The World Crisis

by Winston S. Churchill

  The naval holiday was rejected by Germany and she proceeded with her naval law. But in consequence of the frank and friendly talks which had taken place, both the German increases and our counter-building, which were punctually executed, caused no bickering. Indeed, they were accompanied year by year by the increasing retirement of the naval issue from Anglo-German controversies. I held strongly that the Germans would understand a plain, straightforward policy of this kind, courteously deployed and strictly carried out; that they would not resent the fact, but would accept it. This proved true. The Kaiser and Tirpitz realized that they would never have any chance of overtaking us, and that we were bent upon an overwhelming superiority at sea. They accommodated themselves to this, turned with interest to the colonial discussions and in all the troubles of 1912 and 1913 worked hand in hand with Sir Edward Grey to keep the peace. Never, in fact, had the relations of Great Britain and Germany been so little strained or indeed so promising as they were a fortnight before the great disaster. But for this detente Europe might not even have surmounted the unceasing strains and stresses which the next three years brought upon her from the Near East.1

  On the other hand, France and Russia of course took note of the strong, independent, self-reliant attitude of Great Britain and began to reckon her as a real factor on which they could count in case of German aggression.

  In this same July 1911, Italy exposed her intention of taking from the Turks the ancient Roman province of Libya known as Tripoli. During the Agadir crisis she continually pressed this demand upon the Turks. In September she sent an ultimatum and on October 5 an Italian expeditionary force seized the town of Tripoli and a strip of the seashore thereabouts. Turkey and Italy were thenceforward at war. Europe remained dumb in the face of this unjustified act. The Central Empires could not afford to lose the fact, nor France and Russia the prospect, of an Italian alliance. The Young Turks resisted the outrage with spirit. Enver himself made his way to Libya and animated the defence. Large Italian forces were for a long time held up on the beach. Here was the heaven- or hell-sent opportunity for which Conrad had waited so long. Here should be the first and most important of his preventive wars. Ever since 1899 when he went to command the garrison at Trieste, he had distrusted Italy and longed for the chance of regaining Venetia and Lombardy for the Empire. ‘While Cabinets at Vienna and Berlin treated the alliance with Italy as a secure factor, I characterized it as a gross fallacy; I saw in Italy the enemy in all circumstances and compared the Triple Alliance to a three-legged table which must collapse if one of the legs gave way.’ The antagonism was indeed profound: on the one hand the cause of Italia Irredenta, on the other the Austro-Hungarian Alsace-Lorraine. For years Conrad had persisted in urging a war with Italy. From the end of 1910 he became vehement. Italy, he declared, would be ready for war in 1912. It was folly to wait. Aerenthal rejoined that the Triple Alliance did not fall to be renewed till 1914. Conrad asserted that the alliance was a fraud. But now, seeing Italy compromised and entangled on the Libyan shore, he addressed a lengthy memorial to the Emperor declaring ‘that Austria’s opportunity had come and that it was suicidal to leave the opportunity unutilized.’ Aerenthal, though patient with his fiery coadjutor, was at length aroused. He wrote to the Emperor that ‘it was high time the foreign minister should remain competent and responsible for foreign policy. The duty of the Chief of the Staff was to make the military preparations requisite for the various possibilities of war, but without any right to influence as to which possibility should arise.’

  The Archduke, by now hostile to Aerenthal, sustained Conrad’s personal position, though he did not agree with his war policy. The full force of the dispute fell upon the Emperor. He had no doubts at all. He saw plainly that Austria’s mainstay must be Germany and if Germany did not wish to quarrel with Italy, neither must he. Germany could not afford to estrange Italy. He could not afford to estrange Germany. On September 27 Baron Bolfras, by the Emperor’s directions, interviewed Conrad. H.M. wishes ‘to have order and normal intercourse’ between Conrad and Aerenthal. Conrad should ‘write a couple of lines to Aerenthal to say that he regretted that the matter had been thus set forth.’ Conrad replied that before writing an apology to ‘the Aerenthal’ (dem Ährenthal) he would ‘rather have his right hand cut off.’

