The Sleepwalkers (79 page)

Nikola Pašić in 1919

As soon as Giesl left, Paču gathered the Serbian ministers still present in the capital and they went through the text together. Paču in particular was shocked because he had been expecting, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the Germans would ultimately hold Vienna back from any step that ‘might also drag her [Germany] into war'. For a time the men studied the note in ‘deathly silence, because no one ventured to be the first to express his thoughts'. The first to speak was the minister of education Ljuba Jovanović, who paced the room back and forth several times and then declared: ‘We have no other choice but to fight it out.'
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A curious interlude followed. In view of the extreme importance of the note, it was clear to all present that Pašić must return immediately to Belgrade. Pašić had spent the morning campaigning in Niš in southern Serbia for the elections of 14 August. After giving a speech, the prime minister seemed suddenly to lose interest in the campaign. ‘It would be a good thing if we were to take a little rest,' he told Sajinović, the political director of the foreign ministry, who was travelling with him. ‘What do you think of going off to Salonika [i.e. Thessaloniki, annexed to Greece by the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913] where we could stay two or three days incognito?' While Pašić and the political director waited for the prime minister's special coach to be coupled on to the train to Thessaloniki, Pašić was informed by a station attendant that there was an urgent telephone call from Belgrade. It was Lazar Paču, begging him to return to the capital. Pašić had no intention of hurrying back. ‘I told Laza that when I get back to Belgrade, we shall give the answer. Laza told me from what he had heard that it was to be no ordinary note. But I stood firmly by my reply.' Sure enough, he and Sajinović went to take their seats in the train to Thessaloniki. Only when the train reached Lescovac, nearly fifty kilometres south of Niš, was the prime minister persuaded to return by a telegram from Prince-Regent Alexandar.
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This was bizarre but not uncharacteristic behaviour. We may recall that in the summer of 1903, when the details of the planned assassination of King Alexandar and Queen Draga were passed to him in advance by the regicides, Pašić had reacted by taking his family by train to the Adriatic coast, then under Austrian rule, where he could wait out the consequences. What exactly he had in mind on the afternoon on 23 July is impossible to establish. He may simply, as Albertini suggested, have hoped to avoid the weighty responsibility of accepting the note. Interestingly enough, Berchtold had learned through unspecified secret channels that Pašić intended to resign immediately on receiving it.
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He may just have panicked, or perhaps he felt the need to clear his head and think over his options. The exigencies of a national election, coupled with the greatest external crisis in the history of the modern Serbian state had doubtless placed him under considerable strain. Whatever it was, the moment passed and the prime minister and the political director arrived in Belgrade at 5 a.m. on 24 July.

It took a little time for a Serbian response to the ultimatum to crystallize. On the evening of 23 July, while Pašić was travelling back to the capital, Paču dispatched a circular note to the Serbian legations stating that the demands set out in the Austrian note were ‘such as no Serbian government could accept them in their entirety'. Paču reaffirmed this view when he paid a visit to Chargé d'Affaires Strandmann, who, following the death of Hartwig, was acting chief of the Russian mission. After Paču had left, Prince Alexandar appeared to discuss the crisis with Strandmann. He too insisted that acceptance of the ultimatum was ‘an absolute impossibility for a state which has the slightest regard for its dignity', and added that he placed his trust in the magnanimity of the Tsar of Russia ‘whose powerful word alone could save Serbia'. Early on the next morning, it was Pašić's turn to see Strandmann. The prime minister took the view that Serbia should neither accept nor reject the Austrian note and must immediately seek a postponement of the deadline. An appeal would be made to the powers to protect the independence of Serbia. ‘But,' Pašić added, ‘if war is unavoidable, we shall fight.'
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All of this might seem to suggest that the Serbian political leadership came almost immediately to the unanimous view that Serbia must resist and – if necessary – go to war. But these utterances were all reported by Strandmann. It is likely that the desire to elicit Russian support encouraged the ministers on hand in Belgrade to insist on the impossibility of acceptance. Other testimony suggests that, among themselves, the decision-makers were deeply alarmed at the prospect of an Austrian attack and saw no alternative to acceptance.
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The memory of October 1913, when Sazonov had advised Belgrade to back down in the face of an Austrian ultimatum over Albania, was still fresh enough to nourish doubts about whether the Russians would support Serbia in the current crisis. Ascertaining the attitude of France was difficult, because the key French leaders were on their way back from Russia and the French envoy Descos, who for some time had been showing signs of strain, had collapsed and been recalled to Paris; his replacement had not yet arrived.

