The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (97 page)

Poincaré and Viviani also discussed abandoning their scheduled visits to the Scandinavian countries and setting course immediately for France but they decided that this might cause offence to their hosts and unnecessary alarm at home. So they continued around the Baltic, growing increasingly worried as the news from the Balkans worsened. Since the Germans were now jamming all radio transmissions between the
France
and Paris (as well as those between France itself and Russia), it was difficult to send and receive messages. In Paris their colleagues decided on their own initiative to take precautionary measures. Staff officers were called back from leave and troops sent to guard railways and other key sites. General Joffre, chief of the general staff, later claimed that he had no illusions about the gravity of the situation: ‘We were headed straight for war and Russia was going to find herself drawn in at the same time as ourselves.’ He and the War Minister assured the Russian military attaché that France stood ready to fulfil its alliance. By the end of the month France had gone a considerable way towards preparing itself for war and in the towns and cities shops that sold men’s clothing were starting to display heavy boots and thick socks.
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While the French government had been playing a largely passive role in the period between Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia and its declaration of war on 28 July, Britain had finally directed its attention away from Ireland to the Continent and started to take action. Grey had been slow – too slow – to grasp the extent of the danger that was looming in the Balkans and unwilling to admit to himself that Britain was in any way constrained by its membership of the Triple Entente. On 9 July the German ambassador Prince Karl von Lichnowsky found him cheerful and optimistic that the situation could be sorted out. Britain would of course, Grey insisted, exercise its customary free hand but, he added, it was very close to France and Russia. He did admit that there had been some ‘conversations’ with the French on military issues but gave the impression that they amounted to very little. In a meeting a week later he warned Lichnowsky that if public opinion in Russia grew aroused about Serbia, Britain would have to ‘humour Russian
sensibilities’.
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He did not choose to explain to the German just how concerned he and the Foreign Office were about relations with Russia. A new source of tension had arisen over control of oil in Mesopotamia (now part of Iraq); the struggle for influence in Persia continued; and the government of India was making worried noises about Russian intrigues in Afghanistan. Nicolson and his colleagues in the Foreign Office were not at all confident that the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 could be renewed when that came up in 1915. ‘I am also haunted by the same fear as you’, Nicolson wrote to Buchanan in St Petersburg earlier that spring, ‘– lest Russia should become tired of us and strike a bargain with Germany.’
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As the crisis worsened in July 1914 Grey and his officials were reluctant to pressure Russia too strongly to back down in its confrontation with Austria-Hungary for fear that they would drive Russia into Germany’s arms. (Germany, of course, had a similar fear: that it had to back Austria-Hungary or risk losing its only significant ally.) On 28 July, the day Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Nicolson wrote privately to Buchanan, ‘I foresaw as well as you did that this crisis might be taken by Russia as a test of our friendship, and that were we to disappoint her all hope of a friendly and permanent understanding with her would disappear.’
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Grey’s hope, as the crisis worsened, was for Britain to avoid making hard choices. The powers acting one more time as the Concert of Europe must somehow bring about a settlement, whether through a conference of ambassadors in London, as they had done with success during the First and Second Balkan Wars, or by exerting pressure on those powers most directly involved to negotiate with each other. Perhaps, he suggested, Russia could put pressure on Serbia and Germany on Austria-Hungary? When it became clear that Russia was taking Serbia’s part, Grey grasped at the possibility that France, Britain, Germany, and Italy might persuade Russia and Austria-Hungary to talk directly to each other. When Europe passed the milestone of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July, Grey floated the idea of a halt in Belgrade for Austria-Hungary’s forces in order to give time for negotiations. (Wilhelm, who shrank from war when he had actually to confront its reality, came up with a similar suggestion at the same time.) As Grey put forth one proposal after another, however, he also told the French and his own colleagues that, despite all the military
and naval conversations over the years, Britain was not bound to France by any obligations or secret treaties and would exercise its own judgement. He was never completely frank with either his colleagues, the British public, or perhaps even with himself about how much he and the military had actually committed Britain to working with France. On the other hand, as he had done so often before, he warned Germany that Britain could not stand by and see France crushed and that it would regard any violation of Belgium’s neutrality with strong disfavour.

On 23 July Mensdorff, Austria-Hungary’s ambassador in London, gave Grey an indication of the nature of the ultimatum that was about to be presented to Serbia. Apparently, Grey was shocked. That night he and Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, had dinner with the German industrialist Albert Ballin, who had been sent to London by the German government on an unofficial mission to sound out possible British reactions if war broke out on the Continent. As with so many other moments in those last frantic days, recollections differed after the event: Haldane remembered that he and Grey warned Ballin that if Germany attacked France, he should not count on Britain’s remaining neutral; Ballin, however, took another message back to Berlin: in his view Britain was concerned mainly with the balance of power on the Continent so that as long as Germany undertook not to swallow up France after any war (perhaps only taking a few French colonies) Britain would not intervene.
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The following day Grey read the full text of the ultimatum. ‘The note seemed to me’, he told Mensdorff, ‘the most formidable document I had ever seen addressed by one State to another that was independent.’ On Berchtold’s instructions, Mensdorff made an unconvincing attempt to play down the document’s significance; it was really not so much an ultimatum as a démarche with a time limit, and while Austria-Hungary intended to start military preparations after the deadline, those were not the same thing as military action.
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At a Cabinet meeting later that day, which was meeting to discuss the failure of the Irish conference at Buckingham Palace, Grey brought up the crisis in the Balkans for the first time and said he was sure that if Russia attacked Austria-Hungary, Germany would defend its ally. While a majority of his colleagues were still firmly opposed to Britain becoming involved in a war, that balance
was going to shift over the next week largely as a result of Germany’s actions. Grey said sombrely that the ultimatum was bringing them closer to Armageddon than at any time since the First Balkan Wars. His solution was considerably less dramatic: he was going to suggest that Germany, France, Italy and Britain join forces to urge Austria-Hungary and Russia not to take action. The same day, though, Britain also started its first, tentative preparations for war. The whole of the British fleet in home waters had been on summer naval manoeuvres the week before and the government now ordered it to remain mobilised. Like the Russian and French preparatory moves, and the ones about to start in Germany, such manoeuvres may have been defensive in intent but they did not necessarily appear so from outside and so yet another factor came into play to raise the already high levels of tension in Europe.

