Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914. Max Hastings

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      Even if the contribution of the French president to the crisis was more proactive than he later admitted, he cannot have relished meandering across the Baltic while Europe’s flames kindled and flared. In Paris, Joffre and France’s soldiers were becoming acutely frustrated by the political paralysis. The general wrote crossly: ‘The main preoccupation [of ministers] … was to make no move which could be construed as anything except a response to German initiatives. This timid attitude was largely the result of the absence of the heads of the government.’ He was appalled on the 28th, when a 21 July dispatch reached Messimy from Cambon in Berlin, which had been ‘incomprehensibly’ delayed for a week, claiming that Germany had begun pre-mobilisation measures. The ambassador overstated the case, but the French now believed Moltke’s forces to be a week ahead of themselves in preparedness, and still Messimy would not act in Viviani’s absence.

      The war minister’s caution was prudent; but Joffre’s fuming anger emphasises the urgency with which soldiers were now shouldering a path to the centre of the stage in France, Russia, Germany. As war loomed, every commander-in-chief was terrified of the consequences if the enemy was ready to fight first. Thus, each began to press his respective political leaders. The Russian chiefs of staff lamented to the president of the Duma the Tsar’s indecision. Europe’s armaments race and military contingency plans were not responsible for war, because they were symptoms rather than causes. But by the last days of July 1914 generals were pushing governments towards the abyss: they knew they would take the blame if their nation lost on the battlefield the deadly game of grandmother’s footsteps that was now being played.

      On the 27th, Poincaré and Viviani learned that the French press had become savagely critical of their absence from Paris. The two men decided to hasten home after refuelling at Copenhagen, and duly arrived at Dunkirk early on the morning of 29 July. The Germans had been insistently jamming communications between Paris, St Petersburg and Berlin, but it is hard to suggest that such mischief altered outcomes. The Russians were determined to react to Austria’s assault on Serbia. The French government was committed to support them, strongly influenced by knowledge that if war came, the Germans would strike at France first. The powerful Eiffel Tower radio station enabled the Russian military attaché to maintain contact with St Petersburg through the crisis, overcoming German interference. The Baltic yachting trip of Poincaré and Viviani probably had little or no influence upon the course of history. The president favoured a policy of ‘firmness’ towards Germany; he is likely to have led his country to support Russia in the July crisis whether or not he had met Sazonov at St Petersburg.

      Many French people recognised a growing likelihood that they would have to fight. On Sunday the 26th there were scenes of intense excitement on the streets of Paris: appearances by the usual weekend military bands were cheered; a Hapsburg flag was burnt by protesters outside the Austrian embassy. Most citizens faced the prospect of war without enthusiasm but with an overwhelming sense of resignation, placing blame squarely upon Germany. As printer Louis Derenne left his works in Orléans he heard a crowd shouting ‘Mort aux Boches!’, heedless of the fact that thus far the Austrians had been prime movers in the crisis. ‘We are getting ready to enter a long tunnel full of blood and darkness,’ wrote André Gide. The government gave no clear public signals of its intentions until Poincaré and Viviani reached the capital on the 29th, but it was generally assumed that if Russia fought, so too would France.

      Joffre, on his own initiative, had told the Russians on the 27th that they could expect his country’s full support. Both the chief of staff and Messimy, the war minister, urged Russia to hasten its mobilisation and deploy as rapidly as possible against Germany. They knew that its war plan required an immediate attack in the West. It was vital to French security that the Russians should realise as swiftly as possible a ‘threat in being’, to oblige Moltke to divide his forces. In Paris, a rush to hoard gold caused panic on the Bourse. In France, as across Europe, a collapse of credit was creating a huge financial crisis which was alleviated only by the intervention of governments. People milled on the boulevards and thronged cafés and restaurants, less in search of refreshment than of news and companionship.

