Russia's population is three times
as large as ours and it was not with a light heart that our Emperor-King
took his final resolution. But our national honor and our very existence
as a self-respecting power were at stake. We could not hesitate. Now we
are in a struggle for life or death and we mean to carry it through with
full confidence in the rightfulness of our cause and in the force of our
arms. In one respect events have already belied the calculations of our
enemies, who counted on internal dissensions within our own borders. I
am happy to say that Croatians, Slovenes, and a large majority of our
own Servians are fighting in our ranks with the same valor and
enthusiasm as Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, Magyars, and Germans.
But why did Russia decide to assail us? During the whole nineteenth
century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress
of Servia. She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own
aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it
served her ends. It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of
the Berlin Congress, and it remained so until with the advent of the
present dynasty Servia offered a sure prospect of becoming and remaining
a permanent tool in Russia's hands and a thorn in our flesh.
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