Page:Diplomacy and the War (Andrassy 1921).djvu/188

 not have negotiated with them, because they were in constant and irreconcilable opposition, not on account of their foreign policy but on account of their principles, to every form of bourgeois society and to every unity of the state. They should only have been approached with a sword in one's hand and with orders and an ultimatum.

There was acute opposition on the one hand between our demands, and on the other between the point of view from which we started and the means of solution we adopted. Our procedure was not an honest one. We clothed our imperialism in the cloak of socialism and pacifism. The Ministers spoke of peace without annexation and without compensation, while in Berlin the German mind was occupying itself with the realization of the greatest imperialistic scheme which had ever been conceived. This conception consisted in the idea that Germany should, by circumventing Austria-Hungary, obtain a communication apart from the Hamburg-Bagdad line over Kiew and Central Asia to Asia and India, and that this communication should lead through countries which were to be subjected to the military influence of Germany. Round the table at Brest-Litovsk everyone spoke of the right of self-determination of nations, but the one party wanted, under the protection of the German Army, to carry out their own will, whereas the other were determined to carry out the will of their own people under the protection of the Red Guard.

The chief blame of this mistake rests upon Germany.