On 23 July Mensdorff, Austria-Hungary’s ambassador in London, gave Grey an indication of the nature of the ultimatum that was about to be presented to Serbia. Apparently, Grey was shocked. That night he and Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, had dinner with the German industrialist Albert Ballin, who had been sent to London by the German government on an unofficial mission to sound out possible British reactions if war broke out on the Continent. As with so many other moments in those last frantic days, recollections differed after the event: Haldane remembered that he and Grey warned Ballin that if Germany attacked France, he should not count on Britain’s remaining neutral; Ballin, however, took another message back to Berlin: in his view Britain was concerned mainly with the balance of power on the Continent so that as long as Germany undertook not to swallow up France after any war (perhaps only taking a few French colonies) Britain would not intervene.51
The following day Grey read the full text of the ultimatum. ‘The note seemed to me’, he told Mensdorff, ‘the most formidable document I had ever seen addressed by one State to another that was independent.’ On Berchtold’s instructions, Mensdorff made an unconvincing attempt to play down the document’s significance; it was really not so much an ultimatum as a démarche with a time limit, and while Austria-Hungary intended to start military preparations after the deadline, those were not the same thing as military action.52 At a Cabinet meeting later that day, which was meeting to discuss the failure of the Irish conference at Buckingham Palace, Grey brought up the crisis in the Balkans for the first time and said he was sure that if Russia attacked Austria-Hungary, Germany would defend its ally. While a majority of his colleagues were still firmly opposed to Britain becoming involved in a war, that balance was going to shift over the next week largely as a result of Germany’s actions. Grey said sombrely that the ultimatum was bringing them closer to Armageddon than at any time since the First Balkan Wars. His solution was considerably less dramatic: he was going to suggest that Germany, France, Italy and Britain join forces to urge Austria-Hungary and Russia not to take action. The same day, though, Britain also started its first, tentative preparations for war. The whole of the British fleet in home waters had been on summer naval manoeuvres the week before and the government now ordered it to remain mobilised. Like the Russian and French preparatory moves, and the ones about to start in Germany, such manoeuvres may have been defensive in intent but they did not necessarily appear so from outside and so yet another factor came into play to raise the already high levels of tension in Europe.
In the evening of 24 July Grey summoned Lichnowsky and asked that the ambassador tell his government that Britain would be willing to make a joint request with Germany for Austria-Hungary to extend the time limit. The other powers would then have time to defuse the growing quarrel between Austria-Hungary and Russia. ‘Useless’, scribbled the Kaiser when he read Lichnowsky’s report the next day. ‘I will not join in it unless Austria expressly asks me to, which is not likely. In vital questions and those of honour, one does not consult others.’53
On Saturday 25 July, Grey saw Lichnowsky again to discuss the whole situation. The German ambassador was finding it increasingly difficult to defend the position of his own government. A great admirer of Britain and its institutions, he had long advocated a better understanding between London and Berlin. He had been called out of retirement in 1912 to take up his post by the Kaiser, who told him to go and be ‘a jolly good fellow’. Bethmann and the Foreign Office disliked the appointment because they felt he lacked experience and was too naïve about the British.54 In fact, Lichnowsky in the crisis gave consistently good advice: that Germany was following a dangerous course in its encouragement of Austria-Hungary and that, if a general war broke out, Britain would be drawn in. His superiors, he informed them, were dreaming if they really thought that any conflict could be localised in the Balkans.55 (And, as Nicolson wrote acerbically to Buchanan, ‘I think the talk about localising the war merely means that all the Powers are to hold the ring while Austria quietly strangles Serbia.’56)
That afternoon, as the urgent telegrams continued to fly about Europe, Grey chose to go as usual to his country retreat near Winchester for the weekend.57 Although he could be reached by telegram, it seems a curious decision in such a rapidly developing situation. Back in London, he learned on Monday 27 July that Germany had abruptly rejected the suggestion of four-power mediation on the grounds, so Jagow claimed, that it would amount to an international court of arbitration and so it could happen only if Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two parties directly concerned, requested it.58 Britain was by now also under increasing pressure from Russia and France to make its support clear. Buchanan, who had met Sazonov on the Sunday to urge him to work with Austria-Hungary to resolve the situation and to delay Russia’s mobilisation in the cause of peace, cabled to London on the Monday that the Russian position had hardened: ‘Minister for Foreign Affairs replied that he did not believe that we should succeed in winning over Germany to cause of peace unless we publicly proclaimed our solidarity with France and Russia.’59 In Paris, Izvolsky told a British diplomat at a dinner party that war was certainly coming and that it was Britain’s fault. If only the British had made it clear when the crisis started that they would fight with the Russians and the French, Austria-Hungary and Germany would have hesitated. It was not like the Bosnian crisis, he added ominously, when a weak Russia had been obliged to back down. This time Russia was in a position to fight.60 On Tuesday 28 July, Paul Cambon, who had rushed back from Paris where he had been advising the government in the absence of Poincaré and Viviani, warned Grey that ‘if once it were assumed that Britain would certainly stand aside from a European war, the chance of preserving peace would be very much imperilled’.61 Cambon, who had devoted his time in London to turning the Entente Cordiale into something more substantial than a warm friendship, had feared from the outset of the crisis that Grey would ‘wobble and hesitate’ and that Germany would therefore be emboldened to go ahead. ‘England is sure to join us in the end,’ he nevertheless assured a colleague in Paris, ‘but too late.’62 Cambon was going to suffer agonies in the next week as he tried to get a firm commitment out of Grey.
