File No. 702.4174/12
The Chargé in Bulgaria (Einstein) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 1.]
Sir: I have the honor to bring to your notice that the day after the receipt of your open telegram directing me to make strong representations in favor of Mr. Hurst but not to continue to give him asylum if the Bulgarian Government should insist on his arrest, I received a note from Doctor Radoslavoff, the copy of which with translation is enclosed,1 while a letter from the hotel management, undoubtedly prompted by the police, has asked me to leave the quarters occupied by the Legation within three days because of Mr. Hurst’s presence here.
I beg to call the Department’s attention to the fact that prior to the receipt of this open wire, the Bulgarian Government had called away their secret police agents and were apparently disposed to acquiesce without further ado in Mr. Hurst’s asylum at the Legation. Apart from the question of precedent, tradition, and the most ordinary considerations of propriety involved in affording protection to a former official accused of no crime, who was at Sofia by distinct authorization and whose security and freedom from molestation had been personally guaranteed to me several weeks before, I felt that any other action would have been detrimental to the prestige of the American Legation and that on future occasions the Government would be far more careful as to the method of treatment of neutral diplomatists here than they have been of late. My disappointment was therefore acute at the Department’s wire No. 8 of the 3d instant, which, to the instant knowledge of the Bulgarian Government deprived me of all support from you at the same time as I was ordered to make “strong representations.” Believing that, in accordance with a frequent practice here, essential portions of my telegram to you No. 22 of January 1 may have been omitted, I had taken the precaution to send an additional copy of the correspondence to Vienna, with the suggestion that it be wired from there. I am now awaiting further instructions from the Department before taking any action here: firstly, because I do not yet know if the Department is in possession of the full facts; secondly, because in the light of the “strong representations” I have been directed to make, I do not consider that the insistence of the Bulgarian Government has as yet been sufficient to warrant my surrendering Mr. Hurst in a manner which I regard as a distinct stain on our service; and, thirdly, as it has been announced here from Paris that in a few days’ time the Bulgarian Consul will be freed on Swiss soil, the alleged reason of the reprisal for Mr. Hurst’s arrest will have ceased to exist.
In the light of my telegram No. 23,1 I need hardly inform the Department that, in the event of my being compelled to surrender Mr. Hurst, I should ask for my immediate recall, as my utility here would be at an end.
I have [etc.]