File No. 763.72119/369

The Ambassador in Germany ( Gerard ) to the Secretary of State

[Telegram]

4868. Note received to-day from Foreign Office in German and French text. I therefore send French text which follows:

[Translation]

Through the medium of the Government of the United States, the Royal Government of Spain, and the Swiss Federal Government, the Imperial and Royal Government has received its adversaries’ reply to the note of December 12 in which Germany, in accord with its allies, proposed an early opening of peace negotiations. The adversaries reject the proposal under pretense that it is insincere and meaningless. The form in which they put their refusal excludes any idea of a reply.

The Imperial Government nevertheless wishes to make known to the governments of the neutral powers its view of the situation. The Central powers have no occasion to revert to the discussions as to the origin of the World War. It is for history to pass judgment on the monstrous responsibility for the conflict. Its verdict will not any more leave out of consideration the encircling policy of Great Britain, the revengeful policy of France, the yearning of Russia for Constantinople, than the provocation from Serbia, the Sarajevo assassination, and the general Russian mobilization which meant war with Germany.

Germany and its allies having been compelled to take up arms in the defense of their freedom and existence consider they have accomplished that end of their efforts. On the other hand, the enemy powers have drifted farther and farther away from the achievement of their plans, which, according to the statements of their responsible statesmen, aimed, among other things, at the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine and of several Prussian provinces, the humiliation and curtailment of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the partition of Turkey, and the mutilation of Bulgaria. Such demands give at least a strange sound to the pretension of sanction, repatriation, and guaranty in the mouths of our adversaries.

Our adversaries call the peace proposal of the four allied powers a war maneuver. Germany and its allies must enter the most emphatic protest against so false an interpretation of the motives for their step which they have openly disclosed. They were convinced that a just peace, acceptable to all the belligerents, is feasible; that it can be attained through an immediate oral exchange of views and that [Page 13] therefore further bloodshed is indefensible. The fact that they have unreservedly shown their readiness to make known their peace proposals as soon as the negotiations were opened disposes of any doubt as to their sincerity. The adversaries who were given the opportunity to examine the value of that offer neither attempted to do so nor offered counter proposals. Instead, they declare any peace to be impossible as long as they are not assured reparation for invaded rights and freedoms, acknowledgment of the principle of nationalities and the free existence of small states. The sincerity which our adversaries will not acknowledge in the four allied powers’ proposal can hardly be conceded to those demands by the world when it recalls the fate of the Irish people, the obliteration of the freedom and independence of the South African Republics, the conquest of North Africa by Great Britain, France, and Italy, the oppression of foreign nationalities by Russia, and, lastly, the act unprecedented in history which is constituted by the violence brought to bear on Greece.

Likewise it ill becomes those powers to complain of alleged violations of international law by the four allied powers, as they themselves have since the beginning of the war trampled the law under foot and torn the treaties upon which the law rests. In the early weeks following the opening of hostilities Great Britain disowned its adhesion to the Declaration of London and yet the text had been acknowledged by its own delegates to be conformable to the law of nations, and, as such, valid. In the course of the war it also violated in the most grave manner the Declaration of Paris, so that its arbitrary measures have created in the conduct of maritime warfare the state of illegality that now exists. The attempt to overcome Germany by starvation and the pressure exercised on the neutrals in the interest of Great Britain are at equally flagrant variance with the rules of international law and the laws of humanity. Another infringement of the law of nations that can not be reconciled with the principles of civilization is the use of colored troops, as also is the transfer of war [sic] in violation of existing treaties the effect of which can not but destroy the prestige of the white race in those countries. The inhuman treatment of prisoners, especially in Africa and Russia, the deportation of the civilian population of East Prussia, of Alsace-Lorraine, Galicia, and Bukovina are as many further proofs of the manner in which our adversaries understand the respect of law and civilization.

Our adversaries close their note of December 30 with a statement laying stress on the peculiar situation in Belgium. The Imperial Government is unable to admit that the Belgian Government always observed the duties imposed upon it by its neutrality toward Great Britain. Belgium applied in a military sense to that power and to France thus violating the spirit of the treaties intended to guarantee its independence and neutrality. Twice did the Imperial Government declare to the Belgian Government that it was not coming to Belgium as an enemy and begged it to spare its country the horrors of war. It offered in that case to guarantee in their entirety the territory and independence of the kingdom of Belgium and to make good all damages that the passing of German troops might cause. It is known that in 1887 the British Royal Government had resolved not to oppose a claim to the right of way in Belgium under those conditions. The Belgian Government refused the reiterated offer of [Page 14] the Imperial Government. The responsibility for the fate that befell Belgium rests upon its Government and the powers which drew it into that attitude. The Imperial Government repeatedly repelled as groundless the charges brought against the conduct of the war in Belgium and against the measures there taken in the interest of military safety. It again enters an energetic protest against those calumnies.

Germany arid its allies have made a genuine attempt with a view to bringing the war to an end and opening the way for an understanding among the belligerents. The Imperial Government lays down as a fact that the question as to whether or not that way would be entered, leading to peace, solely depended on the decision of its adversary. The enemy governments declined to do so; upon them rests the whole responsibility for further bloodshed. The four allied powers in their calm conviction that they are in the right will carry on the struggle until they win a peace that will guarantee to their peoples honor, existence, and free development, and at the same time insure for all the states in the European continent the beneficent possibility of cooperating in mutual esteem and on a perfectly equal looting toward the solution of the great problems of civilization.

Gerard