The danger is perceived, of course, in Vienna; and there are those in Vienna who have their plan for meeting it. The Archduke Francis Ferdinand himself is generally understood to have a plan: the transformation of the Dual Monarchy into a Triple Monarchy—the third of his Trinity of Kingdoms to be a Kingdom of Slavs. To some the idea seems a brilliant inspiration; to others a counsel of despair. It derives most of the value which it has from the fact that a majority of the Slavs within the Empire are Catholics, whereas a majority of the Slavs without the Empire belong to the Orthodox Church, and that the Catholics despise the Orthodox as their inferiors in piety and civilisation. The Archduke, as a very religious man—the sort of man whom people speak of as being “in the hands of the Jesuits”—relies, apparently, upon differences of creed to keep the Slavs divided and weak, in spite of the brotherhood of race. He may be right; but there are not wanting indications that he is wrong. Even in the Balkans religious fanaticism is no longer the force that it used to be; and the Austrian police has recently had all its work cut out to prevent inopportune explosions of sympathy with Servian successes, in Croatia. There, and in Bosnia, and in Dalmatia, just as of old in Lombardy and in Venetia, explosions have only been prevented—perhaps one should say have only been deferred—by the policy of sitting on the safety-valve; and when that policy has to be adopted, things never fail to happen which make the oppressed difficult to reconcile. Moreover, there is a further difficulty, already indicated on a previous page: the difficulty which has its double root in Slav numbers and Austro-Hungarian pride. Of all the races which make up the composite Empire, the Slavs are the most numerous. Admitted to the Empire on equal terms, they will be in a position to control it—to control, that is to say, the Austrians and Hungarians who have hitherto controlled them. If that were allowed to happen, the condition of things created might be as intolerable to the Austrians and Hungarians as is the existing state of things to the Slavs. Foreseeing this, they will be reluctant to take the step which will compel them to bow their necks; and, if they do take it, yet another “unredeemed” question will be raised: the question whether the Teutonic portion of the Habsburg dominions should not be regarded as Germania Irredenta. The Pangermanists of Prussia already, as we know, take that view of it; and Slav predominance might easily create a Pangermanist party in Austria also. Indeed, the nucleus of a Pangermanist party already exists there.