The Sleepwalkers (13 page)

What was alarming about these operations, one local official complained, was not simply that they were conducted without the knowledge of the relevant civilian authorities, but that they were undertaken ‘publicly and in broad daylight'. And since the perpetrators were ‘public officials', the impression might easily arise ‘that we welcomed such actions'. Pašić and Interior Minister Protić saw the point. If it is true that Pašić already knew at this time of the plot's existence, we would expect him to have done whatever was possible to shut down activities that might incriminate the Belgrade government. On 10 June, word indeed went out to the civilian authorities of the border districts that ‘all such activities should be prevented'.
¹⁵⁴

Whether the
civilian
commanders in the affected areas were in any position to interdict the operations of the Border Guards was another question. When Raiko Stepanović, a sergeant of the Border Guards who had smuggled a suitcase full of guns and bombs across the border, was summoned to give an account of himself to the district chief, he simply refused to appear.
¹⁵⁵
Following a meeting of the cabinet in mid-June, an order went out to the civilian authorities demanding an official enquiry on the illegal passage of arms and persons into Bosnia and a curt note was sent to the captain of the 4 Border Guards on 16 June ‘recommending' that he ‘cease this traffic of arms, munitions and other explosives from Serbia into Bosnia'. There was no reply. It later emerged that military commanders on the border were under strict orders to forward such civilian interventions unanswered to their superior officers.
¹⁵⁶

In other words, the Serbian border was no longer under the control of the government in Belgrade. When Minister of War Stepanović wrote to the chief of the General Staff asking for a statement clarifying the official position of the military on covert operations in Bosnia, the query was passed first to the head of the operations department, who claimed to know nothing of these matters, and subsequently to the head of Military Intelligence, none other than Apis himself. In a long, impertinent and thoroughly disingenuous reply to the head of the operations department, Apis defended the record and reputation of agent Malobabić and insisted that any guns passed to his hands were purely for the self-defence of Serbian agents working in Bosnia. Of bombs he claimed to know nothing whatsoever (three years later he would in fact state on oath that he had personally entrusted Malobabić with supplying and coordinating the assassination of Franz Ferdinand).
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If a security risk arose on the border, he declared, this was not on account of the discreet and necessary operations of the military but because of the insolence of civilian operatives who claimed the right to police the border. In short, the fault lay with the civilians for attempting to interfere with sensitive military operations beyond their competence or understanding.
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This reply was forwarded to Putnik, the chief of the Serbian General Staff, who summarized and endorsed it in a letter of 23 June to the minister of war. The fissure between the structures of civilian authority and a military command substantially infiltrated by the Black Hand now ran all the way from the banks of the Drina to the ministerial quarter in Belgrade.

Rattled by the resolute tone of the reply from Apis and the chief of the General Staff, Pašić took the step on 24 June of ordering a full investigation into the activities of the frontier guards. He had learned from ‘many sources', he wrote in a top secret letter to the minister of war, that ‘the officers' were engaged in work that was not only dangerous, but treasonable, ‘because it aims at the creation of conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary'.

All our allies and friends of Serbia, if they knew what our officers and sergeants are doing, would not only abandon us, they would stand on the side of Austria-Hungary and allow her to punish her restless and disloyal neighbour, who prepares revolts and assassinations on her territory. The life interests of Serbia impose on her the obligation to be aware of everything that could provoke an armed conflict with Austria-Hungary at a time when peace is necessary for us to recuperate and prepare for the future events that lie ahead.
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The letter closed with an order that a ‘severe investigation' be launched to establish exactly how many officers were guilty of such ‘reckless and wanton' activity with a view to the ‘extirpation and suppression' of the offending groups.

