Slav States, but the union of all the Slavs under the Czars and the destruction of Germany and Austria-Hungary. In order to achieve this end, Russia intended to use the new Bulgaria as its tool. New Bulgaria was to be created against the will of the Turks, the Serbs, the Greeks and the Roumanians, and when it stood there, exposed to the hostility of all its neighbours, with only Russian support to look to, the new Bulgaria was to become a Russian dependency.
In contrast to the above, England and the Monarchy pursued a policy that considered the interests of the rest of the Balkan States and which wished to preserve Turkish power, so that the Straits and Constantinople remained in Turkish possession. The independence of the separate Christian nations was to be preserved in such a way that no individual Balkan State should obtain an artificial predominance. This policy came to be realized on broad lines at the Congress of Berlin.
In the circle of our enemies it became the fashion to trace the subsequent confusion in the Balkans to the Treaty of Berlin. This accusation is, however, totally unfounded. The Treaty of Berlin was not the cause but the result of the Balkan difficulty. The only criticism that can reasonably be levelled against the Treaty is that it failed to solve the Balkan problem finally. I consider, however, that it was an impossibility to find such a solution in 1878. The Bulgarian, the Balkan, and even the Great War—in fact, all the events that have occurred since the Berlin Congress—prove that the old Russian solution of establishing the predomin-
