Page - 132 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

132 Unleashing the War that Austria would take on Serbia and keep part of the Russian forces in check, whilst the German Empire wished to defeat France before turning all its power against Russia. Now, however, Great Britain came into play. Suddenly, the German dispatches evinced real concern. Austria-Hungary should under all circumstances cultivate an exchange of views with St. Petersburg. ‘We are admittedly ready’, telegraphed Beth- mann Hollweg to Vienna, ‘to fulfil our alliance commitments, but must refuse to allow Vienna to pull us recklessly and without due consideration of our advice into a global conflagration’.293 Now it was again Kaiser Wilhelm who pulled the German imperial government back on to its old course. He was disappointed that Great Britain would not remain neutral and regarded this as a personal affront against him, especially since he had been actively involved in the British case and was at pains to exploit the kinship of the two ruling houses. This now seemed to have been in vain. Thus, fierce determination was now the order of the day. On the same day, 30 July, an alliance offer was submitted to Turkey, to whom a considerable expansion of its territorial possessions was offered at the expense of the British Colonial Empire. In this way, the territorial losses of the Ottoman Empire since 1878 could have been offset. These were hours in which a great deal was promised and many territories were men- tally shifted back and forth. Already on 25 July, Conrad von Hötzendorf had demanded of Count Berchtold that no effort should be spared to induce the King of Montenegro to keep his country out of a war, even if this meant making him promises or offering him large sums of money. Kaiser Wilhelm took pains over Romania and let it be known in Vienna that Romania should be promised Bessarabia in return for intervening on the side of the Central Powers. Bulgaria was also brought into play, or rather, it brought itself into play by declaring that it wanted to enter the war on the side of the Cen- tral Powers, as long as Romania did the same and did not obstruct Bulgarian wishes following the conquest of Macedonia.294 Bucharest, however, did not want to allow itself to be dragged into the war. Thus, the Bulgarian offer was also redundant. Great Britain adopted another view as its own and proposed that Austria take Belgrade and its environs from Serbia and occupy them until Serbia fulfilled all its demands. With this version of the ‘halt in Belgrade’, Great Britain even made the Serbian capital city available. This idea also failed to ignite. The roundabout of proposals and interventions continued. Since the Central Powers hoped to persuade Italy to enter the war without any discussion of territorial concessions, Kaiser Wilhelm sent his aide-de-camp, Lieu- tenant Colonel von Kleist, to Rome in order to describe the tremendous impression it would make if an Italian army group were to surface in the French theatre of war in conjunction with German troops.295 Austria-Hungary took a different route. Instead of trying to impress the Italian press with only small sums of money, as it had until then, Berchtold now wanted to engage in bribery on a grand scale. Ten million kronen for