Page:The Great War.djvu/247

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The Fall of Jaroslav 2 1 7 Italy — Trieste and the Trentino were always wait- ing for her. So much for the neighbors of Austria, but what of her Slavs, what of her Czechs, her Serbs, her Croats, her Slovaks, her Slovenes; what of her Ru- manians and her Italians? Even more insistently than after Lemberg the familiar question was posed. Would they not also yield to the centrifugal influ- ences of race? Victory might have welded this heterogeneous force which is the Austrian Army, but defeat, disaster, rout, at the hands of the Slav? What, too, of still more defeats from the little Slav, the Serb south of the Save, who had to be disciplined — destroyed — and had repulsed the Austrian men- ace by the rout of the Jedar, was now coming on toward Serajevo, the city in which the torch had laid to the whole European magazine? So far as the military aspect of the situation was concerned the Russian sweep still moved on slowly but steadily. Cracow reached, it would be in fact at the frontier of Germany, for Cracow was rather the sentinel of Silesia than Hungary and Cracow was now in sight. Even if Przemysl held out a little while, its fate seemed as certain as was that of Mau- beuge. Once it fell the Russian left flank was solidly planted on the Carpathians and the march to Berlin could begin. It was still possible on October i that Austrian reenforcements, strengthened by German army

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