It so happened that in that summer of 1914 I had had occasion to go from Hampshire to one of the western ports, where I was to pick up my boat, and take her ultimately into Plymouth Sound, and thence, when I should have the leisure, I proposed to take her out again, and stand eastward up the coast.
I was staying in Hampshire with a friend who had a house in the New Forest. It was on a Sunday I set out thence. He sent me in his motor to Salisbury, where I wished to get Mass before going on by train. During the Mass, the priest, after his announcements, asked the congregation to pray for the soul of the Archduke heir-apparent of Austria, who had been murdered at a place called Sarajevo. I had never heard the name, and I had but a vague idea of who this archduke was, of his relationship to the Emperor, and of his heirship to the throne of Hapsburg-Lorraine. I came to the Nona, where she lay, and sailed out with her into the sea for some days. I had no conception that anything could be brewing.
When I came to land again, and went up to London, I found the air to be filled with all the possibilities of that time. The Austrian Government had sent to the Serbian Government a note, the like of which had not been heard in the history of Christendom. It made demands which no government claiming to sovereignty could accept. For my part, when I read the terms of the note, I was in no doubt that it was of Prussian dictation. I am in no doubt to this day that it was of Prussian dictation.
There are two ways of ascertaining the origin of such a thing. One is the material way, the consultation of the only available documents, and the only certified direct human evidence. The other is the moral way, when one says: “This can only have been written by So-and-So, or, at the very least, can only have been inspired by So-and-So.” Thus, if I find upon the table of a doubtful, weak kind of a man—and a courteous one at that—a letter framed in the very terms and manner of a bully, constantly his associate, then, though the letter be in the handwriting of the former, and on his own paper, even if there were convincing proof that when the actual writing was done the man was alone, I should yet say that the real author was the bully, and not the gentleman. He may have learnt it by heart at dictation. He may have copied it from the other’s draft. At any rate, it is morally certain that the one man, and not the other, is the true author of the thing launched—is the one responsible.
Now, in the case of this note to Serbia, the whole thing is Prussian from beginning to end: the extreme arrogance, the deliberate provocation, the exactitude, the aridity, and, above all, the unintelligence. And as for proof upon the other side, we have none, except what the various culprits chose themselves to give us.
As I went about London getting all men’s views, as is my custom when grave things threaten, I heard many judgments passed upon the probable consequences of the note. The man whose judgment in European affairs I trusted most, one who had been largely employed in the foreign business of this country, and who also had a deep and solid knowledge of history, told me that there would not be war, even between Austria and Serbia, let alone an extension of the peril.
The reason he gave for this was curious. He said that a document of that extreme violence would not have been issued if war were the object. The object was to make bargaining acutely necessary, and to get a further hold over Balkan land as a result of a long haggling. For very violent actions—of which this was the most extreme case yet known to Europe—the excess of offensive and inhuman brutality could only, he said, be used as a blind.
Though I then knew very much less of the European situation, I hesitated to agree with him as to the motive; but, on the other hand, I certainly did not think there would be war. I thought Serbia would yield in all save the very worst and most humiliating points, and that these would at last be waived.
Many other opinions of various colours did I gather in that interval, but only one foreseeing a war; and to that one I paid no attention, because it was very foolishly expressed, and for the wrong reason. It was given me by a man who had travelled widely, and who was an expert in many languages, as well as a man of great knowledge in certain forms of mechanical construction. He had also a high scientific training. He had no public post. This man said to me there would be war, because Austria was known to be in a rotten condition, because upon the outbreak of war the various sections of her tessellated dominion would break apart, and the Serbians, knowing this, and having the Russians behind them, would take up the challenge. The Prussian power, or “Reich,” would be so alarmed at the prospect that it would attempt to stave off hostilities, or, failing that, to leave the Austrian Crown to its fate. Such was the folly and ill-judgment of the only man who thought that war was coming, among all those whom I consulted. It was a good example of hitting a mark by firing wide: like the duellist in the dark room who in mercy shot up the chimney, yet brought down his opponent.
For note you that though a great many men up and down Europe had said that Prussia was making for war, and that a conflict must come about in some near future, and though I myself had
