This decision, urged by the generals, was checked only by the impassioned pleas of Sazonov and Kokovtsov. Kokovtsov’s account, the most detailed and the most familiar, is an exaggerated contrast of bloodthirsty soldiers to peace-loving statesmen. Ernest R. May interprets the incident as manifesting the structural weakness of Russia’s decision-making process. May argues that bureaucratic infighting encouraged concealing information—in this case the information that no one at the meeting, civilian or military, actually wished or intended to start a war in support of Serbia’s regional pretensions.44 But the conference did not take place in a vacuum.
France had, on the whole, remained conciliatory in its direct relations with Germany after 1906. The republic’s long-time ambassador to Berlin, Jules Cambon, consistently and successfully warned his government against overreacting to the kaiser’s bluster. This, however, did not portend rapprochement. A reviving French nationalism was becoming an increasingly powerful force for anti-German sentiments and policies. Relations between the business and financial communities strained as they came into direct competition in the Near East. The French foreign office included a new generation of fire-eaters: young Germanophobes permanently convinced of Germany’s ultimately evil intentions. Moreover, if the ententes of 1904 and 1907 had considerably improved France’s diplomatic position, they were by no means ironclad guarantees. French diplomats recognized the instrumental character of their British connection. They retained enough respect for the German foreign office not to discount the possibility of Anglo-German rapprochement. The Franco-Russian relationship also seemed far more fragile in Paris than it appeared to Berlin, especially, in the minds of many professional diplomats, because it had to be defended against Radical politicians who dominated the cabinets after 1906, and tended to regard Tsarist Russia as morally and politically disgusting, an unreliable creditor and an ally from stark necessity. A major goal of French foreign policy in the three years before the outbreak of world war was to exercise a greater degree of control over her increasingly wayward eastern ally. This in turn meant maintaining, even enhancing, ties of friendship and good will45
This attitude was strengthened and supported by the evolution of the French army’s strategic and tactical doctrines after Joseph Joffre’s appointment as chief of staff in 1911. Joffre’s commitment to the offensive as the only way to break an enemy’s power and will was significant in view of the confidence he enjoyed in cabinet and parliament alike as a symbol of Republican virtue in uniform. Revised under his supervision, French strategy increasingly focussed on an all-out attack against Germany, an attack geographically limited to Lorraine only because Joffre’s repeated proposals to include south Belgium were rejected as fatal to France’s British connection.
Britain’s insistance that a pre-emptive French move into Belgium would result in a British declaration of neutrality only highlighted France’s concern for the military strength of the Dual Alliance. French prospects for success might not depend entirely upon the diversion of German troops to other theaters. They would, however, be significantly enhanced. This fact helps explain the optimism expressed by the French general staff in the summer of 1912 when considering the prospect of general war over the Balkans. With a good part of Austria’s army presumably pinned down by the forces of the League, with the bulk of Germany’s troops destined for the western theater, French experts reasoned that Russia should have excellent chances for victory in both Galicia and East Prussia—victories that would force Germany to reduce her strength on the French front and facilitate a decisive French breakthrough.46
France’s premier and foreign minister, Raymond Poincaré, was hardly interested in giving Russia a free hand in the Balkans or anywhere else. But his fear of German intentions temporarily outweighed his fear of Russian behavior. Far from concealing the soldiers’ potentially explosive vision, Poincarè not only circulated it to his ambassadors, but informed the Russian envoy in Paris. That man was Izvolsky, whose fall from office had been cushioned by comfortable exile to the Quai d’Orsay. Still smarting over his humiliation in 1908, he was hardly likely to refrain from passing the information to his successor.47
Lest the implication be mistaken in Berlin and Vienna, Russia’s Grand Duke Nicholas was France’s guest at her grand maneuvers in September. The duke’s entourage, particularly his wife, a Montenegran princess, indulged in a spate of anti-German outbursts as extreme as anything heard at a French official function since the days of Boulanger. Senior Russian officers boasted to anyone within hearing that the military situation was highly favorable; all they needed to do was push the button—which they did in October and November. As late as December 26, War Minister V. A. Sukhomlinov described to the French military attaché’s adjutant his intention to rub Germany’s nose in Russia’s readiness for war—ironically, during a forthcoming official visit to celebrate the Russo-Prussian victory over Napoleon a century earlier.48
The war minister may have been seeking to impress his allies. He many have been the temporary victim of his own enthusiasm. But even if Sukhomlinov saw Russia’s partial mobilization as no more than a legitimate effort to take the current Balkan pot by raising the stakes, this kind of brinkmanship was fraught with risks against opponents who had put too much into the game not to call the bet.
III
Strategy did not yet determine policy in either France or Russia. By November, Poincaré was complaining that Izvolsky was misrepresenting his position, and insisting that France would support Russia militarily only should Austria and Germany attack her first.49 Sazonov for his part dispatched a series of stern warnings to the Balkan capitals that Russia was not prepared to make war in defense of small-state pretensions. As much to the point, he was increasingly receptive to suggestions that a great-power conference discuss the Balkan question in general, and the Austro-Serbian dispute in particular.50
Sazanov’s behavior was particularly welcome to Bethmann. It was clear that Germany could not afford simply to follow Austria’s lead in the Balkans.51 At the same time direct attempts at mediating between Russia and Austria were likely to do more harm than good. Austria’s growing weakness relative to her eastern neighbor might force Germany to throw enough extra weight on the Habsburg side of the scale to make her objectivity suspect. On the other hand Russian indecisiveness might generate a repetition of conditions leading to the March, 1909, démarche. Given these undesirable alternatives, Bethmann turned to London, pressing for direct cooperation on the Balkan issue—cooperation in organizing an international conference.52
Britain was distant and dubious. Cooperation on specific issues, according to Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, was welcome. It must not, however, become the first step in “a political understanding with Germany which would separate us from Russia and France, and leave us isolated while the rest of Europe would be obliged to look to Germany.” In particular the foreign office feared that a Russia again overcommitted in the Balkans might this time abandon the entente for good and all.53