A very heavy share of the responsibility for the second Balkan struggle falls to Austrian diplomacy. Austria could not resign herself to the inevitable and put up with the neighbourhood of a Serbia enhanced in power and prestige. The wrangles of the Confederates over the partition of Macedonia gave her the chance for which she had been waiting since the Ottoman disasters. It was she—there is no longer any doubt on this point—that instigated Bulgaria to attack her recent allies, promising to secure the inaction of Roumania. It never occurred to her that she was thus sacrificing a staunch ally who occupied an outpost on the Lower Danube, an island of Western culture in the sea of Slavdom; that the future of Roumania would be seriously jeopardized if Bulgaria became too strong. We have since learnt from M. Take Jonescu that her mouthpiece at Bucharest, Prince Karl von Fürstenberg, even went so far as to bluster, in order to ensure that Roumanian troops should not intervene. It was all lost labour. The Austrian calculations were entirely thrown out of gear by the victories of the Greeks and Serbians and by their alliance with Roumania.
For forty-seven years King Carol had guided the destinies of his young kingdom with a wisdom that deserved its success. But his usual insight forsook him at the outbreak of hostilities in the Balkans. Like the Germans, he believed that the Turks would win; and Fortune, who is erroneously supposed to have no love for old men, seemed to deny him throughout the winter the means of correcting his mistake. His attitude even lost him some of his popularity with his subjects. Yet before the ensuing spring drew to its close, Fortune changed, and offered him an unlooked-for compensation. This time the aged monarch, seizing the opportunity provided by the overweening ambition of his rival in political cunning, the Tsar of Bulgaria, decided to strike while the iron was hot. Though it meant breaking the secret convention that bound him to Austria, and dealing a cruel blow to his great friendship with Francis Joseph, he forged ahead, and thus, without its costing him a single drop of Roumanian blood, enjoyed the proud privilege of dictating the Treaty of Bucharest to the Bulgars, who had been rendered utterly helpless by the entry of his troops into the field. When the Cabinet of Vienna urged that this treaty should be submitted to the Powers for revision, the King haughtily opposed its claim. No doubt he was privately assured of support from Germany, who was determined to humour Roumania in order to keep her under her own thumb; for he telegraphed his gratitude to the Emperor William in a phrase that needs no comment: “Thanks to you, the peace is a conclusive one.”
We may gather, therefore, that the Berlin Cabinet had not followed that of Vienna in its crooked, intriguing policy at Sofia and Bucharest. As Herr von Zimmermann remarked to me at the time, the Imperial Government was content to observe neutrality towards the Balkan States, interposing only with advice that might cool the frenzy of their strife. There is no reason to question the truth of this statement. The line of conduct adopted by Germany was all the more skilful in that it furthered the military renascence of Turkey. The success of the plot that secured the dictatorship for Enver Bey and the Young Turks had been hailed with delight at Berlin. When Tsar Ferdinand committed the blunder of withdrawing the Bulgarian garrison from Adrianople in order to cope with his enemies in Macedonia, the second city of the Ottoman Empire fell without a blow into the hands of its former masters. After this easy triumph, the German Government, under threat of coercive measures (very difficult, by the way, to carry out), refused to join the Triple Entente Powers for the purpose of forcing the Turks to disgorge their prize and restrict themselves to the frontier fixed at the London Conference. Thus the Treaty of London, with the ink upon it scarcely dry, could be torn up with impunity. Turkey’s gratitude for this moral support was destined to efface the memory of her abandonment by her former protectress at the time of her early reverses. Finally, under the auspices of German diplomacy, more influential than ever at the Porte, peace was signed in a treaty which deprived the Bulgarians of the greater part of their conquests in Thrace.
