Page - 105 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The July Crisis 105 at the museum on 14 August. The upper echelons of the government and the military were on holiday, and the Emperor was in Bad Ischl. Surely nothing of any importance could happen now ? The days turned into weeks, and finally, the weeks turned into a month. One could of course be forgiven for asking why a country that was so sure of what it wanted as Austria-Hungary should have waited so long. While work continued at the Ballhaus- platz, the date for ‘stepping forward’ always seemed to be unfavourable. In the ‘war factory’ at the Ballhausplatz, the note to Serbia had already been produced that was to demand an explanation and atonement for the double murder in the form of an ultimatum. The envoy, Baron Musulin, had undertaken the final editing of the Wiesner paper and had been honing it for several days.228 His work was monitored by the head of the presidial department, Count Forgách. Musulin was admired for the elegance of his style, regarded as linguistic expression at its most accomplished. As Emanuel Urbas, who was assigned to Musulin as his assistant, recalled in 1951 in his memoir Schicksale und Schatten (‘Fates and Shadows’), this obsession with linguistic perfection led him to make full use of the time available to him, and he polished away at his note ‘as at a gemstone’.229 In the first draft, which had been formulated before Wiesner’s mission, the demands on Serbia still sounded relatively harmless. First, it stated that the Imperial and Royal government assumed that the Serbian government condemned the murder of the heir to the throne and his wife in just the same way as the entire cultivated world. However, as a demonstration of goodwill, a series of measures would be necessary. The note ended with a request for a response. Count Forgách wanted a far more harsh formulation, and Musulin then added item 6 in particular, which ran : ‘The Royal Serbian government undertakes to bring to trial the accessories to the plot of 28 July who are to be found on Serbian territory ; organs delegated by the Imperial and Royal government shall participate in the inquiries in relation to the matter.’ The aim was not, therefore, to allow Austrian organs to participate in the Serbian judicial administration, as it then sounded from the Serbian note of response, but to participate in the inquiry. In this respect, there had even been a precedent, since in 1868, following the murder of the Serbian prince Mihailo, Austria-Hungary had enabled Serbian functionaries to make inquiries within the territory of the Danube Monarchy.230 Even so : the demands had become signifi- cantly harsher, and the ‘request for a response’ turned into a 48-hour deadline. As Ema- nuel Urbas wrote so vividly decades later : ‘The intention was to produce a document that through the overpowering force and the succinctness of its language must conquer the world. We were after all contemporaries of Karl Kraus […] We had learned to be- lieve in the autonomous magic of the word as the cradle of thought and deed.’231 Forgách had been concerned that his minister might eventually wish to back down. However, Berchtold’s motivation was very different. As he put it to the Emperor, a ‘fee-