File No. 763.72119/109
The Special Agent in Bulgaria (Einstein) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 4, 1916.]
Sir: I have the honor to inform you that in pursuance of your telegraphic instruction of December 3,1 I have brought to the informal notice of the Bulgarian Foreign Office the departure of Mr. Henry Ford on a proposed mission of peace and the refusal of the Department to visa his passports for other than neutral countries.
Although no comment was made, the desire for peace is of course very real here. Bulgaria has achieved her main ambitions—the occupation of Macedonia and the weakening of Servia to a point where, even if that country should again be reestablished, it will be many years before she could become a menace to her eastern neighbor. A six weeks’ campaign has sufficed for this purpose and Bulgaria has little to gain by any continuation of the campaign which must necessarily lead to a drain on her resources without hope of commensurate advantage. Her ambitions with respect to Kavalla and the recovery of Dobruja are perhaps undimmed but as these would involve hostilities with Greece and Roumania, they are kept in restraint for a more propitious occasion. Yet it is by [Page 88] no means impossible that the prolongation of the present war may give that opportunity. The concentrations of Anglo-French forces at Saloniki and of a Russian army at the mouth of the Danube, cause a necessary suspense in any forecast while its immediate effect is to strengthen the ties uniting Bulgaria to the Central powers. The situation at Saloniki presents a dilemma to Bulgaria in either tolerating the gathering of a hostile force in the territory of a neighboring country with which she is at peace, or else, violating that territory and thereby risking the provocation of a fresh war. Unsolicited statements have been made to me that no intention exists on the part of the Bulgars of entering Greek territory though ignorance is professed as to the intentions of the Germans and Austrians.
Whatever the future may bring forth, there can be little doubt that if peace were to-day feasible for Bulgaria with the retention of her actual successes, it would be made. Any further continuation of the war for this country will therefore be in the nature of a corollary of her late campaign and the defense of her recent conquests. Certainly no intention is apparent of assisting the Central powers in any other theater of the war beyond facilitating the passage of military supplies to Constantinople.
While the Department has far better sources of information, it may yet be of some interest to know that on the part of Austrian officials with whom I am brought in close and friendly contact, there are incessant allusions not only to the desirability but to the possibility of an early peace. One has the impression, rightly or wrongly derived, that the Central powers feel they have obtained all that was possible out of this war, and that save for the much advertised Turkish expedition against Egypt to which their contribution will probably be munitions and direction, rather than men, further offenses will hardly be undertaken because the great losses these necessitate could not be compensated for by additional conquests. No more territory is desired than is at present occupied and much of this they would be ready to abandon in return for an early peace and possible indemnities.
The opinion is, moreover, held here by Austrian diplomatists that German territorial ambitions exist rather on the eastern than on the west front and are confined to certain of the Russian Baltic provinces and a part of Poland, and that Germany would be disposed to abandon Belgium and the occupied regions of France in return for her colonies and the freedom of her trade. The Department will of course appreciate that these expressions are entirely private and unofficial, and derived exclusively from informal friendly conversations. If I chronicle them at all, it is because of the possibility of their perhaps throwing light on other information in its possession.
I have [etc.]