How far did the Cabinet of Berlin, on the morrow of the Peace of Bucharest, which it approved, associate itself with the step that has been revealed to us by the remarkable disclosures of Signor Giolitti to the Italian Parliament? Austria-Hungary, eager for action, would fain have crushed Serbia in the full tide of her victory. From the 9th of August 1913 Vienna made overtures with this object to the Quirinal, but the latter would not listen to its suggestions. If Germany had considered the moment favourable for reopening the Balkan question and satisfying at the same time her European ambitions, she would have ignored Italy’s scruples; she would have drawn the sword in company with her impatient ally, as she did a year later. But, in the Emperor’s opinion, the hour had not yet struck for the execution of his far-reaching designs.
VIII.
In the course of the following winter, a characteristic action showed to the more clear-sighted how important Turkey and her military reorganization had once more become in the eyes of the Berlin Staff. One of the ablest German generals, Liman von Sanders, was sent with a large mission to Constantinople, in order to take over the command of the First Army Corps, revive the German system of training for the Turkish soldier, and re-establish the auxiliary services. To meet the objections raised by the Russian ambassador, the authorities changed his title to that of Inspector-General with the rank of Marshal. At the same time, Enver Bey, whose devotion to Germany was notorious, was appointed War Minister, and at once began a process of ruthless weeding-out among the higher grade officers. What did this appointment of a German to the head of the army and this radical clearance in the cadre of generals betoken, if not a desire to make the military forces of Turkey fitted, as soon as possible, and under the most trustworthy leaders, to play the part assigned to them in the next war?
To make up for this activity, William II. displayed an utter indifference to the fate of Albania, although he had done so much towards bringing the new State into the world. More enlightened, no doubt, than his allies as to the chances of life possessed by this sickly offspring of their diplomacy, he had not thought it advisable that a German prince should plot for the Albanian crown, and had left it to the Court of Vienna to patronize the claimant. After the first tragi-comic episodes of the Durazzo siege, the Imperial Government, ashamed of the ridicule that this foolish business brought upon the German name, calmly washed its hands of the luckless Prince von Wied.
During the last months before the cataclysm, relations became still closer, and the interchange of views still more frequent, between the Courts of Berlin and Vienna. William II. and the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the real guiding spirit of Austro-Hungarian statecraft, missed no opportunity of seeing each other and conversing at length. They were like two conspirators, furtively laying their heads together for some momentous deed. In April the Kaiser paid a visit to the Austrian Crown Prince at Miramar, and in June at Konopischt, in Bohemia, where he was accompanied by the Secretary of State for the Navy. Both the curiosity of the public and the professional interest of diplomats were aroused by these marks of a friendship that was too intimate not to give cause for anxiety. On the occasion of the Konopischt meeting, the German ambassador in London was instructed to reassure the British Foreign Secretary as to the presence of Admiral von Tirpitz in the Emperor’s retinue. The visit, it was stated, had no military object. The Ambassador did protest too much! The Admiral, we may be sure, did not leave home in order to enjoy the fragrance of the Bohemian roses. It is more than doubtful, however, whether we shall ever know the purport of these conversations; one of those who took part in them is already in the grave. Did they, at Konopischt, remodel the map of Europe, assign the mastery of the Mediterranean to the Austro-German squadrons, fix the moment for the great upheaval? The Archduke, so far as one can read into the soul of this inscrutable prince, seemed to be the most eager for war. Yet, by a decree of fate, he did not live to see the accomplishment of the plans that he drew up in cold blood with his guests amid the exquisite gardens of his lordly mansion.
In the spring of 1914 Germany and Austria-Hungary, who both had old scores to pay off in connection with Morocco and the Balkans respectively, reached the zenith of their military preparations. The German army was ready at all points, and the Austro-Hungarian army was as ready as it can ever be. The airships and aeroplanes were only waiting for the signal to leave their sheds; the heavy guns, an array of monsters, were already marshalled in the artillery parks. All that was wanted was a pretext. As Dr. Schiemann had pointed out in the Kreuzzeitung, however, Germany could have a war with France merely by letting Austria fly at Serbia’s throat. Prophetic words, which a political crime was to bear out, while at the same time it was to give William II. the pretext he required for appearing before Europe as an instrument of justice and vengeance!