What War Meant to the Great Powers 29 of some of her European provinces, she would sink to the rank of Spain or become a mere satellite of Germany, incapable of resisting her, compelled to share in her future campaigns as was Prussia in Napoleon's after Jena had put her at his feet. So the French statesmen and patriots had reckoned the consequences of war for France, so they had de- scribed it as a war for the existence of France. For Great Britain the line of self-interest, the deciding element, since, unlike Russia, France and Germany, no question of race or religion entered, was less plain. For the Servians, England cared not a fig. She sacrificed the Bulgarians at the Congress of Berlin. Could the war be " localized," no sym- pathy with the Servian would have moved her states- men. Again, victory for her Russian and French allies would mean the tremendous aggrandizement of the former, which confines India, presses upon China, is stretching south into Persia and is still as ever de- termined to have Constantinople, to prevent which England fought the Crimean war and was prepared to fight again after the Treaty of San Stefano. On the other hand, a victory for the Triple Al- liance would mean the immediate expansion of the German navy, the destruction of the balance of power on the Continent for which England fought her great wars with Louis XIV and Napoleon. It might be, as the German soldiers, sailors and states- men had long threatened, the prelude to *' the day "