Luitpold Wolkenstein, financier and diplomat on a small, obtrusive,
self-important scale, sat in his favoured cafe in the world-wise Habsburg
capital, confronted with the _Neue Freie Presse_ and the cup of
cream-topped coffee and attendant glass of water that a sleek-headed
piccolo had just brought him. For years longer than a dog’s lifetime
sleek-headed piccolos had placed the _Neue Freie Presse_ and a cup of
cream-topped coffee on his table; for years he had sat at the same spot,
under the dust-coated, stuffed eagle, that had once been a living,
soaring bird on the Styrian mountains, and was now made monstrous and
symbolical with a second head grafted on to its neck and a gilt crown
planted on either dusty skull. To-day Luitpold Wolkenstein read no more
than the first article in his paper, but read it again and again.
“The Turkish fortress of Kirk Kilisseh has fallen . . . The Serbs, it is
officially announced, have taken Kumanovo . . . The fortress of Kirk
Kilisseh lost, Kumanovo taken by the Serbs, these are tiding for
Constantinople resembling something out of Shakspeare’s tragedies of the
kings . . . The neighbourhood of Adrianople and the Eastern region,
where the great battle is now in progress, will not reveal merely the
future of Turkey, but also what position and what influence the Balkan
States are to have in the world.”
For years longer than a dog’s lifetime Luitpold Wolkenstein had disposed
of the pretensions and strivings of the Balkan States over the cup of
cream-topped coffee that sleek-headed piccolos had brought him. Never
travelling further eastward than the horse-fair at Temesvar, never
inviting personal risk in an encounter with anything more potentially
desperate than a hare or partridge, he had constituted himself the
critical appraiser and arbiter of the military and national prowess of
the small countries that fringed the Dual Monarchy on its Danube border.
And his judgment had been one of unsparing contempt for small-scale
efforts, of unquestioning respect for the big battalions and full purses.
Over the whole scene of the Balkan territories and their troubled
histories had loomed the commanding magic of the words “the Great
Powers”—even more imposing in their Teutonic rendering, “Die
Grossmächte.”
Worshipping power and force and money-mastery as an elderly nerve-ridden
woman might worship youthful physical energy, the comfortable,
plump-bodied cafe-oracle had jested and gibed at the ambitions of the
Balkan kinglets and their peoples, had unloosed 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 Grossmächte 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 Grossmächte 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 encompass a union with their kinsfolk will not
remain any longer in an attitude of dependence on the Great Powers or on
Russia, but will go their own ways . . . The blood that has been poured
forth to-day gives for the first time a genuine tone to the purple of the
Balkan Kings. The Great Powers cannot overlook the fact that a people
that has tasted victory will not let itself be driven back again within
its former limits. Turkey has lost to-day not only Kirk Kilisseh and
Kumanovo, but Macedonia also.”
Luitpold Wolkenstein drank his coffee, but the flavour had somehow gone
out of it. His world, his pompous, imposing, dictating world, had
suddenly rolled up into narrower dimensions. The big purses and the big
threats had been pushed unceremoniously on one side; a force that he
could not fathom, could not comprehend, had made itself rudely felt. The
august Cæsars of Mammon and armament had looked down frowningly on the
combat, and those about to die had not saluted, had no intention of
saluting. A lesson was being imposed on unwilling learners, a lesson of
respect for certain fundamental principles, and it was not the small
struggling States who were being taught the lesson.
Luitpold Wolkenstein did not wait for the quorum of domino players to
arrive. They would all have read the article in the _Freie Presse_. And
there are moments when an oracle finds its greatest salvation in
withdrawing itself from the area of human questioning.