The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (95 page)

By that time the tsar and his family, who had spent much of the spring in the Crimea, partly for the sake of Alexandra’s nerves, were back in their seclusion outside St Petersburg. The empress’s condition did not improve when her haemophiliac son fell while aboard one of the imperial yachts early in July and bled badly. To make matters still worse for her, Rasputin was thousands of miles away. He had been stabbed in the stomach by a madwoman the same day the archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo. Although the tsar sent the imperial surgeon to care for him, Rasputin was too ill to travel until later in the summer. It
was perhaps unfortunate that he was far from the centre of the events that were about to unfold for he was a committed pacifist and had counselled the tsar against going to war during the First Balkan Wars. From his sickbed, Rasputin sent a telegram which warned: ‘A terrible storm cloud hangs over Russia. Disaster, grief, murky darkness and no light. A whole ocean of tears … and so much blood. What can I say? I can find no words to describe the horror.’
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On the other side of Europe, in Britain, the Foreign Office initially took much the same calm attitude to the assassination as the Russian ambassador in Vienna. Nicolson, the Permanent Undersecretary, doubted that Austria-Hungary would take any action against Serbia. British opinion at first was quite sympathetic to the Dual Monarchy. King George V called unannounced on its embassy the morning after the assassinations to express his sorrow and Count Albert Mensdorff, its ambassador, was gratified to receive scores of letters from his many friends among the British upper classes. Grey and Asquith as well as leading Conservatives made speeches of commiseration in Parliament but it was another death – that of Joseph Chamberlain on 2 July – that caused a much greater sense of loss.
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In a debate on foreign affairs in the House of Commons on 10 July, Grey mentioned the Balkans only briefly, spending most of his time on non-European matters. Asquith, who was by now in the grip of his passion for Venetia Stanley and writing her daily love letters, mentioned the assassinations in passing on 30 June and did not refer to them again until 24 July. His letters were mostly taken up with the Irish question, her pets, which included a penguin, and his longing to see her.
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For the British public and their leaders, the continuing crisis over Home Rule for Ireland and the accompanying threat of civil war was a far more immediate and pressing concern than events in a far-off part of Europe. In a last-ditch attempt to get agreement over which parts of Protestant Ulster should be exempted from the Home Rule Bill still making its way slowly through Parliament, the king postponed his summer holidays and called a conference at Buckingham Palace on 21 July. For four swelteringly hot days Asquith and John Redmond, the leader of the Irish nationalists, faced the Conservative leader Bonar Law and Carson, the spokesman for the Ulster Protestants, as they tried in vain to come to an agreement. On 24 July, as the conference broke up,
news came in of Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia. George V decided that he would have to prolong his stay in London and cancelled his usual visit to the races with his friend the Duke of Richmond. ‘The political crisis’, he wrote to the duke, ‘is so acute with regard to the Irish question and now the probability of a general European war necessitates my remaining in London for the present … I hope you will have fine weather and that the racing will be good.’
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Asquith took, at least at first, a more sanguine view of the growing European crisis ‘This will take attention away from Ulster, which is a good thing,’ he told a leading London hostess.
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The French were slow as well to awaken to the developing dangers. It was just a bit of trouble in the Balkans, thought Adolphe Messimy, who had just come back into office as War Minister. ‘It would sort itself out just as the others had.’
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At the Quai d’Orsay, the Foreign Ministry was taken up with plans for the forthcoming visit by the President, Poincaré, and his Prime Minister, Viviani, to St Petersburg. Most of the cables between Paris and the French ambassador to Russia, Maurice Paléologue, were more concerned with such matters as the exact wording of the toasts to be made than with the Balkans.

