But the Allies should have no illusion on this head. The most vehement protests of the Magyars will be of no avail. The Germans are in occupation of Austria-Hungary and they have the power. They may disguise their enslavement of this vast empire under various formulas, such as extension of the _Zollverein_, economic union of the Central Empires, unification of the commercial laws of Austria and Germany, etc.; or they may even, as a subterfuge, to lull the fears of the Allies to sleep, give up the use of any positive formula, the final result will always be the same, the political seizure by Germany of the Hapsburg Monarchy cloaked under the decent pretext of economic measures. To this object the Germans cling above everything else, because it has been the basis of the whole Pangerman plan since 1895, and the indispensable condition of achieving the scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf,” as the reader will find explained, with the reasons in full, in my book published fifteen years ago, _L’Europe et la Question d’Autriche au seuil du XXᵉ siècle_; they cling to it, too, because Germany has made war for the very purpose of effecting at least this seizure of Austria-Hungary, which is absolutely indispensable to the plans of William II. Nothing but the complete victory of the Allies can compel Berlin to renounce this plan of domination and liberate the non-German peoples of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Meantime the Germans are taking all possible precautions against such an event. We have seen (p. 93) how already, under their pressure, the Magyars are concerting with them the economic measures to be taken in view of that future war, which is to complete the results of a peace which Berlin already thinks bound to be “imperfect.” Accordingly, the Allies cannot have the faintest doubt as to the new war which as sure as fate will follow, sooner or later, from the economic and necessarily political union of the Central Empires. In Chapter V we saw that the certain consequence of this economic union would be: 1º. To secure to Germany the spoils of war and a trade monopoly over nearly 3 millions of square kilometres containing wealth untold. 2º. On the contrary, to leave the Allies to pay all their expenses in the war, which is equivalent to condemning their peoples to ruin. 3º. To make Prussian militarism more powerful than ever, since, radiating from the block of Central Europe, it could command an army of from 15 to 21 millions of soldiers. 4º. To give Germany the supremacy over the majority of essential strategic points on land and sea, which would provide Berlin with all the means for executing gradually and completely its plan of world-wide domination.