oreshadowing and justifying the
immediate military occupation of Serbia. Unfortunately its instigator had
not been sufficiently particular as to the choice of his tools and his
methods of using them. Among the contributors of the highly tendencious
articles was the well-known historian Dr. Friedjung, who made extensive
use of documents supplied him by the Vienna Foreign Office. His
accusations immediately provoked an action for libel on the part of three
leaders of the Croato-Serb coalition who were implicated, in December
1909. The trial, which was highly sensational, resulted in the complete
vindication and rehabilitation both of those three Austrian subjects in
the eyes of the whole of Austria-Hungary and of the Belgrade Foreign
Office in those of Europe; the documents on which the charges were based
were proven to be partly forgeries, partly falsified, and partly stolen by
various disreputable secret political agents of the Austrian Foreign
Office, and one of the principal Serbian 'conspirators', a professor of
Belgrade University, proved that he was in Berlin at the time when he had
been accused of presiding over a revolutionary meeting at Belgrade. But it
also resulted in the latter discrediting of Count Achrenthal as a diplomat
and of the methods by which he conducted the business of the Austrian
Foreign Office, and involved his country in the expenditure of countless
millions which it could ill afford.

There never was any doubt that a subversive agitation had been going on,
and that it emanated in part from Serbia, but the Serbian Foreign Office,
under the able management of Dr. Milovanovi['c] and Dr. Spalajkovi['c]
(one of the principal witnesses at the Friedjung trial), was far too
clever to allow any of its members, or indeed any responsible person in
Serbia, to be concerned in it, and the brilliant way in which the clumsy
and foolish charges were refuted redounded greatly to the credit of the
Serbian Government. Count Achrenthal had overreached himself, and moreover
the wind had already been taken out of his sails by the public recantation
on Serbia's part of its pretensions to Bosnia, which, as already
mentioned, took place at the end of March 1909, and by the simultaneous
termination of the international crisis marked by Russia's acquiescence in
the _fait accompli_ of the annexation. At the same time the Serbian Crown
Prince George, King Peter's elder son, who had been the leader of the
chauvinist war-part