Hence the Crimean War, and hence
the disastrous intervention of Disraeli after the treaty of San Stefano
in 1878--an intervention which perpetuated for years the Balkan hell.
The interest of Austria in the peninsula depends primarily on the fact
that the Austrian Empire contains a large Slav population desiring its
independence, and that this national ambition of the Austrian Slavs finds
in the independent kingdom of Serbia its natural centre of attraction. The
determination of Austria to retain her Slavs as unwilling citizens of her
Empire brings her also into conflict with Russia, so far as Russia is the
protector of the Slavs. The situation, and the danger with which it is
pregnant, may be realized by an Englishman if he will suppose St. George's
Channel and the Atlantic to be annihilated, and Ireland to touch, by a land
frontier, on the one side Great Britain, on the other the United States.
The friction and even the warfare which might have arisen between these two
great Powers from the plots of American Fenians may readily be imagined.
Something of that kind is the situation of Austria in relation to Serbia
and her protector, Russia. Further, Austria fears the occupation by any
Slav State of any port on the coast line of the Adriatic, and herself
desires a port on the Aegean. Add to this the recent German dream of the
route from Berlin to Bagdad, and the European importance of what would
otherwise be local disputes among the Balkan States becomes apparent.
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