Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/30

 "a European conflagration, which sets Slaventum against Germanentum," and thus make it necessary for Germany to help Austria-Hungary "not merely within the limits of diplomatic mediation"—thus foreshadowing the arguments of the German White Paper of August, 1914.

The chief strength of the anti-German solution was this, that it satisfied local interests, and stood in perfect harmony with the national aspirations of the awakening Christian populations of the Balkans. Looking backwards at the events, we may say that all diplomatic designs, however farseeing they seemed at the time, have miserably failed in case they were inconsistent with local national needs, and that, on the contrary, small Balkan nations, steadily growing in consciousness and cohesion, have always found their way, mostly taking by surprise diplomatic wisdom. The two kinds of help they really wanted from the entente were, first, to let them alone and to ward off Austro-Germany while they were fighting their common enemy, Turkey, and, secondly, to suggest, and, if necessary, to impose solutions in very delicate and disputed questions of establishing satisfactory and permanent ethnographic frontiers. The entente succeeded in accomplishing the first task and utterly failed in the second.

The only possible way to defeat Turkey by the forces of the Balkan nations alone was to arrange a compact amongst them and to lay the foundations of a Balkan League, while the only chance of Austro-Germany to win the game was to keep them disunited, and to foster internal dissensions and national rivalries in the Balkans. Germs for both were not lacking, and