Book: In the World War

C >> Count Ottokar Czernin >> In the World War




"_February 7, 1918._--My conversation with Trotski took place. I took
Gratz with me; he has far exceeded all my expectations of him. I began
by telling Trotski that a breach of the regulations and a resumption
of hostilities were imminent, and wished to know if this could not be
avoided before the fatal step were definitely taken. I therefore
begged Herr Trotski to inform me openly and without reserve what
conditions he would accept. Trotski then declared very frankly and
clearly that he was not so simple as we appeared to think, that he
knew well enough force was the strongest of all arguments, and that
the Central Powers were quite capable of taking away the Russian
provinces. He had several times tried to bridge a way for Kuehlmann
during the conference, telling him it was not a question of the right
of self-determination of the peoples in the occupied districts, but of
sheer brutal annexation, and that he must give way to force. He would
never relinquish his principles, and would never give his consent to
this interpretation of the right of self-determination. The Germans
must say straight out what were the boundaries they demanded, and he
would then make clear to all Europe that it was a brutal annexation
and nothing else, but that Russia was too weak to oppose it. Only the
Moon Sound Islands seemed to be more than he could swallow. Secondly,
and this is very characteristic, Trotski said he could never agree to
our making peace with the Ukraine, since the Ukraine was no longer in
the hands of its Rada, but in the hands of his troops. It was a part
of Russia, and to make peace with it would be interfering in the
internal affairs of Russia itself. The fact of the matter seems to be
that about nineteen days ago the Russian troops really did enter
Kieff, but were subsequently driven out, the Rada once more coming
into power as before. Whether Trotski was unaware of this latter
development or purposely concealed the truth I cannot say for certain,
but it seems as if the former were the case.

"The last hope of coming to an understanding with Petersburg has
vanished. An appeal from the Petersburg Government to the German
soldiers has been discovered in Berlin, inciting them to revolt, to
murder the Kaiser and their generals, and unite with the soviets.
Following on this came a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm to Kuehlmann
ordering him to terminate negotiations at once, by demanding, besides
Courland and Lithuania, also the unoccupied territories of Livonia and
Esthonia--all without regard to the right of self-determination of the
peoples concerned.

"The dastardly behaviour of these Bolsheviks renders negotiation
impossible. I cannot blame Germany for being incensed at such
proceedings, but the instructions from Berlin are hardly likely to be
carried out. We do not want to drag in Livonia and Esthonia.

"_February 8, 1918._--This evening the peace with Ukraine is to be
signed. The first peace in this terrible war. I wonder if the Rada is
still really sitting at Kieff? Wassilko showed me a Hughes message
dated 6th inst. from Kieff to the Ukrainian delegation here, and
Trotski has declined my suggestion to dispatch an officer of the
Austrian General Staff to the spot, in order to bring back reliable
information. Evidently, then, his assertion that the Bolsheviks were
already masters of Kieff was only a ruse. Gratz informs me, by the
way, that Trotski, with whom he spoke early this morning, is much
depressed at our intention of concluding peace with Ukraine to-day
after all. This confirms me in my purpose of having it signed. Gratz
has convened a meeting with the Petersburgers for to-morrow; this will
clear matters up, and show us whether any agreement is possible, or if
we must break off altogether. In any case, there can be no doubt that
the intermezzo at Brest is rapidly nearing its end."

After conclusion of peace with Ukraine, I received the following
telegram from the Emperor:

"'_Court train, February 9, 1918._

"'Deeply moved and rejoiced to learn of the conclusion of peace
with Ukraine. I thank you, dear Count Czernin, from my heart for
your persevering and successful endeavours.

"'You have thereby given me the happiest day of my hitherto far
from happy reign, and I pray God Almighty that He may further
continue to aid you on your difficult path--to the benefit of the
Monarchy and of our peoples.

KARL.'

"_February 11, 1918._--Trotski declines to sign. The war is over, but
there is no peace.

