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.