On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the
Austro-Hungarian throne, was murdered at Sarajevo.
In the course of July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Government (wherein
far more influence was exerted by Count Tisza, the wealthy and
incorruptible, the vastly ambitious Magyar Prime Minister, than by the
Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, the courteous, somewhat frivolous
man of the world who was doomed to execute reluctantly the orders of
Berlin and be swept away by the resulting storm, while the brave and
brutal Tisza, fighting for the glory of the Habsburgs and the greater
glory of the Magyars, rode upon the storm for years)--the
Austro-Hungarian Government in July 1914 dispatched to Sarajevo a
commissioner for the purpose of investigating whether the Serbian
authorities had anything to do with the Archduke's assassination. This
official, Baron von Weisner, a very distinguished Professor of
Political Economy who was a German Bohemian[73] with staunch German
sympathies, reported in the same month that he was convinced that no
accusation whatever could be levelled against Belgrade. (As a matter
of fact the Serbian police, who had information that a plot was being
hatched in Bosnia, gave warning to the Austrian authorities; but no
notice was taken of this, not even when a similar warning was uttered
on June 21 by the Serbian Minister at Vienna, nor were any special
precautions laid down for the Archduke's safety. It was all rather
mysterious.) "Byzantium, the everlasting and unconquerable Byzantium,"
says an Austrian publicist,[74] "had won another victory.... The
Habsburg Empire," says he, "only wished to defend herself against
those invisible and irrepressible intrigues." And after denouncing the
Serbs for throwing a spark into the powder barrel on June 28, 1914, he
accounts for their conduct by writing that "it is the tradition of
nomad blood to tear down ancient, noble palaces, replacing them by
nomad huts." What we know is that General Potiorek, the Governor of
Bosnia, who had urged Francis Ferdinand and his wife to continue their
programme after the failure of the first attempt at assassination
before lunch, was never invited to explain anything--unfortunately for
Austria he was placed in command of the "punitive expedition" into
Serbia. Other incidents on which a light may some day be thrown were
the very unceremonious funeral arrangements for the murdered couple
(though this may very likely have been due to the High Chamberlain's
personal hatred of the Archduke), and the fact that an Imperial
Commission was sent to Konopi[vs]t[ve], the Archduke's Bohemian
estate, to seize his papers. It was there that he had lately been
confabulating with the German Emperor; and Count Berchtold had visited
the place on the day after the Kaiser's departure to try to ascertain
what had occurred.... It was also at Konopi[vs]t[ve] that Francis
Ferdinand, who was threatened with hereditary madness, had shot a
gamekeeper dead. Knowing that the Archduke was as good a shot as he
was insignificant in horsemanship, this had excited great attention in
the highest circles, coming as it did after other scenes of
violence.... In contrast with all these semi-mysteries it is clear
that Serbia had nothing whatever to gain by the Archduke's
disappearance, and although Austria had time and again endeavoured to
pick a quarrel with her she had managed to avoid a situation which,
after the two recent wars, would be perilous in the extreme. The
Serbian Press, which enjoyed a complete freedom, was naturally violent
in tone when it observed that the Austro-Hungarian Government was
doing little to control the demonstrations hostile to Serbia. Houses
of prominent Serbs were looted and gutted at Sarajevo, while similar
scenes took place--with the connivance of the authorities--in other
large towns of the Monarchy. But the Belgrade populace, uninflamed by
their Press, conducted themselves with great moderation. The stories
circulated in Austria-Hungary of several Magyar journalists having
been murdered were absolutely false. Just as false were the rumours of
a demonstration against the Austrian Minister at the funeral of M.
Hartwig, his Russian colleague, although Serbian public opinion
ascribed the sudden death of this powerful friend of theirs to a cup
of poisoned coffee at the Austrian Legation. Hartwig has been
criticized for his encouragement of Serbia's idea of expansion and for
having fostered anti-Austrian propaganda--of course it was a very
wicked thing, from the Austrian point of view, to think of the day
when the Serbs might be joined to their unredeemed brethren; and as
for the blessed word "propaganda," which covers everything from the
mildest expression of opinion to assassination, there has been no
responsible Austrian so reckless as to accuse the Serbs or M. Hartwig
of having had recourse to methods that approached in wrong-doing their
own notorious (and unsuccessful) forgeries.
Let us address three questions to those who carried on a calumnious
campaign against Serbia:
(a) Why was the Sarajevo trial conducted behind a closed
door? If the crime was instigated and perpetrated by Serbia,
the Habsburg Monarchy, which at the time of the trial had
already declared war on Serbia, had every interest in
establishing with all publicity the guilt and the complicity
of Serbian circles.
