Austria."* Considering that both
statesmen must have been well aware how narrowly an
Austro-Hungarian assault upon Serbia had been averted
in the preceding weeks, it is difficult to find fault with
the remark, if it was actually made. More compromising
are the phrases which Pasic is alleged to have used to
Bogicevic himself during a cure at Karlsbad some weeks
later:» " Already in the first Balkan War I could have
let it come to an European war, in order to acquire
Bosnia and Herzegovina: but as I feared that we should
then be forced to make large concessions to Bulgaria in
Macedonia, I wanted first of all to secure the possession
of Macedonia for Serbia, and only then to proceed to
the acquisition of Bosnia/' This is the true atmosphere
of Balkan megalomania and calculating intrigue, but it
shows that he was not planning any immediate aggres-
sion. That he had at the back of his mind the dream
of Bosnia as one day united with Serbia, it would be
1This writer must be read with considerable caution. Brought up at the
Theresianum in Vienna, and having hardly ever lived in his own country, he
acquired an essentially German outlook and, belonging to the Obrenovic faction,
owed his diplomatic post solely to his family's personal relations with Milo-
vanovic.
His
book
contains
some
first-hand
material,
but
it
suppresses
all
criticism of Austria-Hungary and treats Russia as the villain throughout.
2 Kriegsursachen, p. 65.
3 ibid., p. 65.
57
absurd to deny; for that was a dream which was common
to almost every Serb on either side of the Austro-Serbian
frontier.
Much more important are the terms of Pasic's con-
versation with the Tsar on 20 January, 1914,1 when he
and the Crown Prince had gone to thank Russia for her
support, and if possible to win the hand of a Russian
Grand Duchess. The Tsar met their thanks by the
simple phrase that Russia had only done her Slav duty.
But Pasic, in his exposé of Serbian policy, lays the main
stress upon the need for Balkan peace and the avoidance
of all fresh complications. Serbia, he rightly maintained,
required peace in order to recover and to prepare anew
for the defence of Serbian interests against the dangers
threatening from Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria. If on
the other hand Pasic had come to despair of any arrange-
ment with Vienna after the failure of his two overtures
in December 1912 and October 1913, and in view of
the events which we have already summarised, it is
surely very hard to blame him for such an attitude.
But if Serbia had come to regard a life-and-death
struggle as well-nigh inevitable after so many indications
of Vienna's hostility, it is only natural that the same
opinion should have been entertained in many Russian
circles. No one will accuse the Tsar of wishing war,
especially in the precarious internal state of Russia
herself, nor was the Foreign Minister, Mr. Sazonov, of
an adventurous disposition. But both had pronounced
and genuine Slavophil sympathies and inevitably allowed
them to intertwine with the old Russian desire for access
to the Mediterranean. The aim which Izvolsky had
failed to achieve at the time of the Bosnian Annexation
Crisis was constantly present to the minds of Russian
statesmen, and their military and naval discussions with
1
Pasic's report is reproduced in Deutschland Schuldig? (German White Book,
9 9), appendix xxvi., pp. 130-6; or in Bogiöevic, Kriegsursachen, appendix
iii. PP. 170-80.
58
representatives of the Entente were not unconnected
with it. Already, at his visit to Balmoral in September
1912, Sazonov had discussed with Sir Edward Grey and
King George the possibilities of an European War.1 He
did not inform Britain of Russia's share in producing the
secret Serbo-Bulgarian Convention of the previous spring,
which was the germ of the Balkan League, but he did
intimate it to M. Poincaré, who showed a certain alarm
and feared aggressive aims.» But though these aims
obviously ran counter to Austro-Hungarian policy as
then conceived by Berchtold and his subordinates, it
cannot reasonably be maintained that their point was
directed against the Dual Monarchy.3 The secret clause
which committed Bulgaria in the event of an attack
from the north was simply part of a design intended to
secure immunity during the projected campaign against
Turkey; and it was obvious from the first that Bulgaria
would never have consented to share in a Serbian war
of aggression against Austria-Hungary, even if the Serbs
should be so mad as to undertake one. Moreover, Russia's
control of Balkan events was very much more apparent
than real, and indeed almost from the first the Balkan
states took the bit between their teeth. The secret treaty
prescribed the Tsar as umpire both regarding the date
for beginning the war with Turkey and regarding future
frontier disputes among the allies. The dramatic manner
in which the latter provision was repudiated in June 1913
has overshadowed the fact that the other provision was
equally disregarded, that Sazonov was intensely annoyed
at the allies onslaught upon Turkey and would have
liked to hold them back. His Minister in Belgrade,
Hartwig, who is generally regarded as the Spiritus movens
behind the scenes, and who undoubtedly enjoyed great
1 Report of Sazonov to Tsar (undated) in Le Livre Noir (ed. René Marchand),
ii.,
pp.
