The Archduke Heir Apparent was the victim of Greater Serbia’s aspirations; but these aspirations, which led to the breaking away of our Southern Slav provinces, would not have been suppressed, but, on the contrary, would have largely increased and asserted themselves, and would have strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of other peoples within the Monarchy.

Lightning at night reveals the country for a second, and the same effect was produced by the shots fired at Sarajevo.  It became obvious that the signal for the fall of the Monarchy had been given.  The bells of Sarajevo, which began to toll half an hour after the murder, sounded the death knell of the Monarchy.

The feeling among the Austrian people, and especially at Vienna, was very general that the outrage at Sarajevo was a matter of more importance than the murder of an Imperial prince and his wife, and that it was the alarm signal for the ruin of the Habsburg Empire.

I have been told that during the period between the assassination and the war, warlike demonstrations were daily occurrences in the Viennese restaurants and people’s parks; patriotic and anti-Serbian songs were sung, and Berchtold was scoffed at because he could not “exert himself to take any energetic steps.”  This must not be taken as an excuse for any eventual mistakes on the part of the leaders of the nation, for a leading statesman ought not to allow himself to be influenced by the man in the street.  It is only to prove that the spirit developed in 1914 appears to have been very general.  And it may perhaps be permitted to add this comment:  how many of those who then clamoured for war and revenge and demanded “energy,” would, now that the experiment has totally failed, severely criticise and condemn Berchtold’s “criminal behaviour”?

It is, of course, impossible to say in what manner the fall of the Monarchy would have occurred had war been averted.  Certainly in a less terrible fashion than was the case through the war.  Probably much more slowly, and doubtless without dragging the whole world into the whirlpool.  We were bound to die.  We were at liberty to choose the manner of our death, and we chose the most terrible.

Without knowing it, we lost our independence at the outbreak of war.  We were transformed from a subject into an object.

This unfortunate war once started, we were powerless to end it.  At the conference in London the death sentence had been passed on the Empire of the Habsburgs and a separate peace would have been no easier a form of death than that involved in holding out at the side of our Allies.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Supposed to be the Counts Berchtold, Tisza and Stuergkh and General Conrad von Hohendorf.

[2] See Appendix, p. 325.

[3] See page 275.

CHAPTER II

KONOPISCHT