You are on page 1of 53

Music and The Broadcast Experience:

Performance, Production, and


Audiences 1st Edition Christina Baade
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/music-and-the-broadcast-experience-performance-pr
oduction-and-audiences-1st-edition-christina-baade/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

https://textbookfull.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-
loucas/

Historical Performance and New Music (Studies in


Contemporary Music and Culture) 1st Edition Rebecca
Cypess

https://textbookfull.com/product/historical-performance-and-new-
music-studies-in-contemporary-music-and-culture-1st-edition-
rebecca-cypess/

Music Production Learn How to Record Mix and Master


Music Hans Weekhout

https://textbookfull.com/product/music-production-learn-how-to-
record-mix-and-master-music-hans-weekhout/

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Music Production 1st Edition


Andrew Bourbon

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-bloomsbury-handbook-of-
music-production-1st-edition-andrew-bourbon/
PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance 1st Edition
Abigail Gardner

https://textbookfull.com/product/pj-harvey-and-music-video-
performance-1st-edition-abigail-gardner/

Music a social experience Second Edition Cornelius

https://textbookfull.com/product/music-a-social-experience-
second-edition-cornelius/

The Culture Industry and Participatory Audiences 1st


Edition Emma Keltie (Auth.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-culture-industry-and-
participatory-audiences-1st-edition-emma-keltie-auth/

Intelligent Music Production 1st Edition Brecht De Man


(Author)

https://textbookfull.com/product/intelligent-music-
production-1st-edition-brecht-de-man-author/

The Beautiful Music All Around Us Field Recordings and


the American Experience Stephen Wade

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-beautiful-music-all-around-
us-field-recordings-and-the-american-experience-stephen-wade/
Music and the Broadcast Experience
Music and
the Broadcast
Experience
Performance, Production, and Audiences

Edited by Christina L. Baade and


James Deaville

1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press


198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in


a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form


and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data


Baade, Christina L. | Deaville, James
Music and the Broadcast Experience : Performance, Production, and Audiences/[edited by]
Christina L. Baade, James Deaville.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes index.
LCCN 2015046540| ISBN 9780199314713 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 9780199314706 (cloth : alk. paper)
LCSH: Radio and music. | Television and music. | Music and the Internet.
LCC ML68 .M845 2016 | DDC 780/.0302—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046540

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
In loving memory of Sean Hudson
—​Christina L. Baade
In loving memory of James and Nina Deaville
—​James Deaville
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix
Contributor List   xi
About the Companion Website   xv

Introduction  1

SECTION I: Bringing the Classics Home: Broadcasting Symphonic


Concerts and Opera in Early Radio
1. Broadcasting—​Concerts: Confronting the Obvious   39
​Jenny Doctor
2. The Role of Opera in the Rise of Radio in the United States   69
​Timothy D. Taylor

SECTION II: Spectacular Sound: Production Cultures


in Broadcast Television
3. Spectacular Sound: Classical Music Programming and the Problem
of “Visual Interest” in Early US Television   91
​Shawn VanCour
4. The Machine Hums: Music, Special Sound, and the Spaces in
Between  109
​Louis Niebur
5. Musical Theater Meets Reality TV: An Investigation into the Canadian
Context  129
Christine Quail

SECTION III: Raising Dough on Radio: Musical Genre


and Advertising in the Swing Era
6. “From Operatic Pomp to a Benny Goodman Stomp!”: Frame Analysis
and the National Biscuit Company’s Let’s Dance  153
Rika Asai
7. Passing Pappy’s Biscuits: Dynamics of Uneven Modernization in
Regional Radio Voices   173
Alexander Russo

SECTION IV: The Power of the Small Screen: Musical Celebrity


in Television
8. Toscanini, Ormandy, and the First Televised Orchestra Concert(s): The
Networks and the Broadcasting of Musical Celebrity   193
James Deaville
9. John, Yoko, and Mike Douglas: Performing Avant-​Garde Art and
Radical Politics on American Television in the 1970s   213
Norma Coates

SECTION V: Music Radio On and Off the Air: Publics, Structures,


and Formats
10. Radio Formats in the United States: A (Hyper)Fragmentation
of the Imagination   235
Ron Rodman
11. Music Radio Goes Online   259
Tim Wall

SECTION VI: Worlds Apart: Space, Community, and Participation


in the Web 2.0 Era
12. New Media, New Festival Worlds: Rethinking Cultural Events
and Televisuality Through YouTube and the Tomorrowland Music
Festival  275
Fabian Holt
13. Worship on the Web: Broadcasting Devotion Through Worship Music
Videos on YouTube   293
Monique M. Ingalls
14. Incarcerated Music: Broadcasting and the Tactics of Music Listening
in Prison   309
Christina L. Baade

For Further Reading   327


Index  335

[ viii ] Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book came into being over several years, during which our thinking
about broadcasting, music, and the history of their interaction developed
considerably. Not only have dramatic shifts in music industries, broadcast-
ing organizations, regulatory agencies, and digital media influenced our
thinking, but also we have witnessed the development of vibrant commu-
nities of scholars interested in the intersections between music and media.
In this regard, we are especially grateful to the contributors to this volume
for their intellectually inspiring work and for their enormous patience,
both with the project and with us, throughout the challenging process of
transforming a set of ideas into a completed volume. Our gratitude is not
only intellectual and professional but also deeply personal, given some of
the life events that have affected us in the course of this publication proj-
ect. Above all we extend our most sincere appreciation to Norm Hirschy,
our editor at Oxford University Press, for his thoughtful guidance and
patient understanding throughout the process.
The seeds for this book were sown in a series of conversations that
started when we were colleagues at McMaster University. Driven by our
interest in how mediation—​ especially radio and television broadcast-
ing—​ had affected musicking and musical meaning making for nearly
a century, in 2005 we organized a conference, Over the Waves: Music in/​
and Broadcasting, which was generously funded by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The energy and intel-
lectual breadth shared by the nearly forty presenters, particularly the
inspiring keynotes given by Drs. Anahid Kassabian and Jenny Doctor,
contributed enormously to our developing thinking about music and
broadcasting—​and how these intersections could be explored in book
form. As the book took shape, we were helped by several research assis-
tants: Agnes Malkinson and Dawn Stevenson at Carleton University and
Emily Gallomazzei and Dr. Simon Orpana at McMaster University. Simon
provided not only skillful copyediting but also insightful comments that
helped us strengthen many arguments in the book. We are grateful to Ken
Cruikshank, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and funds associated with
the University Scholar award for help in funding the research assistants
from McMaster, the McMaster Arts Research Board for an indexing grant,
and John Osborne, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and
SSHRC for their support for the research assistants from Carleton and
the travel between Ottawa and Hamilton. We would also like to thank the
anonymous reviewers for this volume who helped us refine our thinking
about the scope and focus of the book.
The success of such a collective undertaking depends so much on the
individual contributions of its authors that we would be remiss not to
stress again in closing how grateful we are to our authors, who readily par-
ticipated in the common vision of opening up an interdisciplinary dialogue
about music in broadcasting across academic fields and media platforms.
We firmly believe that Music and the Broadcast Experience explores new ter-
ritories in the interfaces between music and media, and that our contribu-
tors have provided strikingly creative and superbly researched and written
forays into those domains. Thank you one and all!

Christina would like to thank especially Sara Bannerman, Faiza Hirji, and
Christine Quail, colleagues in her Department of Communication Studies
and Multimedia, who have helped her develop her thinking not only as a
music scholar but also as a media scholar. She thanks her coeditor James
for being a model of intellectual curiosity and engagement. Christina also
thanks her partner, Alana Hudson, for her ongoing support throughout
the process of bringing this book into being. A particularly strong influence
on her thinking in this book was Sean Hudson, Alana’s brother and a pas-
sionate music lover. In life, he deeply touched his family and friends, and
in death, he has been greatly missed. Christina dedicates this book to his
memory.
James recognizes above all his partner, Carol, who has not waivered
in her stalwart support of him and this project. He also wishes to express
his deep appreciation for the understanding and patience of coeditor
Christina, the contributors, and OUP during a difficult time for him.

