Austria-Hungary and the War (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II.?WAS THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN NOTE TO SERVIA BRUTAL? "Liberty" is the title of a statement of the British case sent out a few weeks ago by Arnold Bennett to the Saturday Evening Post. Liberty! The title seems appropriate for that reason only that in no statement on the war is there more liberty displayed in the use of superlative invectives against a whole people and nation than in this one. All the white- heat venom that an intelligent human being can absorb in the course of a lifetime is injected into this article. One might say the author saved it up since the first days of his childhood and diffused it all at once in one supreme effort. It is regrettable that an author of the world reputation of Mr. Bennett should think that the abuse of a whole nation constitutes his own country's strongest defense. Mr. Bennett, after pronouncing the dictum that "the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1908 was an outrage upon the feelings of the inhabitants," proceeds to explain "how the German and Austrian branches of the military worked in secret together. How when they had reached a decision"?and not before, according to Mr. Bennett's special information?"the German The note and answer thereto are reprinted in the appendix. Imperial Chancellor and the German Foreign Secretary were permitted to learn the inwardness of the state of affairs," whatever that is. "And then," he continues, "an impossible ultimatum was sent to Servia, and the thing was done. The fall on the bourses, before the delivery of the Servian reply, showed that the supreme financial magnates had been 'put wise.' Every embassy knew. All diplomacy was futile and most of it was odiously hypocritical. Sir Edward Grey alone in Europe strove against the irrevocable. With the most correct urban...