or from influential persons acting on their behalf. After the death of the Emperor Francis Joseph at the beginning of December 1916 Austria opened with the Entente secret negotiations which were protracted until the spring of 1918. Of them I shall have more to say. It was significant that they should have been undertaken by the young Emperor Charles through his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Parma. A year later, they were publicly revealed by Clemenceau. They bore witness both to the weakening of the Central Powers and to a decrease of the harmony that had existed between Austria and Germany under Francis Joseph. On April 12, 1917, Count Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, dilated officially on the weakness of Austria in a confidential report to the Emperor Charles. This report came to the knowledge of the Allies—through an indiscretion on the part of Erzberger, it is said, though Erzberger himself denied it. Czernin’s report would certainly account for the young Emperor’s peace negotiations; and, as we shall see, they were not an isolated effort. Throughout the whole of 1917 Austria sought to approach all the Allies.
On July 19, 1917, the German Reichstag had adopted, by 214 votes against 116 and with 17 abstentions, a peace resolution demanding, after the Russian fashion, peace without annexations or political or economic indemnities; and secret overtures were also made to the Allies by official Germany. The German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, was prepared to treat for peace with France on the basis of ceding Alsace-Lorraine in whole or in part—so, at least, it was said in Vienna and stated by Austrian agents. Of one Franco-German peace overture details are known. Baron von der Lancken, the former Counsellor of the German Embassy in Paris, who was then in Belgium, got into touch with M. Briand through a number of intermediaries. Matters went so far that he was to have met Briand in Switzerland on September 27, 1917, but Briand did not go. There was a sequel to this episode in a controversy between Clemenceau and Briand. Next month (October) the Germans approached England through Spain, and still other threads were spun from Germany to England by way of The Hague.
Between Germany and Russia there had been several attempts to negotiate. I have mentioned two German offers to the Tsar. In October 1916 Russia apparently approached Germany, and in December Germany approached Russia. In February 1917 Bethmann-Hollweg tried to treat for peace
