These treaty rights comprise some which not all our friends recognize as such.  I mean the rights concerning Bulgaria which we won for Russia in the Congress of Berlin, and which were not contested until 1885.  There is no question for me, who was instrumental in preparing the congressional decisions, and who joined in signing them, that all of us were of the opinion at that time that Russia should have a predominating influence in Bulgaria, after the latter had renounced East Roumelia, and she herself had given the modest satisfaction of reducing by 800,000 souls the extent of the territory under her influence until it included only about three million people.

Following this interpretation of the Congress, Russia until 1885 appointed the prince, a close relative of the imperial house, of whom at that time nobody believed, or could believe, that he would wish to be anything but a faithful adherent of the Russian policy.  Russia nominated the minister of war and a great many officers; in short it was governing in Bulgaria.  There was no doubt of this.  The Bulgarians, or some of them, or the prince—­I do not know which—­were not satisfied with it.  A coup d’etat took place—­a defection from Russia.  Thus an actual condition has ensued which we are not called upon to remedy by a recourse to arms, but which cannot in theory alter the rights which Russia took home from the Congress of Berlin.  Whether there will be difficulties, if Russia should wish to procure her rights by force, I do not know.  We shall neither support nor counsel violent means, nor do I believe that they are being contemplated—­I am quite sure they are not.  If, however, Russia should try her luck along diplomatic lines, possibly by suggesting the intercession of the Sultan, the suzerain of Bulgaria, I deem it the duty of a loyal German policy to cling to the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, and to interpret them as all of us, without an exception, interpreted them at that time.  The public feeling of the Bulgarians can alter nothing in this, so far as I am concerned.  Bulgaria, the tiny little country between the Danube and the Balkans is not an object of sufficient size, I assure you, to attach to it any importance, or to push Europe for its sake into a war, from Moscow to the Pyrenees, from the North Sea to Palermo, when no one can foresee its end.  After the war we would conceivably not even know for what we had been fighting.

I may, therefore, declare that the hostility against us shown in the Russian public opinion, and especially in the Russian press, will not deter us from supporting, at Russia’s request, any diplomatic steps she may take to regain her influence in Bulgaria.  I intentionally say, at her request.  Formerly we have, at times, endeavored to fulfil her wishes when they had been only confidentially suggested, but we have seen that some Russian papers immediately tried to prove that these very steps of the German diplomacy had been the most inimical to Russia.