424 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

ledge, their thoroughness, their powers of organisation-—foi
in this also they have been unsurpassed—were turned to the
production of zeppdins, submarines, krupp guns, mines,
torpedoes, poison-gases, 'and other devices."x Railways were
constructed with broad sidings for troops and cannons; and
a bargain was struck with Turkey for the extension of the
German railway-system to Bagdad—for penetrating into the
Orient. While all other European Powers looked down upon
the Sultan as " Abdul the damned," the Kaiser assiduously
cultivated his friendship. Austria seized Bosnia and Her-
zegovina in 1908, though it was against the terms of the
Treaty of Berlin (1878) ; and Germany, not merely con-
nived at it, but prevented Russia from interfering on behalf
of the Slavs, by a timely and successful display of her
'shining armour.' She herself twice poked her nose (or
rather Eagle's beak) into French Morocco, in 1905 and 1911,
to test her own strength and also that of her prospective
enemies. But these adventures only served to bring about
the dreaded coalition of the Triple Entente between England,
France, and Russia, which Bismarck had tried so much to
prevent. The train thus prepared was set ablaze in 1914
when the Archduke of Austria and his wife were assassinated
by the Serbians in the Bosnian capital Serajevo.

The history of the War may be very briefly told. It
lasted from August 1914 to November 1918. Starting with
Austria's declaration of war on Serbia for the Serajevo mur-
ders, it gradually involved all the important Powers of the
World. The tangle of alliances previously described dragged
one country after another into the cock-pit. Germany en-
tered the lists on account of Austria, and Russia on behalf
of Serbia. The Franco-Russian alliance drew France into

1. Russell, The Tradition of the Roman Empire, p. 237.