While, then, they were winning a third youth, Graben,
for their plans, and obtaining arms from Ciganovic —
himself a Bosnian refugee — and from Tankosic" — leader
of the Komit adj i band in which Princip had unsuccess-
fully tried to enlist — Ilic* continued his preparations in
Sarajevo
quite
independently
of
them,
and
armed
three other youths, Cvetko Popovió, Vaso Cubrilovié,
and Muhamed Mehmedbaslc, none of whom had any
connection
with
Serbia.
Thus
when
the
Archduke
came to Sarajevo, these three, the three youths from
Serbia, and Pusara himself, were all waiting, armed with
revolvers or bombs, at different points along the route.
Each group knew that there were others on the watch,
but did not know who or where they were, Ilié himself
being the sole connecting-link.
The initiative lay, not with those who so recklessly
provided arms to three of them in Belgrade, but with
Ilió and Pusara in Sarajevo, and above all with Gaóinovié
in Lausanne. Moreover, it appears that even the inner
ring was not in full agreement, that Ilió at the last
moment took alarm and wanted to draw back, that
Princip insisted upon Gaóinovió being consulted afresh,
and that only then were the final preparations continued.l
It appears also that some of the group, and the Slovene
student
Endlicher,
were
also
in
touch
with
Italian
anarchists in Trieste, and hoped to obtain bombs from
them, though nothing actually came of this. It may be
1 Most of the above details I learnt in conversations last summer in Sarajevo and
elsewhere with the survivors from the various groups of conspirators.
79
taken as certain that a few ringleaders among the
Jugoslav students in Graz and Vienna knew something of
what was brewing; and it is now known that in at least
one of the Dalmatian towns some youths had resolved to
shoot the Archduke if he passed through their district,
and that they possessed the necessary weapons.
On this whole question of initiative there will be a
good deal more to say in the chapter devoted to responsi-
bility for the crime of Sarajevo.1
The survey of events thus briefly attempted in the three
introductory chapters must surely lead to the conclusion
that between 1912 and 1914 war was on a razor's edge;
that in most capitals there existed groups or individuals
recklessly
bent
upon
precipitating
events;
and
that,
while each weighed anxiously the reasons for and
against action, some stroke of fate might utterly disturb
the precarious balance. The present chapter will have
demonstrated that the real initiative in the Southern
Slav Question was rapidly passing from the hands of
statesmen and politicians alike into those of raw and
hare-brained
youths
who
stuck
at
nothing,
and
whom not even the direst consequences could deter.
Thus all the materials needed to produce an explosion
had long since been accumulated, and, while the actual
spark which lit the powder magazine was struck in
Sarajevo, there were many other points at which the
conflagration might equally well have broken out.
1 A word as to Gacinovic's fate. After the outbreak of war he served as a
volunteer with the French fleet in the Adriatic, then, being invalided, went with
Pero Slijepcevic to America to recruit volunteers for the Serbian army and
collect funds for the families of " traitors " who had suffered from Austrian
reprisals. He died in Switzerland in 1917 at the age of twenty-seven. See
Spomenica, pp. 93-106.
CHAPTER IV
THE ARCHDUKE FRANCIS FERDINAND
THE events recorded in the previous chapter make it
abundantly clear that long before June 1914 a funda-
mental issue had arisen between Austria-Hungary and
Serbia, the product of the same nationalistic currents
which had already transformed the face of Ge
rmany and
Italy. It is obvious that so foul a crime as that of
Sarajevo greatly aggravated the quarrel, and hence the
dangers to European peace, but it did not in any way
create it. Nothing could have arrested the
movement
save a change of policy by Austria-Hungary towa
rds her
own discontented Jugoslav subjects.
Throughout this critical period the personality o f the
heir-apparent, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, exercised
a marked influence upon men and events, and therefore
deserves special consideration before we pass to a
detailed study of the Sarajevo crime and its consequences.
It may safely be affirmed that in the second dec ade
of our century Francis Ferdinand was the most singular
figure of any of the reigning dynasties of Europe. In
the words of Count Czernin, who enjoyed his friendship
and confidence, " he was unbalanced in everything: he
did nothing like other people." Yet he was a man of
very considerable intellectual powers and wide interests.
