Page:Treaty of peace with Austria. Letter by Allied Powers.djvu/3

 TREATY OF PEACE WITH AUSTRIA. Letter of Transmittal to the President of the Austrian Delegation of the Reply of the Allied and Associated Powers. Peace Conference. The President. To His Excellency Mr. Renner, President of the Austrian Delegation at Saint-Germain- en-Layer. Paris, the 2nd September, 1919. Mr. President: 1. The Allied and Associated Powers have given the greatest care to the examination of the observations formulated by the Austrian Delegation in regard to the draft of the Treaty of Peace. The objec- tions presented to this draft in the reply of the Austrian Delegation are based on the fact that, by reason of the dissolution of the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy, Austria ought not to be treated in any respect as an enemy State and that one ought consequently not to make her bear in any special manner the burden of the reparations which would certainly have been imposed upon the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy if she had not ceased to exist. The observations reveal a fundamentally erroneous conception of the responsibilities of the Austrian people. The Allied and Associ- ated Powers shall therefore believe it necessary to indicate as briefly as possible the principles which they consider ought to be applied in the settlement, so far as Austria is concerned, of the war, which has just come to an end. The Austrian people share in a large measure with their neighbor the Hungarian people's responsibility for the ills which Europe has suffered in the course of the last five years. The war was precipitated by the ultimatum which the government of Vienna sent to Serbia exacting acceptance within a delay of 48 hours of a list of exactions which amounted to suppression of the independence of a sovereign neighbor state. The royal government of Serbia accepted within the prescribed delay all these exactions, with the exception of those which implied virtually renunciation of its independence. Never- theless, the Austro-Hungarian government rejected all offers of dis- cussion and all proposals of conciliation on the basis of that reply, and opened at once hostilities against Serbia, entering thus deliberately upon the course which led straight to the world war. It is now evident that this ultimatum was but a hypocritical pre- text to begin a war which the old autocratic government of Vienna, in close accord with the Rulers of Germany, had prepared long ago, and for which it judged the moment had arrived. The presence of Austrian cannon at the sieges of Liege and Namur is a proof more, if one were needed, of the close association of the government of Vienna with the government of Berlin in the complot against public law and the liberty of Europe. 3