“’You have thereby given me the happiest day of my hitherto far from happy reign, and I pray God Almighty that He may further continue to aid you on your difficult path—­to the benefit of the Monarchy and of our peoples.

  KARL.’

“February 11, 1918.—­Trotski declines to sign.  The war is over, but there is no peace.

“The disastrous effects of the troubles in Vienna will be seen clearly from the following message from Herr von Skrzynski, dated Montreux, February 12, 1918.  Skrzynski writes: 

“’I learn from a reliable source that France has issued the following notification:  We were already quite disposed to enter into discussion with Austria.  Now we are asking ourselves whether Austria is still sound enough for the part it was intended to give her.  One is afraid of basing an entire policy upon a state which is perhaps already threatened with the fate of Russia.’  And Skrzynski adds:  ’During the last few days I have heard as follows:  It has been decided to wait for a while.’”

Our position, then, during the negotiations with Petersburg was as follows:  We could not induce Germany to resign the idea of Courland and Lithuania.  We had not the physical force to do so.  The pressure exerted by the Supreme Army Command on the one hand and the shifty tactics of the Russians made this impossible.  We had then to choose between leaving Germany to itself, and signing a separate peace, or acting together with our three Allies and finishing with a peace including the covert annexation of the Russian outer provinces.

The former alternative involved the serious risk of making a breach in the Quadruple Alliance, where some dissension was already apparent.  The Alliance could no longer stand such experiments.  We were faced with the final military efforts now, and the unity of the Allies must not in any case be further shaken.  On the other hand, the danger that Wilson, the only statesman in the world ready to consider the idea of a peace on mutual understanding, might from the conclusion of such a peace obtain an erroneous impression as to our intentions.  I hoped then, and I was not deceived, that this eminently clever man would see through the situation and recognise that we were forced to act under pressure of circumstances.  His speeches delivered after the peace at Brest confirmed my anticipation.

The peace with Ukraine was made under pressure of imminent famine.  And it bears the characteristic marks of such a birth.  That is true.  But it is no less true that despite the fact of our having obtained far less from Ukraine than we had hoped, we should, without these supplies, have been unable to carry on at all until the new harvest.  Statistics show that during the spring and summer of 1918 42,000 wagon-loads were received from the Ukraine.  It would have been impossible to procure these supplies from anywhere else.  Millions of human beings were thus saved from death by starvation—­and let those who sit in judgment on the peace terms bear this in mind.