peace.  This, however, was not the case.  Take Italy, for instance, which was primarily at war with ourselves and not with Germany.  If we had offered Italy concessions however great, if we had offered all that Italy has now taken possession of, even then it could not have made peace, being bound by duty to its Allies and by circumstances not to make peace until England and France made peace with Germany.

When, then, peace by sacrifice was the only peace attainable, obviously, as a matter of principle, there were two ways of reaching that end.  One, a general peace, i.e. including Germany, and the other, a separate peace.  Of the overwhelming difficulties attending the former course I will speak later; at present a few words on the question of separate peace.

I myself would never have made a separate peace.  I have never, not even in the hour of disillusionment—­I may say of despair at my inability to lead the policy of Berlin into wiser channels—­even in such hours, I say, I have never forgotten that our alliance with the German Empire was no ordinary alliance, no such alliance as may be contracted by two Emperors or two Governments, and can easily be broken, but an alliance of blood, a blood-brotherhood between the ten million Austro-Germans and the seventy million of the Empire, which could not be broken.  And I have never forgotten that the military party in power at that time in Germany were not the German people, and that we had allied ourselves with the German people, and not with a few leading men.  But I will not deny that in the moments when I saw my policy could not be realised I did ventilate the idea of suggesting to the Emperor the appointment, in my stead, of one of those men who saw salvation in a separation from Germany.  But again and again I relinquished this idea, being firmly convinced that separate peace was a sheer impossibility.  The Monarchy lay like a great block between Germany and the Balkans.  Germany had great masses of troops there from which it could not be cut off, it was procuring oil and grain from the Balkans; if we were to interpose between it and the Balkans we should be striking at its most sensitive vital nerve.  Moreover, the Entente would naturally have demanded first of all that we joined in the blockade, and finally our secession would automatically have involved also that of Bulgaria and Turkey.  Had we withdrawn, Germany would have been unable to carry on the war.  In such a situation there can be no possibility of doubt but that the German Army Command would have flung several divisions against Bohemia and the Tyrol, meting out to us the same fate which had previously befallen Roumania.  The Monarchy, Bohemia in particular, would at once have become a scene of war.  But even this is not all.  Internally, such a step would at once have led to civil war.  The Germans of Austria would never have turned against their brothers, and the Hungarians—­Tisza’s Hungarians—­would never have lent their aid to such a policy. We