Europe's Last Summer (25 page)

Russia was aware that Britain and France had held naval conversations, in the course of which each had disclosed to the other the dispositions they intended to make of their fleets in the event of war. Each was free to change those planned dispositions. The Russians now wanted to be treated on a par with the other two countries: to be full allies.
When Britain held talks with France, Russia wanted to hold such talks too. The Russians told the French of their desire.

On May 13, Asquith's cabinet had authorized holding such conversations. The ranking serving officer of the British fleet,
Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, came over to Paris to meet with the Russians some weeks later. Further talks were contemplated, but were obviated by the outbreak of war.

The news leaked out. Questions were asked in Parliament. In reply, Sir Edward Grey reiterated an earlier statement by the Prime Minister that "if war arose between European Powers, there were no unpublished agreements which would restrict or hamper the freedom of the Government, or of Parliament, to decide whether or not Great Britain should participate in a war."

As Grey writes in his memoirs, "The answer given is absolutely true. The criticism to which it is open is, that it did not answer the question put to me. That is undeniable." But, argues Grey, government officials do not habitually make full public disclosure of confidential documents regarding their armed forces.

According to Grey, the Russians overstated the importance of the conversations Britain held with the French. His information was that three secret letters from Russian sources were obtained by the German authorities. These letters suggested that Grey had withheld material information. Given Grey's character and his reputation for truthfulness, if these intercepted letters had been accurate, his lack of candor as seen through skeptical German eyes must have been a source of genuine alarm. For whatever reason, the Germans worried greatly about those talks.

For all of its dangers, the strategy of striking Serbia so quickly as to produce a
fait accompli,
in the view of Bethmann, its author, was the only plausible road out of a situation in which the other Great Powers might turn against Germany and Austria. And this strategy had not been employed. The Austrians had not even tried it.

The Chancellor (according to his confidant) brooded. He reflected on the mistakes Germany had made in foreign policy since the dismissal of Bismarck. Germany had alienated Russia, France, and Britain, making enemies of all of them without
weakening
any of them.

• • •

In England, the foreign secretary professed optimism about the
Austro-Serbian dispute. Sir Edward Grey was perhaps the only member of the cabinet who had reason to realize early on that the Balkan situation was serious. He had been alerted by the strongly pro-
British German ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowsky. As early as July 6, Lichnowsky warned Grey that Austria would take a hard line on the Sarajevo matter, and would have Germany's blessing and backing in doing so.

Grey considered working with Germany to restrain Austria. Later, he urged Austria and Russia to hold talks to resolve their differences. Grey did not display any great concern; the Foreign Office showed less. As reported by the German ambassador in London, Grey "believed that a peaceful solution would be reached." He urged moderation, and stressed the importance of Austria proving that the accusations made against Serbia were true.

Britain, too, was in the grip of passions at home, occasioned by the question of what to do with Ireland. The British remained oblivious to danger from abroad. External threats seemed to be evaporating. "The spring and summer of 1914 were marked in Europe by an exceptional tranquility," Winston Churchill, England's civilian chief of the navy department, later remembered. The thirty-nine-year-old boy wonder of English politics was an activist—even an adventurous—First Lord of the Admiralty, yet he looked ahead to calm waters.

Churchill was not then the imposing figure whom the later twentieth century revered. He had risen far and fast in politics, but was regarded as something of an upstart by his cabinet colleagues, almost all of whom were a decade or more older. He seemed always to be in the headlines and in the limelight. His energy was boundless— enough to exhaust those around him, and even in the cabinet he would never stop talking. He was enthusiastic to the point of childishness. Yet his gifts were undeniable. Even then, it could be seen that he had talent; only decades later would it be seen that he also had genius.

In 1914 he was applying his abilities to the seemingly hopeless question of Ireland. As he later wrote: "The strange calm of the European situation contrasted with the rising fury of party conflict at home." As it became clear that Home Rule for Ireland would finally be enacted, Liberals and Conservatives became caught up in the blood feud of their respective clients, the Catholics of the south of Ireland and the Protestants of the north: the Ulstermen. Both sides recruited and trained paramilitary formations. Ulster purchased arms in quantity from Germany, and war equipment for rival militias was reported to be illegally imported from abroad.

Overwhelmed by events, London ordered troop reinforcements and naval support. Understandably, "the military commanders, seeing themselves confronted with what might be the opening movements in a civil war, began to study plans of a much more serious character." The complication was that the officer corps in the British army was disproportionately drawn from Protestant Ulster, and it could be speculated that the army, at least in part, might back Northern Ireland and the Unionist party against Asquith's Liberal government. "These shocking events caused an explosion of unparalleled fury in Parliament and shook the State to its foundations," writes Churchill. "We cannot read the debates that continued at intervals through April, May, and June, without wondering that our Parliamentary institutions were strong enough to survive the passions by which they were convulsed. Was it astonishing that German agents reported and German statesmen believed, that England was paralysed by faction and drifting into civil war, and need not be taken into account as a factor in the European situation?"

On July 20,
King George V convened an all-party conference to assemble at Buckingham Palace the following day. On the twenty-first he opened the meeting with a brief statement. He pointed to the dangers that had led him to convene the conference. "The trend," King George said, "has been surely and steadily toward an appeal to force, and today the cry of Civil War is on the lips of the most responsible and sober-minded of my people." He appealed to the party leaders to arrive at some peaceful compromise.

The conference did indeed show the differences to be narrow, but they remained intractable nonetheless. The conference broke down, and the conferees disbanded Friday morning, July 24. According to the Prime Minister, King George "came in, rather é
motionné,
and said in two sentences . . . farewell, I am sorry, and I thank you."

