We are fully aware of the danger which threatened us from Russia when we formulated our demands in Belgrade.  Russia’s population is three times as large as ours and it was not with a light heart that our Emperor-King took his final resolution.  But our national honor and our very existence as a self-respecting power were at stake.  We could not hesitate.  Now we are in a struggle for life or death and we mean to carry it through with full confidence in the rightfulness of our cause and in the force of our arms.  In one respect events have already belied the calculations of our enemies, who counted on internal dissensions within our own borders.  I am happy to say that Croatians, Slovenes, and a large majority of our own Servians are fighting in our ranks with the same valor and enthusiasm as Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, Magyars, and Germans.

But why did Russia decide to assail us?  During the whole nineteenth century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress of Servia.  She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it served her ends.  It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of the Berlin Congress, and it remained so until with the advent of the present dynasty Servia offered a sure prospect of becoming and remaining a permanent tool in Russia’s hands and a thorn in our flesh.

Russia is an aggressive power.  For 200 years she has extended her dominions at the cost of Sweden first, of Poland and Turkey afterward.  Now she thinks our turn has come.  Finding us to be in the way of her ultimate aims in the Balkan Peninsula, she began to regard us as her enemy.  For years the propaganda for undermining the bases of our empire has been carried on in the name of Pan-Slavism.  It seems that she judged that now the time had come to draw the consequences and to bring things to a final issue.  With what result remains to be seen.

Germany Bound to Aid Austria.

By the terms of our treaty of alliance Germany was bound to come to our assistance if we were attacked by Russia.  There was no secrecy about that treaty.  Its text had been made public long ago and its purely defensive character brought to the knowledge of the world.  No more than we did Germany entertain hostile intentions or nourish hostile feelings against Russia.  There were no clashing interests to excite the first, no historical reminiscences to justify the second.  If it is otherwise in Russia, it is because her present leaders find German power in the way of their conquering aspirations against us.  Germany, true to her obligations, hastened to our side when she saw us menaced, and when she declared war she did it because she had positive information that in spite of formal and solemn assurances to the contrary Russia mobilization was proceeding.