[x] Acknowledgments
CONTRIBUTOR LIST

Rika Asai is Faculty Associate of Music at Utah State University. She


received her PhD in musicology from Indiana University, with a disser-
tation entitled “The Josef Bonime Collection of Radio Music: Music and
Advertising in the Golden Age of Radio.” Her research interests center on
music in media including radio, television, and film, and the culture of
advertising.
Christina L. Baade is Associate Professor in the Department of Communica­
tion Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario,
where she also holds the title of University Scholar (2015–​19). She has
investigated the intersections of radio, musicking, and cultural meaning in
a range of publications, including her award-​winning book, Victory Through
Harmony: The BBC and Popular Music in World War II (Oxford University
Press, 2012).
Norma Coates is Associate Professor at Western University-​Canada. Her
research on popular music and identity, and popular music and television,
is anthologized and taught internationally.
James Deaville is Professor in the School for Studies in Art &
Culture: Music of Carleton University, Ottawa. He is the editor of Music
in Television: Channels of Listening (Routledge, 2011) and has published
widely on television music, music in film trailers and newsreels, and
nineteenth-​century music.
Jenny Doctor is Director of the Belfer Audio Archive and Associate
Professor at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at
Syracuse University. She has published The BBC and Ultra-​Modern Music,
1922–​36 (1999); The Proms: A Social History, coedited with David Wright
and Nicholas Kenyon (2007); and Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz
Performance on Screen, coedited with Björn Heile and Peter Elsdon (Oxford
University Press, 2016).
Fabian Holt is Associate Professor at Roskilde University, where he teaches
in the Department of Communication and Arts. He is the author of Genre
in Popular Music (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and is coeditor of The
Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries (Oxford University
Press, forthcoming).
Monique M. Ingalls is Assistant Professor of Music at Baylor University
(PhD, University of Pennsylvania). Published in the fields of ethnomusi-
cology, religious studies, and media studies, she is cofounder of the inter-
national Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives
conference and Series Editor for Routledge’s Congregational Music Studies
Book Series.
Louis Niebur is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Nevada,
Reno. His work traces the development of electronic music in Britain,
primarily through the mediums of radio and television. His book, Special
Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, was pub-
lished in 2010 by Oxford University Press.
Christine Quail is Associate Professor in the Department of Communi­
cation Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University. She has published
in the areas of television studies, cultural studies, and the political econ-
omy of communication.
Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in
Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: Narrative American
Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010.
Alexander Russo is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and
Communication Studies at the Catholic University of America. He is the
author of Points on the Dial: Golden Age Radio Beyond the Networks (Duke
University Press, 2010), as well as articles and book chapters on the tech-
nology and cultural form of radio and television, sound studies, the history
of music and society, and media infrastructures.
Timothy D. Taylor is Professor in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of
Music and the author of many books and articles, including Music and
Capitalism: A History of the Present, recently published by the University of
Chicago Press.
Shawn VanCour is Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and
Communication at New York University. His work explores the industrial
and aesthetic foundations of US radio and television, their relationships

[ xii ] Contributor List


with neighboring sound and screen media, and their transformations in
the digital era.
Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham
City University. He researches the production and consumption cultures
around music and radio. His recent publications include Studying Popular
Music Culture and articles on the transistor radio, listening, music on tele-
vision, and The X Factor.

Contributor List [ xiii ]


ABOUT THE COMPANION WEBSITE

www.oup.com/​us/​musicandthebroadcastexperience

Oxford University Press has created a password-​ protected website to


accompany Music and the Broadcast Experience, which features a wealth of
audio, video, and images that illustrate many of the programs, events, and
events discussed in this book. It is hoped that readers will listen, watch,
and view these materials as they read.
Video and audio examples and still images available online are signaled
in the text with Oxford’s symbol { }.
Introduction
CHRIST INA L . BAADE AND JAMES DE AVILLE

T he chapters in this book explore the complex ways in which music


and broadcasting have developed together throughout the twenti-
eth and into the twenty-​first centuries. From Saturday afternoons at the
Metropolitan Opera to Saturday nights at the Grand Ole Opry, from Top
40 on a teenager’s transistor radio to the MTV Music Video Awards on
a family television, and from easy listening on a car radio to the uneasy
underscoring of news on a waiting room television, music has been perva-
sive in broadcasting since Lee de Forest’s first transmissions experiment-
ing with continuous sound in 1914.1 In turn, broadcasting has radically
changed music’s cultural roles and meanings. Although phonography and
eventually cinema also played important roles in separating the experience
of musical sound from the physically present body of the performer, it was
radio and then television that introduced the possibility of a mass audi-
ence, experiencing a performance (or recording) together in time but not
in space.
This possibility had far-​reaching ramifications for audiences, musi-
cians, and those involved in broadcasting organizations. During the 1920s
and 1930s, broadcasting not only redefined who audiences were and how
they were constituted but also helped configure modern notions of pub-
lic and private.2 Public musical performance events were no longer limited
to the shared spaces of theaters, auditoriums, and the outdoors but were
extended into private homes. For many observers, radio (and then televi-
sion) thus opened new frontiers for public musical culture. Classical music
advocates and music educators regarded broadcasting as a way to nurture a
musically literate citizenry, one better able to access the uplifting “best” of
culture—​a potent, even idealistic, perspective in an era of expanding suf-
frage and civic participation.3 At the same time, music industry marketers
recognized broadcasting as a critical promotional tool that could reach con-
sumers in their homes. Both forms of address evoke and extend the notion
of “imagined community” so influentially conceived by Benedict Anderson.
Just as the consumption of a newspaper was conducted individually yet
with the awareness that it was being shared with millions throughout a
nation, so too did radio listening and television viewing help constitute
the sense of a collective public.4 And yet, if private listening and viewing
interpellated audiences into a broad, imagined community, it also involved
experiencing the broadcast version of public events in individualized,
domestic spaces. This was a source of concern for broadcasters (and adver-
tisers), who worried about audience distraction and the possible degrada-
tion of “high” culture, such as symphonic music, into what Theodor Adorno
vividly described as “furniture” music, subject to the knob-​twirling whims
of the home listener.5
The auditing and viewing of broadcast music may have been a domes-
tic, intimate, accessible, and scaled-​down experience for audiences, but
this belied the large-​scale and complex technological, organizational, and
regulatory structures that came to characterize its provision. In both com-
mercial and public service, broadcasting tended to involve large, central-
ized organizations, although small, independent, and community-​based
stations also played an important role in the lives of local communities and
in the democratic vision of broadcasting itself. Whatever their size, broad-
casting organizations worked with numerous associated industries, includ-
ing song publishers, recording companies, artist management companies,
and equipment manufacturers, along with governmental regulatory bod-
ies, musicians’ unions, and performing rights societies. The audience was
also key; although often conceptualized as one-​way communication, from
the earliest days of broadcasting audiences were trained to actively respond
to what they heard through letter writing, call-​ins, and survey responses,
as Elena Razlogova has shown.6 Broadcasting organizations, their systems,
and their workers also played critical roles in shaping which music was rep-
resented on air and how it was used and presented, including new ways of
making musical presentations aurally and visually compelling (such as the
role of the announcer in radio, the use of multiple cameras in television,
and sound mixing for both). The use of musical cues and underscoring,
whether in dramas, news bulletins, commercials, or transitions between
programs, helped orient listeners throughout the flow of the broadcasting
day, where they might engage with dedicated musical programs as events

[2] Music and the Broadcast Experience


deserving full attention or merely as background accompaniment to their
daily routines.
A crucial concept for understanding the role of music in broadcasting,
whether as the center of attention or as background, is liveness. As Philip
Auslander has shown, the concept emerged because radio lacked the visual
cues that could authenticate a broadcast performance as not prerecorded.7
It thus became necessary to specify that the performers were in the broad-
casting studio in real time. Even as commercial recordings became domi-
nant on radio during the 1950s, a DJ provided live continuity, maintaining
radio’s status as a live medium, as Andrew Crisell has argued.8 The same era
saw live broadcasting become the standard on television, not least because
it distinguished the televised product from Hollywood film. Thus, the
variety show, with its live studio audience and the contributions of noted
vaudevillians, found the most prominent commercial sponsors throughout
the 1950s.9
The polarity between music as live event and music as everyday back-
ground has arguably intensified in the media landscape that has developed,
particularly in North America and Europe (the regions on which this book
focuses), during the first decade and a half of the twenty-​first century. The
transition to digital formats, Internet-​based distribution models, and on-​
demand consumption patterns—​changes that have been transforming the
music industries since the late 1990s—​is now challenging the long-​held
assumptions that radio and television broadcasting are defined through
cotemporal liveness, a mass audience, and centralized production.10 For
consumers with adequate bandwidth, digital streaming (on computers,
televisions, and mobile devices) has become an everyday means for access-
ing a range of prerecorded content: not only television programming, as
featured on providers like Netflix, but also music, most notably via online
digital music services—​often referred to as Internet radio.11 Whereas
Internet radio extends terrestrial (i.e., the ground-​based transmission of
an analog signal through the air) music radio’s function as everyday accom-
paniment, it is spectacular cultural events, such as awards shows, sporting
events, and benefit concerts, that have the greatest continued currency as
live broadcasting. Such events can straddle older broadcasting media (ter-
restrial, cable, and satellite) and Internet live streaming services (includ-
ing those of established broadcasters), even as audiences engage with them
in a variety of new ways, such as real-​time commentary via social media,
watching digitally recorded broadcasts on delay (enabling fast forwarding
through commercials), or viewing and re-​viewing excerpts online.
Reflecting upon these developments, it is clear that ours is a period of
significant transition for the interpenetrating realms of broadcasting and

