policy. Through Austria the Balkans were to be dominated at last, and
Austria, at this critical moment, vetoed the rational settlement which
the allied Balkan States had agreed to among themselves. She would not
allow the Servians to annex those territories inhabited by men of
their race, and to reach their natural outlet to the sea upon the
shores of the Adriatic. She proposed the creation of a novel State of
Albania under a German prince, to block Servia's way to the sea. She
further proposed to Servia compensation by way of Servia's annexing
the territory round Monastir, which had a Bulgarian population, and to
Bulgaria the insufficient compensation of taking over, farther to the
east, territory that was not Bulgarian at all, but mixed Greek and
Turkish.

The whole thing was characteristically German in type, ignoring and
despising national feeling and national right, creating artificial
boundaries, and flagrantly sinning against the European sense of
patriotism. A furious conflict between the various members of the
former Balkan Alliance followed; but the settlement which Austria had
virtually imposed remained firm, and the third of the great Germanic
steps affirming the growing Germanic scheme in Europe had been taken.

But it had been taken at the expense of further and very gravely
shaking the already unstable armed equilibrium of Europe.

The German Empire foresaw the coming strain; a law was passed
immediately increasing the numbers of men to be trained to arms within
its boundaries, and ultimately increasing that number so largely as to
give to Germany alone a very heavy preponderance--a preponderance of
something like thirty per cent.--over the corresponding number trained
in France.