At the Austrian Embassy, a staff member of around thirty reported, "Your Excellency, this is the intelligence we have gathered recently.
"Of particular note, while Marquis McLean was visiting, Crow, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the British Foreign Office, entered the French Embassy at the same time.
"The two held talks in a sealed room. No one knows the specifics. Our preliminary assessment is that their discussion was related to the Near East War, with a fifty-percent chance that it also touched upon German unification."
Drawing Austria in to check France, then drawing France in to check Austria; using the Anglo-French-Austrian Triple Alliance to preserve stability on the European Continent and consolidate their position as world hegemon—that was British foreign policy.
Hummel was not the least bit surprised by the British contact with the French. The British wanted to preserve the Ottoman Empire as a nail in place, while the Vienna Government was also prepared to leave that rotten empire intact and slowly shear its wool.
If the Ottoman Empire were truly beaten to death in one stroke, Austria would not be able to swallow that piece of meat either. When the time came for the European powers to carve it up together, it would not only ruin the Vienna Government's deception strategy, but also let Britain and France into their own backyard.
"Unifying the German lands" was fine as a slogan, but anyone who took it seriously had already lost. As a senior government official, Hummel knew perfectly well that the Vienna Government was not prepared to unify the German lands.
Hummel nodded. "Leave the documents here. I'll find time to read them. Keep watching the British for now. I have a feeling this is not so simple."
Everything had gone too smoothly—so smoothly that Hummel could obtain the result