely in regard to the Turkish frontier. Serbians have not been always popular in Great Britain, I know; but I am not alone among those who have come into recent contact with Balkan affairs who found them to be the best of the Balkan peoples. [Illustration: _See page_ 194 PODGORICA, UPON THE ALBANIAN FRONTIER] The Greek is even more engaging and hospitable than the Serbian; but his fluent, flexible, subtle nature does not inspire full confidence. At the outset of the last Balkan war there was one thing that all were sure of: that the Greeks would not fight. All were wrong. The Greeks did exceedingly well in the field, even allowing that they sometimes shaped their campaign quite as much by considerations of jealousy of their allies as of hostility to the common enemy. But it is a fact that the Greek has usually more stomach for politics than for fighting, and that his subtle nature allows him to live comfortably in a state of subjection, which would irk a more robust mind. He is by instinct a trader: and a trader is not an uncompromising patriot as a rule.