Seite - 114 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

114 Bloody Sundays Of all the great powers, only Great Britain showed a willingness to mediate. After the first cabinet meeting to address foreign affairs at all since the assassination in Sarajevo, the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, suggested that four powers that were not immediately involved in the conflict, namely Great Britain, the German Empire, France and Italy, should take a joint initiative. However, since Sir Edward probably knew that time was running out, he proposed at the same time that Austria-Hungary should extend the deadline for the response to the ultimatum. After none of the powers addressed reacted positively during the course of 24 July, Sir Edward made a direct enquiry in Berlin as to whether it would be prepared to accept the Serbian note of response in Vienna. However, this thought had not occurred to Berlin. Quite the opposite : on one dispatch, Kaiser Wilhelm wrote a comment regarding a meeting with Foreign Minister Berchtold with the Russian chargé d’affaires in Vienna : ‘En- tirely superfluous’.255 However, since Berlin had of necessity to retain an interest in keeping Great Britain out of the war, the overt reaction to British recommendations for mediation was at least positive, and it was agreed that a conference should take place. However, unequivocal rejections from St. Petersburg and Paris rendered German acceptance inconsequen- tial. Kaiser Wilhelm repeatedly made it clear that he was now only waiting for war to break out. When a report reached Berlin that Austria-Hungary had made it clear that it had no territorial ambitions against Serbia  – a demand that Prime Minister Tisza had forced through in the Joint Council of Ministers on 19 July  – the German Kaiser, adding one of his famous marginal notes to the relevant passage, wrote : ‘Feeble.’ A shift in the balance of power ‘must come about. Austria must become preponderant in the Balkans.’256 On Saturday, 25 July, the war had in effect arrived. In a note delivered just a few minutes before the expiry of the 48-hour deadline, Serbia, while not rejecting the Aus- trian demands outright, set out a series of limitations designed to make it clear that surrender of Serbian sovereignty merely in order to enable Austria to pursue the men behind the assassination, including on Serbian territory, was out of the question. The relevant passage in the response written by Serbia on 25 July stated that the involve- ment of Imperial and Royal organs in the investigation would be ‘a violation of the constitution and of criminal trial law’. In so doing, it interpreted the Austrian demand for involvement in the investigation of the men behind the Sarajevo assassination as being tantamount to Austria-Hungary wishing to exclude Serbian authorities from the proceedings. Naturally, those in authority in Serbia were also aware of the fact that this was an arbitrary interpretation.257 However, they were certain of Russia’s support, and had as a precaution informed the Entente powers of the contents of their response in advance. They also thought that it might perhaps be possible to negotiate one or other of the items in the démarche.