GUEST BLOG: Professor Hans Fenske (1) The Allied Refusal of Peace Talks 1914–1919

This is the first of four guest blogs from Hans Fenske, Professor of Contemporary History at Freiburg University from 1977-2001 and author of Der Anfang vom Ende des alten Europa. (The Beginning of the End of Old Europe; The Allied Refusal of Peace Talks, 1914-1919.)

A War Germany did not want.

When handing over the peace treaty to the German delegation on 7 May 1919, French Prime Minister Clemenceau stated very brusquely that the most horrible war had been foisted on the Allies, and that now the time of reckoning had come. There would be no spoken negotiations; only remarks concerning the treaty in its entirety would be accepted if submitted in writing within two weeks. In his answer, German Foreign Minister Brockdorff-Rantzau rejected the accusation of exclusive responsibility and demanded that an impartial commission investigate the amount of guilt of all parties concerned.

The victorious Allied powers were not prepared to concede forming an impartial commission to look at the facts, but there were a number of neutral scholars who in their academic work reached a view appropriate to the facts. As early as 1914, the renowned American Professor of Law, John William Burgess declared – after having studied the Blue Books presented by the warring parties – that the Entente held a far greater share of responsibility for the war than Germany and the Danube Monarchy. The Swiss scholar Ernst Sauerbeck confirmed this view in 1919. According to his findings, the Entente had unleashed the war without need and turned it into what it became – the tomb of entire nations. He also accused the victorious powers of having, by means of the Versailles peace treaty, allowed the 1914-1918 war to grow into the direst doom that has possibly ever threatened the world; that is the War that began in 1939.

In addition, experts from Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, who in 1927 presented their expertise in a volume published by a Norwegian committee investigating the issue of war guilt, assessed the share of guilt of the Central Powers as low. According to Hermann Aall, the committee’s secretary, Russia had provoked the war, and Great Britain played a decisive role in its outbreak. Axel Drolsum of the University of Oslo stated that Germany in 1914 had been the only nation to have tried everything it could to keep the peace, but that it failed due to the will of the other powers to make war.

Moreover, please let reference be made to one voice from a victorious country. In 1924, the French journalist and former diplomat Alcide Ebray recommended a thorough revision of the Treaty of Versailles. He claimed that the Czarist Regime held the decisive share of war guilt, while Germany acted in favour of a conciliatory position in Vienna and St. Petersburg in 1914.

In Serbia, the radical party had been the decisive power since the bloody officers’ putsch back in 1903, during which the Royal couple had been murdered. This party pursued a decidedly anti-Austrian foreign policy which demanded that all Serbs be united within one state. The problem here was the fact that there were about as many Serbs living outside the country as within, particularly in the two provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Although they nominally still belonged to the Ottoman Empire, they had been under Austrian-Hungarian administration since the Congress of Vienna in 1878. When the Habsburg Empire annexed them in 1908 following an arrangement with Russia, there was a severe international crisis. When this was settled in March 1909, Serbia had to sign a treaty pledging to again maintain good neighbourly relations with the Danube Monarchy. But this did nothing to change Belgrade’s keen antagonism towards Vienna. First, however, Serbian activities were directed towards the South. The war against the Ottoman Empire started by Italy in 1911 to conquer Libya triggered Serbian talks with Bulgaria about whether to join arms against the Turks. After entering into an alliance, the two states started the campaign in the autumn of 1912. Together with Montenegro and Greece, they took away from the Ottoman Empire nearly its entire possessions on the Balkan during the First Balkan War.

This took place with the full assent of Russia, which wanted to get the Bosporus and the Dardanelles under its control and which therefore had a strong interest in effecting changes on the Balkans. Serbia enlarged its territory considerably towards the south. In November 1912, shortly after the beginning of the war, the French ambassador in Belgrade reported to Paris that Serbia was set on bringing down Austria at the first possible occasion. King Peter asked the Russian ambassador whether to enact the downfall the Habsburg Empire now, or whether to still wait. The Russian ambassador relayed this question to St. Petersburg, from where in February 1913 came the answer that Russia was not yet ready for a war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia should content itself with the present increase in territory for now, so that it could later, once the time was ripe, lance the Austrian-Hungarian abscess. Later, more statements of this kind were issued from St. Petersburg: Serbia would find its promised land in Austria-Hungary and should prepare itself for the inevitable battle.

When, in the summer of 1913, Serbia – together with Greece and Romania – turned against Bulgaria in a struggle over the recently conquered land, Russia backed Serbia; it clearly was a satellite of Russia.

At the beginning of 1914, the leadership in St. Petersburg saw Russia far better prepared for a war than the previous year. During a council of war, a decision was taken to use the upcoming war for occupying Constantinople and the Straits. The Russian military gazette expressly declared the Czarist Regime’s readiness for war, and in late March, the head of the military academy declared in front of officers that a war with the Triple Alliance was inevitable and would probably break out in the summer. The Belgian ambassador in St. Petersburg reported to Brussels at the beginning of June that it was to be expected that Russia would soon put its war tools to use. At the same time, Foreign Minister Sazonov exerted pressure in London to quickly conclude the marine convention about which negotiations had been going on for some time. Soon after, he travelled to Romania together with the Czar. There, he asked the Prime Minister how Romania would react should Russia see itself compelled by the events to start hostile actions.

St. Petersburg was well aware that in the case of a big European conflict, Russia would be firmly backed by France and Great Britain. A Russian-French alliance had been in effect since 1894. The British-French understanding about Egypt and Morocco of 1904 was amended from 1905 by firm military agreements made by the General Staffs, about which the Belgian military was kept informed. During his visit to England in September 1912, Sazonov was assured by the British Foreign Minister Grey that in the case of a German-French war, Great Britain would support France by sea and by land, and try to deliver as destructive a blow as possible to German predominance. For Grey, Germany’s strong economic growth presented a grave threat; its weakening was thus a definite necessity for him.

