“Do you know, I’ve just been talking to M. Poincaré about you?” he said in his usual affable manner. “He had spoken to Alexis and asked me who had taught him French. He is a remarkable man, with a splendid intellect, and a brilliant talker. That’s always useful; but what I like most is that there is nothing of the diplomat about him.[26] He is not reticent, but plain-spoken and frank, and wins one’s confidence at once. If only we could do without diplomacy humanity would make immense strides.” On July 23rd the President left Cronstadt for Stockholm, immediately after a dinner given in Their Majesties’ honour on the _La France_. The next day, to our utter amazement, we learned that Austria had presented an ultimatum to Serbia on the previous evening.[27] I met the Czar in the park in the afternoon. He was preoccupied, but did not seem anxious. On the 25th an Extraordinary Council was held at Krasnoïe-Selo in the Czar’s presence. It was decided to pursue a policy of dignified but firm conciliation. The Press was extremely angry at the step taken by Austria. The next few days the tone of the Press became increasingly violent. Austria was accused of desiring to annihilate Serbia. Russia could not let the little Slav state be overwhelmed. She could not tolerate an Austro-Hungarian supremacy in the Balkans. The national honour was at stake. Yet while tempers were rising and the diplomats were setting the machinery of all the chancellories in motion, heartrending telegrams left Alexandria Cottage for distant Siberia, where Rasputin was slowly recovering from his wound in the hospital at Tioumen.[28] They were nearly all of the same tenor: “We are horrified at the prospect of war. Do you think it is possible? Pray for us. Help us with your counsel.” Rasputin would reply that war must be avoided at any cost if the worst calamities were not to overtake the dynasty and the Empire. This advice was consonant with the dearest wish of the Czar, whose pacific intentions could not be doubted for a moment. We had only to see him during that terrible last week of July to realise what mental and moral torture he had passed through. But the moment had come when the ambition and perfidy of Germany were to steel him against his own last hesitation and sweep everything with them into the whirlpool. In spite of all the offers of mediation and the fact that the Russian Government had suggested closing the incident by direct negotiations between St. Petersburg and Vienna, we learned on July 29th that general mobilisation had been ordered in Austria. The next day we heard of the bombardment of Belgrade, and on the following day Russia replied with the mobilisation of her whole army. In the evening of that day Count Pourtalès, the German Ambassador at St. Petersburg, called to inform M. Sazonoff that his Government would give Russia twelve hours in which to stop her mobilisation, failing which Germany would mobilise in turn.[29]