RETORT BY CLEMENCEAU
Premier Clemenceau replied to this Vienna statement on the same day by issuing the following:
A diluted lie is still a lie. Count Czernin told a lie when he said that some time before the German offensive began Premier Clemenceau caused him to be asked "if he was ready to open negotiations and upon what basis."
As to the passage in the manuscript note of Count Revertata, where he says he acted for Austria to obtain peace proposals from France, the solicitant's text is authentic, and Count Czernin has not dared to dispute it.
To hide his confusion he tries to maintain that the conversation was resumed at the request of M. Clemenceau. Unfortunately for him, there is a fact which reduces his allegation to nothing, namely, that Clemenceau was apprised of the matter on Nov. 18, 1917, (that is to say, the day after he took over the Ministry of War,) by communication from the intermediary dated Nov. 10, and intended for his predecessors. For Count Czernin's contention to be true, M. Clemenceau would have had to take the initiative in question before he was Premier. Thus Count Czernin is categorically contradicted by facts.
He is reduced to maintaining that Major Armand was M. Clemenceau's confidential man. Well, until this incident M. Clemenceau had seen this officer of the Intelligence Department only once, for five minutes at a riding school fifteen or twenty years ago.
Finally, Count Czernin, as a last resource, says that what he attributes to M. Clemenceau is unimportant. "What is really important," he affirms, "is not to know who took the initiative for the conversations before the offensive, but who caused them to fail." Then why all this fuss? To demonstrate that every French Government, like France itself, is immovable on the question of Alsace-Lorraine?
Who could have thought it would have been necessary for Count Revertata to elucidate for Count Czernin a question upon which the Emperor of Austria himself has said the last word? It was no other than Emperor Charles who, in a letter dated March, 1917, put on record in his own writing his adhesion to "France's just claim relative to Alsace-Lorraine." A second imperial letter stated that the Emperor was "in agreement with his Minister." It only remained for Czernin to contradict himself.
Ex-Premier Ribot stated on April 9 that during his Premiership "France never directly or through a neutral intermediary took the initiative in any such proceeding as the Austrian official communication asserted."
German Designs on Madeira