een Vienna and Belgrade has been permanent,
though often latent. It was accentuated by the fact that King Milan was
little better than an Austrian agent, the most notorious example of this
being the ill-considered and ill-managed war with Bulgaria into which he
plunged Serbia at the instigation of the Ballplatz[1](1885). Afterwards, it
is true, Vienna intervened to rob the Bulgarians of the fruits of victory
and argued that Serbia was thus under her debt; but this crass application
of the principle of _divide et impera_ could not deceive any one. Milan was
a man of great ability, but vicious and corrupt. The ceaseless scandals
of his private life, the frequent political _coups d'etat_ in which
he indulged, tended to confirm the dislike of his subjects for the
Austrophilism with which he was identified. Alexander, his son and
successor, was even worse; indeed, it is not too much to say that he was
the most "impossible" monarch whom Europe has known since the days of the
Tsar Paul. His court was characterised by gross favouritism and arbitrary
revisions of the constitution; and his position became finally untenable
when he committed the fatal error of marrying Draga Mashin, a woman of no
position and notorious private character. Two incidents in her tragic story
remind us of similar scandals in English history--the fond delusion of Mary
Tudor and the legend of Mary of Modena's warming-pan. The last straw was
the design, widely attributed to her and the infatuated king, for securing
the succession to her brother, who had as little claim to the throne as
any other Serbian subject. On June 10, 1903, Alexander and Draga were
assassinated by a gang of Serbian officers, under circumstances of the
utmost brutality such as nothing can excuse. In the light of recent events,
however, it is important to note that both Austria and Russia knew of the
plot at least ten days before the murder and did nothing to stop it.[2]
On the day after the crime the _Fremdenblatt_, the organ of the
Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office, published a leading article couched in
terms of the utmost cynicism, and declaring that it mattered little to
Austria-Hungary which dynasty reigned in Serbia. The Serbian Government
might have been excused for enclosing a copy of this article in its reply
to the Austrian Note of July 23, 1914!

[Footnote 1: The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office.]

[Footnote 2: In 1908 this was confirmed to me by a distinguished member of
the