Introduction [3]
music, particularly in North America and Europe, the most privileged
regions in the digital divide. The language of crisis runs through much of
the press coverage of musical life: classical music organizations struggling
for financial survival, record companies searching for new revenue streams,
and musicians of all sorts negotiating precarious livelihoods.12 Changes in
broadcasting are also part of this story, including corporate consolidation,
relaxed regulatory, decreasing musical diversity in terrestrial commercial
radio, the turn in public radio from classical and jazz formats to talk, and
the rise of live, contest-​oriented music reality shows in television, like the
Idol franchise, which in the United States was the most watched show from
2004 to 2012.13
For those of us who think historically about music and broadcasting,
the revolutions of the early twenty-​first century—​and the dialectics of
techno-​optimism and cultural crisis that frame them—​recall discourses
that accompanied the birth of radio broadcasting in the early twentieth
century and of television broadcasting at midcentury. Now, in the midst
of the triple revolution, as Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman term the rise
of social networking, the personalized Internet, and connected mobile
devices,14 our ways of relating to broadcasting and to music are being called
into question: the nature of their symbiosis is seeming less like common
sense and more like a historically situated phenomenon. Living through
the “triple revolution” thus opens a fresh vantage point from which to
investigate the relationship between music and broadcasting—​or, rather,
relationships, because, as the chapters in this book will show, the role of
music in broadcasting is complex, changing, and contingent.
While contributing to discussions of the history of broadcasting, our
approach for this book resists situating music broadcasting as a purely his-
torical phenomenon, for three key reasons. First, traditional broadcasting
remains a significant force in musical life, as demonstrated by terrestrial
radio’s continued importance as a promotional outlet for record compa-
nies, by the vitality of community radio, and by the vast global majority
(including many in North America and Europe) who do not have access to
the Internet.15 Second, we consider it important to probe what precisely
makes new forms like Internet radio, live streaming, and YouTube videos
different from traditional broadcasting forms; to this end, we devote spe-
cial attention to their impact on musical performance, distribution, and
consumption. Third, we see this change as an ongoing process: we do not
claim that we are yet at the end of the triple revolution.
Over the last twenty years, many scholars have engaged with ques-
tions about music and broadcasting in historical and contemporary con-
texts; however, as will be discussed later, their conversations have not

[4] Music and the Broadcast Experience


always negotiated between the fields of music studies and media studies,
which have distinct intellectual traditions, methodologies, and concerns.
Furthermore, research on music in television and on music in radio has
also developed along distinct trajectories, not least because studies of tele-
vision, as an audiovisual medium, have historically aligned more closely
with film studies than with radio. In response to these divides, this book
has three key aims:

1. To bring into dialogue researchers working in media and music studies.


Based in both disciplines, the contributing authors engage in their work
with a range of interdisciplinary approaches and concerns; the book
presents their contributions as a dialogue through thematic sections
and cross-​disciplinary pairings, which also demonstrate the distinctive
perspectives of the two fields.
2. To explore and develop crucial points of contact between studies of
music in radio and music in television. It should be acknowledged that
broadcasting studies has long bridged these media in its investigation
of the tripartite “relationship between producers, medium and audi-
ences,” although its emphasis on process has sometimes overlooked the
specificity of radio and television as mediums.16 Investigations of music,
however, have tended to focus on content and to align with the single-​
medium focus of television studies and radio studies.17 Contributors to
this volume have taken production and other structural processes into
account and, when relevant, have attended to broader media contexts in
their analyses.
3. To investigate the limits, persistence, and extensions of music broad-
casting in the Internet era from theoretical and practical perspectives.

Our ultimate aim in this volume is to explore the usefulness and lim-
itations of broadcasting as a concept for making sense of music and its
cultural role, both historically and today. We accomplish this by bringing
together a series of case studies that key moments and concerns in music
broadcasting, past and present, identified and discussed by leading schol-
ars in the field, hailing from both media and music studies. Unified by their
attentiveness both to musical sound and meaning and to broadcasting
structures, practices, audiences, and discourses, their contributions cluster
around a diverse range of topics and approaches:

• The role of live orchestral concerts and opera in the early development
of radio and their relation to ideologies of musical uplift and classical
music (Jenny Doctor [­chapter 1] and Timothy Taylor [­chapter 2])

Introduction [5]
• Production cultures and their relation to television genre: classical music
programming in the 1950s, science fiction in the 1960s, and musical the-
ater reality television in the 2010s (Shawn VanCour [­chapter 3], Louis
Niebur [­chapter 4], and Christine Quail [­chapter 5])
• The function of music in two contrasting forms of sponsored radio in
the 1930s: mainstream dance music (“sweet” as opposed to swing) in
the nationally broadcast Let’s Dance and western swing in regional Texas
radio (Rika Asai [­chapter 6] and Alexander Russo [­chapter 7])
• The fortunes of musical celebrity and artistic ambition on television: in
Arturo Toscanini’s and Eugene Ormandy’s first television broadcasts in
1948 and in John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s week on the Mike Douglas
Show in 1972 (James Deaville [­chapter 8] and Norma Coates [­chapter 9])
• Questions of music format and political economy in the development of
online radio (Ronald Rodman [­chapter 10] and Tim Wall [­chapter 11])
• The negotiation of space, community, and participation among audi-
ences, online and offline, in the early twenty-​first century—​at a large
electronic dance music (EDM) festival, in YouTube worship music com-
munities, and in prison (Fabian Holt [­chapter 12], Monique Ingalls
[­chapter 13], and Christina Baade [­chapter 14])

Each of the topical sections brings together researchers from distinct dis-
ciplinary backgrounds (music studies and media studies; musicology and
ethnomusicology), allowing readers to reflect upon the differences and
similarities of their approaches (for further discussion, see the introduc-
tions to each section).
Although it can be risky to generalize from case studies, as the politi-
cal scientist Yves-​Chantal Gagnon has observed, the approach also offers
many benefits: in particular, case studies enable in-​depth analyses of com-
plex phenomena, contexts, and histories, and they can serve as the basis
for meaningful theory building.18 Rather than providing a comprehensive
history of music broadcasting or sweeping theories of its trajectory, this
volume demonstrates a range of productive theoretical and methodologi-
cal approaches to music broadcasting in different contexts, laying the
groundwork for more comprehensive accounts in the future. The volume’s
lack of comprehensiveness must be acknowledged especially in the case
of geography: all of our chapters focus on European and North American
contexts, particularly the United States. Although our focus reflects the
historic importance of the US and British broadcasting systems, particu-
larly in Anglophone scholarship, we acknowledge that much more is being
said—​and remains to be said—​about non-​English-​language broadcasting
and other global contexts.19

[6] Music and the Broadcast Experience


In the remainder of this introduction, we aim to further contextual-
ize our contributors’ chapters by offering a genealogy of key media and
music terms used in the volume and by surveying the academic literature
on music radio and television. These discussions, which result in an unusu-
ally lengthy introduction, respond to two concerns rooted in the practices
of interdisciplinary research. First, as music scholars working with media
studies research and writing for an interdisciplinary audience, we consid-
ered it important to define the terms we are using. Second, because we
are arguing in this volume for greater dialogue between scholars working
on music in radio and television, we believed it useful to provide a nar-
rative of how these fields developed so independently in the first place.
Readers may wish to think of the “Genealogies” and “Context” sections as
resources, to be scrutinized, skimmed, or skipped as necessary; however,
we encourage all readers to join us at the end of this introduction, where
we discuss five key “points of contact” between the chapters in the volume.
These points of contact offer paths toward greater dialogue through the
lens of broadcasting: the role of production in shaping musical meaning in
mediated culture; the ways in which format and genre structure how music
is broadcast; the tension between treating music as a commodity versus
approaching it as cultural practice; the range of ways in which the audience
and its role are understood; and the function and perception of liveness in
broadcast media.

GENEALOGIES: BROADCASTING, MEDIATION, AND MUSIC

As suggested earlier, broadcasting has done much to redefine musical


meaning and culture during the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries, even
as selecting, producing, and disseminating music became a significant part
of what broadcasting does. In this section, we will offer a brief genealogy of
“broadcasting” as a term, along with the closely related concepts of “mass
media” and “mediation.” We will also clarify what we mean by “classical”
and “popular” music, classifications that became increasingly dichotomous
in the twentieth century, in no small part because of the influence of broad-
casting and its ostensibly competing missions of uplift and commerce.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “broadcasting” first
appeared in print in 1767 to describe a mode of sowing seeds by scatter-
ing them across a field,20 presupposing a center and a periphery.21 By the
1830s, the term was also used to describe the dissemination of ideas, and
sometimes objects or people, but it found its most lasting use when it was
applied to radio in the early 1920s. Specifically, “broadcasting” referred to

Introduction [7]
radio as a means of one-​way communication from a single transmitter to
multiple receivers, as opposed to two-​way, ship-​to-​ship communications
using Morse code, which had been in wide use during World War I. The
notions of a centralized source, the dissemination of material through the
air, and the broad and seemingly passive reception of that material thus
carried through from agriculture to radio and then to television. Although
the point may be crude, it is worth underlining that the audience (i.e.,
human beings) had replaced the soil as recipient in the chain of relation-
ships encompassed by the term. The question remained open, however, as
to whether the ideas and entertainment that were broadcast would take
root. Understanding the audience and how it received the messages it
heard became one of the core challenges in making sense of broadcasting
and its social role.
“Mass media,” a term that entered the lexicon in 1923 in the context of
advertising,22 proved to be a more generative concept for understanding
the impact of broadcasting in modern society than the organicist meta-
phors of agriculture. Since the late nineteenth century, the “masses,” along
with mass culture, mass taste, mass production, and mass markets, had
come to be understood as a crucial aspect of modernity, an era in which
urban, industrial, “mass” society was superseding rural, agrarian, and
communal ways of life. As Raymond Williams has explained, the masses
were conceptualized in two main ways during the twentieth century: as an
active, potentially antihegemonic “social force” (e.g., organized labor or the
Occupy movement) and as an “ignorant, unstable” multitude, to be treated
as an object of study and even manipulation.23 At the simplest level, the
mass media of radio, television, and the press were characterized by their
ability to reach a large number of people, often simultaneously, but their
impact on the masses (in Williams’s second sense) was not simply a matter
of scale. Advertisers, academics, and broadcasters themselves recognized
that the media had become one of the primary means for promoting senses
of social belonging, value, and cultural meaning in modern society—​for
good or ill; motivated by a range of critical and instrumental aims, they set
out to understand both the media and its mass audience. These concerns
helped shape contemporary understanding of “mass media” as encompass-
ing the technologies, institutions, and ideologies involved in the produc-
tion and dissemination of information and entertainment, with the aim
of describing how the press, radio, and television affect modern societies.24
In the speed and range of its one-​to-​many transmission, along with the
immediacy and emotional potency of sound and image,25 radio and televi-
sion broadcasting were forms of mass media seemingly even more power-
ful than the press. Marshall McLuhan described the rise of electronic media

