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i9i4] AIMS OF RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY
an agglomeration of independent States which would be
obliged by the force of circumstances to form a
confederation, naturally under the auspices and presidency
of Russia; this confederation extending from the
Carpathians to Constantinople and from Danzig to the
Adriatic, embracing Orthodox countries—because Russia
is Orthodox; Slav countries—because Russia is Slav;
and finally ;the Hungarians—because they could not
exist otherwise. That was the programme! How
would the immense, complex and somewhat amorphous
Russian Empire carry out this new and grand political
duty ? How would she bear the displacement of her
centre of gravity towards the south-west? How would
the whole of Europe view a state of affairs which would
give Russia political domination over the largest half of
the European continent ? Such questions did not exist
for our politicians in editorial offices, in ministerial
smoking-rooms, in political boudoirs and archbishops’
salons. " We have defeated perfidious Austria, we will
now defeat domineering Germany, and our good allies
will only be too pleased at our final and complete
triumph !"
Formerly Russian diplomacy—so much disparaged
—would have gone against these chimerical hopes and
these dangerous illusions; and the Court would have
upheld it—though secretly—conscious of the hidden
shoals and the dangers of so great an extension of
frontiers and of such a sudden upheaval of the whole
European system. But now our diplomacy had changed
and had acquired a new mentality. Having been for
some years in quest of the support of the Press and of
public opinion, it would never have opposed the
aspirations of that opinion and that Press; nor would it
ever have proposed or conceived such an unexpected
and original solution as that of an immediate and
complete agreement with Austria-Hungary. And even
if it had conceived and proposed it, it would never have
succeeded in obtaining the sanction of the Monarch to
such a proposition.
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