Viscount Grey once attributed the whole tragic course of recent events to the breach of the public law of Europe when Austria tore up the Treaty of Berlin by annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Undoubtedly that was a milestone in history, but the original occupation of these two Slav provinces of Turkey by Austria in 1878, under that very Berlin Treaty, was perhaps nearer to the source. It meant to the Slav mind notice that the Prussian German stood behind the Austrian German in his advance over the country for which the Slav had fought with the Turk, for the War of 1876, it must be remembered, which led up to the Congress of Berlin, began with a rising of the Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Turkey, and became European because of the sympathy of the neighbouring Slavs of Serbia and Montenegro, which impelled them also to fight against the Turk. After 1878 there followed a few years of Russian hesitancy while Germany was beginning to build up her man-power. Then, in 1895, came the Alliance between the Czardom and the French Republic. France needed an Ally because of the still open Alsatian wound in her side; Russia needed an Ally because of the German bully by her side. Russia and France were
