Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.

Comment during the Congress of Berlin in 1878, as quoted in "European Diary" by Andrei Navrozov, in Chronicles Vol. 32 (2008)