Thunder at Twilight

by Frederic Morton

  To the Italian ambassador, who seemed a bit unnerved by Austria’s impassivity after Sarajevo, the Foreign Minister said that the situation was not grave—“it just needs to be cleared up.” And the French ambassador, who did not find much clarification in that statement, was assured by Berchtold that Vienna’s note to Belgrade would be “reasonable.”

  The French ambassador duly relayed this news to his government. Paris, not overly alarmed in the first place, let its attention wander. Just then a magnificent scandal was engulfing France. On July 20, a judge’s gavel at the Court de Seine started a trial mesmerizing the Gallic imagination. Mme. Henriette Caillaux, wife of the Finance Minister (widely touted to be the next Prime Minister), had pumped six bullets into the body of France’s most powerful journalist, the editor in chief of Le Figaro, Gaston Calmette. That had been back in March. But now, in mid-July, fireworks between prosecutor and defense counsel lit up the erotic glamor behind this charismatic homicide. Much of the trial revolved around the love letters Caillaux had written Henriette during the extramarital affair that preceded their wedding—letters whose imminent publication in Le Figaro had driven Mme. Caillaux to murder.

  The shots at Sarajevo faded rapidly as those from the Figaro office resounded once more in newspaper columns. This was the stuff of prime gossip, made even tangier by a courtroom duel. It enlivened millions of French vacations. Certainly it piqued President Poincaré on his summer cruise. About to land in St. Petersburg, he asked to be apprised of every moist detail by cable.

  Britain also had an absorbing domestic concern—apart from holiday-making, of course. The Irish Home Rule Bill was roiling tempers very badly. On July 20—on the morning the Caillaux judges assembled in scarlet robes at the Seine Tribunal—His Britannic Majesty summoned the contending parties to Buckingham Palace, taking a very rare step beyond his constitutional role as a reigning, not a ruling, monarch. And King George did manage to postpone the crisis—until a superior urgency submerged it. But who would have expected such an urgency? Where would it come from? The Henley Regatta?

  British King and Paris murderess were spear-carriers for Count von Berchtold’s stagecraft. They both diverted attention as he readied the surprise climax. Vienna itself remained quiet, basking its way through July. It did generate some official news—though of a literally festive character. The City Fathers were planning the First International Vienna Music Festival, scheduled for June 1915. Newspapers reported a spirited debate on the subject in the Municipal Council. Among the main points discussed were (1) should the program consist of concerts only? and (2) if operas were included, would this be aping Salzburg, whose own first large-scale festival was slotted for August of this year and which would feature the great Felix Weingartner conducting Lotte Lehmann in Don Giovanni?

  Vienna, then, looked preoccupied with matters either esthetic or bucolic and at all events harmless. As late as July 20, the Russian ambassador saw no reason for not leaving town on a two-week holiday. He left. From St. Petersburg came an even more conclusive signal of détente. On July 21, the Tsar and his guest, French President Poincaré, exchanged toasts that dwelled on the international picture: The Serb-Austrian problem wasn’t even mentioned.

  But forty-eight hours earlier, while Europe sunned and napped, Count von Berchtold had tiptoed toward the last scene of his first act. On the afternoon of July 19, a number of taxis and private automobiles drew up before his Palais overlooking the Strudlhof Steps. The cars arrived at intervals, avoiding a dramatic convergence. It was Sunday. The scene seemed to point to some weekend social gathering. A passerby, had he cared to notice, would not have spotted a single official limousine.

  Yet this was an official occasion, as crucial as it was covert: a cabinet meeting of the Joint Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Berchtold had summoned them to review the text of the note to the Serbian government. On the morning of that day the’’jewel’’ had finally been polished to perfection.

  Next morning, on Monday July 20, a courier left the Ball-hausplatz for the Emperor’s villa at Bad Ischl. He made this trip routinely, every weekday, carrying state papers. On the twentieth he carried “the jewel” for Franz Joseph’s inspection. On Tuesday the twenty-first, a brief, laconic item in the official Wiener Zeitung reported that Foreign Minister Count von Berchtold had gone to Bad Ischl “to discuss current business with His Majesty.” And that morning, at 9 A.M. , he was received by the Emperor.

