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The Great War

Albanians, her veto upon Servian dreams of a "window upon the sea" awakened equal wrath among her own subjects, who looked with ill-disguised resentment upon the attempt of Austria to defend the racial integrity of an alien people at the moment she was crushing out the national aspirations of her own subjects. When Austrian interference made the second Balkan war inevitable and Servia emerged again and more splendidly victorious, with new provinces and new laurels, her place among the Southern Slavs was wholly comparable with that of Sardinia when, after Solferino and Magenta, she had with French aid freed the Valley of the Po and opened the way for Italian unity.

In the pathway of the Servians' dream stood the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. It was known that he planned to try to reconcile the Southern Slavs by seeking to satisfy their longings for national unity within the Empire, by creating a three-part Empire in place of the present dual kingdom. Alone in Austria he stood forth as a strong man, who might conceivably save the shaken structure when Francis Joseph should die. His removal must seem more than the insane act of mere school boys, something beyond blind protest against stupid and cruel tyranny, for in removing the heir to the throne of a hostile country it eliminated an obstacle of real peril to the Pan-Servian dreams.
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