[8] Music and the Broadcast Experience


as bringing about a shift in “the whole psychic and social complex”—​from
the detachment and delayed reactions enabled by technologies of literacy
to the extension of “our central nervous system itself in a global embrace,
abolishing both space and time.”26 At the time of its publication, McLuhan’s
provocative 1964 book, Understanding Media, captured the zeitgeist of an
era when network television brought images of war, the civil rights move-
ment, and pop culture into the home, but it has seemed downright pre-
scient to those seeking to understand the Internet and its impact from
the 1990s onward.27 If the broadcast media were fast in the late twentieth
century, the Internet now seems instantaneous and more truly global in
its reach—​embodying McLuhan’s global village. The “post-broadcast era”
(“post-television” is also frequently used, although not “post-radio”—​as
will be discussed later) is characterized by interactive networks, user-​gen-
erated content, narrowcasting to niche audiences (or even individually
customized playlists), and participatory fandom—​in contrast to what is
often described as the one-​way communication, centralized production,
and mass audience of traditional broadcasting.
Of course, the periodization implicit in the term “postbroadcasting”
sets up a binary with traditional broadcasting that risks oversimplify-
ing both sides of the divide, and the term has been debated widely. We
would like to highlight three key ways in which scholars have complicated
the dichotomy of broadcast and postbroadcast media. First, as observed
by numerous scholars working on early radio, including Russo in this vol-
ume (­chapter 7), the audience was far more participatory than standard
descriptions of broadcasting as “one-​way” communication would suggest;
many audience members wrote to broadcasters and the press about what
they heard, and broadcasters took their letters seriously, both as evidence
of engagement and as a sources of ideas.28 If the industry by midcen-
tury had turned to ratings and scientific measurement, as Razlagova has
shown, these approaches to the audience “never triumphed completely.”29
The dialectic between audience participation, with its democratic poten-
tial, and audience measurement, with its instrumentalist thrust—​a ten-
sion weighted with concerns about agency, surveillance, inclusivity, and
commodification—​carries throughout broadcasting history and into the
Internet era.
Second, several scholars, including Rodman in this volume (­chapter 10),
have shown how many aspects of “postbroadcasting”—​including format
fragmentation, narrowcasting, niche audiences, mobility, and on-​demand
consumption—​developed throughout the twentieth century. Technologies
like transistors enabled the proliferation of cheap, portable receiv-
ing devices while terrestrial broadcasting was joined by cable television,

Introduction [9]
satellite radio, and digital broadcasting, each of which was accompanied
by debates about consumer choice, media ownership, regulation, and the
public good.30 Throughout these shifts, concepts of “television” and “radio”
as fields of cultural production and modes of consumption have remained
resilient in public, industrial, and academic discourses; the question is the
degree to which the traditional concept of broadcasting remains in the
picture.
Finally, many scholars have pointed to the persistence of older broad-
casting models in the postbroadcast era, especially in regard to questions
of media ownership and regulations, global contexts, and the digital divide.
We are compelled by Charles Acland’s concept of “residual media,” which
challenges narratives of new media technologies simply supplanting old
ones, considering instead the complexities of older media existing along-
side the new.31 These questions are addressed in Quail’s chapter on music
competition reality shows, international syndication, and Canadian iden-
tity (­chapter 5), and in Baade’s chapter on music listening in US prisons,
which is highly dependent on terrestrial radio and television (­chapter 14).
Ultimately, our aim is not to deny the impact of the Internet, mobility, and
social networks on concepts of radio and television, but we do want to be
more precise about the nature and scope of their impact. Several chapters
in this book offer insights into these questions, including Holt’s chapter on
promotional videos and live-​streaming of the EDM festival Tomorrowland
(­chapter 12); Ingalls’s chapter on user-​created praise music videos and com-
munity on YouTube (­chapter 13); and Wall’s chapter on the music stream-
ing service Last.fm (­chapter 11).
Turning to the designation of “music,” it is helpful to recall Antoine
Hennion’s observation that “music has nothing but mediations to show:
instruments, musicians, scores, stages, record[ings]. … The works are not
‘already there,’ faced with differences in tastes also ‘already there,’ over-​
determined by the social. They always have to be played again.”32 In other
words, music—​even before it is broadcast or recorded—​is defined and
becomes knowable through mediation, encompassing a range of activi-
ties and technologies. Hennion’s thinking about music resonates with
Williams’s consideration of the word “medium,” which long “had the sense
of an intervening or intermediate agency or substance.”33 Carrying as it
does the implications of movement and circulation, this fluid sense of the
word “medium” continues to shape our contemporary understandings of
“the media” as shaping—​mediating—​our awareness not only of music but
also of the world in which we live. It is also worth emphasizing the role of
agency in these concepts of mediation; participants engage actively in the
process of meaning making—​and music making—​an insight conveyed in

[ 10 ] Music and the Broadcast Experience


Christopher Small’s concept of “musicking,” which emphasizes music as an
activity.34 For over two decades, the insight that musical meaning is socially
produced has driven the research questions posed by a wide range of soci-
ologists and music scholars—​including many represented in this volume—​
interested in questions of musical value, community, performativity, and
mediation (in its more narrow sense).
If we accept that musical meaning is produced through mediation, then
radio and television broadcasting have played powerful roles in shaping how
society understands musical meaning. For instance, alongside the recording
industry, radio and television have helped configure the division between
classical and popular music, arguably the most important Western musical
binary of the twentieth century. In many ways, the distinction between
classical and popular music is an outgrowth of what Andreas Huyssen calls
“the great divide” of modernity: between serious, autonomous, experimen-
tal art (thus, the tendency to refer to classical music as “serious” music, as
was the British Broadcasting Corporation’s practice in its first decades) and
the “easy,” formulaic, commercial products of mass culture.35
The modern distinction between popular and “serious” music resonates
with the more negative views of the masses that Williams described, as well
as of other abjected classes of people—​particularly women, but also youth
and racialized groups. Indeed, Huyssen’s influential essay, “Mass Culture as
Woman,” explored how from the nineteenth century on, the masses were
understood in feminized terms as hysterical, emotional, and passive. He
suggested that modernist art could be understood as a reaction, shaped by “a
powerful masculinist mystique,” to mass culture—​novels, theater, popular
music, cinema—​and its visible female audiences.36 As Huyssen points out,
during the 1930s, Frankfurt school thinkers developed the concept of the
“culture industry” to emphasize and explore the structural ways in which
modern capitalism imposed such entertainments on the masses, limiting
their capacity for serious critique and real resistance.37 Theodor Adorno’s
extensive writing on music has been particularly influential in this regard,
not only for his insightful books on composers like Gustav Mahler and
Alban Berg, which argued for the critical potential of their works, but also
in his biting essays on popular music and jazz, which argued that the indus-
try offered only standardized, “predigested” music to audiences who were
far less autonomous than they imagined.38 Despite the problematic ways in
which Adorno employed racially and sexually charged language to describe
the youthful “rhythmically obedient type” of the “radio generation” that
favored swing and the sentimental “emotional type” that perferred popular
song, his conviction that audiences deserved better than escapist enter-
tainment remains palpable.39 His pessimism about the potential for true