In glaring contrast to his uncle, he had a keen artistic
sense and was a famous collector of antiques. A brilliant
s
hot, he carried the usual royal mania for sport to the
length of wholesale massacr e
, yet he was passionately
devoted to the more peaceful pursuit of gardening, and
the grounds of Konopistë were justly famous for their
81
roses. He cared very little for popularity and certainly
never attained it, but he was an excellent judge of
character,* and despite his overbearing and hasty temper,
Was far more tolerant of frank speech and well-grounded
criticism
than
might
have
been
expected.
On
one
occasion the representatives of a minor nationality, when
summoned by him to a secret audience,2 were very out-
spoken in their criticism of the situation, and while
expressing their devotion to his person, warned him that
among their people belief in the dynasty was being
steadily undermined. The Archduke, so far from taking
offence, expressed his surprise that there was any trace
of loyalty left! Being a man of very strong feelings and
prejudices, he was equally emphatic in praise and blame,
and often gave mortal offence when another in his place
would simply have remained silent. He could be winning
and gracious on occasions, but he could also be brutal
and callous to the last degree, and this showed itself in
his lack of consideration for the servants and employees
on his estates. Another unlovely side to his character
was his extreme meanness in all money matters and his
constant habit of driving a hard bargain with persons
who were scarcely in a position to resist. There can be
little doubt that he was encouraged in this by the desire
to provide for his children a fortune independent of any
action on the part of his successor to the throne; and
it is a cruel irony of fate that they should have been
deprived after all of the estate of Konopistë by a decision
of the Czechoslovak Parliament3 which it is hard to
reconcile either with the spirit of the Peace Treaties or
with the principles of international law.
Francis Ferdinand cared little for society and made
1 Auffenberg, op. cit., p. 188. He it was who " discovered " both Conrad
Aehrenthal. His verdict on soldiers or politicians, unless they happened to
be Jews, was generally extremely sound.
2 Two of them recounted the details to me in strict confidence soon afterwards.
3 The decisions was made on 5 August, 1921, and was carried out so ruthlessly
that the children of the late Archduke were not even allowed to remove some
of his Personal effects from the castle of Konopiste.
82
few friends, but those whom he admitted to the inner
ring were whole-heartedly his. His natural reserve was
not untinged by a certain bitterness, due in part to the
neglect and affronts from which he suffered as a young
man, when he was not expected to live very long, but
above all to the situation produced by his marriage,
which indeed, as time passed, tended to accentuate still
further the main points of his character, both good and
bad. His decision to marry the Countess Sophie Chotek,
of an ancient but impoverished Bohemian family, could
not fail to be unwelcome to the Emperor, and was a
source of permanent estrangement between the two. By
the rest of the Imperial family it was openly resented,
and the constant intrigues of the Archduchesses,1 the
Court Chamberlain2 and other high officials against any
change of etiquette or precedence in favour of his Consort,
were continually rousing Francis Ferdinand to fury, and
often led him to absent himself from ceremonies at the
Hofburg. For the rest he was a faithful and devoted
husband and father, and his domestic happiness was
increased by a common standard of strictest attachment
to the Catholic Church. This coloured his whole outlook
upon men: for instance, he disliked officers who were
lax in their observance or, still worse, free thinking, and
Conrad records how the Archduke took him violently to
task for his failure to attend Mass on a Sunday during
manœuvres.3 On the other hand, he was not so narrow
as the Duchess, and showed great friendliness towards
prominent
Slovak
or
German
Lutherans
and
the
Roumanian Orthodox clergy. He attacked the Los von
Rom movement because he rightly recognised that it
1 Specially hostile were the Archduke Frederick and his wife, who had been
planning a marriage between Francis Ferdinand and her own daughter, when
suddenly she found his affections to be centred upon one of her ladies-in-waiting,
the Countess Chotek.
2 Prince Montenuovo's attitude was influenced by the fact that he himself
was a grandson of Marie Louise (daughter of the Emperor Francis and second
wife of Napoleon) through her morganatic marriage with Count Neipperg.
3
Conrad, Aus Meiner Dienstzeit, iii., p. 436: " I know your religious views
but if I go to Church, you have to go too."
