Countdown to War, Day 9. 6 July: rumblings still in Austria-Hungary, outright rebellion in Ireland

One hundred years ago today, on Monday 6 July 1914, Martin, our young Mancunian, might have gone through his Manchester Guardian in search of some good news – and found rather more of the other kind.

Surrey had made a magnificent start in their county match against his beloved Lancashire, posting a commanding score of 371 for only five wickets lost at the end of the first day’s play. “Their success, even from the Lancashire point of view, had its compensations,” proclaimed the journalist sententiously, “It provided an exhibition of good batting by players who are always worth watching...”

Martin snorted in disbelief. Whoever wrote those words knew nothing about supporting a team. Good play by the other side? How’s that a good thing? We want them to crumble into ignominy, not provide us with a display of inspiring – and winning – play.

The coffins of the Archduke and his wife at the train in Sarajevo
In Vienna, it emerged the couple wasn't equal in death
any more than in life

In other news, the assassinated Austrian Archducal couple had been buried at last. And what a bunch that imperial family was: the friends of the Duchess had been incensed at the funeral by the “emphasis laid upon her inequality of birth with the Archduke, as manifested in the funeral arrangements.” 

She’d been a mere countess, who had dared to marry into the imperial family, and for that they treated her with disrespect? Even though it was only because she’d thrown her lot in with Franz Ferdinand’s that she’d been murdered with him? What a crew. Worse than the Surrey cricket team.

And the dust still hadn’t settled. Another article pointed out that “unconfirmed reports say that many Servians have been expelled from Bosnia.” Still plenty of bitterness there, then.

Sir Edward Carson
Proving his loyalty by arming a rebellion 
Not sure I'd want to meet him on a dark night
Especially if he had a bunch of armed Ulstermen with him

That ghastly man Sir Edward Carson had been speaking out on Ireland again, at some public meeting.

I go on, he said, as I began and I am going on to a finish. (Cheers.) I believe in a United Kingdom – in one King, one Parliament, one flag, – and to defend that policy I am prepared to go any length and to make any sacrifices. (Cheers.) Loyalty to the Union is my crime, and if I am indicted I am prepared to plead guilty. (Cheers.) 

“That’s right,” said the resident Cynic in Martin’s crew. “His crime is too much loyalty. Not raising and arming an illegal force of religious extremists.”

Apparently Carson “had grown weary of talking and was longing for something more.”

Something more. Easy to guess what that meant, since he was behind the people running guns to the Ulster Protestants. Martin smiled: it was, indeed, curious to call it loyalty when you were arming an insurrection.

Martin gave up on the subject. He preferred the piece about the joys of having breakfast in bed. It seemed that “breakfast is always punctual because there are always two gongs to let one know when it is necessary to begin to hurry.”

Gongs? There was no gong in his place. Sometimes no breakfast.

“The hostess who leaves the matter to her guests instead of seeking to improve their character”, presumably by forcing them out of bed sooner than they’d like, “will find that of all the luxuries she provides none will be more generally appreciated.”

He smiled wryly. In his house there were never guests and precious few luxuries. And certainly no hostess. Which rather accounted for his wryness.

Countdown to War. Day 5, 2 July: 1914 – year of peace?

One hundred years ago today, on Thursday 2 July 1914, Britain was undergoing a heatwave. In London, temperatures reached 90 Fahrenheit (or 32 Celsius as the Continentals, who always want to be different, called it). 

And, as Martin’s crew discovered from the Manchester Guardian, there were other hotspots around the world. One article reported on “the cruelties committed on Greeks in Asia Minor” by their Turkish rulers. Or was it the other way round? Neither side was behaving well, it seemed, as a piece about “Balkan charges and counter-charges” made clear:

For some time past the Anglo-Hellenic League, the Ottoman Association, and other English bodies pledged to the support of the Moslem or Christian Balkan races have been bandying charges of atrocity which have made it clear that the aftermath of war have left the Balkans in an appalling state. Responsibility for this is attributed, in large measure, to the Christian races in the letter that we publish from Miss Durham – an eye-witness of both the Balkan wars; while an English gentleman travelling in the Aegean islands brings serious charges against the Turks.

A plague on both your houses, then. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. Pots and kettles.

Meanwhile, the dust still hadn’t settled after the assassinations in Sarajevo. It had emerged that the Archduke and his wife had never stood a chance of leaving alive:

Persons connected with the suite of the Archduke ... are reported as saying that the plot against the Archduke was so widely extended that it was impossible for him to leave Bosnia alive. They declare that under the luncheon table prepared for the Archduke and Duchess after their return from the Town Hall at noon were found two clockwork bombs. Another similar bomb was found in the chimney of the room.

Arrest of Gavrilo Princip, author of the Sarajevo murders
Four days later, disturbances were still going on in the region

There had also been “Disorders in many towns”:

Demonstrations were made yesterday at Konyitza (Herzegovina) by the Mussulman and Catholic inhabitants. There were also anti-Servian disturbances, during which the windows of several Servian houses were broken... 

Demonstrations took place at Livno (Bosnia), where several Servian shops and Servian schools were attacked...

At Zavidovitz (Bosnia) the day before yesterday a crowd of Mussulmans and Catholics assembled before the Servian club. Through a window was seen a portrait of King Peter of Servia hanging on a wall. The crowd broke into the building and demolished the furniture. The police dispersed the mob.

At least there was one place where the communities had shown their ability to rise above their differences:

In Banyaluka (Bosnia) great memorial ceremonies took place, in which Servian national societies participated.

Some, it seemed, appreciated peace. 

As did ordinary citizens in Britain and North America. Preparations for peace celebrations were under way, since 24 December 1914 would be the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent and the end of war between Britain and the United States. The Guardian picked up a piece from the Daily Chronicle:

The decision of the House of Representatives at Washington against a grant of money to promote the celebration of the centenary of the Treaty of Ghent should not discourage the supporters of the movement who represent the leading men of all parties in the United States, England and Canada. The movement did not originate in official quarters, it has been spontaneous and popular, and while it would add to its completeness for it to receive official recognition, it will not militate against its success if it remains of a voluntary character. The War of 1812 was ended not by the action of legislators, politicians, or diplomatists, but by the force of public opinion.

That was encouraging. The year 1914 could end, despite the many troubles in the world, under the sign of peace. A peace demanded on both sides of the Atlantic by peoples who had understood the futility of war. An idea with an attractive ring to it.

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.