all of us, without an exception, interpreted them at
that time. The public feeling of the Bulgarians can alter nothing in
this, so far as I am concerned. Bulgaria, the tiny little country
between the Danube and the Balkans is not an object of sufficient
size, I assure you, to attach to it any importance, or to push Europe
for its sake into a war, from Moscow to the Pyrenees, from the North
Sea to Palermo, when no one can foresee its end. After the war we
would conceivably not even know for what we had been fighting.

I may, therefore, declare that the hostility against us shown in the
Russian public opinion, and especially in the Russian press, will not
deter us from supporting, at Russia's request, any diplomatic steps
she may take to regain her influence in Bulgaria. I intentionally say,
at her request. Formerly we have, at times, endeavored to fulfil her
wishes when they had been only confidentially suggested, but we have
seen that some Russian papers immediately tried to prove that these
very steps of the German diplomacy had been the most inimical to
Russia. They actually attacked us for having fulfilled the wishes of
Russia even before they had been expressed. We did this also in
the Congress of Berlin; but it will not happen again. If Russia will
officially request us to support with the Sultan, as suzerain of
Bulgaria, the steps which she may take in her desire to reestablish in
Bulgaria conditions according to the decisions of the Congress, I
shall not hesitate to advise His Majesty the Emperor to do so. Our
sense of loyalty to our neighbor demands this, for we should cherish
neighborly relations with him, let the present feelings be what they
may. Together we should protect the monarchical institutions which are
common to both of us, and set our faces, in the interest of order,
against all the opponents of it in Europe. Russia's monarch, moreover,
fully understands that these are the duties of the allied monarchs. If
the Emperor of Russia should find that the interests of his great
empire of one hundred million people demand war, he will wage it, I do
not doubt. But I do not believe that these interests can possibly
demand a war against us, nor do I believe that these interests demand
war at the present time at all.

To sum up: I do not believe in an immediate interruption of peace, and
I ask you to discuss this bill independently of such a thought or
apprehension, looking upon it as a means of making the gr