Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1919-10-05

and of the foreign office, and also in
structed Major Baron Won dem Busche
to cooperate with the field marshal
in pressing urgently for the dispatch
of the note to President Wilson ask
ing an armistice on October /. or at
the latest at noon on the second.
My principal motive was to avoid
further loss of life, but I also attach
ed great weight to the view that the
earlier we began the more favorable
would our position be at the com
mencement of the negotiations
If it could not at this time be de-
scribed as threatening. it might with
in two or three weeks become of the
greatest importance whether the
army was to have an armistice. or elf
it had to fight on) the moral eneour-
agement from home. twenty-four
hours sooner or later.
In this position any delay in the
formation of the new government was
ineXcusable. / spoke often with my
staff to this effect, and always acted
on this view, / am unable to under
stand how the idea ever arose that I
had said that the front would break if
we did not have an armistice within
twenty-four hours. Between my dis
cussion with Secretary Won Hintze on
September 20 and the majors speech
on October 2. which are wholly con-
sistent with one another, there was no
particular military event that could
have led to any modification of my
views.
Mystified BY Berlin.
l had repeatedly begged Won HintZe
to retain his secretaryship, if the new
chancellor should be willing, in order
to secure certain degree of continu-
ity. This was in vain, however. In
the night of October ID the general
staff had simplified communications
between his majesty and the grand
duke of Baden by laying down trunk
telephone line, in order to hasten the
appointment OF Prince Max
! acted all the time in the same
point of view, that, once the decision
was taken. we should act at once. We
should not let days be wasted let
alone, as so often before, the whole
plan come to nothing l repeated
that it was no question of obtaining an
armistice in twenty-four hours. but
simply of initiating communications
with the enemy in some way or an
other.
That this was not equivalent to
getting an armistice, no one knew
better than /, who had a better judg-
ment OF the enemys views than the
new government. In my quiet but
anxious thought, was completely
mystified by the events in Berlin, and
could find no explanation thereof,
save this, that the members of the
reichstag, not having been properly
informed of anything at the right
time, had now. in their anxiety and
excitement, greatly increased by sur
prise, misunderstood what Major Ba-
ron Won dem Busche had said. and
that even Prince Max and the new
were not sufficiently
well informed to understand the po-
sition properly
To Urge But Not "Jostle."
Late in the night of October 1. and
in the course of october 2, Colonel Won
Haeften rang me UP repeatedly and
described to me the difficulties which
were delaying the formation of the
new government and also the dispatch
of the note. / had informed him on
September 80 of the events at Spa,
and had instructed him to urge the
government to act quickly and ener-
getically; he was not to "jostle" them,
but to make clear the grave disadvan-
tages that would follow every day of
hesitation and inactivity. To Colonel
Won Haeften also Won Hintze had ex-
planned on the afternoon of September