NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION

It has been stated, apparently on good authority, that the informal conversations which went on during the Congress of Berlin between the plenipotentiaries of the Powers (see ante, p. 328) furnished Italy with an assurance that, in the event of France expanding in North Africa, Italy should find “compensation” in Tripoli.  Apparently this explains her recent action there (October 1911).

CHAPTER XIII

THE CENTRAL ASIAN QUESTION

“The Germans have reached their day, the English their mid-day, the French their afternoon, the Italians their evening, the Spanish their night; but the Slavs stand on the threshold of the morning.”—­MADAME NOVIKOFF ("O.K.")—­The Friends and Foes of Russia.

The years 1879-85 which witnessed the conclusion of the various questions opened up by the Treaty of Berlin and the formation of the Triple Alliance mark the end of a momentous period in European history.  The quarter of a century which followed the Franco-Austrian War of 1859 in Northern Italy will always stand out as one of the most momentous epochs in State-building that the world has ever seen.  Italy, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey, assumed their present form.  The Christians of the Balkan Peninsula made greater strides towards liberty than they had taken in the previous century.  Finally, the new diplomatic grouping of the Powers helped to endow these changes with a permanence which was altogether wanting to the fitful efforts of the period 1815-59.  That earlier period was one of feverish impulse and picturesque failure; the two later decades were characterised by stern organisation and prosaic success.

It generally happens to nations as to individuals that a period devoted to recovery from internal disorders is followed by a time of great productive and expansive power.  The introspective epoch gives place to one of practical achievement.  Faust gives up his barren speculations and feels his way from thought to action.  From “In the beginning was the Word” he wins his way onward through “the Thought” and “the Might,” until he rewrites the dictum “In the beginning was the Deed.”  That is the change which came over Germany and Europe in the years 1850-80.  The age of the theorisers of the Vor-Parlament at Frankfurt gave place to the age of Bismarck.  The ideals of Mazzini paled in the garish noonday of the monarchical triumph at Rome.

Alas! too, the age of great achievement, that of the years 1859-85, makes way for a period characterised by satiety, torpor, and an indefinable malaise.  Europe rests from the generous struggles of the past, and settles down uneasily into a time of veiled hostility and armed peace.  Having framed their State systems and covering alliances, the nations no longer give heed to constitutions, rights of man, or duties of man; they plunge into commercialism, and search for new markets.  Their attitude now is that of Ancient Pistol when he exclaims