Bulgaria, between 1885 and 1888, made a Russian occupation a possibility, the 'Mediterranean' group of Austria, England, and Italy, formed to maintain the status quo in lands bordering on the Mediterranean, received Bismarck's undoubted support. The controversies which have continued since Bismarck's dismissal have hitherto failed to give any really satisfactory explanation of this contradiction; but a fresh turn to the discussion has been given since the war by Prof. J. V. Fuller, who, in a more elaborate study of Bismarck's later diplomacy than any hitherto attempted, has arrived at conclusions concerning the negotiations of 1885-88 which differ in many essentials from any hitherto advanced. Approaching the Near Eastern question from the point of view of German policy, he argues that when the question was reopened in 1885 three possible courses presented themselves to the German Chancellor. 'Germany might support Austria unreservedly from the start, announcing boldly that she would be on her ally's side in the event of war. She might espouse Russia's claims and persuade Austria, for a consideration, to concede them. Or she might keep in the background, letting Austria go ahead on her own responsibility, only endeavouring to assure her the support of some other combination, not openly including Germany, which in the end would balk Russia of her desires.' The first course, threatening as it did a great struggle between Slav and Teuton, of which Constantinople should be the prize, and which would certainly precipitate the Franco-Russian alliance that it was his lifelong struggle to avoid, was inconceivable so long as Bismarck stood at the helm of the German ship of state. The third possible course, the indirect blocking of Russia's advance, had most to recommend it. The situation was probably as difficult as any with which Bismarck was ever called upon to deal. The Bulgarian question was reopened and must be boldly faced. Further temporisation was useless: the solution might as well be sought once and for all.' The second course, that of compromise and mutual aggrandisement for both Russia and Austria, would only result in a temporary solution. That any such arrangement could be made † Ibid, p. 80. * Fuller, p. 77. to the permanent satisfaction of Russia was a practical impossibility.' Bismarck therefore determined to solve the Near East question, once and for all.' By engineering his secret diplomacy skilfully, he could serve all Austria's interests and yet avoid breaking with Russia. Germany could thus keep France and Russia apart and maintain her own advantageous position as the mutual friend of both Russia and Austria. An obvious objection to this view that would be advanced by any one familiar with the published material for German diplomatic history in this period is that Bismarck's correspondence nowhere contains any statement-made either to his own diplomatic agents or to the Austrian Governmentwhich can reasonably be construed as an admission of such a policy. Prof. Fuller goes to some trouble to explain this difficulty. He considers that the explanation is largely personal: Bismarck had not much confidence in Kalnoky's discretion. His opinion of the Austrian's ability fell particularly low after the Serbo-Bulgar war of 1885, and the behaviour of such an undependable colleague could be better regulated by keeping him in the dark, and even in a little anxiety. The tone of his communication was always that Germany's support was strictly limited, that real danger existed from the side of France, and that the maintenance of existing ties with Russia and with Italy was a matter, not of manoeuvring for advantages, but of life and death.'† This statement of policy coincides almost exactly with the explanation of Bismarck's policy put forward by Raschdau and other survivors of Bismarck's diplomatic corps: perhaps because they also, for some reason not easy to discover, could not be admitted by Bismarck to the inner secrets of his diplomacy.‡ Prof. Fuller argues that this method, the indirect blocking of Russia's advance, had, in fact, been employed with success at the time of the Russo-Turkish war and Congress of Berlin, to the profit of Austria, without any commensurate Russian gain.§ The conclusion that Bismarck may have followed the same line after 1885 is * Fuller, pp. 76, 79, 80. + Ibid, pp. 81, 82. Raschdau, 'Der deutsch-russische Rückversicherungsvertrag' in Grenzboten' (April 1918), p. 32. § Fuller, p. 80. an attractive one within certain limits; but Prof. Fuller's analysis of his position in the 'eighties attributes a power of initiative to the German Chancellor which the history of the Eastern question after 1878 does not generally suggest. The judgment of German writers, which agrees with that of Dr Gooch in England, certainly does not attribute to Bismarck either the opportunity or the inclination for this exclusively Austrian policy, and the opposition to Fuller's view is clearly expressed in Prof. Pribram's summary of the position after the conclusion of Bismarck's many and conflicting engagements in 1887. "This security on all sides and against every eventuality enabled Prince Bismarck to pursue toward allies and opponents alike those tactics of threats and promises, admonitions and pleadings, pacifications and elucidations, by means of which he attained the goal he held unswervingly before him, the maintenance of the peace of Europe. It was a dangerous game that he was playing. Only a master like himself could hope to bring the ship of state through all the rocks and shoals into safe harbour.' * Any fresh Near Eastern crisis after 1878 would have presented Bismarck with the three alternatives enumerated by Fuller if Bismarck accepted the view that 'further temporisation was useless: the solution might as well be sought once and for all.' Prof. Fuller remarks further that the question reopened was in reality that of the re-establishment of Russian influence in Bulgaria and its possible extension even fartherperhaps to Constantinople itself.' And on a later page, 'the final reckoning would be only postponed by an understanding confined to Bulgaria and Serbia.'