II.—The Bullying of Serbia
The first declaration of war in this world-conflict was that of Austria-Hungary against Serbia on the 27th of July, 1914. The first shots fired in the war were those fired by Austrian monitors on the Danube into Belgrade on the 29th of July, 1914. Austria-Hungary is or was then a great Empire with a population of 50,000,000 and an army of 2,500,000; Serbia is or was then a peasant State with a population of 5,000,000 and an army of 230,000.
How these shots—heard alas! farther and more disastrously than that of Emerson’s embattled farmers!—came to be fired is a plain story often told, and never disputed or disputable. It will be sufficient to recall the main features of it. On the 28th of June the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Emperor Francis Joseph, and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of the province of Bosnia, annexed to Austria-Hungary in 1909. Any reader of the English or French papers of that time will remember the sincere and universal sympathy expressed for the old unhappy Emperor, and his ill-starred realm and family. It was a crime that awakened horror throughout Europe. The annexation had been cynical, but crime is no cure for crime. In general character and consequences there is an historic act which presents remarkable resemblances to the Sarajevo outrage, I mean the Phœnix Park murders. In each case irresponsible men stained a good cause, and in each case an attempt was made to indict a nation. The assassins were arrested, Prinzip who had fired the fatal pistol-shots, and Cabinovitch who had thrown bombs. They were in the hands of the law, and exemplary justice might reasonably be expected. The seething pot of Balkan politics, said the average man in these countries, had boiled up once more in noxious scum. It was another tragic episode. And so people in the Entente countries turned back to their own troubles. How acute these troubles were we are now in danger of forgetting, but we have learned enough since then of the German political psychologist and his ways to conclude that they were a prime factor in subsequent decisions. The threat of civil war in “Ulster,” an unprecedented crisis in the Army, gun-running, arming and drilling public and secret, a woman suffrage and a labour movement, both so far gone in violence as to be on the immediate edge of anarchy, left the Government of these countries little leisure for the politics of the Near East. France was in serious difficulties as regards her public finance, violent fiscal controversies were impending, the Caillaux trial threatened to rival that of Dreyfus in releasing savage passions, the military unpreparedness of the country was notorious. Russia naturally stood far closer to Serbia, but labour riots in Petrograd, a revival of revolutionary activity, and widespread menace of internal disturbance seemed hopelessly to cripple her. Nothing could have been more remote from the desire of any of the Entente nations than a European war springing out of Sarajevo.
But there were other forces at work in the sinister drama. On the very morrow of the assassinations the Austro-Hungarian Press opened what Professor Denis well calls a systematic “expectoration of hatred” against Serbia—Prinzip and Cabinovitch were both Austrian, not Serbian subjects. The Serbian Government pressed the formal courtesy of grief so far as to postpone the national fêtes arranged in celebration of the battle of Kosovo. They had already warned the Austrian police of the Anarchist Associations of Cabinovitch, and now offered their help in bringing to justice any accomplices who might be traced within their jurisdiction. All this was of no avail. The Austro-Hungarian Red Book is not always discreet in its selections. Thus an incriminating passage from the Pravda runs (3rd July, 1914)—
“The Policy of Vienna is a cynical one. It exploits the death of the unfortunate couple for its abominable aims against the Serbian people.”
The Militärische Rundschau demanded war (15th July)—
“At this moment the initiative rests with us: Russia is not ready, moral factors and right are on our side as well as might.”
The Neue Freie Presse demands “war to the knife, and in the name of humanity the extermination of the cursed Serbian race.”
The furious indictment of the whole Serbian nation continued in the Press of Vienna and Budapest, and found echoes even in that of these countries. The task was easy, for the ill repute, clinging to Serbian politicians since the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga, had not been wholly banished by her later heroic deeds.