When the Serbian secret society “Unification or Death” planned the murder of Austrian heir apparent Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the head of the Serbian intelligence service, Dragutin Dimitrijević, leader of the putsch of 1903, asked the Russian military attaché, whether this plan was convenient. St. Petersburg sent its consent, although they should have been aware that the Danube monarchy would have no choice but to react harshly to the murder of their heir to the throne. Apparently, Russian leadership thought the moment had arrived to lance the Austrian-Hungarian abscess.

In mid-June, German Reich Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg asked the German ambassador in London to talk with Grey about securing European peace. If another crisis was to erupt in the Balkans, Russia might react more decisively  than before due to its comprehensive rearmament. Whether this would result in a European clash would depend entirely on Great Britain and Germany. If both states were to act as guarantors of peace, then war might be prevented. If not, any arbitrary marginal difference might light the war torch between Russia and Austria-Hungary. Grey’s response to the ambassador was placatory, but of course he did not tell him the truth.

After the Sarajevo murder on 28 June, Austrian Foreign Minister Berchtold and General Chief of Staff Hötzendorf argued for an immediate strike against Serbia. The Hungarian Prime Minister prevented this. They agreed to demand of Serbia absolute clarification about the crime, but to hand over the respective note only after the end of the impending French state visit to Russia. They were sure about German allegiance to Austria in case of complications; a high-level public servant had been given this assurance when visiting Berlin on 5 and 6 July. The relevant German decision makers agreed that Russia would not intervene, so that the conflict could remain localised. That was a crass misjudgement.

During their stay in St. Petersburg on 20 through 23 July, the French guests, President Poincaré and Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Viviani, repeated the assurance of absolute French solidarity in a war against Germany, often given before. Sazonov and Viviani agreed on 23 July that everything must be done to counter the Austrian demand as well as any request which might be construed as a meddling with Serbian independence. The Austrian note to Serbia called for an unequivocal condemnation of propaganda directed against the Danube Monarchy, and lodged claims as to how this should occur. It also asked for the participation of Austrian delegates in suppressing any subversive efforts directed against the Habsburg Empire, as well as in investigating the murder. An answer was expected within 48 hours, i.e. by the evening of 25 July.

At first, the Serbian council of ministers showed a strong penchant to accommodate this request, and maybe it might have been even more pronounced, had Vienna made reference in its note to the fact that after the murder of Serbian ruler Duke Michael Obrenović in 1868, a Serbian prosecutor had conducted examinations in the Danube Monarchy. A call back to St. Petersburg was answered with the admonition to remain firm, which caused a change in opinion. Thus Serbia mobilised its forces on the afternoon of 25 July and handed over a rather conciliatory answer three hours later. Only the Austrian involvement in suppressing the subversive efforts and in investigating the murder was denied. At once, the Danube monarchy cancelled its diplomatic relations with Serbia. On the same day, Berchthold had it stated in St. Petersburg that should a battle with Serbia be foisted on Austria, this would not be about territorial gain but about defence, and that Serbian sovereignty would not be touched.

Czar Nicholas II had informally started mobilisation directly after the departure of his French guests on 24 July; the respective measures did not go unnoticed by German observers. The British navy was made ready for war on 26 July, and France called back all vacationers to their respective units. Formal Russian mobilisation against Austria-Hungary was ordered on 29 July, complete one day later. The German Empire tried to mediate until the last minute. On 28 July, the day of the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia, Emperor Wilhelm II. advised Vienna to stop in Belgrade, and even on 31 July, he urgently asked the Czar to avert the doom now facing the entire civilised world. Peace in Europe might still be kept if Russia stopped military actions threatening Germany and Austria-Hungary. Since Nicholas II. did not cancel the mobilisation order, the German Empire informed Russia on the evening of 1 August that it regarded the state of war to have occurred. On 3 August, it also declared war on France, after efforts to receive a declaration of neutrality from France had remained unsuccessful.

This was intended as a pre-emptive measure. France could not be left to choose the moment for attack; after all, German plans for a war on two fronts envisaged first turning west. The breach of Belgian neutrality by Germany, which at that point was only nominal, gave Grey the welcome opportunity to lead Great Britain into war on 4 August. Up to that point, public opinion had predominantly been in favour of steering clear of the strife on the Continent. During the crisis, Grey had been very insincere about his intentions towards German diplomats, misleading most of his cabinet colleagues, the House of Commons and the general public.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (4): The Smoking Gun

The mortal remains of Sophie and Ferdinand were interred at Artstetten castle on 4 July. Nine days later Dr Friedrich von Wiesner, the Chief Austrian investigator, forwarded an interim report to Vienna containing three major points. Firstly, the Greater Serbia movement aimed to sever the Southern Slav region from Austria by revolutionary violence. He pointed an accusatory finger at the Serbian nationalist group Narodna Odbrana, stating that the Belgrade government had made no attempt to curb its activities. Secondly, von Wiesner unmasked Major Tankosić and ‘the Serbian official Ciganovic’ as the men responsible for training and supplying the assassins with weapons, and both the frontier authorities and the customs officers for smuggling them into Bosnia. These facts he deemed ‘demonstrable and virtually unassailable’. [1] He concluded by stating cautiously, that there was no conclusive proof at that time, that the Serbian Government had any knowledge of the assassination or had co-operated in preparing it. [2]

Dr von Wiesner’s oral report, delivered some two days later, was more comprehensive and came to a momentous conclusion. The Serbian government had known everything about the assassination. He had unearthed more evidence of Serbian complicity, but his telegrammed report of 13 July was destined to be hijacked and later grossly misrepresented by the American delegation at the War Guilt Commission in 1919. Their two most senior delegates, Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Counsellor James Scott Brown, deliberately chose a 31-word extract from Von Wiesner’s brief report which they claimed ‘proved’ that Austria had no evidence of Serbian involvement [3] Such deliberate falsification suited their cause. It was used as part of the post-war onslaught against Germany and Austria to lay the blame for the world war entirely on their shoulders. Lansing and Brown stand accused of deliberately falsifying history in order to malign the Austrian and German governments.

