WaybackWire

LONDON, Sunday.—Servia accepted every condition and demand in the Austrian note except the participation of Austrian officials in the inquiry, according to a summary of her reply issued in London to-day. It was this answer that Vienna called unsatisfactory.

Servia agrees to publish the declaration on the front page of her official journal, to dissolve societies that may be considered capable of conducting intrigues against Austria, and to revise her press laws.

On the inquiry she protests against Austrian officers taking any part, and asks for an explanation of the part Austrian officials would be called on to play. Nor will she answer for every outburst within her borders: the Government “cannot be held responsible for manifestations of a private character such as are common in all little towns and escape official control.”

Should Austria find the reply inadequate, Servia appeals to The Hague tribunal and to the Powers that signed the declaration of 1909.

Mr Alexander Georgevitch, first secretary of the Servian legation in London, put his country’s case in a sentence: “We have complied with everything that does not impair our sovereign rights.”

BERLIN, Sunday.—The Kaiser has broken off his Norwegian cruise and suddenly started for Germany last night, and is expected home on Monday. General von Moltke, chief of the German General Staff, has left Carlsbad for Berlin, and Herr Bethmann has returned to the capital.

Germany’s ambassadors at Paris, St Petersburg and London have at the same time declared that Germany regards the Austro-Servian dispute as a matter for those two countries alone and strongly desires that the conflict be localised. The Foreign Ministers in Paris and London received the declaration favourably, a German agency telegram reports.

Vienna has news of the third partner in the Triple Alliance. An official statement there says Italy has spontaneously informed Austria that in the event of an Austro-Servian war she will support the Triple Alliance.

LONDON, Sunday.—Sir Edward Grey has invited the French, German and Italian ambassadors to confer with him in London on the present difficulties. Italy has replied that she is favourable to mediation in principle.

Sir John Simon, speaking at Manchester, said that “any part Great Britain would play in the European crisis should throughout be the part of a mediator singly desirous of promoting peaceful relations.”

In London and the European capitals the stock markets still showed a panicky feeling, though less pronounced than on Saturday.

BOMBAY, Sunday.—“It must be confessed that the outlook at the moment is the gloomiest that has faced Europe for more than a generation, perhaps a century,” the Bombay Chronicle writes in its leader on the crisis.

The paper traces the chain of alliances. If Russia comes to the aid of Servia, Germany and Italy must come to the aid of Austria, and France must intervene to save Russia. It doubts whether England’s engagements to France or Russia would compel her to intervene, but doubts too how long Great Britain could stand aside in such an upheaval.

Nor does it accept Vienna’s case: Austria, it says, should speedily realise the injustice of her ultimatum.

“But a very few hours must reveal whether Armageddon has really come at last, or whether the Powers are, on the contrary, merely about to enter on another prolonged series of conferences, with the Near East once again as the subject matter of dispute.”