Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/71

Rh then itself informs us what is supposed to have taken place on July 5th in Potsdam. It repeats substantially what the weekly paper Deutsche Politik had published on the subject in May. This narrative sounds very harmless.

According to it, the Austrian Ambassador Szögyeny breakfasted on July 5th with the Kaiser William in Potsdam, and handed him the letter of his sovereign.

Afterwards Bethmann-Hollweg and Zimmermann (who represented Jagow, then on his honeymoon) came to the Kaiser and discussed the political situation. Next day Kaiser William started on his Northern trip. Plainly the clearest symptom that he was neither planning nor expecting mischief.

The White Book gives a similar account, only without mentioning the Northern trip. Instead of this it adds:

"“No particular measures were decided on, since it was already understood that it was not possible to refuse to Austria, in prosecuting her claim to effective guarantees from Serbia, the support demanded by our obligations as an ally.” (Page 50.)"

This also sounds harmless enough, yet it can imply nothing else than that, in this consultation, the German Government found it a matter of course that Austria should demand “effective guarantees”—we know what that means—and that Germany would join in, in accordance with her obligations as an ally. To decide on special measures about these points seems to have been quite superfluous on July 5th!

The White Book of June, 1919, appears to reckon on a very child-like public. It introduces its study of Rh