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8 Austro-Hungarian corps, in itself an exaggerated and provokingstep. After the date of the 29 th of July nothing was done by theDual Monarchy which could have furnished Russia with a pretextto extend her partial mobilisation into a general one and makewar thereby inevitable.

2. Alleged military preparations by Germany against Russia .

At this critical period the Russian Minister for ForeignAffairs has daily received repeated visits from the German Am-bassador at St. Petersburgh. If the Russian Government reallybelieved in measures of mobilisation alleged to have been takenby Germany "during the last six days", i. e. since the 25 th of July(Yellow Book No. 118), then nothing would have been morenatural for M. Sazonof than to ask Count Pourtalès for informa-tion, pointing out to him that such "measures" would necessarilycall forth reprisals on the part of Russia . A hint from M. Sazonofto those professed German preparations would have been the morenatural, taking into account that Count Pourtalès has in those daysrepeatedly mentioned the dangers of the Russian military pre-parations. So on the 29 th of July, with the result that M. Sa-zonof confined himself to the statement "que les préparatifs russes"sont motivés: d'un côté, par l'intransigeance obstinée de l'Autriche;"d'autre part, par le fait que huit corps austro -hongrois"sont déjà mobilisés". (Transi.: ..... that the Russian pre-parations are caused, on the one hand, by the persistent obstinacyof Austria ; and, on the other hand, by the fact that eightAustro-Hungarian army corps have been already mobilised(Yellow Book No. 100). On the 30 th of July Count Pourtalèsagain reverted to the Russian preparations, and again M. Sazonoffailed to seize the favourable opportunity of interrogating CountPourtalès regarding the alleged German measures of mobilisation(Yellow Book No. 103). Neither did the Czar in his telegramsto the German Emperor at any time make the slightest mentionof German military measures which his Government representedto be one of the motives of Russia 's general mobilisation.

The insincerity of the attempt of excusing the Russian generalmobilisation with German preparations is obvious, admitted