_ PART I. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE WAR:
(6) THE IMMEDIATE OCCASION OF THE WAR
We have seen how constantly and successfully Austria had supported the general Prussian thesis in Europe, and, in particular, the predominance of the German Powers over the Slav.
We have seen how, in pursuit of this policy, the sharpest friction was always suffered at the danger-point of _Servia_. Servia was the Slav State millions of whose native population were governed against their will by Austro-Hungarian officials. Servia was the Slav State mortally wounded by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And Servia was the Slav State which Austria had in particular mortified by forbidding her access to the Adriatic, and by imposing upon her an unnatural boundary, even after her great victories of the Balkan War.
The heir to the Hapsburgs--the man who, seeing the great age of his uncle, might at any moment ascend the throne--was the Archduke Francis. He had for years pursued one consistent policy for the aggrandizement of his House, which policy was the pitting of the Catholic Slavs against the Orthodox Slavs, thereby rendering himself in person particularly odious to the Orthodox Serbs, so many of whose compatriots and co-religionists were autocratically governed against their will in the newly annexed provinces.
To the capital of these provinces, Sarajevo, he proceeded in state in the latter part of last June, and there, through the emissaries of certain secret societies (themselves Austrian subjects, but certainly connected with the population of independent Servia, and, as some claimed, not unconnected with the Servian Government itself), he was assassinated upon Saturday, the 28th of June, 1914.
For exactly a month, the consequences of this event--the provocation which it implied to Austria, the opportunity which it gave the Hapsburgs for a new and more formidable expression of Germanic power against the Slavs--were kept wholly underground. _That is the most remarkable of all the preliminaries to the war._ There was a month of silence after so enormous a moment. Why? In order to give Germany and Austria a start in the conflict already long designed. Military measures were being taken secretly, stores of ammunition overhauled, and all done that should be necessary for a war which was premeditated in Berlin, half-feared, half-desired in Vienna, and dated for the end of July--after the harvest.
The Government of Berlin was, during the whole of this period, actively engaged in forcing Austria forward in a path to which she was not unwilling; and, at last, upon the 23rd of July, Europe was amazed to read a note sent by the Imperial Governor at Vienna to the Royal Government in the Servian capital of Belgrade, which note was of a kind altogether unknown hitherto in the relations between Christian States. This note demanded not only the suppression of patriotic, and therefore anti-Austrian, societies in Servia (the assassins of the Crown Prince had been, as I have said, not Servian but Austrian subjects), but the public humiliation of the Servian Government by an apology, and even an issue of the order of the day to the Servian Army, so recently victorious, abasing that army to the worst humiliation. The note insisted upon a specific pledge that the Servian Government should renounce all hope of freeing the Servian nation as a whole from foreign government, and in many another clause subjected this small nation to the most thorough degradation ever suggested by a powerful European people towards a lesser neighbour.
So far, though an extreme hitherto unknown in European history had been reached, the matter was one of degree. Things of the same sort, less drastic, had been known in the past.
But what was novel in the note, and what undoubtedly proceeded from the suggestion of the Prussian Government (which was in all this the real agent behind Austria), _was the claim of the Austrian Government to impose its own magistrates upon the Servian courts, and to condemn at will those subjects of the Servian king and those officers holding his commission whom Austria might select so to condemn, and that to penalties at the goodwill and pleasure of Austria alone_. In other words, Austria claimed full rights of sovereignty within the territory of her small neighbour and enemy, and the acceptation of the note by Servia meant not only the preponderance of Austria for the future over the Slavs of the Balkans, but her continued and direct power over that region in the teeth of national and religious sentiment, and in clean despite of Russia.
So strong was the feeling still throughout Europe in favour of maintaining peace and of avoiding the awful crash of our whole international system that Russia advised Servia to give way, and the Germanic Powers were on the eve of yet another great success, far more important and enduring than anything they had yet achieved. The only reservation which Servia was permitted by the peaceful Powers of Europe, and in particular by Russia, to make was that, upon three points which directly concerned her sovereignty, Austria should admit the decision of a Court of Arbitration at the Hague. But the time-limit imposed--which was the extraordinarily short one of forty-eight hours--was maintained by Austria, and upon the advice, as we now know, of Berlin, no modification whatever in the demands was tolerated. Upon the 25th, therefore, the Austrian Minister left Belgrade. There followed ten days, the exact sequence of events in which must be carefully noted if we are to obtain a clear view of the origin of the war.
Upon that same day, Saturday, July 25th, the English Foreign Office, through Sir Edward Grey, suggested a scheme whereby the approaching cataclysm (for Russia was apparently determined to support Servia) might be averted. He proposed that all operations should be suspended while the Ambassadors of Germany, Italy, and France consulted with him in London.
What happened upon the next day, Sunday, is exceedingly important. The German Government refused to accept the idea of such a conference, but at the same time the German Ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowski, was instructed to say that the principle of such a conference, or at least of mediation by the four Powers, was agreeable to Berlin. _The meaning of this double move was that the German Government would do everything it could to retard the entry into the business of the Western Powers, but would do nothing to prevent Russia, Servia, and the Slav civilization as a whole from suffering final humiliation or war._
That game was played by Germany clumsily enough for nearly a full week. Austria declared war upon Servia upon Monday the 27th; but we now know that her intention of meeting Russia halfway, when she saw that Russia would not retire, was stopped by the direct intervention of the Prussian Government. In public the German Foreign Office still pretended that it was seeking some way out of the crisis. In private it prevented Austria from giving way an inch from her extraordinary demands. And all the while Germany was secretly making her first preparations for war.
