and hope and certain of victory, had to lay down arms and disappear.  No one could accept such a proposal.  Meanwhile, a general disarmament of all the Powers was both possible and necessary.  Disarmament, the establishment of courts of arbitration under international control:  that, according to my idea, would present an acceptable basis.  I mentioned my fears that the Entente rulers in this, as in the territorial question, would not mete out the same measure to themselves as they intended for us, and unless I had some guarantee in the matter I should not be in a position to carry the plan through here and with our Allies; anyhow, it would be worth a trial.

Long and frequent were the debates on the Central European question, which was the Entente’s terror, as it implied an unlimited increase in Germany’s power.  In Paris and London it would presumably be preferred that the Monarchy should be made independent of Germany, and any further advances to Berlin on the part of Vienna checked.  We rejoined that to us this was not a new Entente standpoint, but that the mutilation caused by the resolutions of the Pact of London forced us to investigate the matter.  Apart from the question of honour and duty to the Alliance, as matters now stood, Germany was fighting almost more for us than for herself.  If Germany to-day, and we knew it, concluded peace, she would lose Alsace-Lorraine and her military superiority on land; but we, with our territory, would have to pay the Italians, Serbians, and Roumanians for their part in the war.

I heard it said on many sides that there were men in the Entente who readily understood this point of view, but that the Entente nations would do what they had intended.  Italy had based her entry into the war on promises from London.  Roumania also had been given very solid assurances, and heroic Serbia must be compensated by Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Many, both in Paris and London, regretted the situation that had arisen through the conference in London, but a treaty is a treaty, and neither London nor Paris could forsake their Allies.  Meanwhile, it was thought likely in Entente circles that both the new Serbian and Polish states, probably Roumania as well, would have certain relations with the Monarchy.  Further details respecting such relations were still unknown.  Our reply was:  we would not give up Galicia to Poland, Transylvania and the Bukovina to Roumania, and Bosnia together with Herzegovina to Serbia, in return for a vague promise of the closer relations of those states with the pitiful remains left to us of the Monarchy.  We were not impelled thereto by dynastic interests.  I myself had persuaded the Emperor to sacrifice Galicia to Poland; but in Transylvania there lived so many Germans and Magyars who simply could not be made a present of, and above all the concessions, to Italy!  I once asked a neutral statesman if he could understand what was meant by making Austria voluntarily give up the arch-German