By and by, it became obvious that Austria was, on account of her non-German population, internally weak, condemned to constant employment of violence and reaction, and therefore unfit to stand at the head of a strong modern Pan-Germany. Prussia therefore, as the greatest of the homogeneous German states, became Austria's rival and was accepted by the Frankfurt Assembly as the leader of the Confederation. The rivalry between Austria and Prussia ended in 1866, when after Austria's defeat the clever diplomacy of Bismarck turned the rivalry between Austria and Prussia into friendship. Since the Germans in Austria began to feel their impotence in the face of the growing Slav power, a year later the centralising efforts of the Habsburgs were finally embodied in the system of dualism which gave over the Slavs and Italians in Austria to German hegemony and the Slavs and Rumanians in Hungary to Magyar tyranny. For the support of this hegemony the Austrian Germans and Magyars, whose ambitions are identical with those of Germany, were entirely dependent on Berlin. Thus Austria-Hungary became inevitably Germany's partner and vanguard in the south-east. Finally, the present war was started by the Germans and Magyars with the object of achieving the ambitious plans preached and expounded by Pan-German writers for years past. The Germans wanted at all costs to become the masters of Central Europe, to build an empire from Berlin to Bagdad, and finally to strike for world domination. 2. In this turn of events Magyar influence played a greater part than might be thought. Already in 1848 Kossuth defined the Hungarian foreign policy as follows:-- "The Magyar nation is bound to maintain the most cordial relations with the free German nation and help it in safeguarding Western civilisation." And while the Hungarian Slavs were prohibited from attending the Pan-Slav Congress held in Prague in 1848, the Magyars sent two delegates to Frankfurt in order to give practical expression to the above Magyar policy. The value of Hungary for the Pan-German plans has been expressed by Friedrich List who, in 1862, dreamt of "a powerful oriental German-Magyar Empire," and declared: "The way towards the realisation of this plan runs through Hungary, and while without Hungary we can do nothing, with her aid we can do everything. Hungary is for Germany the clue to Turkey and the Near East, and at the same time a bulwark against a superior power from the north."