When the military leaders of Germany saw that the possibility of capturing Paris or of destroying London was small and that a German victory, which would fasten Teutonic peace terms on the rest of the world, was almost impossible, they turned their eyes to Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the Balkans and Turkey.  Friederich Naumann, member of the Progressive Party of the Reichstag, wrote a book on “Central Europe,” describing a great nation stretching from the North Sea to Bagdad, including Germany, all of Austria-Hungary, parts of Serbia and Roumania and Turkey, with Berlin as the Capital.  It was toward this goal which the Kaiser turned the forces of Germany at his command.  If Germany could not rule the world, if Germany could not conquer the nine nations which the Director of the Post and Telegraph had lined up on the 2nd of August, 1914, then Germany could at least conquer the Dual Monarchy, the Balkans and, Turkey, and even under these circumstances come out of the war a greater nation than she entered it.  But to accomplish this purpose one thing had to be assured.  That was the control of the armies and navies and the foreign policies of these governments.  The old Kaiser Franz Josef was a man who guarded everything he had as jealously as a baby guards his toys.  At one time when it was suggested to the aged monarch that Germany and Austria-Hungary could establish a great kingdom of Poland as a buffer nation, if he would only give up Galicia as one of the states of this kingdom, he replied in his childish fashion: 

“What, those Prussians want to take another pearl out of my crown?”

In June the Austro-Hungarian General Staff conducted an offensive against Italy in the Trentino with more success than the Germans had anticipated.  But the Austrians had not calculated upon Russia.  In July General Brusiloff attacked the Austrian forces in the neighbourhood of Lusk, succeeded in persuading or bribing a Bohemian army corps to desert and started through the Austrian positions like a flood over sloping land.  Brusiloff not only took several hundred thousand prisoners.  He not only broke clear through the Austrian lines but he thoroughly demoralised and destroyed the Austrian army as a unit in the world war.  Von Hindenburg, who had been made Chief of the German General Staff, was compelled to send thousands of troops to the Wohlynian battlefields to stop the Russian invasion.  But von Hindenburg did not look with any degree of satisfaction upon the possibility of such a thing happening again and informed the Kaiser that he would continue as Chief of the General Staff only upon condition that he be made chief of all armies allied to Germany.  At a Conference at Great Headquarters at Pless, in Silicia, where offices were moved from France as soon as the Field Marshal took charge, Hindenburg was made the leader of all the armed forces in Central Europe.  Thus by one stroke, really by the aid of Russia, Germany succeeded in conquering Austria-Hungary and in taking away from her command all of the forces, naval and military, which she had.  At the same time the Bulgarian and Turkish armies were placed at the disposal of von Hindenburg.  So far so good for the Prussians.