Countdown to War, Day 31. 28 July: hovering on the edge

One hundred years ago today, on Tuesday 28 July 1914, Martin the Mancunian railwayman might have taken some hope from the first article he and his fellow tracklayers read in the Manchester Guardian.

Europe’s hopes of avoiding a great war over the Austro-Servian dispute rose yesterday. Fighting had not begun, although soldiers of the confronting States fired at one another on the Danube, and every day’s delay multiplies the chance of successful mediation by the other Powers.

Sir Edward Grey, in the House of Commons yesterday, said he had instructed the British Ambassadors at Paris, Berlin, and Rome to ask the Governments if they would be willing to arrange for their Ambassadors in London to meet him to endeavour to find an arrangement of the present difficulties. He had not yet received complete replies. The cooperation of the four Powers was essential. The efforts of one Power alone to preserve peace must be quite ineffective.

The four Powers not directly involved might be able to persuade Russia and Austria to hold back from actual military operations.

Austria was disdainful of Serbia’s reply to its Note, but:

Otherwise the news fromVienna also suggests a brighter prospect. Austria apparently is not disinclined to a peaceful issue.

It seemed that France and Germany were working well together, and agreed that the key was to obtain a compromise in St Petersburg and Vienna. For the first time since the 24th, when he’d read about the harshness of the terms in Austria’s note to Serbia, Martin felt that there was a real hope that war might be averted altogether. Not just war spilling over into other countries, but any kind of war at all, even between Austria-Hungary and Serbia.

The Guardian leader writer was unequivocal on the subject.

We want peace in Europe, but we want England to be and remain at peace even more. We wish that all Englishmen would think and say the same. Most of them certainly do. But there are some who, while anxious for European peace, still think that if we cannot share the blessings of peace with others we must share with them the curses of war.

It was true, Martin agreed, that there would always be warmongers, keen on involvement in war. But there must be a massive majority against it in Britain today, as the paper seemed to imply. No government could possibly resist such a huge groundswell of opinion and take us into war despite of it. Could it? Surely not.

An excellent point had been made by a Labour MP, John Robert Clynes, at a public meeting in Manchester. He was:

...profoundly sorry for the absence of a properly constituted court before which quarrelling nations could be required to bring their case, just as quarrelling individuals were required to bring theirs before a court of justice. It was astonishing in these days of a so-called high civilisation that the act of a fanatic or a fool should bring nations to such a state of disturbance as was evident now throughout Europe.

“That’s true,” said Martin, “those murders in Sarajevo were terrible, but I thought they’d just lead to police action. You know, arrests, a trial, a bit of a show of punishing the guilty. But a whole Continent thinking about war? It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s because you keep leaving Great Power politics out of the picture,” replied the Cynic, “Russia and France have got a reckoning to settle with Germany. Germany’s got grievances to resolve with everyone else. No one gives a damn about the Sarajevo business. But they need a pretext, and it provides one.”

At the time of the first ever Labour government in 1924
Jimmy Thomas, Ramsay MacDonald, John Robert Clynes and Arthur Henderson 

“Well, I’m proud of the Labour Party,” Martin retorted, nettled. “At least it’s got its head screwed on. The Tories are nowhere. Maybe Labour can be the real Opposition to the Liberals. Opposition on the Left – that’d be good, wouldn’t it? It’d make Britain a different kind of place to live.”

“Yes, maybe. I shouldn’t get your hopes up, though. When people get into government, they become the government, and they behave like the government. Whichever party they come from.”

Martin shook his head. And turned to the news that Lancashire had secured a convincing victory over Gloucestershire. Much needed and all the more satisfactory for that.

Some good news, then, on a mixed news day.

Countdown to War, Day 29. 26 July: relations broken off between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. What will the Great Powers do? Will Britain stay neutral?

One hundred years ago today, on Sunday 26 July 1914, Martin the young Mancunian railwayman would have been impatient to get his hands on the Observer. He would have wanted to see whether there had been any further intensification of the crisis developing between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. 

