Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

by Max Hastings

  In an age when every European nation measured power by breadth of empire, imperialists saw Britain’s greatness imperilled if its other island was permitted to secede. The Ulster crisis fell upon a society already stricken by industrial strife: there was a protracted lock-out in the building trades, together with conflicts in the mines, on railways and in the engineering industry. In a July speech Lloyd George warned that the industrial and Irish confrontations were alike ‘the gravest with which any government has had to deal for centuries’. He did not exaggerate. A historic constitutional clash beckoned, as King George V recognised when he summoned a conference of the warring parties at Buckingham Palace to seek a path to reconciliation.

  Yet another Times leader, headed ‘The King and the Crisis’, on 20 July, referred to Ulster. Catholic passions were rising in step with those of Protestants: on Tuesday the 21st the Manchester Guardian reported that men of the Dublin Fusiliers, returning from camp training, were heard shouting: ‘We will have Home Rule at any cost!’ ‘A nation once again!’ A letter-writer to The Economist asked what would happen to Lord Roberts’ rash public assertion – made in support of the army’s Orange sympathisers – that soldiers must be allowed to exercise their consciences, if Irish nationalists wearing British khaki claimed such a right. There were extraordinary scenes as the foremost Home Rulers, Redmond and Dillon, walked towards Buckingham Palace to attend the King’s conference: Irish Guardsmen in uniform cheered them on their way.

  On 22 July Ulster still dominated the columns of The Times, but the paper admitted that the growing tension between Austria-Hungary and Serbia had become ‘too serious to be ignored’, though ‘we have no wish to exaggerate the dangers … a cool perception of their greatness may enable the Powers to conjure them before it is too late’. The Times found it so evident that war would threaten the very existence of Austria-Hungary that it cherished every hope the Emperor would act ‘reasonably’. On the afternoon of the 24th, Asquith was obliged to tell the House of Commons that the King’s Irish conference had broken down without a resolution. The cabinet plunged into vexed debate about the prospective boundaries of the six Ulster counties now scheduled for exclusion from immediate implementation of Home Rule – this was a concession extracted by the Protestant rebels at gunpoint. But then the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, reported to his colleagues upon the draconian terms of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Winston Churchill has described in immortal phrases how ‘the parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, and by perceptible gradations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe’.

  Yet that night, few British people retired to their beds anticipating any consequences for themselves from the Balkan drama. It is only because European war caused the Irish crisis to be swept aside, the government to postpone implementation of Home Rule for the duration and then forever – because it was supplanted in 1921 by Irish partition and independence – that the savage hatreds, the magnitude of the threat to Britain’s political fabric, are often today underrated. The Ulster imbroglio also significantly influenced Berlin’s attitude: German leaders saw the British impaled upon their domestic troubles, and found it hard to imagine that a nation thus preoccupied and divided could menace their own purposes.

  On the 25th, for the first time The Times acknowledged the gravity of the situation, saying – though still only in a second leader – that unless Austria-Hungary moderated its attitude towards Serbia, ‘we stand upon the edge of war, and of a war fraught with dangers that are incalculable to all the Great Powers … Austria-Hungary leaves a small and excitable Balkan kingdom to decide at a few hours’ notice whether there is, or is not, to be a third Balkan war, and a Balkan war this time in which one of the Great Powers will be involved as a principal from the first.’ It was widely remarked that, if Austria had been seriously interested in averting conflict, its ultimatum would have allowed a pause of more than forty-eight hours for the Serbian response, to give time for diplomacy to work.

