By the spring of 1913, the diplomatic representatives of the Allied Danube States made no secret of the relations in which their Governments stood to the Tsar's Foreign Office. The Balkan League was put through by Russian influence and Russia controlled its diplomacy. Serbia was as completely the instrument of Russia as Poland is now the instrument of France. "If the Austrian troops invade Balkan territory," wrote Baron Beyens on 4 April, 1913, "it would give cause for Russia to intervene, and might let loose a universal war." Now, if Germany had been plotting "with ruthless, cynical determination," as Mr. Lloyd George said, against the peace of Europe, what inconceivable stupidity for her not to push Austria along rather than do everything possible to hold her back! Why give Russia the benefit of eighteen months of valuable time for the feverish campaign of "preparedness" that she carried on? Those eighteen months meant a great deal. In February, 1914, the Tsar arranged to provide the Serbian army with rifles and artillery, Serbia agreeing to put half a million soldiers in the field. In the same month Russia negotiated a French loan of about $100 million for improvements on her strategic railways and frontier-roads. During the spring, she made "test" mobilizations of large bodies of troops which were never demobilized, and these "test" mobilizations continued down to the outbreak of the war; and in April Russian agents made technical arrangements with agents of the British and French Admiralties for possible combined naval action.
Yes, those eighteen months were very busy months for Russia. True, she came out at the end of them an "unprepared and unsuspecting" nation, presumably, for was not all Europe unprepared and unsuspecting? Is it not so nominated in the Versailles treaty? One can not help wondering, however, how it is that Germany, "carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clandestinely planning in every detail" a murderous attack on the peace of Europe, should have given Russia the inestimable advantage of those eighteen months.
