The willingness to prepare for peace on the part of the enemy declined visibly during the summer.  It was evident from many trifling signs, separately of small import, collectively of much.  In the summer of 1917, too, the first horror of the U-boat warfare began to grow less.  It was seen by the enemy that it could not accomplish what he had first feared, and that again put life into the desire for a final military victory.

These two facts together probably contributed to fan back the peace wind blowing from the West.  Among other things, the Armand-Revertera negotiations were proceeding the whole time.  It is not yet the moment to speak of the negotiations which in the spring of 1918, together with the letters of the Emperor to Prince Sixtus, created such a sensation.  But this much must be stated:  that Revertera in the negotiations proved himself to be an equally correct as efficient agent who acted exactly according to the instructions he received from the Ballplatz.  Our various attempts to take up the threads of peace when emanating from the Ballplatz were always intended for our entire group of Powers.

Naturally, it was not in the interests of the Entente to prevent us from separating from Germany, and when the impression was produced in London and Paris unofficially that we were giving Germany up, we ourselves thus used sabotage in the striving for a general peace; for it would, of course, have been pleasing to the Entente to see Germany, her chief enemy, isolated.

There was a twofold and terrible mistake in thus trifling with the idea of a separate peace.  First of all, it could not release us from the terms of the Pact of London, and yet it spoiled the atmosphere for negotiating a general peace.  At the time when these events were being enacted, I presumed, but only knew for certain later, that Italy, in any case, would claim the promises made to her.

In the spring of 1917 Ribot and Lloyd George conferred with Orlando on the subject, when at St. Jean de Maurienne, and endeavoured to modify the terms in case of our separating from Germany.  Orlando refused, and insisted on his view that, even in the event of a separate peace, we should still have to yield up Trieste and the Tyrol as far as the Brenner Pass to Italy, and thus have to pay an impossible price.  And secondly, these separatist tactics would break up our forces, and had already begun to do so.

When a person starts running away in a fight he but too easily drags others with him.  I do not doubt that the Bulgarian negotiations, opened with the purpose of taking soundings, were connected with the foregoing events.

The effect of this well-meant but secret and dilettante policy was that we suggested to the Entente a willingness to separate from our Allies, and lost our position in the struggle for a separate peace.  For we saw that in separating from Germany we could not escape being crippled; that, therefore, a separate peace was impossible, and that we had dealt a death-blow at the still intact Quadruple Alliance.