But the rulers of Germany knew all the while what
concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigue, lay at the back of what
professors and writers were saying, and were glad to go forward
unmolested, filling the thrones of the Balkan States with German
princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey, developing
plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, and setting their
fires in Persia.
The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single step in the
plan which compassed Europe and Asia from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped
that these demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant to press
them, whether they did or not. For they thought themselves ready for the
final issue of arms. Their plan was to throw a belt of German military
power and political control across the very center of Europe and beyond
the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia, and Austria-Hungary was to be
as much their tool and pawn as Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, or the
ponderous States of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become a
part of the Central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same
forces and influences that originally cemented the German States
themselves.
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