      In Berlin on Tuesday evening, the 28th, some thousands of people from working-class areas marched into the city centre singing socialist songs and crying out ‘Down with the war!’ and ‘Long live social democracy!’ They were prevented from entering the main thoroughfares by mounted police with drawn swords, though at about 10 p.m. a thousand broke through to the Unter den Linden. On the pavements, bystanders showed their disapproval by singing the rousing patriotic songs ‘Wacht am Rhein’ and ‘Heil dir im Siegerkranz’. Half an hour later the police charged and cleared the street, to loud applause from patrons nursing their mugs of hot chocolate on the balconies of Café Bauer and Café Kranzler.

      Twenty-eight people were arrested for chanting anti-war slogans, and thus causing ‘public disturbance’. The right-wing press had a field day next morning, denouncing the demonstrators as ‘a mob’, and anti-war protesters as traitors. Some historians suggest that more Germans demonstrated against war than in its favour, which may well be true. But the conduct of the Kaiser, Moltke and Bethmann was wholly uninfluenced by exhibitions of dissent which they judged – correctly – would cease when the nation found itself committed. Far fewer Germans protested against war than had taken to the streets four years earlier, to demand Prussian voting reform.

      The first significant strategic move by Britain came on Sunday, 26 July, when the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet was due to disperse after a trial mobilisation. The staff of Northcliffe’s Daily Mail believed that they played some role in the First Lord of the Admiralty’s initiative that day. Amid looming crisis, they telegraphed him at his holiday rendezvous in Norfolk: ‘Winston Churchill Pear Tree Cottage Overstrand: WAR DECLARED AUSTRIA SERBIA GERMAN FLEET CONCENTRATING MAY WE ASK IS IT TRUE BRITISH FLEET DEMOBILISING: DAILY MAIL’. This missive was delivered to Churchill on the nearby beach. He never responded, but spoke by telephone within the hour to the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, and took the afternoon train back to London. Late that night, an order was issued to cancel the dispersal of the fleet, which two days later was dispatched to its war station at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. Paul Cambon said later that Churchill rendered a great service to France by his impassioned support for intervention and his order not to demobilise the fleet ‘which we [the French] have never sufficiently recognised’.

      Yet there was still among the British at large no sense of imminent peril. Asquith wrote to Venetia Stanley on the 28th: ‘We had a cabinet yesterday … mainly to talk about war & peace. I am afraid that Grey’s experiment of a Conference à quatre won’t come off, as the Germans refuse to take a hand. The only real hope is that Austria & Russia may come to a deal among themselves. But at this moment things don’t look well, & Winston’s spirits are probably rising.’ Churchill adopted a shamelessly cynical view, mirroring that which was driving policy in Berlin: ‘if war was inevitable this was by far the most favourable opportunity and the only one that would bring France, Russia and ourselves together’. He wrote that day to his wife Clementine: ‘My darling One & beautiful – Everything tends towards catastrophe, & collapse. I am interested, geared-up & happy.’ Asquith ended his 28 July letter to Venetia Stanley on a bathetic note: ‘It is a slack evening of Supply at the House, so I am getting Violet to beat up one or two people to dine at home & play Bridge.’ The prime minister showed no greater agitation the following evening, the 29th: ‘I have just finished an Army Council … Rather interesting because it enables one to realise what are the first steps in an actual war.’

      Some people seized upon looming conflict as a profit-making opportunity. The Cotton Powder Company, whose impressive engraved copperplate letterhead announced its Kent works as ‘manufacturers of Cordite, Guncotton, Blasting Explosives, Distress Signals, Detonators etc’, wrote on 29 July to the Serbian war minister. Its board offered to provide 10,000 rifle grenades, ‘part of a contract for 80,000 which we are executing for another foreign government … This present order followed a previously executed order for 25,000 which have been used up in actual hostilities with the most satisfactory results … 10,000 are packed ready for dispatch and could be shipped within twenty-four hours. If desired the same Grenade may be thrown by hand for close-quarter fighting.’