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CHAPTER VI
the serbo-bulgarian treaty
The Serbo-Bulgarian negotiations lasted from October,
1911, till February, 1912. The place chosen was Sofia,
King Ferdinand being very persistent on this point:
he pretended that Belgrade, owing to its geographical
position, was infested with Austro-Hungarian spies;
but the fact of the matter was that it flattered his vanity
to see the Serbians coming, as it were, to him ! The
negotiations were to be conducted with the utmost
secrecy, and only the respective Russian Ministers were
allowed to know what was going on. In point of fact,
Hartwig and I were the constant arbiters, continually
consulted, and referred to in each difficulty, however
small, by both parties.
The negotiations were soon concentrated almost
exclusively on the defining of the spheres of influence in
Macedonia, and finally four months were spent in fixing
the future frontier between Serbia and Bulgaria. In
discussing the line of this frontier in spe, the two parties
showed such an entire lack of any conciliatory spirit
that I am still wondering how they ever arrived at any
agreement! After long preliminary debates they at last
agreed on the two extreme points of this famous frontier.
These were : in the north-east the spot where at that
period the frontiers of Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia
converged; in the south-west the northern point of
Lake Ochrida.
But then the line between these two points had to be
drawn. As it was manifestly impossible to send a
commission to work on the spot (the Turks might have taken
this amiss!), it was necessary to rely on the most
detailed maps of the Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian
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