These journalistic outbursts and the protests of the Serbian Press, although unnoticed by the outside world, attracted, as was natural, the attention of diplomatists. But an interchange of barbed epithets across the Danube was no new thing, and the Austrian Foreign Office assumed an attitude of reassurance which deceived even Russia, and lulled the other Entente Powers into complete security (Serbian Book, No. 6, No. 12, No. 17). We now know that there were other observers less misled, such as M. D’Apchier le Mangin, who noted the massing of guns and munitions on the Serbian frontier as early as the 11th of July, and M. Jules Cambon, who had convinced himself by the 21st of July that Germany had set in train the preliminaries to mobilisation. But nothing open or public (for the police proceedings against the assassins had been held in camera) had prepared the way for the Austrian coup. It was an amazed Europe that learned the terms of the Note presented at Belgrade by the Austrian Ambassador on the 23rd of July. There were no illusions as to its meaning and implications, for none were possible. Newspapers so little akin as the Morning Post and M. Clemenceau’s L’Homme Libre characterised it in the same phrase: it was a summons to Serbia to abdicate her sovereignty and independence, and to exist henceforth as a vassal-state of the Dual Empire. This document is the Devil’s Cauldron from which have sprung all the horrors of the present war. As to its extravagant character and probable consequences, opinion is unanimous, even unofficial German opinion. The Berlin Vorwärts writes (25th July)—
“From whatever point of view one considers the situation, a European War is at our gates. And why? Because the Austrian Government and the Austrian War Party are determined to clear, by a coup de main, a place in which they can fill their lungs.”
In the Foreign Offices the same language was used. Sir Edward Grey said to the Austrian Ambassador that he “had never before seen one State address to another independent State a document of so formidable a character.” The reader can very easily verify for himself this impression by reference to the Diplomatic Correspondence. To such a document Serbia was given forty-eight hours to reply. As M. Denis points out, Prinzip, the assassin, taken in the act, was allowed three months to prepare his defence, for he was not brought to trial until October: the Serbian nation, exhausted by two wars, was allowed two days in which to decide between a surrender of its independence and an immediate invasion. Almost “to the scandal of Europe,” a reply was delivered within the time. The Austrian representative received it at Belgrade, and in half-an-hour had demanded his passports; fifteen minutes later he was on board the train. The will to war of the Germanic Powers find many cynical and dramatic expressions in the interchanges between the Chancelleries, but none so nude of all decency as this.
In these two days M. Pashich, in his passionate anxiety for peace, had agreed to terms more humiliating than have often been dictated after a victorious war. The Austrian Note had opened with a long indictment of the Serbian nation. Complicity in the crime of Sarajevo was assumed without any tittle of evidence, however vague or feeble, then or since produced. Nevertheless the Serbian Prime Minister bowed to the storm. His surrender was so complete that it deserves to be read textually. These are, in skeleton, the main features (British Blue Book, No. 39).
The Serbian Government, having protested their entire loyalty past and present to their engagements, both of treaty and of neighbourliness towards Austria-Hungary, nevertheless “undertake to cause to be published on the first page of the Journal Officiel, on the date of the 13th (26th) of July, the following declaration—
‘The Royal Government of Serbia condemn all propaganda which may be directed against Austria-Hungary, that is to say, all such tendencies as aim at ultimately detaching from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy territories which form part thereof, and they sincerely deplore the baneful consequences of these criminal movements. The Royal Government regret that, according to the communication from the Imperial and Royal Government, certain Serbian officers and officials should have taken part in the above-mentioned propaganda, and thus compromised the good neighbourly relations to which the Royal Serbian Government was solemnly engaged by the declaration of the 31st of March, 1909, which declaration disapproves and repudiates all idea or attempt at interference with the destiny of the inhabitants of any part whatsoever of Austria-Hungary, and they consider it their duty formally to warn the officers, officials and entire population of the kingdom that henceforth they will take the most rigorous steps against all such persons as are guilty of such acts, to prevent and to repress Which they Will use their utmost endeavour.’
“This declaration will be brought to the knowledge of the Royal Army in an order of the day, in the name of His Majesty the King, by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Alexander, and will be published in the next official army bulletin.”
The Serbian Government further undertakes—
1. To introduce severe Press laws against any anti-Austrian propaganda, and to amend the constitution so as to give more vigorous effect to these laws.
2. To dissolve the “Narodna Odbrana,” although none of its members have been proved to have committed criminal acts, and “every other society which may be directing its efforts against Austria-Hungary.”
3. To remove without delay from their public educational establishments in Serbia all that serves or could serve to foment propaganda against Austria-Hungary. (I print this in italics that the shades of the sins of the National Board may find comfort and be appeased.)
