War.

WITH THE ORIGINAL TELEGRAMS
AND NOTES.

Druck und Verlag: Liebheit & Thiesen, Berlin.

Foreign Office,
Berlin, August 1914.

On June 28th the Austro-Hungarian successor to the throne, Arch-Duke
Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were
assassinated by a member of a band of servian conspirators. The
investigation of the crime through the Austro-Hungarian authorities has
yielded the fact that the conspiracy against the life of the Arch-Duke
and successor to the throne was prepared and abetted in Belgrade with
the cooperation of Servian officials, and executed with arms from the
Servian State arsenal. This crime must have opened the eyes of the
entire civilized world, not only in regard to the aims of the Servian
policies directed against the conservation and integrity of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, but also concerning the criminal means which
the pan-Serb propaganda in Servia had no hesitation in employing for the
achievement of these aims.

The goal of these policies was the gradual revolutionizing and final
separation of the south-easterly districts from the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy and their union with Servia. This direction of Servias policy
has not been altered in the least in spite of the repeated and solemn
declarations of Servia in which it vouchsafed a change in these policies
toward Austria-Hungary as well as the cultivation of good and neighborly
relations.

In this manner for the third time in the course of the last 6 years
Servia has led Europe to the brink of a world-war.

It could only do this because it believed itself supported in its
intentions by Russia.

Russia soon after the events brought about by the Turkish revolution of
1908, endeavored to found a union of the Balcan states under Russian
patronage and directed against the existence of Turkey. This union which
succeeded in 1911 in driving out Turkey from a greater part of her
European possessions, collapsed over the question of the distribution of
spoils. The Russian policies were not dismayed over this failure.
According to the idea of the Russian statesmen a new Balcan union under
Russian patronage should be called into existence, headed no longer
against Turkey, now dislodged from the Balcan, but against the existence
of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. It was the idea that Servia should
cede to Bulgaria those parts of Macedonia which it had received during
the last Balcan war, in exchange for Bosnia and