By October, when the Young Bosnians were brought to trial the Austrian authorities had overwhelming evidence of Serbian complicity. Despite this, the conspirators insisted in deflecting blame from Serbia. Under cross-examination, Princip was defiant: ‘I believe in unification of all South Slavs in whatever form of state and that it be free of Austria.’ Asked how he intended to realize his goal he responded: ‘By means of terror.’ [4] Although they had been trained in Serbia, the Young Bosnians had no knowledge of the influences that dictated policy further up the chain of command. Indeed, few if any within that chain knew who was empowering the next link. Princip and his group genuinely believed that they were striking a blow for freedom and emancipation and could not bring themselves to accept that they had been duped into literally firing someone else’s bullets.

The Austrian court did not accept their attempts to hold Serbia blameless. [5] The verdict was decisive, with the court correctly finding that the military commanders in charge of the Serbian espionage service collaborated in the outrage. Four of the assassination team were executed by hanging in February 1915, but the younger members, like Princip, were given prison sentences. He died in prison in 1918 from tuberculosis exacerbated by a botched amputation. Crucially, the trail of culpability had not been covered over.

Above all else, the Secret Elites had to ensure that no links could be traced from Serbia to Russia. Russian complicity in the Archduke’s death would have altered the balance of credibility for the Entente cause. All links to Sazonov in particular had to be airbrushed. That in turn meant that the web of intrigue between Serbia and Russia be cleansed. The outbreak of war in August slowed down this process, but only delayed the outcome.

Nicholai Hartwig, Russian ambassador to Serbia, died in Belgrade in very strange circumstances. On a visit to the Austrian ambassador, Baron von Giesel, on 10 July1914, Hartwig collapsed, allegedly from a massive ‘heart attack’. The Serbian press immediately published inflammatory articles accusing the Austrians of poisoning Hartwig while he was a guest at their legation. The Austrians, of course, knew from decoded diplomatic telegrams, that Hartwig was at the centre of intrigues against Austria-Hungary. [6] Was this an old-fashioned Roman-style act of retribution or, were the Secret Elite simply very fortunate that a fifty-seven year old diplomat dropped dead in the Austrian legation barely two weeks after the assassination in which he was complicit?

Denials echoed around Europe, no-where more vehemently than in Britain, where the Secret Elite had to vilify any suggestion that Russia was involved with internal Bosnian or Austro-Hungarian politics. The Times led the outcry;

‘The latest suggestion made in one of the Serbian newspapers is that M de Hartwig’s sudden death in the Austro-Hungarian Legation at Belgrade the other day was due to poison. Ravings of that kind move the contempt as well as the disgust of cultivated people, whatever their political sympathies may be.’ [7]

Ravings indeed. The Times, and those it represented, clearly wanted to squash such speculation. It was far too close to the truth. If the idea that Hartwig had been murdered because he was involved in the Archduke’s assassination gained credence, British public opinion would turn even sourer against Russia. At the request of the Serbian Government, Hartwig was buried in Belgrade in what was virtually a State funeral. Every notable Serbian, including the Prime Minister, attended. Officially Hartwig suffered death by natural causes. Unofficially, a very important link in the chain of culpability was buried along with his corpse.

Some three years later, with the tide of war turned violently against Serbia, Colonel Apis and the officers loyal to him were arrested. At a Serbian Court Martial held on the frontier at Salonika on 23 May 1917, Apis and eight of his associates were indicted on various trumped up charges, unrelated to Sarajevo, and sentenced to death, Two others were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Serbian High Court reduced the number of death sentences to seven and King Alexander commuted another four, leaving Apis and two others to face the firing squad. [8]

Colonel Apis effectively signed his own death warrant when he confessed to the Salonika court that he had enlisted men to carry out the assassination. ‘In agreement with Artamanov, the Russian military attaché, I hired Malobabic to organise Ferdinand’s murder upon his arrival in Sarajevo.’ [9] The explosive part of that statement was the opening phrase ‘in agreement with Artamanov’. His revelation of Russian involvement had to be silenced. Much to his own surprise, for Colonel Apis truly believed, right up to the moment of death that his contacts in England, France and Russia would intervene on his behalf, he was executed on 26 June 1917 by firing squad. [10] In reality, Apis was silenced; put to death by order of those who desperately needed to permanently bury the complicity of Russia in the Sarajevo assassination. [11] It was judicial murder.

By one means or another, the lower levels of the web of culpability were blown away. The Young Bosnians had in their naivety been willing sacrifices to a cause they never knew existed. Hartwig was dead. Murdered? Probably, but all that really mattered was that his voice would never be heard again. Our understanding of his role in managing the Russian intrigues has to remain, at best, incomplete. There was plenty to hide, and no doubt at all about Russian complicity. [12] The Soviet collection of diplomatic papers from the year 1914 revealed an astonishing gap.During the first days of the October Revolution in 1917, Hartwig’s dispatches from Belgrade for the crucial period between May and July, 1914 were removed by an unknown person from the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Three years dead and his was a voice they still had to gag. [13] Finally, Apis and his Black Hand associates were removed from any future enquiry or the temptation of a lucrative memoir. Blown away; all of them, in the expectation that the truth about their direct involvement would disappear in the confusion of war.

And yet the world has been asked to believe that the murder of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was carried out by a bunch of lucky amateurs who inadvertently set the world ablaze. What nonsense. Having failed to entice the Austrians and their German allies into an angry indiscretion over the Balkan wars, the Secret Elite laid a most devious trap, which also might well have come to nothing unless deceit had not been taken to an unprecedented level. Court historians have deliberately misrepresented the complex events of July 1914 and perpetuated the myth that after Sarajevo, world war was inevitable. Their stance is based on claims that the opposing Alliance systems, secret treaties and acceleration of armaments production in Europe were destined to end in war. The Kaiser, in their view, lusted for world domination, misled his people and deliberately used the Archduke’s assassination as an excuse to drag Europe into ‘Armageddon’.

