[Footnote 1: This declaration was made the basis of the Austrian Note to Serbia in July 1914.]
§5. _The Renaissance of Serbia._--From this diplomatic defeat dates the renaissance of Serbia. It restored her to a sense of hard realities, and taught her to substitute hard work for loud talk. So rough a challenge put the national spirit on its mettle. The brief period between 1908 and 1912 worked a real transformation in Belgrade, which could not fail to impress those who took the trouble to look beneath the surface. Nowhere was the change more marked than in the Serbian army, from which the regicide elements had been slowly but steadily eliminated. The two Balkan wars of 1912-1913 revealed Serbia to the outside world as a military power, notable alike for the élan of its infantry, the high efficiency of its artillery, the close camaraderie of officers and men. The first use made of her victories over the Turks was the occupation of northern Albania, her only possible outlet to the sea so long as Dalmatia remains in Austrian hands. Austria-Hungary, who had only remained inactive because she had taken a Turkish victory for granted, now intervened, and by the creation of an artificial Albanian State vetoed Serbia's expansion to the Adriatic. The Austrian Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, short-sighted and indolent then as now, failed to realise that the North Albanian harbours, for obvious reasons of physical geography, could never be converted into naval bases, save at a prohibitive cost, and that their possession by Serbia, so far from being a menace to Austria, would involve the policing of a mountainous tract of country, inhabited by a turbulent and hostile population. It ought to have been obvious to him that the moment had arrived for tempting the Serbs into the Austrian sphere of influence by the bait of generous commercial concessions through Bosnia and Dalmatia. Several far-sighted politicians in Austria urged this course upon him, and the Serbian Premier actually approached Vienna with far-reaching proposals in this very sense. Their contemptuous rejection by Berchtold and the little clique of Foreign Office officials who controlled his puppet figure, naturally strengthened still further the bonds which united Belgrade and Petrograd. Serbia, shut out from the Adriatic, had no alternative save to seek her economic outlet down the valley of the Vardar towards the Aegean, and in so doing she came into violent conflict with Bulgarian aspirations in Macedonia. These facts alone would justify the assertion that the war between the Balkan allies was directly due to Austro-Hungarian initiative; but it has also transpired that the dissensions between Sofia and Belgrade were actively encouraged from Vienna, that Magyar influences were brought to bear upon King Ferdinand, and that war material was sent down the Danube from Hungary to Bulgaria. The outward and visible sign of these intrigues was a speech of the Hungarian Premier, Count Tisza, opposing the Tsar's intervention in favour of peace and virtually inciting Bulgaria to fight it out. The break-up of the Balkan League was the first condition to that Austrian advance on Salonica which has always remained the ideal of the advocates of a forward policy in Vienna and Budapest, and which lies at the root of Austria-Hungary's action in provoking the present war.