Bernadotte E. Schmitt

July 1914: Thirty Years After

ON SUNDAY, June 28, I9I4, the Archduke Francis IVerdinand, nel)hew of the Emperor Francis Joseph an(l heir to the throne of AustriaItungary, and his wife the Duchess of lffohenberg were assassinatecl at Sarayevo, the capital of 13osnia-Herzogovina. The crime was the culminating incident in the long quarrel between AustriaI-tungary and Serbia and provided the occasion for the war of I 9I 4-I 8. In July I9I4 not much was known about the circumstances of the crime except that the assassin and his accomplices had been arme(l in Belgrade by minor officials of the Serbian government and smuggled across the frontier. The Austro-TIuIlgarian government laid the

Italian Diplomacy, 1939-1941

FOR a generation the study of the recent diplomatic history of Europe has been handicapped by the lack of an official compilation of Italian documents corresponding to British documents on the origins of the war 1898-1914, Die Grosse Politik der Europdischen Kabinette 18711914 and similar Austrian, French, and Russian publications. More than once the Fascist government of Italy let it be understood that such a work was being prepared, but nothing hadappeared when the second world war broke out in September 1939. It was surely ironical that Luigi Albertinis magnificent Le origini della guerra de 19142 had to be written without benefit of the Italian diplomatic correspondence, so that Albertini was in large measure forced to interpret Italian policy from the documents of other powers (which may partly explain why he was often highly critical of that policy). Only after the close of the second world war was the decisive step taken to proceed with the publication of the foreign office files from the establishment of the kingdom in 1861 to the overthrow of the Fascist regime in 1943. Probably the person chiefly responsible was the late Count Sforza, who was foreign minister from 1947 to 1950 and who, during the years of exile, had often lamented the lack of Italian documents for the period 1871-1914. The enterprise has been entrusted to a commission under the presidency of Senator Alessandro Casati, with Professor Mario Toscano, of the University of Cagliari, as vice-president and executive officer. Nine well-known professors of history and Ambassador Augusto Rosso complete the commission. Nine series are planned, four for the period 1861-1914, one for the first world war, three for the years 1918-39, and one for the second world war. The number of volumes projected is not indicated, but Series

July 1914 Once More

A LTHOUGH July 1914 now seems as remote as the middle ages, the great crisis still retains a considerable interest for historians and publicists. Thanks to the opening of archives after 1919 and to the publication of biographies and autobiographies of innumerable persons, great and small, the record of what happened between the murder at Sarayevo on June 28 and the outbreak of a general European war five weeks later is extraordinarily full-so full, indeed, that much more is known about this crisis than about the circumstances leading up the the Crimean war of 1854 or the Franco-German war of 1870. The hectic exchanges between the chancelleries after the presentation of the Austrian ultimatum on July 23 provide a complete picture of the technique of diplomacy; the vacillations of monarchs and the hesitations of cabinets remind us that politics are determined by human decisions and are not preordained; the analysis and weighing of the controversial evidence and the fitting-together of the jigsaw puzzle provided by the thousands of telegrams sent by distracted ministers and ambassadors offers the historian an opportunity to exercise his most critical powers. Finally, those who have grown used to affirming, on the basis of Gallup or Fortune polls, that the public thinks thus and so, can try their hands at the estimation of opinion when almost the only evidence is supplied by newspaper editorials and the ipse dixit of this or that politician. Not many syntheses of the voluminous materials have been made,2 and none since the publication of the Russian (1934) and the French (1937) documents for the period of the crisis. It was, therefore, high time for someone to fit these new papers into the picture, and Herr von Wegerer has earned

Russia and the War

DIE INTERNATIONALEN BEZIEHUNGEN IM ZEITALTER DES IMPERI ALISMUS. DOKUMENTE AUS DEN ARCHIVEN DER ZARISCHEN UND DER PROVISORISCHEN REGIERUNG, 1878-1917. Reihe I: Das Jahr 1914 bis zum Kriegsausbruch. (International Relations in the Epoch of Imperialism. Documents from the Archives of the Tsarist and Provisional Governments, 1878-1917. Series One: The Year 1914 up to the Outbreak of War.) Authorized German edition, edited by Otto Hoetzsch for the Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Studium Osteuropas. Berlin: Hob bing, 1931-1934, 5 vols., M. 42 per vol.*