rial Government is unable to admit that the Belgian Government always observed the duties imposed upon it by its neutrality toward Great Britain. Belgium applied in a military sense to that power and to France thus violating the spirit of the treaties intended to guarantee its independence and neutrality. Twice did the Imperial Government declare to the Belgian Government that it was not coming to Belgium as an enemy, and begged it to spare its country the horrors of war. It offered in that case to guarantee in their entirety the territory and independence of the kingdom of Belgium and to make good all damage that the passing of German troops might cause. It is known that in 1887 the British Royal Government had resolved not to oppose a claim to the right of way in Belgium under those conditions. The Belgian Government refused the reiterated offer of the Imperial Government. The responsibility for the fate that befell Belgium rests upon its Government and the powers which drew it into that attitude. The Imperial Government repeatedly repelled as groundless the charges brought against the conduct of the war in Belgium and against the measures there taken in the interest of military safety. It again enters an energetic protest against those calumnies.

Germany and its allies have made a genuine attempt with a view to bringing the war to an end and opening the way for an understanding among the belligerents. The Imperial Government lays down as a fact that the question as to whether or not that way would be entered, leading to peace, solely depended on the decision of its adversary. The enemy Governments declined to do so, upon them rests the whole responsibility for further bloodshed. The four allied powers in their calm conviction that they are in the right will carry on the struggle until they win a peace that will guarantee to their peoples honor, existence, and free development, and at the same time insure for all the States in the European Continent the beneficent possibility of coöperating in mutual esteem and on a perfectly equal footing toward the solution of the great problems of civilization.

Ambassador Penfield to the Secretary of State.

[Telegram-Paraphrase.]

GERARD.

AMERICAN EMBASSY, Vienna, January 12, 1917.

Mr. Penfield reports receipt of a note from the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs as follows:

The Imperial and Royal Government had on the fifth instant the honor to receive through the obliging medium of the Government of

the United States of America the reply of the States at war with it to its note of December twelfth, in which the Imperial and Royal Government in concert with its allies declared its readiness to enter upon peace negotiations. Jointly with the Allied Powers the Imperial and Royal Government did not fail to subject the reply of the enemy Governments to a thorough examination which brought the following result.

Under pretence that the proposal of the four Allied Powers lacked sincerity and importance the enemy Governments decline to accede to the proposal. The form they gave to their communication makes it impossible to return an answer addressed to them. The Imperial and Royal Government nevertheless wishes to disclose its views to the neutral powers.

The reply of the enemy Governments shuns every discussion of the means to bring the war to an end. It confines itself to reverting to the facts anterior to the war, to the alleged strength of their military situation, and to the motives for the peace proposal as supposed by them.

The Imperial and Royal Government has no present intention to launch into a renewed discussion of the antecedents of the war, for it is convinced that a straightforward, impartial judgment has already and irrefutably established, in the eye of all mankind, on which side lies the responsibility for the war. With particular reference to Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Servia, the Monarchy has given in the years that preceded that step sufficient evidence of her forbearance in the face of the tendencies and hostile and aggressive doings of Servia which were growing worse and worse up to the time when the infamous Serajevo assassination put any further leniency out of the question.

Likewise any discussion of the point of determining which side the advantage lay in regard to the military situation seems idle, as the answer to that question may unhesitatingly be left with public opinion throughout the world. Besides a comparison of the ends sought by the two groups in the present conflagration implies the solution of that question. While Austria-Hungary and its allies from the beginning of the war, never aimed at territorial conquest but rather at their defense, the contrary stands true for the enemy States which, to mention but a few of the objects they harbor in this war, crave the annihilation and spoliation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine as also the partition of Turkey and the curtailment of Bulgaria. The four Allied Powers therefore may consider they have achieved the purely defensive ends they seek in that war while their adversaries are more and more removed from the accomplishment of their designs.

If the enemy Governments term "strategem" the proposal of the four Allied Powers which is said to lack sincerity and importance,

it is clear that we have here but an absolutely arbitrary assertion of a biased judgment incapable of proof as long as the peace negotiations have not begun and consequently our peace terms are not known.