  He had always been upright and ‘now in my old age I do not bow myself.’ The furthest he would come was ‘if H.M. requires peace between Aerenthal and me, I propose that we say, what has been, has been; a line will be drawn under it and the matter is then done with.’ He added that he had never in his life had to apologize, and that the Archduke had strictly forbidden him to resign. Bolfras, after bewailing the stony path of mediators, reported the conversation to the Emperor and Conrad carried his tale to the Archduke. On October 8 Conrad handed a further memorial to the Emperor urging military measures against Italy and on the 17th he received a reply in brief and general terms of the sharpest character. ‘His department,’ he was told, ‘was to strive for the utmost readiness for war,’ while the Foreign Minister ‘in knowledge of the same conducted his own affairs in accordance with His Majesty’s will and in agreement with the two Minister-Presidents.’ On November 15 Conrad was received by the Emperor, when the following conversation ensued.

  The Emperor, ‘very excited and very angry,’ reproved Conrad.

  H.M. I say at once, the continual attacks on Aerenthal—these pin-pricks—I forbid them.

  Conrad. I beg Your Majesty to permit me to state my views as I now hold them; Your Majesty then decides.

  H.M. These continual attacks, especially the reproaches regarding Italy and the Balkans which go on being repeated, are directed against Me; the policy is made by Me; it is My policy.

  Conrad. I can only repeat that I wrote down my views just as I arrived at them. Your Majesty can of course mark them ‘wrong.’ That is in Your Majesty’s power.

  H.M. My policy is the policy of peace. To this policy of mine all must accommodate themselves. My foreign Minister conducts My policy in this sense. It is indeed possible that this war may come; probable too. But it will not be waged until Italy attacks us.

  Conrad. If only the chances are then still in our favour!

  H.M. So long as Italy does not attack us, this war will not be made. We have never had a ‘War Party’ at all hitherto.

  Conrad. Those whose duty it is to see to it that all is ready if war breaks out, so that we do not come into a difficult situation from the outset, may not utter the word ‘war,’ for otherwise they will be accused of belonging to the War Party.

  H.M. Prepared, one must be.4

  The Emperor then proceeded to aim a shaft at the Archduke. He criticized the bellicose attitude which the German Crown Prince had revealed to the Reichstag. ‘That will indeed not happen with us; but there are indications of it.’

  This stormy audience could but be a preliminary to dismissal. A fortnight later Conrad, again summoned to Schönbrunn, was relieved of his post and transferred to an Inspector-Generalship of the Army. ‘The reason,’ said Francis Joseph, ‘is well known to you and it is not necessary to talk about it.’

  His Majesty, says Conrad, was pleased to say that our personal relations had become ‘most friendly,’ and he had sent for me in order himself to intimate my dismissal, because the direct way appeared to him the best.

  His Majesty then paused, in the evident expectation that I should speak.

  Conrad. I most humbly thank Your Majesty; I too have always only gone the direct way.

  H.M. Then we have both acted alike and we part as friends.

  Upon this I was dismissed.5

  The Ballplatz lost no time in informing the Italians of Aerenthal’s victory over Conrad, and all immediate tension ceased between the two allies.

  In February 1912 Aerenthal died. His work was done; he had had a few months of excitement and triumph; he had secured a ceremonial satisfaction for his country; but the price was heavy, and through his own short-sighted sharp dealing, n
eedlessly heavy. He could have gained all he sought far more easily by treating Isvolski like a gentleman. He had invoked the might of Germany against Russia upon a minor question. He had used a steam-hammer to crack a nut. Until 1907 he had followed the cardinal maxim of Bismarck, namely that every step taken by Austria in the Balkans should be preceded by agreement with Russia. In 1908 he had suddenly discarded this wisdom. He had embroiled Austria and Russia; he had poisoned the relations between the two neighbouring empires who could so readily with mutual advantage have disentangled and cherished their interests in the Near East. He had involved Russia in a public humiliation which the ruling forces constituting public opinion around the Czar would never forget. He was fortunate not to live to endure the outcome.

