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196 not immediate neighbours, so that the incompatibihty of Democracy and Autocracy was not under the circumstances an impediment sufficient to forbid the marriage. But it was none the less some measure of the need in which Russia stood.

In 1905, when Russia was weak after the Japanese War and her first revolution, Germany imposed upon her a punishing Tariff. In 1907 Russia went so far, in consequence, as to accept an understanding even with Britain, her rival of two generations and the ally of her late enemy, Japan. Again we have evidence of the stress that was on her, especially if we remember the German influences in her Court and Bureaucracy.

When, therefore, in 1908, Austria took that further action in regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina to which Viscount Grey attached such importance, she dealt a blow where there were already bruises. The little neighbour Serbia protested, and the big sister Russia supported her, for it meant the definite closing of the door to the historic aspirations of Serbian nationality, proudly held ever since the great defeat of Kossovo in the fourteenth century. But the Kaiser of Berlin put on his 'shining armour' at Vienna, and shook his 'mailed fist' in the face of the Czar at