By the year 1903 Austria was so far mistress of the Balkans as to render it possible for her and Germany in the near future to send troops through Constantinople and Asia Minor by the railways which they controlled.  Accordingly, affairs in the Near East became increasingly strained; and, when Russia was involved in the Japanese War, no Great Power could effectively oppose Austro-German policy in that quarter.  The influence of France and Britain, formerly paramount both politically and commercially in the Turkish Empire, declined, while that of Germany became supreme.  Every consideration of prudence therefore prompted the Governments of London and Paris to come to a close understanding, in order to make headway against the aggressive designs of the two Kaisers in the Balkans and Asia Minor.  Looking forward, we may note that the military collapse of Russia in 1904-5 enabled the Central Powers to push on in the Levant.  Germany fastened her grip on the Turkish Government, exploited the resources of Asia Minor, and posed as the champion of the Moslem creed.  Early in the twentieth century that creed became aggressive, mainly under the impulse of Sultan Abdul Hamid II., who varied his propagandism by massacre with appeals to the faithful to look to him as their one hope in this world.  Constantinople and Cairo were the centres of this Pan-Islamic movement, which, aiming at the closer union of all Moslems in Asia, Europe, and Africa around the Sultan, threatened to embarrass Great Britain, France, and Russia.  The Kaiser, seeing in this revival of Islam an effective force, took steps to encourage the “true believers” and strengthen the Sultan by the construction of a branch line of the Bagdad system running southwards through Aleppo and the district east of the Dead Sea towards Mecca.  Purporting to be a means for lessening the hardships of pilgrims, it really enabled the Sultan to threaten the Suez Canal and Egypt.

The aggressive character of these schemes explains why France, Great Britain, and Russia began to draw together for mutual support.  The three Powers felt the threat implied in an organisation of the Moslem world under the aegis of the Kaiser.  He, a diligent student of Napoleon’s career, was evidently seeking to dominate the Near East, and to enrol on his side the force of Moslem enthusiasm which the Corsican had forfeited by his attack on Egypt in 1798.  The construction of German railways in the Levant and the domination of the Balkan Peninsula by Austria would place in the hands of the Germanic Powers the keys of the Orient, which have always been the keys to World-Empire.

Closely connected with these far-reaching schemes was the swift growth of the Pan-German movement.  It sought to group the Germanic and cognate peoples in some form of political union—­a programme which threatened to absorb Holland, Belgium, the greater part of Switzerland, the Baltic Provinces of Russia, the Western portions of the Hapsburg dominions, and, possibly, the Scandinavian peoples.  The resulting State or Federation of States would thus extend from Ostend to Reval, from Amsterdam (or Bergen) to Trieste.