File No. 763.72119/2309
The Ambassador in Italy ( Page) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 23, 8.54 p.m.]
German reply published late edition evening papers with official governmental comment to the following effect:
The first observation on German reply is that German Government appears to speak this time only in its own name, as it makes no more mention of Austria-Hungary, but only of the German people. The first impression of its contents is the manifest disproportion between the scant phrases which in the beginning are devoted to the more important and urgent questions, that is, the conditions of the armistice, and the diffuse way in which the note deals with political questions and the accusations of having committed acts against humanity and the law of nations. Regarding this it is not necessary to go fully into its fundamental hypocrisy. The burning of entire cities, for example Cambrai, in the very act of their evacuation is classified as legal acts of destruction necessary to cover the military retreat. The [note attempts] to give due value to the attempted defense of the atrocities committed against so many unfortunates by their submarines and to the assurances of having today given orders to all their commanders to suspend all sinking of steamships carrying passengers with the reservation, however, of those exceptions which may occur through failure of those orders reaching their destination. It suffices to recall the methods and the official instructions of Luxburg for sinkings without leaving any trace.
[Page 385]Coming on the other hand to the [armistice conditions], is [there] any radical difference between the first reply already given and this which now follows it, whence the impression that the object is to gain time? In the first reply it was desired to refer the conditions of the armistice to a mixed commission; and now, confronted by the formal declaration of the President that such conditions must be requested by the military authorities of the inter-Allied Supreme Command, it says that “the conditions of armistice should be left to the judgement of military counselors” and the President is requested to create the opportunity to regulate the details.
This turn of phrase not only appears in itself tortuous but, considered attentively, evades the President’s ringing and precise demand to refer their request for an armistice to the military commander[s], and substitutes therefor a judgement of military counsellors who should be [designated] by the President himself. Is not this a short cut in disguise to a mixed commission?
Yet more serious [is] the other point of the reply. President Wilson had declared that he was not, so far as he was concerned, disposed to accept any provisional arrangement which would not assure and guarantee the maintenance of the present existing supremacy of the Allied armies, and that was evidently just. Germany replies that the arguments [arrangements?] for an armistice should be based on the present relations of the Allied forces on the several fronts. From this is deduced that on the subject of military guarantees all that Germany declares herself disposed to consent to is that they should consist in the conservation of the present relation of forces that are confronting each other. Apart even from the concrete difficulty of such an arrangement and especially of the guarantees of its loyal fulfillment, there is revealed the manifest snare of including all the efficiency of the military forces in the simple proportion of the numerical forces of the combatants, while even those [ignorant] of the military art know that many other coefficients have a significant importance: that is, the extension of the fronts, their defensibility, the means of communication, the morale of the people and so forth.
It is clear, then, that to concede today an armistice on the basis of the simple conservation of the combatant force the Allies would give to the Central Empires in substance, [collectively] and individually considered, the time and the means to reorganize their forces, refurnish them with arms which are now deficient, systematize their internal conditions, [refortify] their spirit, reestablish their unity; in fine, place them once more on their feet, extracting them from their present situation which is so grave as to constrain them to ask for peace.
All this goes to show the new document emanating from the Imperial Chancery not only evades the fundamental problem of the guarantees of the armistice but reveals the persistence of the enemy in his methods of subtle astuteness. It is necessary, then, in the interest of a just and durable peace itself to be wary and to stand on guard.