less. The main object of French policy was to prepare for the war. No documents have been found which prove that France intended to provoke the war which she considered inevitable, either in the year 1914, or at any other definite moment. No agreement is known which would have forced France to such an action. All that is clear is that France was absolutely determined to enter into the war as soon as Germany and Russia should become actively hostile, and this had been known in Russia for some time, with the effect that Russia experienced a sense of great security and freedom of action, and finally it facilitated the outbreak of the war.
Russia also had a motive for a European war. Byzantium, which Russia loved so dearly and which was the gateway to the sea and the outlet for the richest portion of her country, could only be won by means of a European war. Moreover, Jugo-Slavia could only be created out of a pool of blood—a fact which was very well known in Petrograd.
In 1898, during the annexation crisis, the Russian Ambassador in Bucharest, Prince Urusoff, said to the Serbian Ambassador: "Nobody in his senses could have imagined that Austria-Hungary would surrender of her own free will the occupied provinces, and that they would fall to Serbia." This possibility can only "result in an unfortunate war for Austria-Hungary, or in a successful revolution in Bosnia." During the same critical time, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Iswolski, said to the Serbian Ambassador that
