known journalist, but that he had been frightened by Viennese clumsiness. However this may have been, it was precisely from Clemenceau that we received notable help.
Our people were often put out by these pro-Austrian tendencies. But is it not true that we ourselves had long given countenance to the very policy which the French and the other pro-Austrians now recommended? Who was it, beginning with Palacký’s original view that if Austria did not exist she would have to be invented, who proclaimed pro-Austrianism among us and the doctrine that Austria was a bulwark against Germany? And, up to the year 1917, what was the bearing of official Prague? Like us, the French had to unlearn and to change their outlook; and some of them changed it thoroughly—Chéradame, for instance, with whom we were in touch. Before the war he had urged the preservation of Austria against Germany. During the war, he recognized that Austria could no longer withstand the German Empire. The negotiations opened by the Emperor Charles were foredoomed to failure, and the fact that they took place as they did is merely an instructive sign of the extent to which official quarters on both sides were groping in the dark. After all, the Allies had bound themselves by the Treaty of London to get for Italy considerable territorial concessions at the cost of Austria. They had done the same with Roumania in regard to Transylvania; and they had promised Serbia, as a minimum, Bosnia-Herzegovina and free access to the sea. How much of Austria-Hungary would then have been left? True, Austria—-the Emperor Charles in particular—was prepared to make over the whole of Galicia to the projected Polish Kingdom under German control; and it is a further sign of official bewilderment that the French General Staff should have supported a scheme to give Prussian Silesia or Bavaria to Austria by way of compensation.
To the concrete difficulties arising out of the earlier engagements I attributed the caution with which the French Prime Minister, M. Ribot, approached the Austrian proposals. He declined to negotiate without Italy. Though the Emperor Charles and his representatives affirmed that the Italian Commander-in-Chief, General Cadorna, and the King of Italy had offered Austria peace about the time when Prince Sixtus became active, I doubt the truth of these statements in this form. Some Austrian negotiators sought to add weight to their offers by asserting that, on behalf of post-Tsarist Russia, Prince Lvoff had approached Austria, but their statements
