His political advisers experienced great difficulty in their business dealings with the Emperor William during the war, as he was generally at Headquarters and seldom in Berlin.  The Emperor Charles’s absence from Vienna was also at times most inconvenient.

In the summer of 1917, for instance, he was at Reichenau, which necessitated a two hours’ motor drive; I had to go there twice or three times a week, thus losing five or six hours which had to be made good by prolonged night work.  On no account would he come to Vienna, in spite of the efforts made by his advisers to persuade him to do so.  From certain remarks the Emperor let fall I gathered that the reason of this persistent refusal was anxiety concerning the health of the children.  He himself was so entirely free from pretensions that it cannot have been a question of his own comfort that prevented his coming.

The Emperor’s desire to restore the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand to a post of command was for me a source of much unpleasantness.  The Archduke is said to have been to blame for the Luck failure.  I cannot judge whether wrongly—­as the Emperor maintained—­or rightly; but the fact remains that the public no longer had confidence in him.  Quite accidentally I learnt that his reinstatement was imminent.  As a matter of fact, this purely military proceeding in no way concerned me, but I had to reckon with the feeling of the populace, who were in no mood for further burdens, and also with the fact that, since Conrad had gone, none of those in the Emperor’s entourage showed the slightest disposition to acquaint him with the truth.  The only general who, to my personal knowledge, was in the habit of speaking frankly to the Emperor, was Alvis Schonburg, and he was at this time somewhere on the Italian front.  I therefore told the Emperor that the reinstatement was an impossibility, giving as my reason the fact that the Archduke had forfeited the confidence of the country, and that no mother could be expected to give up her son to serve under a general whom everyone held to be guilty of the Luck catastrophe.  The Emperor insisted that this view was unjust, and that the Archduke was not culpable.  I replied that, even so, the Archduke would have to submit.  Everyone had lost confidence in him, and the most strenuous exertions of the people could neither be expected nor obtained if the command were handed to generals who were unanimously regarded as unworthy of the confidence placed in them.

My efforts were vain.

I then adopted another course.  I sent an official from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Archduke with the request that he would resign voluntarily.

It must be admitted that Joseph Ferdinand took both a loyal and a dignified attitude, as he himself notified the Emperor that he would relinquish his command at the front.  A short correspondence followed between the Archduke and myself, which on his side was couched in an indignant and not over-polite tone; this, however, I did not take amiss, as my interference had been successful in preventing his resuming the command.