eks heavy with impending
decision, to show that it is worthy of continued existence."

4

=Speech by Count Czernin to the Austrian Delegation, January 24,
1918.=

"Gentlemen, it is my duty to give you a true picture of the peace
negotiations, to set forth the various phases of the results obtained
up to now, and to draw therefrom such conclusions as are true, logical
and justifiable.

"First of all it seems to me that those who consider the progress of
the negotiations too slow cannot have even an approximate idea of the
difficulties which we naturally had to encounter at every step. I will
in my remarks take the liberty of setting forth these difficulties,
but would like first to point out a cardinal difference existing
between the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk and all others which
have ever taken place in the history of the world. Never, so far as I
am aware, have peace negotiations been conducted with open windows. It
would be impossible that negotiations of the depth and extent of the
present could from the start proceed smoothly and without opposition.
We are faced with nothing less than the task of building up a new
world, of restoring all that the most merciless of all wars has
destroyed and cast down. In all the peace negotiations we know of the
various phases have been conducted more or less behind closed doors,
the results being first declared to the world when the whole was
completed. All history books tell us, and indeed it is obvious enough,
that the toilsome path of such peace negotiations leads constantly
over hill and dale, the prospects appearing often more or less
favourable day by day. But when the separate phases themselves, the
details of each day's proceedings, are telegraphed all over the world
at the time, it is again obvious that nervousness prevailing
throughout the world must act like an electric current and excite
public opinion accordingly. We were fully aware of the disadvantage of
this method of proceeding. Nevertheless we at once agreed to the wish
of the Russian Government in respect of this publicity, desiring to
meet them as far as possible, and also because we had nothing to
conceal on our part, and because it would have made an unfavourable
impression if we had stood firmly by the methods hitherto pursued, of
secrecy until completion. _But the complete publicity in the
negotiations makes it insistent that the great public, the country
behind, and above all the leaders,