July 1914: Countdown to War (34 page)

I
N
L
ONDON
,
AS
S
AZONOV MUST HAVE KNOWN
, Ireland was still dominating the news cycle. On Sunday, following the arrival of a shipment of Mauser rifles in Dublin harbor, a melee had developed that saw British troops fire into a “crowd of stone-throwing Dubliners”; the clash had left three dead and thirty-six wounded. This was far bigger news on Fleet Street than the unfolding Balkan crisis or murky events in distant Russia, about which even Britain’s government remained unaware. As the
Times
reported on Monday, “there can no longer be the slightest doubt that the country is now confronted with one of the greatest crises in the history of the British race”—the possibility of a civil war over Home Rule, that is, not a European war breaking out. To the extent that Prime Minister Asquith gave thought to the Balkan crisis at all, he saw it as possibly “a good thing,” as it had the potential to distract the public from Ireland. He seems first to have suspected that it might
not
be a good thing on Tuesday evening, 28 July, when he was told by officials from the House of Rothschild that the French government was dumping her London securities. While he found the news “ominous,” Asquith apparently did not bother to enquire about why France’s government was doing this.
¹⁸
Sir Edward Grey, in charge of foreign policy, was of course following the crisis as closely as he could, but it was still not closely enough. As late as four
PM
on Tuesday, he instructed Sir Edward Goschen, his ambassador in Berlin, to promote “the direct exchange of views between Austria and Russia,” not realizing, because of the sloth of his diplomats, that (1) Austria was already at war with Serbia, and (2) Russia had begun premobilizing secretly against both Austria-Hungary and Germany three days previously and would begin at least “partial” mobilization as soon as Petersburg learned that Austria was at war with Serbia. Five hours after a Balkan war had begun, Grey was still telling Goschen that “as long as there is a prospect of that [peaceful mediation]
taking place, I would suspend every other suggestion.”
¹⁹
Goschen was not enjoined to exert any pressure on the Germans to restrain Austria (nor, it goes almost without saying, did Grey expect Buchanan to restrain the Russians). Grey would learn only around eight
PM
on Tuesday evening that Austria had declared war on Serbia, and he would remain in the dark about Russia’s ongoing mobilization measures through the night. Another day had come and gone, this one the most decisive yet—and Grey’s dawdling diplomacy had left Britain impotent to influence events.

The only official in London who seems to have sensed the mounting danger was Churchill. Without consulting Grey, much less his even less belligerent Liberal colleagues in the cabinet (although he did inform Asquith, from whom he received “a sort of grunt” implying approval), at five
PM
on Tuesday Churchill ordered the First Fleet to proceed northwards to its war station at Scapa Flow, passing through the Straits of Dover under cover of darkness. Even this measure, however, was not taken until the early hours of Wednesday morning.
²⁰
It thus could have had no deterrent effect on Germany or Austria on Tuesday.

In Paris, the general public remained just as oblivious to ongoing events in the Balkans—and Russia—as were the British. On Tuesday, everyone was far more preoccupied with the conclusion of the trial of Mme Caillaux. Caillaux’s lawyer laid his case on temporary insanity and lack of premeditation. In a curious closing argument, he admonished the courtroom to “save [y]our anger for the enemy outside. . . . War is at the gates. . . . Acquit Mme Caillaux.” The jury agreed: innocent! It was this stunning verdict, along with the “ferocious melee of shouts” on the streets that followed (“Vive Caillaux!” “Death to Caillaux!”)—not Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia, much less Russia’s accelerating mobilization measures, that would dominate French headlines on Wednesday morning.
²¹

In Potsdam, meanwhile, Bethmann was humbled once again by his sovereign, who was livid when he learned of Austria’s declaration of war. Summoning his chancellor to the palace after hearing the news on Tuesday afternoon, Kaiser Wilhelm issued another stinging rebuke: “You have got me into a fine mess.” Seeking to undo the damage wrought by Austrian recklessness, he ordered Bethmann to lean on Vienna to negotiate with Russia, even if it was necessary that the Austrian army occupy Belgrade to satisfy her honor.
²²

