Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/200

196 interest if there were not involved in it the danger of a universal political complication, which now already threatens to unchain a world-war. For over five years Serbia has been the cause of a tension in Europe which weighs upon the political and economic life of the nations with a pressure which is really becoming unbearable. With a forbearance almost amounting to weakness, Austria has hitherto endured the constant provocations and the political agitation directed against its constitution by a people who have gone from the murder of a king in their own country to the murder of a prince in a neighbouring land. Only after the last ghastly crime has she resorted to extreme means to burn out with glowing iron a cancer which continually threatened to poison the body of Europe. One would have thought that the whole of Europe ought to have been grateful to her. The whole of Europe would have breathed freely if its mischief-maker had been suitably chastised, and peace and order thus restored in the Balkans. But Russia placed herself on the side of the criminal country. It was only then that the Austro-Serbian affair became the thunder-cloud which threatened at any moment to break over Europe.”

And so on. Such were the political lessons given by the General Staff to the Imperial Chancellor, and received by him most submissively. We need not waste words on the General Staff's conception of history. Let us only point out that the German General Staff made the murder of the Serbian king an act of the Serbian people. They had already forgotten that it was their colleagues (the military) who applied this process.