On my arrival in Berlin I saw at once that I was to be made the
scapegoat for the catastrophe of which our Government had made itself
guilty in opposition to my advice and my warnings.
The report was persistently circulated by official quarters that I had
let myself be deceived by Sir Edward Grey, because if he had not wanted
war Russia would not have mobilized. Count Pourtalès, whose reports
could be relied upon, was to be spared, if only because of his family
connections. He was said to have behaved "splendidly," and he was
enthusiastically praised, while I was all the more sharply blamed.
"What has Russia got to do with Serbia?" this statesman said to me after
eight years of official activity in Petersburg. It was made out that the
whole business was a perfidious British trick which I had not
understood. In the Foreign Office I was told that in 1916 it would in
any case have come to war. But then Russia would have been "ready," and
so it was better now.
As appears from all official publications, without the facts being
controverted by our own White Book, which, owing to its poverty and
gaps, constitutes a grave self-accusation:
1. We encouraged Count Berchtold to attack Serbia, although no German
interest was involved, and the danger of a world war must have been
known to us--whether we knew the text of the ultimatum is a question of
complete indifference.
2. In the days between July 23 and July 30, 1914, when M. Sazonoff
emphatically declared that Russia could not tolerate an attack upon
Serbia, we rejected the British proposals of mediation, although Serbia,
under Russian and British pressure, had accepted almost the whole
ultimatum, and although an agreement about the two points in question
could easily have been reached, and Count Berchtold was even ready to
satisfy himself with the Serbian reply.
3. On July 30, when Count Berchtold wanted to give way, we, without
Austria having been attacked, replied to Russia's mere mobilization by
sending an ultimatum to Petersburg, and on July 31 we declared war on
the Russians, although the Czar had pledged his word that as long as
negotiations continued not a man should march--so that we deliberately
destroyed the possibility of a peaceful settlement.
In view of these indisputable facts, it is not surprising that the whole
civilized world outside Germany attributes to us the sole guilt for the
world war.