Introduction [ 11 ]
critique in mass culture was undoubtedly rooted in his own “elite” back-
ground, as well as his experiences in Nazi Germany (he wrote his essays
on popular music and jazz while living as an émigré in the United States).
Adorno’s portrayal of audiences acted upon by a culture industry invited
questions about whether they were really so passive. For scholars associ-
ated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the
answer was no. Especially influential was Stuart Hall’s theory of encod-
ing/​decoding (1973), which provided a model for analyzing the contingent
and varied ways in which audiences interpreted (decoded)—​even repur-
posed—​the media.40 Hall and other Birmingham school theorists helped
develop a space for academics not only to take seriously the experiences,
thoughts, and voices of the working class, people of color, youth, women,
and other disenfranchised groups but also to engage seriously with popular
culture and media content. In tension with Frankfurt school views on the
culture industry, the Birmingham thinkers were foundational for research
into television, radio, and popular music, including the work of several
scholars in this book, including Quail (­chapter 5), Russo (­chapter 7), Coates
(­chapter 9), and Baade (­chapter 14).
One of the most challenging aspects of approaching popular music as a
category is that it encompasses a wide range of contemporary and past musi-
cal genres, styles, and practices. In this volume alone, the category includes
musical theater (Quail, c­ hapter 5), Yoko Ono’s avant-​garde performances
(Coates, ­chapter 9), sweet dance music of the 1930s (Asai, c­ hapter 6), west-
ern swing (Russo, ­chapter 7), electronic dance music (Holt, ­chapter 12), con-
temporary worship music (Ingalls, ­chapter 13), and indie, punk, and pop
(Baade, ­chapter 14). Another challenge is that although audiences, fans,
and subcultural participants might have decoded and repurposed popular
music, their identities were also inscribed and coopted by broadcasters and
marketers. Popular music was thus situated as the commercialized, mass-​
distributed “other” to pure, authentic folk music (a tension explored by
Russo in his chapter on western swing in 1930s radio shows aimed at white
rural Texans [­chapter 7]), as well as to classical music.
The chapters by Doctor (­ chapter 1), Taylor (­ chapter 2), VanCour
(­chapter 3), and Deaville (­chapter 8) illustrate how broadcasters framed
classical music—​opera, symphonies, and chamber music—​as culturally
significant, especially in the early years of radio and television broadcast-
ing. Simultaneously, nineteenth-​century discourses of classical music’s
transcendence helped raise the status of broadcasting itself. As David
Goodman has observed, “It was vital for commercial and political reasons
that broadcast classical music become part of a program of uplift and more
equal provision of access to esteemed culture for all.”41 Thus, although

[ 12 ] Music and the Broadcast Experience


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
what I then advanced in words and acts that have branded his nation
with the stigma of infamy.
But the well-meaning pacifists of all shades and degrees, from
the wordy interpreters of Prussian philosophies in high places down
to the credulous man in the street, who pinned his faith to the
business instincts of our German customers, clung tenaciously to
their comfortable faith. At last, five months ago, I uttered a further
warning:

Among the new or newly intensified currents of political life


now traversing the Continents of Europe, none can be compared
in its cultural and political bearings and influence with the rivalry
between the Slav and Teutonic races. This is no mere dispute
about territorial expansion, political designs, or commercial
advantages. It is a ruthless struggle for mastery in all domains of
national and international existence, which, so far as one can
now see, may at most be retarded by diplomatic goodwill on
both sides, but can hardly be settled with finality by any treaty or
convention. For here we are dealing with an instinctive, semi-
conscious movement which obeys natural laws, and not with a
deliberate self-determining agency which may be modified by
13
argument or swayed by persuasion.

