HOW THE WAR BEGAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21296, 24 September 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW THE WAR BEGAN

AUSTRIAN'S REVELATIONS ULTIMATUM TO SERBIA TELEGRAM FROM THE TSAR An intensely dramatic story of the outbreak of the World War was told in Vienna on July 26 for the first time by one of the principal actors in it. The narrator is General Vladimir Giesl, who was Austro-Hnngarian Minister in Serbia in 1914.

General Giesl reveals that the presentation of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was postponed for one hour by an urgent cipher telegram from Vienna. This telegram instructed him to present tho ultimatum at six p.m. on July 23. 1914, instead of five p.m., as at first determined. The reason was that by that hour the French Fleet, would have put to sea from Kronstadt, and thus Russia and France would miss the opportunity of immediately arranging co-operative naval action. At 6 p.m. punctually General Giesl called on M. Pacu, the acting Serbian Premier, and read the ultimatum to him, demanding unreserved acceptance within 48 hours. M. Pacu at once sent for M. Pasitch, the Premier, who arrived at midnight. At two p.m. on tho fateful July 25 General Giesl learned that a cipher tele-

gram consisting of 1000 groups of code figures had arrived from the Tsar, stating that the entire might of Russia was behind Serbia. Serbia, it added, must reject the humiliating Austrian demands. It is upon this action of the Tsar that General Giesl places the responsibility for the war.

Five minutes before the fatal hour of six M. Pasitch entered General Giesl s study. "Behind some curtains," the story proceeds, "I had hidden my wife and Von Storck, the First Secretary, as witnesses of the fateful conversation.

"Has the Royal Serbian Government accepted our demands?" I asked. "We have accepted all that we possibly could," replied M. Pasitch. "For the rest, we relv on the chivalrous honour of an Austrian general—yourself—with whom we have alwavs been content. With the utterance of these simple words the World War, according to the narrator, really, began. In about ten minutes General Giesl and his staff had left Belgrade by train.