Hungarian Conservative

Count István Tisza is still blamed by liberal and left-wing historiographers for Hungary entering WWI, despite clear evidence of his anti-war stance. It is rather anachronistic to hold Tisza to democratic standards that did not exist at the time and with the wisdom of hindsight: the knowledge of how the war ended.

Why did those who had the power to do so not pull in the reins? How could the civilised European populaces celebrate the war? Why did they not choose the path of peace, progress, and constructiveness? On the 109th anniversary of the start of the First World War, and in the shadow of the war of our time, these are the questions historians must answer.

On 28 June 1914, 109 years ago today, at around 11 o’clock in the morning, a 20-year-old anarchist assassin, Gavrilo Princip, fired several shots at the Archduke of the Austro–Hungarian Empire and his wife. The Sarajevo assassination became the casus belli for the ‘Great War’, as it was called back then, i.e., the First World War.