"The disastrous effects of the troubles in Vienna will be seen clearly
from the following message from Herr von Skrzynski, dated Montreux,
February 12, 1918. Skrzynski writes:

"'I learn from a reliable source that France has issued the
following notification: We were already quite disposed to enter
into discussion with Austria. Now we are asking ourselves whether
Austria is still sound enough for the part it was intended to give
her. One is afraid of basing an entire policy upon a state which
is perhaps already threatened with the fate of Russia.' And
Skrzynski adds: 'During the last few days I have heard as follows:
It has been decided to wait for a while.'"

Our position, then, during the negotiations with Petersburg was as
follows: We could not induce Germany to resign the idea of Courland
and Lithuania. We had not the physical force to do so. The pressure
exerted by the Supreme Army Command on the one hand and the shifty
tactics of the Russians made this impossible. We had then to choose
between leaving Germany to itself, and signing a separate peace, or
acting together with our three Allies and finishing with a peace
including the covert annexation of the Russian outer provinces.

The former alternative involved the serious risk of making a breach in
the Quadruple Alliance, where some dissension was already apparent.
The Alliance could no longer stand such experiments. We were faced
with the final military efforts now, and the unity of the Allies must
not in any case be further shaken. On the other hand, the danger that
Wilson, the only statesman in the world ready to consider the idea of
a peace on mutual understanding, might from the conclusion of such a
peace obtain an erroneous impression as to our intentions. I hoped
then, and I was not deceived, that this eminently clever man would
see through the situation and recognise that we were forced to act
under pressure of circumstances. His speeches delivered after the
peace at Brest confirmed my anticipation.

The peace with Ukraine was made under pressure of imminent famine. And
it bears the characteristic marks of such a birth. That is true. But
it is no less true that despite the fact of our having obtained far
less from Ukraine than we had hoped, we should, without these
supplies, have been unable to carry on at all until the new harvest.
Statistics show that during the spring and summer of 1918 42,000
wagon-loads were received from the Ukraine. It would have been
impossible to procure these supplies from anywhere else. Millions of
human beings were thus saved from death by starvation--and let those
who sit in judgment on the peace terms bear this in mind.

It is also beyond doubt that with the great stocks available in
Ukraine, an incomparably greater quantity could have been brought into
Austria if the collecting and transport apparatus had worked
differently.

The Secretary of State for Food Supplies has, at my request, in May,
1919, furnished me with the following statistical data for
publication:

Brief survey of the organisation of corn imports from Ukraine (on
terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace) and the results of same:

When, after great efforts, a suitable agreement had been arrived
at with Germany as to the apportionment of the Ukrainian supplies,
a mission was dispatched to Kieff, in which not only Government
officials but also the best qualified and most experienced experts
which the Government could procure were represented.

Germany and Hungary had also sent experts, among them being
persons with many years of experience in the Russian grain
business, and had been in the employ of both German and Entente
grain houses (as, for instance, the former representative of the
leading French corn merchants, the house of Louis Dreyfuss).

The official mission arrived at Kieff by the middle of March, and
commenced work at once. A comparatively short time sufficed to
show that the work would present quite extraordinary difficulties.

The Ukrainian Government, which had declared at Brest-Litovsk that
very great quantities, probably about one million tons, of
surplus foodstuffs were ready for export, had in the meantime
been replaced by another Ministry. The Cabinet then in power
evinced no particular inclination, or at any rate no hurry, to
fulfil obligations on this scale, but was more disposed to point
out that it would be altogether impossible, for various reasons,
to do so.

Moreover, the Peace of Brest had provided for a regular exchange
system, bartering load by load of one article against another. But
neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary was even approximately in a
position to furnish the goods (textiles especially were demanded)
required in exchange.

We had then to endeavour to obtain the supplies on credit, and the
Ukrainian Government agreed, after long and far from easy
negotiations, to provide _credit valuta_ (against vouchers for
mark and krone in Berlin and Vienna). The arrangements for this
were finally made, and the two Central Powers drew in all 643
million karbowanez.

