THE NEW EUROPE
herself bound to make any great effort in the direction of Macedonia. Even in France Westernism, if we may employ the word, has its adherents, some of whom are in a specially good position to enforce their views, or to delay the execution of contrary views. But it was always the privilege, and sometimes the misfortune, of the French to love general ideas, and having once grasped them, to follow them to their logical conclusions. Confronted by a complex situation, they insist upon looking at it from an angle which permits them to treat it as a whole; in considering an event they endeavour to forecast its extreme consequences. Moreover, they have certain habits of criticism which prevent them from stopping short at the first objection which may arise. When they are told that the military problem is distinct from the political problem, they agree, but they remember an axiom which our enemies have not forgotten, and which was expressed by Clausewitz in these terms: "War is the pursuit of a political object by other means." To the dictum that bad strategy cannot be good politics, they are ready with the reply that the soundest policy may be sacrificed to the most questionable strategy; and there are some who, if they could speak, could quote some fine examples of this truth. They have broken too many idols to allow themselves to be intimidated by mere words. Strategy is not a science, but an art, and few are its masters. What is most essential for the conduct alike of military and political affairs is common sense.
The origin of the conflict, no less than its development, reveal to us the Eastern problem as lying at the very heart of the great problem of the war. It matters very little that it was France whom Germany first attacked. Germany made war because of Serbia. It was a question of consolidating, by the final subjugation of the Southern Slavs, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as the instrument of German ambitions. But also, and above all, Serbia, thanks to her geographical position, was an obstacle to the expansion of Germanism through the Balkans, towards the Mediterranean and the Levant. Serbia held the key of the routes which
diverge from Nish to Salonica and Constantinople. Serbia was to disappear, and by forcing Europe to choose between a consent which would have reduced her to slavery and a struggle which they hoped would end in a crushing victory,
226