In a sense, of course, this was locking the stable door after the horse had bolted, since the boys had crossed the border at the end of May. Over two weeks had passed by the time Pašić acted to close the borders and nearly four by the time he was ready to launch an investigation of the perpetrators behind the plot. It is difficult to ascertain why the prime minister was so slow to act on the news of the conspiracy. He must have known that instructions to the frontier guards were bound to be fruitless, given that so many of them were affiliated with Ujedinjenje ili smrt!. Perhaps he feared the consequences of antagonizing his powerful enemy, Apis. It is striking that, despite the calls for a ‘severe investigation', Apis remained in post as head of Serbian Military Intelligence throughout the crisis – he was not dismissed or even suspended from duties pending the outcome of the investigation. We should recall in this connection the extremity of the political crisis that had paralysed Serbia during May 1914. Pašić prevailed in that struggle, but only by a whisker, and only with the assistance of the ambassadors of the two great powers with most influence in Serbian affairs. There is thus some doubt as to whether he possessed the means to close down Apis's activities, even if he were inclined to do so. Perhaps Pašić even feared that an open confrontation might trigger his own assassination by Black Hand agents, though this seems unlikely, given the fact that he had already survived the May crisis unscathed. On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the Serbian prime minister remained, despite everything, the most powerful man in the country, a statesman of unparalleled skill at the head of a mass party whose delegates still dominated the national legislature. It is more probable that Pašić reverted during these weeks to the habits of long years at the turbulent apex of Serbian political life: keep your head down, don't rock the boat, let conflicts resolve themselves, wait out the storm.

Nevertheless, Pašić still had one important card in his hand: he could have foiled the conspiracy at little risk to himself by warning Vienna confidentially of the plot to kill the archduke. Heated controversy surrounds the question of whether such a warning was given. The evidentiary situation is especially difficult on this issue, because it was in no one's interest in retrospect to acknowledge that a formal warning had been offered or received. Pašić himself expressly denied that he had attempted to warn Vienna in an interview granted to the Hungarian newspaper
Az Est
on 7 July 1914.
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He could hardly do otherwise, since avowing foreknowledge would have exposed him and his colleagues to the charge that they were accessories to the conspiracy. Apologists for Serbia in the post-war years were bound to follow the same line, because their argument for Belgrade's innocence of co-responsibility in the outbreak of war rested on the thesis that the Serbian government was entirely ignorant of any plot. The Austrian authorities were also unlikely to acknowledge a warning, because it would raise the question of why better measures had not been taken to protect the heir apparent's life – on 2 July, the semi-official Viennese newspaper
Fremdenblatt
issued a statement denying that there was any truth in the rumour that the Austrian Foreign Office had received any prior notification of the impending outrage.
¹⁶¹

There is nonetheless powerful evidence that a warning of sorts was given. The most unimpeachable source is the French under-secretary for foreign affairs, Abel Ferry, who recorded in his office diary on 1 July that he had just received a visit by the Serbian minister to Paris, Milenko Vesnić, an old friend. In the course of their conversation, Vesnić stated among other things that the Serbian government had ‘warned the Austrian Government that it had got wind of the plot'.
¹⁶²
Among those who confirm this is the Serbian military attaché in Vienna, who told the Italian historian Magrini in 1915 that Pašić had sent a telegram to the Serbian legation in Vienna stating that ‘owing to an information leak, the Serbian Government had grounds to suspect that a plot was being hatched against the life of the Archduke on the occasion of his journey to Bosnia' and that the Austro-Hungarian government would be well advised to postpone the visit.
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It is possible to reconstruct from recollections and the testimony of third persons what Jovan Jovanović, the Serbian minister in Vienna, did next. He met with Leon Biliński, joint Austro-Hungarian finance minister, at noon on 21 June in order to issue the Austrian government with a warning against the likely consequences if the archduke were to visit Bosnia. But the warning was delivered only in the most oblique terms. A visit by the heir apparent on the anniversary of the Kosovo defeat, Jovanović suggested, would surely be regarded as a provocation. Among the young Serbs serving in the Austro-Hungarian forces ‘there might be one who would put a ball-cartridge in his rifle or revolver in place of a blank cartridge . . .' Biliński, unimpressed by these auguries, ‘showed no sign of attaching any importance to the communication' and merely replied: ‘let us hope nothing does happen'.
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Biliński refused in later years to speak with journalists or historians about this episode, protesting that a veil of oblivion should be drawn over these dark moments in recent history. It is clear that he was disinclined at the time to take the warning seriously – it was couched in such general terms that it might even be construed as a gesture of mere intimidation, an unwarranted attempt by the Serbian minister to intervene in the internal affairs of the monarchy by implying vague threats against its most senior personnel. Biliński thus saw no reason to pass the message on to the Austrian foreign minister, Count Berchtold.

