File No. 763.72/10702
The Minister in Switzerland ( Stovall ) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 14, 2.10 p.m.]
3937. German political. President Wilson’s Fourth of July speech received relatively meager comment in the German press, which pretends to distinguish between his ideas and the annexionist claims of the Allies. While finding little to criticise in the President’s words, the pretense is made that they are vague and not supported by his actions. Only one Socialist paper accepts his message with anything like approval.
The assassination of the German Ambassador in Russia1 came as a shock to Germany. The immediate effort of the press was to place the blame on Entente agents in Russia and to exculpate the Bolsheviki.
The resignation of Kühlmann, predicted ever since his Reichstag speech, is probably due to the antagonism of the Conservatives and the military. It represents Hertling’s concession to the High Command, and is hailed with joy by the Conservative press. The action of the Socialists has been deferred, and may lead to the disruption of the parliamentary majority.
It seems probable that secret emissaries of Ludendorff have proposed to Entente powers in Switzerland tentative peace terms not unlike Kühlmann’s formula, “The integrity of the German Empire.” Then the question arises, why should Ludendorff force Von Kühlmann to resign for stating in the Reichstag principles with which Ludendorff is already secretly identifying himself. The answer seems to be that Ludendorff desires an untarnished, Conservative official to be the sponsor for a conciliatory peace in order that it may be the Conservatives and not the Socialists who receive the nation’s gratitude. If this be true one may expect from Von Hintze, named as Kühlmann’s successor, a policy, and particularly enunciations in the Reichstag, acceptable to the Conservatives, until the hour shall arrive to expose peace terms.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .