This would be more convincing if the German Foreign Office had added the text of the advice which it thus gave Vienna.
A like significant omission will be found when the same official defense states that on July 29th the German Government advised Austria “to begin the conversations with Mr. Sazonof.” But here again the text is not found among the documents which the German Foreign Office has given to the world. The communications, which passed between that office and its ambassadors in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, are given in extenso, but among the twenty-seven communications appended to the German White Paper it is most significant that not a single communication is given of the many which passed from the Foreign Office of Berlin to that of Vienna and only two which passed from the German Ambassador in Vienna to the German Chancellor. While the Kaiser has favored the world with his messages to the Czar and King George, he has wholly failed to give us any message that he sent in those critical days to the Austrian Emperor or the King of Italy. We shall have occasion to refer hereafter to the frequent failure to produce documents, the existence of which is admitted by the exhibits which Germany appended to its White Paper.
This cannot be an accident. The German Foreign Office has seen fit to throw the veil of secrecy over the text of its communications to Vienna, although professing to give the purport of a few of them. The purpose of this suppression is even more clearly indicated by the complete failure of Austria to submit any of its diplomatic records to the scrutiny of a candid world. Until Germany and Austria are willing to put the most important documents in their possession in evidence, they must not be surprised that the World, remembering Bismarck’s garbling of the Ems dispatch, which precipitated the Franco-Prussian War, will be incredulous as to the sincerity of their pacific protestations.
ADDENDUM
The Austrian Red Book, published more than six months after the declaration of war, simply emphasizes the policy of suppression of vital documents, which we have already discussed. Of its 69 documentary exhibits, there is not one which passed directly between the Cabinets of Berlin and Vienna. The text of the communications, in which Germany claims to have exercised a mediatory and conciliatory influence with its ally, is still withheld. Not a single document is produced which was sent between July the 6th and July the 21st, the period when the great coup was secretly planned by Berlin and Vienna.
In the Red Book we find eight communications from Count Berchtold to the Austrian Ambassador at Berlin and four replies from that official, but not a letter or telegram passing between Berchtold and von Bethmann-Hollweg or between the German and Austrian Kaisers. The Austrian Red Book gives additional evidence that at the eleventh hour, and shortly before Germany issued its ultimatum to Russia, Austria did finally agree to discuss the Servian question with Russia; but the information, which Germany presumably gave to its ally of its intention to send the ultimatum to Russia, is carefully withheld. Notwithstanding this suppression of vital documents, the diplomatic papers of Germany and Austria, now partially given to the world, disclose an unmistakable purpose, amounting to an open confession, that they intended to force their will upon Europe, even though this course involved the most stupendous war in the history of mankind.
March 1, 1915.