the russo turkish war has been all that we feared russia has played her hand perfectly building
support for action with her allies in germany and austria and effectively marginalising the british
position while appearing to be amenable to an international solution our strategy of sowing
confusion among the allies worked to delay the inevitable and i comfort myself that this delay
achieved two things first we were able to develop our agent network within the diplomatic services
of our enemies and second we were able to begin to negotiate with other leading powers to present
our own solution to the turkish problem nonetheless my methods have not been universally popular in
whitehall and i have expended considerable energy fighting enemies within now finally with the
prospect that peace might be bought at the impending congress in berlin i can begin to hope for a
resolution when i said this to playfair he corrected me and said that i must surely mean brought but
it is my view that all victories worth winning are bought and often at great cost my hope is that
our new methods of diplomacy might succeed at a much lower cost in lives all of the major powers
have begun to see the gathering threat that war may erupt across the continent and all have realised
that they have something more to lose from further conflict if we can control the agenda at berlin
then i believe we may see away out of the crisis the pan slavic movement aims to unite the slavic
states in the same way that germany and italy have been unified but is deeply split between those
who believe that the locus of its power should lie within russia and those who seek a balkan
solution the balkan states themselves remain divided with varied cultural and political ambitions of
their own and no clear idea of which party should lead the unification perhaps that is misleading it
is not that they lack a clear idea but rather that there are very many rival views and these are
incompatible the question of how and whether this unification might be achieved is the principle
concern of the congress all of the major powers william sure have a view but my focus is on the
smaller states and parties my agents across the balkans have nurtured instability in the hope that
we can bring pressure to bear through the mon the major powers of course the frenzied atmosphere of
the diplomatic bazaar in germany will be rich in trading opportunities and i have heard rumours that
we may gain cyprus cementing our control of the mediterranean trade routes at the same time by
trading macedonia back to the ottoman state we hope to undermine russian territorial gains and
perhaps to settle the balkan question permanently if so our agent network in bosnia will give usa
foothold in that region i will continue to work closely with them in the hope of creating a new and
more secure future