Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/123

Rh can only be said by someone who imagines that the efforts to localize the war had been a serious peace scheme. In reality, it meant the derangement and sabotage of every scheme for peace. The assertion that Serbia's overthrow by Austria concerned these two States alone implied nothing less than that in future Austria alone had any say in the Balkans; implied that Russia was required to consent voluntarily to her elimination there, to declare herself beaten before she had fired a shot. By this striving after localization of the conflict, Russia was faced with the alternative: either to submit or to declare war on Austria.

The demand for localization was, therefore, just the very way to force Russia to war.

The alternative to the localization of the conflict was its solution through the intervention of Europe, i.e., either through a Court of Arbitration or through the mediation of the Great Powers not directly concerned. Only this Europeanizing of the problem afforded the prospect of the local war not becoming a European war. But, of course, it did not afford Austria the prospect of being left a free hand in the military crushing of Serbia. And so the highly dangerous method of localization had to be insisted upon with all obduracy. It signified now, as in the annexation crisis of 1909, a speculation on Russia's weakness and on the peaceableness of England and of France. The Bavarian report, indeed, continues:

"Herr Zimmermann assumes that both England and France, to whom a war would hardly be desirable at present, will influence Russia in a peaceable sense; in addition, he is building on the fact that bluff is one of the most popular desiderata of the