Final Service (I): War Finance, 1914–1916

Abstract

As the international crisis deepened in summer 1914, Ribot maintained hope that Germany and Russia would not push the Serbian issue to the point of European war.¹ Previous Balkan crises, after all, had been resolved pacifically among the great powers. Yet, since the local Balkan conflicts in 1912–1913, Ribot had sensed the altered climate of European opinion, had become aware that a European war appeared imminent. His diplomatic informants impressed the possibility upon him, and, with the greater fearfulness brought by age, the vision haunted his thoughts. Prior to Paléologue’s departure for the St. Petersburg embassy in February 1914, Ribot repeated to him the need for prudence. But the ambassador-elect’s statement of the riddle — how to urge diplomatic caution while at the same time encouraging Russian military preparations — met with only Ribot’s “tragic silence.” Ribot did not want to fight for purely Russian interests, but Paléologue reminded him that there were now only interests of the rival alliance systems to consider,² the unintended consequences of the Franco-Russian Alliance which Ribot had negotiated in 1892. In the first days of August 1914, the rival alignments worked themselves out with deadly logic, and the great European war began.