CHAPTER FIFTY 



RETURNING from Wales by way of Cambridge, on 

 Sunday, August 2, we stopped for a few hours with 

 Dr. and Mrs. Oppenheim. During the past week 

 war clouds had been gathering rapidly over the Con- 

 tinent, but Great Britain did not as yet feel vitally 

 concerned. Diplomatic contentions were no novelty 

 in European history, and the storm might blow over 

 as it had in 1908 and 1911. If not, the professor and 

 I both expressed the hope that England would not 

 be involved. But nobody, not even certain members 

 of the Cabinet with whom I afterward discussed the 

 matter, knew whether confidential agreements ex- 

 isted between Sir Edward Grey and the French 

 ministry. 



The murder of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of The s ara - 

 Austria, made the way to war easier, as furnishing J ^ m 

 alleged justification for the attack on Serbia a 

 move certain to be resented by Russia. Whether or 

 not this crime was planned by Tisza, Tschirsky, and 

 Forgach the trio who wrote the Austrian ultima- 

 tum through the use of agents provocateurs, as 

 plausibly asserted by Mr. H. Wickham Steed, I can- 

 not say; but Hincovich, the Croatian attorney who 

 represented the victims of the Friedjung trial at 

 Zagreb, told me he believed it to be so. 1 Certainly 



l The story of "the pact of Konopischt," as reported in the London press 

 by Mr. Steed, though unverified, is at least plausible. Konopischt in Styna 

 was the summer residence of the Archduke, and at his villa there he developed 

 a wonderful rose-garden worth going far to see. In the spring of 1914, therefore, 

 Kaiser Wilhelm and Admiral Tirpitz paid him a more or less quiet visit, ostensibly 



C633 3 



