Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/59

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Sarajevo
55


It is certain that the Rumanian policy of Hungary made it impossible for the Rumanian Government to part company with Serbia and Russia and face these states in Austria's company.

Directly after the meeting at Konopischt the Foreign Office in Vienna set about preparing a Memorandum to show that the state of affairs in the Balkans was intolerable, and that Austria was forced to oppose Russia, who was planning a Balkan League against the Habsburg Monarchy.

To this end Austria sought to win over Rumania. The latter by this time was on very bad terms with her.

“The Monarchy up till now has confined itself to discussing in a friendly manner the vacillation of Rumanian policy in Bucharest; beyond this, however, it does not see any reason to look for serious consequences from this change of course, which is becoming more and more pronounced on the part of Rumania. The Vienna Cabinet has in this matter allowed itself to be determined primarily by the fact that the German Government's view was that it was a question of temporary vacillation, the consequences of certain misunderstandings surviving from the time of the crisis, which would settle themselves automatically if treated calmly and patiently. It is evident, however, that these tactics of calm attention and friendly representations had not the desired effect; that the process of estrangement between Austria-Hungary and Rumania had not slackened, but on the contrary had been hastened.”

Nor does the Memorandum expect a “favourable turn of affairs in the future.”