The general impression was that it was the Slavic race sentiment
that inspired Russia's quick action. Servia, a country of Slavs,
brothers in race to a large section of the people of Russia, was
threatened with national annihilation and her great kinsman
sprang to her rescue, determined that she should not be absorbed
by her land-hungry neighbor. This seemed to many a sufficient
cause for Russia's action. Not many years before, when Austria
annexed her wards, Bosnia and Herzegovina, both Slavic countries,
Russia protested against the act. She would doubtless have done
more than protest but for her financial and military weakness
arising from the then recent Russo-Japanese War. In 1914 she was
much stronger in both these elements of national power and lost
not a day in preparing to march to Servia's aid.

But was this the whole, or indeed the chief, moving impulse in
Russia's action? Was she so eager an advocate of Pan-Slavism as
such a fact would indicate? Had she not some other purpose in
view, some fish of her own to fry, some object of moment to
obtain? Many thought so. They were not willing to credit the
Russian bear with an act of pure international benevolence. Wars
of pure charity are rarely among the virtuous acts of nations. As
it had been suggested that Germany saw in the war a possible
opportunity to gain a frontier on the Atlantic, so it was hinted
that Russia had in mind a similar frontier on the Mediterranean.
Time and again she had sought to wring Constantinople from the
hands of the Turks. In 1877 she was on the point of achieving
this purpose when she was halted and turned back by the Congress
of Berlin and the bellicose attitude of the nations that stood
behind it.