Although the Austrian ultimatum to Servia was so worded and the time accorded for a reply so limited as to ensure its rejection, misgivings were, as we saw, felt and uttered in Vienna and Budapest that Servia would knuckle down and execute the humiliating behests of the Ballplatz. For this was a consummation which was deemed highly undesirable. The carefully laid plan would have become difficult of realization had Austria’s terms been acquiesced in unreservedly. It would have rendered a military expedition superfluous and left Servia’s army intact. Hence the exhaustive precautions adopted for the purpose of provoking a negative answer to the ultimatum from Belgrade. On July 23rd, while the Franco-Russian festivities were at their height, and M. Poincaré and the Tsar were announcing to the world their ultra-pacific strivings, the bolt fell from the blue. What will Russia say? people asked in Western Europe. Well, the Russian Foreign Office, as we now know, was informed by Austria of the text of the Note _only seventeen hours after it had been presented, and only thirty-one hours before the time limit had lapsed_! The little case thus made of Russia by the Teutonic allies was meant to be clearly conveyed by this studied affront. It had been decided in Berlin and Vienna that Russia must and would remain passive. Delay was the only danger apprehended in Vienna, and nothing was left undone to prevent its occurrence. M. Pasitch, the Servian Premier, who appears to have had an intuition of what was brewing, let it be known before the Austrian Note was presented that he was absent from Belgrade and was going abroad. His substitute was nominated. But in Vienna they were on the alert, and M. Pasitch received from that city an urgent telegram notifying him that the representations which the Austro-Hungarian Government were drawing up would be delivered in Belgrade almost immediately, and that their tenor was such as to necessitate his presence in the capital. Thereupon the Premier hastened back to Belgrade.