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1913] THE SERBO-GREEK ALLIANCE 163
Bulgarian proceedings, made himself the initiator and
the champion of this new political combination. He
quickly found a sympathetic echo from our
representative to Bukharest, to whose interest it was that our
good relations with Rumania—which he made his
own—should redouble in weight in the scales of our
policy. The Russian Minister to Athens naturally
followed his two colleagues; and as to the Foreign
Office—M. Hartwig took charge of that: his ascendency
over the friends he had left there—over those who
formerly, in the Asiatic Department, were "the shadow
of his shadow"—sufficed to alter completely the course
that M. Sazonoff had adopted at the outset of his term
of office. It is true that the Bulgarians and their august
master, on their side, contributed powerfully to this,
the former by their proverbial obstinacy, the latter by
his breach of faith.
Hartwig’s influence—exercised through the channel
of his friends and admirers at the Foreign Office—made
itself felt in Balkan affairs beyond the period of which
I speak. It only ceased at his sudden death, which
occurred only three weeks before the general
conflagration of 1914. He was a true and faithful friend of the
Serbians; he was just as sincere and ardent a Russian
patriot; he displayed in the service of Russian politics
and of the Slav cause, an intelligence above the average,
much learning and unremitting work ; but his vehement
and domineering character, his intolerance of any
opinion differing even slightly from his own, prevented
him from forming an equitable judgment on men and
matters, and from seeing the terrible dangers
accumulating on the horizon.
But let us return to the spring of 1913. Serbia and
Greece ended by concluding a formal alliance, directed
against the encroachments of Bulgaria; Montenegro
also acceded to this alliance; and Belgrade,like Athens,
conferred actively on the subject with Bukharest.
I was not at all surprised to receive, towards the
end of April, a voluminous telegram from the Foreign
M
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