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argument—Mr. Harden as early as November, 1914, made the candid and emphatic declaration: “We wished this war.”[1]
In western literature all guilt, or at least the principal share of it, has been placed on the back of Germany, Austria remaining somehow in the background. This is not correct. Austria’s policy in recent years, both before and after the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was highly aggressive against Serbia and Russia and thereby it brought on the war; Germany in its own interests supported this policy and abused it. The question which of the two is the more guilty need not be discussed in this brief sketch,—I merely emphasise here that Austria’s guilt is great, far greater than its adversaries admit.
Perhaps the objection will be made that Austria acted under the pressure of Berlin—in England, France and America many people see it that way, and Austria supports and strengthens this legend through its agents. This is known in Berlin, but it is not objected to; quite the contrary. It is true that Austria is under the influence and pressure of Berlin, but that does not mean that she does not exert any influence on Berlin. In monarchical states mutual personal influences (of sovereigns and their councillors) have considerable weight and in the given case Berlin after 1866 (just as previously) for tactical reasons treated with tenderness the person of Emperor Francis Joseph and complied with his inclinations as much as possible, Austria sometimes having different views. There is a certain tension between the courts of Berlin and Vienna, but both dynasties and their offensive imperialism pointed to the same East, and the bad conscience of militaristic aggressiveness unites the rivals.[2]
The participation of Austria-Hungary, not merely in the provocation of the war, but also in the manner in which it was conducted, is considerable in any case; it is claimed, for instance, quite categorically that not Tirpitz, but Burián made the decision for the unrestricted submarine warfare, hoping
- ↑ A member of the Reichstag, the historian Gothein, as early as November 17th, 1914, in the Berliner Tagblatt, tried to answer the question whether the Germans wished the war, and he was forced to the following admission: “It cannot be denied that certain irresponsible circles played with the thought.” Are General von Bernhardi (now one of the most prominent commanders on the Eastern front) and similar writers mere “irresponsible” personages? Herr Friedrich Naumann (Die Hilfe, August, 1917) explains why the German people no longer believe the war to be defensive. “People can no longer rightly believe that the present battles are inevitable battles of defence. They have rather the gloomy suspicion that a policy of conquest, over and above what is necessary, is being pursued. And here a positively disastrous effect is produced by certain publications in which powerful societies and private individuals give expression to the lust of conquest. Only general ideas of their contents reach the great mass of the people; but to the best of our belief their existence is well known in every barrack, in every workshop, and in every village inn. The consequence of this literature of conquest is the disappearance of simple faith in the defensive war.”
- ↑ The guilt of Austrian politics shortly before the declaration of war was well brought out by the Berlin Vorwärts, when it wrote, July 25th, 1914: “We condemn the agitation of the Great-Serbian Nationalists, but the frivolous provocation of the war by the Austro-Hungarian Government calls for our liveliest protest. For the demands of this Government are more brutal than any that have ever been addressed, in the whole course of history, to an independent State, and they can only be intended to provoke war forthwith. The conscious proletarist of Germany, in the name of humanity and culture, raises its burning protest against this criminal agitation . . . . Not a single drop of blood of a German soldier is to be sacrificed to the desire for power and to the imperialistic greed of the Austrian despots.”The rest of the German Socialist newspapers wrote in a manner similar to that of Vorwärts; they are cited in an American publication of the German adherents of Liebknecht, “Die Krise der deutschen Sozialdemokratie.” Dr. Victor Adler, the leader of the Social Democrats of Austria, admitted in careful but clear words that Austria caused the war when she refused to follow Serbia’s concessions with further diplomatic negotiations.Before him Kjellén, the strongly Germanophile Swedish Austrian, confesses (“Die politischen Probleme des Weltkrieges, 1916”) that Austria-Hungary could have solved the Serbian question in a peaceful way, and that the war was not necessary.Oven, the Orthodox David of the Scheidemann majority, accused the Berlin Government of giving carte blanche to Vienna.