French politicians and the general public were largely preoccupied by a sensational scandal involving the wife of the leading Radical politician Joseph Caillaux. He was accused by his enemies of being corrupt, which was probably true, and friendly to Germany, which was certainly true. He was after all a realist who believed that Germany and France had much to gain from working together. As Prime Minister at the time of the second crisis over Morocco, he had done much to bring a peaceful solution. He was hated by French nationalists for this and for opposing the introduction of three years’ compulsory military service designed to enlarge the French army. (Almost as bad, he had advocated the introduction of an income tax.) In the first months of 1914, Gaston Calmette, editor of the leading Paris daily
Figaro
, mounted a savage campaign against him with articles carrying such titles as ‘Shady Financier’ and ‘Germany’s Man’. In addition Calmette had managed to get his hands on some indiscreet love letters which Caillaux had written to his second wife Henriette while she was still married to someone else and was threatening to publish them. On 16 March Henriette, who was beautifully dressed as always, went to
Figaro
’s offices. When she was
shown in to see Calmette, she pulled a Browning pistol out of her fur muff and emptied it into him. Saying to the horrified staff, ‘There’s no more justice in France. It was the only thing to do,’ she waited calmly to be arrested for the murder. Her trial started on 20 July. Eight days later, as Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, the jury acquitted her on the grounds that she had committed a crime of passion. An unfortunate consequence of her action was that her husband, who might well have been a voice of moderation in France as Europe moved towards war, had been obliged to resign from the government.
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Towards the end of July the fresh trouble brewing in the Balkans began to move to the front pages of Europe’s press. The stock exchanges grew jittery as rumours spread that Austria-Hungary intended to force a showdown with Serbia and that Russia was determined to back its little ally this time. Surely, though, people thought, the crisis would, in the end, play out as earlier ones had. There would be some back and forth of diplomatic notes, perhaps even military preparations by Austria-Hungary and Russia as a means of exerting pressure, but eventually the other powers would intervene and broker a settlement and the armies would stand down. The Concert of Europe would maintain the peace, as it had done for so long. ‘Bluff, everything a bluff’, Kiderlen the German Foreign Secretary had written in 1912 during the First Balkan War. ‘I’ll live to see it now for the third time: Algeciras, Morocco, and now this. Only now, one always attempts to trump the other with bluffs. War could only happen if one were so unfathomably foolish to bluff so badly as to be unable to go back down on it and had to shoot. I really consider none of the current coming statesmen an example of such oxen.’
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Kiderlen did not live long enough to see how wrong he had been. His death is yet another example, like that of the archduke’s assassination, Rasputin’s stabbing or Caillaux’s forced resignation, of the role of accident in history. If Kiderlen had been in office in the summer of 1914, he might just have been strong enough to stand up to the military and persuade Bethmann and the Kaiser to take the path of peace.

The crisis in July 1914 was initially created by the recklessness of Serbia, the vengefulness of Austria-Hungary and the blank cheque from Germany. Now it was increasingly the turn of the Entente powers to do what they could either to avert war or, if it came, to bring it about on favourable terms for themselves. While many of the historical
debates have centred on the question of Germany’s or Austria-Hungary’s or even Serbia’s culpability for the war, others have placed the blame on the Triple Entente, whether on France for following a policy of revenge against Germany, on Russia for the alliance with France and for backing Serbia, or on Britain for not recognising Germany’s legitimate demands for a place in the sun and a greater share of the world’s colonies or for not making it clear early in the crisis that it would intervene on the side of France and Russia. While these have fascinated and will continue to fascinate historians and political scientists, we may have to accept that there can never be a definitive answer because for every argument there is a strong counter. Was France really intent on revenge on Germany? Even nationalists such as Poincaré had resigned themselves to the loss of Alsace and Lorraine and were not prepared to risk war to regain the provinces. True, France’s treaty with Russia led Germany to feel encircled but from both the French and Russian points of view the treaty was a defensive one, triggered only if Germany attacked. (As so often in international relations, though, what is defensive from one perspective may appear a threat from another, and that is certainly how Germany saw the treaty.) How much responsibility should Russia bear for encouraging Serbian nationalism? Sazonov should have done more to keep his ambassador Hartwig under control but for all the Panslav rhetoric in nationalist circles not all Russia’s leaders wanted to come to Serbia’s defence if it meant risking another major conflict so soon after the catastrophic defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. As for Britain, while an early declaration that it would unhesitatingly fight on France’s side might have acted as a deterrent on Germany, that is not at all clear. The German military regarded the British Expeditionary Force as negligible and hoped to win in France long before naval power came into play. In any case, Britain could not have made such a declaration before the Cabinet approved it – and the Cabinet was deeply divided over what to do in the last weeks before the war broke out.