In that same article I gave Germany’s plea for a preventive war,


which I felt was then in the air. And I quoted the pregnant remark of
my German colleague of the Berliner Tageblatt, who deliberately
wrote: “It cannot be gainsaid that the growth of Russia is in itself a
peril.” This chosen people, these apostles of culture and humanity,
could not brook the natural growth of a gifted neighbour. Russia must
be exterminated that Germany might thrive.
The Governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary then
considered that the odds against Russia’s participation in a war to
shield Servia were, under the existing conditions, almost tantamount
to certainty. The German Ambassador in Vienna stated this positively
to our Ambassador there and to his other colleagues. It was an
axiom which admitted of no question. It followed that France and
Great Britain would also hold aloof, and a duel with a foregone
conclusion could, under these propitious conditions, be fought by
Austria against Servia. And this was the state of things for which the
Central European Powers had been making ready from the
conclusion of the Bucharest Treaty down to the assassination of the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This monstrous crime, for which there
are neither excuse nor extenuating circumstances, wholly changed
the aspect of affairs, and provided the Teutonic allies with a most
welcome war-cry which was sure to rally their friends, while
immobilizing their enemies. It was not, therefore, to be wondered at
that they took such a long time to study the ways and means of
utilizing it to the fullest. And in this they succeeded so well that
France, Great Britain, Italy, and even Russia freely admitted Austria’s
right not merely to punish Servia for her aggressive agitation, but
also to take effective guarantees for her future good behaviour.
Never before was European public sentiment so universally and
whole-heartedly on the side of Austria-Hungary. Every nation and
political party sympathized with her aged monarch and supported the
legitimate claims of her Government. If the grievances ostensibly put
forward in Vienna and Budapest, and recognized by all civilized
peoples, had really represented the full extent of what Austria
desired to see redressed once for all, there would have been no war.
And left to herself, Austria would probably have contented herself
with this measure of amends for the past and guarantees for the
future. But she was not a free agent. In all fundamental issues she is
the vassal of Prussia. And the development of this crisis brought out
their inseparability in sharp outline and relief. Every act of the Austro-
Hungarian Government, from the moment when the Archduke fell in
Sarajevo to the declaration of war against Servia, was conceived
with the knowledge and collaboration of Berlin, and performed
sometimes at its instigation and always with its approval.
Germany herself is commonly said to have been bent upon war
from the outset of the crisis. Conscious of her readiness for the
struggle, she is supposed to have been eager to seize on the
puissant war-cry afforded her by the crime of Sarajevo to profit by
the military unpreparedness of France, Russia, and Great Britain,
and the internal strife in these countries, which had seemingly struck
their diplomacy with paralysis and disqualified their Governments
from taking part in a European conflict.
That this theory is erroneous I know on the highest authority.
Having watched, sometimes at close quarters, the birth, growth,
cultivation, and ripening of the scheme which has now borne fruit in
the bitterest and most tremendous war on record, and having had
more than once some of the decisive State papers under my eyes, I
can affirm that Germany’s hope and desire and striving were on the
opposite side. She deprecated a European war sincerely. She
sought to ward it off by every means compatible with the realization
of her main scheme, and she was disappointed beyond words at her
failure. Her main scheme was to deal with each of the Entente
Powers separately, and to reserve Great Britain for the last. And it
was presumably in furtherance of this programme that Admiral von
Tirpitz tendered his advice to the Kaiser—as we are told he did—not
to break with England yet, but to conciliate her by every available
means, and thus to gain time for the German navy to reach the
standard which would enable it to cope with ours.
That the German scheme of separating the Entente Powers and
crushing them one by one was feasible will hardly be denied. One
has only to read the recent diplomatic correspondence on the crisis
in the light of certain other data to realize how lucky the Entente
Powers may account themselves at having been provoked one and
all by Germany. Each Power felt strongly tempted to circumscribe its
own interests to the narrowest limits, and to keep its powder dry until
these were manifestly assailed. That was the temper of the Entente
States. “In the present case,” Sir Edward Grey explained to the
German Ambassador, “the dispute between Austria and Servia was
not one in which we felt called to take a hand. Even if the question
became one between Austria and Russia, we should not feel called
upon to take a hand in it.”
Clearly, then, Germany might tackle Russia without drawing
Great Britain to the side of her enemy. But even “if Germany were
involved,” the Foreign Secretary went on to say, “and France
became involved, we had not made up our minds what we should
do.” Consequently it might well seem no great feat of diplomacy for
Germany to set inducements and deterrents before us sufficiently
powerful to keep us neutral. In no case was the Prussian scheme of
dealing separately with each Power chimerical.
The invasion of Servia as the first step had a twofold object for
Germany, who encouraged it from the outset: first, to gratify her
Austrian ally, on whom Servia had in truth inflicted terrific losses
during the past four years, thus enabling the Habsburgs to cripple
the independent Slavs of the South, and obtain guarantees against
the recurrence of the evil; and then to compel the principal Balkan
States to form a block against Russia, so that they could be relied
upon as a new Great Power in the coming struggle against that
Empire. On this subject I write with knowledge, having myself taken
a hand more than once in the international negociations which had
the Balkan equilibrium for their object. The first phase in the Teutonic
advance towards supreme world-power, then, was the tossing aside
of the Bucharest Treaty as a worthless scrap of paper, and the
formation of this Balkan League. And the first serious obstacle to it
was raised by myself in a series of negociations which may be made
public elsewhere.
Germany, therefore, was not anxious to bring about a European
war just yet. On the contrary, her efforts to postpone it were sincere
and strenuous. And to her thinking she had reduced the chances of
a clash of nations to a faint possibility. Consequently it would be
much nearer the mark to say that, convinced that she would succeed
in “localizing the war,” she was bent on carrying out her policy in
every event, but that this policy being ultimately found incompatible
with the vital interests of Russia, the limits of whose forbearance she
had miscalculated, led necessarily to the present conflict. But for this
emergency, too, she had been extensively preparing and deemed
herself quite ready. Into Germany’s calculations and expectations I
have more than once had an insight, and I can affirm that she was
twice out in her reckoning of the probabilities. I ought, however,
emphatically to add that even for one of these miscalculations she
made due allowance. When the latent crisis became acute the
opinion prevailed in Berlin that the stability of the Tsar’s dynasty, as
well as the solvency and the integrity of his Empire, were bound up
with the maintenance of peace, and that Russia, being thus fettered,
Austria would be allowed, with certain formal reserves, to have a free
hand against Servia. And Germany’s initial efforts were directed to
enlisting the co-operation of Great Britain and of France in the task
of securing this advantage for her ally. That is why she was credited
with a praiseworthy desire to restrict the war-area as much as
possible.
As we have seen, the grounds for Germany’s optimistic forecast
were reinforced by the opinions of certain Russian authorities. These
experts strongly held that a war with Germany would open the
sluice-gates of disaster for their country. There are always such
Calchases in every land, but Russia possesses an abnormally large
number of them. Some of these views were committed to paper, laid
before the highest authorities, and also reported simultaneously to
the Foreign Office in Berlin. The financial, military, and political
considerations adduced in support of these conclusions were also
fully set forth in the communications on the subject which Germany’s
agents in St. Petersburg supplied to the Wilhelmstrasse. Much of
interest might be written on this aspect of the preliminaries to the war
—much that is striking, instructive, and in a way sensational—but
this is hardly the moment for anything in the nature of startling
disclosures.
In what the policy consisted which Germany and Austria pursued
under the mask of indignation against the Servian abettors of murder
is well known by now even to the general public. Over and over
again I unfolded it in the columns of the Daily Telegraph; and from
the day on which ominous rumours about Austria’s expected Note to
Servia began to disquiet Europe, I announced that the assassination
of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was but the flimsiest of pretexts,
that Austria was minded to take the initiative in the struggle of the
Teutons against the Slavs, and that the European press was making
a strange mistake in accepting the theory that her aim was the
condign punishment of the accomplices of the assassins. I added
that this was no dispute, in the ordinary sense of the term, between
Austria and Servia; it was only a question of which of the two could
impose its will on the other. In a word, it was a trial of strength—eine
Machtfrage.
Germany’s aim, I repeat, was, and had long been, to sever the
bonds that linked France with Russia, so as to be able to tackle each
one separately. The methods to which her statesmen had recourse
in order to effect a severance between the two allies were of a piece
with the expedients now being resorted to for the purpose of egging
on Turkey to a breach of her neutrality—such as the forging of Mr.
Burns’ alleged oration and the speech of the Lord Mayor of London
against the war. But some of them which have never yet been even
hinted at are far more sensational even than this. One of the Kaiser’s
own little schemes which has never been mentioned even in well-
informed diplomatic circles outdid in breeziness the episode of the
scrap of paper.
The Entente was to be dealt with like an artichoke—to have leaf
after leaf torn off. To attain this Germany employed fair means and
foul—first flattered and cajoled the French—and when
blandishments failed passed abruptly to brutal threats. But her
diplomacy in its obsequious as well as its menacing mood had failed
of its purpose. And now war was to be essayed as a means to the
end, but a war with Servia only. Its objects, as we saw, were
materially to weaken Slavdom, humiliate Russia, create a Balkan
League against that Empire, and supply an object-lesson to those
politicians in France who were opposed to the alliance with the
Tsardom, on the ground that it might at any moment involve the
Republic in a sanguinary struggle for obscure Slav interests. The
duel contemplated was to be confined to Austria-Hungary and
Servia. Every lever was to be moved to keep it restricted to that
narrow compass. As an Austrian victory would ensure a partial
dismemberment of Servia, to be followed by a new grouping of the
Balkan States—this time under the ægis of the Habsburgs—the
Central European Powers would have won a most useful ally in the
shape of a new and compact Balkan League.
A partnership of Turkey, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Greece, under
the lead of Austria and Germany, Servia being constrained to keep
the step with these, would have constituted a stout bulwark against
the tide of Slavdom flowing towards the Adriatic, and a puissant ally
in the event of a European war. That this was a real scheme, and is
not merely an inference or an assumption, may be taken as certain. I
became acquainted with the details of it at its inception. Bulgaria
knows it and Turkey knows it. Bulgaria’s pressing offer, made to
Turkey at the very moment when I was successfully endeavouring to
obtain the assent of the Porte and of the King of Greece to a treaty
which I had drawn up for the settlement of all their differences, was
brought to my cognizance. Happily, the suggested deal was
scrutinized and rejected by the Porte. Turkey, as represented by
Talaat Bey, had brought an open mind to the matter, allowing herself
to be swayed only by her own interests; and as it appeared that
these would fare best by the treaty which I proposed, she assented
to this. Greece, needing permanent peace as a condition of internal
development, showed herself amenable to reason and ready to
compromise. And she, too, agreed to the treaty. Roumania,
animated by a like broad and liberal spirit, was steadfastly opposed
to every move, by whomsoever contemplated, which was likely to
jeopardize public tranquillity or modify the Treaty of Bucharest, and
favoured every arrangement capable of imparting stability to the
status quo.
But perseverance and importunity are characteristic traits of
German methods in diplomacy as in commerce. And on this
occasion they stamped her Balkan policy with the well-known cachet
of the Hohenzollerns. The moment it was decided that the Austrian
demands should be so drafted as to ensure their rejection by Servia,
the two Central European Powers set to work anew to stir up
opposition to the Treaty of Bucharest, realize the scheme for a
Balkan League with its sharp point turned against Russia, and have
a large part of King Peter’s realm carved up by the Balkan States
themselves without the ostensible intervention of Austria or
Germany. This is an important point in the march of events which
preceded the war—a point, too, which, so far as I am aware, has not
been noticed by any publicist or statesman.
It is worth a moment’s consideration. The world has not forgotten
the assurance which Austria gave to Russia as an inducement to
hold her hand and allow Servia to be punished. It took the shape of
an undertaking that the Dual Monarchy would not annex any portion
of Servian territory. Now, on the face of it, this was a concession the
worth of which, from Russia’s point of view, might well be reckoned
considerable. And in truth it had great weight with the St. Petersburg
Foreign Office. For it seemed to imply that at the close of Austria’s
campaign against Servia the vanquished Slav State would at any
rate lose none of the land of which it was possessed before the war.
That was the obvious meaning of the official Austro-Hungarian
assurance, and it was construed in this sense by all the
Chancelleries of the Entente Powers without exception. It worked as
a motive to lure Russia to the far-reaching concessions she offered
to Austria-Hungary in the hope of “localizing the war.” Sir M. de
Bunsen wrote to Sir Edward Grey that the Austrian Minister of
Foreign Affairs thought “that Russia would have no right to intervene
after receiving his assurance that Austria sought no territorial
aggrandisement.”
But in reality the phrasing of this self-denying promise was
deceptive. Austria undertook that she would not incorporate Servian
territory in her own Empire, but in reading this declaration the accent
should be laid on the word she. She would refrain from cutting off
slices of Servian territory for herself. But it was resolved, none the
less, that Servian territory should be carved up and partitioned
among Servia’s neighbours—Bulgaria, Turkey, and Albania. The
three Greek islands—Samos, Chios, and Mytilene—were to revert to
their late owner. Russia never suspected this curious wile. Otherwise
she would not have fallen into the trap as she did. That it was part of
a deliberate plan which Germany and Austria set about realizing is
established beyond question. Neither can it be gainsaid that the form
of words chosen later on by Germany for the assurance she offered
to Sir Edward Grey respecting the integrity of France left room, and
was meant to leave room, for a similar subterfuge. To my knowledge,
and to that of at least one European Chancellery, Germany decided
on making an offer to Italy of Tunis, Nice, and Savoy, all which she
might claim and receive as a recompense for active co-operation
during the war. And this by-compact was deemed perfectly
consistent with her promise to Sir Edward Grey. Whether that bid for
co-operation was actually made to Italy, I am unable to say. That it
was one of the inducements to be held out to the Consulta, I know.
Meanwhile Turkey was exhorted to throw aside the Treaty which
I had drafted, and which was to have been signed by the Grand
Vizier and M. Venizelos at my house during the week ending on
August 3rd. She was further urged to close with Bulgaria’s offer of a
treaty of partition without delay, and to make common cause with
her. At the same time M. Venizelos was advised to treat with King
Ferdinand’s representatives, and come to an arrangement by which
Bulgaria should retake from the Serbs “the territory which by right
belongs to them,” and a certain lesser slice from Greece, who would
receive in turn partial compensation and perpetual guarantees.
Moreover, all Bulgaria’s territory, new and old, should be insured by
Turkey and Greece. A draft of this treaty actually existed. In case of
refusal, Greece was menaced with the loss of everything she had
acquired by her Balkan victories. How these suggestions were
received I had no means of learning. But the final upshot is disclosed
by recent events. Turkey, eager to regain some part of what she lost,
and believing the present moment propitious, lent herself readily to
Germany’s designs. It was only after the infraction of her neutrality
by the warships Goeben and Breslau, and moved by fear of the
consequences to which her connivance had exposed her, and by the
proofs adduced that neutrality would pay better than a fresh Balkan
campaign, that she reined back. She now apparently takes a
modified view of the situation, and the more statesmanlike of her
leaders recognize that, after all, her interests may turn out to be
dependent upon the goodwill of the Entente Powers. But Enver
Pasha, a Pole by extraction and a German by sympathy, still seems
bent on exposing the Ottoman Empire to the risks of a single cast of
the die.
CHAPTER V
GERMANY’S PROGRAMME

