Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/75

Rh "“Austria must have owned to herself that it was no longer consistent with her dignity nor with the maintenance of the monarchy to look on inactive at what was going on beyond the frontier. The Imperial and Royal Government informed us of this view and asked for our opinion. We could most heartily assure our ally that we shared her estimate of the situation, and that any action which she held necessary to make an end of the Serbian movement against the monarchy would have our approval. We were fully conscious in saying this that any warlike action of Austria-Hungary against Serbia might bring Russia on the scene and thus, in accordance with the obligations of our alliance, entangle us in war.”"

It would have been thoughtless to the last degree if Bethmann and the Kaiser, on the 5th of July, had really not looked ahead and considered the possibility of a European war which they were conjuring up by their procedure.

It is certainly remarkable that the Kaiser should have started on a cruise to the North in the midst of such a threatening situation. One thing, however, is clear: the most frivolous of sovereigns would not have dared to do that without having first assured himself that the defences of the State were prepared for all possible emergencies. The fact that after the Council at Potsdam he started on his summer cruise indicates what had been decided on at this Council.

If William and Bethmann-Hollweg, as the latter himself declared, had there and then given their assent to “warlike measures on the part of Austria-Hungary,” at the peril of being involved in a war with Russia, the