83
was in the first instance a political, anti-dynastic and
separatist movement, and religious only in quite a
secondary sense. His disapproval of Free Thought gave
an added point to his dislike of the Jews, on whom he
sometimes expressed himself with even more than his
usual vigour and indiscretion.
With the old Emperor his relations were definitely
bad, in the first instance because they were tempera-
mentally so different. Francis Joseph typified the House
of Lorraine, while his nephew showed more Habsburg
qualities, transmuted by the Bourbon blood which he
inherited from his maternal grandfather, the notorious
King " Bomba " of the Two Sicilies. But the jealousy
that subsisted between the Emperor and his heir was
above all due to a fundamental divergence of political
aims and outlook. Francis Joseph had throughout life
favoured half-measures and discouraged the emergence
of
masterful
personalities,
while
Francis
Ferdinand
believed in energetic measures and welcomed strong
men (so long of course as they were loyal to himself).
Francis Joseph was wedded to the Dual System as it
had developed since 1867. It was a typical product of
his love of compromise, and regarding himself (with
Deák) as its chief creator, he was exceedingly jealous of
any suggestion of its reform and had honestly come to
believe that he alone possessed the political experience
needed to control so complicated a machine. Francis
Ferdinand, on the contrary, was fully alive to the many
fatal flaws in the Dual System and made no concealment
of his desire for its drastic revision. He does not appear
to have ever committed himself to the exact details of
such a revision, but he is known to have given the problem
a great deal of thought and to have invited and examined
a whole series of proposals drafted by such recognised
authorities
on
international
or
constitutional
law
as
Lammasch, Tezner, Steinacker and Zolger. It is quite
true that his autocratic leanings ran counter to a proper
84
understanding of constitutional questions, but he and
his advisers found common ground in the view that
the Dual System was a cul-de-sac, that its gravest defect
was the lack of any constitutional machinery for revision
when necessary, and that a forcible exit being well-nigh
inevitable, the main problem was to discover that which
would cause the
least disturbance.1 He undoubtedly
inclined to the idea of remodelling the Dual Monarchy
into a number of separate national states, linked together
by a strong central Parliament and unified ministries
for the conduct of certain common affairs.
In all these schemes the foremost obstacle in his path
was the position of Hungary, and it is sufficiently
notorious that he looked upon the Magyars with a violent
antipathy, as endangering not merely the dynasty, but
the very existence of the Dual Monarchy itself, by their
insane policy towards all the nationali
ties which bordered
with them. So strong were his feelings that in receiving
a small Slovak deputation he once said of the Magyars,
" It was bad taste on their part ever to come to Europe." *
In one way or another the power of the ruling oligarchy
in Hungary had to be broken. The new sovereign on
his accession would at once be confronted by that pro-
vision of the Hungarian Constitution» which obliges him
1
Perhaps the most serious of all the various drafts was that prepared by-
Colonel Brosch, till 1911 the Chief of the Archduke's Militärkanzlei, a soldier of
quite unusual breadth of vision and understanding, who had established intimate
personal relations with the leaders of most of the lesser nationalities, and to the
last enjoyed his master's confidence. I have seen a letter of his addressed to one
of these leaders shortly after the murder, in which he says that after an event
which has shattered all his hopes for the future there is nothing left for him but
to take his place at the head of his regiment and die fighting in the war which was
on the point of breaking out. In actual fact he courted death, and fell in August
1914 during the Galician
campaign. Incidentally
his letter,
coming
from
one
inside the innermost ring of knowledge, may serve as indirect confirmation of
the " will to war " in Vienna. This draft has been published in full in the Neues
Wiener Journal of 30 December, 1923, and 1 January, 1924. According to
Count Polzer-Hoditz, a former private secretary of the late Archduke, it was
afterwards
very
materially
altered
by
Professor
Lammasch
and
others.
(See
interview in Pester Lloyd of 5 January, 1924.)
2
" Es war eine Geschmacklosigkeit von den Herren, dass sie überhaupt nach
Europa
gekommen
sind."
This
I
learnt
from
members
of
the
deputation,
personal friends of my own.
3
Art. iii. of 1790-1. See Corpus Juris Hungarici, vol. v., p. 150, or Ungarische
Verjassungsgesetze, (ed. Steinbach), p. 7.
85
to take his Coronation oath within a period of six months,
Sarajevo Page 11