In short: a warning of sorts was sent, but not one that was adequate to the situation. In retrospect, it has the look of a covering manoeuvre. Jovanović could have issued a more specific and forthright warning by providing the Austrians with the best information to hand in Belgrade. Pašić, too, could have informed the Austrians directly of the danger, rather than via Jovanović. He could have launched a real investigation of the conspiracy and risked his own office rather than the peace and security of his nation. But there were, as ever, constraints and complications. Jovanović, for one thing, was not just a member of the Serbian diplomatic service, but also a senior pan-Serb activist with the classical career profile of an ultra-nationalist. He was a former
comitadji
who had been involved in fomenting unrest in Bosnia after the annexation of 1908 and was even rumoured to have commanded guerrilla bands. He also happened to be, in the summer of 1914, the Black Hand's candidate for foreign minister in the event that the Pašić government were to be chased from power.
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Indeed the Serbian envoy's pan-Serb views were so notorious that Vienna had made it known to Belgrade that his replacement by a less hostile figure would not be unwelcome. This is one of the reasons why Jovanović chose to approach Biliński rather than Count Berchtold, who held him in very poor regard.
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Pašić, too, was acting from complex motivations. On the one hand there was his concern – widely shared within the Radical leadership – about how the networks affiliated with Ujedinjenje ili smrt! might respond to what they would certainly perceive as a gross betrayal.
¹⁶⁷
He may have hoped that the attempt in Sarajevo would fail. Most important of all, surely, was his awareness of how deeply the structures of the state and the very logic of its historical existence were interwoven with the irredentist networks. Pašić might regret their excesses, but he could not openly disavow them. Indeed, there was danger in even acknowledging publicly an awareness of their activities. This was not just a question of the legacy of Serbian national consolidation, which had always depended upon the collaboration of state agencies with voluntarist networks capable of infiltrating neighbouring states. It also touched upon the future. Serbia had needed the nationalist networks in the past and would depend on them again when the moment came, as Pašić knew it some day would, to redeem Bosnia and Herzegovina for Serbdom.

Everything we know about this subtle, interesting man suggests that he understood that Serbia needed peace above all if it were to rebuild its strength after the bloodshed of the Balkan Wars. The integration of the newly annexed areas – in itself a violent and traumatic process – had only just begun. Forced elections were looming.
¹⁶⁸
But it is a characteristic of the most skilful politicians that they are capable of reasoning simultaneously at different levels of conditionality. Pašić wanted peace, but he also believed – he had never concealed it – that the final historical phase of Serbian expansion would in all probability not be achieved without war. Only a major European conflict in which the great powers were engaged would suffice to dislodge the formidable obstacles that stood in the way of Serbian ‘reunification'.

Perhaps Pašić recalled the warning Charles Hardinge, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office in London, had offered Grujic, the Serbian minister in London, during the annexation crisis of 1908–9. Hardinge had cautioned the minister in January 1909 that support from Russia and the Entente powers would be forthcoming only if Serbia were to be attacked by Austria-Hungary; if Serbia itself took the initiative, help was out of the question.
¹⁶⁹
That Pašić may have been thinking along these lines is suggested by an exchange between the Serbian prime minister and the Russian Tsar in the early spring of 1914, in which Pašić pressed upon the Tsar his need for Russian help in the event of an Austro-Hungarian attack.
¹⁷⁰
Such a scenario would fail, of course, if the world were to construe the assassination plot itself as an act of Serbian aggression; but Pašić was certain that the Austrians would be unable to establish any connection between the assassination (if it were to succeed) and the government of Serbia because, in his own mind, no such linkage existed.
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An attack from Austria-Hungary must therefore surely trigger support from Russia and her allies; Serbia would not stand alone.
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This was not, in Pašić's view, primarily a question of Russia's attachment to Serbia, but rather the logical consequence of the imperatives governing Russian policy in the Balkans.
¹⁷³
So strong was Pašić's reputed trust in this redemptive mechanism that even
Pijemont
occasionally ridiculed him for his ‘great belief in Russia'.
¹⁷⁴
Reports received by Pašić in mid-June from the Serbian minister in St Petersburg that Russia had restructured its eastern frontier in order to deploy much larger forces for an ‘offensive against the west' may well have reinforced the plausibility of this line of thought.
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