These incredible concoctions gained credence over the twentieth century through deliberately falsified histories and received learning. Whoever challenged them was deemed to be a ‘revisionist’ or a ‘conspiracy-theorist’ and sometimes even a traitor. An official cloak of confusion was woven through the manipulations and misrepresentations presented as ‘evidence’ at Versailles in 1919, to deliberately and unfairly lay blame on the Kaiser and Germany. When that cloak is stripped away it is patently clear that it was not Germany that wanted war, or forced war on Europe in 1914. That particular infamy belongs to the Secret Elite in London.

[1] Friedrich von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol. 28 (1928), issue 4, p.632.
[2] Austrian Red Book No 17 quoted in Sidney B Fay, The Origins of the World War, vol.1., pp.6-7.
[3] von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, p.632.
[4] Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol. 28 (1928), issue 4, p.622.
[5] W.A. Dolph Owings, The Sarajevo Trial, Part 1, pp.527–30.
[6] Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, p.620.
[7] The Times, 16 July 1914.
[8] David MacKenzie, Apis, The Congenial Conspirator, pp.329 and 344–7.
[9] Ibid., pp.129-130.
[10] Vladimir Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, pp.398–400.
[11] Harry Elmer Barnes, Genesis of the World War, p.731.
[12] Victor Serge, ‘La Verité sur l’Attentat de Sarajevo’, in Clarte, no. 74, 1 May 1924.
[13] Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, p.513.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (3): Firing The Bullets

Archduke Ferdinand need not have been killed. Warnings about the perilous nature of his safety abounded. Despite this, the Governor of Bosnia, the Austrian General Potiorek, was determined that the visit would go ahead. Desperate pleas from the Chief of Police, who believed that the Archduke was in grave danger, were ignored. The very date of the visit, 28 June was particularly provocative. It was St Vitus Day, historically and emotionally significant to the Serbs, the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Poyle, (1389) the victory that unified the Serbian nation against the Turkish invader.

That alone should have been a warning. The Police chief’s fears were dismissed by the Governor and he was ridiculed by Sarajevo’s military committee when he requested a cordon of soldiers to line the streets as a precaution. He pleaded with them not to publish the route of the Archduke’s cavalcade through the city, but to no avail. Newspapers carried detailed notices of times and places to view the Archduke’s processional visit. [1] A request that additional police officers be brought in from the country was rejected because it would cost too much. Security measures were left in the hands of providence.

The conspirators, and there were seven in the Young Bosnian team, stood at intervals along the avenue called Appel Quay – or the avenue of Assassins as the Archbishop of Sarajevo would later dub it – and mingled freely with the crowds for an hour and a half before the Archduke’s arrival. Though Bosnia could boast a first-class political intelligence, no-one, no police officer, no undercover police agent, no vigilant citizen questioned them. [2]

The events of what might safely be deemed the world’s most devastating assassination have been well documented. A botched bomb-throwing left the Archduke shaken and stirred, but physically unmarked. Officials in the following car were not so lucky. His cavalcade stopped briefly before continuing to the Town Hall. Strained speeches made pretence that all was well. Despite the shameful outrage, troops were not called in from the barracks, nor additional police summoned for protection. Franz Ferdinand demanded to go to the hospital to see for himself how one of the governor’s assistants, wounded by the bomb-blast, was faring. [3] Incredibly, the cavalcade returned along the same ‘Avenue of Assassins’, from where the first bomb had been thrown, but turned into the wrong street. Potiorek ordered the driver to stop and reverse. In doing so, he placed the Archduke directly in front of young Princip who promptly shot both him and his unfortunate wife, Sophie. The police arrested Princip on the spot before he could use his cyanide.

The assassination succeeded, despite the amateurism of the conspirators, because the victim was more or less served up on a plate.  Governor Potiorek’s behaviour was astonishing. The car was on its way to the hospital (Franz Ferdinand had insisted on going there to see an assistant wounded in the bomb throwing) but Potiorek, with the  Archduke and  his wife now both badly wounded, ordered the driver to proceed to the Governor’s residence instead. Confused? We should be. Had Potiorek acted in shock, or did he know it was already too late? It was suggested at the time that Austria had set up the assassination deliberately in order to provoke a war. In the bitter rage of accusation and counter-claim that followed after 1914, all sides made allegations against each other. In the 1920s, and over the decades since, much evidence has come to light from documents that had been ‘lost’ or removed ‘unofficially’. There is now a huge body of diplomatic evidence that links Russia and Serbia to the assassination, [4] but none that supports the suggestion that the low-security visit of Archduke Ferdinand to Sarajevo was in some way organised with the intention of exposing him to the risk of assassination. Had the great crime gone to plan, all of the Young Bosnians should have committed suicide. They were expendable. Dead Bosnians tell no tales. The links in the chain of responsibility would have been broken. That was supposedly why the assassins had been supplied with the cyanide phials. The headline they sought was of a noble death-pact assassination which would leave the authorities completely bewildered, and the coffee-houses of Europe abuzz with revolutionary admiration. Cabrinovic, who threw the first bomb, immediately took the cyanide pill and leapt fifteen feet into the shallow River Miljacka. Police officers hauled him out of the mud-flat, vomiting uncontrollably. Arrested immediately after the shooting, Princip had no opportunity to swallow the cyanide.

The cyanide failed to be effective for any of the Young Bosnians. There was to be no self-directed mass martyrdom.  But what if the vials had been deliberately formulated with a dose of cyanide that was insufficient to kill?   In his book, Lord Milner’s Second War, John Cafferky poses the pertinent question; did Apis and the Serbian government want them taken alive so that they could be questioned by the authorities and the link with Serbia proved?  The whole point of the exercise, after all, was to provoke Austria into a war with Serbia.  [5]

With suspicious simplicity, the Austro-Hungarian authorities arrested and prosecuted all but one of the Sarajevo assassins, together with the agents and peasants who assisted them on their way. How they managed to track all of the alleged conspirators so quickly begs the question about how much they knew in advance. The major charge against the Young Bosnians was conspiracy to commit high treason which carried a maximum sentence of death. Within a few days of the assassination, the Austrians had set up a judicial investigation. They were convinced that the Young Bosnians had been equipped from Belgrade and that the plot had originated from there. What the Austrians wanted to know was the extent to which the Serbian government was directly involved. [6] The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry sent its top legal counsellor, Dr von Wiesner, to Sarajevo to investigate the crime.

