April 21st Burian sent Prince Fürstenberg a telegram instructing him not to send Karl’s message to Washington for the time being, if it could not be done by a special courier, as the Spanish cipher was known to the Allies.
President Wilson probably never received Karl’s second message. The Clemenceau-Czernin incident and everything which followed it, the new agreements on the occasion of Karl’s visit to Spa, the new commitments and the greater dependence of Vienna upon Berlin no doubt deprived Karl and the Government at Vienna of any opportunity or desire to continued any such scheme.
On my return to Paris I was asked to call upon Mr. Sharp, the American Ambassador. At that time I was in continual contact with Mr. Frazer, his Counsellor of Embassy, and in fact with the whole of his staff, to whom I had been systematically furnishing reports on our work in the Allied countries and on the conditions in Central Europe ever since the autumn of 1917. I regularly used to receive invitations to visit the Embassy whenever anything of particular importance had happened, and in the second half of April Mr. Sharp had twice asked me to call upon him in connection with the Clemenceau-Czernin conflict, as he was anxious to obtain details about the state of affairs in the Habsburg Empire, the Congress of Rome, and the stage which our movement had reached in France. At first Mr. Sharp had been totally ignorant of Central Europe and our affairs, which he had accordingly regarded in a very naïve manner, but when he became acquainted with our movement, the organization of our army and our political and military activities in the Allied countries, he at once became an enthusiastic supporter of our national demands. I am unable to say whether he had any influence on his Government and on President Wilson. On the occasion of my second visit he read to me the telegrams which he had sent to Wilson on the subject of our affairs. They constituted an enthusiastic plea on our behalf, and a demonstration of the fact that nothing more could be done with the Habsburg Empire, that the nations in it were gradually liberating themselves, and that the Allies in Europe were clearly directing their policy in accordance with this circumstance.
These successes were, of course, supplemented first and foremost by our intensive action in the United States them-
