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Both were therefore in conflict with the purely defensive character of the Triple Alliance; in such circumstances Italy would remain neutral. Impartial readers can draw their own conclusions. Austro-Hungarian note to Servia, and Servia's reply.
'would be hardly consistent with the maintenance of Servia's independent sovereignty, if it were to mean, as it seemed that it might, that Austria-Hungary was to be invested with a right to appoint officials who would have authority within the frontiers of Servia. Obviously he was in doubt about the meaning and scope of this demand, and the next was equally vague.
I thought; "nothing can be more reasonable." Much to the surprise of every one, news came on July 26 that Austria regarded Servia's answer as unsatisfactory, and that the Austro-Hungarian Minister, with the Legation Staff, had left Belgrade on the previous day. On July 28 I called at Mrs. Nancarrow's house, where I saw Bob reading the newspaper with a smile on his face.
But natural and essential as this policy was for Italy and Austria-Hungary, it was fatal to Servia's dream of expansion to the Adriatic; it set narrow limits to the northward extension of Greece into Epirus, and the southward extension of Montenegro below Scutari; it impelled these Allies to seek compensation in territory that Bulgaria had regarded as her peculiar preserve; and as a consequence it seriously menaced the existence of the Balkan Alliance torn as it already was by mutual jealousies, enmities, aggressions, and recriminations.
Eustace Thorneycroft, who had been acting as a sort of bailiff for Holmes's court of inquisition, now brought in a girl with the same sort of lack of intelligence on her face as had distinguished the Russian Galetchkoff. "What's your name, there?" said Holmes. "Natalie Nishovich, and I used to work in King Alexander of Servia's royal palace in Belgrade before his sudden death nine years ago."
Probably his assent was a forced one, due to the insistence of the war party and the public sentiment developed by it. That the murder of the Archduke was the real cause of the action of Austria can scarcely be accepted in view of Servia's acceptance of Austria's rigid demands.
In 1914 she was much stronger in both these elements of national power and lost not a day in preparing to march to Servia's aid. But was this the whole, or indeed the chief, moving impulse in Russia's action? Was she so eager an advocate of Pan-Slavism as such a fact would indicate? Had she not some other purpose in view, some fish of her own to fry, some object of moment to obtain?
Such was the high tribute paid to Servia's future Queen at the first dawning of that beauty which was to make her also Queen of all the fair women of Europe, and which at its zenith was thus described by one who saw her at Wiesbaden ten years or so later: "She walked along the promenade with a light, graceful movement; her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground, her figure was elegant, her finely cut face was lit up by those wonderful eyes, once seen never forgotten brilliant, tender, loving; her luxuriant hair of raven black was loosely coiled round the well-set head, or fell in curls on the beautifully arched neck.
It is scarcely necessary to repeat that its severe demands upon Servia, arising from the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and its refusal to accept Servia's almost complete acceptance of its terms, led to an immediate declaration of war upon the small offending state, the war fever thus started quickly extending from side to side of the continent.
Servia's defeat by the armies of Amurath came at a time when its people was too strongly possessed by the heroic spirit to avoid uttering itself in poetry. And from this it appears, too, that when the heroic age sings, it primarily sings of itself, even when that means singing of its own humiliation.
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