That afternoon, cabinet members assembled and went back to work on a proposed definition of the border between Home Rule Ireland and British Northern Ireland. When they had finished their deliberations, Sir Edward Grey turned their attention to the Serbian crisis.

CHAPTER 30: PRESENTING
AN ULTIMATUM

There had been an ominous semi-break in communication between Austria and Serbia since the Outrage; for all practical purposes they were not talking to one another, or at least not very much. The Austrian investigation of the murders was being conducted in secret, and while all but one of Princip's band were swiftly taken into custody, the proceedings against them moved forward in weeks, or indeed months, rather than days.

Meanwhile (since the common assumption was that Serbia was in some part to blame) Serbia awaited with dread whatever punishment was being prepared or proposed. From sources in London the
Serbian government heard on July 17 that "a kind of indictment is being prepared" for "alleged complicity in the conspiracy which led to the assassination of the Archduke." From Vienna came the rumor on July 20 that Austria was preparing to go to war.

The Serbian population was the reverse of helpful to its government in this respect. They showed no remorse, while the opposition press gave every sign of being pleased by the killings.

To outsiders, the Serbian government seemed unwise in not making at least a show of energetically pursuing those who had aided the killers. True, the two main criminals were Austrian subjects; true, they were being tried in an Austrian judicial proceeding which had not yet concluded. However, the real reason for Serbian inaction may have been that the government had much to conceal. If it became known, for example, that Pasic had learned of the death plot in time to have averted it—if indeed that was the case—the Prime Minister would have been condemned by the Black Hand for warning Vienna, however feebly, and by Austria for not having warned effectively enough. Indeed, if Pasic had let the truth come out in any investigation commissioned or sanctioned by him, the Black Hand might well have killed him.

Moreover, Serbian elections were scheduled for August 14. Pasic had to campaign as a fiery nationalist. The country was in no position to stand up to the Hapsburg Empire, but if Pasic let the electorate know that he was willing to make concessions or compromises in order to avert a conflict, he was likely to lose votes. He somehow had to perform the impossible feat of moving in two opposite directions at once.

Baron Giesl von Gieslingen,
Austro-Hungarian minister to Serbia, telephoned the Serbian foreign ministry on Thursday morning, July 23, out of courtesy. He wished to alert the Serbian government that between four and five he would be delivering an important message to the Prime Minister.

Giesl then received a cable from his own government concerning the mistake that Jagow had caught: the French leaders would not yet have left St. Petersburg. He was ordered to postpone his delivery time to 6:00 p.m.

When Giesl finally arrived, it was to find that the Serbian Prime Minister was not in Belgrade; he was out of town, campaigning for votes in the election—or at least so he said.
Pacu, Serbian minister of finance, was delegated to act in the Prime Minister's absence. But Pacu did not speak French, the language of diplomacy. It therefore would not be possible for Giesl to communicate with him.

The secretary general of the foreign office,
Slavko Grvic, stepped in to translate. But Pacu, faced with the document being served upon him, refused to accept it. Giesl placed it on the table and told Pacu to do what he wanted with it, and then left.

When Giesl departed, Pacu and his colleagues tried to get in touch with Pasic. It took about two hours. Over the telephone his associates then summarized for the Prime Minister the harsh terms of the document that Giesl had served upon them. (See Appendix 1, pp. 307–12, for the Austrian note in full.) Pasic decided to return by train promptly, and called a meeting of the cabinet in Belgrade the next morning at 5:00 a.m. Nicolai Hartwig, the Russian envoy upon whose advice the Serbians generally relied, had died two weeks before and had not yet been replaced; the Serbs were on their own.

The cabinet ministers met all day, through the night, and then all through the following day. Urgency was imposed upon them, for the Dual Monarchy's note demanded a reply within forty-eight hours. Pasic turned to other governments for counsel and help, but there the time was even shorter: Hapsburg couriers had delivered copies of the note to the powers only the morning of July 24.

And without even waiting for a reply, on July 23 the Hapsburg army had opened its war book: its outline of administrative measures and its designation of responsibilities that would come into effect on commencement of hostilities.

The news arrived in London in time for the cabinet meeting that had been devoted to trying to pick up the pieces of the failed Buckingham Palace conference on Ireland. The differences between the two sides, according to Winston Churchill, had been reduced to a question of the boundaries of two Irish counties, Fermanagh and Tyrone. But on this question there was a hopeless deadlock, and a civil war threatened.

In the oft-quoted lines of Churchill:

The discussion had reached its inconclusive end, and the Cabinet was about to separate, when the quiet grave tones of Sir Edward Grey's voice were heard reading a document which had just been brought to him from the Foreign Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia. He had been reading or speaking for several minutes before I could disengage my mind from the tedious and bewildering debate which had just closed. . . . This note was clearly an ultimatum; but it was an ultimatum such as had never been penned in modern times. As the reading proceeded it seemed absolutely impossible that any State in the world could accept it, or that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the aggressor. The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began . . . to fall upon the map of Europe.

It was the first time that month that the cabinet had heard mention of foreign policy. Churchill was one of only two in the cabinet other than the Prime Minister alerted by Grey in advance of the meeting.

During the meeting, as was his custom, Prime Minister Asquith wrote a letter to his confidante,
Venetia Stanley. He told her that the European situation "is just about as bad as it can possibly be. Austria has sent a bullying and humiliating ultimatum to Serbia, who cannot possibly comply with it, and demanded an answer within forty-eight hours—failing which she will march. This means, almost inevitably, that Russia will come on the scene in defence of Serbia and in defiance of Austria; and if so, it is difficult both for Germany and France to refrain from lending a hand to one side or the other. So that we are in measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon."