Gibbs George
The Secret Witness
IN REGARD TO THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
If the reader of this book is not inclined to accept the prima-facie evidence as presented in the newspapers from official sources with regard to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, he is referred by the publishers to the very interesting article by Mr. Henry Wickham Steed called "The Pact of Konopisht," printed in the Nineteenth Century for February, 1916. Mr. Steed, as is well known, was for twenty years the correspondent in Vienna of the London Times, and is also the author of the latest and presumably the most authoritative work in English on the Austro-Hungarian government and the House of Habsburg.
The facts presented in that article beginning with the open breach between Franz Joseph and the Archduke on his marriage to Sophie Chotek; the entente between Kaiser and Archduke at Eckartzau and Potsdam; the seizure of the Archduke's papers by the Austrian government after the assassination; the instructions to the Sarajevo police from the military authorities of Austria-Hungary to make no special arrangements for the Archduke's protection; the fact that no evidence has ever been adduced proving the complicity of the Serbian government; the funeral of the Archduke and Duchess, at which no wreaths were sent by Emperor Franz Joseph, by the Archduke's sister, or any member of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Family; the inadequacy of the formal arrangements for burial and the obvious intention of the Court authorities to pay as little honor as possible to the dead; the exclamation of the Kaiser, during Kiel week when the news of the assassination was brought to him, "Now I must begin all over again":—these facts must be considered as circumstantial evidence of the most positive sort that the relations between Archduke and Kaiser had been looked on with disfavor and suspicion by the Imperial Family of Austria. What actually happened at Konopisht of course will never be known, but there is strong presumptive evidence that a pact of the character suggested in this story was made in the rose garden of the castle and that Von Tirpitz was a witness to it.
Whatever the police records show with regard to Cabrinovitz and Prinzep, the former, who threw the bomb, the latter who did the killing, no successful effort has been made to show that they were employed by the Serbian government, nor is it probable that Serbia would have promoted a plot which would give Austria Hungary a pretext for assailing her, a pretext that Austria Hungary had already sought. The story of the beginnings of the Great War has shown how she found it.
In the light of the ascertained facts concerning the production of anti-Serbian forgeries employed by Austria during the annexation crises of 1908-9, and exposed during the Friedjung trial of December, 1909, it certainly would not be beyond the power of Austro-Hungarian Secret Service agents to cook up a plot at Belgrade or Sarajevo, were it considered desirable, for reasons of Imperial policy, either to "remove" obnoxious personages or to provide a pretext for war.
The dream of an empire from Hamburg to Saloniki is as yet a dream, but that it was dreamed in Potsdam no one doubts.
