assages
and as soon as they have shown that the remarks were actually made by
the said officials.

The Austro-Hungarian Government regarded this reply as unsatisfactory
and inadequate; they withdrew their Minister from Belgrade the same
evening, and on July 28th declared war on Servia. Meanwhile they
published a long official explanation[174] of the grounds on which the
Servian reply was considered inadequate; in it they criticized and found
unsatisfactory every single article of the reply, except that to demand
No. 8. It is not worth while to analyze the whole of this; one sample
may be sufficient. Sir Edward Grey commented on demand No. 5 and pointed
out[175] that it

'would be hardly consistent with the maintenance of Servia's
independent sovereignty, if it were to mean, as it seemed that it
might, that Austria-Hungary was to be invested with a right to
appoint officials who would have authority within the frontiers of
Servia.'

Obviously he was in doubt about the meaning and scope of this demand,
and the next was equally vague. The Servian reply to these two demands
was necessarily guarded: yet the Austro-Hungarian Government treated
this as deliberate misrepresentation:--

'The international law, as well as the criminal law, has nothing to
do with this question; it is purely a matter of the nature of state
police which is to be solved by way of a special agreement. The
reserved attitude of Servia is therefore incomprehensible, and on
account of its vague general form it would lead to unbridgeable
difficulties.

...

'If the Servian Government misunderstands us here, this is done
deliberately, for it must be familiar with the difference between
"enquete judiciaire" and simple police researches. As it desired to
escape from every control of the investigation which would yield, if
correctly carried out, highly undesirable results for it, and as it
possesses no means to refuse in a plausible manner the co-operation
of our officials (precedents for such police intervention exist in
great number), it tries to justify its refusal by showing up our
demands as impossible.'[176]

It would have been fairer to Servia to assume that there had been a
genuine misunderstanding, and that the explanation here given by Austria
might prove satisfactory to Servia, as the Italian Minister for Foreign
Affairs suggested.[177] The persistent refus