Brewda names Robert William Seton-Watson as the committee member in charge of pushing the idea of a Greater Serbia. Indeed, Seton-Watson wrote The Southern Slav Question and the Habsburg Monarchy in 1911 in which Seton-Watson writes:
The present volume attempts to trace the growth of national feeling among the Croats and Serbs of the Dual Monarchy, and to describe in fuller detail the more recent movement in favour of Croato-Serb Unity. The fact that the English language contains no book devoted to the history of this movement, must be my excuse for occasional prolixity ; not merely the main building, but even the substructure had to be created.
This is precisely the movement of which Gavrilo Princip was a member. Whether Princip read this, I doubt.
But if he had then he would have been encouraged by what Seton-Watson wrote in his conclusion:
Croato-Serb Unity must and will come. It rests with Austria to delay its attainment for another generation and reap the disastrous fruits of such a policy, or by resolutely encouraging Southern Slav aspirations, to establish Austrian influence in the Northern Balkans by lasting bands of sympathy and interest. Upon Austria's choice of alternative depends the future of the Habsburg Monarchy.
But then I find this recent PhD thesis on The Balkan Committee!!
British liberalism and the Balkans, c. 1875-1925 by James Andrew Perkins in which Perkins states:
In the Balkan Committee, this combination of secular expertise and Christian conviction (and prejudice) was encapsulated perfectly in the character of its first President – James Bryce combined in-depth knowledge of the region with a deep Christian faith and a tendency towards ‘public moralism’. Bryce’s ‘wide experience’, ‘extraordinary knowledge’ and ‘deep moral purpose’, to cite from his obituary by Lord Cecil, were attributes that the Balkan Committee certainly valued.
As noted, however, this ultimately encouraged a rather inconsistent form of ‘trouble making’.
And elsewhere:
Not only was a conflict feared as a likely harbinger of yet more Balkan massacres and atrocities, it was also, virtually all commentators agreed, most definitely not in the British national or wider European interest. Similar attitudes were displayed at this time towards national questions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, many of which, of course, had a direct bearing on the Balkans. R.W. Seton-Watson would soon become perhaps the leading British advocate of the rights of the subject nationalities of the Habsburgs. Yet at this stage he advanced the concept of an autonomous South Slav unit within a reconfigured Austro- Hungarian Empire rather than an independent ‘Yugoslavia’. A union of the Habsburg South Slavs with independent Serbia and Montenegro, Seton-Watson argued in October 1909, ‘could only be attained by means of a general European war...which it is to the pressing interest of everyone, especially my own country Great Britain, to avoid’. As we shall see, such qualms about the prospect of a European war would not prevent his enthusiastic embrace of ‘la victoire integrale’ after July 1914, when his analysis of British interests underwent rapid change.
...The Balkan Wars, in this analysis, highlighted the threat to civilisation posed by the volatile combination of war and nationalism in general, rather than some intrinsic Balkan predisposition towards violence. This point has been largely overlooked in studies of British attitudes towards the region. It is therefore important to note that, even at a time of enhanced negative representation of the Balkans, influential voices were raised in defence and mitigation of the inhabitants of the region. The fact that the groundswell of British liberal sympathy for the Balkan peoples had not been exhausted (despite being severely tested) would help to facilitate the emergence of positive pro-Serb publicity during the First World War, as discussed below.
...However, given the distinctly lukewarm attitude – if not outright opposition – of most radicals towards the war, it was to the likes of Seton-Watson that the diplomats turned. Having been first called up to the Department of Information Intelligence Bureau (March 1917), Seton-Watson then served from March 1918 on its successor body, the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office. He also co-directed propaganda against Austria-Hungary for Lord Northcliffe’s Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries (established in February 1918) with his friend and ally, the Foreign Editor of the Times, Henry Wickham Steed. Developing close contacts with émigré groups such as the Yugoslav Committee, Seton-Watson, Steed and Arthur Evans became key go-betweens for Central and Eastern European and Balkan nationalist leaders and statesmen. They were a noted presence on the margins of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
So Seton-Watson recognised that a pan-Slav nation could only be formed "a general European war" which he also said was in nobody's interest. But in July 1914 he changes his mind and supports such a war. Then he (formally?) joins British Intelligence to push anti-Austria propaganda, and then represents the Balkans at Versailles!
This gives some credence to Brewda and Tarpley's article.
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