rd to the
petroleum question, a ninety years' lease was agreed on. In the matter
of the corn supply, Roumania was to bind herself to deliver her
agricultural produce to the Central Powers for a certain number of
years. The plan for Germany to be in the permanent control of
Roumanian finances was not carried out. In the question of price, the
Roumanian views held good. The most impossible of the German demands,
namely, the occupation of Roumania for five to six years after the
conclusion of peace, gave rise to great difficulties. This was the
point that was most persistently and energetically insisted on by the
German Supreme Military Command, and it was only with great trouble
and after lengthy explanations and discussions that we settled the
matter on the following lines: That on the conclusion of peace the
entire legislative and executive power of the Roumanian Government
would be restored in principle, and that we should content ourselves
with exercising a certain control through a limited number of agents,
this control not to be continued after the general peace was made. I
cannot say positively whether this standpoint was adhered to by my
successor or not, but certain it is that Marghiloman only undertook
office on condition that I gave him a guarantee that the plan would be
supported by me.

As already mentioned, the question of the Dobrudsha had prepared great
difficulties for us in two respects. First of all there was the
relinquishing of their claim which, for the Roumanians, was the
hardest term of all, and imparted to the peace the character of a
peace of violence; and secondly, the matter had precipitated a dispute
between Turkey and Bulgaria.

The Bulgarians' view was that the entire Dobrudsha, including the
mouth of the Danube, must be promised to them, and they insisted on
their point with an obstinacy which I have seldom, if ever, come
across. They went so far as to declare that neither the present
Government nor any other would be able to return to Sofia, and allowed
it clearly to be seen that by refusing their claims we could never
again count on Bulgaria. The Turks, on the other hand, protested with
equal vehemence that the Dobrudsha had been conquered by two Turkish
army corps, that it was a moral injustice that the gains chiefly won
by Turkish forces should be given exclusively to the Bulgarians, and
that they would never consent to Bulgaria receiving the whole of the
Dobrudsha unless compensatio