In spite of former aberrations, everything was still possible in July, 1914. Agreement with England had been reached. We should have had to send to Petersburg a representative who, at any rate, reached the average standard of political ability, and we should have had to give Russia the certainty that we desired neither to dominate the Starits nor to throttle the Serbs. M. Sazonoff was saying to us: "Lâchez l'Autriche et nous lâcherons les Français," and M. Cambon [French Ambassador in Berlin] said to Herr von Jagow: "Vous n'avez [pas] besoin de suivre l'Autriche partout."
We needed neither alliances nor wars, but merely treaties which would protect us and others, and which would guarantee us an economic development for which there had been no precedent in history. And if Russia had been relieved of trouble in the west, she would have been able to turn again to the east, and then the Anglo-Russian antagonism would have arisen automatically without our interference—and the Russo-Japanese antagonism no less than the Anglo-Russian.
We could also have approached the question of limitation of armaments, and should have had no further need to bother about the confusions of Austria. Austria-Hungary would then become the vassal of the German Empire—without an alliance, and, above all, without sentimental services on our part, leading ultimately to war for the liberation of Poland and the destruction of Serbia, although German interests demanded exactly the contrary.
I had to support in London a policy which I knew to be fallacious. I was punished for it, for it was a sin against the Holy Ghost.
ARRIVAL AT BERLIN
On my arrival in Berlin I saw at once that I was to be made the scapegoat for the catastrophe of which our Government had made itself guilty in opposition to my advice and my warnings.
The report was persistently circulated by official quarters that I had let myself be deceived by Sir Edward Grey, because if he had not wanted war Russia would not have mobilized. Count Pourtalès, whose reports could be relied upon, was to be spared, if only because of his family connections. He was said to have behaved "splendidly," and he was enthusiastically praised, while I was all the more sharply blamed.
"What has Russia got to do with Serbia?" this statesman said to me after eight years of official activity in Petersburg. It was made out that the whole business was a perfidious British trick which I had not understood. In the Foreign Office I was told that in 1916 it would in any case have come to war. But then Russia would have been "ready," and so it was better now.
As appears from all official publications, without the facts being controverted by our own White Book, which, owing to its poverty and gaps, constitutes a grave self-accusation:
1. We encouraged Count Berchtold to attack Serbia, although no German interest was involved, and the danger of a world war must have been known to us—whether we knew the text of the ultimatum is a question of complete indifference.