In the Balkan Peninsula, fate was supposed still to hang upon the decision of Bulgaria--a decision secretly taken two months before (July 17), although Ferdinand, with lachrymose solicitude, continued to profess the neutrality of a fox between two packs of hounds. From the first, both belligerents had rightly calculated that, in spite of the strong national sympathy with England and Russia inherited by the Bulgarian people, their Tsar, if not their representative Government, could be won by the highest bidder for alliance, and each side attempted to outbid the other with profuse offers of other people’s territory. But when, in mid-September, England and her Allies proposed the cession of Serbian territory at Monastir (a mainly Bulgarian district), Doiran and Ghevgheli (mainly Turkish in race), and part of the Dobrudja, then occupied by Roumania, they had been forestalled by more tempting promises from Turkey and the Central Powers. To the force of such temptation was added the animosity rankling in all Bulgarian hearts against the neighbouring states which two years before (August 1913), by the Treaty of Bucharest, had torn from their country the reward of her decisive victories over the Turk in 1912. Especially against Serbia was this animosity directed, and one might have supposed that even a slight acquaintance with the Balkan States would have warned the Allied Governments of Serbia’s extreme and imminent peril. Yet up to September 20 they continued to hope. [Sidenote: ATTITUDE OF BULGARIA AND GREECE] On that day, M. Radoslavoff announced that Bulgaria had signed a treaty with Turkey, but would maintain an armed neutrality for the protection of her frontiers. No one, except perhaps the British Government, was deceived as to the real intention. On September 19 a large German-Austrian army under Field-Marshal von Mackensen had renewed the attack upon Serbia’s capital, and Bulgaria after mobilising her 350,000 rifles could strike at Serbia’s exposed eastern flank almost without opposition from the exhausted Serbian army. Serbia’s one poor chance was to attack her hereditary enemy at once, before the Germans had crossed the rivers in the north. But from this course England discouraged her, and, with unfounded confidence, she awaited the assistance due from Greece according to her treaty of 1913. But Greece, always so justly apprehensive of warlike risks, was presented with a passable means of escape by her own warrior King, that “Bulgar-slayer” and “Napoleon of the East,” whose titles belied his earlier reputation as a leader of panic-stricken flight at Larissa in April 1897.