ABSTRACT
In Austria, the German, Czech, Slovenian, Polish, and other nationalities were fighting one another without rest, after Taaffe’s attempt to pacify them had failed in 1893; this rendered all parliamentary activity difficult and almost impossible. The “European concert” was not equal to the European mission of civilization, and because of the discordant interests of its components proved itself, in kind, impotent towards Turkey, notwithstanding the horror aroused in Europe in 1876 by the atrocities in Bulgaria and in 1894 and 1896 by those in Armenia, and notwithstanding the fact that a statesman, Gladstone, had called the Sultan the “great assassin.” The internal beginning of disequilibrium in European equilibrium came from another conflict of far greater import than all the others that had existed so far, because it no longer concerned particular increases of power and dominion, but nothing less than the leadership of Europe and of the world: the conflict between Germany and England.
