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32 thus irretrievably doomed to perish. So little did the statesmen of Germany understand this, that it was precisely these Powers on which they chose to lean. But indeed what others had their world-policy now left to them?

Both these States stood in a position of traditional hostility to Russia, which was always straining towards an outlet on the Mediterranean, towards Constantinople, but which had learned by repeated experiences that this goal could not be directly arrived at. Russia decided therefore on a circuitous route, by dissolving Turkey into a collection of small independent States, of which it was hoped that, related as they were by religion, and also in part—in the case of Serbia and Bulgaria—by language, to the Russian people, they might become vassal States of the Tsardom. In opposition to the Austrian and the Turkish Governments, Russia therefore favoured the movement for independence in the Balkans, and therefore advanced on the inevitable course of historical progress, while the other Governments set themselves against it. The same monarch whom his own subjects cursed as a hangman and the Tsar of Blood was hailed in the Balkans as the Tsar of Deliverance. Russian imperialism, indeed, would not have attained its object among the Balkan peoples. The more their strength and their independence of the Sultan increased, the more independent they tended to become as against the Tsar also. They felt themselves drawn to him so long only as they needed his protection, so long as their independence was threatened from another side.

This other side, in the decades immediately preceding the war, was revealing itself more and more as Austria. In view of the national movements which were