Across the Continent there were reports of unusual activities. On the weekend of 25–26 July German spies reported increased radio traffic between the Eiffel Tower in Paris and a major Russian military base in western Russia. Russian frontier guards were said to be on full alert and railway rolling stock being moved to Russian towns close to the border with East Prussia.63 On 26 July Wilhelm, whose government had hoped to keep him safely away in the North Sea, suddenly ordered the German fleet to escort his yacht back to Germany. He feared, apparently, that Russia was planning to torpedo it in a surprise attack. He also felt that Bethmann did not have the proper understanding of military matters.64 The following day Poincaré and Viviani abruptly cancelled their planned visit to Copenhagen and steamed back towards France. Ripples of nationalist feeling started to disturb the summer calm. In St Petersburg, crowds, small at first but growing in size as the week went on, paraded carrying portraits of Tsar Nicholas and the national flag and singing ‘Save Thy people, Lord’.65 When Nicholas himself attended a local theatre in Krasnoye Selo, the audience gave him several spontaneous standing ovations and army officers who were present broke into song. In Paris crowds demonstrated outside the embassy of Austria-Hungary and in Vienna, ‘wildest enthusiasm prevails’, reported the British ambassador, as locals tried to demonstrate outside the Russian embassy while officers in uniform received rousing cheers. In Berlin, when the news came of the Serbian response to the Austrian ultimatum, large crowds gathered to sing patriotic songs and the Austrian national anthem. University students marched up and down Unter den Linden singing and chanting patriotic slogans.66
In Italy, however, the streets were quiet and the British ambassador reported that opinion condemned both Serbia’s role in the assassination and what was seen as an overly harsh reaction by Aus
tria-Hungary. The Italian public was waiting, he noted, in an ‘attitude of somewhat anxious expectancy’. The government, in his view, was looking for a plausible reason to evade the obligations of its membership of the Triple Alliance.67 The dilemma for the Italian government was that it did not want to see Austria-Hungary destroy Serbia and so be supreme in the Balkans but, on the other hand, it did not want to antagonise its alliance partners and particularly Germany. (The Italians like many other Europeans had a healthy, even exaggerated respect for German military power.) An actual European war presented a further problem still: if Germany and Austria-Hungary won, Italy would be left even more at their mercy and become a sort of vassal state. War on the side of the Dual Alliance would also be unpopular at home, where public opinion still tended to view Austria-Hungary as the traditional enemy which had bullied and oppressed Italians just as it was now doing with Serbians. A final consideration was Italy’s own weakness. Its navy would be decimated if it had to fight the British and French navies and its army badly needed a period of recovery after the war with the Ottoman Empire over Libya. Indeed, Italian forces were still fighting a strong resistance in their new North African territories.68
San Giuliani, Italy’s wise and experienced Foreign Minister, was spending July in Fiuggi Fonte in the hills south of Rome in a vain attempt to cure his debilitating gout. (The local waters were famous for curing kidney stones as well and had a testimonial from Michelangelo, who said it cured him of ‘the only kind of stone I couldn’t love’.) The German ambassador to Italy visited him there on 24 July to pass on the details of the ultimatum. Despite considerable pressure from both Germany and Austria-Hungary, San Giuliani took the position then and in the ensuing weeks that Italy was not obliged to enter any war which was clearly not a defensive one but that it might decide to join in under certain circumstances – the offer of territory inhabited by Italian speakers from Austria-Hungary in particular. And if Austria-Hungary made gains in the Balkans Italy would have to be compensated as well. On 2 August the government of Austria-Hungary, which rudely referred to Italians as unreliable rabbits, reluctantly gave way to pressure from Germany and made a vague offer of compensation of territory, not including, however, any from Austria-Hungary itself and only if Italy entered the war. The following day, Italy declared that it would remain neutral.69
In Britain during that last week of July, public opinion was also deeply divided with both the strong radical wing of the Liberal Party and the Labour Party opposed to war. When the Cabinet met on the afternoon of Monday 27 July it was split down the middle. Grey, equivocating, did not propose a clear course of action. On the one hand, he said, if Britain failed to join France and Russia,
we should forfeit naturally their confidence for ever, and Germany would almost certainly attack France while Russia was mobilising. If on the other hand we said we were prepared to throw our lot in with the Entente, Russia would at once attack Austria. Consequently our influence for peace depended on our apparent indecision. Italy, dishonest as usual, was repudiating her obligations to the Triplice on the ground that Austria had not consulted her before the ultimatum.70
After the meeting Lloyd George, the influential Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was still in the camp of those who wanted peace, told a friend ‘there could be no question of our taking part in any war in the first instance. He knew of no Minister who would be in favour of it.’71
Across the Channel some of those decision-makers who had been so bellicose were briefly having second thoughts. Now back in Berlin, on 27 July the Kaiser thought that the Serbian reply to the ultimatum was acceptable. Falkenhayn, the War Minister, wrote in his diary, ‘He makes confused speeches. The only thing that emerges clearly is that he no longer wants war, even if it means letting Austria down. I point out that he no longer has control over the situation.’72 The tsar sent Sazonov a note suggesting that Russia join forces with France and Britain, and perhaps Germany and Italy, for an attempt to preserve the peace by persuading Austria-Hungary and Serbia to take their dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague: ‘Maybe time is not lost yet before fatal events.’73 Sazonov also undertook to have direct conversations with Austria-Hungary and from Berlin Bethmann advised Germany’s ally to take part, more it seems to have the opportunity to put Russia in the wrong before domestic opinion in the Dual Alliance than for peace.