The Rouble Syndicate, however, which had been formed under the
leadership of the principal banks in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest,
was during the first few months only able to exert a very slight
activity. Even the formation of this syndicate was a matter of
great difficulty, and in particular a great deal of time was lost;
and even then the apparatus proved very awkward to work with.
Anyhow, it had only procured comparatively small sums of roubles,
so that the purchasing organisation in Ukraine, especially at
first, suffered from a chronic lack of means of payment.

But, in any case, a better arrangement of the money question would
only have improved matters in a few of the best supplied
districts, for the principal obstacle was simply _the lack of
supplies_. The fact that Kieff and Odessa were themselves
continually in danger of a food crisis is the best indication as
to the state of things.

In the Ukraine, the effects of four years of war, with the
resulting confusion, and of the destruction wrought by the
Bolsheviks (November, 1917, to March, 1918) were conspicuously
apparent; cultivation and harvesting had suffered everywhere, but
where supplies had existed they had been partly destroyed, partly
carried off by the Bolsheviks on their way northward. Still, the
harvest had given certain stocks available in the country, though
these were not extensive, and the organisation of a purchasing
system was now commenced. The free buying in Ukraine which we and
Germany had originally contemplated could not be carried out in
fact, since the Ukrainian Government declared that it would itself
set up this organisation, and maintained this intention with the
greatest stubbornness. But the authority in the country had been
destroyed by the Revolution, and then by the Bolshevist invasion;
the peasantry turned Radical, and the estates were occupied by
revolutionaries and cut up. The power of the Government, then, in
respect of collecting supplies of grain, was altogether
inadequate; on the other hand, however, it was still sufficient
(as some actual instances proved) to place serious, indeed
insuperable, obstacles in our way. It was necessary, therefore, to
co-operate with the Government--that is, to come to a compromise
with it. After weeks of negotiation this was at last achieved, by
strong diplomatic pressure, and, accordingly, the agreement of
April 23, 1918, was signed.

This provided for the establishment of a German-Austro-Hungarian
Economical Central Commission; practically speaking, a great firm
of corn merchants, in which the Central Powers appointed a number
of their most experienced men, familiar, through years of activity
in the business, with Russian grain affairs.

But while this establishment was still in progress the people in
Vienna (influenced by the occurrences on the Emperor's journey to
North Bohemia) had lost patience; military leaders thought it no
longer advisable to continue watching the operations of a _civil_
commercial undertaking in Ukraine while that country was occupied
by the military, and so finally the General Staff elicited a
decree from the Emperor providing that the procuring of grain
should be entrusted to Austro-Hungarian army units in the
districts occupied by them. To carry out this plan a general, who
had up to that time been occupied in Roumania, was dispatched to
Odessa, and now commenced independent military proceedings from
there. For payment kronen were used, drawn from Vienna. The War
Grain Transactions department was empowered, by Imperial
instructions to the Government, to place 100 million kronen at the
disposal of the War Ministry, and this amount was actually set
aside by the finance section of that department.

This military action and its execution very seriously affected the
civil action during its establishment, and also greatly impaired
the value of our credit in the Ukraine by offering kronen notes to
such an extent at the time. Moreover, the kronen notes thus set in
circulation in Ukraine were smuggled into Sweden, and coming thus
into the Scandinavian and Dutch markets undoubtedly contributed to
the well-known fall in the value of the krone which took place
there some months later.

The Austro-Hungarian military action was received with great
disapproval by the _Germans_, and when in a time of the greatest
scarcity among ourselves (mid-May) we were obliged to ask Germany
for temporary assistance, this was granted only on condition that
independent military action on the part of Austria-Hungary should
be suppressed and the whole leadership in Ukraine be entrusted to
Germany.

It was then hoped that increased supplies might be procured,
especially from Bessarabia, where the Germans have established a
collecting organisation, to the demand of which the Roumanian
Government had agreed. This hope, however, also proved vain, and
in June and July the Ukraine was still further engaged. The
country was, in fact, almost devoid of any considerable supplies,
and in addition to this the collecting system never really worked
properly at all, as the arrangement for maximum prices was
frequently upset by overbidding on the part of our own military
section.

