THE NEAR EAST AND THE POLICY OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE
We ought at last to have broken with the fatal tradition of pursuing a Triple Alliance policy in the Near East also, and have recognised our mistake, which lay in identifying ourselves in the south with the Turks and in the north with the Austro-Magyars. For the continuance of this policy, upon which we had entered at the Berlin Congress, and which we had actively pursued ever since, was bound to lead in time to a conflict with Russia and to the world-war, more especially if the requisite cleverness were lacking in high places. Instead of coming to terms with Russia on a basis of the independence of the Sultan, whom even Petrograd did not wish to eject from Constantinople, and of confining ourselves to our economic interests in the Near East and to the partitioning of Asia Minor into spheres of influence while renouncing any intention of military or political interference, it was our political ambition to dominate on the Bosphorus. In Russia they began to think that the road to Constantinople and the Mediterranean lay _via_ Berlin. Instead of supporting the active development of the Balkan States--which, once liberated, are anything rather than Russian, and with which our experiences had been very satisfactory--we took sides with the Turkish and Magyar oppressors.
The fatal mistake of our Triple Alliance and Near East policy--which had forced Russia, our natural best friend and neighbour, into the arms of France and England and away from its policy of Asiatic expansion--was the more apparent, as a Franco-Russian attack, which was the _sole_ hypothesis that justified a Triple Alliance policy, could be left out of our calculations.
The value of the Italian alliance needs no further reference. Italy will want our money and our tourists even after the war, with or without an alliance. That this latter would fail us in case of war was patent beforehand. Hence the alliance had _no value_. Austria needs our protection in war, as in peace, and has no other support. Her dependence on us is based on political, national, and economic considerations, and is the greater the more intimate our relations with Russia are. The Bosnian crisis taught us this. Since the days of Count Beust no Vienna Minister has adopted such a self-confident attitude towards us as Count Aehrenthal during the later years of his life. If German policy is conducted on right lines, cultivating relations with Russia, Austria-Hungary is our vassal and dependent on us, even without an alliance or recompense; if it is wrongly conducted, then we are dependent on Austria. Hence there was _no reason_ for the alliance.