Thirdly, the part of Austria-Hungary is perfectly clear.  She was determined now, as in 1913, to have out her quarrel with Serbia, at the risk of a European war.  Her guilt is clear and definite, and it is only the fact that we are not directly fighting her with British troops that has prevented British opinion from fastening upon it as the main occasion of the war.

But this time, quite clearly, Austria was backed by Germany.  Why this change in German policy?  So far as the Kaiser himself is concerned, there can be little doubt that a main cause was the horror he felt at the assassination of the Archduke.  The absurd system of autocracy gives to the emotional reactions of an individual a preposterous weight in determining world-policy; and the almost insane feeling of the Kaiser about the sanctity of crowned heads was no doubt a main reason why Germany backed Austria in sending her ultimatum to Serbia.  According to Baron Beyens, on hearing the news of the murder of the Archduke the Kaiser changed colour, and exclaimed:  “All the effort of my life for twenty-five years must be begun over again!"[3] A tragic cry which indicates, what I personally believe to be the case, that it has been the constant effort of the Kaiser to keep the peace in Europe, and that he foresaw now that he would no longer be able to resist war.

So far, however, it would only be the war between Austria and Serbia that the Kaiser would be prepared to sanction.  He might hope to avoid the European war.  And, in fact, there is good reason to suppose that both he and the German Foreign Office did cherish that hope or delusion.  They had bluffed Russia off in 1908.  They had the dangerous idea that they might bluff her off again.  In this connection Baron Beyens records a conversation with his colleague, M. Bollati, the Italian Ambassador at Berlin, in which the latter took the view that

at Vienna as at Berlin they were persuaded that Russia, in spite of the official assurances exchanged quite recently between the Tsar and M. Poincare, as to the complete preparations of the armies of the two allies, was not in a position to sustain a European war and would not dare to plunge into so perilous an adventure.

Baron Beyens continues:—­

At Berlin the opinion that Russia was unable to face a European war prevailed not only in the official world and in society, but among all the manufacturers who specialized in the construction of armaments.  M. Krupp, the best qualified among them to express an opinion, announced on the 28th July, at a table next mine at the Hotel Bristol, that the Russian artillery was neither good nor complete, while that of the German army had never been of such superior quality.  It would be folly on the part of Russia, the great maker of guns concluded, to dare to make war on Germany and Austria in these conditions.[4]

But while the attitude of the German Foreign Office