Austria's Peace Offer, 1916-1917. Edited by G. de Manteyer. (Constable.
25s. net.)—When Count Czernin on April 2nd, 1918, said in a speech at Vienna that M. Clemenceau had invited him to begin peace negotiations, M. Clemenceau retorted publicly, " Czernin has lied." Count Czernin was referring to the conver- sations in Switzerland in February, 1918, between his agent Count Revertera and Count Armand, of the French General Staff, who was ordered by M. Clemenceau to listen but to say nothing. These conversations had begun at the instance of Austria in August, 1917, before M. Clemenceau took office. They had been preceded by tentative negotiations in which the Emperor Charles employed his brother-in-law, Prince Sixte of Bourbon-Parma, as an intermediary with the French Govern- ment. M. de Manteyer, a friend of Prince Sixte, sets out the whole story of these dealings in his interesting book. The author is one of those Frenchmen who would have liked to preserve and even to strengthen the Hapsburg Empire as a counterpoise to Prussia. The history of the nineteenth century proves, we should have thought, the unwisdom of such a policy, which ignored the national sentiment both of Italy and of the Slav peoples of Austria-Hungary. It is obvious from this book
that the Austrian peace offers to France produced no little irritation in Italy and weakened the unity of the Allies. Prob- ably the offers were intended to have that effect. Although the young Emperor may have been perfectly sincere, it is impossible to credit Count Czemin with any good intentions, and the Allies were well advised in declining to take his proposals seriously. The author convicts Count .0zernin not only of deliberate falsehood but also of a complete inability to realize, as late as April, 1918, that the Hapsburg system was on the point of collapsing like the old house in Little Don*,
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