king a
European war. It seemed in 1908 as though the favorable moment had
arrived to make a first move, and the Austro-Hungarian government
put forward a project for connecting the Bosnian and Macedonian
railway systems. But the only result was to bring to an end the
co-operation which had for some years been maintained between the
Austrian and Russian governments in the enforcement upon the Porte
of the adoption of reforms in Macedonia.

And now the result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 was the practical
expulsion of Turkey from Europe and the territorial aggrandizement
of Servia and the sister state of Montenegro through the annexation
of those very Turkish domains which lay between the Austro-Hungarian
frontier and the Aegean. At every point Austro-Hungarian policies
had met with reverses.

Only one success could possibly be attributed to the diplomacy of
the Ballplatz. The exclusion of Servia from the Adriatic Sea and the
establishment of the independent State of Albania was the
achievement of Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of
Foreign Affairs. The new State has been a powder magazine from the
beginning, and since the withdrawal of Prince William of Wied, the
government, always powerless, has fallen into chaos. Intervention on
the part of neighboring states is inevitable. And only last month
the southern part of Albania--that is, Northern Epirus--was occupied
by a Greek army for the purpose of ending the sanguinary anarchy
which has hitherto prevailed. This action will be no surprise to the
readers of this volume. The occupation, or rather re-occupation, is
declared by the Greek Government to be provisional and it is
apparently approved by all the Great Powers. Throughout the rest of
Albania similar intervention will be necessary to establish order,
and to protect the life and property of the inhabitants without
distinction of race, tribe, or creed. Servia might perhaps have
governed the country, had she not been compelled by the Great
Powers, at the instigation of Austria-Hungary, to withdraw her
forces. And her extrusion from the Adriatic threw her back toward
the Aegean, with the result of shutting Bulgaria out of Central
Macedonia, which was annexed by Greece and Servia presumably under
arrangements satisfactory to the latter for an outlet to the sea at
Saloniki. The war declared by Austria-Hungary against Servia may be
regarded to some extent as an effort to nullify in the interests of
the f