The Austro-Servian Crisis A Press Campaign Settling Up Outstanding Differences
The diplomatic and Press campaign undertaken by Austria-Hungary against Servia is increasing in intensity. Though the results of the Austro-Hungarian inquiry into the Serajevo crime are still unknown, it is announced that earnest representations to Servia will be made on the strength of them. The article in the North-German Gazette expressing the hope that Servian submissiveness would avert a serious crisis has caused a sharp fall of prices on the Vienna Stock Exchange.
A prominent Cracow organ reports semi-officially from Vienna that Austria-Hungary intends to use this opportunity to settle both the Servian and the Albanian questions; and that Servia will be asked to remove a whole group of officers from her Army.
In diplomatic circles the approaching crisis is considered grave. There is believed to be no ground for the assumption that Russia will withdraw her support from Servia in case the Austro-Hungarian demands should be in any way derogatory to Servian independence or national dignity.
Fall on the Vienna Bourse
Vienna, July 20th
A serious interpretation is given in financial circles here to the utterances of the North-German Gazette with regard to the Austro-Servian situation, so that prices again fell heavily on the Vienna Bourse today.
The uncertainty as to the extent of the demands which the monarchy will make of Servia in order, to use Count Tisza’s words, that the relations between the two countries may be “cleared up,” and as to the attitude which the Servian Government will adopt towards them is creating an atmosphere of considerable uneasiness.
In some well-informed quarters it is believed that the Austro-Hungarian Government has not yet definitely made up its mind as to what form demands will take, though it appears to be generally assumed that they will not be restricted to the punishment of persons who may be proved guilty of complicity in the Serajevo crime.
It is in the possibility that such demands may assume a shape which the Servian Government may consider incompatible with the dignity of a sovereign state that the danger of eventual complications lies.
Count (Istvan) Tisza, (the Hungarian premier) spent yesterday here, and had conferences with Count Berchtold and the Hungarian minister, Baron Burian, in order to inform himself with regard to the latest phases of the situation. It is expected that further interpellations will give him an opportunity of making some declaration in the Hungarian Chamber on Wednesday.
The accuracy of the statements attributed to M. Pashitch, the Servian premier, in an interview published in the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, to which the Austro-Hungarian Press took much exception, is officially denied in Belgrade.
The London Times July 21st, 1914
