Hugh would occasionally make a reference to how he was considering betraying me but didn’t, which I mostly assumed to be him trying to extort concessions from me.

While I was trying to create trust with which to get more concessions, my main motive was different. Considering that I had raised a large outcry after you stabbed me with Italy in 1903, I feared that you would fear me stabbing you out of a grudge, and that you might stab me first. So I tried to obviously signal that I was forgoing opportunities to stab you.

The last touch that finally made the three-way draw inevitable was a phone call that I made to France urging him not to do a two-way draw with Turkey. I pointed out how difficult it would be to precisely balance the fall of my centers so that each player ended up with 17.

I think that such a problem was inherent in any two of us attempting a three-way, and we all made the right choice.