r a
thorough discussion by both Governments of the aims.

And again:

I must say Count Hertling's answer is very undecided and most
confusing, full of equivocal sentences, and it is difficult to say
what it aims at. It certainly is written in a very different tone
from that of Count Czernin's speech and obviously with a very
different object in view.

There can be no doubt that when the head of a State at war with us
speaks in such friendly terms of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, he
has the best intentions of coming to an understanding. My efforts in
this connection were interrupted by my dismissal.

In these last weeks during which I remained in office the Emperor had
definitely lost faith in me. This was not due to the Wilson question,
nor yet was it the direct consequence of my general policy. A
difference of opinion between certain persons in the Emperor's
entourage and myself was the real reason. The situation became so
strained as to make it unbearable. The forces that conspired against
me convinced me that it would be impossible for me to gain my
objective which, being of a very difficult nature, could not be
obtained unless the Emperor gave me his full confidence.

In spite of all the rumours and stories spread about me I do not
intend to go into details unless I should be compelled to do so by
accounts derived from reliable sources. I am still convinced to this
day that morally I was perfectly right. I was wrong as to form,
because I was neither clever nor patient enough to _bend_ the
opposition, but would have _broken_ it, by reducing the situation to a
case of "either--or".

CHAPTER VIII

IMPRESSIONS AND REFLECTIONS

1

In the autumn of 1917 I had a visit from a subject of a neutral state,
who is a pronounced upholder of general disarmament and world
pacifism. We began, of course, to discuss the theme of free
competition in armaments, of militarism, which in England prevails on
the sea and in Germany on land, and my visitor entered upon the
various possibilities likely to occur when the war was at an end. He
had no faith in the destruction of England, nor had I; but he thought
it possible that France and Italy might collapse. The French and
Italians could not possibly bear any heavier burdens than already were
laid on them; in Paris and Rome, he thought, revolution was not far
distant, and a fresh phase of the war would then ensue. England and
America would continue to fig