of 1914, Lichnowsky was the only German diplomat who raised objections to Germany's efforts to provoke an Austro-Serbian war, arguing that Britain would intervene in a continental war. On 25 July, he implored the German government to accept an offer of British mediation in the Austro-Serbian dispute. On 27 July, he followed with a cable arguing that Germany could not win a continental war. This cable was not shown to Kaiser Wilhelm II. A cable on 28 July relayed an offer from King George V to hold a conference of European ambassadors to avoid general war. A final cable on 29 July to the German Foreign Office stated simply "if war breaks out it will be the greatest catastrophe the world has ever seen." These warnings went unheeded, and by the time the final cable reached Berlin, Austrian troops were already bombarding Belgrade. On Britain's declaration of war on 4 August 1914, Lichnowsky returned to Germany. So highly was he thought of, a British military guard of honour saluted his departure – a rare privilege in the circumstances. His 1916 pamphlet His privately printed pamphlet, My Mission to London 1912–1914, circulated in German upper-class circles in 1916, accused his government of failing to support him in efforts to avert World War I; its 1917 publication in the United States led to his expulsion from the Prussian House of Lords. In 1918, the renamed "Lichnowsky Memorandum" was published in The Disclosures from Germany (New York: American Association for International Conciliation, 1918). It was also published in the Danish journal Politiken in March 1918, from which a British copy was published by Cassell & Co., later in 1918, with a preface by Professor Gilbert Murray. The pamphlet mainly covers the period 1912–1914, and occasionally back to 1900. Lichnowsky deplored the German alliance with Austria-Hungary (though he owned land in Austria and had served as a diplomat in Vienna), feeling that it inevitably pulled German diplomacy into Balkan crises and tensions with Russia, without any compensating benefits to Germany with its new industries, trade and colonies. "This is a return to the days of the Holy Roman Empire and the mistakes of the Hohenstaufens and Habsburgs," he wrote. The Kaiser had commented on 31 July 1914 about an encircling British diplomacy during the crisis: "For I no longer have any doubt that England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves, knowing that our