July 1914: Countdown to War (45 page)

Having thus sent messages urging moderation to Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin, Grey and Asquith had covered their flank with the Little Englanders before the start of the cabinet meeting. But they still had to satisfy the interventionists, foremost among them Churchill. Over the past few days, the bellicose first lord had made overtures to Conservative and Unionist opposition leaders,
*
in case the Liberal cabinet split over the war. Churchill had once been a Conservative and still had good contacts in the party. Among them was F. E. Smith (the future
Lord Birkenhead), who assured him on Friday night that he “was unreservedly for standing by France and Belgium.” After consulting with Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative opposition, Smith had given Churchill a written assurance that, “on the assumption (which we understand to be certain) that Germany contemplates a violation of Belgian neutrality—the Government can rely on the support of the Unionist Party in whatever manner that support can be most effectively given.”
¹³
Churchill had then showed this note to Asquith.

During the cabinet meeting, Churchill quietly passed notes to David Lloyd George, the chancellor of the Exchequer, who had served him as a mentor in the Liberal Party. Although leaning against intervention, Lloyd George had not yet made up his mind. Churchill “implored” him to “come and bring your mighty aid to the discharge of our duty.” The question of war or peace, he told Lloyd George, “is our whole future—comrades—or opponents.” Having thus staked out his position and won over (so he hoped) the prime minister and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill summoned all his “daemonic energy” and demanded “the immediate calling out of the Fleet Reserves and the completion of our naval preparations.” The cabinet said no. Churchill issued forth a “torrent of rhetoric,” which Asquith judged to have lasted over an hour. The cabinet still said no.
¹⁴

To give succor to Churchill and the interventionists, Grey warned everyone that he would resign if, as Lord Morley and the Little Englander faction he led desired, “an out-and-out and uncompromising policy of non-intervention at all costs is adopted.” The implications were clear: because Asquith and Churchill would almost certainly follow, Grey’s resignation would bring down the government. Not even Morley wanted to risk this yet. Still, the cabinet remained deadlocked. There was no support for Churchill’s belligerent stance, but none to force a vote on unconditional neutrality either.
¹⁵

The deciding issue, it seemed, would be Belgian neutrality. While a hard core of Liberal MPs in Parliament were pushing a motion that afternoon that England should stay out of war “whatever happened in Belgium,” the noninterventionists in the cabinet were not so sure. Morley did not like the idea of intervening on behalf of Belgium, but he admitted that the matter was tricky. “There was,” he recalled of this historic cabinet session, “a general, but vague, assent to our liabilities under the Treaty of 1839, but there was no assent to the employment of a land force.” At some point in the discussion of the Belgian issue, Grey saw his opportunity. He asked permission to address a warning to Lichnowsky that if Germany was unable to give the same guarantee on Belgium that France had, “it would be very hard to restrain public feeling in this country.”
¹⁶
It was an odd sort of warning: threatening Germany with the wrath of English public opinion. But it offered Grey a possible way out of the cabinet impasse. He seized it.

Back in Paris, the cabinet meeting had been interrupted at eleven
AM
, when Ambassador Schoen arrived at the Quai d’Orsay to demand an answer as to French neutrality in a Russo-German war. Viviani was dispatched to give the reply that was prearranged by the cabinet on Friday evening: “France will act in accordance with her interests.” Schoen could not have been in much doubt as to what this meant, but still, he had to ask. “I confess,” he said, “that my question is rather naive. But, after all, do you not have a treaty of alliance [with Russia]?” Viviani replied, again ambiguously: “So it would appear” (
Évidemment
). Seeking some kind of answer that could be interpreted unambiguously in Berlin, Schoen pressed again, but all that Viviani would tell him was that “he regards situation as changed since yesterday.” As to
what
had changed, he informed Schoen that “Sir Ed. Grey’s proposal that all sides cease military preparations has been accepted by Russia in principle and that Austria-Hungary has
announced that she will not infringe Serbian integrity and sover-eignty.”
¹⁷
The latter statement was true; the former “revelation”—that Russia had agreed to cease military preparations—was utterly false, although Schoen did not know this.

It was an impressive performance by Viviani, who seemed to be warming to his role as foreign minister for the first time. He had given away nothing, while throwing a good deal of diplomatic smoke in the air. As Viviani himself noted in his own report of the encounter that he sent to France’s ambassadors, Baron Schoen had answered “that he did not know the developments which had taken place in this matter in the last twenty-four hours, that there was in them perhaps a ‘glimmer of hope’ for some arrangement . . . and that he was going to get information.”
¹⁸
In any case, the German ambassador was nonplussed enough by Viviani’s ambiguous answers that he did not ask for his passports. Viviani’s misleading remarks, relayed by Schoen to Berlin, left the Germans guessing a little longer as to French intentions.

Viviani may still have been harboring doubts himself. It is not entirely clear from the record when the pacifist-minded premier finally shifted toward belligerence. Judging from his refusal to issue even halfhearted warnings about Russian mobilization on Friday, 31 July, or to press harder for mediation with Austria, he may have given up hope for peace by then. This shift, however, may have been more in the line of passive resignation than active conversion to belligerence. Viviani had not, after all, agreed to order mobilization on Friday night. Nor had he done so in the Saturday morning cabinet meeting, despite the welcome news from Italy.

