The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-01-26
WASHINGTON VIEW IS THAT ADDRESSES OF TWO MINISTER'S WERE WELL STUDIED German Is Confident and Defiant, While Austrian
 Tries to Lull the Dis
 satisfied People
BOTH TRY TO CONCEAL REAL DESIRE OF GAIN BEHIND GOOD WORDS
There Will Be No Official Comment in America Un- til the Official Texts
 Are Received

Washington, January 25. No advance toward peace IS seen here in the speeches made yesterday in Berlin and Vienna by the German chancellor and Austrian foreign minister upon the war aims of the central powers.
 Formal comments will be with held until the texts are put out by an authorized German agency, but after reading press accounts of the speeches officials expressed the opin- ion that they were framed largely for internal consumption with the incidental purposes to plant seeds of discord among the allies by sugges- tions of separate negotiations and ap- peal to the synpathies of the radi- cal socialistic clements in the enemy's countries.
  ternal conditions of Germany and Aus tria, one official suggested that the striking differences of tone In the two notes, the German being almost de- fiantly aggressive and the Austrian con- promising and insinuating, were caicu- lated precisely to meet conditions in the two empires. In Germany, strengthened by the Russian collapse, resulting in the transfer of vast forces from the eastern to the western front, the militaristic party Is in the ascendency and the chan cellor apparently voices the will of the military leaders
 AUSTRIANS ARE INSISTENT
 Tn Austria the working people are re- ported in incipient rebellion and the de- mands for peace at almost any price are insistent and clamorous. This is the ex- planation found here for the foreign minister's vague promises of peace With out annexation or indemnities, and his special bid for negotiations direct with America.
 It is noted, however, that the speeches are interdependent; that Austria will not nepotiate without Germany's consent and approval and that Germany gives her sanction to what has been done in Aus tria. Both spokesmen express confidence in the success of the peace negotiations with Russia, in contrast to the bitter de- nunciation of the conduct of the Teuton by Leon Trotzky. This attitude, officials and diplomats believe, is the result of apprehension that the confession at this moment of the failure of the Brest-, Litovsk negotiations would exasperate inc German and Austrian public beyond the safety point
 GRAINS OF HOPE
 Tn some places there was disposition 10 some grain of hope in the concession by both speakers that there were points in the utterances Of Lloyd George and President Wilson that might afford the basis of further discussion. But other officials insisted that this was only an- other demonstration of the truth of President Wilson's statement in his ad- dress to Congress, that 1t was the prac- tice of German diplomacy to mislead by declaring adherence to large principles and then neutralize them by insistence upon details of quite another character.
 The present belief of the officials is that there Is not the slightest probabil- ity of a compliance by the United States and the allies with the final demand of inc German chancellor for the subnis- sion by them of new proposals for peace