d be no
Greater Bulgaria, with Czar Ferdinand as its ruler. Russia, too,
when her opportunity came to take Constantinople, would come, not as
a liberator of the Macedonian Slavs, but as an invading enemy. And
Austria would find her pathway to Saloniki blocked by a stronger
Turkey than she had counted upon. All these powers were against the
success of Young Turkey. But they did not stand shoulder to shoulder
against it. Between the Balkan States and the two big powers was
another division of interest quite as deep. It was the rivalry of
the wolves and the bears.

The Young Turks' revolution may definitely be considered the first
jar to the _status quo_, as established by the Treaty of Berlin, to
be followed in quick succession by other similar shocks, which were
presently to culminate in its complete upset and the present war.
Turkey herself had broken the compact to remain quiescent, to stand
pat. With the exception of the union of Eastern Rumelia with
Bulgaria, there had been no changes during those twenty-nine years.

The next event in the chain happened almost immediately. Hardly had
the revolution in Turkey occurred when Austria, who had, by the
terms of the Berlin Treaty, been simply administrating the two
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed them without any
ceremony. In actual fact this was merely making theory conform to
the practical situation, but it put the Young Turks in an awkward
predicament. The old regime under Abdul Hamid would not have been
able to do more than accept, and that was what the Young Turks were
compelled to do, handicapped as they were by the confusion attending
their own affairs at home. But it roused the anger of the
conservative Turks, and they somehow attributed it to the new
regime.

And at almost the same moment, as though to increase the irritation,
Prince Ferdinand kicked over another theory--that his principality
was under the suzerainty of the sultan--and declared himself king,
or as he called himself, czar of the independent kingdom of the
Bulgars and of all Bulgars elsewhere. Practically it meant nothing
more than that he was making faces at the new regime in Turkey, but
it served the purpose of irritating the masses of Islam.

But if the act of Austria in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina
irritated the Turks, it almost maddened the Serbians, who had no
cards to play in this little game of diplomacy just at that moment.
Serbia, like all her neighbors, had her dreams