The whole thing was characteristically German in type, ignoring and despising national feeling and national right, creating artificial boundaries, and flagrantly sinning against the European sense of patriotism.  A furious conflict between the various members of the former Balkan Alliance followed; but the settlement which Austria had virtually imposed remained firm, and the third of the great Germanic steps affirming the growing Germanic scheme in Europe had been taken.

But it had been taken at the expense of further and very gravely shaking the already unstable armed equilibrium of Europe.

The German Empire foresaw the coming strain; a law was passed immediately increasing the numbers of men to be trained to arms within its boundaries, and ultimately increasing that number so largely as to give to Germany alone a very heavy preponderance—­a preponderance of something like thirty per cent.—­over the corresponding number trained in France.

To this move France could not reply by increasing her armed forces, because she already took every available man.  She did the only possible thing under the circumstances.  She increased by fifty per cent. the term during which her young men must serve in the army, changing that term from two years to three.

The heavy burden thus suddenly imposed upon the French led to very considerable political disputes in that country, especially as the parliamentary form of government there established is exceedingly unpopular, and the politicians who live by it generally despised.  When, therefore, the elections of last year were at hand, it seemed as though this French increase of military power would be in jeopardy.  Luckily it was maintained, in spite of the opposition of fairly honest but uncritical men like Jaures, and of far less reputable professional politicians.

Whether this novel strain upon the French people could have been long continued we shall never know, for, in the heat of the debates provoked by this measure and its maintenance, came the last events which determined the great catastrophe.

(6) THE IMMEDIATE OCCASION OF THE WAR.

We have seen how constantly and successfully Austria had supported the general Prussian thesis in Europe, and, in particular, the predominance of the German Powers over the Slav.

We have seen how, in pursuit of this policy, the sharpest friction was always suffered at the danger-point of Servia.  Servia was the Slav State millions of whose native population were governed against their will by Austro-Hungarian officials.  Servia was the Slav State mortally wounded by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  And Servia was the Slav State which Austria had in particular mortified by forbidding her access to the Adriatic, and by imposing upon her an unnatural boundary, even after her great victories of the Balkan War.

The heir to the Hapsburgs—­the man who, seeing the great age of his uncle, might at any moment ascend the throne—­was the Archduke Francis.  He had for years pursued one consistent policy for the aggrandizement of his House, which policy was the pitting of the Catholic Slavs against the Orthodox Slavs, thereby rendering himself in person particularly odious to the Orthodox Serbs, so many of whose compatriots and co-religionists were autocratically governed against their will in the newly annexed provinces.