The official plan of Bulgarian supremacy, set forth on the accompanying map, may serve to explain that hatred, for it shows that Bulgarian ambition encroaches considerably on the territories of all her neighbours. It now even extends by way of Albania to the Adriatic. We can therefore readily understand that this plan of Bulgarian supremacy is the nightmare of the Greeks and the Roumanians. But these Bulgarians, like the Prussians, because of the similarity of their characters, will never renounce their programme of dominion until they shall have received at the hands of the Allies, with the help of the Greeks and Roumanians, the sound thrashing which they have earned a hundred times over, and which is essential to the establishment of lasting peace in the Balkans. But it is clear that if negotiations were opened for a separate peace with the Bulgarians, the Greeks (250,000 men) and the Roumanians (600,000 men), seeing their interests once more misunderstood by the Allies, would refuse once and for all to fight on their side. [Illustration: ENCROACHMENTS PLANNED BY BULGARIA ON NEIGHBOURING STATES.] Finally, a separate peace which left Bulgaria in possession of her conquests, would enable her to build and buttress the bridge which is to join the Central Empires to Turkey. That is just what Berlin wants in order to execute its scheme of domination “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.” In the light of that aim, the secret attempts of Bulgaria to conclude a separate peace are seen to be the Bulgaro-German counterpart of the Turko-German manœuvre which I have exposed above (see p. 167). Evidently the Allies will not allow themselves to be taken in by these clumsy tricks. The lesson taught by the faults committed in the Balkans in 1915 is so plain that it will prevent the Allied leaders from perpetrating any fresh blunder on a large scale. Moreover, the victory of the Allies cannot be won, and a lasting peace cannot be established in Europe, unless the German dodge of the “drawn game” is frustrated. CHAPTER IX. THE STILL NEUTRAL STATES WHOSE INDEPENDENCE WOULD BE DIRECTLY THREATENED BY THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE “HAMBURG TO THE PERSIAN GULF” SCHEME, AND THEREFORE BY GERMANY’S CAPTURE OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. I. The example of Portugal. II. Holland. III. Switzerland. IV. The States of South America. V. The United States.