Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/78



ment with the danger of war whenever he wanted to put anything through.

The Russo-Turkish war of 1878, being in its na- ture a conflict about the merits of which only vague ideas could be current among the Western nations, produced a whole nest of secret treaties.. The treaty of San Stefano itself was kept secret by Russia and Turkey. The British Foreign Sec- retary in a diplomatic note which was much ad- mired at the time, demanded that the treaty must be submitted to the European powers.

Meanwhile a second secret treaty had been made between Russia and Austria wherein, as is cus- tomary in such transactions, "compensations" were distributed out of property belonging to neither of the contracting parties, at the cost of somebody else; it was agreed that Austria should have Bosnia and Herzegovina. Meanwhile the British Foreign Office, though it had just de- claimed in indignant tones against the secret terms of San Stefano, made an agreement, equally secret, with Russia (May 30, 1878), concerning the points on which Great Britain would insist in the final adjustment. Through the wrongful action of an employee of the Foreign Office this agree- ment leaked out and a summary of it was pub-