Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/102

 Then follows the offer which confirms the good faith of Serbia, and which damns the Central Empires before the Judgment of History.

"If the Imperial and Royal Government are not satisfied with this reply, the Serbian Government, considering that it is not to the common interest to precipitate the solution of this question, are ready, as always to accept a pacific understanding, either by referring this question to the decision of the International Tribunal of The Hague, or to the Great Powers which took part in the drawing up of the declaration made by the Serbian Government on the 18th (31st) of March, 1909."

Of the ten points of the Austrian Note eight are conceded under conditions of unparalleled humiliation. No diplomatic triumph could be more complete. Serbia yields, well knowing that her immediate past is a good deal fly-blown and that nobody in Western Europe has the least intention of dying for her beaux yeux. But paragraphs 5 and 6, demanding the association of Austrian officials in judicial enquiries to be held within the territory and under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Government, aim at more than humiliation; they demand that Serbia shall abdicate her own independent sovereignty. M. Pashich rejects them, but in a mode that will remain as the final condemnation before history of the Germanic Powers.

M. Sazonof went to the root of the matter at once in a conversation with the Austrian represen