Austria, too, was feeling economic pressure. Her people, especially the Hungarians, looked toward the southeast for expansion. Her shrewd statesmanship, its instincts inherited from the Hapsburg dynasty, playing race hatred against race hatred and bound, so it looked, to national disruption, welcomed any opportunity which would set the mind of the whole people thinking of some exterior object rather than of internal differences. She annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina with its Slav population at a moment when Russia was not prepared to aid her kindred. Bosnia and Herzegovina are better off for the annexation; they have enjoyed rapid material progress as the result. Bounded by the Danube and the Turk were the Balkan countries, which ought to be the garden spot of civilisation. Here, poverty aggravated racial hate and racial hate aggravated poverty in a vicious circle. Serbia, longest free of the Turk, adjoining Austria, had no outlet except through other lands. She was a commercial slave of Austria, dependent on Austrian tariffs and Austrian railroads, with Hungarian business men holding the purse-strings of trade. In her swineherds and tillers the desire for some of the good things of modern life was developing. Strangling, with Austria’s hands at her throat, with many clever, resourceful agitators urging her on, she fought in the only way that she knew. To Austria she was the uncouth swineherd who assassinated the Austrian Crown Prince and his consort. This deed was the exterior object which united Austria in a passionate rage. For Austria, more than any other country, could welcome war for the old reason. It let out the emotion of the nation against an enemy instead of against its own rulers. A deeper-seated cause was the racial hatred of Slav and Teuton. For rulers do not make war these days; they try to keep their thrones secure on the crest of public opinion. They appear to rule and to give, and are ruled and yield. Whoever had travelled in Russia of late years had been conscious of a rising ground-swell in the great mass of Russian feeling. Your simple _moujik_ had an idea that his Czar had yielded to the Austrians and the Germans. In short, the German had tweaked the nose of the Slav race with the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Czar had borne the insult because his people were willing.