Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1914. NEW LIGHT FROM VIENNA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 70, 19 September 1914, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1914. NEW LIGHT FROM VIENNA

On the broad facts of the case, the question who is responsible for the war has, from the beginning, admitted of only one answer. No purpose would be served at this stage 1 by again covering well-trodden ground, but some attention should be given to tit© latest White Paper, disclosing pre-war events at Vienna. Hitherto the world has been asked to believe that Germany declared war in the interests of her ally Austria. All the fnliaina-tions of Berlin, the naive amazement of the German Chancellor at j Britain's devotion to "a scrap of paper," the demand for an explanation of Russia's alleged mobilisation — all these and other tilings equally indefensiblo have been attributed to Teutonic devotion to the Triple Alliance. An effort has been made fo plead loyalty to an ally as an excuse lor a piece of disgraceful disloyalty to a treaty and of treachery to a guaranteed neutral State. But the statement of the British Ministor at Vienna, published in the White Paper, puts on the situation an entirely different complexion. The Minister, Sir Maurice de Bunsen, shows that on Ist August "conversations between St. Petersburg (now Petrograd) and Vienna were proceeding in the fncndHest way." Instead of the peace prospect being entirely in the hands of the "mediating" Kaiser — a3 the Warlord himself insisted in his letter to the TEar — Austria and Russia were getting along very well by direct negotiation. "Austria," states Sir Maurice de Bunsen. "even assented to mediation on the points in her ultimatum which were incompatible with Servian independence. It was at this point that Germany intervened in an ultimatum to St. Petersburg and Paris, cutting short the prospects for peace. A few days' delay would in all probability have saved Europe from the greatest calamity in history." This new and important fact concern- | ing the diplomatic situation on the eve ! of the war rests not only upon the word of the British Ambassador at Vienna, but upon surrounding probabilities. Frauds Jowph, the. aged Emgfror

of Austria-Hungary, had been, for over a generation, a force for peace. In 1909 he had lent himself, quite wrongly, to the Bosnian adventure, but he did so in the confidence — abundantly justified by facts both before and after— that Germany's mailed fist would keep the ring clear. Had there been no ally "in shining armour " to overawe the Russians, Francis Joseph would not have been found taking any great risk of hostilities, for he is emphatically not a warlord of the Kaiser's type, but a veteran diplomatist. That he would have incurred a European conflict for the sake or two or three disputed — and quite unjustifiable^ — demands in the Austrian ultimatum to Servia is in the highest degree improbable. When, therefore, the latter days, of August disclosed that Russia was resolutely mobilising, instead of meekly submitting, as in 1909, to a war-threat from Berlin, a ruler of Francis Joseph's type would have seen that the thing had gone far enough. Such a development would have impelled him to have recourse again to the resources of diplomacy ; and this, the probable course, is exactly that which is recorded as fact in the despatch of the British Ambassador. The White Paper tends strongly to confirm the previous impression that , Austria was allowed by Germany to enter into a situation that made war likely; but, at the critical moment, when she would have withdrawn from it, the same Germany prevented her. Not only did the Kaiser fail to exercise a restraining influence upon his ally; he even made it impossible for the ally to restrain himself. Apparently the ide* dominating the situation in Berlin was that of the preventive war. Russia was growing so fast that Germany must, now or never, use her great army, coupled with Austria's, to restore Teutonic predominance. Granted a neutral Britain (which Hen- Bethmann-Hollweg calculated on), Germany might have been equal to the task if Austria, had proved "the brilliant 'second" which the Kaiser once termed her. But the Austrian Government, realising inherent racial weaknesses, never really wanted the major war into which it was finally hustled by the Kaiser; and tho consequent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian army bids fair to drag down with it even the military might of opportunist GerA many, who stands convicted on clear evidence of being the great aggressor and arch-incendiary of Europe.