Bethmann was in a foul mood when he returned to Berlin on Tuesday evening. Lichnowsky’s latest depressing dispatch from London was on his desk. While this one, at least, contained no new, biased, British mediation initiatives, the news was still not good. Even while Lichnowsky, carrying out standing instructions from Berlin, was reassuring Grey that Austria had no territorial designs on Serbia, Austria’s ambassador to Britain, Count Mensdorff, was telling Lichnowsky that Austria was resolved on war so that Serbia could be “flattened” (the German word Mensdorff used was the colorful
niedergebegelt
) and then “carved up” by the Balkan jackal states (if, that is, Austria did not take her share). As Bethmann knew, by the time he read this that Austria had gone ahead and declared war, this revelation crystallized his frustrations with Vienna. “The ambiguity on the part of Austria,” he scribbled on Lichnowsky’s report, “is intolerable. To us they refuse information about their program and expressly say that Count Hoyos’s remarks about a partitioning of Serbia were purely personal; in St. Petersburg they are lambs without evil intentions and in London their embassy talks of giving away Serbian territory to Bulgaria and Albania.”
²³

It is easy to sympathize with the chancellor’s exasperation. When he (following the kaiser’s lead) had signed the blank check, he could not have imagined the unpredictable, self-defeating twists and turns that Austrian policy would take. As Bethmann wrote at ten fifteen on Tuesday night to Ambassador
Tschirschky in Vienna, Pašić’s conciliatory reply to the ultimatum “met the Austrian demands in so considerable a measure that a completely intransigent attitude on the part of the Austro-Hungarian government would bring about a gradual revulsion of public opinion all over Europe.” Berchtold, by declaring war unilaterally, had taken just such an “intransigent attitude.” And for what purpose? Conrad himself, Bethmann reminded Tschirschky, had informed Berlin that “active military measures against Serbia will not be possible before 12 August.” Germany had thus been “placed in the extraordinarily difficult position of finding itself exposed to proposals for mediation and conferences from the other cabinets, and if it persists in its previous reserve toward such proposals, the odium of having caused a world war will fall on [Germany]
even in the eyes of the German people
.” It was thus imperative, Bethmann told Tschirschky, that Austria begin negotiating with Russia and assure Sazonov as unequivocally as possible that “territorial gains in Serbia are remote from its thoughts and that its military measures are aimed purely at a temporary occupation of Belgrade and other definite points on Serbian territory in order to force the Serbian government into full compliance (
völliger Erfüllung
) with Austrian demands. . . . As soon as Austrian demands are met, evacuation will follow.”
²⁴
If Russia did not go along with this, then she, and not Germany, would be perceived as the power disturbing the peace—or so Bethmann hoped.

There was an element of desperation about this “Halt in Belgrade” proposal, as the German initiative soon came to be known. While Bethmann and the kaiser both bore heavy responsibility for having encouraged Austrian recklessness, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their dismay at learning that Austria had declared war on Serbia two weeks before she was ready to fight her. In signing the blank check, both men had known that they were
risking
war if Russia intervened on
Serbia’s behalf, and yet neither man had wished, or intended, for this intervention actually to come to pass. They had unquestioningly trusted in their ally’s diplomatic competence, only to watch Berchtold make one wrong move after another. It was getting late, but perhaps it was not too late to rein Austria in.

There was a crucial difference, however, between the way the kaiser and his chancellor wanted to go about doing this. In his letter to Jagow written at ten
AM
Tuesday morning, Wilhelm had made clear that he thought “the few reservations made by Serbia on single points” in Pašić’s reply to the ultimatum “can in my opinion well be cleared up by negotiation.” This would be asking a great deal of the Austrians, of course: although Conrad and the army might still satisfy honor with a “temporary” occupation of Belgrade, Berchtold would be forced to swallow his pride and back down on a major point of principle. By contrast, Bethmann’s instructions to Tschirschky stipulated that the Austrian occupation “force the Serbian government
into full compliance with Austrian demands
,” implying that it was Pašić, not Berchtold, who would have to back down. Whether or not Bethmann understood this, the distinction was fundamental. Any small chance that the Russians would acquiesce in a “temporary” occupation of Belgrade would surely vanish once Sazonov learned that there would be no real negotiation over the terms of Serbia’s compliance with the Austrian ultimatum.

