the European powers at the demand of Austria-Hungary, as some weeks
later on the same compulsion she had to withdraw from the siege of
Scutari. Then she turned toward the Aegean, and the second Balkan
War gave her a new opportunity. The treaty of Bukarest and the
convention with Greece assured her of an outlet to the sea at
Saloniki. But this settlement proved scarcely less objectionable to
Austria-Hungary than the earlier dream of Servian expansion to the
Adriatic by the annexation of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.

The fact is that, if we look at the matter dispassionately and in a
purely objective spirit, we shall find that there really was a
hopeless incompatibility between the ideals, aims, policies, and
interests of the Servians and the Serb race and those of the
Austrians and Hungarians. Any aggrandizement of the Kingdom of
Servia, any enlargement of its territory, any extension to the sea
and especially to the Adriatic, any heightening and intensifying of
the national consciousness of its people involved some danger to the
Dual Monarchy. For besides the Germans who control Austria, and the
Hungarians who control Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire embraces
many millions of Slavs, and the South Slavs are of the same family
and speak practically the same language as the inhabitants of the
Kingdom of Servia. And Austria and Hungary can not get to their
outlets on the Adriatic--Trieste and Fiume--without passing through
territory inhabited by these South Slavs.

If, therefore, Austria and Hungary were not to be left land-locked
they must at all hazards prevent the absorption of their South Slav
subjects by the Kingdom of Servia. Pan-Serbism at once menaced the
integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and jeopardized its