  Aerenthal was succeeded by the late Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Count Berchtold, the owner of the château at Buchlau where the unlucky conversations with Isvolski had occurred. Berchtold was one of the smallest men who ever held a great position. His calibre and outlook were those of a clever Foreign Office clerk of junior rank, accustomed to move a great deal in fashionable society. Fop, dandy, la-di-da; amiable, polite and curiously un-self-seeking; immensely rich; magnate of a noble house; habitué of the Turf and of the Clubs; unproved in any grave political issue; yet equipped with the all-too-intensive training of a chess-board diplomatist; thus conditioned Berchtold fell an easy prey. He was allured by the glamour and force of the military men, and fascinated by the rattle and glitter of their terrible machines. We gaze with mournful wonder upon his doubting eyes and his weak, half-constructed jaw; we contemplate a human face in which there is no element of symmetry or massiveness. We are appalled that from such lips should have issued commands more fateful to the material fortunes of mankind than any spoken by the greatest sovereigns, warriors, jurists, philosophers and statesmen of the past. Berchtold is the epitome of this age when the affairs of Brobdingnag are managed by the Lilliputians.

  Since her painful experience in 1909 Russia had lain low, but neither her military preparations nor her diplomacy had been idle. A war between Italy and Turkey seemed to favour a renewed Russian effort to obtain that privileged freedom of the Dardanelles for her warships which had so long been a prime object of Muscovite desire. Russia now offered Turkey in distress a defensive alliance modelled upon the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi of 1833. Territorial changes likely to involve other Great Powers were excluded. The Russians offered to guarantee ‘the maintenance of the present regime in the Straits of the Bosphorous and the Dardanelles. The Ottoman Government were to promise not to oppose the passage of Russian warships through the Straits provided that these ships did not stop in the Straits or only by agreement.’ There was no basis for such an arrangement. Deep-rooted in the heart of the Turks was fear of Russia. In Russia they saw the probable destroyer of the Turkish Empire. In the Russian territories of the Caucasus they saw the greatest prize that Turkey could win by a victorious war. The Young Turk leaders were saturated with these ideas. Indeed they had already resolved that should the long-predicted European war break out, and Russia find herself at grips with Germany, they would invade the Caucasus with their principal armies. As this operation required the Turkish command of the Black Sea, it was necessary for them to become a naval power. They had already raised largely by public subscription the funds to purchase two Dreadnought battleships, the orders for which had been placed in England. They were therefore much embarrassed by the Russian proposal, and on learning that Great Britain and France were in no way pressing it, they rejected the overture with promptitude.

  COUNT BERCHTOLD

  This second rebuff to Russian diplomacy led M. Sazonov, who had now succeeded Isvolski, into a remarkable change of front. Under his guidance Russia set herself actively to form a league of the Balkan states against Turkey. The elements for such a confederacy were certainly not lacking. History reeked with the wrongs which Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece had suffered at Turkish hands. By the desperate struggles of generations they had freed themselves from Turkish yoke. Now the old oppressor still in control of many Christian provinces was in the toils. This was the moment to settle old scores and acquire new possessions. It needed only the influence of a Great Power which had long warred with the Turks to unite them in an effective alliance. Indeed it may well be that Russian diplomacy was only encouraging the Balkan states to do what they had already resolved.

  On October 8, 1912, Montenegro declared war upon Turkey. Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek declarations followed in a few days. The hardy and dauntless men who had seized power in Turkey marshalled their utmost resources to resist this dangerous combination of their hated foes. The course of the war was swift and its results unexpected. To no class had the crushing Turkish defeats come with more surprise than to the military experts. Conrad had always thought poorly of the Serbians. The German General Liman von Sanders at the head of a military mission was actually reorganizing the Turkish army and the staff in Berlin were confident of Turkish successes. In high British military circles an inveterate distrust of the Greeks as fighting men lay joined with their traditional liking and partisanship for the Turks.

