two, which she asked should be referred to the Hague Tribunal. Austria
refused on the ground that the dispute was not of a justiciable
nature; and the meagre five days' grace having expired on the 28th,
Austrian troops crossed the Save and occupied Belgrade, the Serbians
withdrawing without resistance. Meanwhile feverish activity agitated
the chancelleries of Europe. The terms of the ultimatum had been
discussed by the British Cabinet on Friday the 24th, and the British
Fleet, which had been reviewed at Spithead on the previous Saturday,
was, instead of dispersing at Portland, kept together, and then, on
the 29th, dispatched to its war stations in the North Sea.
Simultaneously the German High Seas Fleet withdrew on the 26th to Kiel
and Wilhelmshaven. Russia replied to the Austrian invasion of Serbia
by mobilizing her southern command and extending the mobilization, as
the hand of Germany became more apparent, to her northern armies. Sir
Edward Grey made unceasing efforts to avert the clash of arms by
peaceable negotiation, and proposed a conference of the four Great
Powers not immediately concerned in the dispute--Germany, France,
Italy, and Great Britain. Germany, knowing that she would stand alone
in the conference, declined. The dispute, she pretended, was merely a
local affair between Austria and Serbia, in which no other Power had
the right to intervene. But she refused to localize the dispute to the
extent of regarding it as a Balkan conflict between the interests of
Austria and Russia. Austria was less unyielding when it became evident
that Russia would draw the sword rather than acquiesce in Serbia's
subjection, and on the 30th it seemed that the way had been opened for
a settlement by direct negotiation between Vienna and Petrograd. At
that moment Germany threw off the diplomatic disguise of being a
pacific second to her Austrian friend, and cut the web of argument by
an ultimatum to Russia on the 31st. Fear lest the diplomatists should
baulk them of their war had already led the German militarists to