[1] David James Smith, One Morning in Sarajevo: 28 June 1914, p.166.
[2] Vladimir Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, pp.317–19.
[3] Smith, One Morning in Sarajevo, p.193.
[4] Alexander, Count Hoyos, ‘Russia Chief Culprit in Precipitation of World War’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), p.628.
[5] John Cafferky, Lord Milner’s Second War, pp.193-208.
[6] Friedrich von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), pp.630–3.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (2): Making The Bullets

Colonel Apis’s organisation had infiltrated Mlada Bosna, the Young Bosnians, a revolutionary group whom they equipped and trained to carry out the Sarajevo Assassination. These young men were far more intellectual than the narrow chauvinistic Black Hand. They wanted to go beyond independence from Austria-Hungary, to change the primitive nature of Bosnian society. They challenged the authority of existing institutions of state, church, school and family and believed in socialist concepts; egalitarianism and emancipation of women. Young Bosnians stood for modernism, intellectualism and a brave new world. [1] They were spurred by revolution, not narrow nationalism, and under different circumstances would have been swept aside by Black Hand aficionados.

Apis knew just the man to organise and lead the assassination team, Danilo Ilić. He had worked as a school teacher and as a bank worker, but in 1913 and 1914 he lived with his mother, who operated a small boarding house in Sarajevo. Ilić was leader of the Serbian Black Hand terrorist cell in Sarajevo, and as such was known to Colonel Apis personally. He provided the perfect link between the two organisations. [2] Ilić was also a close friend of Gavrilo Princip, the student destined to fire the fatal shot.

Apis used three trusted Serb associates in planning the assassination. His right hand man, Major Tankosić, was in charge of guerrilla training, and brought the would-be assassins to a secret location in Serbia where his specific role was to ensure that the Young Bosnians knew how to handle guns and bombs effectively. He was tasked to teach them the art of the assassin and get them back over the border and into Sarajevo safely. The second, Rade Malobabić was the chief undercover operative for Serbian Military Intelligence. His name appeared in Serbian documents captured by Austria-Hungary during the war which describe the running of arms, munitions, and agents from Serbia into Austria-Hungary under his direction. [3] His assessment was that the Young Bosnians were capable of the task. The third Black Hand conspirator was Milan Ciganovic. He supplied the assassination team with four revolvers and six bombs from the Serbian army’s arsenal. Crucially, each was given a vial of cyanide to take after they had murdered the Archduke. Their suicides would ensure that the trail could not be traced back to Apis and Hartwig.

Ciganovic played an equally important dual role. He was a trusted confidant of the Serbian Prime Minister, Pasic, and was ultimately protected by him from the volcanic fall-out after Sarajevo. Critically, Ciganovic’s involvement meant that members of the Serbian government knew in advance about the proposed assassination. [4] and had time to consider the consequences. Yet in spite of this guilty knowledge, Pasic took no steps to arrest the conspirators or warn Austrian authorities of the impending disaster. [5]

Hartwig was the conduit to Sazonov and Isvolsky for updates on the conspirators. Through them, the Secret Elite were advised of the progress of their plans. Everything appeared to be running smoothly, but Serbian intrigues hit political turbulence at precisely the wrong moment. The unity of Serbia’s political, military and royal leaders, nestling behind the muscle of their Russian minders, had been a feature of Serbian success in the Balkan Wars. Prime Minister Pasic, Colonel Apis and Prince Alexander were all supported by Ambassador Hartwig towards the ambitions of a Greater Serbia. But suddenly, just days before the planned assassination, a power struggle erupted for control of the country. Apis attempted to organise a coup to dismiss Pasic, allegedly over a minor detail of precedence, but found that his power-base in the Serbian military had shrunk.

But the killer blow to Colonel Apis’s aspirations came from two external powers. Russia, more accurately the Sazonov/Isvolsky axis, would not countenance the removal of Prime Minister Pasic and his cabinet. Hartwig slapped down any notion of resignations. At the same time the French president, Poincare let it be known that a Serbian Opposition regime could not count on financial backing from Paris. [6] The King, caught between old loyalties and Russian pressure, withdrew from political life. He transferred his powers to Prince Alexander, a man who resented Apis’s authority in Serbian military circles.

Look again at these events. With the assassination just days away, the last thing that Sazonov, Isvolsky, Poincare and their Secret Elite masters in London would have entertained in June 1914 was a change of government in Serbia that did not owe its very existence to their power and money. Apis, the ultra-nationalist, was not a man to take orders. He had desperately wanted to attack Bulgaria in 1913, but Pasic (no doubt under instructions form Hartwig) had refused to sanction the order. [7] He was neither deferential to Prince Alexander, nor under Hartwig’s thumb. He knew that Pasic was weak and subservient to Russia. It was as if metaphoric scales had suddenly dropped from his eyes, and he understood for the first time that the Russians were exploiting him and his beloved Serbia for their own purposes.

Apis may also have had second thoughts based on his own prospects for survival. He had clearly shaken the ruling cabal in Serbia. Prime Minister Pasic knew about the intended assassination, and in consequence, the Cabinet had closed the borders to known or suspected assassins. Was this self-preservation on their part, an attempt to make it look like the Serbian government had nothing to do with the shooting? Hartwig too knew details of the plans, but never imagined they could be traced back to him. Crucially he did not know that the Austrians were well aware of his intrigues because they had possession of decoded Diplomatic correspondence between Russia and Serbia. [8]

Colonel Apis made a desperate attempt to regain control of events. He ordered a trusted agent to go to Sarajevo and instruct the Young Bosnians to abort the assassination. [Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo, p.309 ] It was all too late. Having slipped out of Belgrade on May 28th and been secretly routed across the border by sympathetic frontier guards they were safely ensconced in Sarajevo ready for the appointed day and ill-disposed to accept any postponement. Ciganovic had ensured they had weapons and cash. The senior officer on the border guard at the time, a member of Black Hand, had been placed there on special assignment to see them safely across.

The bullets were safely in the chamber.

