sproutling

Updated: May 21, 2025

France had not in 1908 begun her pro-Slav intrigues in Albania, and had but a feeble representative, who picked quarrels with the Austrian attache over the latter's bulldog. But as in the Near East even a consular dog is suspected of politics, this may, for all I know, have been the first sproutling of France's subsequent conduct.

M. E. (Mary Edith) Durham - Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle