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Updated: June 9, 2025
On returning to our convent at about two o'clock to partake of our frugal but welcome meal, we were surprised to find that another party of travellers, Franks like ourselves, had arrived. The new- comers proved to be Count Zichy and Count Wratislaw, who had travelled from Vienna to Cairo in company with Counts Berchtold and Salm Reifferscheit.
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.
But, of course, quite apart from such considerations, Serbia was suffering from the extreme exhaustion consequent upon waging two wars within a year, and her statesmen, despite the rebuffs administered by Count Berchtold, were genuinely anxious for a modus vivendi with the neighbouring Monarchy, as an essential condition to a period of quiet internal consolidation.
So far from my native country, I was thus suddenly placed in the midst of my own people. Father Paul was a native of Vienna, and the two counts, Berchtold and Salm Reifferscheit, were Bohemian cavaliers. As soon as I had completely recovered from the fatigues of my journey, and had collected my thoughts, I passed a whole night in the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But besides attack, the Germans had also a problem of defence to engage their attention. And, curiously enough, it appears to have been particularly knotty in Austria. At that moment Count Berchtold was Minister of Foreign Affairs in name, but Count Tisza, the Hungarian Premier, was the man who thought, planned and acted for the Habsburg Monarchy.
These two statements were made by Count Berchtold in reply to precise questions put to him by M. Dumaine, under instructions from his Government.
But this was the very thing which the controllers of Austrian foreign policy the phantom Minister Berchtold, the sinister clique in the Foreign Office, and the Magyar oligarchy, led by that masterful reactionary, Count Tisza, the Hungarian Premier were anxious to avoid. Salonica still remained the secret Austrian objective, and Serbia the main obstacle to the realisation of this dream.
Later in the same month Count Berchtold startled Europe with his 'progressive decentralization' scheme of reform for Macedonia. The Bulgarian army was fully prepared for the fray, and the autumn manoeuvres had permitted the concentration unobserved of a considerable portion of it, ready to strike when the time came. Mobilisation was ordered on September 30, 1912.
The German Government believed that the Serbian propaganda would annihilate Austria-Hungary, and hoped, moreover, that her last faithful ally would experience a political renaissance as the result of her chastisement of Serbia. That is why they gave Count Berchtold a free hand, in the belief that Count Bülow's success over the Bosnian crisis could be repeated.
The fate of the proposals put forward by His Majesty's Government for the preservation of peace is recorded in the White Paper on the European Crisis . On the 28th July I saw Count Berchtold and urged as strongly as I could that the scheme of mediation mentioned in your speech in the House of Commons on the previous day should be accepted as offering an honourable and peaceful settlement of the question at issue.
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