It is not easy for Western minds, accustomed to truth, honour, and self-respect, to realize how all the usages of international intercourse were thus set at naught during this first stage of the European conflict. Words and forms were employed to mislead. Servia’s answer was wanted only as providing a plausible pretext for the resort to force, which had been decided on from the first. And I was informed--although I must in fairness add that I had no tangible evidence for the assertion, nothing but a strong presumption--that even if M. Pasitch, violating the Constitution of his country, had undertaken to carry out all Austria’s behests unreservedly, and if no internal troubles had resulted from this subservience, the Austrian troops massed on the Servian frontiers would not have been baulked of their prey. Another demand was held in reserve which Servia could not and would not comply with, and her refusal would have afforded the wished-for ground for invasion. In any and every case, Servia was to have been entered by Austrian troops. That seems to have been a settled and irrevocable resolve. And all the diplomatic notes, conversations, and reports, which Sir Edward Grey, M. Viviani, and M. Sazonoff treated as excusable manifestations of fiercely burning anger, were but cunningly devised expedients to sting the Belgrade Cabinet into some word or act that might serve to justify this set plan. The plan was not at first suspected by the Entente Powers, nor was it fully understood for some time even after its existence had been discovered. It was, as we saw, twofold. First, the “punishment” of the army by the forces of the Dual Monarchy, and of the nation by the levy of a crushing war indemnity, and of the economic energies of the country by the imposition of a commercial treaty which was to lay Servia permanently at the mercy of her powerful navy. And, second, the partition of the newly annexed territories among Servia’s neighbours and the establishment of a Balkan League under the ægis of the Habsburgs. The machinery for bringing about this latter object was in full movement at the very time that the British, French, and Russian Governments were basing their moderation and self-containment on Austria’s voluntary undertaking not to _annex_ any portion of Servian territory. Here, again, was a case of juggling with phrases which the Chancelleries of the Entente Powers were taking at their face value. Pressure was even then being put upon Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece to assist in this underhand scheme, and reliance was being placed in the Hohenzollern King Carol, who would, it was assumed, make full use of his authority to hinder Roumania from taking sides against Austria-Hungary. The Treaty of Bucharest was to be proclaimed a scrap of waste paper.