The Austrian attache duly came to dinner, and explained that it was absolutely necessary to annex Bosnia as the Young Turks were preparing for the general elections. The two provinces were nominally part of the Turkish Empire, and the Turks would claim that they should be represented in their Parliament. Europe had never intended the provinces to revert to Turkey; they had been entirely Austrian for thirty years, and the change was in name only. It would also make it possible to give the provinces a liberal and civilian government, a thing not possible when it was a question only of a military occupation. I countered with: "Let sleeping dogs lie." Europe would never have taken it from Austria, and if it had been agreed that Austria should retire from part she would have been necessarily heavily compensated. He replied: "Ah, but you don't know something we know, and which has expedited the affair. England is on the point of annexing Egypt. The same problem faces you there." I did not believe this possible, and declared that we were pledged to the Egyptians to restore the land to them. I believed, then, we should keep our word. He laughed, and said he had certain information that we should annex it. Nor would he agree, when I persisted, that Austria had made a mistake in not bringing the question up before the signatory Powers. We discussed the anti-Austrian propaganda, which I had found rife in Bosnian He believed it to have been largely due to the uncertainty of the position, and declared that, faced with the fait accompli, the Serbs would drop the intrigues which kept up the agitation, and that a civilian government and a constitution would speedily ameliorate everything. Austria was already withdrawing the officers' families from the Sanjak, and complete evacuation would follow. She dropped also the Uvatz-Mitrovitza railway scheme which the Young Turks seemed not over-willing to permit. Moslem wrath, fierce against Austria, was further excited by the arrival of malcontent Moslems from the annexed provinces, who had thrown up their businesses and emigrated to the Young Turks. A curio-dealer from Mostar, whom I knew, was among them He and his friends had all believed that the Turkish revolution meant that Bosnia-Herzegovina would be the Sultan's once more. I asked why there had been no rising, and he explained humorously that, except his wife's scissors, he had no weapon to rise with. The "Schwabs" had called in all knives big enough to fight with, some weeks before the annexation was proclaimed.