345-59.
This
book
contains
the
Russian
diplomatic
documents
from
1910 to 1914, as published by the Bolshevik Government.
2 Stieve, Izvolsky und der Weltkrieg, p. 91.
3 This is Stieve's contention {ibid., p. 86).
59
personal prestige and influence at Belgrade, was so little
initiated into the plot as to be able to report to St.
Petersburg
late
in
July
that
Serbia
was
decidedly
disinclined for warlike plans of any kind.1 As late as
1 October — a week before war broke out — he assured
his Entente colleagues that Pasic was entirely pacific,2
and during the war he wrote home in alarm, lest Russia's
" historical ideals " might be threatened by the League's
advance upon Constantinople.
On
the
other
hand
Sazonov
undoubtedly
gave
encouragement to the Serbs. On 27 December, 1912,
he appears to have told the Serbian Minister, Mr. Popovic,
/>
that they must be satisfied with what they might get
and " regard it only as an instalment, since the future
belonged " to them.8 Again in April 1913 he bade them
work for the future, as they would eventually " get much
territory
from
Austria."4
The
Paris
despatches
of
Izvolsky to Sazonov5 also show that during the Balkan
War the former was working steadily to commit the
French Government to military action in the event of
Austria-Hungary intervening against Serbia. But there
is no evidence whatever that Russia contemplated a war
of aggression, and it is sufficiently notorious that quite
apart from internal unrest, she was so little ready for
war that the General Staff reckoned with the necessity
of abandoning Warsaw and the whole Polish salient.
When the Great War actually came, it was only
Germany's tremendous concentration of effort against
Belgium that enabled Russia to alter her plan and attempt
the invasion of East Prussia. This has obscured the
utter unpreparedness of Russia in the summer of 1914.
Those who maintain that Russia intended to make war
1 Siebert, Diplom. Aktenstücke, p. 529.
2
French
Yellow
Book
(Affaires
Balcaniques),
i.,
p.
69,
No.
116.
Telegram
reproduced
in
appendix
v.
of
Bogicevié,
Kriegsursachen,
p.
128.
lbid., appendix vii. To this Popovié naively replied, " We would gladly
give Monastir to Bulgaria, if we could get Bosnia and other Austrian lands."
ûee Le Livre Noir, i., pp. 321-72.
60
in the following autumn, and so was only forestalled by
a few months, argue in flagrant defiance of well established
and fundamental military facts.
The most, then, that can be said is that Izvolsky,
influenced in part by personal pique against Vienna, but
above all by his temperamental reading of the European
situation, had come to regard war as inevitable and was
absorbed in diplomatic preparations for it. But though
influential, he was far from all-powerful at St. Petersburg,
and even friends and colleagues were ready to discount
his colossal vanity. On the very eve of the tragedy there
is evidence from Bucarest of Sazonov's pacific intentions,
and his confidences to the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador
as late as 26 July, 1914, reveal him as anything but
aggressive, even when roused.l It seems, however, to be
well established that Izvolsky used the expression " C'est
la guerre."
It may, however, be said that in the spring of 1914,
despite certain signs of relaxed tension such as the
Anglo-German
negotiations,
the
general
situation
in
Europe was one of very great uncertainty and was at
the
mercy
of
any
untoward
event.
Austro-Russian
rivalry in particular was as acute as ever, not merely in
the Balkans, but also in Galicia and the Ukraine, where
Uniate and Orthodox propaganda was exploited by both
sides for political ends and gave rise to sensational
treason trials, and where legions were being organised
for the coming war. So far as Austria-Hungary was
concerned, her prestige had been seriously impaired by
Berchtoldś clumsy handling of the Balkan situation.
