Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/97

 naries to mobilisation. But nothing open or public (for the police proceedings against the assassins had been held in camera) had prepared the way for the Austrian coup. It was an amazed Europe that learned the terms of the Note presented at Belgrade by the Austrian Ambassador on the 23rd of July. There were no illusions as to its meaning and implications, for none were possible. Newspapers so little akin as the Morning Post and M. Clemenceau's L'Homme Libre characterised it in the same phrase: it was a summons to Serbia to abdicate her sovereignty and independence, and to exist henceforth as a vassal-state of the Dual Empire. This document is the Devil's Cauldron from which have sprung all the horrors of the present war. As to its extravagant character and probable consequences, opinion is unanimous, even unofficial German opinion. The Berlin Vorwärts writes (25th July)—

"From whatever point of view one considers the situation, a European War is at our gates. And why? Because the Austrian Government and the Austrian War Party are determined to clear, by a coup de main, a place in which they can fill their lungs."

In the Foreign Offices the same language was used. Sir Edward Grey said to the Austrian Ambassador that he "had never before seen one State address to another independent State a document of so formidable a character." The reader can