WaybackWire

LONDON, Tuesday.—Germany has turned down Sir Edward Grey’s proposal for a conference of ambassadors in London. Austria has also refused to join.

Germany intimated this afternoon, Reuter learns, that while she sincerely sympathises with Sir Edward Grey’s object, she considers that a conference would have no prospect of success, since Austria will not consent to submit her policy to such a tribunal. Berlin holds that conversations between the Powers would be a better course.

Diplomatic quarters in London suggest that some sort of understanding exists between Austria and Russia, resting on Austria’s positive disavowal of any intention of conquest or permanent occupation. It is thought here that she may occupy Belgrade and other important points and then pause.

ST PETERSBURG, Tuesday.—The Tsar has authorised a partial mobilisation of the Russian army and has gone to the Finnish skerries, the Times correspondent here wires. At the same time Germany was told that the rest of the army would be mobilised if Germany mobilised.

At the Grand Council the Tsar is reported to have said: “We have stood this sort of thing for 7 1/2 years. Quite long enough.”

Reuter’s London view is that the danger now turns on the Russian frontier. “Austria-Hungary appears to be determined to attack Servia and if the Russians once cross the frontier then Germany will instantaneously intervene and the catastrophe mentioned by Sir Edward Grey will become imminent.”

The declaration of war became known here only late in the evening. Thousands then marched, cheering wildly, through the main streets to the British and French embassies, until mounted police scattered them without great disorder.

LONDON, Tuesday.—Twenty-nine battleships, four battle-cruisers and nine cruisers at Portland were coaling all night and taking on board war stores and provisions for several weeks, the London papers report. They are rumoured to have been ordered to a point in the North Sea.

The Admiralty has not issued its usual list of ship movements, and the King has put off his visit to Goodwood owing to the crisis.

The German fleet, for its part, is returning homewards and gathering at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel.

PENANG, Tuesday.—The call to arms has reached the Straits. “We understand that orders have been cabled for Austrian reservists located in the Straits Settlements and F.M.S. to immediately return to Vienna,” the Pinang Gazette states to-day.

From London comes word of the markets. “The stock markets are in a state of panic, and the Continental bourses are closed,” the Straits Times’s London correspondent cables, and Consols stand at the lowest recorded.

In Wellington Mr W. F. Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand, opening the Agricultural Conference, said there was only one trouble ahead and it might prove a very serious one. Should the Empire become involved, he was quite sure its different parts would stand together as they had done in past years.

SINGAPORE, Tuesday.—“To all appearance the great war cloud has burst over Europe,” the Straits Times writes in its leader this morning, before the declaration was known in Singapore.

The paper is blunt about the Servians: “We have no sympathy with Servia.” The provocation Austria suffered was abnormal, it holds, but it draws a line: “Punitive measures are justified, aggressive measures are not.”

Britain, in its view, is under no specific guarantee and can stand aside for the moment, though not indefinitely. Its last word is hopeful: “We have a feeling that some method of peaceful settlement will be found.”