Countdown to War. Day 8, 5 July: Did someone say war?

One hundred years ago today, on Sunday 5 July 1914, the young Mancunian Martin would have visited his Methodist Minister, to collect the Observer once he’d finished with it.
 
Like the Manchester Guardian the previous day, the Sunday paper reflected on the Entente Cordiale or cordial understanding between France and Britain. 

Now that this instrument of peace and understanding between the two nations is such an accepted, and let us hope a solid, factor in international polity, a certain retrospect is all the more welcome...

Peace and understanding. The hallmark of 1914, as US and Canadian troops showed when they met in Vermont the day before, for joint commemorations of the end of the War of 1812 a hundred years earlier. That was the spirit when “the American Ambassador was the principal guest at a banquet given at the Savoy Hotel last night by the American Society in London in celebration of Independence Day,” an event attended by 250 and which “evoked much enthusiasm.”

As usual, however, neither peace nor understanding were particularly in evidence in Ireland. Although the paper reported on a speech by Tory MP Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland: “the chance of civil war, in his opinion, had become very small,” which ought to be encouraging, Martin remained sceptical. Their denials only reinforced the ideas politicians tried to dismiss, if only because they raised them. In any case, another article, headlined  “Rifles in Belfast”, pointed out that “the South Belfast Regiment of the Ulster Volunteers openly carried rifles and bayonets through the streets of Belfast in a march yesterday afternoon.”

That hardly seemed like a gesture for peace.

It also seemed that the repercussions of the shooting in Bosnia still hadn’t entirely died down, as Martin had begun to believe:

According to a telegram from Sarajevo it has now been ascertained that ten persons were implicated in the conspiracy. They have all been arrested. All telegraph and telephone communications with Sarajevo are now under strict censorship, and are only permitted to be made in German.

Clearly, the Austrians were taking things seriously in their restless province. That was underlined by another piece which, like the comments about Ireland, only increased the fears it was trying to allay:

A semi-official communiqué issued in Budapest warns Servia that although Austria-Hungary does not desire a war with Servia, she expects the Servian Government to fulfil all [its] obligations in connection with “the crime which was undoubtedly promoted in Belgrade.”

War? That word hadn’t been used before. Even mentioning the possibility seemed to raise the spectre of a tragic event being turned into an international disaster.

German troops in the formerly French city of Strasbourg in 1915

Meanwhile elsewhere, another “semi-official” announcement had been issued, this time by the German authorities, for their province of Alsace, seized from France 43 years earlier:

TRICOLOUR BANNED IN ALSACE

A semi-official warning against the wearing of the French colours was published here today. The warning states that it has recently been observed that French colours and badges have been worn in a conspicuous manner, especially by persons returning from excursions across the frontier, and adds that it is desirable to recall the fact that the public display of these colours in an offence punishable under a decree of 1848, which has been confirmed by numerous judicial decisions with imprisonment and fines.

So it seemed that even among local people, tensions were still simmering over which nation should control the province.

The Royal Navy: never stronger

It was unfortunate that France and Germany couldn’t patch up their differences. After all, Britain’s “cordial understanding” with France didn’t prevent her having equally cordial relations with Germany. Why, even their navies, though rivals, got on well enough. The Observer carried an item from Kiel, Germany’s main base on the Baltic:

It is announced that before the departure of the British Squadron from Kiel on Tuesday, Vice-Admiral Sir George Warrender sent the following telegram by wireless from his flagship King Geroge V. to Admiral von Cörper, the commander of the Baltic station:–
“Before leaving Kiel Bay I beg you and the commander-in-chief to accept the hearty thanks of the British Squadron for the magnificent hospitality shown to officers and men, comrades in the past and always.”

Heartwarming.

Countdown to War. Day 6, 3 July: Peace in Mexico? Freight by air? And the Sarajevo business rumbles on

One hundred years ago today, on Friday 3 July 1914, Martin could breathe a sigh of relief: the insufferably hot weather was going to turn cooler. The Manchester Guardian announced: “Heat Wave Breaking. Further Storms. Cooler Weather forecasted for today.” 

A welcome change. But it didn’t mean that elsewhere in the world temperatures, or tempers were, cooling.

The Anglo-Russian convention was creating a dangerous situation in Persia, with Russia unscrupulously taking advantage of it to extend its influence in the country. Competition between the two nations over India, Kipling’s “great game”, meant Russia would dearly love to extend its territory right up to the Indian border. That was something the British Foreign Secretary seemed not to have seized:

The mistake that Sir Edward Grey has made in Persia is to credit Russia with the same loyalty to the professed objects of the Convention that he has himself. It is not that Russian policy and Russian agents are consciously unscrupulous and cynical men. But their whole point of view is diametrically opposed to our own. Our interest is in an independent and strong Persia to act as a buffer between Russia and India. But the disappearance of Persia has no terrors for Russia, and so far from avoiding a military frontier with us, there is nothing that she would like better, if only as a means of keeping us in order or, as she would express it, of retaining our friendship.

Elsewhere, however, trouble seemed to be dying down. Having predicted trouble in Mexico only three days earlier, now the paper was proclaiming the arrival of peace.

Negotiations between the warring Mexican factions, which it is hoped will eventually lead to peace, were begun to-day, when the delegates of General Huerta formally gave the South American envoys a note to be transmitted to the Rebel representatives at Washington declaring willingness to discuss peace terms.

General Victoriano Huerta, President of Mexico
In negotiations with the rebels against his rule

A separate article informed Martin that, despite the worries expressed before and the insistence of the British Minister that they should go, British residents planned to remain in Mexico City. So peace might be in the air. That had to be a good thing, surely? Even if Huerta was one of those military fellows with lots of medals who really ought to be kept well away from power, most things had to be preferable to war. 

The last word had clearly not been said about the assassination in Sarajevo at the weekend. As previously suspected, a thread leading back to Belgrade, the Serbian capital, seemed increasingly likely. Talking about the first, failed attempt on Franz Ferdinand’s life, the Guardian reported:

Gabrinovic, who threw the bomb which the Archduke escaped, has admitted his connection with an organisation agitating for a Greater Servia. The editors of the Greater Servian journals at Sarayevo have been arrested, and one of them has been expelled from Bosnia.

Marconi radio
You could talk to New York without so much as a cable?

But then Martin's eye was caught by a completely different piece on “Future Uses of Wireless.” It quoted a spokesman for the Marconi company who made claims for this bright new technology that seemed a little too good to be true: “... if Marconi does not talk to New York before the year is out I shall be very disappointed.” Conversation between London and NewYork without using a cable? That would be remarkable.

Just as outlandish was another item on “Aerial Transport” which referred to workers who apparently believed “that aeroplanes will become more and more means of carrying cargo.” It seems they felt that “there will be imperative need for a special union as part of the Transport Workers’ Federation.”

Flying cargo? Well, more extraordinary things had happened. And he wouldn’t mind getting involved. Flying around for work instead of grafting on the Earth’s surface to lay railway track sounded like a big improvement. Some interesting things could be happening in the next few years.