The Royal Government was therefore painfully surprised by the assertions that citizens of Servia had participated in the preparations of the outrage in Sarajevo.  The Government expected to be invited to cooperate in the investigation of the crime, and it was ready in order to prove its complete correctness, to proceed against all persons in regard to whom it would receive information.

This assertion is incorrect.  The Servian Government was accurately informed about the suspicion resting upon quite definite personalities and not only in the position, but also obliged by its own laws to institute investigations spontaneously.  The Servian Government has done nothing in this direction.

According to the wishes of the I. and R. Government, the Royal Government is prepared to surrender to the court, without regard to position and rank, every Servian citizen, for whose participation in the crime of Sarajevo it should have received proof.  It binds itself particularly on the first page of the official organ of the 26th of July to publish the following enunciation: 

“The Royal Servian Government condemns every propaganda which should be directed against Austria-Hungary, i. e. the entirety of such activities as aim towards the separation of certain territories from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and it regrets sincerely the lamentable consequences of these criminal machinations.”

The Austrian demand reads: 

“The Royal Servian Government condemns the propaganda against Austria-Hungary....”

The alteration of the declaration as demanded by us, which has been made by the Royal Servian Government, is meant to imply that a propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary does not exist, and that it is not aware of such.  This formula is insincere, and the Servian Government reserves itself the supterfuge for later occasions that it had not disavowed by this declaration the existing propaganda, nor recognized the same as hostile to the monarchy, whence it could deduce further that it is not obliged to suppress in the future a propaganda similar to the present one.

The Royal Government regrets that according to a communication of the I. and R. Government certain Servian officers and functionaries have participated in the propaganda just referred to, and that these have therefore endangered the amicable relations for the observation of which the Royal Government had solemnly obliged itself through the declaration of March 31st, 1909.

The Government ... identical with the demanded text.

The formula as demanded by Austria reads: 

“The Royal Government regrets that Servian officers and functionaries ... have participated....”

Also with this formula and the further addition “according to the declaration of the I. and R. Government”, the Servian Government pursues the object, already indicated above, to preserve a free hand for the future.