This very unpreparedness, however, rendered still less excusable her treatment of the Irredentist agitation, which brought her within a hairs-breadth of a conflict with Austria.
His administration of the war department during the Spanish-American War was severely criticized for extravagance in army contracts, for unpreparedness, and for general inefficiency, charges which he answered in his The Spanish-American War (1901).
In view, however, of the unpreparedness of the Swedish army and the difficulties of the situation, Charles was forced to observe a strict neutrality.
Other Greek statesmen, and notably Tricoupis, had worked for a Balkan League but failed, partly, no doubt, owing to adverse circumstances, but partly also because of Greek unpreparedness for war and of the inflexibility of the Greek claims. Venizelos was, it is true, favoured by circumstances - the Balkan races just then had been drawn together in self-defence against the newly fledged tyranny of the Young Turks in Macedonia and Thrace, while the military revolt of 1909 had swept the Greek political stage clear of nearly all the corrupt parties, that hitherto had blocked the wheels of the nation's progress.