In the evening of 24 July Grey summoned Lichnowsky and asked that the ambassador tell his government that Britain would be willing to make a joint request with Germany for Austria-Hungary to extend the time limit. The other powers would then have time to defuse the growing quarrel between Austria-Hungary and Russia. ‘Useless’, scribbled the Kaiser when he read Lichnowsky’s report the next day. ‘I will not join in it unless Austria expressly asks me to, which is not likely. In
vital
questions and those of honour, one does not consult others.’
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On Saturday 25 July, Grey saw Lichnowsky again to discuss the whole situation. The German ambassador was finding it increasingly difficult to defend the position of his own government. A great admirer of Britain and its institutions, he had long advocated a better understanding between London and Berlin. He had been called out of retirement in 1912 to take up his post by the Kaiser, who told him to go and be ‘a jolly good fellow’. Bethmann and the Foreign Office disliked the appointment because they felt he lacked experience and was too naïve about the British.
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In fact, Lichnowsky in the crisis gave consistently good advice: that Germany was following a dangerous course in its encouragement of Austria-Hungary and that, if a general war broke out, Britain would be drawn in. His superiors, he informed them, were dreaming if they really thought that any conflict could be localised in the Balkans.
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(And, as Nicolson wrote acerbically to Buchanan, ‘I think the talk about localising the war merely means that all the Powers are to hold the ring while Austria quietly strangles Serbia.’
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)

That afternoon, as the urgent telegrams continued to fly about Europe, Grey chose to go as usual to his country retreat near Winchester for the weekend.
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Although he could be reached by telegram, it seems a curious decision in such a rapidly developing situation. Back in London, he learned on Monday 27 July that Germany had abruptly rejected the suggestion of four-power mediation on the grounds, so Jagow claimed, that it would amount to an international court of arbitration and so it could happen only if Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two parties directly concerned, requested it.
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Britain was by now also under increasing pressure from Russia and France to make its support clear. Buchanan, who had met Sazonov on the Sunday to urge him to work with Austria-Hungary to resolve the situation and to delay Russia’s mobilisation in the cause of peace, cabled to London on the Monday that the Russian position had hardened: ‘Minister for Foreign Affairs replied that he did not believe that we should succeed in winning over Germany to cause of peace unless we publicly proclaimed our solidarity with France and Russia.’
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In Paris, Izvolsky told a British diplomat at a dinner party that war was certainly coming and that it was Britain’s fault. If only the British had made it clear when the crisis started that they would fight with the Russians and the French, Austria-Hungary and Germany would have hesitated. It was not like the Bosnian crisis, he added ominously, when a weak Russia had been obliged to back down. This time Russia was in a position to fight.
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On Tuesday 28 July, Paul Cambon, who had rushed back from Paris where he had been advising the government in the absence of Poincaré and Viviani, warned Grey that ‘if once it were assumed that Britain would certainly stand aside from a European war, the chance of preserving peace would be very much imperilled’.
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Cambon, who had devoted his time in London to turning the Entente Cordiale into something more substantial than a warm friendship, had feared from the outset of the crisis that Grey would ‘wobble and hesitate’ and that Germany would therefore be emboldened to go ahead. ‘England is sure to join us in the end,’ he nevertheless assured a colleague in Paris, ‘but too late.’
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Cambon was going to suffer agonies in the next week as he tried to get a firm commitment out of Grey.

Across the Continent there were reports of unusual activities. On the weekend of 25–26 July German spies reported increased radio
traffic between the Eiffel Tower in Paris and a major Russian military base in western Russia. Russian frontier guards were said to be on full alert and railway rolling stock being moved to Russian towns close to the border with East Prussia.
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On 26 July Wilhelm, whose government had hoped to keep him safely away in the North Sea, suddenly ordered the German fleet to escort his yacht back to Germany. He feared, apparently, that Russia was planning to torpedo it in a surprise attack. He also felt that Bethmann did not have the proper understanding of military matters.
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The following day Poincaré and Viviani abruptly cancelled their planned visit to Copenhagen and steamed back towards France. Ripples of nationalist feeling started to disturb the summer calm. In St Petersburg, crowds, small at first but growing in size as the week went on, paraded carrying portraits of Tsar Nicholas and the national flag and singing ‘Save Thy people, Lord’.
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When Nicholas himself attended a local theatre in Krasnoye Selo, the audience gave him several spontaneous standing ovations and army officers who were present broke into song. In Paris crowds demonstrated outside the embassy of Austria-Hungary and in Vienna, ‘wildest enthusiasm prevails’, reported the British ambassador, as locals tried to demonstrate outside the Russian embassy while officers in uniform received rousing cheers. In Berlin, when the news came of the Serbian response to the Austrian ultimatum, large crowds gathered to sing patriotic songs and the Austrian national anthem. University students marched up and down Unter den Linden singing and chanting patriotic slogans.
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