Whether or not he had made up his mind beforehand, Viviani’s last resistance crumbled following his encounter with Schoen. The hostile audience may have gotten his blood up, or it may have simply confirmed suspicions he already harbored about German intentions. According to Joffre, when Viviani “returned
to his seat” at the cabinet meeting, “he was now fully convinced that I was right, and in face of the dangerous preparations already made by the Germans, he was ready to sign the order for general mobilization.”
¹⁹
Viviani’s only condition was that he and Poincaré draft a manifesto to the French people, explaining why the decision was made (i.e., for purely defensive reasons), insisting on national unity and the setting aside of party differences, and arguing—with an eye on the British public and government—that “
mobilization is not war
.” France’s general mobilization order was signed into law by Poincaré, Viviani, Messimy, and the naval minister.
²⁰

At three thirty
PM
, Messimy’s aide, General Ebener, along with two officers delegated to deliver the order to the telegraph office, arrived at Rue Saint-Domingue to perform their duty. Messimy handed them the mobilization order “in dry-throated silence.” Everyone, he recalled, “conscious of the gigantic and infinite results to spread from that little piece of paper . . . felt our hearts tighten.”
²¹
At three forty-five
PM
, the order was delivered to the central telegraph office in Paris and swiftly dispatched to all military commanders.

At four
PM
, the first mobilization placards went up in Paris. Orchestras across the city played “The Marseillaise,” alongside the Russian and, as if in plaintive hope, British national anthems. Contributing to the air of gaiety, the boulevards were empty of cars—Messimy had already requisitioned them for the army. Crowds of patriotic Frenchmen glided through the streets. Reservists were seen marching to the Gare de l’Est, from where they would embark for the frontier, as French civilians waved and cheered. English and other foreign tourists mobbed the Gare du Nord, hoping to get out of France before the war began. The trains, one Briton recalled, were “packed to suffocation point.” Raymond Recouly recalled the moment when a “small blue paper” announcing mobilization was posted: “An innumerable crowd surged to and fro. ‘Mobilization is not war’ said M. Poincaré in his message to the people. To tell the truth no one believed him. If it was not war, it was certainly something terribly near to it.”
²²

Soldiers on leave re-joining their garrisons in Paris as France mobilizes in 1914.
Source: Getty Images.

Viviani himself had a similar premonition. Just before four
PM
, he called on Messimy to ask whether mobilization could be postponed a little longer. The only news he had received since midday was a message from Paléologue claiming that Germany would order mobilization on Sunday. This confirmation that a terrible war was about to begin may have stirred Viviani’s conscience.
*
To his regret, Messimy replied that “the order had already
gone and that the first measures were being carried out. It was too late, the mechanism had been set in motion.”
²³

I
N
B
ERLIN
, B
ETHMANN WAS CLINGING
to hopes just as forlorn as Viviani’s. Although Germany’s ultimatum deadline to Russia would expire only at noon, when he awoke on Saturday morning Bethmann received a preliminary reply that was not encouraging. Ambassador Pourtalès, after receiving the ultimatum at 11:10
PM
, had presented it to Sazonov at midnight. The Russian foreign minister repeated his exhortation of two nights previously, that “it was impossible on technical grounds to stop [Russia’s] war preparations.” Playing for time, Sazonov insisted that “the meaning of Russian mobilization could not be compared to [Germany’s],” the implication being that it could stop short of war.
²⁴

Bethmann was not impressed by Sazonov’s sophistry about general mobilization not meaning war. Addressing the Bundesrat Saturday morning—a higher parliamentary body whose endorsement, unlike the Reichstag’s, was constitutionally necessary before a declaration of war—the chancellor informed the deputies that “Russia tries to make out that her mobilization is not to be regarded as an act of hostility against us.” Meanwhile, he informed the Bundesrat, France was also undertaking serious war preparations. If Germany took Sazonov’s assurance at face value, Bethmann warned, she would “lose advantage of our greater speed of mobilization, putting us then in danger of having, in the immediate future, fully mobilized, battle-ready armies on our eastern and western frontiers,” ready to take “entire provinces of East Prussia, even while, in the West, the Rhineland was endangered.” For this reason, the chancellor informed the Bundesrat, he had dispatched a twelve-hour ultimatum to Russia and a note to Paris demanding clarification as to French intentions. “If the Russian reply is unsatisfactory,” he declared,
“and there is no absolutely unambiguous declaration of neutrality from France,”

The Bundesrat voted unanimous support for the chancellor. “If the iron dice now must roll,” Bethmann concluded his remarks, “then may God help us.”
²⁵

The noon deadline passed without further reply from Russia. Germany’s state secretary, Jagow, therefore drew up a (French-language) declaration of war on Russia, which he wired to Pourtalès at 12:52
PM
. Aside from some preliminaries having to do with the failure of mediation efforts, the document was fairly straightforward, citing Russia’s general mobilization, and failure to stop it, as casus belli. The only twist was that, not knowing whether Sazonov would still give a formal answer (his midnight reply had been ambiguous) or simply remain silent, a sort of “choose one” clause was included, where Pourtalès could circle either “having refused” or “having not felt it necessary to reply” as grounds for ending diplomatic relations. In either case, however, the ambassador was to inform Sazonov that “H. M. the Emperor, my august Sovereign, in the name of the Empire, accepts the war which has been thrust upon him.” To give time for both transmission and decoding, and—just possibly—second thoughts from Sazonov or the tsar, Pourtalès was instructed to hand the note to the Russian government at
5
PM
Central European Time (6:30
PM
Russian time). So the deadline had some time to run still.
²⁶