Instead of uniting with Russia on the basis of the independence of the
Sultan, whom the Russians also did not wish to drive out of
Constantinople, and confining ourselves to economic interests in the
East, while at the same time refraining from all military and political
interference and being satisfied with a division of Asia Minor into
spheres of interest, the goal of our political ambition was to dominate
in the Bosporus. In Russia, therefore, the opinion arose that the way to
Constantinople and to the Mediterranean lay through Berlin. Instead of
encouraging a powerful development in the Balkan States, which were once
free and are very different from the Russians, of which fact we have
already had experience, we placed ourselves on the side of the Turkish
and Magyar oppressors. The dire mistake of our Triple Alliance and our
Eastern policies, which drove Russia--our natural friend and best
neighbor--into the arms of France and England, and kept her from her
policy of Asiatic expansion, was the more evident, as a Franco-Russian
attack, the only hypothesis justifying a Triple Alliance policy, had to
be eliminated from our calculations.
As to the value of the alliance with Italy, one word only. Italy needs
our money and our tourists after the war, with or without our alliance.
That our alliance would go by the board in the event of war was to be
foreseen. The alliance, consequently, was worthless.
Austria, however, needed our protection both in war and peace, and had
no other point d'appui. This dependence on us is based on political,
national, and economic grounds, and is all the greater in proportion to
the intimacy of our relations with Russia. This was proved in the
Bosnian crisis. Since Count Beust, no Vienna Minister had been so
self-conscious with us as Count Aehrenthal was during the last years of
his life. Under the influence of a properly conducted German policy
which would keep us in touch with Russia, Austria-Hungary is our vassal,
and is tied to us even without an alliance and without reciprocal
services; under the influence of a misguided policy, however, we are
tied to Austria-Hungary. An alliance would therefore be purposeless.
I know Austria far too well not to know that a return to the policy of
Count Felix Schwarzenberg or to that of Count Moritz Esterhazy was
unthinkable. Little as the Slavs living there love us, they wish just as
little for a return to the German Kaiserdom, even with a
Hapsburg-Lorraine at its head. They are striving for an internal
Austrian federation on a national basis, a condition which is even less
likely of realization within the German Empire than under the Double
Eagle. Austro-Germans look on Berlin as the centre of German power and
Kultur, and they know that Austria can never be a leading power. They
desire as close a connection as possible with the empire, but not to the
extent of an anti-German policy.