The Balkan States the Archduke foresaw as units in a further extended Empire of the Hapsburgs or as a subject confederation, readily amenable as an effective instrument for the execution of Hapsburg policy and even as an incident in Pan-Germanism. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a policy entirely in accord with his sympathy, and thus it may be readily understood that the Archduke was naturally in violent antagonism to Servia. This State had emerged from the Balkan War of 1912 strengthened with enlarged territory, and was the State which of all others had maintained and even strenuously fostered the ideal of a complete Balkan independence.
The present Austro-Hungarian army was very largely made by the Archduke in a process of restless re-organisation, one of its outstanding characteristics being its carefully developed dynastic sympathies. The fleet undoubtedly was his creation. In 1907 he had delivered a speech advocating a forward naval policy, which should result in the construction of a fleet " capable of seeking out and attacking an enemy on the high seas." In accord- ance with this policy, the larger class of battleship was introduced into the Austro-Hungarian navy and at the same time there began a close friendship between the Archduke and the German Emperor. We return to Serajevo, to the Sunday morning there with its crowds awaiting the visit of the Archduke, a man who in temperament alone was not likely to call forth any extravagant affection on the part of the people over whom it would seem he was destined in the near future to rule: to the people, and all over whom he had any power at all, he was reserved and brutal in his manner. The excited crowds were lining the streets, ready vigorously to acclaim him. But one asks, how much of that excitement was due to pleasurable anticipation? How much too, at best, was there of mingled feelings, the result of subjection, tyranny, and oppression by a ruler who had gathered themzinto his territory without regard to their own wishes, as though they were, in fact, but chattels? These people who thronged these streets were, for the most part, Slavs or sympa- thetic to the Slav or Serb movement in the Empire.
The then Slav element in the kingdom of Hungary, particularly the Croats, had been for all practical purposes deprived of all privileges of citizens and the rights of free men. They, the Slav crowds in the streets of Serajevo, knew that only within the last few days, bombs had been thrown among the Croats and Slovenes at Trieste, with the tacit approval of the authorities; that high school and other festivities which had been arranged for very day of National Fête in other parts of the country had
