As always, the Emperor had to arbitrate. In the spirit of the fall of 1913, Franz Joseph’s government decided to combine the latest of mailed fists with an old-fashioned diplomatic smile. The Minister of War, Baron von Krobatin, announced that four more dreadnoughts would be built at a cost of 106 million kronen each; the ships would boast every twentieth-century advance in armor and cannon; together they would constitute the most formidable task force in the Adriatic. At almost the same time Count von Berchtold held his fall reception for accredited ambassadors at the Ballhausplatz where he remarked, between toasts of champagne, that the sole purpose of Austrian strength was peace—especially peace with Serbia.
If Serbia didn’t believe in pleasantries amidst goblets, it did take seriously the looming of the dreadnoughts. Early in October the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić visited Vienna. After an interview with Count von Berchtold, Pašić’s office issued a communique: he and the Austrian Excellency could not agree on the issue of Austrian interference in the southern Balkans, but he did promise that Serbia would not invade Albania and he hoped that his pledge would fortify the possibilities of amity between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Coming from the chief executive of a pugnacious upstart of a country, this was an almost chastened statement. Perhaps it also reflected a weakening of Serbia’s international support that autumn. The saber that its protector could rattle was tarnished for the moment; the Tsar was beset by domestic trouble. Credit for that belonged, at least in part, to Lenin and therefore to Lenin’s hidden hosts in Austrian Counter-intelligence. At the Bolshevik summer conference in Austrian Galicia—held at virtually the same time as Freud’s Psycho-Analytical Congress in Munich and as contentious and important—Lenin had forced through a controversial resolution: It directed the Bolshevik parliamentary deputies to the St. Petersburg legislature to form a caucus separate from the more moderate Mensheviks with whom they had till then formed a common Social Democratic front. In word and action they were now free to push their own much more drastic program.
Very soon the move made itself felt through much of industrialized Russia. The Bolshevik-controlled Pravda in St. Petersburg mercilessly scourged “Menshevik spinelessness” and Trotskyite “nonfactionalism.” In the Duma, Bolshevik speakers called on workers to stop being slaves. Their fierceness unfettered, Lenin’s men drew more attention from major trade unions. They also gained more influence. Scattered but steady strike activity spread in the factories, guided by Bolshevik headquarters in Austria. Here Lenin enjoyed freedom to operate and to politick in ways that made Habsburg smile. Occasionally Lenin smiled back. In his talks on the Nationalities Question he said more than once that Vienna handled the problem far better than St. Petersburg.
But in the second half of 1913 you didn’t have to be a Bolshevik to consider Austria morally prettier than Russia. By autumn the damage from the Redl case was fading in Habsburg lands; at any rate it receded before the disgrace happening under Romanov. In October the Tsar’s district attorney in Kiev prosecuted, with anti-Semitic zeal, a ritual-murder trial against a Jew named Mendel Beilis.
The spectacle reeked of medieval viciousness. Indignation ran through Europe, not least along the Danube. To support their brother so unjustly accused, Vienna’s Jewish Community organized a huge meeting at the Musikvereinssaal. The famous (non-Jewish) physiologist Julius Wagner-Jauregg was among three Austrian scientists giving testimony in defense of Mendel Beilis’s innocence. Internationally, on Beilis’s behalf, a petition was addressed to the Tsar; notables signing it included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Engelbert Humperdinck, Ana-tole France, Kathe Kollwitz, Selma Lagerlof, H. G. Wells, Frank Wedekind, as well as Viktor Adler, the Jewish leader of Austrian Socialism, and Hermann Bahr, the non-Jewish Austrian writer.
When the Russian court had to acquit Beilis in the first week of November, it was an Austrian variety-show producer who first offered him a personal-appearance contract worthy of his red-hot celebrity. Mr. Beilis begged off because of stress caused by the trial.
