Relations with the Austro-Hungarian
Government.

(Cd. 7596)

_Sir M. de Bunsen to Sir Edward Grey_.

_London, September_ 1, 1914.

Sir,

The rapidity of the march of events during the days which led up to the
outbreak of the European war made it difficult, at the time, to do more
than record their progress by telegraph. I propose now to add a few
comments.

The delivery at Belgrade on the 23rd July of the Austrian note to Servia
was preceded by a period of absolute silence at the Ballplatz. Except
Herr von Tchinsky, who must have been aware of the tenour, if not of the
actual words of the note, none of my colleagues were allowed to see
through the veil. On the 22nd and 23rd July, M. Dumaine, French
Ambassador, had long interviews with Baron Macchio, one of the
Under-Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, by whom he was left
under the impression that the words of warning he had been instructed to
speak to the Austro-Hungarian Government had not been unavailing, and
that the note which was being drawn up would be found to contain nothing
with which a self-respecting State need hesitate to comply. At the
second of these interviews he was not even informed that the note was at
that very moment being presented at Belgrade, or that it would be
published in Vienna on the following morning. Count Forgach, the other
Under-Secretary of State, had indeed been good enough to confide to me
on the same day the true character of the note, and the fact of its
presentation about the time we were speaking.

So little had the Russian Ambassador been made aware of what was
preparing that he actually left Vienna on a fortnight's leave of absence
about the 20th July. He had only been absent a few days when events
compelled him to return. It might have been supposed that Duc Avarna,
Ambassador of the allied Italian Kingdom, which was bound to be so
closely affected by fresh complications in the Balkans, would have been
taken fully into the confidence of Count Berchtold during this critical
time. In point of fact his Excellency was left completely in the dark.
As for myself, no indication was given me by Count Berchtold of the
impending storm, and it was from a private source that I received on the
15th July the forecast of what was about to happen which I telegraphed
to you the following day. It is true that during all this time the "Neue
Freie Presse" and other leading Viennese newspapers were using language
which