Of the three entente powers, France had the most straightforward policy in 1914 – to make sure that if war came France would enter it united, as the innocent party, and with Russia by its side. The French also hoped to restrain their ally from acting provocatively in ways which would allow Germany and Austria-Hungary to claim that they were
merely defending themselves against Russian aggression. As an emergency meeting of the Cabinet on 30 July stressed, ‘For the sake of public opinion, let the Germans put themselves in the wrong.’
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This was important both domestically and internationally. French leaders were haunted by the memories of the defeats of the 1870–71 war and France’s long isolation afterwards, by France’s own internal divisions, by the knowledge of France’s demographic weakness in comparison with Germany and by fears that its allies would not stand by it. The French hoped for but never completely counted on Britain’s intervening even if Germany, as was widely suspected, intended to violate Belgium’s neutrality. It was essential for France, however, that Russia moved quickly to attack German forces in the east when war broke out. In the years immediately before 1914, the French had done their utmost to get a firm commitment from Russia that it would attack Germany early to relieve the pressure of the expected German onslaught on France. With huge loans for Russia’s railway building and industrial development, the French managed to extract promises from the Russian military but they were never entirely sure that these would be kept. Even Russia’s growing power was a double-edged sword for France, which was in danger of becoming the junior partner. Worse still, Russia might become so strong that it no longer needed the French alliance.
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There was always the danger, too – and this also haunted the French – that the conservatives in Russia who continued to argue for a rapprochement with Germany would gain the upper hand. Paléologue, who sent alarmist reports back to Paris, told the British ambassador in May 1914, ‘The Emperor is changeable and the Ministry is not stable. There has always been a party at court in favour of an understanding with Germany.’
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Just as Germany backed Austria-Hungary for fear of losing it, so too France in the summer of 1914 was reluctant to rein Russia in as it moved towards a confrontation in the Balkans. Jaurès, the great socialist leader, whose grasp of foreign affairs was profound, said in the French parliament on 7 July as the forthcoming trip of Poincaré and Viviani to St Petersburg was being discussed, ‘We find it inadmissible … that France should become involved in wild Balkan adventures because of treaties of which she knows neither the text, not the sense, nor the limits, nor the consequences.’
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Despite opposition from the Socialists, Poincaré and Viviani duly
set out on 15 July for Russia, travelling aboard the cruiser
France
to avoid crossing German territory. Although they could not know it, on the previous day Tisza had finally dropped his opposition to Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia and it was now being finalised in Vienna. As the French warship made its way through the North Sea and into the Baltic, the weather, as it was all over Europe, was glorious and Poincaré sat on the deck reading Ibsen and chatting to Viviani. Even though he was also responsible for foreign affairs, the French Prime Minister knew little about them but, it turned out, he was a walking compendium of literature and recited great chunks of both prose and poetry to his companion. Poincaré’s thoughts occasionally turned to the Caillaux trial at home but he was not worried about the international situation, or so he claimed in the version of his diary he published later. He felt sure, he wrote, that he was sailing towards peace, to establishing good relations with other nations, and to reasserting France’s alliance with Russia.
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He was in fact more concerned about the alliance than he admitted; there was a strong possibility that the French parliament might in the autumn reverse the hard-won three-year military service law, something which could well add further to Russian doubts about France’s value as an ally.
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