Day 28 - July 24
Pasic returns to Belgrade at 5:00 am.
Giesl and staff begin burning sensitive diplomatic papers and cipher books. They are already preparing for their departure from Belgrade on tomorrow's evening train.
Prince Alexander urgently wires the Russian Czar for assistance and guidance in the matter.
Russia advises Pasic to "proceed with extreme caution."
Serbia makes the contents of the ultimatum public in a hope to gain public support. The world is aghast at the contents. They ask for the impossible. Sir Edward Grey says: "...never before seen one State address to another independent State a document of so formidable a character". He at once proposes four-Power (Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy) mediation.
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| The Russian War Minister Vladmir Sukhomlinov |
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| The Navy Minister Admiral Ivan Grigorovich |
The Russian Council of Ministers met to decide their response to the crisis. The Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Krivoshein, who was especially trusted by Nicholas, noted that:
"...our rearmament programme had not been comp
leted and it seemed doubtful whether our Army and Fleet would ever be able to compete with those of Germany and Austria-Hungary as regards modern technical efficiency...No one in Russia desired a war. The disastrous consequences of the Rusoo - Japanese War had shown the grave danger which Russia would run in case of hostilities. Consequently our policy should aim at reducing the possibility of a European war, but if we remained passive we would attain our objectives...In his view stronger language than we had used hitherto was desirable."
Sazonov stated that Russia had usually been moderate in its foreign policy, but “Germany looked upon our concessions as so many proofs of our weakness and far from having prevented our neighbours from using aggressive methods, we had encouraged them.” The Russian War Minister Vladmir Sukhomlinov and the Navy Minister Admiral Ivan Grigorovich stated that Russia was not ready for a war against either Austria or Germany, but that “...hesitation was no longer appropriate as far as the Imperial government was concerned. They saw no objection to a display of greater firmness in our diplomatic negotiations”. The Russian government again asked Austria to extend the deadline, and advised the Serbs to offer as little resistance as possible to the terms of the Austrian ultimatum.Finally to deter Austria from war, the Russian Council of Ministers ordered a partial mobilization against Austria.
Russian policy was to pressure the Serbs to accept the ultimatum as much as possible without being humiliated too much. Russia was most anxious to avoid a war because the Great Military Programme was not to be completed until 1917, and Russia was otherwise not ready for war. Because all of France’s leaders, including President Poincare and Rene Viviani, were at sea on the battleship France, returning from the summit in St. Petersburg, the acting head of the French government, Jean-Baptiste Bienvenu- Martin took no line on the ultimatum. In addition, the Germans jammed the radio messages, at least garbling contacts between the ship-borne French leaders and Paris, and possibly blocking them completely.
Concerning the summit at St. Petersburg, Alfred Fabre-Luce has concluded the following:
There is, then, no possible doubt about the attitude taken by Poincaré at St. Petersburg between the 20th and the 23rd of July. Without any knowledge whatever of the Austrian demands or of the policy of Germany in the circumstances, he assumed a position of energetic opposition to the Central Powers, gave this opposition a very specific character, and never modified it in the slightest degree to the very end.
The Kaiser hears about the ultimatum from his yacht's radio officer who read it in the Norwegian newspaper.
Information resourced from the following sites:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/onthisday/1914_07_24.htm
http://www.worldwar1.com/tlplot.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
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