Hope

Chapter 764: Hope

As time passed, every country's overseas interests continued to expand. Friction and mutual checks and balances among the great powers grew ever more frequent, and much of it arose passively.

Austria wanted to destroy the Ottoman Empire and secure a stable rear area. In the process, its reach had inadvertently extended into Persia, giving it the ability to threaten India.

In overseas colonial endeavors, there were many places where Britain and Austria checked each other. The threats were mutual.

You could move my cheese, and I could take your bread. Everyone was exercising restraint. For example:

Britain's Cape of Good Hope remained unharmed right under Austria's nose; Austrian Alaska bordered Canada, yet no conflict had broken out there either.

Times had changed. Austrian Alaska was no longer a frozen land with nothing in it, but a world-famous source of gold.

Of course, its fame did not mean that local gold production was outrageously high. The main reason was that the colonial government was good at advertising.

If ranked, the world's major gold-producing regions were currently: South Africa, Australia, Canada, the United States, Russia, West Africa, with Alaska only placing seventh.

Austrian Alaska was chiefly known for its harsh climate, and Austrian poets jokingly called it "God's Trial."

The population-starved colonial government of Austrian Alaska simply adopted the phrase as a slogan.

It proclaimed to the outside world: Alaska possessed the gold mines with the harshest natural conditions in the world, a trial God had left for mankind.

Only by enduring the trial set by God could one make a fortune and climb to the pinnacle of life.

Of course, the Russians might not accept the claim of "the harshest natural conditions." The Russian Empire had quite a few gold mines with equally dreadful climates.

Calling it God's