† How far does Bismarck's diplomacy before 1885 bear out this forecast? It is difficult to believe that Bismarck, after the events of 1878 and 1879, could have seriously believed it possible to engineer the permanent defeat of Russian Balkan ambitions and still retain the friendship of Russia: he was too close a student of Russian affairs not to know how readily Russian opinion translated every disappointment in foreign affairs into hostility to Germany. This would have been an obvious deduction from the events of the Congress period, and in fact † Fuller, pp. 76, 79. * Pribram, II, 84. Vol. 251.-No. 497. B Bismarck is complaining of the Russian press before the end of 1886; anti-German feeling was strongly expressed from this point onward, and by the end of 1887 it was widely believed that war was in sight.* It is possible to argue that Bismarck was prepared to accept the consequence of Russian ill-feeling, but not that he was ignorant of it. And even if the Russian press could have been persuaded that the defeat of Russia was not due to German machinations, it would have been most unlikely that Russian diplomatists would not have gained some inkling of the truth. Further, we may well ask how Bismarck was to bring into existence a coalition of governments in opposition to Russia without letting those governments know that he was doing so? Prof. Fuller, nevertheless, explains the lack of direct evidence in the published German documents for his view by saying that Bismarck considered it best not to inform Kalnoky of his intentions. As a matter of fact Kalnoky was well informed as to Bismarck's activities, even in the obscure instance of Dr Langenbuch's visit to Alexander of Battenberg in March 1887.† Even if we accept the hypothesis that Kalnoky was kept in ignorance the problem remains of finding what motive Bismarck would have in supporting Austria if Austria was to be told nothing about it. Presumably the truth was to be revealed when the defeat was finally accomplished. Prof. Fuller does not deal with this point, and if Kalnoky's temperament was so undependable that he could not be employed even as conscious auxiliary in fighting his own battles, it is doubtful if he could have been safely entrusted with a secret which would obviously have had to be hidden very carefully from the suspicious Russians. Dr Trützschler, indeed, goes further, and maintains that Bismarck had no such doubts as to Kalnoky's reliability. At any rate, unless we can find reasons for disbelieving Bismarck's repeated statement that Germany had no direct interest in the Near East we must assume that desire to gain the self-interested gratitude of Austria would play a large part in such a * Die Grosse Politik,' III, 2; v, 96, etc. † Corti, Alexander von Battenberg,' p. 295. ‡ Trützschler, 'Bismarck und die Kriegsgefahr des Jahres 1887,' Appendix, p. 153. policy as Prof. Fuller elaborates. In any case, why should Bismarck voluntarily undertake the task of pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for Austria? There is no reason to doubt that if the choice had definitely to be made between Russia and Austria he would, as the German Government did in 1908 and 1914, have chosen for Austria; but his whole policy was directed to removing the need for this choice, which would be followed by all the nightmares he was anxious to avoid.* It would involve the enmity of Russia and a consequent rapprochement between Russia and France, with the probability of an evenly balanced European war fought for no better cause than Austria's possible gain in the Near East. The real objections to this theory is that there was very little chance of the policy being successful, and that it would not have benefited Austria if it had been successful. In what sense could Bismarck hope to solve the Near Eastern question? Prof. Fuller himself points out that any temporary defeat of Russia would merely postpone the issue, and that Bismarck, if he tackled the problem at this stage, would aim at solving it once and for all; but there is nothing of a permanent character in the defeat of Russia which resulted from the Mediterranean Agreements of 1887 and the largely independent development of events in Bulgaria at the same time. This solution was obviously one-sided and even less satisfactory than the 'understanding confined to Bulgaria and Serbia,' which Prof. Fuller considers inadequate as a solution of the question. In the 'nineties a reconciliation was arranged between the Russian and Bulgarian Governments, and the renewed interest of Russia in the Near East in the early years of the new century was followed by open war in 1914. Bismarck's own constructive solution of a division of the peninsula into spheres of influence was, on the other hand, a recognition of the permanent nature of Russia's movement to the south. This movement, as at the Peace of Paris in 1856 and the Congress of Berlin in 1878, had been in the past checked by a combination of powers and after Russia had been exhausted by war; but there was no reason to believe that the fresh forward movement, * Cf. Die Grosse Politik,' IV, 349, |