rand and urged the English
suggestion that action should at once be taken by England, Germany,
Russia, and France at St. Petersburg and Vienna, to the effect that
Austria and Servia

"should abstain from any act which might aggravate the
situation at the present hour."

By this was meant that there should be, pending further parleys, no
invasion of Servia by Austria and none of Austria by Russia. _To this
the German Foreign Minister opposed a categorical refusal._

On the same day the Russian Ambassador at Vienna had "a long and earnest
conversation" with the Austrian Under Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs. He expressed the earnest hope that

"something would be done before Servia was actually invaded.
Baron Machio replied that this would now be difficult, as a
skirmish had already taken place on the Danube, in which the
Servians had been aggressors."

The Russian Ambassador then said that his country would do all it could
to keep the Servians quiet,

"and even to fall back before an Austrian advance in order to
gain time."

He urged that the Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg should be
furnished with full powers to continue discussions with the Russian
Minister for Foreign Affairs,

"who was very willing to advise Servia to yield all that could
be fairly asked of her as an independent power."

The only reply to this reasonable suggestion was that it would be
submitted to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

[English "White Paper," No. 56.]

On the same day the German Ambassador at Paris called upon the French
Foreign Office and strongly insisted on the "_exclusion of all
possibility of mediation or of conference_," and yet contemporaneously
the Imperial German Chancellor was advising London that he had

"started the efforts toward mediation in Vienna, immediately
in the way desired by Sir Edward Grey, and had further
communicated to the Austrian Foreign Minister the wish of the
Russian Foreign Minister for a direct talk in Vienna."

What hypocrisy! In the formal German defense, the official apologist for
that country, after stating his conviction

"that an act of mediation could not take into consideration
the Austro-Servian conflict, which was purely an
Austro-Hungarian affair,"

claimed that Germany had transmitted Sir Edward Grey's further
suggestion to Vienna, in which Austria-Hungary was urged

"e