Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/213

Rh Russian differences regarding Serbia. I put the question directly to the Minister whether he could guarantee me that, if an agreement with Austria was not reached, Russia would be willing to maintain peace. The Minister could not give me an affirmative answer to this question. In this case, I replied, we could not be blamed if we were not inclined to allow Russia a further advantage in mobilization."

This is all. In the conversation also there is not even the slightest hint of the principle so sharply emphasized to France, that Germany's mobilization would be synonymous to a declaration of war. And now for the deciding telegram, from Pourtales, which never reached its addressee, the Foreign Office in Berlin, dispatched from St. Petersburg on August 1st, at 8 p.m.:

""After deciphering, at seven o'clock Russian time (six Central European), I asked M. Sasonow three times in succession whether he could give me the declaration demanded in telegram No. 153, regarding the cessation of military measures against us and Austria. After he had three times answered in the negative, I handed him the Note as commanded.""

Herr von Pourtalès had been in such haste to deliver the Note, that he did not even notice that it contained a two-fold version of Germany's reason for declaring war. Both versions were given to the Russian Government, an incident probably unique in the history of declarations of war.

In the meanwhile, the Chancellor must have become somewhat uneasy about this method of letting loose