Professional's Return

Bulgaria's War-time Prime Minister, Vasil Radoslavoff, has spent the past eleven years in exile, with his son-in-law's spare bedroom at Berlin as his base. Last week Exile Radoslavoff, who fled his country when Tsar Ferdinand was forced to abdicate the Bulgarian throne in 1918, was unofficially told that he might return to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Sobranye (Assembly) had passed the third reading of a bill pardoning those ministers who were condemned to life imprisonment by the government of Alexander Stamboulisky, spectacular peasant, in 1922.

Chief reason for the flight of Vasil Radoslavoff was his connection with fox-bearded German Tsar Ferdinand. In 1923, Peasant-Prime Minister Stamboulisky was overthrown by a coup d'etat and assassinated while trying to escape. Disgust with Stamboulisky brought renewed respect for Radoslavoff. People forgot that he had been prosecuted for corrupt practices before the War.

It was Prime Minister Radoslavoff, always pro-German, who took Bulgaria into the War on the German side when most Bulgarians were in favor of neutrality. It was Prime Minister Radoslavoff, occasionally farsighted, who refused (he now says) to declare war on the U. S. against the earnest entreaties of temperamental General von Ludendorff.

"That attitude paid well," chuckled Dr. Radoslavoff last week. "When the victorious Balkan States wanted to divide Bulgaria among themselves at the Neuilly Peace Conference it was the United States who protested and saved Bulgaria."

He told what he would do next:

"My opponents [in Bulgaria] have made all kinds of false accusations, such as that I intended to put back the Tsar Ferdinand on the throne. That was not true, because Ferdinand is always able to return to Bulgaria. He vacated the throne voluntarily and was not expelled from the country.

"I am for a democratic form of government, or rather for the constitutional monarchy as it exists at present under King Boris, but I am opposed to any dictatorship from Left or Right. When I return I shall re-enter political life as a member of the National Liberal Party."

Late Bulgarian news read by ex-Exile Radoslavoff, told how Prime Minister Liaptcheff had foiled assassins when he returned to Sofia last week, by train instead of automobile, from ceremonies at Kritschin. Detective Phileon Alexandroff, who followed with the Prime Minister's car, drove into a hail of rifle bullets near Philippopolis, was killed.