nal and agrarian
problems had been neglected, popular discontent had smouldered, but at
least great material progress had been made. Roads, railways, public
buildings had been created out of nothing, capital had been sunk, a new
machine of government had been constructed. Austria had come to stay, and
Aehrenthal, in annexing the provinces, felt himself to be merely setting
the seal to a document which had been signed a generation earlier. He
had failed to reckon with the outcry which this technical breach of
international law evoked: like Bethmann-Hollweg, he had no blind faith in
"scraps of paper," and had no scruple in tearing up the Treaty of Berlin on
which the whole Balkan settlement had rested. Nowhere was the outburst of
feeling so violent as in Serbia and Montenegro, who had never ceased to
dream of the lost Serb provinces. For some months the two little States
challenged the accomplished fact, and seemed bent on staking their very
existence upon war with the great neighbouring Monarchy. Aehrenthal
remained unmoved by their cries of impotent fury and settled down to a
trial of strength with his rival Izvolsky, the Russian Foreign Minister,
who encouraged the sister Slavonic States in their resistance. At length
in March 1909 Germany stepped forward in "shining armour" to support her
Austrian ally, and Russia, to avoid European war, gave way and abandoned
the Serbs to their fate. Nothing was left but a humiliating submission:
the Serbian Government was obliged to address a Note to the Great Powers,
declaring that the annexation and internal condition of Bosnia did not in
any way concern her.[1]

[Footnote 1: This declaration was made the basis of the Austrian Note to
Serbia in July 1914.]

Sec.5. _The Renaissance of Serbia._--From this diplomatic defeat dates the
renaissance of Serbia. It restored her to a sense of hard realities, and
taught her to substitute hard work for loud talk. So rough a challenge put
the national spirit on its mettle. The brief period between 1908 and 1912
worked a real transformation in Belgrade, which could not fail to impress
those who took the trouble to look beneath the surface. Nowhere was the
change more marked than in the Serbian army, from which the regicide
elements had been slowly but steadily eliminated. The two Balkan wars of
1912-1913 revealed Serbia to the outside world as a military power, notable
alike for the elan of its infantry, the high efficiency of its artillery,