The German and Austrian Emperors held a consultation at German Great Headquarters on May 12 to discuss future relations between the two empires. Emperor Karl was accompanied by Foreign Minister Burian, Field Marshal von Arz, Chief of the General Staff, and Prince Hohenlohe, Austrian Ambassador at Berlin. Germany was represented by Imperial Chancellor von Hertling, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, General Ludendorff, Foreign Secretary von Kuehlmann, and Count von Wedel, Ambassador at Vienna.
According to an official statement issued in Berlin, all the fundamental political, economic, and military questions affecting present and future relations were thoroughly discussed, and "there was complete accord on all these questions, tending to deepen the existing alliance." In many quarters the impression prevailed that the result of the meeting was to define and recognize formally the subservient relations of Austria-Hungary toward the German Empire. The State Department at Washington made public a report based upon indications given by the Berlin newspapers that the agreement made at the meeting concerned three points:
1. The duration of the alliance was fixed for twenty-five years.
2. Germany and Austria-Hungary are to sign a military convention imposing upon each much stricter military obligations than did the preceding treaty.
3. The economic relations will be regulated so as to realize the plan of Mitteleuropa.
A solution of the Polish question was also arrived at, according to a newspaper statement published in Berlin, on the lines of complete union between Austria-Hungary and Poland. Another message said that the German and Austrian Emperors had selected monarchs for Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and Esthonia. It was officially stated that no actual treaty was signed.
One of the most interesting subsequent revelations was that King Ludwig of Bavaria and King Frederick August of Saxony were also present at the meeting at German Great Headquarters. Some of the reports represented these two monarchs as having been present uninvited.
The Prince Sixtus Letter
Arthur J. Balfour, British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, replying to inquiries in the House of Commons, May 16, stated that Emperor Karl's peace letter to Prince Sixtus, which had been received while Mr. Balfour was in America, was a private letter written by Emperor Charles to a relative (Prince Sixtus of Bourbon) and conveyed by him to President Poincaré and the French Premier under seal of the strictest secrecy, but with no permission to communicate it to any one except the Sovereign and Premier of this country, [Great Britain.] The letter was communicated to the French and English Premiers under these pledges.
He stated that he had no secrets from President Wilson, and added: "Every thought I have on the war or on the diplomacy connected with the war is as open to President Wilson as to any other human being." He declared that he regarded the Sixtus letter as not a peace effort, but a manoeuvre to divide the Allies. He declared that they were not fighting for "a bigger Alsace-Lorraine than in 1870," and added:
If any representative of any belligerent country desires seriously to lay before us any proposals we are ready to listen to them.
Lord Robert Cecil, Minister of Blockade, in the same debate, after indorsing the preceding statement of Mr. Balfour, added this reference to Russia: