The World War
No one who had had constant opportunity during previous years to watch the relation between Austria and Serbia could doubt for a moment that a boulder had started roiling which could never be halted.
It is unjust to the Vienna government to heap it today with reproaches for the form and substance of the ultimatum it presented. No other power in the world could have acted differently in a similar situation and on a similar occasion. On her Southeast border Austria had an implacable, deadly enemy that kept provoking the Monarchy at ever shorter intervals, and that never would have given in until at last a propitious moment had arrived to shatter the Empire.
There was good reason to fear that at the latest this would happen upon the death of the old Kaiser. But by then perhaps the Monarchy would no longer be in any position to offer serious resistance. In its last years the whole State rested so completely on the eyes of Francis Joseph that the death of this aged incarnation of the Empire meant in itself (so the broad masses felt) the death of the Empire. More than that, it was one of the slyest tricks of Slavic policy that they created the impression that the Austrian State owed its continued existence only to the Monarch’s marvelous and unique skill. This piece of flattery pleased the Hofburg the more because the Emperor’s actual merit so little deserved it. The sting hidden in the eulogy was not detected. People did not see, or perhaps no longer wished to see, that the more the Monarchy depended upon the outstanding governing skill (as they were accustomed to call it) of this “wisest Monarch” of all times, the more catastrophic must be the situation when Fate finally knocked at the door to demand its due.
Was old Austria really thinkable at all without the old Kaiser? Would not the tragedy which once befell Maria Theresa have been repeated?
No, it is really unjust to Vienna government circles to reproach them with having hurried into a war which otherwise might yet have been avoided. It could no longer have been avoided, but at
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