Page - 130 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

130 Unleashing the War According to a remark made by the Emperor’s aide-de-camp, Baron von Catinelli, the Monarch was annoyed at not having been reported to immediately by Berchtold.287 Even if that is true, the Emperor was in no way so indignant to even reprimand Berch- told. He was only too aware of the necessity of unleashing the war that he had helped to prepare. When everything already seemed to be under way, an objection came all of a sudden and from someone of whom one would never have expected it. When Kaiser Wil- helm returned from his trip to Nordland and read the text of the Serbian response, he apparently said : ‘But with this any reason for war ceases to exist.’ And on the edge of the report from Vienna he noted : ‘Giesl could have remained in Belgrade after all.’288 Suddenly, the very man who had consistently worked towards war and indeed pressed for it, who had dismissed with derisive words any Austro-Hungarian impulse to min- imise the war aims, was now inclined to concede. Why he did this is difficult to say. Had he suddenly realised the full extent of the risk ? Did he for the first time have the impression that Great Britain might also count among the opponents of the Dual Al- liance ? Or was the whole thing only designed for the benefit of the outside world and to demonstrate the German Kaiser’s desire for peace ? These questions cannot really be answered conclusively. But Wilhelm now suddenly found the British proposal of a halt in Belgrade worth considering. For the German imperial leadership, a peculiar situation had thus emerged. The Imperial Chancellor and the permanent secretary in the Foreign Ministry had geared their policies towards the Kaiser and had made the realisation of a war the foundation of these policies. The British proposal for a conference had been rejected. And now suddenly the Kaiser hesitated and everything seemed to be called into question. Would there perhaps really only be a Third Balkan War ? Whoever claimed to have witnessed the final act of drama would have been mistaken. On 28 July the Italian Foreign Minister Sonnino informed the British ambassador in Rome, Sir Ronald Rodd, that the Serbian chargé d’affaires had just called and reported that the Serbian government had by no means spoken its final word in points 5 and 6 of the Austrian démarche. The demand for the participation of Imperial and Royal organs had, on the contrary, been ‘wilfully wrongly interpreted’ by presenting therein the cooperation of authorities and the elimination of the Serbian judiciary as a massive encroachment on the sovereignty of the country, whereas Austria-Hungary had in fact wanted no more than perhaps the cooperation of criminal organs.289 In any case, the chargé d’affaires stated that the negotiations could continue. But by now the declara- tion of war was already on its way. On the afternoon of 28 July the declaration of war was communicated to Belgrade. As Austria-Hungary no longer had a diplomatic representative in Serbia, this was sent by telegraph and rerouted via Romania. The declaration of war was handed over, even though Russia had once more made it clear that it would not remain on the sidelines.