Pan-Slavism against Pan-Germanism was the issue which was launched when the Emperor of all the Russias took up Servia’s quarrel with Austria-Hungary. Russia, if she wanted a ground for war, could have found no better one. The popularity of her aggressive big-brother attitude to all the Slavs was quickly attested in St. Petersburg. It had been a long time since war had appealed with the same favor to so large a part of the Czar’s people. Slavs there were in plenty to menace the allied German Powers, even if there were not allied French arms, on Germany’s other flank, and Britain’s naval supremacy to cope with. Slavs in past times had spread over all of eastern Europe, from the Arctic to the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas. Their continuity was long ago broken into by an intrusion of Magyars. Finns, and Roumanians, leaving a northern Slavic section composed of North Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks, and a southern section comprising the main body of the Balkan people. For over a thousand years these Slavs have peopled Europe east of the Elbe River. And for centuries they kept the hordes of Cossacks, Turks and barbarians off Europe. Russia in those days was called “the nation of the sword.” And over a hundred years ago that sword was drawn for Servia. After 400 years of vassalage to Turkey, the Serbs rebelled in 1804, and then only Russian intervention saved them from defeat. In later wars oppression of the Slavs was a prominent issue. RUSSIA’S PART IN THE SERVIAN ISSUE What rendered the Russian menace so formidable at the opening of the 1914 war was the unusual enthusiasm which was displayed. Ordinarily, the huge population of Russia has been rather apathetic toward the purposes of the Emperor. But in the case of Austria’s injustice to Servia the Czar, judging from the demonstrations in St. Petersburg, could reasonably count upon having behind him possibly 100,000,000 Slavs among his subjects. Moscow and Odessa gave similar demonstrations of good feeling, and it seemed as if, in the event of the Czar’s assuming command as generalissimo of all the forces, the wave of enthusiasm would sweep over the whole empire. Who knows that is the strength of the Russian bear, once he is roused to sullen fury? In the ten years following the Russo-Japanese War Russia had greatly added to her army and navy, and materially cut down the time required for the mobilization of her forces by eliminating many of the difficulties attendant upon transportation and equipment of troops. Her quiet advances toward becoming a Power to be feared by the most formidable European Nation had come to be recognized even if in a vague way.