Evening star., 1919-11-18
BY FRANK H. SIMONDS.

In all the welter of material. COM
ng from sources until recently en-
my and designed to impress domes-
ic and foreign publics alike, it would
De difficult to find any more enter
aiming or illuminating documents
than those now supplied by Count
.zernin, foreign minister for the
Iapsburg empire in the critical years
which stretch from the latter end OF
1916 until the close of the negotla-
ions at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest
n 1918.
The peculiar value and charm OF
Count CZernin'S contribution lies IN
the fact that he has no other thesis
o establish than that he did his best.
He does not claim. and he obviously
loes not believe. that other policies
would have saved the empire, that had
lis wishes prevailed Austria would
rave been saved, much less that, had
different course been adopted, the
var would have been won.
BY contrast what he does believe
nanifestly is that the war could
neither have been prevented nor won.
The watch of the dual monarchy had
.un down.; this is his melancholy
onclusion-a conclusion reached early
n the struggle. He never believed in
Y,
monarchy could survive the shock. In
he main, doing the bNst he could he
elt himself like physician called to
sttend a patient in the advanced
,tages of mortal illness.
Far Different From Ludendorff.
Given these circumstances, however,
lis comments have striking value as
hey show the position of the central
powers from a standpoint wholly an
.erent from that of Ludendorff or Tir-
oitZ, both of whom are sure now that
he war could have been won had
their view prevailed or had some un-
lecessary circumstance not inter-
.ened.
Czernin supplies the useful counter
ooise to Ludendorff. Admiring the
older. he bemoans the idea and the
method he represented. He saw the
German military leaders as they We're,
md wrestled with them again and
again. They could not realize, he
points out shrewdly, that nation
nay die of victories. and that unlim-
ted securities in the shape of con-
auered provinces, like Belgium and
iorthern France, are valueleSS If the
enemy is not prepared to redeem them
1T your price. Perhaps, he suggests,
!alf humorously-perha the elder
and greater Moltke would have been
lust as bad had he not been controlled
ov a Bismarck, and a Bismarck was
lust what was lacking between 1914
and 1918.
AS a consequence CZernin wander
ed from impossibility to impossibility
His own emperor agreed with him
that victory was impossible and peace
essential. But the Germans were
equally certain that victory was in
evitable. When Czernin went to them
to urge that they cede Alsace-Lorraine
to France and take Poland in eX-
change, with Austrian Gaiicia thrown
in, they were both angry and amused.
Victory was as certain for them as
the sunrise.
When Czernin approached the Hun
garians with the project that they
buy Rumania off by cessions in Tran
sylvania he encount' red equal opposi-
ton. TisZa and all other Hungarians
could only think in Magyar. and the
integrity of the Hungarian state was
the beginning of their thoughts. Nor
was he less baffied in all attempts to
deal Indirectly with the enemy. The
program, adopted at London in 1915,
when Italy came into the war. pro-
vided for the destruction of the Haps-
burg empire, the division of the outer
fringes between Russia, Italy, Ru-
mania and Serbia and the creation OF
separate states.