Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/199

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Even after the general Russian mobilization of July 31st Bethmann wrote to Lichnowsky in London:

"“I do not consider it impossible that the Russian mobilization may be traced to the fact that rumours current here yesterday to the effect that we have mobilized absolutely false and at once officially denied—were reported as fact to St. Petersburg.”"

But even though mobilizations had been for defensive purposes only, they enormously increased the general tension.

The danger of the situation thus grew tremendously. Besides the diplomats, the General Staff officers now had a word to say, at the very time that the “civilian” Chancellor completed his swing round towards peace. To the General Staff officer the task was not to prevent the war, which he already considered inevitable, but rather to win the war. The prospects of victory, however, were all the greater the more rapidly one struck and the less time allowed the enemy to gather strength. Thus the attempts of the Chancellor to keep the peace only began at a point where his earlier war policy had already brought to the forefront the greatest driving force towards war.

By July 29th we have proofs of the intervention of the German General Staff in politics. On this day they sent to the Foreign Office a Memorandum, not on the military but on the political situation, which it was not their office to elucidate for the Imperial Chancellor.

The Report began with the following observations:

“It is beyond question that no State in Europe would regard the conflict between Austria and Serbia as other than a subject of general human Rh