The Sleepwalkers (85 page)

It would, however, be difficult and delicate for us to ask Petersburg not to mobilise at all when Austria was contemplating such a measure; we should not be listened to. The main thing was to prevent, if possible,
active
military operations.
²⁵

This was an odd reading of the situation, to say the least, for it implied an equivalence between Austrian and Russian mobilization, overlooking the fact that whereas Austrian measures were focused exclusively on Serbia, Russian ones were directed against Austria (and Germany, inasmuch as the Regulation of 2 March 1913 applied to nearly all the western Russian military districts and had in any case been extended to cover the mobilization of the Baltic Fleet). Grey's comments also revealed a blank (or perhaps partially wilful) ignorance of the meaning of mobilization measures in an era when the speed of concentration and attack was seen as a crucial determinant of military success. Finally, had Grey been interested in adopting an impartial approach to the admittedly tangled problem of mediation and localization, he might have wished to examine closely the strengths and weaknesses of the Austrian case against Serbia, and to prevent Russian counter-measures that were certain to trigger a broader conflict. But he did nothing of the kind. At his meeting with Benckendorff on 8 July and at various points thereafter, Grey had, after all, acquiesced in the Russian view that a ‘Servian war inevitably meant a European war'.
²⁶

Grey knew in general terms what had transpired during the French visit to St Petersburg. In a dispatch of 24 July (following Poincaré's departure) Ambassador Buchanan reported that the meetings in the Russian capital had revealed a ‘perfect community of views' between Russia and France on ‘the general peace and the balance of power in Europe' and that the two states had made ‘a solemn affirmation of [the] obligations imposed by [their] alliance'; Sazonov had asked Buchanan to convey to Grey his hope that the British government would ‘proclaim [its] solidarity with France and Russia'.
²⁷
Commenting on this dispatch, Eyre Crowe used more trenchant formulations than Grey would have chosen, but captured the inner logic of the position that the foreign secretary would adopt:

Whatever we may think of the merits of the Austrian charges against Servia, France and Russia consider that these are the pretexts, and that the bigger cause of Triple Alliance versus Triple Entente is definitely engaged. I think it would be impolitic, not to say dangerous, for England to attempt to controvert this opinion, or to endeavour to obscure the plain issue, by any representation at St. Petersburg and Paris. [. . .] Our interests are tied up with those of France and Russia in this struggle, which is not for the possession of Servia, but one between Germany aiming at a political dictatorship in Europe and the Powers who desire to retain individual freedom.
²⁸

Grey assured Lichnowsky that Britain had no legal obligations to its Entente partners. But he also warned the German ambassador on 29 July (without specific authorization from the cabinet beforehand) that if Germany and France were drawn into the war, Britain might find it necessary to take precipitous action.
²⁹
When Bethmann Hollweg contacted London on 30 July to suggest that Germany would abstain from annexations of French territory if Britain agreed to remain neutral, Grey cabled Goschen (the British ambassador in Berlin) to inform him that the proposal ‘cannot for a moment be entertained'.
³⁰

Grey's actions and omissions revealed how deeply Entente thinking structured his view of the unfolding crisis. This was, in effect, a new iteration of the Balkan inception scenario that had become the animating logic of the Franco-Russian Alliance, and that Grey had internalized in his warning to the German ambassador in early December 1912 (see
chapter 5
). There would be a quarrel in the Balkans – it didn't really matter who started it – Russia would pile in, pulling in Germany, France would ‘inevitably' intervene on the side of her ally; in that situation, Britain could not stand aside and watch France be crushed by Germany. This is precisely the script – notwithstanding momentary doubts and prevarications – that Grey followed in 1914. He did not inspect or weigh up the Austrian case against Serbia, indeed he showed no interest in it whatsoever, not because he believed the Serbian government was innocent of the charges against it,
³¹
but because he acquiesced in the Franco-Russian view that the Austrian threat to Serbia constituted a ‘pretext' as Eyre Crowe put it, for activating the alliance.

A central feature of that scenario was that Britain accepted – or at least did not challenge – the legitimacy of a Russian strike against Austria to resolve an Austro-Serbian quarrel, and the inevitability of French support for the Russian initiative. The precise circumstances of the Austro-Serbian dispute and questions of culpability were matters of subordinate interest; what mattered was the situation that unfolded once the Russians (and the French) were involved. And defining the problem in this way naturally placed the onus on Germany, whose intervention in Austria's defence must necessarily trigger French mobilization and a continental war.

As Grey was proposing his four-power mediation idea at the end of the cabinet meeting of 24 July, Poincaré and Viviani were crossing the Gulf of Finland on board the
France
, escorted by Russian torpedo boats. When they arrived in Sweden on the following day, Poincaré exploited the access to secure telegraphic links to ensure that control over the formulation of policy remained with himself and (nominally) Viviani. He instructed the premier to issue a statement to the French press announcing that Viviani was in communication with all relevant parties and had resumed direction of external affairs. ‘It is important,' Poincaré noted, ‘that they not get the impression in France that Bienvenu-Martin [the inexperienced acting foreign minister in Paris] has been left to his own devices.'
³²
Over the past twenty-four hours, bits and pieces of information on the evolving Austro-Serbian crisis had made it through to the wireless station on board the
France
. As a fuller picture emerged, Poincaré stuck to the position he had outlined in St Petersburg: the Austrian démarche was illegitimate, Vienna's demands were ‘obviously unacceptable to Serbia', indeed they constituted a ‘violation of human rights'. The responsibility for saving peace no longer lay with Russia, whose military preparations were entirely in accordance with the positions affirmed and agreed during the French state visit, but with the Germans, who must restrain their Austrian ally. If the Germans failed to do this, Poincaré noted in his diary on 25 July, ‘they would place themselves in a very wrongful position in taking upon themselves the responsibilities for the violent acts of Austria'.
³³

