In Europe

‘total’, and stating the need to ‘contain the conflict’.
    On Monday, 27 July, the paper reports on British attempts to restore peace. The mutual alliances are not nearly as binding as was later suggested, and the diplomats still have plenty of room to manoeuvre. Germany, for example, is in no way obliged to come to Austria's assistance in this matter. Russia need not support Serbia through thick and thin. Britain was not at all bound to enter the war for the sake of Belgium.
    The first map of a possible theatre of war is published on Tuesday, 28 July. Rumours are circulating about Russian mobilisation and a possible German counter-mobilisation.
    The next day, the
Neue Freie Presse
prints the text of Emperor Franz Josef's declaration of war against Serbia: ‘To my peoples’. Behind the scenes, the danger of this crisis has now fully sunk in. Among the French there is a growing fear that Germany will now march against them too. After all, an attack on Russia – according to the Franco-Russian convention of 1892 – also constitutes an attack on France.
    Thursday, 30 July: Germany and Great Britain are still hoping to convince Austria and Russia to halt the mobilisation.
    On Friday, 31 July, reports come in concerning a general mobilisation in Russia and German ultimata to France and Russia.
    On Saturday, 1 August, the headline of the morning edition reads: ‘
Die Monarchie und das verbündete Deutschland in Waffen
’. Germany, along with Austria, is mobilising against the Russians. France receives a German ultimatum: the country must declare its neutrality within eighteen hours. A French mobilisation will mean ‘immediate war’.
    At the bottom of the same page, Stefan Zweig writes of his hurriedreturn to Vienna from Ostend: ‘The beach and the sea. People grabbing papers, tossing them open, the pages struggling in the wind, to find the reports. Only the reports! For the rest is impossible to read, in these French papers: it is too painful, it excites, it embitters … French, the language people have used for years with love and loftiness, suddenly sounds belligerent.’
    On Sunday, 2 August, the paper reports that there has been an exchange of telegrams between Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas. The desperate texts would be made public only later: ‘I understand fully how difficult it is for you and your government to defy the power of your public's opinion. That is why, because of the hearty and tender friendship that has bound us so strongly for so long, I am applying my greatest influence to compel the Austrians …’ Signed: Cousin Willy.
    ‘I can see that within a very short time I shall have to bow to the pressure that is being applied to me, and that I will be forced to take extreme measures that will lead to war. In an attempt to prevent the calamity of a European war, I therefore beg you, in the name of our old friendship, to do whatever you can to keep our allies from going too far …’ Signed: Cousin Nicky.
    On Monday, 3 August, the morning edition opens with Germany's declaration of war on Russia. France mobilises. The Russian diplomatic mission leaves Berlin. Along the Russian-German border, the first hostilities are reported. The first strange rumours start flowing in as well. ‘A French airplane has dropped a bomb on Nuremberg. This is behaviour unworthy of a cultured nation. Even in war, there are limits to the decent use of force.’
    Two days later, in the evening edition: the British Empire declares war on the German Empire. Diplomatic relations end.
    Within a few days, all the switches have been thrown. Everything is ready for the Great European War, 1914–45.
    Let us take one good, close look. On the right side of the uniform's collar, beside the general's star, we see a hole several millimetres in diameter. That is all. The rest of the uniform is covered in bloodstains. Rips in the front of the coat and the sleeves bear witness to the physicians’ panic, to the attempts to save what can still be saved.
    Franz Ferdinand's sky-blue uniform is still on display in a glass case in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna. The same hall contains the green and black open touring car in which the heir to the Habsburg throne and his wife Sophie were sitting as they made their tour of Sarajevo, a huge, tinny thing that resembles an old jalopy from a cartoon.
    Gavrilo Princip and his five romantic school friends had spread out along the quay that morning, to murder the hated symbol