The volume of news in the paper wouldn’t have disappointed him, though its contents may have left him far from pleased.

“Diplomatic Relations Broken Off” was the headline over a brief piece recounting that after the Serbian reply to the Austrian Note was delivered at the Belgrade Embassy, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and the entire legation staff had left Serbia.

“I don’t know much about diplomatic niceties,” Martin told his Minister, who’d dropped the paper round to him and stayed on a few minutes, “but that doesn’t sound like the best way of building good neighbourly relations.”

“It isn’t,” he said, ‘they’re not beating swords into ploughshares. Rather the contrary.”

“But they’re Christian countries... what about turning the other cheek?”

“Christianity doesn’t impose acceptance of injustice you know, Martin. God doesn’t ask of us that we accept what He deems unacceptable.”

Another article talked about “England’s Position”. Sir John Simon, the Attorney General, had spoken at a meeting the night before.

Let us all resolve that whatever may be the difficulties and dangers which threaten peaceful relations in Europe the part which this country plays shall from the beginning to end be the part of a mediator, singly desirous of promoting better and more peaceful relations.

The Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Francis Dyke Acland, had also spoken to a public meeting and painted a stark picture.

There was a cloud over Europe, he said, the position being far graver than the position in Ireland. No one could imagine the disasters a war in which great European Power was involved might bring to the whole world... The whole of the influence of this country would be used in the interests of peace.

“Well, I say Amen to that,” Martin remarked. “Yes. We should act as a peacemakers if we can. We mustn't get sucked into a conflict on the Continent. Surely we’re not that stupid. Blessed are the peacemakers, aren’t they?”

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” said the Minister, “and we have friends. We may be called on to stand up for them. With them. And I hope we shan’t be found wanting.”

“That’s a greater duty even than ‘Thous shalt not kill’?”

“Sometimes it can be greater than that,” said the Minister as he picked up his hat and made for the door.

Martin returned to the paper. Graver than Ireland? That was seriously worrying. Why, yesterday Sir Roger Casement, who seemed to be for the Nationalist Irish what Sir Edward Carson was to the Unionists in Ulster, had declared that:

...when the volunteers were equipped with 160,000 rifles and ammunition Home Rule would become a reality. “We stand for an armed Ireland,” he said; “in other words, for a free Ireland.”

That sounded like a pretty desperate mess. And the whole of Europe might be getting into something even worse?

Serb Infantry in 1914

An article headlined “EUROPEAN PEACE IN DANGER” pointed out that many had long said that “the Great War, if it ever came at all, would come with utter unexpectedness.” The situation could still be saved by Serbia backing down: while admitting that “no wise man can approve wholly the unmitigated violence of the Hapsburg [i.e. Austro-Hungarian] ultimatum and the tremendous hazards of its indirect challenge to Russia”, no-one could reasonably side with Serbia. On the contrary, referring to the Sarajevo assassinations of 28 June, “the whole state of things which led to these infamous murders ought to be condemned and repressed with uncompromising sternness by every principal Government in Europe, and, above all, by that of the Tsar.”

Martin understood that the starting point of all this was the Greater Serbia movement, which was doing its utmost to bring all territories Belgrade saw as Serbian under its control. It had seized other areas in earlier Balkan Wars; now it wanted Bosnia. That was bad enough but what made it worse was that it had resorted to terrorist means to achieve its aims, in the assassination of the Archduke and his wife. No one could stand by and allow terrorism to succeed; all the powers had to unite against it. 

The matter was well summed up in a single sentence: “the moral point to remember is that in this business Austria Hungary is fundamentally justified and Servia is fundamentally wrong.”

That being said, Austria in pursuing a legitimate aim was in danger of over-reaching: the ultimatum was too unreasonable and it had awoken a response in Russia, as “with the approval of the Tsar a decision was taken to mobilise at once five Army Corps.”

Punishing Serbia might make sense, but surely not at the cost of threatening the peace of the whole Continent.

What about Britain? The Observer was clear: ”The duty of this country, in the first place, whatever it may be in the end, is to mediate, mediate, mediate.”

