for international commerce, while the engineering difficulties
were such that the cost of construction would have been prohibitive. But
the possibilities which this move indicated, the palpable evidence it
contained of the notorious _Drang nach Osten_ of the Germanic powers
towards Salonika and Constantinople, were quite sufficient to fill the
ministries of Europe, and especially those of Russia, with extreme
uneasiness. The immediate result of this was that concerted action between
Russia and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans was thenceforward impossible,
and the Muerzsteg programme, after a short and precarious existence, came
to an untimely end (cf. chap. 12). Serbia and Montenegro, face to face
with this new danger which threatened permanently to separate their
territories, were beside themselves, and immediately parried with the
project, hardly more practicable in view of their international credit, of
a Danube-Adriatic railway. In July 1908 the nerves of Europe were still
further tried by the Young Turk revolution in Constantinople. The
imminence of this movement was known to Austro-German diplomacy, and
doubtless this knowledge, as well as the fear of the Pan-Serb movement,
prompted the Austrian foreign minister to take steps towards the
definitive regularization of his country's position in Bosnia and
Hercegovina--provinces whose suzerain was still the Sultan of Turkey. The
effect of the Young Turk coup in the Balkan States was as any one who
visited them at that time can testify, both pathetic and intensely
humorous. The permanent chaos of the Turkish empire, and the process of
watching for years its gradual but inevitable decomposition, had created
amongst the neighbouring states an atmosphere of excited anticipation,
which was really the breath of their nostrils; it had stimulated them
during the endless Macedonian insurrections to commit the most awful
outrages against each other's nationals and then lay the blame at the door
of the unfortunate Turk; and if the Turk should really regenerate himself,
not only would their occupation be gone, but the heavily-discounted
legacies would assuredly elude their grasp. At the same time, since the
whole policy of exhibiting and exploiting the horrors of Macedonia, and of
organizing guerilla bands and provoking intervention, was based on the
refusal of the Turks to grant reforms, as soon as the ultra-liberal
constitution of Midhat Pasha, which, had been withdrawn after a brie