  All these authorities were stultified by the event. The Greek army, which twenty years before had fled incontinently, now advanced with energy and speed in spite of heavy losses. The Bulgarians fought with the utmost skill and valour. But it was to the despised Serbians that the principal merit was ascribed. Not only did their troops fight skilfully and well, but their field artillery and heavy guns, trained and supplied by the French, played a decisive part both upon the battlefields and in the siege of Adrianople. By Christmas the Bulgarian army stood before the lines of Chatalja and King Ferdinand was dreaming of a triumphal entry into Constantinople. But while the Bulgarians had been fighting in Thrace, the Greeks had reached Salonica and the Serbians Cavalla. A general victory was no sooner assured than the conquerors were at each other’s throats. Bulgaria, behaving in a most arrogant manner, found herself opposed by Serbia and Greece. Fierce fighting broke out in February 1913. The Greeks and Serbians fell upon their late ally. Overweighted by numbers and exhausted with her losses against Turkey, Bulgaria reeled before this onslaught. At this moment Roumania, which had taken no part in the war, invaded Bulgaria from the rear and conquered the Dobruja. Bulgaria, crushed and cowed by overwhelming strength, made such terms as were possible. She was deprived of almost all conquests, barred from the sea and stripped by Roumania of the very province from which her most famous and most heavily-smitten division of soldiers had come. In the confusion Enver Pasha had returned from Libya. He advanced with inexhaustible audacity and recovered Adrianople. On these accomplished facts the Treaty of Bucharest was eventually made.

  All the reactions of these two Balkan wars were evil. The German Government and especially the Kaiser were most disagreeably impressed. Their long wooing of Turkey, their vaunted support, had only accompanied the Ottoman Empire to its greatest disaster. The fact that they had trained or at least had been the patrons of the Turkish army, while the French had supervised the technical preparations of Serbia and Greece, was unpalatable to the German General Staff. But the vexation of Austria was indescribable. The Serbians had not only proved their prowess in the field, they had doubled their area and increased their population by at least two-thirds. All the confident expectations of Vienna and Budapest that Serbia would be beaten by the Turks in the first Balkan war and by the Bulgarians in the second, were proved false. They found themselves face to face with the ambitions and hostility of that Greater Serbia whose very existence threatened the vitals of the empire. Russian elation inflamed the Austrian wrath. It was common talk in Vienna that a world war would come unless something happened to modify the ‘unwholesome effect’ of the Peace of Bucharest.

  The Serbian troops in the course of the war had reached the Adriatic and the Serbian Government stridently proclaimed their intention of keeping the Albanian coast as their ‘window upon the sea.’ The Austrians refused to tolerate this
, and although the Kaiser derided the idea of a war for a ‘few Albanian goat-pastures,’ war between Austria and Serbia was only averted by the prodigious labours of all the Great Powers assembled in London and especially by the co-operation of Great Britain and Germany.

  Conrad, banished from the Council chamber to a military command, had no official influence upon the policy. He distributed to the principal personages in power a series of Essays by ‘an onlooker’ at ‘epoch-making events which no patriot can view with indifference.’ He strenuously urged war with Serbia simultaneously with mobilization against Russia. He acquired great influence with Berchtold. The war spirit which dominated the rank and fashion in Vienna during the winter of 1912 and throughout 1913 was favourable to him. In December 1912 he was once more appointed Chief of the General Staff by Imperial decree. He ceaselessly ingeminated war. On December 14: ‘If the Monarchy means to resolve the question which touches its life interests, the best means appears to make war now against Serbia despite all qualms.’ On December 23: ‘Sole means to a solution: overthrow Serbia by war undismayed by consequences…. Though the Entente Powers together with Serbia may be strong enough jointly to threaten the Monarchy, yet we are powerful enough to confront these states with the choice of a general war of which the most important among them are in fact afraid.’ On December 30 to the Archduke: ‘We have reached the point where there is a trial of strength between the Monarchy and Serbia. It is a trial which must be seen through. All else—Albania, harbour question, consular question, trade agreements, etc.—are side-issues.’ His appeals were supported by the new War Minister, Krobatin, and by Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia, who wrote fatuously: ‘But in God’s name anyhow no rotten peace. Better a defeat on the battlefield in a struggle with a Great Power than that.’ This was not in the end to be denied him.