at army to the worst
humiliation. The note insisted upon a specific pledge that the Servian
Government should renounce all hope of freeing the Servian nation as a
whole from foreign government, and in many another clause subjected
this small nation to the most thorough degradation ever suggested by a
powerful European people towards a lesser neighbour.

So far, though an extreme hitherto unknown in European history had
been reached, the matter was one of degree. Things of the same sort,
less drastic, had been known in the past.

But what was novel in the note, and what undoubtedly proceeded from
the suggestion of the Prussian Government (which was in all this the
real agent behind Austria), _was the claim of the Austrian Government
to impose its own magistrates upon the Servian courts, and to condemn
at will those subjects of the Servian king and those officers holding
his commission whom Austria might select so to condemn, and that to
penalties at the goodwill and pleasure of Austria alone_. In other
words, Austria claimed full rights of sovereignty within the territory
of her small neighbour and enemy, and the acceptation of the note by
Servia meant not only the preponderance of Austria for the future over
the Slavs of the Balkans, but her continued and direct power over that
region in the teeth of national and religious sentiment, and in clean
despite of Russia.

So strong was the feeling still throughout Europe in favour of
maintaining peace and of avoiding the awful crash of our whole
international system that Russia advised Servia to give way, and the
Germanic Powers were on the eve of yet another great success, far more
important and enduring than anything they had yet achieved. The only
reservation which Servia was permitted by the peaceful Powers of
Europe, and in particular by Russia, to make was that, upon three
points which directly concerned her sovereignty, Austria should admit
the decision of a Court of Arbitration at the Hague. But the
time-limit imposed--which was the extraordinarily short one of
forty-eight hours--was maintained by Austria, and upon the advice, as
we now know, of Berlin, no modification whatever in the demands was
tolerated. Upon the 25th, therefore, the Austrian Minister left
Belgrade. There followed ten days, the exact sequence of events in
which must be carefully noted if we are to obtain a clear view of the
origin of the war.

Upon that same day, Saturday, July 25th, the Engli