Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/325

Rh

Bulgaria refuses to be a vassal State.

Turkey is becoming anxious.

The plan for the realisation of which the Pan-Germans persuaded Germany to go to war and which has cost so many millions of lives and caused such universal misery is completely frustrated.

What reason remains why we should fight?

The Government has no further reason for continuing the struggle and is therefore suing our enemies for peace.

Therefore all the talk about a defensive war proves to have been absolutely untruthfully and dishonestly

Leaflet No. 17 (betiveen pages 176 and 177).

What are you fighting for?

For the Emperor of Austria and the King of Hungary!

Or is it for the German Emperor?

You are only fighting for the German Emperor. The Austrian Emperor has given over to him the army and the State revenues for twenty-five years by a formal treaty the contents of which are kept from you.

But your newspapers also announce a "Waffenbund" which was entered upon on May 12th, 1918, between your old and your new masters.

But you Magyars, whose ancestors shed so much blood for freedom, you are ignorant of the truth.

For behold according to the Germans you are idle and slow.

The Frankfürter Zeitung says on May 13th, "The new treaty should finally seal the disappearance of Austria as an independent State and the seizing of the Hapsburg Monarchy by Germany."

The Deutsche Zeitung of the 19th May remarks, "What the Mittel-Europa Confederacy chiefly needs is strength, and never more so than at the time the war broke out. Austria-Hungary was not sufficiently prepared. According to the 'Waffenbund' Austria-Hungary must arm its inhabitants in exactly the same way as Germany. It is no longer possible that it should happen that the delegates should vote extraordinary credits for military purposes, and that afterwards they should waste a long time before they pass the amount because either the Hungarian or the Austrian Minister of Finance says there is no money; or