bia was deliberately framed in such a manner as to
be unacceptable by any State which valued its self-respect or prestige. The
military leaders desired war, while the Foreign Office, already committed
for years to a violently Serbophobe policy, was working hand in glove with
the German Ambassador Tschirschky, and with the very highest quarters in
Berlin. The German Government in its official case admits having given
Austria "a free hand against Serbia," while there are good grounds for
believing that the text of the Note was submitted to the German Emperor
and that the latter fully approved of (if he did not actually suggest) the
fatal time-limit of forty-eight hours, which rendered all efforts towards
peace hopeless from the outset.

The Austrian case against Serbia, as embodied in this Note, rested upon a
secret investigation in the prison of Sarajevo. The persistent rumours that
the assassins are _agents-provocateurs_, and that pressure of a somewhat
drastic kind was brought to bear upon them after their arrest, cannot of
course be accepted as proved. But the essential point to bear in mind
is the fact that the details of the Austrian "case," as embodied in the
notorious Note of July 23, originated in the same quarter as the previous
attempts to slander and discredit Serbia. Count Forgach, the arch-forger
of the Austrian Legation in Belgrade, was permanent Under-secretary in the
Foreign Office, and as Count Berchtold's right hand and prompter in Balkan
affairs, was directly responsible for the pronounced anti-Serb tendencies
which have dominated the foreign policy of the Dual Monarchy since the
rise of the Balkan League. As a Magyar nobleman with intimate Jewish
connections, Forgach was an invaluable link between Magyar extremist policy
and Berlin on the one hand and Salonica and Constantinople on the other.
In view of his record as the inspirer of the Vasic forgeries, we are amply
justified in declining to accept any "evidence" prepared by him and his
subordinates, and insisting upon a full and open trial of the murderers as
the only conceivable foundation for charges of complicity.

When all is said and done, however, the murder of the Archduke, though an
event of world-importance so far as the internal development and future
of the Dual Monarchy is concerned, is none the less a side-issue in the
Southern Slav question. This seeming paradox will not surprise those who
consider the currents of national life among the