Balkan States impossible.  Nor is it a mere accident that official Germany and official Hungary should have pursued an actively Turcophil policy; for the same tendencies have been noticeable in Turkey, though naturally in a somewhat cruder form than farther west.  Just as the Young Turk policy of Turkification rendered a war between Turkey and the Balkan States inevitable, so the policy of Magyarisation pursued by two generations of Hungarian statesmen sowed the seeds of war between Austria and the Southern Slavs.  In the former case it was possible to isolate the conflict, in the latter it has involved the greater part of Europe in a common disaster.

The struggle centres round the Austro-Serbian dispute.  Let us then attempt a brief survey of the two countries.

Sec.1. Austria and the Habsburgs.—­Let us begin with Austria-Hungary.  In this country many misconceptions prevail regarding Austria-Hungary; nor is this surprising, for it is unique among States, and whether we regard it from a political, a constitutional, a racial, or a social point of view, the issues are equally complicated and difficult to sum up.  With the aid of a good gazetteer it is easy enough to elicit the facts that the Austria-Hungary of to-day is a state of fifty-two million inhabitants, divided into three component parts:  (a) the Empire of Austria, (b) the Kingdom of Hungary, each with subdivisions which will be referred to later, and (c) the annexed provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina, jointly administered by the two Governments.  But this bald fact is meaningless except in connection with the historical genesis of the Habsburg State.

[Illustration:  AUSTRIA-HUNGARY; PHYSICAL]

Austria—­Oesterreich—­is the ancient Eastmark or frontier province, the outpost of Carlovingian power against the tribes of the east, then of the mediaeval German Empire against Slav and Magyar.  Under the House of Habsburg, which first rose to greatness on the ruins of a Greater Bohemia, Austria grew steadily stronger as a distinct unit.  Two famous mottoes sum up the policy of that dynasty in the earlier centuries of its existence. Austriae est Imperare Orbi Universo (Austria’s it is to Rule the Universe) ran the device of that canny Frederick III., who, amid much adversity, laid the plans which prompted an equally striking epigram about his son and successor Maximilian, the “Last of the Knights”—­Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube (Let others wage war; do thou marry, O fortunate Austria!).  There were three great stages in Habsburg marriage policy.  In 1479 Maximilian married the heiress of Charles the Bold, thus acquiring the priceless dowry of the Low Countries (what are now Belgium and Holland).  In 1506 his son Philip added the crown of Spain and the Indies by his marriage with the heiress of Ferdinand and Isabella.  In 1526, when the battle of Mohacs placed Hungary at the mercy of the Turks, Maximilian’s grandson Ferdinand, in his wife’s name, united Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia with the Austrian duchies.