It might conceivably be argued by a special pleader that war was not the only intention of Berlin, as most undoubtedly it had not been the only intention of Vienna. Such a plea would be false, but one can imagine its being advanced. What is not capable even of discussion is the fact that both the Germanic Powers, under the unquestioned supremacy of Prussia, _were_ determined to push Russia into the dilemma between an impossible humiliation and defeat in the field. They allowed for the possibility that she would prefer humiliation, because they believed it barely possible (though all was ready for the invasion of France at a moment already fixed) that the French would again fail to support their ally. But war was fixed, and its date was fixed, with Russia, or even with Russia and France, and the Germanic Powers arranged to be ready before their enemies. In order to effect this it was necessary to deceive the West at least into believing that war could after all be avoided.
One last incident betrays in the clearest manner how thoroughly Prussia had determined on war, and on a war to break out at her own chosen moment. It was as follows:
As late as Thursday, the 30th of July, Austria was still willing to continue a discussion with Russia. The Austrian Government on that day expressed itself as willing to reopen negotiations with Russia. The German Ambassador at Vienna got wind of this. He communicated it at once to Berlin. _Germany immediately stopped any compromise, by framing that very night and presenting upon the next day, Friday the 31st, an ultimatum to Russia and to France._
Now, the form of these two ultimata and the events connected with them are again to be carefully noted, for they further illuminate us upon the German plan. That to Russia, presented by the German Ambassador Portales, had been prepared presupposing the just possible humiliation and giving way of Russia; and all those who observed this man's attitude and manner upon discovering that Russia would indeed fight rather than suffer the proposed humiliation, agreed that it was the attitude and manner of an anxious man. The ultimatum to France had, upon the contrary, not the marks of coercion, but of unexpected and violent haste. If Russia was really going to fight, what could Prussia be sure of in the West? It was the second great and crude blunder of Prussian diplomacy that, instead of making any efforts to detach France from Russia, it first took the abandonment of Russia by France for granted, and then, with extreme precipitancy, asked within the least possible delay whether France would fight. That precipitancy alone lent to the demand a form which ensured the exact opposite of what Prussia desired.
This double misconception of the effect of her diplomatic action dates, I say, from Friday, the 31st of July, and that day is the true opening day of the great war. Upon Sunday, the 2nd of August, the German army violated the neutrality of Luxembourg, seizing the railway passing through that State into France, and pouring into its neutral territory her covering troops. On the same day, the French general mobilization was ordered; the French military authorities having lost, through the double action of Germany, about five days out of, say, eleven--nearly half the mobilization margin--by which space of time German preparations were now ahead of theirs.
There followed, before the action state of general European conflict, the third German blunder, perhaps the most momentous, and certainly the most extraordinary: that by which Germany secured the hitherto exceedingly uncertain intervention of England against herself.
Of all the great Powers involved, Great Britain had most doubtfully to consider whether she should or should not enter the field.
On the one hand, she was in moral agreement with Russia and France; on the other hand, she was bound to them by no direct alliance, and successive British Governments had, for ten years past, repeatedly emphasized the fact that England was free to act or not to act with France according as circumstances might decide her.
Many have criticized the hesitation, or long weighing of circumstance, which astonished us all in the politicians during these few days, but no one, whether friendly to or critical of a policy of neutrality, can doubt that such a policy was not only a possible but a probable one. The Parliamentarians were not unanimous, the opposition to the great responsibility of war was weighty, numerous, and strong. The financiers, who are in many things the real masters of our politicians, were all for standing out. In the face of such a position, in the crisis of so tremendous an issue, Germany, instead of acting as best she could to secure the neutrality of Great Britain, simply took that neutrality for granted!
Upon one specific point a specific question was asked of her Government. To Great Britain, as we have seen in these pages, the keeping from the North Sea coast of all great hostile Powers is a vital thing. The navigable Scheldt, Antwerp, the approaches to the Straits of Dover, are, and have been since the rise of British sea-power, either in the hands of a small State or innocuous to us through treaty. Today they are the possession of Belgium, an independent State erected by treaty after the great war, and neutralized by a further guarantee in 1839. This neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed in a solemn treaty not only by France and England, but by Prussia herself; and the British Government put to the French and to the Germans alike the question whether (now they were at war) that neutrality would be respected. The French replied in the affirmative; the Germans, virtually, in the negative. But it must not be said that this violation of international law and of her own word by Germany automatically caused war with England.
_The German Ambassador was not told that if Belgian territory was violated England would fight_; he was only told that if that territory were violated England _might_ fight.
The Sunday passed without a decision. On Monday the point was, as a matter of form, laid before Parliament, though the House of Commons has no longer any real control over great national issues. In a speech which certainly inclined towards English participation in the war should Germany invade Belgium, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs summed up the situation before a very full House.
In the debate that followed many, and even passionate, speeches were delivered opposing the presence of England in the field and claiming neutrality. Some of these speeches insisted upon the admiration felt by the speaker for modern Germany and Prussia; others the ill judgment of running the enormous risk involved in such a campaign. These protests will be of interest to history, but the House of Commons as a whole had, of course, no power in the matter, and sat only to register the decisions of its superiors. There was in the Cabinet resignation of two members, in the Ministry the resignation of a third, the threatened resignation of many more.
Meanwhile, upon that same day, August 3rd, following with superstitious exactitude the very hour upon which, on the very same day, the French frontier had been crossed in 1870, the Germans entered Belgian territory.
The Foreign Office's thesis underlying the declaration of its spokesman, Sir Edward Grey, carried the day with the politicians in power, and upon Tuesday, August 4th, Great Britain joined Russia and France, at war with the Prussian Power. There followed later the formal declaration of war by France as by England against Austria, and with the first week in August the general European struggle had opened. _