Henceforth the friction between Vienna and Belgrade has been permanent, though often latent.  It was accentuated by the fact that King Milan was little better than an Austrian agent, the most notorious example of this being the ill-considered and ill-managed war with Bulgaria into which he plunged Serbia at the instigation of the Ballplatz[1](1885).  Afterwards, it is true, Vienna intervened to rob the Bulgarians of the fruits of victory and argued that Serbia was thus under her debt; but this crass application of the principle of divide et impera could not deceive any one.  Milan was a man of great ability, but vicious and corrupt.  The ceaseless scandals of his private life, the frequent political coups d’etat in which he indulged, tended to confirm the dislike of his subjects for the Austrophilism with which he was identified.  Alexander, his son and successor, was even worse; indeed, it is not too much to say that he was the most “impossible” monarch whom Europe has known since the days of the Tsar Paul.  His court was characterised by gross favouritism and arbitrary revisions of the constitution; and his position became finally untenable when he committed the fatal error of marrying Draga Mashin, a woman of no position and notorious private character.  Two incidents in her tragic story remind us of similar scandals in English history—­the fond delusion of Mary Tudor and the legend of Mary of Modena’s warming-pan.  The last straw was the design, widely attributed to her and the infatuated king, for securing the succession to her brother, who had as little claim to the throne as any other Serbian subject.  On June 10, 1903, Alexander and Draga were assassinated by a gang of Serbian officers, under circumstances of the utmost brutality such as nothing can excuse.  In the light of recent events, however, it is important to note that both Austria and Russia knew of the plot at least ten days before the murder and did nothing to stop it.[2] On the day after the crime the Fremdenblatt, the organ of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office, published a leading article couched in terms of the utmost cynicism, and declaring that it mattered little to Austria-Hungary which dynasty reigned in Serbia.  The Serbian Government might have been excused for enclosing a copy of this article in its reply to the Austrian Note of July 23, 1914!

[Footnote 1:  The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office.]

[Footnote 2:  In 1908 this was confirmed to me by a distinguished member of the then Austrian Cabinet, since dead, who was certainly in a position to know.]