The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

of most cherished dreams and ambitions, and the sacrificing of selfish interests enhanced by an unjustly conquered position. All the forces that governed Austria-Hungary were opposed to such a change, which could be brought about only by their utter defeat. The revolutions in Great Britain and France effected more than the deposition of a king or the change of a dynasty. They abolished the principle of government by divine right and prepared the advent of a modern democracy. In Austria all the revolutionary outbreaks merely rippled the surface, without being able to effect any change in the depth of her life.

Austria-Hungary, ruled by a bigot dynasty allied to an unconciliatory Church and intolerable aristocracy, was a living anachronism in Europe, and, like Turkey, was assailed from every side by growing forces of her nationalities endowed with ever-increasing centripetal motion. In order to maintain its rule, her dynasty divided the power with the Germans and the Magyars, leaving to their tender mercy and greedy exploitation all other nationalities in the Monarchy. But even such a combination was too weak to resist the pressure from without and to subdue the centripetal motions of the different nationalities, therefore all three dominant factors—the dynasty, the Germans, and the Magyars—allied themselves with Germany. Austria-Hungary became the advance-guard of the Pan-German

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