Meanwhile the first cold gusts helped yellow the leaves on oak and beech all over Vienna’s parks. But whether or not it was the contrast to Tsarist barbarism, the Western Powers seemed to warm not only toward Austria but also toward its German ally. England’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, made a very well-tempered speech at Manchester; he noted an improvement in relations between his country and the Reich and proposed a mutual reduction in the building of new battleships. America contributed a friendly sound from even higher up. A German publisher brought out a translation of President Woodrow Wilson’s The State—Elements of Historical and Practical Politics. It marked a highlight of the fall publishing season, not least because of the preface specially written by the author for this edition. In it the American President praised the profundity of German thought, which had furnished not only his book but many other American works with inspiration.
At almost the same time, Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, chose an odd forum for displaying willingness to associate himself with things Austrian. The Vienna press reported his appearance in a variety show in Maryland also featuring a Tyrolean yodeler. Mr. Bryan’s role in the entertainment consisted of a spectacularly orotund oration that championed peace among the world’s principal countries, most of which he enumerated (omitting Mexico, against which the USA was preparing an ultimatum). This high-minded aria, euphonious with metaphor and legato vowels, he repeated for twelve performances. In an interview, his Excellency explained that only through fees for extra undertakings such as this could he foot the high representational expenses of his office. The Tyrolean received much less for his yodels. But then a Tyrolean yodeler was not an American gentleman, and an American gentleman—said Diamond Jim Brady in New York during an interview much quoted in the Vienna press that fall—an American gentleman required an income of $1,000 a day, plus expenses.
This, of course, was the sort of zany flash typical of America. But in the course of autumn of 1913, Vienna saw the international horizon brighten in a more important way. At Belvedere Palace the First Lord Chamberlain of the Crown Prince issued an auspicious statement. An arrangement informally discussed during the summer had been confirmed and could be publicly announced: His Imperial and Royal Highness, the Archduke and Heir Apparent Franz Ferdinand and his consort had been asked to join Their Majesties, the King and Queen of England, at Windsor Castle, for a shoot during the third week of November.
To be sure, this was to be a “private stay” for the Austrian couple—not a state visit, which would have implied an altogether august elevation for a morganatic wife. Still, the last time Franz Ferdinand’s spouse had seen the English King, two years earlier, she had almost been smuggled into Buckingham Palace as an incognito luncheon guest under the name of Countess of Artstetter. But now, at Windsor, the Archduke would have her officially at his side as the Duchess of Hohen-berg. It was a protocol breakthrough; a coup scored by the Crown Prince over Prince Montenuovo, First Lord Chamberlain of the Emperor; an event registered instantly by Vienna gossip as a bulletin from the invisible front line running through the Court.
And there was that other arena, much less accessible to rumor, in which the Crown Prince did combat. Here the contest was waged through memos, usually top secret and livid; special couriers scurried from backstairs at the War Ministry to the “confidential door” of Franz Ferdinand’s Military Chancellery at Belvedere Palace and back again. The temperatures sank in Vienna in the course of autumn. The thrust and parry heated up between Army Chief and Crown Prince, between Serbia’s unappeasable foe and the volcanic apostle of restraint.
Earlier in the year the Archduke had mentioned that he might attend the Army’s summer exercises planned for summer of 1914 at Sarajevo. Presently definite notice of his intention to participate was transmitted to the Chief of Staff by General Oscar Potiorek, Governor of Bosnia. The Crown Prince had chosen to convey “highest” information to the Chief of Staff through
an officer of less senior rank. It was a pointed disregard of channels.
And the Chief of Staff, General Conrad, retaliated with some anti-Serb ammunition pointed directly at the Archduke’s heart. Austrian intelligence in the United States had been watching Michael Pupin, the well-known professor of electro-mechanics at Columbia University and the head of Srpska Slega, an organization of Americans of Serbian descent. A student of Pupin’s, one Dusan Trbuhovic, had left America for Serbia at the end of summer and during a farewell dinner for him at the Hotel La Salle in Chicago, the possibility of an attempt on Franz Ferdinand’s life had been discussed in detail. This report Conrad sent on to the Archduke. It seems fair to assume that the purpose was not just to warn but to rattle His Highness, to shake him into a tougher stance toward the Serbs.
There is no evidence of a specific response on Franz Ferdinand’s part. But that month he made devastatingly plain his position vis-á-vis Conrad.
