The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

be the outcome of the struggle. In that again she was disappointed. From the second war Serbia came out aggrandised, and with such prestige in the eyes of Europe and especially among the Southern Slavs, that Vienna decided to act immediately lest it might be too late. Exhausted in two strenuous wars, Serbia was to be attacked before she could recuperate, and it was firmly believed in Vienna and Budapest that Serbia would fall an easy prey to their onslaught. But immediate action was also necessary in order to redeem the pledge to Bulgaria, as the means of maintaining the agreement arrived at with her. As soon as the Treaty of Bukarest in 1913 was signed, the Vienna Cabinet asked Italy to be a party to her attack upon Serbia; this we now know thanks to the revelation made in October 1914 by Signor Giolliti, then the Italian Prime Minister. But Italy refused, and the attack upon Serbia was delayed until the next good opportunity.

During all that time Serbia felt the pressure of Vienna and the threatening cloud did not disappear from her horizon. In June next year, 1914, a meeting took place at Konopisht between the Kaiser William II and the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. At this fatal meeting a compact was entered into under which the map of Central Europe was to be transformed and the peace of the world was doomed.

Three weeks later the Archduke Ferdinand

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