The most revealing glimpse of how proactively Poincaré viewed his own part in events is furnished by his reaction to the news, which reached him in Stockholm, that Sazonov had urged the Serbs not to offer resistance to the Austrians at the border, but to withdraw their forces to the interior of the country, to protest to the international community that she had been invaded and to appeal to the powers for judgement. Sazonov's aims in proffering this advice were to win international sympathy for the Serbian cause, but at the same time to draw the Austrians as deeply as possible into their Plan B deployments and thereby weaken the dispositions available to meet a Russian attack on Galicia. Poincaré misread this news as an indication that Sazonov had lost his nerve and was counselling an ‘abdication' of Russia's responsibilities to the Balkan state. ‘We assuredly cannot show ourselves
braver
[i.e. more committed to Belgrade]
than the Russians
,' he wrote. ‘Serbia has every chance of being humiliated.'
³⁴
It was, or rather it looked like, a return to those days of winter 1912–13 when French policy-makers had pressed the Russians to adopt a firmer position against Austria in the Balkans. At that time, the Russian military attaché in Paris had reacted with puzzlement to the bellicose talk of the French military. Now the situation was different. The policy had been agreed, and Poincaré's fears that Sazonov was about to wobble again were unfounded.

It may seem odd that Poincaré did not, in view of the escalating crisis in Central Europe, simply cancel his scheduled visit to Sweden on the home leg. The stopover in Stockholm has sometimes been cited as evidence of the French leader's essential passivity in relation to the crisis. Why, if Poincaré intended to play a proactive role in events, would he and Viviani have indulged in maritime tourism on the way home to Paris?
³⁵
The answer to the question is that the visit to Sweden was not tourism at all, but a crucial part of the alliance strategy reaffirmed in St Petersburg. Poincaré and the Tsar had discussed the need to secure Swedish neutrality (in preparation, one must infer, for an impending European war). Swedish-Russian relations had been troubled in recent times by aggressive Russian espionage activity and fears in Stockholm of an imminent Russian attack, either across their shared border or across the Baltic.
³⁶
On their last day together in St Petersburg, Nicholas II had asked Poincaré personally to convey to King Gustav V of Sweden his (the Tsar's) peaceful intentions towards Sweden. Poincaré was to inform the king that the Tsar harboured no aggressive intentions against his Baltic neighbour and that while he had until now been unaware of any espionage activity, he would put a stop to it forthwith.
³⁷
Above all, it was crucial that Sweden be prevented from falling into the arms of the Germans, with the severe strategic complications this might entail. On 25 July, during an afternoon spent with Gustav V, Poincaré successfully performed this errand and was able to report that the king heartily reciprocated the Tsar's desire that Sweden should remain neutral.
³⁸

It was, of course, awkward to be stuck wining and dining in Sweden while the European crisis deepened, especially as the strain was beginning to tell once more on poor Viviani. But French public opinion was still calm – attention remained focused on the Caillaux trial, which ended only on 28 July with the surprise acquittal of Madame Caillaux. Under these circumstances, as Poincaré knew well, an early return was more likely to alarm than to reassure French and European opinion. Moreover, it would ‘give rise to the impression that France may involve herself in the conflict'.
³⁹
But once it became known, on 27 July, that the Kaiser had returned early to Berlin from his Baltic journey on the imperial yacht, Poincaré, who was now being bombarded with telegrams from ministers urging him to return to Paris, lost no time in cancelling the remaining state visits to Denmark and Norway, which were in any case much less pressing from the strategic point of view, and instructing the crew of the
France
to return directly to Dunkirk.
⁴⁰

Nicholas II and Poincaré

Hardly had they changed their course, but the
France
and her escort, the dreadnought-class battleship
Jean Bart
, were met by a German battle cruiser crossing the Bay of Mecklenburg out of Kiel, followed by a German torpedo boat that turned tail and left the scene. The German battle cruiser offered the usual salute, firing blanks from all guns singly on the beam, and the
Jean Bart
responded in kind – the
France
remained silent, as was the custom for any ship carrying a head of state. Minutes later, the telegraph station on the
France
intercepted an encrypted radio transmission sent from the battle cruiser immediately after the salute – presumably to alert Berlin to the fact that the French president was now on his way back to Paris.
⁴¹

Poincaré and Viviani found themselves adopting increasingly divergent views of the international situation. Poincaré noticed that the prime minister seemed ‘more and more troubled and worried' and was preoccupied by ‘the most contradictory ideas'.
⁴²
When a telegram arrived on 27 July reporting Edward Grey's affirmation that England would not remain inactive should a war break out in the Balkans, Poincaré ‘made an example of this firmness to Viviani' in order to buck him up. The president spent much of that day, as he had on the journey to St Petersburg, explaining to Viviani ‘that weakness is [. . .] always the mother of complications' and that the only sensible course was to manifest ‘an enduring firmness'. But Viviani remained ‘nervous, agitated [and] kept uttering disturbing words or phrases that denote a bleak vision of foreign policy matters'. Pierre de Margerie (head of the political department of the Quai d‘Orsay), too, was unsettled by Viviani's ‘singular state of mind'. To Poincaré's consternation, the prime minister seemed unable to speak coherently of anything but party congresses and the political alliances around the socialist leader Jean Jaurès.
⁴³