  Berchtold’s diary records a Franz Joseph braced, tart, taut, not at all octoġenarian.

  “Well, Berchtold, ever on the go?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, one has to be. These are fast-moving times.”

  “Exactly, as never before. The note is pretty sharp.”

  “It has to be, Your Majesty.”

  “It has to be indeed. You will join us for lunch.”

  “With humble pleasure, Your Majesty.”

  Hoyos, whom Berchtold had brought along to the audience, took the official copy of the demarche from his briefcase. Franz Joseph initialed it. “The Jewel,” already endorsed by the Joint Ministers, now bore the Imperial imprimatur.

  Actually this was only the formal ratification of action taken twenty-four hours earlier. On Monday the Emperor had read and approved the note handed him by the courier. On that same Monday it had been wired to the Austrian Embassy in Belgrade. It was ready to be thrust at Serbia by the time a white-gloved footman set down a tureen before Franz Joseph, Berchtold, and Hoyos at midday of July 21.

  In summary, the note said

  1. that preliminary investigations prove that the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince was planned in Belgrade; that Serbian officials and members of the government-sponsored Naradna Obrana* had provided the culprits with arms and training; that chiefs of the Serbian frontier service had organized and effectuated passage of the culprits into Austrian territory. . . .

  2. that even before the outrage, Belgrade had encouraged for years terrorist societies and criminal actions aiming to detach Bosnia-Hercegovina from the Habsburg realm. . . .

  3. that in view of the above, and in order to end this intolerable, long-standing, and ongoing threat to its territories and to its tranquillity, the Imperial and Royal Government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire sees itself obliged to demand from the Royal Serbian government

  (a) the publication on the front page of Belgrade’s Official Journal of July 26, 1914, of a declaration by the Serbian Government which regrets, condemns, and repudiates all Serbian acts, official or nonofficial, against Austria, and all Serbian violations of rules governing the comity of nations—and that such a declaration be also published as “Order of the Day” by the King of Serbia to the Serbian Army.

  The Austrian Government further demands

  (b) a guarantee from the Serbian Government that it will henceforth suppress any publication inciting hatred against Austria or menacing Austria’s territorial integrity; that it will dissolve any and all societies engaged in propaganda, subversion, or terrorism against Austria, and that it will prevent such societies from continuing their activities under another name or form . . .

  The Austrian Government further demands

  (c) that the Serbian Government will eliminate instantly any and all educational materials in Serbian schools that are anti-Austrian in character . . .

  The Austrian Government frther demands

  (d) that the Serbian Government will remove from the Serbian Army and the Serbian administration all officials guilty of anti-Austrian acts, including specific individuals whose names and activities will be detailed to the Serbian Government by the Austrian Government; and that the Serbian Government will accept the participation of Austrian Police in the suppression and apprehension of anti-Austrian subversive groups, particularly those involved in the Sarajevo crime . ..

  Finally, the Austrian Government demands

  (e) that the Serbian Government will notify the Austrian Government without delay of the execution of these measures . . . and to
convey unconditional agreement to all of the foregoing at the latest by Saturday, July 25, 1914, at 6 P.M.

  This was the super-ultimatum. In the words of the British Foreign Secretary, it constituted “the most formidable document ever addressed by one state to another” It was also the nonultimatum. Though its tone left no doubt over the consequences of noncompliance, it did not mention the possibility of war, and therefore arrived at the Austrian Embassy in Belgrade labeled as a mere “demarche with a time limit.”

  And there were other fine aspects to Berchtold’s game. The sledgehammer message came phrased in fastidious diplomatic French, the last such “final notice” to be written in that language. Last but not least, Berchtold used precision timing, always important in a theatrical enterprise. Belgrade relied on two principal protectors, Russia and France. Just then the French Head of State was finishing his visit with the Tsar. Berchtold did not want the two to react jointly when the “demarche with a time limit” struck. Through German diplomatic sources, Berchtold had learned that President Poincaré would end his stay at the Russian capital in the early afternoon of Thursday, July 23. By 5 P.M. he would be floating away on the cruiser France. Berchtold instructed the Austrian Ambassador in Belgrade to deliver the “demarche” at 6 P.M. sharp.

