Page:The voice of an oppressed people.pdf/58

46 means of putting pressure on Vienna, which could not easily forgot 1866. But long before Bismark List had preached in Germany a very practical Pangerman Magyarophilism.

The occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina led Austria into a fatal antagonism against not only the Southern Slavs but also Russia. Germany joined her in this direction. Bismarck hoped, in spite of the Berlin Congress, not to lose the friendship of Russia, and even the creation of the Triple Alliance did not prevent him from the effort to secure the re-insurance of Russia, or rather, of Petrograd. But the new generation in Germany conceived Pangermanism in the sense of "Berlin-Bagdad," and the road to Bagdad led to an inevitable dispute with Russia about Constantinople. William II., accepting Lagarde's teaching, and the designs of world-power which it involved, dismissed Bismarck and placed himself at the head of the new generation. Austria-Hungary and Prussia-Germany inaugurated a very decided anti-Slav policy with the double object of crushing the Czechs in the North, and the Jugoslavs, and above all the Serbs, in the South.

The Germans used the unjust privileges conferred by an artificial constitution to maintain a majority in the Parliament and in the Diets; the bureaucracy and army also served their aims. The so-called Linz programme, and, still more, the motion brought forward by the Pangerman leader, Schönerer, in 1901, aimed at granting a kind of autonomy to Galicia, Bukovina and even to Dalmatia, with the object of securing to the Germans a strong and unshakable majority. Count Badeni induced the Emperor to restore to Bohemia a part of her national right, but again the Emperior gave in to German terrorism and Badeni's decree was step by step abolished.

The Poles were partly satisfied (Galician Resolution 1868), but Vienna temporarily favoured the Ruthenes not only against Russia but also against the Poles; the South-