Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military power and
political control across the very center of Europe and beyond the
Mediterranean into the very heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to
be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the
ponderous states of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become
part of the central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same
forces and influences that had originally cemented the German states
themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a
heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race
entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It
contemplated binding together racial and political units which could
be kept together only by force--Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs,
Rumanians, Turks, Armenians--the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary,
the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks,
the subtile peoples of the East. These peoples did not wish to be
united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs, would be
satisfied only by undisputed independence. They could be kept quiet
only by the presence or the constant threat of armed men. They would
live under a common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day
of revolution. But the German military statesmen had reckoned with
all that and were ready to deal with it in their own way.
And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan
into execution! Look how things stand. Austria is at their mercy. It
has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of its own
people, but at Berlin's dictation, ever since the war began. Its
people now desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted
from Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are, in fact, but a single
Power. Serbia is at its mercy, should its hand be but for a moment
freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will, and Rumania is overrun.
The Turkish armies, which Germans trained, are serving Germany,
certainly not themselves, and the guns of German warships lying in
the harbor at Constantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day that
they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. From
Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread.