The Vienna Cabinet, burning to avenge its diplomatic failures, and feeling assured of Berlin’s support, decided on 20th March to send a threatening note to the Montenegrins, who were on the point of capturing Scutari through the connivance of Essad Pasha, its defender. The note was followed by the appearance of an Austrian squadron off the coasts of Albania and Montenegro. It will be remembered with what a stormy display of public feeling on behalf of the Serbians and Montenegrins the news of this step was received in France and in Russia. Yet the storm was merely on the surface; neither nation was stirred to its depths. If the Paris and St. Petersburg Cabinets had been guided by a certain section of their Press, they would have found themselves on the threshold of a war at a very unfavourable juncture; for the Cabinet of St. James’s, which was then indifferent to Serbia, would not have come to their aid, and, on the other hand, they would have been confronted with the solid and formidable mass of the Triple Alliance. At Berlin, the outbreak of war seemed so likely to the Imperial Government that officers and men of the reserve were ordered to keep themselves in readiness for the call to mobilize. Fortunately, those who conducted the policy of the Dual Alliance saw the danger ahead before it was too late. They clung to the compromise suggested at the London Conference, leaving the two Serb States nothing but the districts of Ipek, Djakovo, and Prizrend, and reserving Scutari for the future principality of Albania. In accordance with the unanimous will of the great Powers, and despite the indignant protests of some French and Russian newspapers, the King of Montenegro, at the beginning of May, consented to evacuate Scutari, where detachments of troops from the Powers were then garrisoned. On the 30th of the same month a Turko-Balkanic treaty was signed in London. Europe thought she could breathe again. She was in error: the peace was merely a makeshift. V. In order to prove to the Reichstag the necessity for the new army bill submitted to it on 18th March, the explanatory statement alleged the early victories of the Balkan League as the primary motive. Austria-Hungary, crippled by this new coalition, which probably had Russia at its back, could no longer give Germany sufficient aid; and the latter, with only her own strength to rely upon, would have to face her enemies on two opposite fronts.