Abstract
On 28 June 1914 the unpopular heir-apparent to an ancient but unsteady throne was shot dead in a backward provincial capital of the empire he expected some day to inherit. In these inglorious cir cumstances began the final chain of events which prefaced the Great War.1 Archduke Franz Ferdinand was brutally murdered by Serbian- trained nationalists, whose transparent plot gave Austria-Hungary the reason she sought to crush Serbia, drive back Russian ambitions in the Balkans and attempt a consolidation of her tottering and disparate empire. With full German support, she moved, but only very slowly. Revealing before the world what she considered to be the conclusive proofs of Serbian perfidy, on 23 July she issued to Belgrade an ultimatum designed to be a made-to-order causus belli. Acting finally a full month after the terrible event, Austria-Hungary had waited too long in carrying out her plan to wage a punitive war while world opinion was still on her side. She stood virtually alone, except for her constant friend, Germany.
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Notes and References
See Joachim Remak, Serajevo, The Story of a Political Murder (New York, 1959).
Vladamir Dedijer, The Road to Serajevo (New York, 1966), for the place of the assassination in the coming of the World War.
The Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections, 1852–1927, (London, 1928) vol. II, pp. 10,12 and 25–6.
Paul Hayes, The Twentieth Century, 1880–1939 (London, 1970) p. 169.
See Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York, 1967).
Sir Philip Magnus, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (London, 1959) pp. 276–7.
See also George H. Casser, Kitchener: Architect of Victory (London, 1977) pp. 170–77.
Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill As I Knew Him (London 1959) p. 257.
A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (London, 1965) p. 8.
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1914–1918, vol. I (London, 1923) p. 253.
Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, 1892–1916, vol. II (London, 1925) p. 68.
Duncan Crow, A Man of Push and Go: The Life of George Macauley Booth (London, 1965) p. 137.
Sir George Arthur, The Life of Lord Kitchener, vol. III (London, 1920) p. 265.
See John Morton Osborne, The Voluntary Recruiting Movement in Britain, 1914–1916 (New York, 1982) ch. 1.
See the War Office Regulations for Recruiting for the Regular Army and the Special Reserve (London, 1912).
The Kitchener Divisions were numbered 9 to 26, and 30 to 41. Twenty-two of these served their entire wartime duty on the Western Front. See Howard Green, The British Army in the First World War (London, 1968) p. 63.
Gen. The Rt Hon. Sir Nevil Macready, Annals of an Active Life (London, 1925) vol. I, p. 245. The sole defence among contemporary historians of Kitchener’s decision to raise the New Armies independently is found in Casser, Kitchener, pp. 199–201.
Basil W. Williams, Raising and Training the New Armies (London, 1918) p. 6.
A. B. Dearie, The Labour Cost of the World War to Great Britain, 1914–1918 (London, 1922) p. 8.
The minutes of the various meetings of the main and sub-committees of the PRC are preserved in the British Library, Add. MSS. 54192. See Roy Douglas, ‘Voluntary Enlistment in the First World War and the Work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee’, Journal of Modern History, December 1970.
For the pioneering role of advertising professionals in the recruitment campaigns both before and during the War, see Eric Field, Advertising: The Forgotten Years (London, 1959) pp. 27–30. All reactions to the publicity campaign of those who supported enthusiastic pursuit of the War were not positive. See Oliver, Ordeal by Battle, pp. 256–8.
The Parliamentary Labour Party formed its own recruiting committee, which merged with the PRC in October 1915. Perhaps the most colourful recruiter was Horatio Bottomley, editor and proprietor of the jingoistic John Bull and, for a time, an independent MP. He was the darling of the patriotic working class for most of the War period, and his rallies invariably raised large sums in contributions ‘for the lads’ — which frequently never left Bottomley’s pockets. He later was tried, convicted and imprisoned for fraud. See J. Symons, Horatio Bottomley (London, 1955).
Diary entry of 25 August 1914, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill (London, 1973) companion vol. III, part 2, p. 54. Charles Hobhouse noted in his diary on the same day: I said a proposal of F.E. Smith to explain, through M.P.’s, the reasons for … the war should be accepted and put into force now. If it caught on K. would get a second 100,000 voluntarily and then we could fall back on conscription. However, the P.M. was determined that only his eloquence and that of Grey could rouse the country to a sense of duty and peril, and that neither could spare time for speeches. Edward David (ed.), Inside Asquith’s Cabinet: From the Diaries of Charles Hobhouse (London, 1977) pp. 184–5.
The Prime Minister’s correspondence with Miss Stanley is revealing both about him and those whom he knew. He kept virtually nothing back from her, and she was a loyal guardian of his secrets. His letters to her have recently been published: see Michael and Eleanor Brock (eds) H. H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley (Oxford, 1983).
See R. J. Q. Adams, Arms and the Wizard (London, 1978) ch. 2, for this committee stage of recognition of the munitions shortage.
W. A. S. Hewins, The Apologia of an Imperialist: Forty Years of Empire Policy (London, 1929) vol. II, p. 21.
See the excerpts ‘copied from an old diary’ of Austen Chamberlain, entry of 14 May 1915, Austen Chamberlain Papers, AC 12/37. See also Sir Charles Petrie, The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Sir Austen Chamberlain, K.G., P.C., M.P. (London, 1940) vol. II, p. 20.
Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth, Northcliffe (London, 1959) p. 475.
This memorandum is printed in Viscount French, 1914 (London, 1919) pp. 358–61.
Fisher, having addressed the envelope in his unmistakable hand, mailed an old cutting from the Pall Mall Gazette to Bonar Law stating that ‘Lord Fisher was received in audience of the King and remained there about half an hour’, which the latter received on Saturday 15 May. Lord Beaverbrook, Politicans and the War (London, 1960) pp. 105–6.
In this regard, see Gerald Henry Starbuck Jordan, ‘The Politics of Conscription in Britain, 1905–1916’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 1974, pp. 85–6; and Hazlehurst, Politi cians at War, pp. 265–6.
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Challenge of War, 1914–1916, vol. III (London, 1971) p. 447.
Ian Colvin, Sir Edward Carson (London, 1933) vol. III, p. 51.
Paul Guinn, British Strategy and Politics, 1914 to 1918 (Oxford, 1965) p. 85.
Beatrice Webb’s Diaries, 1912–1924, ed. Margaret I. Cole (London, 1952) pp. 37–8.
In this regard, see C. J. Wrigley, David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement, Peace and War (Hassocks, Sussex, 1976) ch. 8, and Adams, Arms and the Wizard, chs 6 and 7.
Humbert Wolfe, Labour Supply and Regulation (London, 1923) p. 15.
Trevor Wilson, The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911–1928 (London, 1970) p. 128.
The Rt Hon. Christopher Addison, Politics from Within (London, 1924) vol. I, p. 86.
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© 1987 R. J. Q. Adams
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Adams, R.J.Q., Poirier, P.P. (1987). The Lamps Go Out. In: The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain, 1900–18. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08787-7_4
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