Germany’s programme, then, from the beginning of the crisis


resolves itself into two parts: to restrict the war in the sense that
Austria’s enemy was to have no allies, and to extend it by letting
loose against Servia as many of the Balkan States as could be
enlisted by enticing promises. Congruously with the first object, the
seemingly humane movement in favour of “localization” was
approved by the Chancellor, localization being construed to mean
the neutrality of Russia. And for a time it was not merely hoped, but
believed, that Russia would remain quiescent. Indeed, this belief
was, as we have seen, the groundwork of the policy with which the
German Ambassador in Vienna identified himself.
M. von Tschirschky is one of those convinced, acidulous
Russophobes who are obsessed by racial hatred of an intensity
which men of the English-speaking races are unable to realize. His
diplomatic methods extend far beyond the limits within which the
average Ambassador and diplomatist feels it his duty to keep his
activity. In proselytizing he is an adept; but his limitations are those
of countrymen and class. He had lived in St. Petersburg, where his
diplomatic career was Sisyphus work, and ever since then the
keyword of his policy has been delenda est Moscovia. Nor was he
concerned to dissemble his passion. Every politician in Austria,
native and foreign, was aware of it, and when diplomatists there
heard that he had been enjoined by his Chief to plead the cause of
moderation in Vienna, they shrugged their shoulders and grinned.
He assured the Austrian Government that, from information in
possession of the Wilhelmstrasse, Russia was powerless to strike a
blow. “She is a negligible quantity,” he repeated. “If her armies were
to take the field the dynasty would fall. And the Tsar, alive to the
danger, is resolved to steer clear of it. Were he prevailed upon to run
the risk, the whole political and financial structure would fall to pieces
like a pack of cards.” And he was certain of what he advanced. He
honestly deceived himself before misleading his friends.
Parenthetically, it may be well to remind the reader that this
contention about Russia’s military impotence, which was accepted in
Vienna as well as Berlin, makes short work of the plea now
advanced that it was Russia’s bellicose attitude that provoked
Germany. The contrary proposition is true. Germany was
aggressively insolent because Russia was believed to be militarily
powerless. That is why Austria’s ultimatum to Servia was so indited
that a refusal could be counted upon.
The history of that Note is curious. The assassination of the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand was fastened upon as a fitting pretext for
mutilating the Servian State. Servia’s Government and the entire
class of intellectuals from which it was drawn were stigmatized as
the real authors of the crime. The murder itself was declared to be
but a typical act of an unprincipled political organization which had
ramifications all over the land, including all political parties, the
clergy, and the teaching bodies. Bomb-throwing, assassination, and
a subversive propaganda in Bosnia and Herzegovina were alleged to
be among its recognized methods. Austria-Hungary, it was
contended, could not lead a normal life so long as this state of affairs
was allowed to endure. It must, therefore, be transformed radically.
But no transformation could be effected until Servia was brought to
her knees by the Habsburgs and forced into the groove of chronic
quiescence which had been destined for her by the murdered
Archduke. In other words, she must become a satellite of her
powerful neighbour, and subordinate her policy, military, commercial,
and foreign, to that of the Ballplatz. This was the programme, most
of which had been adopted some eighteen months before, during the
factitious excitement about the imaginary murder of the Austrian
Consul, Prochaska, by the Serbs. I announced it in the Daily
Telegraph at the time. Since then it had been kept in abeyance, and
now the crime at Sarajevo was held to have supplied a favourable
conjuncture for reviving it.
That official way of stating the grounds of the quarrel had one
great advantage. It identified Servia with monstrous crime and
Austria with law and justice. Foreign Governments which set a high
value on the reign of order and tranquillity would, it was hoped, be
deterred from giving countenance to such a nation of criminals as
Servia was alleged to be. By way of strengthening this deterrent,
they were reminded of the stain on Servia’s honour contracted when
King Alexander and his consort were brutally done to death. By that
crime, it was alleged, the present King himself had been
compromised, and was consequently now powerless to curb his
unprincipled subjects, on whose goodwill his own tenure of office
depended. From Servia’s goodwill, therefore, there was nothing to
be hoped. But if regeneration could not come from within, it must
proceed from outside. And as Austria’s political interests were also at
stake, she would undertake the work of sternly punishing crime and
efficaciously preventing its recurrence. To this rôle no civilized Power
could reasonably demur without laying itself open to a charge of
fomenting a vast criminal organization which it behoves monarchs
and people alike to put down by every means in their power. This
was the argument by which Russia was to be floored. It was also the
bridge over which she would, it was assumed, recoil from Servia
when Servia was at grips with Austria-Hungary.
Now in that chain of allegations there was at least one link of
truth. Servian propaganda in Bosnia and Herzegovina had certainly
been unceasing, resourceful, and dangerous. It had also inflicted
enormous losses on the population of the Dual Monarchy. And the
Vienna Cabinet had undoubtedly a strong case for putting forth
energetic action and exacting substantial guarantees. Had it
contented itself with thus redressing real grievances all Europe
would have endorsed its claims and the war would have been
postponed.
For Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose inhabitants are all Serbs by
race and language, were honeycombed with disaffection. No
outsider realized or even yet realizes the extent to which Austrian
rule there was burrowed. During the exhaustive investigation into the
origins of the crime of Sarajevo, the Central Governments learned
with dismay that disaffection was rife everywhere. This sensational
revelation was the only result of the inquiry, which was hidden from
the public gaze, lest it should compromise the local authorities and
discredit the administration in the eyes of the peoples.
But Austria had other interests besides her own to consider.
Once more it had fallen to her lot to discharge the functions of
“brilliant second” to her ally. And this was her undoing.
So much depended on the reception which her demands would
meet in Servia and Europe generally that the utmost care was
bestowed on the wording of it. The task of drawing it up was
confided to the Hungarian Premier, Count Tisza, partly on intrinsic
grounds—this statesman having displayed a keen interest in foreign
politics generally and in Balkan affairs in particular—and partly for
political reasons, Austria being desirous of bestowing upon Hungary
an active rôle in what was a fateful enterprise for both halves of the
Monarchy. Before the text of the document was fixed, the results of
the inquiry into the assassination were committed to writing, in the
form of a pièce justificative, intended to bring the outside world into
dynamic contact with what Austria brandmarked as a realm of
assassins and anarchists. Hardly any mystery was made of the
object which the demands were meant to attain. It was expected and
intended that M. Pasitch would find it impossible to assent to the
terms laid down, some of which could only be complied with by his
treating the Constitution as a worthless scrap of paper. It was felt
that if he yielded an indignant people would sweep away his
Government, return a negative answer, and possibly inaugurate a
saturnalia of anarchy, to which the Emperor Franz Josef’s troops
would put a speedy end.
Sir Maurice de Bunsen, the British Ambassador in Vienna, in one
of his despatches, writes of this ultimatum: “Its integral acceptance
by Servia was neither expected nor desired, and when, on the
following afternoon, it was at first rumoured in Vienna that it had
been unconditionally accepted, there was a moment of keen
disappointment.” I was in Vienna at the time, and I know that that is a
correct presentment of the facts.
A long period of anxious suspense had preceded the publication
of the Note. In diplomatic circles curiosity became painfully intense.
Every hint of what was coming was eagerly snatched up,
commented, and transmitted to headquarters. Italian diplomacy,
weighed down by a sense of heavy responsibility and intuitive
apprehension of imminent danger, was treated to vague phrases
about the heinous nature of the crime, the necessity of preventing its
recurrence, and Austria’s resolve to have her relations with the Slav
kingdom placed on a new and stable basis. But beyond these
generalities nothing concrete was submitted either to the Duke of
Avarna in Vienna or to the Marquis di San Giuliano in Rome.
The Russian Ambassador in the Austrian capital was led to infer
that no sweeping stroke would be dealt against Servia, and that the
demands contemplated would be compatible with her integrity,
independence, and honour. And he accordingly took a fortnight’s
leave of absence a few days before the Note was presented.
Very different was the attitude of the Austrian Government
towards Germany, who was vigilantly watching for every new phase
of the historic transaction in order to subordinate the whole to her
own vaster design. Nothing was kept back from the politicians of the
Wilhelmstrasse but the rough draft of the Note. The German
Ambassador, von Tschirschky, however, was one of the few who
were initiated into that mystery. This, it must be confessed, was
natural. For without the resolute backing of Germany the position
taken up by Austria-Hungary would have been untenable.
Congruously with this privileged position, Germany’s representative,
von Tschirschky, saw the proposed text of the ultimatum. Not that his
advice on the subject was taken or solicited. His views were known
in advance. But it was he who telegraphed the wording of the
document to the Kaiser, who was then ostentatiously absent from
Germany. I advance this statement with full knowledge of what
actually took place. This communication was made not merely for
the purpose of keeping the War Lord informed of what it behoved
him to know, but also and mainly in order to secure his express
assent to the set terms of an official paper which was intended to
bring about hostilities between Austria and Servia, and might
incidentally precipitate a European conflict.
Well, the rough draft as originally drawn up by Count Tisza did
not obtain the Emperor’s unconditional approval. The versatile
monarch suggested a certain amendment to the wording and fixed
the time-limit, the alleged object of which was to leave no room for
evasion, no loophole for escape. And as a matter of course the
verbal modifications he proposed—I only know that their purpose
was to sharpen (scharfmachen) the terms—were embodied in the
ultimatum which, thus amended and sanctioned, was duly
presented. I further had it on the same indisputable authority that the
time-limit of forty-eight hours was the result of a proposal coming
direct from Kaiser Wilhelm, who held that Servia must not be allowed
to deliberate or to take counsel with Russia, but should be
confronted with the necessity of giving a categorical answer at once.
His own mode of action towards Russia and Belgium, to each of
which States he allowed but twelve hours for deliberation, was
conceived in the same spirit and prompted by a like calculation.
CHAPTER VI
THE POSITION OF ITALY

