If this new order of things resulting from the treaty of Bukarest had been allowed to develop fully, the influence of Germanism would have been infallibly ruined in the Hapsburg Monarchy, just as had happened in the Balkans. Under the growing pressure of her Slav and Latin elements the partition, or at any rate, the evolution towards federation of Austria-Hungary would have become a necessity. This federalism would not have affected the frontiers of the Hapsburg Dominions, but it would necessarily, and without doubt, have given political preponderance to the Slav and Latin elements, which were the most numerous and the most prolific. Now, those elements form an enormous majority, which was and is resolutely hostile to any alliance with Germany. Thus, progressively, the Hapsburg Monarchy in evolution would have become more and more independent of Berlin in regard to her foreign policy, and as it gradually shook itself free from its bondage to Berlin, it would, as a necessary consequence, have drawn closer and closer to Russia, France and England. Thus Germany would have been deprived of the artificial prop which she has found at Vienna and at Budapest ever since the days of Sadowa through the Germano-Magyar predominance. Finally, as a result of peaceful development, William II. would have been confronted by a state of things in Austria-Hungary which would have opposed a far more formidable barrier to his oriental ambitions than that which was created in 1913 in the Balkans, as a consequence of the treaty of Bukarest. If we bear in mind the powerful and extraordinarily important series of after-effects which must have followed on the new situation produced by the treaty of Bukarest and its inevitable influence on the 28 million Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary, we can readily understand that had the European peace been maintained, the chances of executing the Pangerman plan would have been totally and simultaneously ruined in Turkey, in the Balkans, and in Austria-Hungary; that is to say in the three territorial zones which, as will be seen from Chapter III, constituted by far the most important part of the regions mapped out for Pangerman operations in the plan of 1911. Thus we see how the internal evolution of Austria-Hungary had reached a point at which, as the result of the treaty of Bukarest, it was just about to escape for ever from the influence of Berlin; this would have broken the pivot on which all the Pangerman combinations revolved. It was that consideration which decided William II. to make war at once. III.