It was under a sky so leaden and on a road so strewn with bones that the little mountain democracy with its patriarchal prince went out, first and before all its friends, on the last and seemingly the most hopeless of the rebellions against the Ottoman Empire.  Only one of the omens seemed other than disastrous; and even that was doubtful.  For the successful Mediterranean attack on Tripoli while proving the gallantry of the Italians (if that ever needed proving) could be taken in two ways, and was seen by many, and probably most, sincere liberals as a mere extension of the Imperialist reaction of Bosnia and Paardeberg, and not as the promise of newer things.  Italy, it must be remembered, was still supposed to be the partner of Prussia and the Hapsburgs.  For days that seemed like months the microscopic state seemed to be attempting alone what the Crusades had failed to accomplish.  And for days Europe and the great powers were thunderstruck, again and yet again, by the news of Turkish forts falling, Turkish cohorts collapsing, the unconquerable Crescent going down in blood.  The Serbians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks had gathered and risen from their lairs; and men knew that these peasants had done what all the politicians had long despaired of doing, and that the spirit of the first Christian Emperor was already standing over the city that is named after his name.

For Germany this quite unexpected rush was a reversal of the whole tide of the world.  It was as if the Rhine itself had returned from the ocean and retired into the Alps.  For a long time past every important political process in Europe had been produced or permitted by Prussia.  She had pulled down ministers in France and arrested reforms in Russia.  Her ruler was acclaimed by Englishmen like Rhodes, and Americans like Roosevelt, as the great prince of the age.  One of the most famous and brilliant of our journalists called him “the Lord Chief Justice of Europe.”  He was the strongest man in Christendom; and he had confirmed and consecrated the Crescent.  And when he had consecrated it a few hill tribes had risen and trampled it like mire.  One or two other things about the same time, less important in themselves, struck in the Prussian’s ear the same new note of warning and doubt.  He sought to obtain a small advantage on the north-west coast of Africa; and England seemed to show a certain strange stiffness in insisting on its abandonment.  In the councils over Morocco, England agreed with France with what did not seem altogether an accidental agreement.  But we shall not be wrong if we put the crucial point of the German surprise and anger at the attack from the Balkans and the fall of Adrianople.  Not only did it menace the key of Asia and the whole Eastern dream of German commerce; not only did it offer the picture of one army trained by France and victorious, and another army trained by Germany and beaten.  There was more than the material victory of the Creusot over