It is quite certain that, apart from the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary, no German who took an interest in politics considered this diplomatic instrument as a final treaty. As a provisional armistice, allowing for a breathing-space before Germany plunged into Africa, it might pass; but no more than that. When it came to putting the Convention into practice, nothing was done beyond a few initial measures. The Wilhelmstrasse proclaimed its sincere wish to carry out the compact, but refused to specify when, if ever, the minister at Tangier would be superseded by a consul-general, and when (a point that was taken for granted) the consular jurisdiction would be abolished. Morocco was far from being pacified; in the interests even of the Republican Government, it was asserted, no hasty conclusions must be drawn as to the achievement of progress or reform. In Germany the peaceful settlement of the 1911 crisis gave a mighty impetus to the war party, to the propaganda of the Union of Defence and the Navy League, and added considerable weight to their demands. Their visions of supremacy and domination were now blended with a fierce desire for revenge on France. A diplomatic success, won in a clandestine struggle, meant nothing. In the eyes of this rancorous tribe, only a war, a fight in the open, could solve the Moroccan problem for good and all, by incorporating Morocco and all French Africa in that colonial empire which they hoped to build up on the shores of the Mediterranean and in the heart of the Dark Continent. CHAPTER VII. THE EASTERN QUESTION. I. The revolution of 1908 had set up in Turkey a constitutional system or, more properly speaking, a travesty of one, by unearthing the 1876 constitution from the dust in which it lay buried. Count von Aehrenthal, who in Vienna aimed at politics on the grand scale—a personal policy, modelled on that of the statesmen of Berlin—took advantage of the internal troubles arising from the overthrow of the Hamidian despotism to convert into a formal annexation (7th October 1908) the right of occupying Bosnia-Herzegovina granted to the Dual Monarchy by the Congress of Berlin. The pretext was ready to hand: Francis Joseph could not allow the inhabitants of provinces under his control to send deputies to a Parliament assembling at Constantinople. The Austrian minister thought to disarm the opposition of the Young Turks by withdrawing the Austro-Hungarian garrisons from the Sandjak of Novibazar. All he did, in reality, was to weaken the position of his Government in the ensuing conflict. This conflict lasted through the winter of 1908-1909, and came near to provoking a European war. On the one side was Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany; on the other, not only Turkey, but also Serbia, with Russia at her back.