Germany's action in other affairs we find pleasant
words but no tangible profit. From her geographical position Italy
claimed an interest in the status of the Balkan Peninsula, and
particularly in the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Germany pretended
to favor her interests--according to Crispi, Bismarck even went so far
as to ask, "Why don't you take Albania?"--but it was Austria that
Germany steadily pushed on into the Balkans; and in 1908, when
Austria, with Germany's connivance, appropriated Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the Italians realized that they had been tricked again,
as they were in the case of Tunis.

Since 1908 the Teutonic partners, growing more and more arrogant, have
shown indifference to the concerns of their Italian ally, who, seeing
no future for her in Europe, swooped down on Tripoli, the only stretch
of North African littoral not already possessed by the French and by
the English. Persons on the inside at Rome whispered that, if Italy
had not occupied Tripoli when she did, Germany would have forestalled
her; for the Kaiser, furious at being thwarted in Morocco and at
having failed to bully France into submission, as he had done in 1905,
had determined to seize Tripoli, come what might. More than one
Foreign Office has ample proof to settle this assertion. Its
plausibility is patent--Germany was already in close league with
Turkey, and, looking forward to a war on England, she saw the
advantage of owning territory and a naval base within easy reach of
the Suez Canal.

Certain it is that both Germany and Austria frowned on Italy's Libyan
enterprise, and that, in their intrigues in the Balkan Peninsula, in
1912 and 1913, they ignored their Italian partner.

And yet as long ago as 1895 Germany admitted that Italy was hardly
getting a fair return from her bargain with her Teutonic allies. On
March 5, 1895, Senator Lanza reported an interview he had just had
with Emperor William, who said; "He had found Count Kalnoky (the
Austrian Premier) ... still uneasy lest we (Italy) may come to
consider the Triple Alliance insufficiently advantageous, merely
because it cannot supply us, at once and in times of peace, with the
necessary means of satisfying our desires with regard to the
territories of Northern Africa and others as well. His Majesty ...
added: 'Wait patiently. Let the occasion but present itself and you
shall have whatever you wish.'"[5]

[Footnote 5: Crispi's "Memoirs," iii., 326-7.]

In spite of th