existence with the very much slower progress made by Serbia during a
much longer period. This is insisted on especially by publicists in
Austria-Hungary and Germany, but it is forgotten that even before the last
Balkan war the geographical position of Bulgaria with its seaboard was
much more favourable to its economic development than that of Serbia,
which the Treaty of Berlin had hemmed in by Turkish and Austro-Hungarian
territory; moreover, Bulgaria being double the size of the Serbia of those
days, had far greater resources upon which to draw.

From 1894 onwards Ferdinand's power in his own country and his influence
abroad had been steadily growing. He always appreciated the value of
railways, and became almost as great a traveller as the German Emperor.
His estates in the south of Hungary constantly required his attention, and
he was a frequent visitor in Vienna. The German Emperor, though he could
not help admiring Ferdinand's success, was always a little afraid of him;
he felt that Ferdinand's gifts were so similar to his own that he would be
unable to count on him in an emergency. Moreover, it was difficult to
reconcile Ferdinand's ambitions in extreme south-eastern Europe with his
own. Ferdinand's relations with Vienna, on the other hand, and especially
with the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand, were both cordial and intimate.

The gradual aggravation of the condition of the Turkish Empire, notably in
Macedonia, the unredeemed Bulgaria, where since the insurrection of 1902-3
anarchy, always endemic, had deteriorated into a reign of terror, and,
also the unmistakably growing power and spirit of Serbia since the
accession of the Karageorgevich dynasty in 1903, caused uneasiness in
Sofia, no less than in Vienna and Budapest. The Young Turkish revolution
of July 1908, and the triumph of the Committee of Union and Progress,
disarmed the critics of Turkey who wished to make the forcible
introduction of reforms a pretext for their interference; but the
potential rejuvenation of the Ottoman Empire which it foreshadowed
indicated the desirability of rapid and decisive action. In September,
after fomenting a strike on the Oriental Railway in eastern Roumelia
(which railway was Turkish property), the Sofia Cabinet seized the line
with a military force on the plea of political necessity. At the same time
Ferdinand, with his second wife, the Protestant Princess Eleonora of
Reuss, whom he had married in March of that year, was