Page - 170 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

170 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ Josef Redlich, the legal scholar and member of the Reichsrat, accompanied his brother to the station and noted : ‘Then accompany Fritz to the Nordbahnhof, where there were moving scenes as thousands of reservists departed in three express trains. The crying mothers, women and wives : how much more wailing is yet to come’.396 Many people, and not least high-ranking officers, believed in a short war. ‘And so now soon departure from Vienna’, wrote the Commander of the Imperial and Royal 1st Army, General of Infantry Baron Viktor von Dankl. ‘I hope that we shall return, successful and happy, in November at the latest.’397 Despite the enthusiasm for the war, the mood was not equally jubilant everywhere. Concern and grief were also expressed in particular, since from the moment that the scale of the war between the alliance partners became evident, there was no doubt that the conflict would be widespread, and that it would lead to heavy losses. ‘The mood in Vienna was more sombre’, wrote lieutenant of the artillery Constantin Schneider, who came from Salzburg. ‘Here also, the same jubilation from a vast crowd of sensationalist people prevailed outwardly ; here in the city, it was even more intense than among the people living in the country. On a side track, the train was re-routed on to the state railway line (to Budapest) […] General Staff officers from the War Ministry visited us here. They told us about the gloomy mood that arose among the higher-ranking circles as a result of the Russian declaration of war.’398 Clearly, the jubilation was not the same everywhere. Captain Wenzel Ruzicka, who passed through Vienna with a marching company of Infantry Regiment No. 75, arrived at the Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof station at 2 p.m. on 17 August. ‘We march into a girls’ school in the 2nd district, next to the NW station. The roads are almost empty of peo- ple, and there is a disconcerting silence. Only here and there are flowers and cigarettes thrown down to us from a window.’399 On the following day, the journey continued by ship to Budapest. However, some events did not fit into the picture of a modern war, quite apart from one that was to be waged with fierce determination. On the evening of 25 July, the 68-year-old Chief of the Serbian General Staff and designated leader of operations of the Serbian Army, Vojvoda (Field Marshal) Radomir Putnik, was arrested. He had travelled from Gleichenberg in Styria, where, as in previous years, he had been on a four-week health cure, and now wished to return to Serbia. However, his presence in Styria had been the cause of countless rumours, and was also anything but unconten- tious. He was also said to have been the subject of death threats.400 However, Putnik clearly wanted to create the appearance of an entirely normal summer by continuing his cure visit, just in the same way as Conrad had done with his holiday during the July Crisis. Only on the day of delivery of the Serbian note of response to the Austro-Hun- garian démarche did Putnik depart. In Budapest, however, he was already awaited. The Commander of the IV Corps, General of Cavalry Carl Tersztyánszky, had informed