Meantime everything had been made ready for getting in the harvest
of 1918. The collecting organisation had become more firmly
established and extended, the necessary personal requirements were
fully complied with, and _it would doubtless have been possible to
bring great quantities out of the country_. But first of all the
demands of the Ukrainian cities had to be met, and there was in
many cases a state of real famine there; then came the Ukrainian
and finally the very considerable contingents of German and
Austro-Hungarian armies of occupation. Not until supplies for
these groups had been assured would the Ukrainian Government allow
any export of grain, and to this we were forced to agree.

It was at once evident that the degree of cultivation throughout
the whole country had seriously declined--owing to the entire
uncertainty of property and rights after the agrarian revolution.
The local authorities, affected by this state of things, were
little inclined to agree to export, and it actually came to local
embargoes, one district prohibiting the transfer of its stocks to
any other, exactly as we had experienced with ourselves.

In particular, however, the agitation of the Entente agents (which
had been frequently perceptible before), under the impression of
the German military defeats, was most seriously felt. The position
of the Government which the Germans had set up at Kieff was
unusually weak. Moreover, the ever-active Bolshevik elements
throughout the whole country were now working with increasing
success against our organisation. All this rendered the work more
difficult in September and October--and then came the collapse.

The difficulties of transport, too, were enormous; supplies had
either to be sent to the Black Sea, across it and up the Danube,
or straight through Galicia. For this we often lacked sufficient
wagons, and in the Ukraine also coal; there were, in addition,
often instances of resistance on the part of the local railways,
incited by the Bolsheviks, and much more of the same sort.

However great the lack of supplies in Ukraine itself, however much
the limitations of our Russian means of payment may have
contributed to the fact that the hopes entertained on the signing
of peace at Brest-Litovsk were far from being realised, we may
nevertheless maintain that _all that was humanly possible_ was
done to overcome the unprecedented difficulties encountered. And
in particular, by calling in the aid of the most capable and
experienced firms of grain merchants, the forces available were
utilised to the utmost degree.

Finally it should perhaps be pointed out that the import
organisation--apart from the before-mentioned interference of the
military department and consequent fluctuations of the system--was
largely upset by very extensive smuggling operations, carried on
more particularly from Galicia. As such smuggling avoided the high
export duty, the maximum prices appointed by the Ukrainian
Government were constantly being overbid. This smuggling was also
in many cases assisted by elements from Vienna; altogether the
nervousness prevailing in many leading circles in Vienna, and
frequently criticising our own organisation in public, or
upsetting arrangements before they could come into operation, did
a great deal of damage. It should also be mentioned that Germany
likewise carried on a great deal of unofficially assisted
smuggling, with ill effects on the official import organisation,
and led to similar conditions on our own side.

Despite all obstacles, the machinery established, as will be seen
from the following survey, nevertheless succeeded in getting not
inconsiderable quantities of foodstuffs into the states concerned,
amounting in all to about 42,000 wagons, though unfortunately the
quantities delivered did not come up to the original expectations.


SURVEY OF THE IMPORTS FROM UKRAINE DATING FROM COMMENCEMENT OF
IMPORTATION (SPRING, 1918) TO NOVEMBER, 1918.

I. Foodstuffs obtained by the War Grain Transactions Department
(corn, cereal products, leguminous fruits, fodder, seeds):

Total imported for the contracting states
(Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) 113,421 tons
Of which Austria-Hungary received 57,382 "
Grain and flour amounting to 46,225 "

II. Articles obtained by the Austrian Central Purchasing Company:

Of which
Austria-Hungary
Total received:

Butter, fat, bacon 3,329,403 kg. 2,170,437 kg.
Oil, edible oils 1,802,847 " 977,105 "
Cheese, curds 420,818 " 325,103 "
Fish, preserved fish, herrings 1,213,961 " 473,561 "
Cattle 105,542 head 55,421 head
(36,834,885 kg.) (19,505,760 kg.)
Horses 98,976 head 40,027 head
(31,625,172 kg.) (13,165,725 kg.)
Salted meat 2,927,439 " 1,571,569 "
Eggs 75,200 boxes 32,433 boxes
Sugar 66,809,969 kg. 24,973,443 kg.
Various foodstuffs 27,385,095 " 7,836,287 "
------------- -------------
Total 172,349,556 " 61,528,220 "
and 75,200 boxes and 32,433 boxes
eggs eggs
(Total, 30,757 wagons) (Total, 13,037 wagons)

The goods imported under II. represent a value of roughly 450
_million kronen_.