For three days starting September 14, large-scale war games involving six divisions of the Austro-Hungarian Army were to unfold in Bohemia, on a terrain about fifty miles south of Prague. Conrad arrived on September 11 to prepare mock battles involving field telephone and telegraph as well as bomber aircraft. The exercises were to show how well the Empire could fight a twentieth-century war.
On the thirteenth, the Crown Prince’s automobile roared up, followed by a huge detachment of horse. Instantly, brutally, he asserted his new rank of Inspector General, which gave him supreme command over all maneuvers. He cancelled a number of troop movements and changed the timing of all others—everything that Conrad had mapped out with such care. A three days’ program was squeezed into little more than one, in order to make room for the Archduke’s own plan.
Most of the second day went into a rehearsal over which the Crown Prince presided, frowning triumphantly astride his Lippizaner. On the sixteenth, he let his operation explode before the eyes of his wife and an assembly of Bohemian princes watching from a grandstand: Down the slope of Mount Tabor galloped tier upon tier of cavalry. It was a dust-wreathed extravaganza of hussar bravado. In real war it would have been mowed down—drawn swords, flowing capes, plumed shakos, and all—by laconic bursts from a few machine gun batteries.
The impresario of this passé magnificence was not one of your backward-minded Viennese. On the contrary, Franz Ferdinand preferred a powerful motorcar over the fastest thoroughbred. And in ordnance beyond the Army Chiefs immediate sphere—the Austrian Navy, for example—the Archduke urged the most modern armaments. Franz Ferdinand had turned these maneuvers into a historial joke not because he liked antiquated valor but because he hated the Chief of Staff. To undo Conradian policy, the Crown Prince must undo Conrad himself in every way.
The horse droppings left by the hussar commotion had not yet been scooped when the Crown Prince barked at the Chief of Staff: Why hadn’t he attended field Mass? Five minutes later, he barked at him again, this time in front of other generals: Why had he permitted cars to park in the path of the cavalry attack?
Conrad listened mutely. His handsome mustache twitched with his tic. He saluted and excused himself. He boarded alone his command train back to Vienna. He did not want to share his humiliation with his brother officers. But to his beloved Frau von Reininghaus he could pour out his heart about “. . .this battle-farce” the Archduke had put on, “. . .this ludicrous spectacle for amateurs and children” which “. . . the Archduke must have anticipated and intended because he must have known that I can accept all this no longer.”
The day after his return from “the farce,” on September 17, Conrad addressed to the Archduke a written request to accept his resignation, leaving it “to your Imperial and Royal Highness to most graciously decide what official form or reason should be assigned to my voluntary removal”
Franz Ferdinand had already picked out Conrad’s successor—General Karl von Tersztyansky, head of the Budapest Army Corps. But at this juncture the Emperor himself intervened. At the moment the Balkan situation was still too unsettled, the military contingencies too unpredictable, for Austria to dispense with a seasoned commander like Conrad.
The Crown Prince was summoned to a discreet audience at the Hofburg. He returned to Konopiste where he exercised, furiously, his famed marksmanship on over a hundred heath-cocks. Then he sat down to do something unusual, for him. Something quite Viennese: He smiled a fine smile over clenched teeth. “Dear General Conrad,” he wrote on September 23, “Much as I understand your wish not to remain much longer in office, I do hope and trust that you shall be able to display in some other high position your inestimable abilities, your patriotic commitment and your generally admired qualities as a soldier for which we are much indebted to you. But for the moment I would like to ask you most earnestly, in the interest of a good cause and in my own name, not to change your command and to remain in your thorny office at least until spring, and thereby make a sacrifice to the Army and to all of us entrusted with its leadership.”
The tone suggests anything but vintage Franz Ferdinand. These phrases are not only too humble, they are far humbler than the Emperor required. Strategy, not sincerity, produced the Archduke’s compliments. If their intent was to tempt the General into overconfidence, they did their work well within a month.
