File No. 763.72119/888
The Minister in Denmark ( Egan) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 12, 12.35 a.m.]
1374. The speech in the Reichstag of the German Minister for Foreign Affairs on the 9th instant contains the first authoritative and specific declaration of Germany’s attitude on any one point which may be presented at the future peace conference—that any alienation of Alsace-Lorraine will in no case be admitted but that [Page 237] all other questions, however, susceptible of arrangement through negotiation, apparently on the theory that the usual result of arbitration is compromise and thereby hoping to realize a large portion of their plans.
Can they by giving voice to this unalterable resolve hope to dishearten the French who they may imagine are nearing the end of their resources; or is it an attempt to inveigle the Entente into a conference by creating the impression that if only the question of the recession of Alsace-Lorraine is not raised they will be found prepared to make substantial concessions on all other points; or to strengthen the peace parties in enemy countries by declaring Great Britain responsible for the continuation of the slaughter by supporting France’s unrealizable ambitions in the hope that the various peoples once taken in by the German fallacy may refuse to continue the war? Everything would seem to indicate an intense desire on their part to negotiate peace, as they had planned, before the United States forces become fully effective.
The effect of such a declaration on the German people may likewise be marked and tend to deepen the conviction so sedulously cultivated by the Imperial authorities that Germany is the object of an unprovoked attack by wickedly envious and greedy nations and that not only Alsace-Lorraine but all the German territory up to the left bank of the Rhine is the plunder marked down by France. The entire speech is probably also designed to act as one of the stimuli which have been periodically administered to the German people especially at the approach of a winter campaign. Each of these motives would seem to have played a part in inspiring this most mendacious and insidious address.