  But the British public still took more notice of such domestic trivia as ‘the motor-horn nuisance’ much discussed in The Times’s correspondence column. On 24 July Asquith mentioned the Balkans to Venetia Stanley in tones that still displayed Olympian detachment, though also sluggishly rising concern: ‘Russia is trying to drag us in … The curious thing is that on many, if not most, of the points Austria has a good and Serbia a very bad case, but the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe … and there is a brutality about their mode of procedure which will make most people think that it is a case of a big Power wantonly bullying a little one. Anyhow it is the most dangerous situation of the last 40 years, and may have incidentally the good effect of throwing into the background the lurid pictures of “civil war” in Ulster.’ Asquith told the Archbishop of Canterbury that the Serbs deserved ‘a thorough thrashing’. On the afternoon of the 25th he presided at a diplomatic garden party at 10 Downing Street, where a string orchestra played while the German ambassador rubbed shoulders with the Serbian minister, and the Lloyd Georges mingled with assorted peers.

  That same Saturday night the attorney-general, Sir John Simon, addressed a gathering of Birmingham Liberals at Altrincham. He told them: ‘We have been so filled with our own political developments that some of us may not have noticed how serious a situation is threatening on the continent of Europe … Let us resolve that the part which this country plays … shall from beginning to end be the part of a mediator simply desirous of promoting better and more peaceful relations.’ It is understandable that many Europeans, both allies and enemies, recoiled from such self-righteousness.

  In the press announcement of house parties for the forthcoming Cowes yachting week, it was stated that ‘Prince Henry of Prussia was to have been among the guests, but is unable to leave Germany at present owing to the crisis, though he may do so later should the situation improve.’ Walter Cunliffe, governor of the Bank of England, asserted confidently to his guests at Inverewe in the Scottish Highlands that a great war was impossible, because ‘the Germans haven’t got the credits’. The financier Sir Ernest Cassell gave the same assurance to Mrs George Keppel’s glittering summer house party across the Channel at Clingendaal House, near The Hague: a general European conflict could not be funded. However, a young guest declared that she must go home anyway – Violet Asquith wanted to be with her father in Downing Street. Some of the young men took a cue from her. Lord Lascelles, a Grenadier Guardsman, said to his friend Lord Castlerosse, ‘We had better get back.’ They motored to the coast, and caught a boat to England among other uneasy folk with the same idea.

  Just before the 6 p.m. expiry of Austria’s deadline on the 25th, Serbia’s response was delivered by the prime minister personally to Austria’s Baron Giesl. Pašić, conscious of the solemnity of the moment, wore an expression of mournful gravity. He said to Giesl in imperfect German: ‘Part of your demands we have accepted, for the rest we place our hopes on your loyalty and chivalry as an Austrian general. With you we have always been very satisfied.’ The Serbs accepted all Vienna’s harsh terms save its requirement for Austrians to be granted authority on their soil. When this response became known in western Europe, there were some brief delusions that war was averted. ‘People are relieved and at the same time disappointed to hear that Serbia is giving in,’ wrote André Gide. But Vienna made no pretence of desiring a peaceful outcome: whatever the Serbian response, Baron Giesl had been instructed to remove himself to the border at Zemun by the 6.30 train.

  News that the ultimatum had not been accepted in totality prompted an explosion of frivolous glee in Vienna, where crowds surged through the streets until the small hours. It has recently been suggested that Serbia’s Nikola Pašić was also secretly enthused about a war that would commit Russia in support of Serbia’s pan-Slav ambitions; while this is remotely possible, it is again wholly unproven and unprovable. But the Serbs knew their response would not satisfy Vienna, and their ow
n mobilisation orders had been dispatched four hours earlier, at 2 p.m. That night government official Jovan Žujović, now in uniform, boarded a train carrying the General Staff eastward to the army’s concentration area, while his brother, a doctor, reported to a divisional field hospital. After two recent conflicts and a mobilisation, the Serbs were more familiar with the routines than any other nation in Europe. But their army had not yet re-equipped after the Second Balkan War, and the government knew how ill-stocked were its arsenals – a further reason for doubting that Pašić welcomed hostilities.