The Imperial and Royal Government and the Governments of the Allied Powers acted in perfect sincerity and good faith when they proposed peace negotiations for they had to reckon with the contingency of their explicit proposal to make their terms known immediately upon the opening of the negotiations being accepted. On the contrary the adversaries were those who, without offering any counter proposal, declined to acquaint themselves with the contents of the proposal of the four Allied Powers. If the adversaries demand above all the restoration of invaded rights and liberties, the recognition of the principle of nationalities and of the free existence of small States, it will suffice to call to mind the tragic fate of the Irish and Finnish peoples, the obliteration of the freedom and independence of the Boer Republics, the subjection of North Africa by Great Britain, France and Italy and, lastly, the violence brought to bear on Greece for which there is no precedent in history.

The Imperial and Royal Government lays down as a fact that in concert with the Allied Powers it had declared its readiness to bring the war to an end by means of an oral exchange of views with the enemy Governments and that on decision of the adversaries alone depended the opening of the way to peace. Before God and mankind it disclaims responsibility for a continuance of the war. Calm, strong, and confident of their right, Austro-Hungary and its allies will carry on the struggle until they gain a peace that will secure the existence, honor, and free development of the peoples and at the same time enable the States of Europe to coöperate in the grand work of civilization on the basis of wholly equal rights.

The Imperial and Royal Government has the honor to apply for Your Excellency's obliging good offices with a request that you will kindly forward the foregoing to the Government of the United States of America.

Be pleased to accept etcetera.

[Signed.]

CZERNIN.

PENFIELD.

PART XI.

SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING THE WAR MADE BY PRESIDENT WILSON DECEMBER 18, 1916, AND REPLIES OF BELLIGERENTS AND NEUTRALS.

The Secretary of State to Ambassador W. H. Page.1

[Telegram.]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, December 18, 1916.

The President directs me to send you the following communication to be presented immediately to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Government to which you are accredited:

The President of the United States has instructed me to suggest to His Majesty's Government a course of action with regard to the present war which he hopes that the British Government will take under consideration as suggested in the most friendly spirit and as coming not only from a friend but also as coming from the representative of a neutral nation whose interests have been most seriously affected by the war and whose concern for its early conclusion arises out of a manifest necessity to determine how best to safeguard those interests if the war is to continue.

The suggestion which I am instructed to make the President has long had it in mind to offer. He is somewhat embarrassed to offer it at this particular time because it may now seem to have been prompted by the recent overtures of the Central Powers. It is in fact in no way associated with them in its origin and the President would have delayed offering it until those overtures had been answered but for the fact that it also concerns the question of peace and may best be

1

Same, mutatis mutandis, to the American Diplomatic Representatives accredited to the Governments of France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Belgium, Montenegro, Portugal, Roumania, and Servia, and to all neutral Governments for their information.

considered in connection with other proposals which have the same end in view. The President can only beg that his suggestion be considered entirely on its own merits and as if it had been made in other circumstances.

The President suggests that an early occasion be sought to call out from all the nations now at war such an avowal of their respective views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded and the arrangements which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future as would make it possible frankly to compare them. He is indifferent as to the means taken to accomplish this. He would be happy himself to serve or even to take the initiative in its accomplishment in any way that might prove acceptable, but he has no desire to determine the method or the instrumentality. One way will be as acceptable to him as another if only the great object he has in mind be attained.

He takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world. Each side desires to make the rights. and privileges of weak peoples and small States as secure against aggression or denial in the future as the rights and privileges of the great and powerful States now at war. Each wishes itself to be made secure in the future, along with all other nations and peoples, against the recurrence of wars like this and against aggression of selfish interference of any kind. Each would be jealous of the formation of any more rival leagues to preserve an uncertain balance of power amidst multiplying suspicions; but each is ready to consider the formation of a league of nations to insure peace and justice throughout the world. Before that final step can be taken, however, each deems it necessary first to settle the issues of the present war upon terms which will certainly safeguard the independence, the territorial integrity, and the political and commercial freedom of the nations involved.

In the measures to be taken to secure the future peace of the world the people and Government of the United States are as vitally and directly interested as the Governments now at war. Their interest, moreover, in the means to be adopted to relieve the smaller and weaker peoples of the world of the peril of wrong and violence is as quick and ardent as that of any other people or Government. They stand ready, and even eager, to coöperate in the accomplishment of these ends, when the war is over, with every influence and resource at their command. But the war must first be concluded. The terms upon which it is to be concluded they are not at liberty to suggest; but the President does feel that it is his right and his duty to point out their intimate interest in its conclusion, lest it should presently be too late to accomplish the greater things which lie beyond its conclusion, lest the situation of neutral nations, now exceedingly hard