The sole charge that could be laid, not against Serbia but against a Serbian subject, concerned the relations of the subordinate officer Tankosić with the authors of the crime. It was asserted that he knew of the plan and that he helped the assassins to procure money and weapons. The accused definitely said that he exercised no influence on their decision, which had been taken before conversation with him. But even supposing that he was an accomplice, it is evident that the whole Serbian nation and especially the Serbian Government is not identical with an officer who, on account of other troubles with the Ministry of War, had already been removed from the active service list.[76] When the Austrian ultimatum was transmitted to the Serbian Government, Tankosić was immediately arrested, so that his guilt and complicity might be enquired into and established. Serbia could not do more than that. But the whole Serbian people, in Serbia and out of Serbia, was declared guilty of the crime, and immediate steps were taken to carry out the sentence. The unprecedented atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian army in Serbia were to be the expiation of an imaginary crime, and such proceedings, which recall the times of Attila, are shielded by the illustrious name of the aforementioned Professor Kohler, whose reputation it was to be the most democratic of German jurists. All his previous theories on crime, causality and responsibility became void; we see him adopt the monstrous theory according to which every act of private persons is the responsibility of the whole nation. It remained for Nikita, a man of Serbian blood, a man whose verses had been laden with love for the Serbian nation, it remained for this shameless Prince to charge his brothers with the crime. So implacable was the old man's hatred of Serbia that when President Wilson arrived in Europe he immediately wrote[77] to him, in his indifferent French, for fear, he said, lest the intrigues conducted by the Serbs or their accomplices should precede him in capturing the President's sympathies. "In spite of their perfidy," said he, "I was the first to lend them a hand by being the first to declare war against Austria, although I was certain that the provocation originated on their side by the Sarajevo murders and their Black Hand.... Horrible thought that this country refuses to realize the crime it has committed, for which it is responsible to mankind no less than William!"