Page - 92 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

92 Bloody Sundays a firm hand.190 The Austrian Prime Minister, Count Stürgkh, added his own opinion to the range of different responses by suggesting that the connection between the Slavs in the Monarchy and those outside it could only be broken by war, and that there would be dangerous consequences if this were not done. The war atmosphere was so all-pervasive that the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Tisza, found it necessary on 1 July to make the Emperor aware of the fact and to express his consternation.191 Here, it was not least the Hungarian newspapers and journals of the calibre of the Pester Lloyd’ that began a frenzied campaign to settle the account with Serbia. As on so many occasions, however, the newspapers simply captured a broadly prevalent mood and for their own part added to its intensity. However, Tisza was par- ticularly disconcerted after having been told by the Foreign Minister on the same day, 1 July, that the murders in Sarajevo would be used as a reason for making Serbia pay, and wrote to the Emperor to inform him that something was being planned. The Emperor, however, was fully aware of the mood, as he was of the policy being pursued at the Ball- hausplatz  – and he also approved of it. Ultimately, the question now was merely how to put the decision in favour of war into action. In a study of the records made by journalist Heinrich Kanner, Robert A. Kann published a conversation between Kanner and the joint Finance Minister Baronet von Biliński, in which he attempted to find out when exactly the decision to go to war was made. Biliński replied : ‘We already decided to go to war at a very early stage ; the decision was already taken right at the beginning.’ Kan- ner asked him about the precise date, and Biliński said that it was the period between 1 and 3 July.192 He could of course have been mistaken as to the exact day.193 It was by no means the case that the Ballhausplatz became caught up in a frenzy of bloodlust and was motivated in its deliberations by a desire for revenge. The decision to precipitate a war with Serbia was in fact probably founded on numerous experiences, assumptions and feelings. After all, how could a state be trusted that repeatedly made promises and failed to keep them, signed agreements and then broke them, that pur- sued power politics without taking account of the concerns of others, and with which it was simply impossible to negotiate by means of a policy without war ? Another likely factor was that the important foreign policy decision-makers  – the minister, his chief of staff, the first head of the department, as well as others  – had gained their diplomatic and political experience mainly in Russia, Serbia or in other parts of the Balkans, and had therefore been ground by the mill of Balkan policy for years and even decades. Berchtold had become minister due to his experience with Russia. His chief of staff, Count Alexander Hoyos, the head of the presidential department, Count Forgách, and his closest colleague, the envoy Baron Alexander von Musulin, had all been influenced by the annexation crisis. Furthermore, they were keen to repeat a whole series of actions from the annexation crisis, but without making previous errors. They also remembered particularly well that the two states had already stood on the brink of war in October