[1] Vladimir Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, p.175.
[2] Luigi Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, vol.II, pp.27–28, and 79.
[3] Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, pp.388–9.
[4] Albertini,Origins of the War of 1914, vol.II, pp.282–3.
[5] Fay, Origins of the World War, vol.I, p.27.
[6] MacKenzie, Apis, p.120.
[7] Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, p.385.
[8] Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.620.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (1): The Web Of Intrigue

Let one historic myth be put immediately to the sword. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 did not start the First World War. Of itself, the fateful slaying of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown was a great crime that did indeed cry out for vengeance, but the hand that pulled the trigger had no knowledge of what lay behind the assistance his band of brothers had been given, or how the act would be misrepresented and manipulated into a universal disaster. Assassinations and politically motivated slayings were not uncommon in that troubled time, with Kings and Queens, aristocracy, political opponents and religious leaders falling victims to usurpers, murderers and zealots with astonishing regularity. It was an age of assassins. What made the death of Archduke Ferdinand different from any other was that the event was assisted by the secret cabal in London, well removed from the heat of the Balkans.

The men who comprised the Secret Elite had previously failed to find their spark for the international conflagration through the Balkan wars of 1912-13 because Germany, in the person of the Kaiser, restrained Austria-Hungary from over-reacting to Serbia’s repeated and deliberate provocation. Indeed, the Dual Monarchy was concerned that the German Ambassador in Belgrade in 1914 was decidedly pro-Serb, and had influenced the Kaiser to take a comparatively benign attitude towards the Serbian cause. [1] Yet it was clear that Austria was the weak link in Germany’s protective armour. She could only absorb so much pressure from antagonistic Serbia before the integrity of the Austria- Hungarian state was destroyed. [2]

The war-makers required an incident so violent, threatening or dangerous that Austria would be pushed over the brink. But the assassination itself failed to do so. The world was shocked, stunned and in many parts saddened by the Archduke’s death, but no one talked of war in June 1914. Immediate blame was pointed at the pan-Serb movement, though the implication of revolutionary elements from Bosnia-Herzegovina was not ruled out. The Serbian minister in Vienna denounced the assassination as ‘a mad act of fanatical and political agitators’ [3] as if to suggest that it had been a dastardly and ill-timed mischance.

It was not. In fact the process of bringing about the assassination had been exceptionally well constructed. Austria-Hungary was aware of the external dangers that lay across the Serbian border. Its military intelligence had intercepted and deciphered a large number of diplomatic telegrams that detailed Russian involvement with several activist groups. [4] They knew that the Russian Ambassador in Belgrade, Nicolai Hartwig, was manipulating the Serbian Government to destabilise the region. They knew that Hartwig was in control of the internal politics of Serbia. They knew of his links back to the Russian foreign minister Sazonov in St Petersburg, and to the Paris-based warmongers, Isvolsky and Poincare, but like everyone else, they were not aware of the real power centred in London. No-one was.

The Secret Elite in London funded and supported both the Russian Ambassador in Paris and the French prime minister himself. They influenced the Russian foreign minister in St Petersburg, but kept a very low profile in such matters. Their work had to be undertaken in great secrecy. The links in the chain of command from London went further, deeper and more sinister when extended from Hartwig into the Serbian military, their intelligence service, and the quasi-independent nationalist society, Black Hand. And deeper yet, into the young Bosnian political activists who were willing to pull the trigger in Sarajevo – students whose ideas on socialism and reform were influenced by revolutionaries like Trotsky. As each level in the web of culpability extended away from the main Secret Elite chain of command, precise control became less immediate. Sazonov in St Petersburg considered that Hartwig in Belgrade was ‘carried away occasionally by his Slavophile sympathies’ [5] but did nothing to curtail him. [6] Hartwig in turn supported and encouraged men whose prime cause he willingly shared and whose actions he could personally approve, but not at every stage, control.

Nicolai Hartwig the Russian Ambassador worked in close contact with his Military Attaché, Artamanov, who had been posted to Belgrade to advise and liaise with the Serbian Army. These men were intrinsically linked to the assassinations in Sarajevo by their chosen agent, the founder and dominating figure in the Serbian Black Hand, and the most influential military officer in Serbia, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrjievic or Apis. [7] The English traveller and Balkan commentator, Edith Durham, described the Black Hand as a mafia-type society, Masonic in secret self-promotion, infiltrating the Serbian military, civil service, police and government. It produced its own newspaper, Pijemont, which preached intolerance to Austria-Hungary and ‘violent chauvinism’. It became the most dangerous of political organisms, a government within the government, responsible to none. Crimes were committed for which no-one took responsibility. The government denied any knowledge of it, yet King Petar was literally placed on the throne by these men. Efforts by responsible politicians to tackle the subversion of good government by the Black Hand, came to nothing. [8] Hartwig’s friendship and respect for Apis may be measured by his description of his group as ‘idealistic and patriotic’ [9] and there is no doubt that it suited Hartwig’s purpose to approve Apis’s promotion to Chief of Intelligence in the summer of 1913.

It is important that we clearly identify every link in the chain of intrigue that surrounded the fateful assassination in Sarajevo in June 1914. Apis was deliberately given responsibility for an intelligence organisation financed from Russia. His life’s purpose was the establishment of a Greater Serbia. He was first, foremost and always a Serb. He worked in collusion with the Russian military attaché, Artamanov, and secured a promise from him that Russia would protect Serbia should Austria attack them in the wake of his actions. [10] In other words, Russia was prepared to give Serbia a blank-cheque guarantee that whatever happened, she would stand by her. For Apis, what was required was a demonstration of Serbian self-determination that would force the issue once and for all and bring about permanent change.

The Austrian government presented the opportunity in March 1914 when they announced that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg dual-monarchy, would visit Sarajevo in June.  Although they had reliable information that Serbian agitators ‘in conjunction with influential Russian circles’, wished to strike a decisive blow against the Austrian Monarchy, [11] they chose to ignore it. The Secret Elite had four crucial months in which to spin their web of intrigue and catch their ultimate prize.

