WORLD WAR, I. - The immediate cause of the outbreak of the world war was the assassination of Archduke Francesco Ferdinando, heir to the Habsburg throne, and of his consort at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The assassin, G. Princip, an Austrian citizen but of Slav nationality, carried out the crime with the support of a Serbian terrorist organization. Austria-Hungary, desirous of humiliating Serbia in order indirectly to strike at Slav irredentism, which was very strong among the populations subject to the Dual Monarchy, sent an ultimatum to Belgrade on 23 July, containing extremely harsh conditions that were rejected. On 28 July Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia came to the aid of her sister South Slav nation, an intervention that involved Germany and France in the conflict and, after the invasion of Belgium by German troops, England as well. Turkey and Bulgaria subsequently aligned themselves alongside the Central Empires (Germany and Austria-Hungary), while many other powers opposed them, including Japan (1914), Italy (1915), Romania (1916), and the United States of America (1917). The remote, so to speak substantial, causes of this conflict were numerous; among them, the Anglo-German rivalry on the seas and in world markets, and the Austro-Russian rivalry for influence in the Balkans, were decisive. To these must be added France’s desire for revanche after 1871, a revenge preached even before Bismarck’s dismissal and the accession of Guglielmo II, but which seemed feasible above all after the German Chancellor’s retirement, when his successors no longer wished to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1890. The Franco-Russian alliance of 1893 resulted from this. The “Triple Alliance” (Austria, Germany, Italy) of 1882 had likewise lost much of its solidity after the Franco-Italian agreements at the beginning of the new century, and Rome’s neutrality during the first months of the war was a consequence of Italy’s pro-French political line, made evident at the Algeciras Conference of 1906. In 1904 France had moreover removed, by an agreement, the obstacles standing in the way of an understanding with England. Thus, long before the outbreak of open hostilities, the European Powers found themselves arrayed in two opposing camps: Austria-Hungary and Germany on one side; France, Great Britain, and Russia on the other.
The war plan of the Central Empires envisaged a swift victory over France. The invasion of Belgium was intended precisely to facilitate the attainment of this result, but the purpose failed in the face of the heroic resistance of the Belgian people and the skilful defence of General Joffre, who by the battle of the Marne (Sept. 1914) stabilized the front. Thus began on the Western Front a war of position that continued until the end of the conflict, despite bloody German and Allied attempts at a breakthrough (1916, Verdun and the Somme; 1917, the offensive on the Aisne and the battle of Flanders; 1918, the German offensives on the Somme and the Lys, and the battle of Picardy). On the Eastern Front, after the battle of Tannenberg (1914), where the Germans successfully opposed and halted the Russian offensive, the Central Empires reoccupied Austrian Galicia in the summer of 1915, having been conquered in the preceding autumn by the Tsar’s troops, and penetrated deeply into enemy territory, conquering Poland and Lithuania. On the Italian Front the fortunes of war were at first favourable to the Italian troops, who occupied Gorizia in 1916; but in 1917, the year of the Central Empires’ greatest effort, the rout of Caporetto compelled the Italian army to withdraw to the line of the Piave, whence it victoriously resumed the offensive in Oct. 1918 and routed the enemy, forcing it to request an armistice (4 Nov.). As already stated, 1917 was the year of the Central Empires’ greatest effort. The unrestricted submarine warfare decided upon by Germany in Feb. 1917, both in order effectively to combat the danger posed by the strict Allied naval blockade and to prevent the decisive contribution of American supplies and troops to the Entente powers, came close to attaining its intended purpose, and only the establishment of convoys saved England and France from defeat. The fall of the tsarist regime and the advent of Bolshevism in Russia, which signed the armistice of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers (15 Dec. 1917), enabled the German High Command to transfer considerable forces to the Western Front; but in the face of the progressive increase in Allied military potential, Germany too, exhausted by the long struggle and reduced to extremities by the naval blockade, was compelled on 11 Nov. 1918 to sign the armistice. The Treaties of Versailles (18 June 1919, with Germany), St-Germain (10 Sept. 1919, with Austria), Neuilly (27 Nov. 1919, with Bulgaria), Trianon (4 June 1920, with Hungary), and Sèvres (11 Aug. 1920, with Turkey) brought the world war to an end. The new Europe differed profoundly from that of the pre-war period. The Habsburg monarchy disintegrated, and new States arose from its scattered members: Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia. Germany became a republic. Russia, likewise a republic, lost its Polish territories, which, together with those formerly held by Germany and Austria-Hungary, constituted the new Republic of Poland. Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia also became independent States.
