to expect His Majesty to alter his views.

In true friendship, your

CZERNIN.

I thereupon, on March 14, received the following answer from Tisza:

DEAR FRIEND,--I also note with genuine pleasure the success of
your American _aide-memoire_ (meaning thereby America's resolve
not to break off relations with us). But it does not alter my
opinion that it was a pity to admit that a pledge had been given.
It may be requited at a later stage of the controversy, and it
would have been easy not to broach the subject for the moment.

Do you think me very obstinate? I have not suppressed the final
word in our retrospective controversy so that you should not think
me better than I am.

Au revoir, in true friendship, your

TISZA.

Tisza was strongly opposed to the U-boat warfare, and only tolerated
it from reasons of _vis major_, because we could not prevent the
German military leaders from adopting the measure, and because he, and
I too, were convinced that "not joining in" would have been of no
advantage to us.

Not until very much later--in fact, not until after the war--did I
learn from a reliable source that Germany, with an incomprehensible
misunderstanding of the situation, had restricted the building of more
U-boats during the war. The Secretary of State, Capelle, was
approached by competent naval technical experts, who told him that, by
stopping the building of all other vessels, a fivefold number of
U-boats could be built. Capelle rejected the proposal on the pretext
"that nobody would know what to do with so many U-boats when the war
was at an end." Germany had, as mentioned, 100 submarines; had she
possessed 500, she might have achieved her aims.

I only heard this in the winter of 1918, but it was from a source from
which I invariably gleaned correct information.

Seldom has any military action called forth such indignation as the
sinking, without warning, of enemy ships. And yet the observer who
judges from an objective point of view must admit that the waging war
on women and children was not begun by us, but by our enemies when
they enforced the blockade. Millions have perished in the domains of
the Central Powers through the blockade, and chiefly the poorest and
weakest people--the greater part women and children--were the victims.
If, to meet the argument, it be asserted that the Central Powers were
as a besieged fortress, and that in 1870 the Germans starved Paris in
simil