were avowedly meant to perpetuate the overwhelming
preponderance of England's fighting power, so that she would at any
moment be in a position to crush German commercial rivalry for all time.
She apparently thinks that this moment has now come.

That Germany's third implacable enemy, Russia, is clearly the aggressor,
and not the defender of her own national existence, need hardly be
demonstrated. She poses as the guardian of the Balkan States. But is
there any case on record where Russia has really protected the
independence of smaller neighboring countries? Has she not crushed out
provincial and racial individuality wherever she has extended her power?
Is it not the sole aim of her national policy to Russianize forcibly
every nationality under her sway?

In Finland she has gone back on her solemnly pledged word to maintain
the Finnish Constitution, and is ruthlessly reducing one of her most
highly developed provinces to the dead level of autocratic rule. In her
Baltic provinces she is trying to destroy, root and branch, whatever
there is left of German culture. Wherever the Russian Church holds
dominion intellectual blight is sure to follow.

To think, therefore, that Russia would promote the free development of a
number of independent Balkan States under her protectorate is to shut
one's eyes to the whole history of Russian expansion. No, Russian
expansion in the Balkans means nothing less than the extinction of all
local independence and the establishment of Russian despotism from the
Black Sea to the Adriatic.

Why Germany Supports Austria.

Not Russia, but Austria, is the natural protector of the equilibrium
between the existing States on the Balkan Peninsula and their natural
guardian against Russian domination. Austria is their nearest neighbor;
indeed, the possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina makes her a Balkan
State herself.

Being herself more than half of Slavic stock, she has every reason for
living on good terms with the various Slav kingdoms south of her. Being
herself forced, through the conglomerateness of her population, to
constant compromises in her internal affairs between conflicting
nationalities within her borders, she could not possibly absorb a large
additional amount of foreign territory. She is bound to respect the
existing lines of political demarkation in the Balkans, and her sole
object can be through commercial treaties and tariff legislation to open
up what used to be European Tu