d avoided the actual outbreak. But that the dreaded conflict was
inevitable had long been recognized. For its coming immense armaments
had been prepared, until the burdens of taxation laid upon the people
had become in themselves a source of danger. But behind it all lay the
sinister influence of the "junker" element of Germany--the military
party, swollen with pride in the development of the German army by more
than forty years of preparation for conflict, and the naval party, eager
for "der Tag" which should bring a trial of the new German navy
against the battle fleets of an enemy. Fostering and encouraging these
militaristic sentiments was the growing desire of Germany for "a
place in the sun," which was translatable only as a desire for world
domination. Greater and wider markets for German commerce were urgently
demanded, and visions of Germany as mistress of the seas, with a great
colonial empire, and of the Kaiser as the undisputed military overlord
of Europe, already filled and fired the Teuton imagination.

The political alignment of the great powers prior to the war was as
follows: On the one side was the Triple Alliance, including Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and Italy; while on the other was the Triple Entente,
comprising Great Britain, France and Russia. As the event proved, the
uncertain element in this line-up was Italy, which had a real grievance
against Austria in the latter's possession of the former Italian
territory known as the Trentino, and which was not consulted by Germany
and Austria prior to the outbreak of hostilities. She therefore declined
to enter the war as a member of the Triple Alliance, but was later found
in the field against Austria, and thenceforth rendered powerful aid to
the cause of "the Allies," as the members of the Triple Entente and
their supporters soon came to be known.

It was in the Balkans, long regarded as the zone of danger to European
peace, that the war-clouds gathered and darkened rapidly. For
generations Austria and Russia had struggled diplomatically for the
control of Balkan seaports, with the Balkan states acting as buffers in
the diplomatic strife. Servia acted as a bar to Austria's commercial
route to the AEgean, by way of the Sanjak of Novi Bazar to Saloniki,
while Russia was Servia's great ally and stood stoutly behind the little
Slav kingdom in its opposition to Austrian aggression.

AMBITIONS OF SERVIA

Then came the recent Balkan Wars, and their outcome w