"The delivery at Belgrade on the 23d July of the note to
Servia was preceded by a period of _absolute silence_ at the
Ballplatz."

He proceeds to say that with the exception of the German Ambassador at
Vienna--note the significance of the exception--not a single member of
the Diplomatic Corps knew anything of the Austrian ultimatum and that
the French Ambassador when he visited the Austrian Foreign Office on
July 23 was not only kept in ignorance that the ultimatum had actually
been issued, but was given the impression that its tone was moderate.
Even the Italian Ambassador was not taken into Count Berchtold's
confidence.

[Dispatch from Sir M. de Bunsen to Sir Edward Grey, dated Sept. 1,
1914.]

No better proof of this sense of security need be adduced than that the
French President and her Foreign Minister were thousands of miles from
Paris, and the Russian Minister had, after the funeral of the Austrian
Archduke, left Vienna for his annual holiday.

The interesting and important question here suggests itself whether
Germany had knowledge of and approved in advance the Austrian ultimatum.
If it did, it was guilty of duplicity, for the German Ambassador at St.
Petersburg gave to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs an express
assurance that

"the German Government _had no knowledge of the text of the
Austrian note before it was handed in and has not exercised