4. To remove from the Army all persons proved guilty of acts directed against Austria-Hungary.
5. “The Royal Government must confess that they do not clearly grasp the meaning or the scope of the demand made by the Imperial and Royal Government that Serbia shall undertake to accept the collaboration of the organs of the Imperial and Royal Government upon their territory, but they declare that they will admit such collaboration as agrees with the principle of international law, With criminal procedure, and with good neighbourly relations.
6. “It goes without saying that the Royal Government consider it their duty to open an enquiry against all such persons as are, or eventually may be, implicated in the plot of the 15th of June, and who happen to be within the territory of the kingdom. As regards the participation in this enquiry of Austro-Hungarian agents or authorities appointed for this purpose by the Imperial and Royal Government, the Royal Government cannot accept such an arrangement, as it would be a violation of the Constitution and of the law of criminal procedure; nevertheless, in concrete cases communications as to the results of the investigation in question might be given to the Austro-Hungarian agents.”
7. To arrest any incriminated persons.
8. To reinforce and extend the measures against illicit traffic of arms and explosives across the frontier, and to punish severely any official who has failed in his duty.
9. To deal with any anti-Austrian utterances of Serbian officials.
10. To keep the Austro-Hungarian Government informed of the carrying out of these engagements.
Then follows the offer which confirms the good faith of Serbia, and which damns the Central Empires before the Judgment of History.
“If the Imperial and Royal Government are not satisfied with this reply, the Serbian Government, considering that it is not to the common interest to precipitate the solution of this question, are ready, as always to accept a pacific understanding, either by referring this question to the decision of the International Tribunal of The Hague, or to the Great Powers which took part in the drawing up of the declaration made by the Serbian Government on the 18th (31st) of March, 1909.”
Of the ten points of the Austrian Note eight are conceded under conditions of unparalleled humiliation. No diplomatic triumph could be more complete. Serbia yields, well knowing that her immediate past is a good deal fly-blown and that nobody in Western Europe has the least intention of dying for her beaux yeux. But paragraphs 5 and 6, demanding the association of Austrian officials in judicial enquiries to be held within the territory and under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Government, aim at more than humiliation; they demand that Serbia shall abdicate her own independent sovereignty. M. Pashich rejects them, but in a mode that will remain as the final condemnation before history of the Germanic Powers.
M. Sazonof went to the root of the matter at once in a conversation with the Austrian representative in Petrograd. This is the Austrian version (24th July)—
“The participation of Imperial and Royal (Austrian) officials in the suppression of the revolutionary movements elicited further protest on the part of the minister. Serbia then will no longer be master in her own house. You will always be wanting to interfere again, and what a life you will lead Europe.”
“Serbia would no longer be master in her own house.” There was the key to Austrian ambitions. The independence of Serbia was to be violated, her territory was to admit foreign officials, and gradually a small nation was to disappear into the patchwork-quilt possessions of the Dual Monarchy. There you have the sinister House of the Hapsburgs exposed in the very act of pressing the button, and releasing the current which has shattered the fabric of Europe.
Swaddle and disguise it as you will in words, there is the seed of origin of the European War. There is no plainer transaction in history: the clock has a crystal face that allow us to see all the works. You may, if you will, call up a mist of eloquence and people it with ghosts, the ghosts of wicked things done by English in Ireland and India, Russians in Finland, French in Morocco, Italians in Tripoli, Belgians in the Congo, and Serbians all the way back to Kosovo. You may write at length of the inherent perils of the “European system,” the expansion of races, the discharge of long accumulating thunder-clouds, of Hauptströmungen, of iron laws of destiny, and all the rest of the lurid, deterministic farrago of sham omniscience which forms the stock-in-trade of the German savant. You may point out that there is a sense in which all previous history is behind even the least important event in history, and that the Austrian ultimatum did but set a match to a long-laid train. Much of what you say will be true, and much will also be horrible. But nothing can alter the fact that this war originated in the attempt of a great Empire to exploit legitimate anger against crime in order to destroy the independence of a small State; that the small State, having accepted every other humiliation, offered to submit in this to the judgment of either of the recognised international tribunals, and that the great Empire refused.
