working hard against Bulgaria in Macedonia, signed a
secret commercial convention with that country providing for the
free interchange of goods with the exception of certain specified
objects, and binding the two to a monetary convention and
assimilation of weights and measures. As both countries produced
much the same articles the arrangement did not appear to be likely
to stimulate trade and as the racial hatred and rivalry of the two
over the unsettled Macedonian scheme was extreme, the permanence of
the arrangement was in any case doubtful.

Serbia was in dire need of a loan, and was on the point of
concluding one for 70,000,000 francs. Part of this was to be
supplied by the Vienna Bank, and both Serbia and Bulgaria were
negotiating new commercial treaties with Austria. Serbia thought
best therefore to keep the transaction with Bulgaria quiet. But just
as business was almost concluded with Austria, a Bulgarian newspaper
blurted out the Bulgar-Serb convention. The Austria-Hungarian
Government demanded at once to see the document, and all business
came to a standstill. Nor was this surprising, for Petar I, Pashitch
and the regicide group were notoriously Russia's proteges, and any
secret arrangement on their part was likely to be directed against
Austria.

Austria closed her frontier to Serbian live stock.

Serbia was on the bubble. England had stipulated that the regicides
were to be retired from power, as a condition of resuming diplomatic
relations. (A stipulation that showed either that the Foreign Office
little knew the Balkans, or that it knew very well that the treaty
was a farce and did not care.) The regicide gang was infuriated and
plotted the assassination of their opponents who wished by legal
means to settle the question. But, as was delicately expressed by
The Times correspondent, "it is stated that the police authorities
refused to afford facilities for the execution of the plot, which
consequently failed." Pity indeed that the police of Serbia did not
remain "conscientious objectors" to plots of assassination. And
about the same time when Vladan Georgevitch was sentenced to six
months' imprisonment for "revealing state secrets," in The End of a
Dynasty, the author in court denounced King Petar as the humble
instrument of Russian policy.

Austria insisted on modifications to the Serbo-Bulgar convention;
Turkey too demanded an alteration.

But by the time I arrived in Bosnia this affair was throw