Page:Diplomacy and the War (Andrassy 1921).djvu/10

 taken by the leading statesmen of Germany and Hungary, Bismarck and Andrassy. They concluded an alliance between Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878. Andrassy did not wish to go any farther. The Triple Alliance was not his work, and neither Austrian nor Hungarian statesmen had any share in it. Andrassy's first thought always was to guard against the Russian danger, and he feared that an alliance with Italy would be regarded as hostile to France. He was afraid, moreover, that the inclusion of Italy into the Austro-German combination might lead to a Franco-Russian alliance. From the point of view of the Monarchy, he felt that a tête-à-tête with Germany promised better than a triple alliance which would bring Italy into the German orbit and thus further increase Germany's power. Andrassy would have preferred England to be the third member of the Alliance, and he had succeeded in bringing England and the Monarchy into closer touch before the Dual Alliance was signed. English policy and our own ran on parallel lines in the Balkans, and when the defensive agreement with Germany was presented, Andrassy wired to the Emperor Francis Joseph on August 31, 1879, that England should be informed of this agreement and, if possible, drawn into it. Bismarck favoured the suggestion, but unfortunately his hopes did not materialize.

After Andrassy was dismissed, Italy approached us, her traditional enemy, because she needed Germany's friendship, and the path to Berlin led through Vienna.