37 Days

l once calculated that the Foreign Office received 250 telegrams every hour.

That's 6000 telegrams a day.

Or 42,000 each week.

Ah, l see you thought I was Persia, didn't you? l've been promoted.

Which comes to 2,190,000 telegrams every year.

Britannia rules the waves, l suppose, and for that reason

we must weIcome these tides of information.

Political crisis in Argentina, the abolition of slavery in Siam

l love it. lt means that l am working centre of the worId

and get to find out what's happening as soon as it happens.

Within a few hours anyway.

But, my word, it's an awful lot of telegrams.

Could you do these promptIy, MurieI? - Please? - PIease.

This particular one though, received in London

from his Britannic majesty's consul in Sarajevo, on June the 28th, 1914...

Well, l should be honest with you...

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand murdered in Sarajevo?

lnteresting, for sure, over breakfast, but forgotten by tea time.

Or so l thought. As did everyone else l spoke to.

But it was not forgotten. And I think it never will be.

You know it is a magical place, and l have to pinch myself sometimes

that I'm here.

Just two years on from King's, a second division clark in the great

and as some would have it, independent kingdom of the Foreign Office...

What's in the box Henry, lead piping?

Not much of a player, not yet, but a ringside seat if you like in boxing.

ShouIders back!

DoubtIess that is for me, AIec? - It is, sir.

Well Iet's take it into my office.

That's my boss, Sir Eyre Crowe. - So what do we have?

The assistant undersecretary at the Foreign Office.

German-born, educated in Berlin but now...

...he's more British than any one of us. - Well, well.

l've learnt to watch Sir Eyre closely because everyone knows

he is a briIIiant man... including himself.

Do you know? I was about to predict something like this.

This man, had come to Britain at seventeen, a German speaker still

and sailed through his civil service examinations.

l think so. Rash, rash, rash.

l think he likes me too; I'm a scholarship boy, you see.

l'm a bit of an outsider myself.

Look at this. The 28th was the Serb Holy Day.

What a time for an Austrian Archduke to go to Sarajevo.

It's rash, sir. - Yes. Rash.

So, is this important or not? - lt is.

But, important enough to disturb the Foreign Secretary?

Right now? - Right now.

No.

l believe you may want to think about that one again.

l'm Ieaving, Crowe. Is it urgent?

lt's Bosnia, Foreign Secretary. - Ah, l think that might wait.

Really? Come and waIk me out.

That's Sir Edward Grey, the Liberal Foreign Secretary.

As a statesman he was, we believed, trusted and admired.

The Mesopotamia minute. And I shall need the Persian text

first thing tomorrow. - Sir.

So who wouId want him dead? - Many peopIe.

Franz Ferdinand was an unpopular man and made enemies easily.

What does your stomach say, Croat? MusIim?

I doubt it. - Hungarian?

Possibly. - More Iikely to be a Serb then?

That's where l'd pIace my money. - Me too.

The question is, how wiII the Austrians take it?

And you're going to give me a very brief - but wonderfuIIy incisive - answer.

The same way they take all their disappointments.

Hysterical condemnation. A baroque display of official grief.

And a demand for financial compensation. - From?

Oh, from whoever they can find to blame.

We don't want it to be Serbia, do we? - No.

It wouId be messy. - It wouId...

Yes?

Austria does have rather too many unruIy Serbs within its own borders

to go picking a fight with a lot more outside. - So do we need to worry?

We aIways need to do that. - But l should enjoy my supper?

You know Sir Edward might also have been the unIuckiest man in Britain.

His wife had recently died after being thrown by a horse.

Ah, how is your boy doing Marmaduke? - Very well, sir.

Well I hope to see him back here before Iong.

His elder brother had been eaten by a lion and his younger brother

would be mauled to death by a Buffalo.

l mean that's enough personal tragedy to finish a man, but...

Grey bore it. Somehow.

Oh that dreadful man Eyre Crowe!

I'II wager he sees this is an opportunity to have a go at the Germans.

Now now, dear, Sir Edward's come here to reIax, not to taIk shop.

Oh nonsense! He loves taIking shop. You all do.

Look at David over there. Do you want him to recite Welsh poetry?

No you don't. You want him to reIate some tittIe-tattIe from the Treasury.

You can never distinguish between a dinner party and a Cabinet meeting.

And much as we'd all weIcome your feminine wisdom in Cabinet, Margot

there is a difference. - More's the pity.

But at least tell me this, Sir Edward. ls it Serbia or Servia?

'B' for 'barbarian' or 'v' for 'villain'?

Ah, I'm at a Ioss. Some of our cIerks type it up as 'b', others 'v'.

The Times favours 'v'. - Never, in the Manchester Guardian it's 'b'.

And the News of the WorId says 'Who the heII cares?'

About the spelling? - About anything.

I've no firm aIIegiance to either Margot. - WeII you shouId get these things straight.

A misspeIt name is like a forgotten face: a grave insult.

lt's just the sort of thing men will go to war over.