The successive rebuffs of 1912 and 1913 were in every-
one's recollection, and now as spring turned to summer
there came the Russo-Roumanian
rapprochement, the
humiliating failure of the Wied regime in Albania, the
Serbo-Montenegrin negotiations for union and the danger
that the two Serb states might ere long find a genuine
1 See infra., p. 269.
61
excuse
for
intervention
in
Albania.
Berchtold
was
therefore
searching
anxiously
for
some
means
of
rehabilitating
himself
before
public
opinion.
In
the
words of the ablest German post-war critic of diplomatic
history, Vienna's " attitude towards Balkan questions and
the whole Southern Slav problem " was one of " per-
plexity
and
planlessness,"
and
her
statesmen
were
"
permanently
possessed
by
the
fear
that
further
failures in foreign policy might completely dislocate the
internal structure of the Monarchy."1
Inside Serbia itself the situation was also strained;
two closely balanced factions were struggling for power,
a revision of the constitution was imminent, and the
PaSic Cabinet was hard put to it to maintain its majority
at the impending general elections. The problem of
administering the newly acquired provinces was entirely
unsolved and causing great disquietude, in view of the
Bulgarophil sympathies of large sections of the popula-
tion. In a word, Serbia was absorbed in her own troubles
and not in a position to risk fresh adventure. That
some of the wilder and more ambitious spirits in the
army had not yet had their fill of fighting is as certain as
that the pothouses and cafés of the Balkan Peninsula,
as also of Hungary and some parts of Austria, were
frequented by megalomaniacs whose political phantasy
was boundless and who reflected the general atmosphere
of unsettlement, but who did not after all control their
respective Governments.
Far more serious, however, than this loud-mouthed
beer-patriotism was the fact that in the Jugoslav provinces
of the Dual Monarchy the entire younger generation
under the age of twenty-five, and especially the youths
finishing their gymnasium and
starting
a University
career, were infected by revolutionary ideas, utterly
1 Brandenburg, Von Bismarck zum Weltkriege, p. 387. His criticism of
A-ehrenthal and Berchtold, based on official German documents not yet published,
is very instructive.
62
impatient of the mild and opportunist tactics of their
political leaders, going their own way and leaning more
and more towards " propaganda of the deed." Before
the war little or nothing of this movement was known
in the West, while more than one post-war writer, misled
<
br /> by motives of race or party, has placed it in an entirely
false perspective and thereby produced a very distorted
picture of the events leading to the Sarajevo outrage
and the outbreak of the Great War. Hence no apology is
needed for treating this subject in somewhat greater
detail.
CHAPTER III
THE JUGOSLAV REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
THE Austro-Serbian conflict is only too often treated as
a diplomatic struggle between the Governments of Vienna,
Budapest, and Belgrade;
and the Bosnian problem in
particular is presented as a question of international law
or of European balance of power, to be decided according
to the interests of the Great Powers rather than the
wishes of the native population. Yet the really essential
facts, the facts which are linked with the tragedy of 1914
as cause and effect, are, firstly, that in the two decades
preceding the Congress of Berlin the hopes of the entire
Serbian
race
were
centred
upon
Bosnia-Herzegovina,
that Serbia and Montenegro, having fought in vain for
its delivery, regarded its occupation by Austria-Hungary
as downright robbery Γ"and declined to accept it as a
finally accomplished fact; and, secondly, that the mass
of the Bosnian population itself struggled valiantly for
union with the two Serb principalities, resisted foreign
occupation by force of arms, and, though reduced
to
subjection,
remained
sullenly
unreconciled.
That
Austria-Hungary did much for the material welfare and
ordered development of the two provinces is simply not
open to question; but nothing that she did could win
the hearts of her new subjects, and those who, since the
turn of the century, celebrated the success of her
colonising efforts either wrote in ignorance or were living
in a fools' paradise.
How deep-rooted was the sentiment for Bosnia in
every Serbian heart had long been known to all who had
ears to hear, and is nowhere expounded more clearly
64
than in the confidential reports addressed to Vienna
between 1868 and 1874 by Benjamin Kállay, Austria-
Hungary's first diplomatic agent in Belgrade. During
the years following the murder of Prince Michael we find
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