  Next morning Berchtold informed his Emperor – mendaciously – that the Serbs had fired on Austria’s Danube steamers. Old Franz Joseph promptly signed the Empire’s mobilisation order, saying enigmatically, ‘Also doch!’ – ‘So, after all!’ Since the crisis began, his ministers had seriously debated only two matters: diplomatic measures to ensure German support, and the mechanics of Serbia’s dismemberment after its conquest. Belgrade, the country’s sole city of any stature, was to be annexed to the Hapsburg Empire, together with some additional territory. Other portions would be offered to Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro, to reconcile them to the new dispensation. Serbia would thus cease to trouble the world; the pan-Slav movement would be deprived of its prime mover. Both Austria and Germany repeatedly lied about these intentions, assuring the Russians and the world that the Hapsburg government had no plans for imposing territorial changes.

  Count István Burián wrote that ‘across the whole of Europe our steps are rumbling like a storm which truly will decide our destiny’. Theodor Wolff, editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, asserted that the increasingly frenzied response to the appearance of each special edition on the streets of the capital reflected not merely a hunger for news, but each man’s unwillingness to be alone, his yearning to share his own fears with others: ‘Suddenly the crowds move. A couple of delivery vans appear, stormed by throngs of people. Some hold a white paper, others stare over their shoulders … People stand in their autos and carriages, hanging out over the street, staring, waiting for certainty … Never before has there been so much reading in the streets … Everyone does it, the flower-sellers in front of Café Kranzler as eagerly as the elegant lady inside the café itself.’

  An extra edition at 9.30 p.m. on the 25th reported that the Serbs had rejected Vienna’s ultimatum. Few people cheered; most simply went home. But crowds gathered in front of the Austrian and Italian embassies screaming patriotic slogans: ‘Down with Serbia!’ Nationalists sang outside the chancellor’s office. Café orchestras played ‘Deutschland über alles’. In Wolff’s words, ‘the music rose sublimely to the heavens’, followed by Austria’s anthem ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’. Kurt Riezler wrote: ‘in the evening and on Sunday people were singing. The chancellor is much moved, deeply stirred and strengthened, especially since news [of such displays of popular emotion] is coming in from across the Empire. Among the people [there is] an enormous, if confused, urge for action, a yearning for a great movement … to rise up for a great cause, to show one’s powers.’

  Joffre, France’s chief of staff and commander-in-chief, found civilian politicians nervous, as well they might be, facing a huge crisis with the president and premier still abroad. The general told Messimy, the war minister, that he was quite prepared to handle a mobilisation in their absence: ‘Monsieur le Ministre, if we have to make war we shall do so.’ Messimy responded emotionally: ‘Bravo!’ On 25 July, without reference to Joffre, the minister telegraphed an order for all senior officers on leave to return to their units, which caused the general testily to remind him that there was a proper sequence for such measures, which Messimy had pre-empted. That night, French intelligence learned that German officers in Switzerland had been recalled from leave; guards were being placed on key bridges across the Kaiser’s empire. It was nonetheless decided not to recall vacationing French soldiers, many of whom were still needed at home for the harvest.

  In London Sir Edward Grey still harboured a huge though scarcely ignoble delusion: that Germany would exercise its influence upon Vienna to prevent a Balkan quarrel from escalating into a general European conflict. But that night of the 25th, the head of the Foreign Office’s East and West Department, Sir Eyre Crowe, warned of the gravity of the situation. He wrote that everything now hinged upon the vital question of ‘whether Germany is or is not determined to have this war now’, and urged that the most likely way of preventing disaster was for Britain to make plain that it would not remain neutral in a conflict that engaged France and Russia. But at that moment there was no possibility that the cabinet or the House of Commons would have endorsed any such commitment, even had Grey asked for it – as he did not.