  As ordered, so done. Berchtold had successfully achieved the end of Act I.

  Act II opened well, or so it seemed. Abruptly, out of the blue of yet another lovely day, the Austrian Ambassador Baron von Giesl placed a telephone call “of utmost urgency” to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade. It was 4:30 P.M. on July 23, and the Ambassador said that he must deliver “an extremely important communication” to the Prime Minister—who was also the Foreign Minister—that very afternoon at 6 P.M.

  Prime Minister Pašić was not even in town. He had no reason to stay close to his office. True, at the beginning of the month, Serbian diplomats abroad had reported rumors that something “strong” might be brewing in Vienna. Yet week followed week after Sarajevo, and nothing “strong” materialized. Serbia began to turn to internal matters. An electoral campaign engrossed the country in mid-July. Pašić left the capital for a political tour, speaking against Apis’s extremist party. It was at this point that the Austrian ambassador placed his peremptory call.

  Since the Prime Minister was away on the hustings in the Southern provinces, the Finance Minister substituted for him. The Finance Minister received that astounding note from the ambassador at 6 P.M. of July 23. It did not reach Pašić until 8 P.M. that night, when he heard over the telephone details of the suddenness, the severity, the smooth murderousness of Vienna’s demands. He had less than forty-eight hours to answer them.

  Pašić cancelled all further election speeches. He returned to Belgrade at five o’clock the next morning and immediately called a cabinet meeting. Sessions continued throughout the day, through most of the night that followed, and through most of the day after.

  Shortly after 6 P.M. of Saturday July 25, a tall rotund man with a seignorial white beard and a black formal frock coat hurried on foot from the Foreign Ministry to the Austrian Embassy a few blocks off. It was Prime Minister Pašić, holding in his hand an envelope with his government’s reply.

  When he was admitted to the Ambassador’s office it was 6:15 P.M. , a quarter of an hour after the deadline set by Vienna. Therefore Ambassador von Giesl did not ask the Prime Minister to sit down. He himself read the note standing. It was a messy document, revised and re-typed many times, after frenzied debates and febrile consultations with the Russian and French embassies. The final version in Baron von Giesl’s hands had an inked-out passage and a number of corrections made by pen. That did not interest the Austrian ambassador, nor did the reply’s conciliatory and mournful prose, nor did its acceptance of all points of the demarche except those demanding the participation of Austrian police in pursuit of Serbian subjects on Serbian soil. Such requests, the note said, Belgrade “must reject, being a violation of the Serbian constitution and of the law of criminal procedure.”

  It was this rejection that mattered to the Ambassador. It was the necessary next event in Austria’s scenario. The Ambassador had counted on it. He had anticipated it. That was why he stood before the Serbian Prime Minister in his traveling clothes. That was why his code-book had already gone up the chimney, why his secret papers had been shredded, his luggage packed, and his motor-car readied at the front door. That was why he only needed to sign a statement prepared in advance: It said that “due to the unsatisfactory nature” of the Serbian response, the Austro-Hungarian Empire saw itself forced to break off relations with the Kingdom of Serbia.

  At 6:20 P.M. a messenger took the statement from Baron von Giesl’s desk for delivery to the Serbian Prime Minister’s office. As the messenger left, Giesl repeated the statement orally to the Prime Minister who still stood before him. Then the Austrian ambassador bowed, wished the Prime Minister good day, walked to his car. At half past six he boarded a train that crossed the Austrian frontier ten minutes later.

  * * *

  * The cultural society promoting Serb nationalism. Since neither Princip nor his accomplices gave away the Black Hand during their interrogations, it is not mentioned in the Austrian note.

