With the signing of peace with Rumania the war in the east is ended. Three treaties of peace have been signed—with Petrograd, Ukraine, and Rumania. One principal section of the war is thus ended.
Before discussing the separate peaces which have been signed, and before going into details, I wish to return to the statements of the President of the United States wherein he replied to the speech I made before the delegations on Jan. 24. In many parts of the world Mr. Wilson's speech was regarded as an attempt to drive a wedge between Vienna and Berlin. I do not believe that, because I have much too high an opinion of Mr. Wilson's statesmanship to suspect him of such a train of thought.
According to my impressions, Mr. Wilson does not want to separate Vienna from Berlin. He does not desire that, and knows that it is impossible.
He perhaps thinks, however, that Vienna presents more favorable soil for sowing the seeds of a general peace. He has perhaps said to himself that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy has the good fortune to have a monarch who genuinely and honorably desires a general peace, but that this monarch will never be guilty of a breach of faith; that he will never make a shameful peace, and that behind this monarch stand 55,000,000 souls.
I imagine that Mr. Wilson says to himself that this closely knit mass of people represents a force which is not to be disregarded and that this honorable and firm will to peace with which the monarch is imbued and which binds him to the peoples of both States is capable of carrying a great idea in the service of which Mr. Wilson has also placed himself.
Before I discuss Mr. Wilson's last utterances I would like to clear up one misunderstanding. In my last speech which I delivered before the Austrian delegations I replied to an inquiry in this connection that probably Mr. Wilson was already in possession of my utterances. Later Mr. Wilson corrected this, and pointed out that there must be some mistake. I had prepared my speech beforehand, so as to avoid any possibility of its being incorrectly or incompletely transmitted, and at the moment I made my speech I supposed that it had already reached Washington. Apparently, however, it only arrived there some days later.
This does not affect the matter itself. My object was to assure that the President of the United States should get the exact text of my speech, and this object was attained and the trifling delay of a few days was a matter of indifference.
With regard to Mr. Wilson's reply, I can only say that I consider it very important that the German Chancellor, in his admirable speech of Feb. 25, took the answer out of my mouth and declared that the four points developed by Mr. Wilson in his speech of Feb. 11 are the basis upon which a general peace can be discussed. I entirely agree with him in this.
President Wilson's four points are a suitable basis upon which to begin negotiating about a general peace. The question is whether or not Mr. Wilson will succeed in uniting his allies upon this basis.
SAYS FRANCE ASKED TERMS