The quantities _smuggled_ unofficially into the states concerned
are estimated at about 15,000 wagons (about half the official
imports).

So ended this phase, a phase which seemed important while we were
living through it, but which was yet nothing but a phase of no great
importance after all, since it produced no lasting effect.

The waves of war have passed over the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, washing
it away as completely as a castle of sand on the shore is destroyed by
the incoming tide.

Long after I was reproached by the Polish element in the Herrenhaus,
who asserted that I had proved my incapability by my own confession
that the Peace of Brest had not withstood the test of subsequent
events. But should I have shown more capability by asserting, after
the collapse of the Central Powers, that the peace still existed?

The term "bread peace" (_Brotfrieden_) was not coined by me, but by
Burgemeister Weisskirchner on the occasion of my reception by the
Gemeinderat of Vienna at the Nordbahnhof. The millions whose lives
were saved by those 42,000 wagon-loads of food may repeat the words
without a sneer.




CHAPTER XI

THE PEACE OF BUCHAREST


At Brest-Litovsk rumours had already spread that Roumania did not
intend to continue the war. These rumours assumed a very definite
character after peace was concluded with the Ukraine. That peace, as
well as Trotski's attitude, left no doubt in Bucharest that Roumania
could no longer reckon on further co-operation on the part of Russia
and gave rise to the idea in some circles that she would turn back. I
say in _some_ circles, for there was one group which, to the very last
moment, was all for war.

While at Brest-Litovsk I began to get into touch with the leaders of
the Hungarian Parliament in order to come to an agreement on the peace
aims relating to Roumania. It was evident that, as regards Roumania, a
peace without annexations would be more difficult to bring about than
with any other state, because the treacherous attack by the Roumanians
on the whole of Hungary had raised the desire for a better strategical
frontier. As might be expected, I met with violent opposition from
Hungary, where, under the name of strategical frontier rectifications,
as a matter of fact greater annexations were desired. The first person
with whom I dealt was Stephen Tisza, who, at great trouble, was
brought to modify his original standpoint and finally was led so far
as to admit that the fundamental ideas for peace were capable of
acceptance. On February 27, 1918, he handed me a _pro-memoria_ with
the request to show it to the Emperor, in which he explained his
already more conciliatory point of view, though, nevertheless, he very
distinctly showed his disapproval of my intentions. The _pro-memoria_
reads as follows:

Unfortunately, Roumania can withdraw from the war not as much
exhausted as justice and the justified interests of the Monarchy
could wish.

The loss of the Dobrudsha will be made good by territorial gains
in Bessarabia, while the frontier rectifications demanded by us
are out of all proportion with Roumania's guilt and with her
military situation.

Our peace terms are so mild that they are as a generous gift
offered to vanquished Roumania and are _not at all to be made a
subject for negotiations_. In no case are these negotiations to
assume the character of trading or bargaining. If Roumania refuses
to conclude peace on the basis laid down by us our answer can only
be a resumption of hostilities.

I consider it highly probable that the Roumanian Government will
run that risk to prove her necessity in the eyes of the Western
Powers and her own population. But it is just as probable that
after breaking off negotiations she will just as quickly turn back
and give way before our superior forces.

At the worst a short campaign would result in the total collapse
of Roumania.

In all human probability it is almost certain that the development
of affairs will take a course similar to the last phase in the
peace with Northern Russia, and will lead to an easy and complete
success for the Central Powers. That we lay down the frontier
rectification as _conditio sine qua non_ forms a justifiable
measure to protect an important interest for the Monarchy of a
purely defensive nature. It is energetically demanded by the
entire patriotic public opinion of Hungary. It appears out of the
question that a Minister of Foreign Affairs, had he taken up
another attitude in the matter, would have been able to remain in
the Delegation.

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