Although the Kaiser and perhaps Bethmann continued to grasp at straws as they whirled past on the strong currents that were now running, the prevailing mood among the German leadership by this point was that war was inevitable. They were also persuading themselves that Germany was the innocent party. Moltke in a grim memorandum he wrote on 28 July said Russia was bound to mobilise when Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia and Germany would then be bound to come to the aid of its ally with its own mobilisation. Russia would respond by attacking Germany and France would come in. ‘Thus the Franco-Russian alliance, so often held up to praise as a purely defensive compact, created only in order to meet the aggressive plans of Germany, will become active, and the mutual butchery of the civilised nations of Europe will begin.’74 The talks between Russia and Austria-Hungary duly started on 27 July only to be broken off again the next day when Austria-Hungary, under pressure from Germany to move quickly, declared war on Serbia.75
Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia would have been amusing if it had not had such tragic consequences. Since he had melodramatically closed his embassy in Belgrade, Berchtold found himself at a loss as to how to deliver the news to Serbia. Germany refused to be the emissary since it was still trying to give the impression that it did not know what Austria-Hungary was planning and so Berchtold resorted to sending an uncoded telegram to Pašić, the first time that war had been declared that way. The Serbian Prime Minister, suspecting that someone in Vienna might be trying to trick Serbia into attacking first, refused to believe it until confirmation had come in from Serbian embassies in St Petersburg, London and Paris.76 In Budapest Tisza gave a passionate speech of support for the declaration in the Hungarian parliament and the leader of the opposition cried out, ‘At Last!’77 When Sukhomlinov heard the news at a dinner party in St Petersburg, he said to his neighbour, ‘This time we will march.’78 On the night of 28 July Austrian guns on the north shore of the Sava fired shots at Belgrade. Europe had a week of peace left.
CHAPTER 20
Turning Out the Lights: Europe’s Last Week of Peace
Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July turned what had been Europe’s increasingly firm march towards war into a run over the precipice. Russia, which made no secret of its support for Serbia, was likely to threaten Austria-Hungary in response. If that were to happen, Germany might well come to the aid of its ally and so find itself at war with Russia. Then, given the nature of the alliance systems, France might be obliged to enter on Russia’s side. In any case, although the German war plans were secret, the French already had a fairly clear understanding that Germany had no intention of waging a war on Russia alone but would attack in the west as well. What Britain and Italy as well as smaller powers such as Rumania and Bulgaria would do was still an open question, although all had existing friendships and ties to the potential belligerents.
The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was taking a holiday near the Belgian port of Ostend, where he remembered the mood was as carefree as every other summer. ‘Visitors enjoying their holiday lay on the beach in brightly coloured tents or bathed in the sea, the children flew kites, young people danced outside the cafés on the promenade laid out on the harbour wall. All imaginable nations were gathered companionably together there.’ Occasionally the mood darkened when the newspaper sellers shouted out their alarming headlines of threats of mobilisation further to the east or the visitors noticed more Belgian soldiers about, but the holiday spirit soon returned. Overnight, though, it became impossible to ignore the clouds that were gathering over Europe. ‘All of a sudden’, Zweig recalled, ‘a cold wind of fear was blowi
ng over the beach, sweeping it clean.’ He packed up hastily and rushed homewards by train. By the time he reached Vienna the Great War had started. Like thousands upon thousands of his fellow Europeans he had trouble believing that Europe’s peace had ended so quickly and so finally.1
20. The German plan, usually known as the Schlieffen, assumed that Germany would fight a two-front war against France and Russia. To knock its enemy in the west out quickly, the German military planned a quick advance into Belgium and northern France. Although Germany called on Belgium to let the German armies pass through peacefully, the Belgian government decided to resist. This both slowed down the German advance and, even more importantly, persuaded the British to enter the war to defend brave little Belgium.
The War that Ended Peace Page 71