policy of delay and subterfuge, and Turkey
soon came to look on Germany as its only strong, sincere, and
disinterested friend in Europe. For the indefinite continuance of chaos
and bloodshed in Macedonia, after the other powers had really braced
themselves to the thankless task of putting the reforms into practice,
Germany alone was responsible.

The blow which King Ferdinand had inflicted on the prestige of the Young
Turks in October 1908, by proclaiming his independence, naturally lent
lustre to the Bulgarian cause in Macedonia. Serbia, baffled by the
simultaneous Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and maddened
by the elevation of Bulgaria to the rank of a kingdom (its material
progress had hitherto been discounted in Serbian eyes by the fact that it
was a mere vassal principality), seemed about to be crushed by the two
iron pots jostling it on either side. Its international position was at
that time such that it could expect no help or encouragement from western
Europe, while the events of 1909 (cf. p. 144) showed that Russia was not
then in a position to render active assistance. Greece, also screaming
aloud for compensation, was told by its friends amongst the great powers
that if it made a noise it would get nothing, but that if it behaved like
a good child it might some day be given Krete. Meanwhile Russia, rudely
awakened by the events of 1908 to the real state of affairs in the Near
East, beginning to realize the growth of German influence at
Constantinople, and seeing the unmistakable resuscitation of
Austria-Hungary as a great power, made manifest by the annexation of
Bosnia and Hercegovina, temporarily reasserted its influence in Bulgaria.
From the moment when Baron Aehrenthal announced his chimerical scheme of
an Austrian railway through the _Sandjak_ of Novi Pazar in January 1908--
everybody knows that the railway already built through Serbia along the
Morava valley is the only commercially remunerative and strategically
practicable road from Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest to Salonika and
Constantinople--Russia realized that the days of the Muerzsteg programme
were over, that henceforward it was to be a struggle between Slav and
Teuton for the ownership of Constantinople and the dominion of the Near
East, and that something must be done to retrieve the position in the
Balkans which it was losing. After Baron Aehrenthal, in January 1909, had
mollified the Young Turks by an indemnity, and thus put