A telegram of the English Ambassador in St. Petersburg, dated July 27, (British "White Paper" No. 55,) shows how this conference was expected to be conducted in St. Petersburg:
His Excellency [Sazonof] said he was perfectly ready to stand aside if the powers accepted the proposal for a conference, but he trusted that you would keep in touch with the Russian Ambassador in the event of its taking place.—(British "White Paper" No. 55.)
Russian shrewdness evidently expected to control the conference by keeping in touch with Grey, who of course would have been the Chairman. The dispatches of his own Ambassadors lying before him should have enabled the Secretary of State to see the perfidy of the Russian policy. Buchanan wrote on the 28th from St. Petersburg:
... and asked him whether he would be satisfied with the assurance which the Austrian Ambassador had, I understood, been instructed to give in respect to Servia's integrity and independence.... In reply his Excellency stated that if Servia were attacked Russia would not be satisfied with any engagement which Austria might take on these two points....—(British "White Paper" No. 72.)
Entirely in contrast herewith is one report of the British representative in Vienna, dated Aug. 1, and speaking of a conversation with the Russian Ambassador there:
Russia would, according to the Russian Ambassador, be satisfied even now with assurance respecting Servian integrity and independence. He said that Russia had no intention to attack Austria.—(British "White Paper" No. 141.)
What, then, may one ask, was the opinion which Sir Edward Grey had formed concerning Russia's real intentions? He learns from Russian sources and notes faithfully that Russia will accept Austrian guarantees for independence of Servia, and also that it will not accept such guarantees. It is the same duplicity which Russia, when its own mobilization was concerned, showed toward Germany. Did Sir Edward not notice this duplicity, or did he not wish to notice it? If the documents of the English Government have not been selected with the purpose to confuse, then in London the decision to take part in the war does not seem to have been a certainty at the beginning. We have seen that Ambassador Buchanan in St. Petersburg on July 24 gave the Russian Minister to understand that England was not of a mind to go to war on account of Servia. This position, taken by the Ambassador, was approved by Sir Edward Grey on the following day in the following words:
I entirely approve what you said ... and I cannot promise more on behalf of the Government.—(British "White Paper" No. 24.)
Based upon these instructions, Sir George Buchanan, even on July 27, stated to M. Sazonof, who continued to urge England to unconditionally join Russia and France:
I added that you [Grey] could not promise to do anything more, and that his Excellency was mistaken if he believed that the cause of peace could be promoted by our telling the German Government that they would have to deal with us as well as with Russia and France if she supported Austria by force of arms. Their [the German] attitude would merely be stiffened by such a menace.—(British "White Paper" No. 44.)