Russian acquiescence was rendered more improbable still by Bethmann’s strange decision not to issue any warnings to Russia on Tuesday about her ongoing mobilization measures, as Berchtold had requested him to do on Monday, hoping that the threat of German countermeasures would put the fear of God in Sazonov. Perhaps wishing to spite the Austrians for putting Germany in such an impossible position, Bethmann informed Vienna that “a categorical declaration at St. Petersburg would seem today to be premature” and made no effort to follow up on the disquieting reports of Pourtalès and Eggeling
from Petersburg.
²⁵
The chancellor did let the Russians, French, and British know—via a telegram to his ambassadors sent off at nine
PM
—that he now favored direct talks between Austria and Russia, hoping that this assurance, coupled with his muffling of German protests against Russia’s mobilization measures, would convince Sazonov to parley. Why Sazonov would want to do so after Austria had already declared war—and on the basis of a subsequent Austrian occupation of Belgrade, without any hint of Austrian concessions on the terms of Serbia’s reply to the ultimatum—was left unclear.

In fact Bethmann did not even spell out the terms of his “Halt in Belgrade” plan in his nine
PM
telegram circular; rather he spoke only in the vaguest sense of Austrian-Russian talks and claimed speciously that Vienna’s declaration of war “changes matters not at all” (
ändert hieran nichts
).
²⁶
This was hardly the way to impress Grey—much less Sazonov or the French—that Bethmann was serious about mediating at Vienna. Thus Bethmann in Berlin, not unlike Berchtold in Vienna, settled on the most incompetent policy possible: demanding concessions from Russia rather than offering them himself, while undermining his own leverage by refusing to warn Petersburg that Germany would respond to Russia’s secret mobilization. He had gotten his carrots and sticks backwards.

Unaware of his chancellor’s latest policy blunders, Kaiser Wilhelm II sat down in the Neues Palais on Tuesday evening to edit an urgent telegram to Tsar Nicholas II. Although addressed from “Willy” to “Nicky,” in the familiar style in which the sovereigns addressed one another, the message was actually drafted first by Wilhelm von Stumm, the political director at the Wilhelmstrasse, under Bethmann’s supervision. Mildly suspicious as to what his chancellor was up to, the kaiser did insist on several changes that softened the tone. He rewrote the key line personally: “I am exerting my utmost influence,” Willy promised Nicky, “to induce the Austrians to deal straightly to arrive at a
satisfactory understanding with you.” He signed off, “your very sincere and devoted friend and cousin Willy.”
²⁷

Unbeknownst to the kaiser, Nicky was writing his own sovereign-to-sovereign telegram almost simultaneously. The tsar had been having second thoughts ever since inaugurating the Period Preparatory to War on Saturday. On Monday, he had come up with his own mediation idea, proposing to Sazonov that the Austrian-Serbian dispute be submitted to arbitration by the Hague Tribunal. Sazonov had simply ignored the tsar’s suggestion, hoping that his simple-minded sovereign would forget about it. Nevertheless, Sazonov was unable to prevent the tsar from intervening in his own way, appealing directly to Willy to pull back the Austrians. “An ignoble war,” Nicholas wrote, “has been declared to a weak country. The indignation in Russia shared by me is enormous. I foresee that very soon I shall be overwhelmed by the pressure brought upon me and be forced to take extreme measures which will lead to war. To try to avoid such a calamity as a European war, I beg you in the name of our old friendship to do what you can to stop your allies [e.g., Austria-Hungary] from going too far.”
²⁸