t in mind that up to the last days that I held
office the Eastern front was manned by Austro-Hungarian and German
troops all mixed together, and this entire army was under the Imperial
German Command. We had no army of our own in the East--not in the true
sense of the word, as it had been merged into the German army. That
was a consequence of our military inferiority. Again and again we
resorted to German aid. We called repeatedly for help in Serbia,
Roumania, Russia, and Italy, and were compelled to purchase it by
giving up certain things. Our notorious inferiority was only in very
slight degree the fault of the individual soldier; rather did it
emanate from the general state of Austro-Hungarian affairs. We entered
the war badly equipped and sadly lacking in artillery; the various
Ministers of War and the Parliaments were to blame in that respect.
The Hungarian Parliament neglected the army for years because their
national claims were not attended to, and in Austria the Social
Democrats had always been opposed to any measures of defence, scenting
therein plans for attack and not defence.

Our General Staff was in part very bad. There were, of course,
exceptions, but they only prove the rule. What was chiefly wanting was
contact with the troops. These gentlemen sat with their backs turned
and gave their orders. Hardly ever did they see the men at the front
or where the bullets whistled. During the war the troops learned to
_hate_ the General Staff. It was very different in the German army.
The German General Staffs exacted much, but they also achieved much;
above all, they exposed themselves freely and set an example.
Ludendorff, sword in hand, took Liege, accompanied by a couple of men!
In Austria archdukes were put into leading posts for which they were
quite unsuited. Some of them were utterly incompetent; the Archdukes
Friedrich, Eugen, and Joseph formed three exceptions. The first of
these in particular very rightly looked upon his post not as that of a
leader of operations, but as a connecting link between us and Germany,
and between the army and the Emperor Francis Joseph. He always acted
correctly and with eminent tact, and overcame many difficulties. What
was left of our independence was lost after Luck.

To return, therefore, to the plan developed above: a separate peace
that would have contained an order for our troops on the Eastern front
to lay down their arms or to march back would immediately have led to