Why this differential treatment as between Germany and Italy? one


may ask. Both being Austria’s allies, each might reasonably claim
the same degree of confidence as the other. Whence, then, this one-
sided distrust? To this query the answer came pat and plausible.
There was no difference in the degrees of confidence displayed by
Austria towards the Governments of her allies, no more information
having been vouchsafed to one than to the other. To the Berlin
Foreign Office was dealt out the same meed of intelligence as to the
Consulta. Consequently there is no ground for complaint. The matter
being a concern of Austria’s, with no direct bearings on the Triple
Alliance, was communicated to the other two members of the
Alliance in exactly the same measure. And I have good grounds for
believing that the Berlin Foreign Office did not receive directly from
the Ballplatz in Vienna the text of the ultimatum to Servia. The Kaiser
was the sole direct recipient.
None the less, Italy’s position was necessarily shaped in part by
Austria’s failure to keep her informed of a move which might entail a
European war, and might, therefore, warrant a claim on her for her
services as an active ally in that war. The Consulta argued that if
Italy was deemed not to have a sufficient interest in a transaction
which was calculated to lead to an armed conflict, neither could she
be considered to have a corresponding interest in the upshot of that
transaction. For the duties of an ally during war presuppose certain
corresponding rights in peace, and foremost among these is her
claim to be consulted, to offer advice, and to exercise a moderating
influence. And as she was deprived of those rights, so she was ipso
facto relieved of the corresponding duties. And to this line of
reasoning there is no convincing answer. That, however, is but the
formal aspect of Italy’s justification of her neutrality. She can and
does take her stand on higher ground. Bound to aid her allies only if
these are attacked, she is under no obligation to co-operate with
them in the field if they themselves are the aggressors. And as
Austria and Germany deliberately provoked hostilities, they have no
real claim on their ex-ally.
In France, and to a lesser extent in Great Britain, much—too
much, to my thinking—has been written about the strong motives
which appeal to King Victor Emanuel’s Government to abandon its
neutrality and throw in its lot with the Entente Powers. It was a
deplorable blunder, we are told, on the part of the short-sighted
statesmen of the Consulta to have ever entered into partnership with
the military States of Europe. Worse than this, it was an act of the
blackest ingratitude towards France, and in a lesser degree towards
Russia. But the belligerents of the Entente are generous, and Italy, if
she repents and makes amends by joining hands with France and
Great Britain before it is too late, will be magnanimously forgiven and
lavishly rewarded. Unredeemed Italy—Italia irredenta—now under
the Austrian yoke, will be presented to her at the close of hostilities.
She may also take possession of Valona and supreme command of
the Adriatic. But these rewards are for timely action. If she waits too
long she will have waited in vain.
Exhortations of this kind are to be deprecated as mischievous.
They are likely—if they produce any effect at all—to damage the
cause which they are meant to further. Italy must be allowed to
understand her own vital and secondary interests at least as well as
the amateur diplomatists who so generously undertake to ascertain
and promote them, and all of whom have an axe of their own to
grind. In the eyes of the world, though not in those of her ex-allies,
Germany and Austria, she has completely vindicated her right to
hold aloof from her allies in a war of pure aggression, waged for the
hegemony of the Teutonic race. But to pass from neutrality to
belligerency, to treat the allies of yesterday as the enemies of to-day,
without transition and without adequate provocation, would be in
accordance neither with the precepts of ethics nor the promptings of
statesmanship.
The reproach hurled at Italy for her long co-partnership with
Austria and Germany appears to me to be unmerited. It was neither
a foolish nor an ungrateful move. On the contrary, I feel, and have
always felt, convinced that it was the act of an able statesman whose
main merit in the matter was to discern its necessity and to turn that
necessity into a work of apparent predilection. As a member of the
Triple Alliance, Italy discharged a twofold function, national and
international. She avoided a war against Austria-Hungary which,
whatever the military and naval upshot, would have secured for her
no advantages, political or territorial, and would have exhausted her
resources financial and military. And in this way, while directly
pursuing her own interests, she indirectly furthered those of all
Europe. Even under the favourable conditions realized by her
membership of the Alliance, it was no easy task to repress popular
feeling against Austria. At one time, indeed, when Count Aehrenthal
was Minister of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, an Austro-Italian war was
on the point of breaking out. The late Archduke Franz Ferdinand and
his protégé, Baron Conrad von Hoetzendorff, who was then, and is
now, Chief of the General Staff, were strongly in favour of severing
the links that bound the Habsburg Monarchy to Italy and delivering
an ultimatum to the Consulta. Between their quarrel and overt war
stood a solitary individual, Count Aehrenthal, who had the courage of
his opinion and refused to countenance the projected breach. His
resignation or a pacific settlement were the alternatives which he laid
before his sovereign, and this perspective, together with his lucid
exposé of the sinister results of the proposed plunge, enlisted the
aged Emperor on his side, and Baron Conrad von Hoetzendorff was
gently removed—for a time—from the General Staff and appointed
to a different post of trust.
Another function discharged by Italy while she retained her
membership of the Alliance was purely international. She continued
steadfastly to cultivate cordial relations with Great Britain, turning a
deaf ear to the admonitions, exhortations, and blandishments of
Berlin. No competent student of international politics who has
watched the growth of Italy ever since she entered the Alliance, and
has had the means of acquainting himself with the covert threats,
overt seductions, and finely spun intrigues by which her fidelity to
Great Britain was tested, will refuse to her statesmen the palm of
European diplomacy or to her Government a sincere tribute for her
steadfast loyalty to her British friends. Her policy during this
chequered period has been a masterpiece of political wisdom and
diplomatic deftness. In the Triple Alliance her influence was, and was
intended to be, of a moderating character. It was thus that it was
regarded by her statesmen and employed by her diplomatists.
Whenever a quarrel between one of her own allies and one of ours
grew acute, Italy’s endeavour was to compose it. She was at least as
much averse to war as we were ourselves, and she cheerfully made
heavy sacrifices to avert it. So long, therefore, as she was treated as
a fully qualified member of the Alliance, we could feel assured that
European peace had a powerful intercessor among its most
dangerous enemies.
That is why, before the war, I always shared the view of the
statesmen of the Consulta that Italy should do nothing calculated to
sever her connection with Austria and Germany. I went further than
this, and maintained that it was to our interest to support her
diplomatically in the Near East and elsewhere, on the ground that
the stronger she became the greater would her influence for peace
grow, and the more valuable the services she could and would
14
confer upon us without impairing her own interests.
But by means of poisonous insinuations diplomatic and
journalistic, the Wilhelmstrasse strove hard to sow suspicion and
breed dissension between her and her western friends. It was, for
instance, asserted by Germany that when last the Triple Alliance was
prematurely renewed, the terms of the treaty had been extended,
and an agreement respecting the sea-power of the allies in the
Mediterranean had been concluded by all three. This was a
falsehood concocted presumably for the purpose of embroiling
France, Russia, and Great Britain with Italy. Its effect upon Russia
was certainly mischievous. And having ascertained from two of the
allies that it was an invention, I publicly stigmatized it as such, and
affirmed that the treaty had been signed without modification. And
events have proved the accuracy of my information.
Another and much more insidious untruth, emanating from the
same source and fabricated for a like purpose, turned upon the
withdrawal of our warships from the Mediterranean, where our
interests were confided to the care of the French navy. This
disposition was, of course, taken with a view to the general sea-
defences of Great Britain and France in case of an emergency such
as that which has since had to be faced. It was certainly not directed
against Italy, with whom our Government neither had nor expected to
have any grounds for a quarrel. None the less, it supplied too
attractive an occasion to be lost by the ever-ready Prussian, who
made haste to use it in order to generate mistrust between Italy and
her friends of the Entente. Sundry Italian diplomatists were initiated,
in seemingly casual ways, into the “true meaning” of that “insidious”
move. It was not directed against Germany and Austria, they were
assured, but had Italy, and Italy alone, for its object. France, jealous
of the growing power and prestige of Italy in the Midland Sea, had
sought and obtained Great Britain’s assent to the concentration of
France’s warships there. This innovation constituted, and was meant
to constitute, a warning to Italy to slacken her speed in the Midland
Sea. And I was requested to make private representations to our
Foreign Office, accompanied by a request that this unfriendly
measure should be discontinued. My assurances that it contained
neither a threat nor a warning to Italy were but wasted breath.
Information of a “trustworthy” character had been obtained—it was
not volunteered, and could not, therefore, be suspected—that the
initiative had been taken by France, whose dominant motive was
jealousy of Italy.
To my mind this misstatement, which derived the poison of its
sting from the truly artful way in which it was conveyed through “a
disinterested source,” was one of the most mischievous of Prussian
wiles. Italy was led to believe that the real design of the Republic
was the establishment of French hegemony in the Mediterranean;
that M. Poincaré, whose regrettable speech about the French
steamers Carthage and Manuba, which had been detained by Italy

You might also like