territory.

It was but a formal act, but it proved of vast consequence. It was an
open declaration by a Germanic Power that the hopes of the Servians,
the main population of the district and a Slav nation closely bound
to Russia in feeling, were at an end; that Servia must content herself
with such free territory as she had, and give up all hope of a
completely independent State uniting all Servians within its borders.
It was as though Austria had said, "I intend in future to be the great
European Power in the Balkans, Slav though the Balkans are, and I
challenge Russia to prevent me." The Russian Government, thus
challenged, would perhaps have taken the occasion to make war had not
the French given it to be understood that they would not imperil
European peace for such an object. The Prussian Government of the
German Empire had, in all this crisis, acted perhaps as the leader,
certainly as the protector and supporter of Austria; and when France
thus refused to fight, and Russia in turn gave way, the whole thing
was regarded, not only in Germany but throughout the world, as
equivalent to an armed victory. Observers whose judgment and criticism
are of weight, even in the eyes of trained international agents,
proclaimed what had happened to be as much a Prussian success as
though the Prussian and Austrian armies had met in the field and had
defeated the Russian and the French forces.

The next step in this series was a challenge advanced by Germany
against that arrangement whereby Morocco, joining as it did to French
North Africa, should be abandoned to French influence, so far as
England was concerned, in exchange for the French giving up certain
rights of interference they had in the English administration of
Egypt, and one or two other minor points. Germany, advancing from a