The one theory, the only one, that explains the Austrian attitude, namely, that the Germanic Powers willed war, explains also the remainder of the ante-bellum interchanges. From the first no illusion was possible as to what was at stake. M. Sazonof on behalf of Russia allowed none to arise. He pointed out with that brevity and frankness which will be found in this affair to characterise the whole course of Russian diplomacy that any invasion of the sovereign rights of Serbia must disturb the equilibrium of the Balkans and with it the equilibrium of all Europe, and that if it came to war it would be impossible to localise it. M. Sazonof, indeed, never fails in these transactions to hit on the right idea, and the right phrase. Serbia, he said to Count Szapary in words that can scarce miss moving an Irish Nationalist, would, if the Austrian demands were conceded, “no longer be master in her own house. ‘You will always be wanting to intervene again, and what a life you will lead Europe’” (Austrian Red Book, No. 14). He “had been disagreeably affected by the circumstance that Austria-Hungary had offered a dossier for investigation when an ultimatum had already been presented.” What Russia could not accept with indifference was the eventual intention of the Dual Monarchy “de dévorer la Serbie” (Ibid., No. 16). In all her reasonable demands he promised to support Austria-Hungary. So did France; so did Great Britain. All three of them counselled, that is to say as things stood, directed, Serbia, if she desired their countenance, to give every satisfaction consistent with her sovereign rights. It is precisely on this unallowable violation that Austria-Hungary insists. As for Germany, there is not one hint in all the diplomatic documents of any mediation at Vienna in the direction of a peaceful solution. “The bolt once fired,” said Baron Schoen at Paris, Germany had nothing to do except support her Ally, and support her in demands however impossible.
The will to war of the Germanies thus made manifest explains, and alone explains the rest of the sorry business. The earnest, constant, and even passionate efforts of the British and French Governments to find a formula for the assembling of a conference of the Powers were rebuffed at every turn. Sir Edward Grey persisted in his conciliatory course till the last moment. He refused to proclaim the solidarity of the United Kingdom in any and all circumstances with France and Russia, although earnestly urged by both to do so.
He risked the very existence of the Entente by showing himself ready in the interests of peace to consent to what Russia must have regarded as an almost intolerable humiliation. So late as the 29th of July he writes of a conversation with the German Ambassador: “In a short time, I supposed, the Austrian forces would be in Belgrade and in occupation of some Serbian territory. But even then it might be possible to bring some mediation into existence, if Austria, while saying that she must hold the occupied territory until she had complete satisfaction from Serbia, stated that she would not advance further, pending an effort of the Powers to mediate between her and Russia” (Blue Book, No. 88). At the same time, six days before the Anglo-German breach, he gave the Ambassador a very definite warning which is in itself sufficient to repel the charge, since made in some quarters in Ireland and America, that he designed by his ambiguous attitude to “lure” Germany on and then “crush” her. That such a charge, whether made honestly or not, is in formal contradiction with the facts is evident—
“The situation was very grave. While it was restricted to the issues at present actually involved, we had no thought of interfering in it. But if Germany became involved in it, and then France, the issue might be so great that it would involve all European interests; and I did not wish him to be misled by the friendly tone of our conversation—which I hoped would continue—into thinking that we should stand aside.
“I hoped that the friendly tone of our conversations would continue as at present, and that I should be able to keep as closely in touch with the German Government in working for peace. But if we failed in our efforts to keep the peace, and if the issue spread so that it involved practically every European interest, I did not wish to be open to any reproach from him that the friendly tone of all our conversations had misled him or his Government into supposing that we should not take action, and to the reproach that, if they had not been so misled, the course of things might have been different.
“The German Ambassador took no exception to what I had said; indeed, he told me that it accorded with what he had already given in Berlin as his view of the situation.”
The appeal from force to law, from killing to reason—that substitution of the better new way for the bad old way which had for so long been the goal of democracy in international affairs—was rejected by the Germanies. Neither to the International Tribunal of the Hague, so proposed by Serbia, nor to a conference of the Great Powers, but to the sinister logic of Krupp and Zeppelin did the Central Empires resort for a settlement.
All the accumulated hatred of European history were let loose to fill the world with tumult and rapine. It is true that if you trace these hatreds back to their sources you will find no immaculate nations. True also that they were perilous stuff of which the European system had not purged itself. But the unchallengeable fact remains that while democracy was seeking a solution in terms of peace, “the old German God” forced it in terms of war. Nothing can ever displace or disguise the plain historical record which exhibits as the origin of our Armageddon the intransigent determination of the great Empire of Austria-Hungary to violate the sovereign rights of the small nation of Serbia.