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48 filled the Germans with anxiety and incited them to try and reduce to impotence a neighbour so embarrassing to their ambitions.

The Germans also held a trump card in their game in having a Coburg on the throne of Bulgaria, a Hohenzollern at Bucarest, and another relation of their Emperor at Athens. The Rumanians feared the Russians, and Athens hated them because of Constantinople. As early as 1912 Ferdinand of Coburg was working for Berlin, at a moment when he was preparing to attack Turkey. At this period he asked Vienna and Berlin to intervene against the Serbs, intending to seize Macedonia and part of Serbia and offering to put his enlarged kingdom at the service of the Germans to promote their domination in the Balkans.

This series of advantageous circumstances encouraged Germany immediately to attempt a supreme effort. Instead of appropriating a few Austro-German provinces, according to the old Pan-German plans, with a view to a dismemberment of Austria, it was now a question of including the whole of Austria and the Balkans with the Adriatic and Turkey, in short to make of Germany a real world-power, menacing India and Egypt.

However, Germany found four great obstacles in her way:—

First of all Serbia. Serbia, by her very exist-