Conrad, of course, withdrew his resignation. He had retained power with his dignity vindicated; his foe was beaten back, his opinion bolstered by the news of the day. Each week in October brought new reports of fighting along Albania’s border with Serbia. Serbia claimed it was repelling an invasion. Albania, which consisted of tribal war lords shooting off Austrian rifles, accused Serbia of aggression. Conrad felt that the mounting chaos could only be resolved by a showdown with Belgrade. Since that might mean war with Russia, however, Austria needed to be backed by its own strong ally, Germany. Yet on just that point Berlin had been evasive, or worse.
On October 1, Wilhelm, writing to Franz Ferdinand, had been rather sympathetic to the Serbs; he had actually referred to “Albania’s habit, incited by Turkey, of pouncing on Serbia . . .” This implied that the real inciter and protector of the Albanians, Austria, would ignite a needless conflagration from which Germany had a right to remain apart.
Conrad had been trying to enroll Berlin on Vienna’s side. At an audience some months ago, he had—cautiously and respectfully—asked Franz Joseph to obtain some personal commitment from the Kaiser in case of a wider conflict. Franz Joseph’s reply had been one short, brusque sentence. “It is the duty of kings to keep peace.”
But that had been much earlier in the year, at a time less favorable to Conrad’s cause, with Serb aggressiveness lying relatively low and the Crown Prince riding high as chief of the appeasers. Now, in October, it was the other way around. Now was the time to take by the horns that bull of bulls—Wilhelm II of Germany.
On October 18, 1913, the German monarch celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, where Prussian, Austrian, and Swedish troops had vanquished Napoleon. Wilhelm, who loved to wallow in borrowed glory, wallowed away .He decreed a great tattoo in Leipzig; ordered the boom of guns saluting, the blare of trumpet, fife, and drum; convened a titled assembly of gold braids, of fringed epaulettes, of tunics sashed, starred, and bemedalled.
Dignitaries of the three victor countries laid wreaths at the foot of the gigantic monument built for the occasion. As leaders of the Austrian delegation, Franz Ferdinand and General Conrad then sat down at a table (set at the Gewandhaus for four hundred and fifty) to rise again and again to heel-clicking toasts proposed by the German Emperor.
After the banquet Wilhelm held a cercle, that is, an informal reception. And Conrad made his move. By way of paying his respects, he expressed his humble gratitude to His Majesty for underlining with this festivity the importance and the might of the alliance between German and Austrian arms in the past and thereby emphasizing its continued importance in present or future circumstances.
This was not idle courtesy. It was an ov
erture to draw Wilhelm into any potential fracas not only with Serbia but its big brother in St. Petersburg. Revved up by the martial trappings of the fete, the Kaiser answered that, indeed, the German-Austrian alliance remained unshakable, unbreakable, undeterrable. And—undeterred himself by the presence of a Russian general to his left or by the frown of the Austrian Crown Prince to his right—Wilhelm added that this moment made him feel so close to his Austrian comrades-in-arms that he wished to be introduced to all of the officers in the Austrian delegation.
Conrad answered that he would be most honored to do just that—and thereby pushed Franz Ferdinand beyond his boiling point.
“General!” the Crown Princely voice echoed across the hall. “Are you the Austrian of highest rank here? Isn’t it the privilege of the Austrian of highest rank to introduce other Austrians to His Majesty? And if that is so, why have you affronted me?”
It was, of course, the Chief of Staff who had been affronted before an international audience that would regale chancelleries and palaces throughout Europe with this scene. Nonetheless the General must apologize to the Crown Prince. He must bow, no doubt deep enough to hide his tic. And he must pack all his bitterness into yet another letter to Frau von Reininghaus.
But he could not, as he had done four weeks earlier after the maneuver contretemps, propose again to quit as Chief of Staff. Tendering his resignation must not become a monthly tragicomedy. On his return to Vienna, Conrad resolved to do the opposite. He would gather all the powers of his office into a demand for a final reckoning with Belgrade. Just now Serb violation of Albanian sovereignty had been compounded by border crossings and pillage of troops from Montenegro, Belgrade’s ally. Conrad sent a summary of “these provocations” to Franz Joseph together with a briefing on the support expressed by Kaiser Wilhelm in Leipzig: on the basis of such developments, the Chief of Staff requested the instant punitive invasion of Serbia.
Thunder at Twilight Page 11
