ere the proceedings of the first brief
sitting of the peace congress.

"_December 23, 1917._--Kuehlmann and I prepared our answer early. It
will be generally known from the newspaper reports. It cost us much
heavy work to get it done. Kuehlmann is personally an advocate of
general peace, but fears the influence of the military party, who do
not wish to make peace until definitely victorious. But at last it is
done. Then there were further difficulties with the Turks. They
declared that they must insist on one thing, to wit, that the Russian
troops should be withdrawn from the Caucasus immediately on the
conclusion of peace, a proposal to which the Germans would not agree,
as this would obviously mean that they would have to evacuate Poland,
Courland, and Lithuania at the same time, to which Germany would never
consent. After a hard struggle and repeated efforts, we at last
succeeded in persuading the Turks to give up this demand. The second
Turkish objection was that Russia had not sufficiently clearly
declared its intention of refraining from all interference in internal
affairs. But the Turkish Foreign Minister agreed that internal affairs
in Austria-Hungary were an even more perilous sphere for Russian
intrigues than were the Turkish; if I had no hesitation in accepting,
he also could be content.

"The Bulgarians, who are represented by Popow, the Minister of
Justice, as their chief, and some of whom cannot speak German at all,
some hardly any French, did not get any proper idea of the whole
proceedings until later on, and postponed their decision until the
24th.

"_December 24, 1917._--Morning and afternoon, long conferences with
the Bulgarians, in the course of which Kuehlmann and I on the one hand
and the Bulgarian representatives on the other, were engaged with
considerable heat. The Bulgarian delegates demanded that a clause
should be inserted exempting Bulgaria from the no-annexation
principle, and providing that the taking over by Bulgaria of Roumanian
and Serbian territory should not be regarded as annexation. Such a
clause would, of course, have rendered all our efforts null and void,
and could not under any circumstances be agreed to. The discussion was
attended with considerable excitement at times, and the Bulgarian
delegates even threatened to withdraw altogether if we did not give
way. Kuehlmann and my humble self remained perfectly firm, and told
them we had no objection to their withdrawing if the