(b) Why were the evidence of the witnesses and the
declarations of the authors of the assassination not
published? It was only in 1918 that the Austrian Government,
with the help of a professor of Berlin University, published
a few facts taken from the proceedings of the trial.
Although in this book[75] a great deal of material
importance has been omitted--for example, the declarations
of the witnesses as well as the last declarations of the
accused, nevertheless that which we have before us
constitutes one of the most terrible accusations against the
Habsburg Monarchy. The young accused persons were not afraid
to state, even behind closed doors in a barrack-room, some
bitter truths concerning Austria-Hungary. One can have some
idea of what they would have said in a public trial from the
results of the famous trials of Zagreb and of Friedjung. All
the accused persons, as well as their accomplices, declared
that the decision to kill the Archduke was an act of their
own personal will and that nobody incited or ordered them
to make the attempt, least of all any authority of the
Kingdom of Serbia. The crime was the personal act of Bosnian
patriots who believed that they were serving their oppressed
people. "In Bosnia," said the Minister Burian--"in Bosnia,
there is no policy, there is only administration."
(c) Why did the Sarajevo police and Austro-Hungarian
official circles conduct themselves so strangely with
respect to the bomb-thrower [vC]abrinovi['c], a notorious
anarchist and son of a Sarajevo police spy, who had on a
former occasion been expelled by the police from Sarajevo?
Later on, after the Belgrade police had been obliged, owing
to the intervention of the Austrian Consulate, to allow him
to stay in Belgrade, he returned to Sarajevo and was quite
unmolested by the police, whose precautions a few years
previously, at the time of the visit of Francis Joseph, had
gone so far as to expel, as suspected persons, two members
of the Bosnian Parliament.
The sole charge that could be laid, not against Serbia but against a
Serbian subject, concerned the relations of the subordinate officer
Tankosi['c] with the authors of the crime. It was asserted that he
knew of the plan and that he helped the assassins to procure money and
weapons. The accused definitely said that he exercised no influence on
their decision, which had been taken before conversation with him. But
even supposing that he was an accomplice, it is evident that the whole
Serbian nation and especially the Serbian Government is not identical
with an officer who, on account of other troubles with the Ministry of
War, had already been removed from the active service list.[76] When
the Austrian ultimatum was transmitted to the Serbian Government,
Tankosi['c] was immediately arrested, so that his guilt and complicity
might be enquired into and established. Serbia could not do more than
that. But the whole Serbian people, in Serbia and out of Serbia, was
declared guilty of the crime, and immediate steps were taken to carry
out the sentence. The unprecedented atrocities committed by the
Austro-Hungarian army in Serbia were to be the expiation of an
imaginary crime, and such proceedings, which recall the times of
Attila, are shielded by the illustrious name of the aforementioned
Professor Kohler, whose reputation it was to be the most democratic of
German jurists. All his previous theories on crime, causality and
responsibility became void; we see him adopt the monstrous theory
according to which every act of private persons is the responsibility
of the whole nation.
It remained for Nikita, a man of Serbian blood, a man whose verses had
been laden with love for the Serbian nation, it remained for this
shameless Prince to charge his brothers with the crime. So implacable
was the old man's hatred of Serbia that when President Wilson arrived
in Europe he immediately wrote[77] to him, in his indifferent French,
for fear, he said, lest the intrigues conducted by the Serbs or their
accomplices should precede him in capturing the President's
sympathies. "In spite of their perfidy," said he, "I was the first to
lend them a hand by being the first to declare war against Austria,
although I was certain that the provocation originated on their side
by the Sarajevo murders and their Black Hand.... Horrible thought that
this country refuses to realize the crime it has committed, for which
it is responsible to mankind no less than William!"
At last, on January 5, 1917, the _Neue Freie Presse_ acknowledged that
Austria provoked the war with the intention of crushing Serbia. It is
a formal and categorical confession. And it obliges us to consider
seriously the thesis put forward by Jules Chopin in _Le Complot de
Sarajevo_ (Paris, 1918), according to which the plot was hatched at
Konopi[vs]t[ve] between the German Kaiser and the man to whom the plot
proved fatal. Monsieur Chopin, after a minute examination of the facts
and of grave presumptions, believes that Serbia was to be held up to
the world as having provoked the war that was to consolidate the
Monarchy and satisfy the Archduke's paternal ambitions. The army
manoeuvres were to be in Bosnia, the Archduke was to make his
ceremonial entry into Sarajevo on Vidov dan, the day when the Serbs
solemnly celebrate the battle of Kossovo, and [vC]abrinovi['c], son of
the Sarajevo police-spy, was to be assisted through the Chinese Wall
which then encircled Bosnia. But what did not enter into the royal
calculations was the possibility that other Southern Slavs, acting on
their own initiative, might strike a real blow.