But the consequences of the Three Years Service law were contemplated by Baron Guillaume with great apprehension. He reports on 12 June, 1913, that "the burden of the new law will fall so heavily upon the population, and the expenditure which it will involve will be so exorbitant, that there will soon be an outcry in the country, and France will be faced with this dilemma: either renounce what she can not bear to forgo, or else, war at short notice." Of the militarist party now in the ascendancy, he says: "They are followed with a sort of infatuation, a kind of frenzy which is interesting but deplorable. One is not now allowed, under pain of being marked as a traitor, to express even a doubt of the need for the Three Years Service." Public opinion was evidently confiscated by the Poincaré-Millerand-Delcassé group, much as it was in the United States in 1917 by the war-party headed by Mr. Wilson. Baron Guillaume uses words that must remind us of those days. "Every one knows," he says, "that the mass of the nation is by no means in favour of the projected reform, and they understand the danger that lies ahead. But they shut their eyes and press on." XX The train of powder, however, had been laid by the diplomatic engagements. Austria-Hungary and Serbia came into collision in the spring of 1913 over the Scutari incident. In December, 1912, M. Sazonov had urged Serbia to play a waiting game in order to "deliver a blow at Austria." But on 4 April, 1913, Baron Beyens reports from Berlin that the arrogance and contempt with which the Serbs receive the Vienna Cabinet's protests over Scutari can only be explained by their belief that St. Petersburg will support them. The Serbian chargé d'affaires was quite openly saying here lately that his Government would not have persisted in its course for the last six months in the face of the Austrian opposition had they not received encouragement in their course from the Russian Minister, M. de Hartwig, who is a diplomatist of M. Isvolsky's school.... M. Sazonov's heart is with his colleagues who are directing the policy of the Great Powers, but he feels his influence with the Tsar being undermined by the court-party and the pan-Slavists. Hence his inconsequent behaviour.