I know that some definite proposals were made to the Bulgarians, and in any case it is certain that the idea of a separate peace with her, to be obtained in this way, was in the air. In June, 1918, General Bartlett, the United States Military Attaché at Athens, came to Salonica, and it was believed that his presence there had something to do with the rumours of the possible intervention of the United States in the Balkans. America had never declared war against Turkey or Bulgaria and had no troops in Macedonia, and although Turkey had immediately broken off diplomatic relations with her, diplomatic relations between Bulgaria and America continued through the whole of the war, and an American Chargé d’Affaires continued to reside at Sofia. There was much speculation in the Entente countries as to the reasons for this attitude on the part of the United States, and even in America the public could not understand it. In the spring of 1918 some members of the American House of Representatives and of the Senate had presented a motion to Congress in favour of a declaration of war against those two States, but President Wilson requested the authors of that motion to suspend all discussion on the subject, without giving any reason for his request, and nothing more was said about the matter. The above-mentioned general had come to Salonica to call on General Franchet d’Espérey and the other Allied Commanders, and he visited various sectors of the front, including our own. Although he maintained the utmost reserve regarding the attitude of his country in connexion with Bulgaria, he ended by saying that in America it was believed that the cause of the Allies in the East might be better served by keeping the threat of declaring war against Bulgaria hanging like the sword of Damocles over the head of that State, instead of actually declaring it. In fact, Bulgaria strongly desired to avoid a break with the United States; she now began to realize that the defeat of the Central Empires was possible if not probable, and she hoped to see the United States at the future Peace Conference, if not as a friend, at least as a benevolent neutral who would defend her from the extreme retribution of the Allies, especially of Serbia, Roumania and Greece. In the meanwhile, Mr. Murphy, the American Chargé d’Affaires at Sofia was able to conduct an active, although prudent propaganda, in favour of a separate peace, hinting that the sooner the Bulgarians abandoned the now hopeless cause of the Central Empires, the better would be the conditions which the Entente would offer them.