Quite so. - Those Serbs do appear to enjoy killing royaIty though.

We don't know it's the Serbs yet.

Yes, but Margot is quite correct.

They're thrilled by vioIence. By the reality, not just the idea.

Winston's kind of people.

Their own King, Alexander, stripped and butchered in the royaI bedchamber.

His wife too. And both of them thrown from an open window.

lt is the Iand of the bIood feud. A contested wiII, pistols are drawn.

An argument over a worthless pIot of Iand, out come the knives.

And the embittered past is aIways there threatening to engorge the present.

Dear God, it sounds just like lreIand! - Oh no, please!

Can we not talk about that? - Hear, hear.

Of course my dear. Except to say that if I were Prime Minister

instead of you l'd have had the leaders of the UIster Volunteer Force shot by now.

l do believe she wouId. - And anyone else bent on using

guns to overturn the decisions of the British House of Commons.

Ah! BIoodshed! A perfect soIution to the Irish probIem.

But there wiII be bIood. You've all let it sIide too far.

The only question is, whose?

Thank you Margot.

You've been keeping your cards close to your your chest tonight, Sir Edward

so pIease give me something to take away.

lreIand's not my department, Margot. - Oh, I'm not talking about that.

Home ruIe will be resisted by UIster and the Tory leadership

and there'II be a horribIe civiI war, that's obvious.

Now, l want to know about the Sarajevo assassination.

Should I be worried? - l don't see why.

You see, now l am worried. I can read you like a book.

WeII l do hope l'm not so transparent to foreign diplomats.

So, what is the Foreign Office pIotting? - Plotting?

Oh we all know you sit on a mountain of secrets.

Nobody is plotting anything Margot, but you have my assurance

if this country has anything to worry about

you will be the first to be told.

Goodnight Winston.. Edward.

Goonight David.

Thank the Lord I'm not married to her, if I had been l'd be a widower by now.

I'm sorry Edward, that was damned careless of me.

WeII l must say, I do hope it's not the Serbs

because if is Austria won't be happy untiI her army has been biIIoted in Belgrade.

I'm not sure.

And then we'II have the Russians rattIing their sabres.

We don't want a SIav common front developing over this.

WeII, I can't imagine Austria would be stupid enough to provoke that.

WeII, good night Edward. - Good night.

l'm certain you'll make us proud if you're called upon.

You're stiII up WiIIiam. Now that wasn't necessary.

lt's me. - Crowe!

l was let in by your man. - What is it?

I was right. lt was a Serb.

A young student, a fanatic cIearIy. Possibly an anarchist. I forget his...

Ah Principo l think. The details are aII here. Such as they are.

l thought you'd want to know before the morning papers.

Thank you Crowe.

The Archduke's assassin was Gavrillo Princip.

A Bosnian Serb and a nonentity, but a nonentity with a very powerful idea.

Princip believed that Bosnia should be part of the Kingdom of Serbia

and that it would take violence to get rid of the province's Austrian overlords.

VioIence that he and his friends were willing to inflict.

And the victim they chose was this man: the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The heir to the Habsburg throne and the symbol of everything Princip hated

about Austrian rule. lts arrogance, its bullying and...

Well, the sheer fact that it regarded the Serbs in the province as an inferior race.

And it was madness for a Habsburg to visit Sarajevo on this day of all days.

For the 28th was the most important date in the Serb calendar.

A day of Holy mourning.

lt would be like an English King going, in battle-dress

to Dublin on St Patrick's Day. An act of self-destruction.

Yet this fool might still have escaped.

The young assassins had lost their nerve

and all Princip had seen of the Archduke's car was a blur as it raced by.

He'd retreated to a little café and was no doubt contemplating what might have been.

But then, by some perverse roll of the dice, the boy got a second chance.

Back, back, back!

The Archduke's driver had got lost in the city's old town. And the car...

How this makes me laugh and cry even now...

The car was stuck right outside Princip's coffee house.

These shots. From this boy. They were loud in Sarajevo.

l promise you they were even louder in Berlin.

For Austria was our ally, and Franz Ferdinand was our friend.

Good morning.

For most of my colleagues in the chancellery of the German Reich

it was as if we, ourseIves, had been shot.

There are very few like me in the lmperial Government.

l count myself a liberal

and liberalism is understood to be a kind of poison here.

l favour making the Fatherland a true democracy too, and that

shouId it ever become known, wouId be enough to see me cashiered.

For this is a Prussian institution stiII, not a German one.

And here is the man at the head of it.

The imperial Chancellor: Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg.

The Kaiser needs to know the titIe of the book, not the chapter and verse.

This one.

Bethmann Hollweg had spent a lifetime in the Prussian civiI service.

He was extremely competent and he knew that the murder in Sarajevo

would affect our Kaiser personally.

They were friends. - They were more than friends.

They were hunting partners.

What became of the antilope population of Bohemia?

One day perhaps our chiIdren will want to know the answer.