The outbreak of the world war had a pernicious effect upon the mind and body of the nearly eighty-year-old pontiff Pio X, causing his death less than a month later. From his first encyclical (1 Nov. 1914), the new pope Benedetto XV addressed the whole world, calling for the cessation of hostilities and the return of peace: “the end of the present most disastrous war” was the first of his thoughts, the end
necessary “for the good of society, so that, once peace has been attained, it may truly advance in every branch of progress” and “for the good of the Church of Jesus Christ, so that, unrestrained by further impediments, it may continue, even in the most remote regions of the earth, to bring comfort and salvation to mankind.” From the beginning to the end of the conflict, the Pontiff remained rigorously faithful to this program of peace, enunciated a few weeks after his elevation to the tiara. Father of all Catholics, he always held himself above the fray and supported neither one nor the other of the two parties in conflict: the evident proof of this absolute impartiality is provided by the fact that he was accused by both belligerent groups of favoring the enemy; for Clemenceau, Benedetto XV was le Pape boché, while for Ludendorff he was the “French Pope.” The Pontiff’s activity, limited in the first years of the conflict to moral expressions of condemnation and exhortations, developed in 1917 into a genuine attempt at mediation between the two sides. The moment was particularly opportune, since both the Entente and the Central Powers were beginning to tire of the conflict and were not unwilling to give serious consideration to possible peace proposals. The Holy See therefore submitted to the German government on 24 July 1917 a peace plan that could serve as a basis for discussion in further negotiations between the belligerents. The nuncio in Munich, Pacelli, who had gone expressly to Berlin to communicate the pontifical proposal and solicit a positive response, unfortunately obtained from Chancellor Michaelis only vague assurances that it would be carefully considered. After waiting in vain for the German position, the Pontiff decided to transmit the points of the mediation to all, without exception, of the heads of state of the powers at war. In this appeal for peace of 1 August 1917, transmitted in the form of a secret diplomatic note only on the 14th of that month, precisely because the Pontiff was awaiting the German response, the necessity was asserted first of all that “the moral forces of law should take the place of the material force of arms,” that there should be a “simultaneous and reciprocal reduction of armaments,” and that “in place of arms, the institution of arbitration, with its high peacemaking function,” should be established. This was followed by the affirmation of freedom of the seas and the demand for the reciprocal evacuation of occupied territories. These were the main points of the papal message. But neither the Central Powers nor the Entente approved this basis for discussion. Germany did not wish to renounce Belgium; the Allies accused the Pope of favoring their enemies through this “white peace,” without victors or vanquished and without a penalty being imposed on Germany, which, through the mouth of its Chancellor at the time of the invasion of Belgium, had declared that necessity knows no law and that treaties were scraps of paper. Alongside this persistent work of pacification, which found its highest expression in the offer of mediation to the belligerents, Benedetto XV devoted himself without limit to prisoners of war, the populations of occupied territories, and, in general, all those who were the most grievously afflicted victims of the immense conflict. The activity of the missions suffered a severe setback. Above all in the German colonies, the war inflicted substantial material and spiritual damage on the work of evangelization among the indigenous peoples. The missions located in the possessions of the Entente powers also suffered from the war, and many priests had to abandon their stations, compelled to return to their homeland either to perform military service or because, as enemy nationals, they had been interned. Thus the Church, which never ceased to denounce this crime committed against humanity, suffered its harshest consequences: places of worship destroyed, clergy dispersed, missions abandoned—this was the sorrowful condition of a large part of the Catholic world at the end of the First World War.