formed a tacit but decisive censure of the policy of Potsdam; for it realised the fears which had haunted Bismarck like a nightmare[522].  Its effect on William II. was to induce him to increase his military and naval preparations, to reject all proposals for the substitution of arbitration in place of the reign of force, and thereby to enclose the policy of the Great Powers in a vicious circle from which the only escape was a general reduction of armaments or war.

[Footnote 522:  Bismarck, his Reflections and Recollections, vol. ii. pp. 252, 289.  There are grounds for thinking that William II. has been pushed on to a bellicose policy by the Navy, Colonial, and Pan-German Leagues.  In 1908 he seems to have sought to pause; but powerful influences (as also at the time of the crises of July 1911 and 1914) propelled him.  See an article in the Revue de Paris of April 15, 1913, “Guillaume II et les pangermanistes.”  In my narrative I speak of the Kaiser as equivalent to the German Government; for he is absolute and his Ministers are responsible solely to him.]

CHAPTER XXII

TEUTON versus SLAV (1908-13)

     “To tell the truth, the Slav seems to us a born
     slave.”—­TREITSCHKE, June 1876.

On October 7, 1908, Austria-Hungary exploded a political bomb-shell by declaring her resolve to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Since the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, she had provisionally occupied and administered those provinces as mandatory of Europe (see p. 238).  But now, without consulting Europe, she appropriated her charge.  On the other hand, she consented to withdraw from the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar which she had occupied by virtue of a secret agreement with Russia of July 1878.  Even so, her annexation of a great province caused a sharp crisis for the following reasons:  (1) It violated the international law of Europe without any excuse whatever. (2) It exasperated Servia, which hoped ultimately to possess Bosnia, a land peopled by her kindred and necessary to her expansion seawards. (3) It no less deeply offended the Young Turks, who were resolved to revivify the Turkish people and assert their authority over all parts of the Ottoman dominions. (4) It came at the same time as the assumption by Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria of the title of Tsar of the Bulgarians.  This change of title, which implied a prospect of sovereignty over the Bulgars of Macedonia, had been arranged during a recent visit to Buda-Pest, and foreshadowed the supremacy of Austrian influence not only in the new kingdom of Bulgaria but eventually in the Bulgar districts of Macedonia[523].

[Footnote 523:  H.W.  Steed, The Hapsburg Monarchy, pp. 52, 214.]