This meeting was followed by a period of quiet waiting. For the sake of secrecy, and to Conrad’s consternation, little could be done to ready the Austro-Hungarian army for action. Tisza remained nettlesome. On the day after the council meeting he wrote to Franz Joseph, warning that an attack on Serbia “would, as far as can humanly be foreseen, lead to an intervention by Russia and hence to a world war.” He reverted to his original position that the demands to be made of Serbia should be “stiff but not impossible to meet, and that further action should be taken only if Serbia refuses.”
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