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Three main causes may be noted the lack of any great men capable of counteracting the Emperor's lack of initiative, which was always very marked, but has been accentuated by advancing old age; the superficial and malicious outlook of the capital and the classes which control it; the alliance between the Magyar oligarchy and the Jewish press and Haute Finance, working in a pronouncedly anti-Slav direction.
In October 1906 Baron Achrenthal succeeded Count Goluchowski as Minister for Foreign Affairs at Vienna, and very soon initiated a more vigorous and incidentally anti-Slav foreign policy than his predecessor. What was now looked on as the Serbian danger had in the eyes of Vienna assumed such proportions that the time for decisive action was considered to have arrived.
He may have been anti-Slav and anti-Russian, but I did not find him, in the long conversation we had in 1906, otherwise than sensible as regards France. I explained that my business in Berlin was merely with War Office matters, and, even as regards these, quite unofficial. He said that there had been much tendency to misinterpret in both countries, but that things were now better.
If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian "kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian, Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. Her gravitation to the Central Powers seems inevitable.
Core constituencies in the west such as farmers and low-skilled industrial workers resent the enlargement project. Anti-Slav prejudices run rampant in Italy, Austria and Germany. The incompatibilities are deepest. For instance, according to research recently published by the Pew Center, the new members are staunchly pro-American, though less so than ten years ago.
As it was, the Balkans teemed with plots and counterplots against the Austrians, culminating in the assassination of the Arch-Duke and heir-apparent to the Austrian throne, Francis Ferdinand, known for his anti-Slav principles, and therefore feared and hated as the king to be. The assassination occurred at Serajevo in Bosnia, where Servian disaffection was seething.
The spiteful anti-Slav attitude of Ferdinand the Koburg and his government cannot retard the victory of a just cause.
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