When Diplomacy Fails presents the July Crisis Anniversary Project, a day-by-day account of the events that occurred 100 years ago.

United We Stand. Today is the 30th of July 2014, and on this day in history 100 years ago, occurred the following

events.

It had been a revealing night for the Germans.

Not only had they learned of Britain's inability to remain neutral, thanks to Sir Edward Gray, the British Foreign Secretary,

but Berlin would also be informed shortly of Russia's duplicity that had duped the entirety of Europe to an unimaginable degree.

It was Russia's own foreign minister, Sergei Sazanov, who had admitted to the German ambassador to Russia,

that Russia's mobilization measures could no longer be reversed. This statement, coming from the mouth of

the director of Russia's foreign policy, revealed in the plainest terms the Russian insincerity

in the previous negotiations. If mobilization was truly irreversible, then why did St. Petersburg engage in diplomatic proceedings,

which gave the impression that they wanted a peaceful solution to the now two-day-old war between Serbia and Austria.

The answer to this, the German Chancellor would soon uphold, was for the sake of deception,

to delay Germany's response to the circumstances, and to

enable Russia to gain a head start in its own military measures.

But if Sazanov's revelations were bad, then the note Wilhelm received from Tsar Nicholas

the Second was even worse.

Its author had claimed that, the military measures which have now come into force were decided five days

ago, for the sake of the Tsar claimed, defence on account of Austria's preparations. However, both

the German Chancellor and the German Kaiser knew that their ally had been mobilised against Serbia,

since they had been told that military contingency plans were addressed as late as the 29th of July to account only for Serbia,

for the same reason that Germany did not advance its own limited military measures,

neither member of the central powers wished to provoke Russia.

...