And with this, gentlemen, I have finished what I proposed to set before you.  I vainly endeavoured to make peace together with Germany, but I was not unsuccessful in my endeavours to save the German-Austrians from ultimately coming to armed conflict with Germany.  I can say this, and without exaggeration, that I have defended the German alliance as if it had been my own child, and I do not know what would have happened had I not done so.  Andrassy’s “extra turn” at the last moment showed the great mass of the public how present a danger was that of war with Germany.  Had the same experiment been made six months before it would have been war with Germany; would have made Austria a scene of war.

There are evil times in store for the German people, but a people of many millions cannot perish and will not perish.  The day will come when the wounds of this war begin to close and heal, and when that day comes a better future will dawn.

The Austrian armies went forth in the hour of war to save Austria.  They have not availed to save it.  But if out of this ocean of blood and suffering a better, freer and nobler world arise, then they will not have died in vain, all those we loved who now lie buried in cold alien earth; they died for the happiness, the peace and the future of the generations to come.

FOOTNOTES: 

[11] Translated from the German text given by Count Czernin, no English text being available.

INDEX

Adler, Dr. Victor, a discussion with, 27
  and the Socialist Congress at Stockholm, 168
  and Trotski, 234, 235

Adrianople, cession of, 268

Aehrenthal, Franz Ferdinand and, 40
  policy of expansion, 5

Air-raids on England, cause of, 16
  their effect, 167

Albania, and the Peace of Bucharest, 6
  Queen Elizabeth of Roumania and, 92

Albrecht von Wuertemberg, 39

Alsace-Lorraine, Bethmann on, 74
  cession of, demanded by Entente, 165
  conquest of, a curse to Germany, 15
  Emperor Charles’s offer to Germany, 75
  France insists on restoration of, 170
  Germany and, 71, 158, 159

Ambassadors and their duties, 97, 110

America and the U-boat campaign, 116, 119, 120
  enters the war, 17, 148
  rupture with Germany, 127
  shipbuilding programme of, 291
  unpreparedness for war, 122
  (Cf. United States)

American Government, Count Czernin’s Note to, 279 et seq.

Andrassy, Count, and Roumanian peace negotiations, 260
  declares a separate peace, 24, 25
  German Nationalist view of his action, 25

Andrian at Nordbahnhof, 219

Anti-Roumanian party and its leader, 77

Arbitration, courts of, 171, 176, 177

Arion, Roumanian Foreign Minister, 322

Armaments, pre-war fever for, 3