Page - 286 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

286 The First Winter of the War been well-informed. He claimed to have noticed in Vienna that war-weariness was regarded as an insult to His Majesty, whilst he encountered the opinion in Bohemia that the Habsburg ‘horse’ allowed itself to be put before the German ‘cart’. Viennese street scenes were characterised by the wounded and the surroundings of the city by the refugees from Poland, Galicia and Bukovina. Mr Penfield stated that there were hundreds of thousands. The most prominent refugee, however, was not from the Bal- kans but instead the Khedive of Egypt, His Highness Ali Pasha. The American relayed Viennese gossip, according to which the Imperial and Royal troops in Galicia had not been able to resist far superior forces, and in Serbia it was apparent that the troops had been unprepared and far too confident. For this reason, peace was desired. On the War’s Objectives As could be expected, the turn of the year 1914/15 offered the opportunity to take stock. It was generally a sober and sobering result. The occasion, however, was also suited to allowing the question to emerge much more strongly, in fact in some cases for the first time, as to which objectives the Habsburg Monarchy was pursuing in this war.687 In the final days of 1914, the question had been posed as to which aims the war had actually been started with. Every one of those who then became a belligerent party had to submit to the question and attempt to formulate initial answers. But whatever was said or thought, it bore no relation to reality. No-one was in a position to look ahead and glimpse the end of the war, and it was at best estimations and hopes that formed the basis of the first concrete statements of war objectives. Parrying and obstruction were the dominant vocabulary. Austria-Hungary had been quick to make assurances even before its declaration of war against Serbia to the effect that it did not aspire to any territorial conquests. In this way, it was above all the Russians who were to be reassured, whilst at the same time it was also to be signalised to Italy that there would be no changes in the Balkans that Italy could then make the subject of demands for compensation with reference to the Triple Alliance treaty. Nonetheless, this naturally did nothing to prevent the floodgates of imagination remaining open and everyone giving thought to what would happen if Serbia were actually defeated and Russia could perhaps be induced to back down or give up. It would have sufficed in itself if Serbia could really be persuaded to stop playing the role of a southern Slav ‘Piedmont’. How it could be persuaded to do this, however, was questionable. One of the possibilities mentioned was ultimately also the allocation of territory to Serbia’s neighbours, always on the assumption that they even wanted a piece of Serbia. But the most important consideration for Austria-Hungary was that the notorious troublemaker could no longer exert an influence on the southern