It was too late to talk of trialism unless it meant independence, and, when
it meant that, it did not mean Austrian trialism. The treason trial by
which Baron Rauch hoped to split the Serbo-Croat coalition, and which was
to furnish the cause of a war with Serbia on the annexation of Bosnia in
1908, collapsed. It rested on forgeries concocted within the walls of the
Austro-Hungarian legation in Belgrade where Count Forgach held forth. The
annexation of Bosnia in 1908 completed the operation begun in 1878
and called for the completion of the policy of prevention. It was the
forerunner of the press campaign in the first Balkan war, the Prohaska
affair, the attack by Bulgaria upon Serbia and Greece, the rebuff
to Masaryk and Pa[s]i[c], the murder of Francis Ferdinand, and the
Austro-Hungarian note to Serbia. The mysteries connected with the forgeries
and this chain of events will remain a fertile field for detectives and
psychologists and, after that, for historians. For us, it is necessary to
note that, as the hand of Pan-Germanism became more evident, the Slovenes
began to draw nearer to the Croats and the Serbs. It remained only for the
Serbs to electrify the Jugo-Slavs --"to avenge Kossovo with Kumanovo"
--in order to cement their loyalty to the regenerated Serbs. Religious
differences, political rivalries, linguistic quibbles, and the petty
foibles of centuries appeared to be forgotten in the three short years
which elapsed from Kumanovo to the destruction of Serbia in 1915.
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