Page - 128 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

128 Unleashing the War Kubin. Berchtold was then informed that such an engagement had never taken place. When this amendment took place is not entirely clear. At lunchtime on 27 July, the Austro-Hungarian Correspondence Office was also informed about the skirmish near Temes-Kubin. Yet the Emperor had already signed the declaration of war. Berchtold returned to Vienna. Was he only now informed about the bloodless shoot-out near Temes-Kubin ? At the latest during the course of 27 July, he learnt that nothing had happened and expunged the passage on Temes-Kubin from the official declaration of war conveyed to Serbia. In the meantime, however, with reference to the opening of hostilities by Serbia, politics had been pursued on a grand scale. On 27 July the Russian ambassador, She- beko, who had called for great restraint, had received a response to the effect that this would be difficult, as a skirmish had already taken place on the Danube and Serbia had commenced hostilities. The Russian promised to immediately exert an influence on Serbia so that it refrained from all forms of violence. He furthermore stated that the Serbs would pull back in the event of an Austrian advance in order to avoid hostilities for as long as possible.281 But these could no longer be avoided. Emperor Franz Joseph telegraphed King Carol of Romania on 28 July that he was forced to commence hos- tilities against the Serbian armed forces after Serbia had not only failed to fulfil Aus- tro-Hungarian demands but also ‘provoked a military engagement without a previous declaration of war’.282 The British ambassador in Vienna was likewise informed about this, and on 28 July he called on Berchtold and was told, among other things, that Ser- bia did not count among the cultured nations. Aside from that, all attempts to prevent the war were too late, since, as Berchtold told the ambassador and then also dispatched to the Imperial and Royal representative in London, ‘yesterday the Serbian side already opened fire on our border soldiers’.283 Here, Berchtold mixed up his dates, for the skir- mish near Temes-Kubin had supposedly already taken place on 26 July. Berchtold no more mentioned Temes-Kubin by name, however, than the Emperor had done in his telegram to King Carol of Romania. The Minister in fact withheld all exact dates and merged events into each another very conspicuously. Now the question must be asked as to what exactly had happened at the ‘skirmish’ near Temes-Kubin. It is clear that it did not take place. It was already established decades ago that the report was mysterious because the notification of the skirmish apparently came from a corps command that was not even located in the region. Ru- dolf Kiszling, who has written several articles on Temes-Kubin, has provided evidence for his portrayals merely by citing one document in the Austrian War Archives.284 An exact examination carried out years ago by archivists in the War Archives in Vienna came to the surprising conclusion, however, that this telegram could not be found. Neither in the files of the Emperor’s Military Chancellery nor in the General Staff files, the operational files or in other record groups of the so-called New Field Files