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22
MY APPOINTMENT TO SOFIA [chap. i.
time in London he often came to Paris; times were
strenuous and interesting: first the Japanese war and
the Treaty of Portsmouth ; followed immediately by the
first Russian Revolution, with Dumas succeeding one
another and ending in the Stolypin regime, which
appeared to quell the great tumult; finally, the
Russo-British Entente. All this gave rise to much interchange
of opinions and ideas between two close colleagues.
These meetings in Paris cemented a certain intellectual
intimacy between us, and later on when M. Sazonoff
became assistant to M. Isvolsky, I often had the
satisfaction of noticing that he still took an interest in my
opinions.
In announcing my appointment to me, M. Sazonoff
said, amongst other things, that I was going to Sofia at
a particularly interesting moment: King Ferdinand
appeared to be directing his policy more and more
towards Russian sympathies and designs, and his
Government—composed of Radicals with Malinov at
their head—proposed to us to conclude a military
convention. This was a matter for mature deliberation, and
the Minister was confident that my knowledge of Balkan
affairs would enable me to study the proposal and to
give my advice on the expediency of such negotiations.
He advised me to try and be on good terms with
Ferdinand, who had the reputation of being very
distrustful and unreliable in his dealings with foreign
representatives, especially the Russian ones. My
predecessor had achieved notable success in this respect.
In 1909, at the outset of M. Sementovsky’s term of
office, King Ferdinand, on arriving in St. Petersburg, had
tried to get rid of the new Russian Minister, and to
secure the appointment to Sofia of some person
belonging to the smartest society in St. Petersburg. But the
Ministry, in the offices of which Sementovsky had spent
all his career, not being willing to part with him,
Ferdinand made haste to be reconciled with a
representative who he felt was well supported, and then tried
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