  Europe now had a war: only its scale remained to be determined. Everything turned upon Russia. Jules Cambon, the French ambassador in Berlin, told his Belgian counterpart: ‘Today the fate of France and the conservation of the peace of Europe depend upon a foreign will, that of the Tsar. What will he decide? And upon what advice? If he decides for war France, the victim of her alliance, will follow the destiny of her ally on the battlefields.’ It was taken for granted that Serbia would not have dared to reject even a part of Austria’s ultimatum without being confident of Russia’s support. At 1 a.m. on 26 July St Petersburg placed Russian Poland under martial law. Later that day, critical pre-mobilisation orders were issued. The army required a fortnight to be ready to fight, a month to be fully deployed, and thus every hour counted. Sazonov wanted only partial mobilisation; Russia had taken this same step in 1912 without precipitating a war. It seemed prudent to avoid directly provoking the Germans, and thus to hold back from activating the troops of Warsaw district, closest to their frontier. But when Danilov the quartermaster-general returned from the Caucasus that day, he explained to the foreign minister that a limited mobilisation would critically impede the full process.

  On the 26th also, the minister of internal affairs published an order prohibiting publication or public mention of information about the armed forces, under the terms of Russia’s treason laws. Notice was given that lighthouses and navigation lights were being doused in all Russian waters save the inland Caspian and Azov seas. The naval base at Sebastopol was closed to shipping, and Russian vessels at sea were instructed to halt radio transmissions. A series of domestic restrictions was introduced, starting with a 10 p.m. closure order for all St Petersburg restaurants. Next day all Germans and Austrians on Russian soil were ordered to settle their affairs and leave the country forthwith. From the 27th also, shipping in the Black Sea was warned that any craft steaming inshore during the hours of darkness was liable to be fired upon.

  Soldiers began to move. Outside Moscow, the Sumskoi Hussars were recalled from exercises to barracks, where horses were reshod, campaign uniforms issued, harness and equipment checked. Men locked their personal possessions into chests which were labelled with the names and addresses of their next of kin. The officers’ mess silver was sent to the State Bank for safekeeping, and cherished regimental banners were presented to a museum. The Serbian military attaché to Berlin noted that he travelled across Germany on 26–27 July without observing any warlike activity, but on crossing into Russian territory ‘we noticed mobilisation steps being taken on a grand scale’. When Sir George Buchanan questioned Sazonov about Russia’s scurrying soldiery, the foreign minister responded soothingly that they were merely responding to the ongoing industrial turbulence. The ambassador, however, was in no doubt that the army was preparing for war. That day, the 26th, Grey put to Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London, Britain’s proposed solution to the crisis: a four-power conference. Berlin promptly dismissed this, believing that such a gathering would be bound to condemn Austria. Here again was evidence of the German indifference to securing a diplomatic outcome.

  In the last days of July, the weight of traffic flying between governments swamped the relatively primitive international communications system, so that vital cables became subject to chronic d
elay. Only a fraction of government messages were transmitted by diplomatic wireless: most relied upon the commercial telegraph network. Details of Russia’s mobilisation were slow to reach the French government, for instance, because every message from its St Petersburg embassy had to be carried more than two miles to the public telegraph office. The British Foreign Office cipher clerks, only four in number, were overwhelmed: they worked in pairs, one reading out the groups, the other transcribing them onto a Post Office form – everything was done in longhand. Since five-number groups cost more to send, they made efforts to achieve terseness in the interests of economy. Once completed, a message was sealed in an envelope and taken by a messenger half a mile to London’s central post office in The Strand for transmission.

  German civilians were becoming increasingly conscious that they might have to fight. The prospect roused dismay among socialists, enthusiasm among conservatives. Wilhelm Kaisen was a twenty-seven-year-old Bremen plasterer, and a dedicated Social Democrat. On 26 July he wrote to his girlfriend Helene expressing revulsion at the prospect before Europe: ‘War – those letters embrace such a dreadful ocean of blood and horror that they make us shudder to contemplate them.’ Kaisen was full of hopes that the Socialist International would intervene to prevent conflict. If it failed to do so, he foresaw mutiny among soldiers, especially ‘once murderous aircraft unleash perdition from the sky’. Across Europe in the last weekend of July, fears of the breaking storm prompted tens of thousands of hasty weddings. In the small town of Linden near Hanover, the register office married forty-six couples before finally closing at 11 o’clock on Sunday night. In Hanover itself, two hundred couples tied the knot.