[1] Editorial, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.619.
[2] Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.621.
[3] The Times, Tuesday 30 June 1914, p.8.
[4] Editorial, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.619.
[5] Sidney B. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol.I, p.439.
[6] Ibid., p.27.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Edith Durham, Sarajevo Crime, pp.197–201.
[9] David MacKenzie, Apis, The Congenial Conspirator, p.275.
[10] Harry Elmer Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice, p.43.
[11] Friedrich von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.63.

The Dead Hand Of History

Dead men tell no tales. Any investigation into crimes against truth should also include a consideration of suspicious and untimely deaths which silenced dangerous voices against the will of the Secret Elite. Strange deaths in the pre-war period include that of the Italian General Alberto Pollio. Italy had renewed its membership of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria on 5 December 1912, but the British Foreign Office, initially bolstered by Edward VII’s frequent meetings with Italian royalty in the first decade of the century, had secretly manoeuvred the Italians away from that commitment. There was one fly in the proverbial ointment. While the Secret Elite could influence general policies and overarching treaties, they could not guarantee the actions of individuals. The Italian Military Chief of Staff, General Alberto Pollio was one such individual. He did not belong to the diplomatic or ruling classes. He was loyal to the stated commitment to Germany. They were not.

German–Italian military discussions took place in December 1912 shortly after the renewal of the Triple Alliance, and Pollio promised the German Chief of Staff, von Moltke that Italy would mobilise her forces if, and as soon as, war was declared. Pollio intended to honour what he understood to be Italy’s international commitments. By March 1914 he had gone so far as to agree that the Italian third army would serve under direct German command. German optimism for a second front along Italy’s borders with France was based on Pollio’s assurances, and his strength of character and proven loyalty placed his intentions above suspicion. [1]

Through secret Anglo-Italian agreements made behind Polio’s back, the government in Rome planned to observe a strictly neutral stance when war broke out. In February 1914, the unwitting Pollio even assured the Germans that he would send two cavalry divisions and three to five infantry divisions into Germany through Southern Tyrol [2] to help them implement the Schlieffen Plan. The question was, would the Italian army follow Pollio or the government? Strange, then, that Pollio ‘just happened’ to suffer a heart attack on the same day as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. His condition was ‘misdiagnosed’ as a gastric ailment and the unfortunate Pollio was given a strong purgative. He died on 1 July 1914 and Italy’s part in the Schlieffen Plan died with him. [3] Pollio had been the one man in Italy who would have stood up to the politicians and made a case for the honour and dignity of the nation. He died from a gastric ailment that reeked of Agrippina’s poisoning of Claudius centuries before. On hearing the bad news the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph exclaimed in utter frustration that ‘everyone is dying around me’ [4] With General Pollio out of the way, the Italian Cabinet had no powerful voice raised against its decision to adopt a neutral stance when war was declared.

Was General Pollio’s untimely death mere co-incidence? Consider this, nine days later, Nicholai Hartwig, the Russian ambassador in Serbia dropped dead, allegedly from a massive heart attack during a visit to the Austrian Ambassador at Belgrade. Hartwig was directly implicated in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June, and his pivotal role will be fully explained in a subsequent posting. The Serbian press immediately published several inflammatory articles accusing the Austrians of poisoning Hartwig while he was a guest at their legation, but the Secret Elite dampened down such speculation through The Times, their mouthpiece in London, which described such talk as ‘ravings’. [5] Absolving Russia from any connection with the assassination was absolutely vital to their long term interest.

That fact alone accounts for the death by execution of another figure closely associated with the Sarajevo assassination. Some three years after the event Colonel Dragutin Dimitrjievic, also known as Apis, and officers loyal to him, were indicted on various false charges unrelated to Sarajevo. He effectively signed his own death warrant when he confessed to the court marshal that, in agreement with the Russian military attaché in Serbia, he had hired an agent to organise Ferdinand’s murder. [6] The explosive part of his statement was the revelation of Russian involvement in the assassination, and Apis had to be silenced. Much to his own surprise, for Colonel Apis truly believed, right up to the moment of death that his contacts in England, France and Russia would intervene on his behalf, he was executed on 26 June 1917. [7] In reality, Apis was silenced; put to death by order of a Serbian government that desperately needed to permanently bury its complicity with Russia in the Sarajevo assassination. [8] It was judicial murder.

What price then the assassination of the French socialist party leader and anti-militarist, Jean Jaures? He publicly called on workers in France and Germany to take part in general strikes and thus stop both countries from going to war. On 31 July he was gunned down in Le Croissant, a café in the Montmatre district of Paris. Jaures was the voice of reason, appealing to Europe to ‘keep cool’. [9] His voice too was silenced.

Another co-incidence? Perhaps, but they were oh so convenient for the warmongers. Many of those with tales to tell did not live long enough to tell them. Alexander Isvolsky, the Russian ambassador to France and a man intimately associated with the Secret Elite, started to write his biography but was found dead, slumped over his desk with pen in hand before he could finish the first volume. [10] Strangely, all of Isvolsky’s copious papers and telegrams from July 1914 disappeared. His biographer, Friedrich Stieve, considered the likelihood of a ‘prudent holocaust’ of his incriminating documents. [11] Most frustratingly we will never read the memoirs of General Pollio on the disingenuous Italian government, or Hartwig’s confessions of a manipulative Russian ambassador. Apis was executed before he could implicate the Serbian government and its supporters, and Alexander Isvolsky’s autobiography was doomed to dust as he began to progress his personal account of how he helped cause the war. The voice of reason with which Jean Jaures was influencing working class Europeans against war was brutally silenced. Each of these men could have affected both the war and our understanding of its causes. Each in his own way was a danger to the Secret Elite.

