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i9T3] TSAR OFFERS TO ARBITRATE 171
initiative about this clause; it was well known in our
country, but we had not formally adhered to it.
Consequently it was necessary above all things to ask St.
Petersburg whether the Imperial Government would
consent to become the arbitrator of the Serbo-Bulgarian
litigation if the case arose. But Spalaikovitch and I
went further: I sent M. Sazonoff a telegram1 which we
composed together, and in which I suggested to our
Government that it should itself propose to arbitrate,
and not propose this only to the Bulgarians and the
Serbians, but also to the Greeks. I concluded my
telegram by expressing the opinion that such a step
taken by Russia would be the best means of preventing
a fratricidal war in the Balkans. For more than ten
days no answer to my suggestion came ; then I received
from Moscow, where the Court was at the moment, the
telegram of His Majesty the Emperor to the Kings of
Bulgaria and Serbia which I was to transmit
immediately to King Ferdinand, and in which H.I.M. the
Emperor proposed to both sides that he should
arbitrate. I was told later that this telegram of the
Emperor’s was not dispatched on the initiative of
M. Sazonoff, who, moreover, had already returned
to St. Petersburg, but on that of the Marshal of the
Nobility of Moscow, M. Alexander Samarine, who at
the moment was persona gratissima at the Court, and
who, as the representative of the best traditions of the
Russian nobility as of the Slavophile traditions of the
Samarine family, thought it incumbent on him to suggest
to his Sovereign that he should generously offer his
arbitration in order to prevent the scandal of a new
war between people of a common origin and Orthodox.
The Emperor at once approved of this idea, and the
telegram was sent off. That would show that my
telegram on which Spalaikovitch and I were building
so many hopes was not submitted to His Majesty at a
good moment, but was merely put away in the archives
1 If my memory does not deceive me, it was on the 15th (28th) May,
or the 16th (29th) May.
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