The delivery at Belgrade on July 23rd of the Austrian note to Servia was preceded by a period of absolute silence at the Ballplatz. Except Herr von Tschirschky, who must have been aware of the tenour if not of the actual words of the note, none of my colleagues was allowed to see through the veil. On July 22nd and 23rd M. Dumaine, French Ambassador, had long interviews with Baron Macchio, one of the Under Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, by whom he was left under the impression that the words of warning he had been instructed to speak to the Austro-Hungarian Government had not been unavailing, and that the note which was being drawn up would be found to contain nothing with which a self-respecting State need hesitate to comply. At the second of these interviews he was not even informed that the note was at that very moment being presented at Belgrade, or that it would be published in Vienna on the following morning. Count Forgach, the other Under Secretary of State, had indeed been good enough to confide to me on the same day the true character of the note, and the fact of its presentation about the time we were speaking. THE BOLT FROM THE BLUE. So little had the Russian Ambassador been made aware of what was preparing that he actually left Vienna on a fortnight’s leave of absence about July 20th. He had only been absent a few days when events compelled him to return. It might have been supposed that Duc Avarna, Ambassador of the allied Italian Kingdom, which was bound to be so closely affected by fresh complications in the Balkans, would have been taken fully into the confidence of Count Berchtold during this critical time. In point of fact, his Excellency was left completely in the dark. As for myself, no indication was given me by Count Berchtold of the impending storm, and it was from a private source that I received on July 15th the forecast of what was about to happen, which I telegraphed to you the following day. It is true that during all this time the _Neue Freie Presse_ and other leading Viennese newspapers were using language which pointed unmistakably to war with Servia. The official _Fremdenblatt_, however, was more cautious, and till the note was published the prevailing opinion among my colleagues was that Austria would shrink from courses calculated to involve her in grave European complications.