Social And Diplomatic Memories, 1884-1919 Vol. III by Sir James Rennell Rodd K.C.B

Author:Sir James Rennell Rodd K.C.B. [K.C.B., Sir James Rennell Rodd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Europe, Great Britain, General, Germany, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781782892939
Google: mQRwCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2014-08-15T05:03:13+00:00

CHAPTER IX — ROME, 1914

The Serajevo assassinations and the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Efforts to avert war. Italy declares her neutrality. We enter the war. News of Goeben and Breslau. Death of Pins X and election of Benedict XV. Propaganda at Conclave. British representation at Holy See. Counter-propaganda. M. Destrée. The anti-war groups in Italy. The interventionists. Salandra and San Giuliano. Importance of Italy's neutrality. Embassy Staff. Sir C. Capel-Cure. Death of San Giuliano. Turkey enters the war.

Having no illusions regarding the ultimate aims of the central empires, I ought not to have been surprised by any sudden move on the political chess-board which a favourable opening might inspire. And yet the spring of 1914 advanced into summer with no graver preoccupations for us in Italy than those of watching the complications on the eastern side of the Adriatic, the troubles at Durazzo, which threatened a renewal of intervention in Albania, and the growing friction between Greece and Turkey. The elder statesmen in Italy, I gathered, like myself, regretted that San Giuliano had contested Serbian access to the sea, which would at that time have offered a barrier to a further Austrian advance, and many thought that he had also been rather intransigent in his opposition to Greek claims in Epirus. His policy had meant making enemies in Serbia and Greece, and had occasioned some impatience in France and Russia, while in Great Britain the veto to a Serbian port had not been well received.

After spending four successive summers in Italy, I had asked for leave in August, and we had taken a place in Scotland, where the boys were to have their first experience of moor and stream. My wife was leaving for England at the end of June, and I had accompanied her to say good-bye to our old friend Princess George Radziwil. While we were sitting with her and the Russian Ambassador in the villa garden, the telegraph sheet arrived, announcing the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Serajevo. The news was like a thunder-clap in a clear sky.

It was, and has remained, difficult to account for this determined and cold-blooded murder. For Serbia there seemed to be nothing to gain by a deliberate provocation of the Empire which had been seeking an excuse for coercing her. Only a distorted process of reasoning which sought to prove that ordered government was impossible under actual conditions in Bosnia could account for her complicity or tolerance. It was no less difficult to understand the neglect of the Austrian authorities to take elementary precautions to protect the heir apparent during a visit of inspection in regions of doubtful security. In any case, after the experience of recent years the danger was obvious that this deplorable outrage might furnish the war-party at Vienna with the pretext for attacking Serbia for which they had long been waiting.

The instructive memoirs of Marshal Conrad von Hoetzendorff have revealed that the report of Herr von Wiesner, the official sent to Serajevo to investigate the crime, was negative.

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