lest a Turkey rejuvenated by the Young Turk revolution should seek to
revive its claims on Bosnia, the Austrian Government annexed on its
own authority a province confided to its care by a European mandate.
This arbitrary act was only challenged on paper at the time; but the
striking success of Serbia in the Balkan wars of 1912-13 brought out
the dangers and defects of Austrian policy. For the Serbs were kin to
the great majority of the Bosnian people and to millions of other
South Slavs who were subject to the Austrian crown and discontented
with its repressive government; and the growing prestige of Serbia
bred hopes and feelings of Slav nationality on both sides of the
Hapsburg frontier. The would-be and the real assassins of the
Archduke, while technically Austrian subjects, were Slavs by birth,
and the murder brought to a head the antagonism between a race
becoming conscious of its possibilities and a government determined to
repress them. The crime gave a moral advantage to the oppressor, but
the guilt has yet to be apportioned, and instigation may have come
from secret sources within the Hapsburg empire; for the Archduke was
hated by dominant cliques on account of his alleged pro-Slav
sympathies and his suspected intention of admitting his future Slav
subjects to a share in political power.

For some weeks after the murder it bade fair to pass without a
European crisis, for the public was unaware of what happened at a
secret conclave held at Potsdam on 5 July. It was there decided that
Germany should support to the uttermost whatever claims Austria might
think fit to make on Serbia for redress, and she was encouraged to put
them so high as either to ensure the domination of the Balkans by the
Central Empires through Serbian submission, or to provoke a war by
which alone the German militarists thought that German aims could be
achieved. That was the purport of the demands presented to Serbia on