cupied
territories restored, Serbia accorded free and secure access to the
sea, and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another
determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of
allegiance and nationality, and international guarantees of the
political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the
several Balkan States should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be
assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are
now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life
and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development,
and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to
the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish State should be erected which should
include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations,
which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose
political and economic independence and territorial integrity should
be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small States
alike.

8

=Ottokar Czernin on Austria's Policy During the War=

_Speech delivered December 11, 1918_

GENTLEMEN,--In rising now to speak of our policy during the war it is
my hope that I may thereby help to bring the truth to light. We are
living in a time of excitement. After four years of war, the bloodiest
and most determined war the world has ever seen, and in the midst of
the greatest revolution ever known, this excitement is only too easily
understood. But the result of this excitement is that all those rumours
which go flying about, mingling truth and falsehood together, end by
misleading the public. It is unquestionably necessary to arrive at a
clear understanding. The public has a right to know what has really
happened, it has the right to know why we did not succeed in attaining
the peace we had so longed for, it has a right to know whether, and if
so where, any neglect can be pointed out, or whether it was the
overwhelming power of circumstances which has led our policy to take
the course it did. The new arrangement of relations between ourselves
and Germany will make an end of all secret proceed