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74 SERBO-BULGARIAN TREATY [chap. vi.
on the other hand, one perhaps etc., etc! . . ." This
exchange of views lasted till the beginning of February,
1912, when the famous frontier-line was at last settled
and marked on the map of Macedonia, and nothing
remained to be done but to sign the agreement. At this
juncture I was informed from St. Petersburg that His
Majesty the Emperor, when receiving the Bulgarian
military attache, had expressed to him in very precise
terms his desire to see the Serbo-Bulgarian agreement
concluded and signed. From that moment I no longer
felt myself justified in expressing doubts and fears as to
the agreement. Roma locuta—causa finita.
The Serbo-Bulgarian agreement was signed by the
Serbian and Bulgarian Foreign Secretaries in the last
days of February, 1912, and ratified by the two
Sovereigns under date of March 13th, which in this
leap-year corresponded to February 29th, O.S. I have
often remembered, since, the superstitions attached in
the West to the number 13, and in Russia to the date of
February 29th, which is considered singularly unlucky.
But the fact that it had been possible to keep the
conclusion of the agreement a complete secret may have
consoled the interested parties for this. No one had
any idea of it, except Russia, and those to whom we
judged it fit and proper later on to confide the secret.
Turkey and the Powers of the Triple Alliance only
knew of the Serbo-Bulgarian compact when the Balkan
War broke out. It is true that our Foreign Secretary
had received from Belgrade some information as to the
secret of the agreement having been betrayed by
Ferdinand to the Austrian Court. Later on, in 1913,
this retrospective disclosure appeared in the Novoye
Vremja. Nevertheless it was quite untrue, and our
Foreign Secretary had an opportunity of proving to
himself irrefiitably that in Vienna, as in Berlin, there was
no idea of the Serbo-Bulgarian agreement till shortly
before the Balkan War, and that the German Minister
in Sofia denied up to the end, that is till the mobilisation,
the very existence of the agreement. I consider it
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