And his judgment had been one of unsparing contempt for small-scale
efforts, of unquestioning respect for the big battalions and full purses.
Over the whole scene of the Balkan territories and their troubled
histories had loomed the commanding magic of the words "the Great
Powers"--even more imposing in their Teutonic rendering, "Die
Grossmachte."
Worshipping power and force and money-mastery as an elderly nerve-ridden
woman might worship youthful physical energy, the comfortable,
plump-bodied cafe-oracle had jested and gibed at the ambitions of the
Balkan kinglets and their peoples, had unloosed against them that battery
of strange lip-sounds that a Viennese employs almost as an auxiliary
language to express the thoughts when his thoughts are not complimentary.
British travellers had visited the Balkan lands and reported high things
of the Bulgarians and their future, Russian officers had taken peeps at
their army and confessed "this is a thing to be reckoned with, and it is
not we who have created it, they have done it by themselves." But over
his cups of coffee and his hour-long games of dominoes the oracle had
laughed and wagged his head and distilled the worldly wisdom of his
castle.
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