The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

Lichnowsky’s dispatch reached the Wilhelmstrasse at about the same moment as a message from Vienna informing the German government that Austria would declare war on Serbia the next day, or at the latest on July 29, Thereupon Bethmann-Hollweg committed either an incredible blunder, or — as Albertini and some other historians believe — an act of almost equally incredible duplicity. Acting upon instructions from the Kaiser, he forwarded to Vienna Sir Edward Grey’s suggestion about German good offices, but on his own initiative he omitted a key passage in the message he had received from the German Embassy in London which stressed the seriousness of the British warning, and he failed to indicate any official German endorsement of the suggestion; he merely asked for the Austrian views about it.