Whatever its role might be in the end? Again he was reading words that could both thrill and chill. But he agreed that for now the job was mediation. Work to secure the peace if at all possible.

The French didn’t seem too worried yet. Reuter’s reported that diplomatic circles in Paris regarded the situation as ”very grave, but not desperate”. Apparently, France and Russia had been making joint representations to the Austrians. However, the Germans seemed unhappy about the involvement of France, judging by how vehemently they denied it.

To-day business men and public opinion generally were thrown into a state of tense anxiety by the ominous news from St. Petersburg. The Foreign Office remains calm, and refuses to see in the Russian official declaration that Russia cannot remain an indifferent spectator to the Austro-Servian quarrel anything more than a warning that the fate of Servia is a close concern of Russia’s... The German Government has no knowledge as yet of any intervention by Russia or other Powers. [...] The Vienna statement that the German Ambassador in Paris has presented a Note to the French Government, warning France that intervention by a third Power would bring the two groups of alliances into sharp opposition, is denied...

It seemed that a lot of posturing was going on. Austria-Hungary and Serbia; then Russia with France; now Germany issuing or not issuing warnings. He had a terrible sense of a snowball beginning to gather mass and speed.

Interestingly the Germans too, apparently, thought that Britain wouldn’t become involved if a conflict developed and spread to other countries.

There is naturally much speculation as to the attitude of Great Britain in the case of the conflict spreading beyond Austria and Servia. There is a fairly general expectation that the Irish situation and the lack of public sympathy with Servia will relegate Great Britain to the position of a neutral.

Peacemakers or Belligerents? British Cabinet Ministers in 1914
Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary (left) with Winston Churchill,
First Lord of the Admiralty next to him

British neutrality. British mediation. At least a lot of people seemed to agree that this was the most reasonable stance for Martin’s country to adopt.

In spite of his Minister’s words, Martin wondered whether perhaps God was more inclined to assert “blessed are the peacemakers” just now, rather than “greater love hath no man...”

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.

Countdown to War. Day 4, 1 July: so there weren't just Serbs in Bosnia. Who would have guessed?

One hundred years ago today, Wednesday 1 July 1914, our young Mancunian railwayman and his friends, leafing through their Manchester Guardian, would have read that the bodies of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, brought to the coast from Sarajevo, had been picked up by a battleship of the Austrian navy.
“Austria has a navy?” Martin might have asked. “How does a country without a coastline get an Empire that stretches to the sea?”

Inland, the assassinations had sparked trouble:

Violent demonstrations have been made in many parts of Bosnia by Catholics and Moslems against the Orthodox Serbs. Many shops and houses have been looted and several persons injured. The disorders, in part no doubt genuine proofs of devotion to the Hapsburgs [the imperial family], would be more important than they are were they not largely due to an old political animosity.

Curious. So there were three communities in Bosnia, not just the Serbs. And they didn’t like each other very much. Nor were the problems limited to Bosnia: in the Diet (parliament) of the Austrian province of Croatia, “an angry quarrel between the Croatian Nationalists and the Croat-Servian coalition caused a suspension of the sitting.”

More internal dissension, then. 

That chap, Princip, the student who shot the Archduke and his wife, was a Serb nationalist, but in the province next door it seemed there were Croats who were just as nationalist in their own cause. Always a recipe for trouble, that kind of thing. Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia were none of his business, of course, but he couldn’t help feeling it would be a good idea to sort out those tensions before they became really nasty.

Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary
He had plenty on his plate.
Long before Martin or his mates knew it

In another piece, the Manchester Guardian turned its attention to Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary. Not in connection with Austria or Serbia, but with the other end of the Balkans altogether, where Turks and Greeks were being thoroughly vile to each other, and leaving a trail of bodies behind them. Challenged by his critics, Grey had one of his officials reply:

...as regards your proposal that his Majesty’s Government should suggest to the Greek and Turkish Governments their acceptance of an international commission to regulate the reciprocal emigration of their Christian and Moslem subjects, and the adjustment of losses thereby incurred, I am to state that Sir E. Grey considers that these objects should be attainable by the Turco-Greek Commission already designed for the purpose and, further, it is his experience that offers of mediation are seldom acceptable to Powers at variance unless they can be made at the desire of both of them.

