oosed against them that battery
of strange lip-sounds that a Viennese employs almost as an auxiliary
language to express the thoughts when his thoughts are not complimentary.
British travellers had visited the Balkan lands and reported high things
of the Bulgarians and their future, Russian officers had taken peeps at
their army and confessed "this is a thing to be reckoned with, and it is
not we who have created it, they have done it by themselves." But over
his cups of coffee and his hour-long games of dominoes the oracle had
laughed and wagged his head and distilled the worldly wisdom of his
castle. The Grossmachte had not succeeded in stifling the roll of the
war-drum, that was true; the big battalions of the Ottoman Empire would
have to do some talking, and then the big purses and big threatenings of
the Powers would speak and the last word would be with them. In
imagination Luitpold heard the onward tramp of the red-fezzed bayonet
bearers echoing through the Balkan passes, saw the little sheepskin-clad
mannikins driven back to their villages, saw the augustly chiding
spokesman of the Powers dictating, adjusting, restoring, settling things
once again in their allotted places, sweeping up the dust of conflict,
and now his ears had to listen to the war-drum rolling in quite another
direction, had to listen to the tramp of battalions that were bigger and
bolder and better skilled in war-craft than he had deemed possible in
that quarter; his eyes had to read in the columns of his accustomed
newspaper a warning to the Grossmachte that they had something new to
learn, something new to reckon with, much that was time-honoured to
relinquish. "The Great Powers will have not little difficulty in
persuading the Balkan States of the inviolability of the principle that
Europe cannot permit any fresh partition of territory in the East without
her approval. Even now, while the campaign is still undecided, there are
rumours of a project of fiscal unity, extending over the entire Balkan
lands, and further of a constitutional union in imitation of the German
Empire. That is perhaps only a political straw blown by the storm, but
it is not possible to dismiss the reflection that the Balkan States
leagued together command a military strength with which the Great Powers
will have to reckon . . . The people who have poured out their blood on
the battlefields and sacrificed the available armed men of an entire
generation in order to