Utterly unacceptable as those deaths were, in the light of the lies that have been purveyed as history it is surely of even greater concern that Carroll Quigley pointed an accusing finger at those who monopolised ‘so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period’. There is no ambivalence in his accusation. The Secret Elite controlled the historical record through numerous avenues including the Northcliffe newspapers, but none more effectively than Oxford University. Almost every important member of the Milner Group, which dominated and led the Secret Elite, was a fellow of one of three colleges – Balliol, New College or All Souls. They controlled these colleges and, in turn, largely dominated the intellectual life of Oxford in the field of history. [12] Historians beholden to the Secret Elite for senior academic posts were at the forefront of the justification of the war. Their influence at Oxford was so powerful that they also controlled the Dictionary of National Biography, which meant that the Secret Elite wrote the biographies of its own members. [13] They created their own official history of key players for public consumption, striking out any incriminating evidence and portraying the best public-spirited image for each.

In addition many of the official histories of the war were commissioned through these Oxford historians and widely disseminated. Popular magazine-types like The Illustrated History of the First World War were written by journalists closely associated with Lord Northcliffe who was in turn, deeply involved with the Secret Elite and their war to destroy Germany. Nelson’s History of the Great War was accredited to John Buchan, an Oxford man better known as the author of adventure stories, but a member of the Secret Elite, groomed by Alfred Milner in South Africa.

The Oxford link goes ever on and undoubtedly will continue. We will be dealing with this connection in great detail in future postings. Some famous names may already be known to you. A.J.P. Taylor, lecturer in modern history at Oxford from 1938 to 1963, was a prolific and popular historian from the 1960s until his death in 1990. He was the classroom ‘guru’ with virtually every school course in modern history in the land using his texts. When he decided that it was not true to claim that ‘mobilisation means war’, then that was what was taught as fact, no matter the contrary evidence from Russia, from France, or from the waves of diplomatic telegrams warning the Russians to mobilise in secret because Germany would know that it meant war.

In like vein, Sir Michael Howard, formerly Chichele professor of the history of war at Oxford, fellow of All Souls and emeritus professor of modern history at Oxford, denied the automatic implication of mobilisation, claiming that ‘Russian mobilisation gave her [Germany] the excuse’. [14] So the mobilisation of between one and two million Russian soldiers on Germany’s border was simply used as an excuse by Germany to go to war: a war on two fronts that she had desperately striven to avoid. No evidence was offered by either of these learned authorities. They spoke ex cathedra, pronouncing the verdict of Oxford on the causes of the First World War like medieval popes, and God help the student that questioned their divine bull.

Norman Stone, Professor of Modern History at Oxford between 1984 and 1997, also blamed Germany for the war: ‘Princip stated if I had not done it, the Germans would have another excuse. In this, he was right. Berlin was waiting for the inevitable accident.’ [15] Sir Hew Strachan, Chichele professor of the history of war at Oxford and a fellow of All Souls, and the historian placed in charge of the war centenary ‘commemorations’, also absolved Britain and France of blame. His conclusion was that for those liberal countries struggling to defend their freedoms against Germany, the war was far from futile.

The Oxford message remains clear: blame Germany. Histories of the First World War should be treated with critical caution, especially those emanating from Oxford University, the spiritual home of the Secret Elite.

A completely different tactic to suppress the truth emerged in the inter-war years. In 1929 Harry Elmer Barnes, professor of history at the prestigious Columbia University published The Genesis of the World War. His conclusion, based on documents and statements that had been ignored by official histories, was that Germany and Austria were not to blame for the war. He pointed an accusatory finger at France and Russia, and as a result fell foul of what he termed, ‘court historians’. To his dismay, the book was suppressed. Barnes explained:

‘A major difficulty has been the unwillingness of booksellers to cooperate, even when it was to their pecuniary advantage to do so…booksellers even discouraged prospective customers who desired to have The Genesis of the World War ordered for them.’ [16]

Booksellers unwilling to sell books? That was surely an unusual situation, unless of course, other influences – powerful, moneyed influences – wanted to restrict the circulation and squeeze the life from such work. Barnes expanded the historic debate by inviting major Triple-Alliance politicians who played key roles in July 1914 to provide eyewitness evidence for a special edition of the New York Times Current History Magazine in July 1928. The result was a fierce rejection of German war guilt, [17] and the Secret Elite grew concerned. If this revisionist historical research was allowed to continue unabated, they faced the possibility of being unmasked. Their response was a sudden growth of anti-revisionist histories by Court historians in the 1930s.

A number of historians and authors who offered critical analysis which came to very different conclusions about the causes of the First World War appear to have been given very limited shelf-life. Even though sales were good, second and subsequent editions never went to print. Professor Carroll Quigley’s histories have themselves been subject to suppression. Unknown persons removed Tragedy and Hope from the bookstore shelves in America, and it was withdrawn from sale without any justification soon after its release. The book’s original plates were unaccountably destroyed by Quigley’s publisher, the Macmillan Company, who, for the next six years ‘lied, lied, lied’ to him and deliberately misled him into believing that it would be reprinted. [18] Why? What pressures obliged a major publishing house to take such extreme action? Quigley claimed that powerful people had suppressed the book because it exposed matters that they did not want known.

It would appear that a similar fate has been visited on our book Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War published in July 2013. Although we as authors were fortunate to be invited to address a sell-out audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, the book has been completely blanked, with no reviews whatsoever published in mainstream newspapers or journals. Our literary agent stated that he has never known anything like it in his 40 years in the publishing business.

The dead hand of history weighs heavy on those who would speak truth to power.

[1] Ruth Henig, The Origins of the First World War, p.190.
[2] John Whittam, The Politics of the Italian Army, 1861-1918, p.179.
[3] Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the First World War, vol.1, p.559.
[4] Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War, vol.II, p.187.
[5] The Times, 16 July 1914.
[6] David MacKenzie, Apis, the Congenial Conspirator, pp.129-130.
[7] Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo, pp.398–400.
[8] Harry Elmer Barnes, Genesis of the World War, p.731.
[9] The Times, 31 July 1914, p.7.
[10] Friedrich Stieve, Isvolsky and the First World War, p.9.
[11] Ibid., p.209.
[12] Carroll Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p.98.
[13] Ibid., p.99.
[14] Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction, p.24.
[15] Norman Stone, World War One, p.19.
[16] Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice, p.x.
[17] New York Times Current History Magazine in July 1928, pp.619-40.
[18] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk%5D