Yes. If there was too much bad blood between them for the parties to agree among themselves, mediation was never going to work. The idea of swapping populations, on the other hand, was a good one. It made no sense to have Christians living in Muslim countries or Muslims in Christendom. The faiths weren’t designed to get on with each other.

How could there ever be peace between them?

Countdown to War. Day 2, 29 June: fatal incident in Sarajevo

One hundred years ago today, on Monday 29 June 1914, the Manchester Guardian carried news that shocked Europe.

The day before, a bloody event had shaken Sarajevo.

Sarajevo? Martin wasn’t even sure where it was. A better-informed colleague explained that it was the capital of Bosnia which, with neighbouring Herzegovina, had been reduced to a province of Austria-Hungary, following the Congress of Berlin 36 years earlier. That was the congress that carved up Africa among the European powers, but it also carved up bits of Europe, and Austria-Hungary had taken Bosnia-Herzegovina.

On Sunday, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie, had been visiting Sarajevo where he intended to take part in army manoeuvres.

Franz Ferdinand and his family, including Sophie, his wife, who was killed with him
She had been born a mere Countess, so the children were cut out of
the succession to the imperial throne: a countess's blood was far too lowly

Not everyone was pleased about Austria’s takeover of the provinces. Serbia, next door and independent, felt that the large Serbian population of Bosnia would rather like to be part of a Greater Serbia, and a lot of that population agreed. One of them was a student, Gavrilo Princip. He decided to take dramatic action, and targeted Francis Ferdinand and his wife.

“Assassination of the Austrian Royal Heir and his wife,” screamed the Guardian. “Shot by student in Bosnian capital. Two attempts during a procession.”

Two attempts? In the morning, a bomb had been thrown at the Archduke’s car, but no one was hurt. In the afternoon however:

The Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, nephew of the aged Emperor and heir to the throne, was assassinated in the streets of Sarayevo, the Bosnian capital, yesterday afternoon. His wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, was killed by the same assassin.

The paper pointed out that “the assassin ... is a student named Gavrilo Prinzip. He is 19 years of age... He studied for some time in Belgrade.”

Belgrade. The capital of Serbia proper. Clearly a centre for grooming impressionable young men, turning them into extremists ready to take violent action for their cause.

On being interrogated, Prinzip declared that he had intended for a long time to kill some eminent personage from nationalist motives. He was waiting to-day for the Archduke to pass by, and made his attempt at a point where the motor-car had to slacken speed when turning into the Francis Joseph Strasse.

Martin was appalled. He might not think much of Emperor Franz Joseph, but he couldn't help feeling sorry for a man who had suffered so much misery in his life. His brother Maximilian, another article explained, had been made Emperor of Mexico, only to be shot when he was overthrown. Then, as the Manchester Guardian delicately put it, “in 1889 the Crown Prince Rudolf and a lady of the Court to whom he is known to have been attached, died by violence in a mountain shooting lodge. His death is still a mystery. Officially he is said to have committed suicide...”

Also in 1889, a cousin of the Emperor who married an actress set off with her to South America and was never heard of again. And in 1898, Franz-Joseph’s own wife, the Empress Elizabeth, was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist.

This catalogue of disasters deserved at least a wry shake of Martin’s head. Poor bastard. He’d had to put up with a lot. Nasty business.

It wasn’t, naturally, the only nasty business reported in the paper that day. Sir Edward Carson, the rather loudmouthed leader of the Ulster Protestants, had been making more noise in the Emerald Isle. But there was nothing new about that.

At least there was one heartwarming piece, The Art of the Umpire, about the difficulty of managing a cricket match. It was gratifying to know that a South African cricketer felt that “the umpires in England are a credit to English cricket.”

Something at least was right with the world.