  33

  THAT SAME EVENING OF JULY 25, THE AUSTRIAN FOREIGN MINISTER Count von Berchtold sat in the Ischl office of Emperor Franz Joseph’s military aide-de-camp. They were waiting for a call from the War Ministry in Vienna, which in turn waited for a telephone call from the Embassy in Belgrade. When the clock struck 6:30 P.M. , the Foreign Minister, white-faced, said he had to leave, he must get some fresh air. Two minutes after he had gone, the telephone rang with the staccato news. Serbia rejects essential demand. The aide ran to have himself announced at the Emperor’s villa.

  Franz Joseph received his message (as the aide would remember) “hollow-eyed” and “hoarse of voice.” “Also doch . . .” he said. (“So, after all. . .”). Then, after a long silence, he added, “But the rupture of relations needn’t necessarily mean war! . . .”

  What sudden change. Barely two days earlier, in the same idyllic Alpine setting, with the same beneficent weather, the same Emperor and the same Foreign Minister had looked forward to just this news: Serbia’s rejection of the demarche, which now justified its military punishment. Why, then, was the Emperor shaken? Why the Foreign Minister’s ashen cheeks?

  Because the play had begun to fail.

  In Belgrade Berchtold’s libretto had proceeded on cue, but elsewhere the second act was suddenly unravelling. The trouble began with Austria’s chief supporting actor, namely Germany.

  On the surface nothing seemed wrong. Vienna had sent the text of the “jewel” demarche to Berlin on July 22. Within a day the Austrian ambassador cabled from the German capital that the Kaiser’s Foreign Minister “thanks for the communication and assures me that the government here is entirely in agreement with the contents of the demarche.”

  Actually the Wilhelmstrasse was only imitating the attitude struck by its overlord, the absentee Kaiser (still away on his cruise) before he had boarded his yacht. Aping their master, German ministers stepped before the footlights to stiffen their upper lips at Europe: On July 27, Berlin officially and publicly advised its ally not to accept an offer of mediation from Britain.

  But Berlin performed only the external mechanics of the Austrian script, as Vienna was soon to know. Internally things were rather different. A cable sent by the German Foreign Ministry to its principal diplomats abroad said “. . . we have had no influence of any kind on the wording of Austria’s note to Serbia, and no more opportunity than other powers to take sides in any way before its publication . ..” The tart implication here was made plain to the Austrian ambassador by the German Foreign Minister von Jagow shortly after he had read Vienna’s demarche. “I at once gave my opinion to His Excellency [Jagow’s memoirs would state] that the contents of the Austrian note to Serbia seemed pretty stiff and going beyond its purpose . . . I expressed m
y pained surprise . . . that the decisions of the Austrian government had been communicated to us so tardily that we were deprived of the possibility of giving our views on it. The Chancellor, too, to whom I at once submitted the text of the ultimatum, thought it was too harsh.”

  If Berlin thought so, in its heart of hearts, what about capitals less friendly?

  On July 24, the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey returned to London from trout fishing on the river Itchen, and the First Lord of the Admiralty Mr. Winston Churchill from his beach idyll near Norfolk. They met in Parliament, which was still in something of a dither over the Irish Home Rule Bill. But the debate suddenly gave way to Sir Edward’s voice. He was reading from a paper just handed to him—the Austrian note to Serbia, “. . . an ultimatum [this is Churchill describing the scene] such as had never been penned in modern times before. The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone [i.e., the Irish issue] faded back into the mists . . . and a strange new light fell on the map of Europe.”

  Little more than forty-eight hours later the Admiralty announced that new orders had been issued to the First and Second Fleets of the British Navy. They were the most powerful units of the world’s most powerful marine force, and they happened to be concentrated in the English Channel for maneuvers just finished. Now, contrary to previous plans, they were not to disperse. All shore leaves were cancelled.

  In Paris, a hastily called Ministerial Council cabled the text of the Austrian “jewel” to President Poincaré on the battle cruiser France. Poincaré was about to visit some Scandinavian ports. He cancelled all further travels. The France headed straight for Dunkirk.