“we [Germany] continued our mediatory efforts to the utmost
     and advised Vienna to make any possible compromise consistent
     with the dignity of the Monarchy.”

     [German “White Paper.”]

This would be more convincing if the German Foreign Office in giving other diplomatic documents had only added the text of the advice which it thus gave Vienna.

The same significant omission will be found when the same official defense states that on July 29 the German Government advised Austria “to begin the conversations with Mr. Sazonof.”  But here again the text is not found among the documents which the German Foreign Office has given to the world.  The communications, which passed between that office and its Ambassadors in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, are given in extenso, but among the twenty-seven communications appended to the German official defense it is most significant that not a single communication is given of the many which passed from Berlin to Vienna and only two that passed from Vienna to Berlin.

This cannot be an accident.  Germany has seen fit to throw the veil of secrecy over the text of its communications to Vienna, although professing to give the purport of a few of them.

Until Germany is willing to put the most important documents in its possession in evidence, it must not be surprised that the world, remembering Bismarck’s garbling of the Ems dispatch, which precipitated the Franco-Prussian war, will be incredulous as to the sincerity of Germany’s mediatory efforts.

Austria’s Case Against Servia.

To discuss the justice of Austria’s grievances against Servia would take us outside the documentary record and into the realm of disputed facts and would expand this discussion far beyond reasonable length.

Let us therefore suppose arguendo that our imaginary court would commence its consideration with the assumption that Austria had a just grievance against Servia, and that the murder of the Archduke on June 28, 1914, while in fact committed by Austrian citizens of Servian sympathies on Austrian soil, had its inspiration and encouragement in the political activities either of the Servian Government or of political organizations of that country.

The question for decision would then be not whether Austria had a just grievance against Servia, but whether having regard to the obligations which Austria, as well as every other country, owes to civilization, she proceeded in the right manner to redress her grievance.

On June 28, 1914, the Austrian Crown Prince was murdered at Serajevo.  For nearly a month there was no action by Austria, and no public statement whatever of its intentions.  The world profoundly sympathized with Austria in its new trouble, and especially with its aged monarch, who, like King Lear, was “as full of grief as years and wretched in both.”