alkans we should
be striking at its most sensitive vital nerve. Moreover, the Entente
would naturally have demanded first of all that we joined in the
blockade, and finally our secession would automatically have involved
also that of Bulgaria and Turkey. Had we withdrawn, Germany would have
been unable to carry on the war. In such a situation there can be no
possibility of doubt but that the German Army Command would have flung
several divisions against Bohemia and the Tyrol, meting out to us the
same fate which had previously befallen Roumania. The Monarchy,
Bohemia in particular, would at once have become a scene of war. But
even this is not all. Internally, such a step would at once have led
to civil war. The Germans of Austria would never have turned against
their brothers, and the Hungarians--Tisza's Hungarians--would never
have lent their aid to such a policy. _We had begun the war in common,
and we could not end it save in common._ For us there was no way out
of the war; we could only choose between fighting with Germany against
the Entente, or fighting with the Entente against Germany until
Germany herself gave way. A slight foretaste of what would have
happened was given us through the separatist steps taken by Andrassy
at the last moment. This utterly defeated, already annihilated and
prostrate Germany had yet the power to fling troops toward the Tyrol,
and had not the revolution overwhelmed all Germany like a
conflagration, smothering the war itself, I am not sure but that the
Tyrol might at the last moment have been harried by war. And,
gentlemen, I have more to say. The experiment of separate peace would
not only have involved us in a civil war, not only brought the war
into our own country, but even then the final outcome would have been
much the same. The dissolution of the Monarchy into its component
national parts was postulated throughout by the Entente. I need only
refer to the Conference of London. But whether the State be dissolved
by way of reward to the people or by way of punishment to the State
makes little difference; the effect is the same. In this case also a
"German Austria" would have arisen, and in such a development it would
have been hard for the German-Austrian people to take up an attitude
which rendered them allies of the Entente. In my own case, as Minister
of the Imperial and Royal Government, it was my duty also to consider
dynastic interests, and I never lost sight of that obligati