Baron Aehrenthal announced the formal annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Emperor Francis Joseph.

A mistake was made by Garibaldi himself when he wished to postpone the immediate annexation of the Southern Provinces to the Northern Kingdom, and asked to be named Dictator of Naples for two years by Victor Emmanuel, whom he further requested to dismiss Cavour and his actual advisers.

His success in the temporal world, and especially this peaceful annexation of land, wrought so vividly upon the imaginations of his countrymen that three false Prophets arose and three separate bands of devoted fanatics appeared to uphold them.

Under Czardom, he proclaimed, the existence of Turkey was threatened, but now the revolution has made friendship possible, for Russia no longer desires territorial annexation.

The Pasha's army is commanded by French officers, and the annexation of these States to Egypt would be their practical annexation to France.

On the other hand the Hoti and Gruda tribes on the north fiercely resent annexation to Montenegro (which the Great Powers have decreed) and threaten to summon to their support other Malissori tribes with whom they have had a defensive alliance for several centuries.

Serbia, baffled by the simultaneous Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and maddened by the elevation of Bulgaria to the rank of a kingdom (its material progress had hitherto been discounted in Serbian eyes by the fact that it was a mere vassal principality), seemed about to be crushed by the two iron pots jostling it on either side.

They think of internationalism with greedy Great Powers in the background outside the internationalized area, intriguing to create disorder and mischief with ideas of an ultimate annexation.

And so arguing, the Roumanian government claimed as a quid pro quo the adjoining northeastern corner of Bulgaria, permitting Bulgaria to recoup herself by the uncontested annexation of Thrace and Eastern Macedonia.

They have been avoided by her voluntary and peaceful annexation to the United States.

Another reason against the direct annexation of foreign countries lay in the Constitution of the Empire; it would have been easier to annex fresh land to Prussia; this could have been done by the authority of the King; there was, however, no provision by which the Bundesrath could undertake this responsibility, and it probably could not be done even with the assent of the Reichstag unless some change were made in the Constitution.

The plenipotentiaries were in such awe of the vast armies of the Czar, that they were obliged to yield to this wicked annexation; and Polandonce the most powerful of the mediaeval kingdoms of Europewas wiped out of the map of independent nations.

I speak not of forcible annexation, for that cannot be thought of.

It persisted through all the years down to the time of the Teller amendment, in 1898, and there are many who even now regard annexation as inevitable at some future time, more or less distant.

And two other members of those European groupsRussia and Austria-Hungaryhave long been vitally interested in the Balkan question; while the opposition to Servian annexation on the Adriatic littoral and of Greek annexation in Epirus now for the first time reveals the deep concern of Italy in the same question.