The British Government is the one which was most often represented to us as taken utterly by surprise by the German onslaught on Belgium. Let us see. The Austrian Archduke was assassinated 28 June, 1914, by three men who, according to wide report in Europe and absolute certainty in America, were secret agents of the German Government, acting under German official instruction. The findings of the court of inquiry showed that they were Serbs, members of a pan-Slav organization; that the assassination was plotted in Belgrade, and the weapons with which it was committed were obtained there.[3] Serbia denied all connexion with the assassins (the policy of Serbia being then controlled by the Russian Foreign Office), and then the Russian Government stepped forward to prevent the humiliation of Serbia by Austria. It is clear from the published diplomatic documents that the British Foreign Office knew everything that took place between the assassination and the burial of the Archduke; all the facts, that is, connected with the murder. The first dispatch in the British White Paper is dated 20 July, and it is addressed to the British Ambassador at Berlin. One wonders why not to the Ambassador at Vienna; also one wonders why the diplomats apparently found nothing to write about for nearly three weeks between the Archduke's funeral and 20 July. It is a strange silence. Sir Edward Grey, however, made a statement in the House of Commons, 27 July, in which he gave the impression that he got his first information about the course of the quarrel between Austria and Serbia no earlier than 24 July, three days before. The Ambassador at Vienna, Sir M. de Bunsen, had, notwithstanding, telegraphed him that the Austrian Premier had given him no hint of "the impending storm" and that it was from a private source "that I received, 15 July, the forecast of what was about to happen, concerning which I telegraphed to you the following day." Sir Maurice de Bunsen's telegram on this important subject thus evidently was suppressed; and the only obvious reason for the suppression is that it carried evidence that Sir E. Grey was thoroughly well posted by 16 July on what was taking place in Vienna. Sir M. de Bunsen's allusion to this telegram confirms this assumption; in fact, it can be interpreted in no other way.
On 28 July, the House of Commons was informed that Austria had declared war on Serbia. Two days later, 30 July, Sir E. Grey added the item of information that Russia had ordered a partial mobilization "which has not hitherto led to any corresponding steps by other Powers, so far as our information goes." Sir E. Grey did not add, however, that he knew quite well what "corresponding steps" other Powers were likely to take. He knew the terms of the Russian-French military convention, under which a mobilization by Russia was to be held equivalent to a declaration of war; he also knew the terms of the English-French agreement which he himself had authorized—although up to the eve of the war he denied, in reply to questions in the House of Commons, that any such agreement existed, and acknowledged it only on 3 August, 1914.[4] He had promised Sazonov, the Russian Foreign Minister, in 1912, that in the event of Germany's coming to Austria's aid, Russia could rely on Great Britain to "stake everything in order to inflict the most serious blow to German power." To say that Sir E. Grey, and À fortiori Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister; Lord Haldane, the Minister for War, whose own book has been a most tremendous let-down to the fictions of the propagandists; Mr. Winston Churchill, head of the Admiralty, who at Dundee, 5 June, 1915, declared that he had been sent to the Admiralty in 1911 with the express duty laid upon him by the Prime Minister to put the fleet in a state of instant and constant readiness for war; to say that these men were taken by surprise and unprepared, is mere levity.
Austria was supposed to be, and still is by some believed to have been, Germany's vassal State, and by menacing Serbia to have been doing Germany's dirty work. No evidence of this has been adduced; and the trouble with this idea of Austria's status is that it breaks down before the report of Sir M. de Bunsen, 1 September, 1914, that Austria finally yielded and agreed to accept all the proposals of the Powers for mediation between herself and Serbia. She made every concession. Russian mobilization, however, had begun on 25 July and become general four days later; and it was not stopped. Germany then gave notice that she would mobilize her army if Russian mobilization was not stopped in twelve hours; and also, knowing the terms of the Russian-French convention of 1892, she served notice on France, giving her eighteen hours to declare her position. Russia made no reply; France answered that she would do what she thought best in her own interest; and almost at the moment, on 1 August, when Germany ordered a general mobilization, Russian troops were over her border, the British fleet had been mobilized for a week in the North Sea, and British merchant ships were lying at Kronstadt, empty, to convey Russian troops from that port to the Pomeranian coast, in pursuance of the plan indicated by Lord Fisher in his autobiography, recently published.
These matters are well summed up by Lord Loreburn, as follows:
Serbia gave offence to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, cause of just offence, as our Ambassador frankly admits in his published dispatches. We [England] had no concern in that quarrel, as Sir Edward Grey says in terms. But Russia, the protectress of Serbia, came forward to prevent her being utterly humiliated by Austria. We were not concerned in that quarrel either, as Sir Edward also says. And then Russia called upon France under their treaty to help in the fight. France was not concerned in that quarrel any more than ourselves, as Sir Edward informs us. But France was bound by a Russian treaty, of which he did not know the terms, and then France called on us for help. We were tied by the relations which our Foreign Office had created, without apparently realizing that they had created them.
In saying that Sir E. Grey did not know the terms of the Franco-Russian agreement, Lord Loreburn is generous, probably more generous than he should be; but that is no matter. The thing to be remarked is that Lord Loreburn's summing-up comes to something wholly different from Mr. Lloyd George's "most dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations." It comes to something wholly different from the notion implanted in Americans, of Germany pouncing upon a peaceful, unprepared and unsuspecting Europe. The German nation, we may be sure, is keenly aware of this difference; and therefore, any peace which, like the peace of Versailles, is bottomed on the chose jugÉe of laying the sole responsibility for the war at the door of the German nation, or even at the door of the German Government, is simply impracticable and impossible.