No decision was reached at the first cabinet meeting convened by Paču on the evening of 23 July and the situation remained unresolved after Pašić's return on the following morning. Pašić merely determined that no decision should be taken until the Russians had made their view known. In addition to the conversations with Strandmann, which were of course reported immediately to St Petersburg, there were two official requests for clarification. Pašić cabled Spalajković, asking him to ascertain the views of the Russian government. On the same day, Prince Regent Alexander sent a telegram to the Tsar stating that Serbia ‘could not defend itself' and that the Belgrade government was prepared to accept any points of the ultimatum ‘whose acceptance shall be advised by Your Majesty [i.e. the Russian Tsar]'.
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The Italian historian Luciano Magrini concluded from his interviews with key Serbian decision-makers and other witnesses to the events of those days that the Belgrade government had in effect decided to accept the ultimatum and avoid war. ‘It was thought that in the condition she was known to be in, Serbia could not be expected to do otherwise than yield to so terrible a threat.'
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It was evidently in a mood of resignation that Pašić composed his telegram of 25 July to the Serbian missions declaring that Belgrade intended to send a reply that would be ‘conciliatory on all points' and offer Vienna ‘full satisfaction'.
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This was unmistakably a major step back from Paču's much firmer circular of two days before. A telegram from Crackanthorpe to Grey, dispatched just after midday on 25 July, confirms that at this point the Serbs were even willing to accept the notorious points 5 and 6 calling for a mixed commission of enquiry, ‘provided that the appointment of such commission can be proved to be in accordance with international usage'.
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It may have been reassurance from the Russians that stiffened the backs of the Serbs. At around 8.30 a.m. on 23 July, a telegram dispatched on the evening of the previous day arrived from Spalajković, reporting his conversation with Poincaré during the state visit. The French president had asked the Serbian envoy if there was news from Belgrade; when Spalajković replied that the situation was very bad, Poincaré had said: ‘We will help you to improve it.'
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This was gratifying, but not especially substantial. At around midnight on 24 July, a telegram reached Belgrade announcing that ‘a bold decision' was imminent.
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The most important of Spalajković's dispatches were two telegrams sent on the night of 24–25 July, detailing a conversation with Sazonov some time before 7 p.m. on 24 July in which the Russian foreign minister had conveyed to the Serbian envoy the results of a meeting of the Council of Ministers held at three o'clock that afternoon. In the first telegram, Spalajković reported that the Russian foreign minister had ‘condemned the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum with disgust', declaring that no state could accept such demands without ‘committing suicide'. Sazonov had assured Spalajković that Serbia could ‘count unofficially on Russian support'. But he did not specify which form this help would take, because these were matters ‘for the Tsar to decide and consult on with France'. In the meanwhile, Serbia should avoid any unnecessary provocations. If the country were attacked and unable to defend itself, it should in the first instance withdraw its armed forces south-eastwards into the interior.
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The aim was not to accept an Austrian occupation, but rather to keep Serbia's armies in readiness for a subsequent deployment. The second telegram of that night, dispatched at 1.40 a.m. on 25 July, reported that the Russian Ministerial Council had decided to take ‘energetic measures, even mobilization', and were about to publish an ‘official communiqué in which Russia takes Serbia under its protection'.
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At 8 p.m. on 25 July, Spalajković fired off a further dispatch reporting that he had spoken with the Serbian military attaché, who had just returned from the Tsar's residence at Tsarskoe Selo. The attaché had been talking with the chief of the Russian General Staff and told Spalajković that the Military Council had shown the ‘greatest readiness for war' and was resolved to ‘go to any length in protecting Serbia'. The Tsar in particular had surprised everybody with his determination. Moreover, it had been ordered that at exactly 6 p.m., the deadline for the Serbian reply, all the final-year cadets in Russia were to be raised to officer rank, a clear signal of imminent full mobilization. ‘In all circles without exception, the greatest resolve and jubilation reigns on account of the stance adopted by the tsar and his government'.
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Other dispatches reported on the military measures that were already being taken, the mood of ‘pride and [readiness for] any sacrifice' that pervaded the ruling circles and the public sphere and the excitement that greeted the news from London that the British fleet had been ordered to a state of readiness.
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It was probably the news from Russia that dispelled the mood of fatalism in Belgrade and dissuaded the ministers from attempting to avoid war by acquiescing in the demands of the ultimatum.
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Spalajković's telegram of 24 July conveying Sazonov's vague assurance of support arrived in Belgrade in two parts, the first at 4.17 a.m. and the second at 10 a.m. on 25 July. The telegram hinting at Russian mobilization arrived at 11.30 a.m. on the same day, in good time to reach the Serbian ministers before they had drafted their reply to the Austrian note.
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Notwithstanding this firming of the mood, the Serbian ministers invested immense effort in polishing their reply to Vienna in order to create the appearance of offering the maximum possible compliance without compromising Serbian sovereignty. Pašić, Ljuba Jovanović and most of the ministers then present in Belgrade, including those of the interior, economics and justice, Stojan Protić, Velizar Janković and Marko Djuričić, all had a hand in the numerous redactions of the text. Slavko Gruić, secretary-general of the Serbian foreign ministry, later described to Luigi Albertini the hectic activity that preceded the presentation of the reply. During the afternoon of Saturday 25 July there were numerous drafts as the ministers took turns in adding and scratching out various passages; even the final version was so covered in alterations, insertions and crossings-out that it was virtually illegible.

At last after 4 pm the text seemed finally settled and an attempt was made to type it out. But the typist was inexperienced and very nervous and the typewriter refused to work, with the result that the reply had to be written out by hand in hectographic ink, copies being jellied off. [. . .] The last half-hour was one of feverish work. The reply was corrected by pen here and there. One whole phrase placed in parenthesis was crossed out in ink and made illegible. At 5.45 Gruić handed the text to Pašić in an envelope.
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Pašić had hoped that Gruić or some other subordinate figure would convey the reply to Baron Giesl, but when no one volunteered, he said: ‘Very well, I will take it myself,' descended the stairs and walked to the meeting with Giesl, while the ministers and officials all rushed to make the train to Niš, to which the Serbian government was relocating in preparation for the coming conflict.

The Serbian reply may have looked messy, but it was a masterpiece of diplomatic equivocation. Baron Musulin, who had composed the first draft of the Austrian ultimatum, described it as ‘the most brilliant specimen of diplomatic skill' that he had ever encountered.
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The reply opened with a confident flourish. The Serbian government, it was asserted, had demonstrated on many occasions during the Balkan Wars its moderate and peaceful attitude. Indeed, it was ‘thanks to Serbia and to the sacrifice that she has made in the exclusive interest of European peace that that peace [had] been preserved'. The drafters of the reply were therefore confident that their response would remove any misunderstanding between the two countries. Since the government could not be held responsible for the actions of private individuals, and exercised no direct controls over the press or the ‘peaceable work of societies', it had been surprised and pained by the accusations emanating from Vienna.
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