"If you wish to ruin the peace, if you are anxious to renounce the supply of grain, then it would be logical enough to force my hand by speeches and resolutions, strikes and demonstrations, but not otherwise. And there is not an atom of truth in the idea that we are now at such a pass that we must prefer a bad peace without economic gain rather than a good peace with economic advantages to-morrow.
"The difficulties in the matter of food of late are not due solely to lack of actual provisions; it is the crises in coal, transport and organisation which are increasing. When you at home get up strikes you are moving in a vicious circle; the strikes increase and aggravate the crises concerned and hinder the supplies of food and coal. You are cutting your own throats in so doing, and all who believe that peace is accelerated thereby are terribly mistaken.
"It is believed that men in the country have been circulating rumours to the effect that the Government is instigating the strikes. I leave to these men themselves to choose whether they are to appear as criminal slanderers or as fools.
"If you had a Government desirous of concluding a peace different from that desired by the majority of the population, if you had a Government seeking to prolong the war for purposes of conquest, one might understand a conflict between the Government and the country. But since the Government desires precisely the same as the majority of the people—that is to say, the speedy settlement of an honourable peace without annexationist aims—then it is madness to attack that Government from behind, to interfere with its freedom of action and hamper its movements. Those who do so are fighting, not against the Government, they are fighting blindly against the people they pretend to serve and against themselves.
"As for yourselves, gentlemen, it is not only your right, but your duty, to choose between the following alternatives: either you trust me to proceed with the peace negotiations, and in that case you must help me, or you do not trust me, and in that case you must depose me. I am confident that I have the support of the majority of the Hungarian delegation. The Hungarian Committee has given me a vote of confidence. If there is any doubt as to the same here, then the matter is clear enough. The question of a vote of confidence must be brought up and put to the vote; if I then have the majority against me I shall at once take the consequences. No one of those who are anxious to secure my removal will be more pleased than myself; indeed far less so. Nothing induces me now to retain my office but the sense of duty, which constrains me to remain as long as I have the confidence of the Emperor and the majority of the delegations. A soldier with any sense of decency does not desert. But no Minister for Foreign Affairs could conduct negotiations of this importance unless he knows, and all the world as well, that he is endowed with the confidence of the majority among the constitutional representative bodies. There can be no half measures here. You have this confidence or you have not. You must assist me or depose me; there is no other way. I have no more to say."
5
Report of the Peace Negotiations at Brest-Litovsk
The Austro-Hungarian Government entered upon the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk with the object of arriving as quickly as possible at a peace compact which, if it did not, as we hoped, lead to a general peace, should at least secure order in the East. The draft of a preliminary peace was sent to Brest containing the following points:
1. Cessation of hostilities; if general peace should not be concluded, then neither of the present contracting parties to afford any support to the enemies of the other.
2. No surrender of territory; Poland, Lithuania and Courland retaining the right of determining their own destiny for the future.