763.72119/2727: Telegram
The Minister in Switzerland ( Stovall ) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 21—7:27 a.m.]
5844. Austro-Hungarian Legation here has received despatch transmitted by Bauer, Representative for Foreign Affairs, addressed to [Page 193] President Wilson by the Friedengesellschaft Bereitschaft [sic] of Vienna, message follows:
“We hail with all our hearts the coming of the final world salvation from the cruelties of war. At all times and during the whole war we unfailingly professed the idea of the Confederation of nations convinced that by it alone a lasting peace might be secured. To its creation and vitality it is however indispensable that justice should be granted to every nation and that no parts of a nation inhabiting contiguous settlements or larger districts of the same tongue should be submitted to any other nation. This ought to be the rule for the German parts of the population in Bohemia, Moravia, Tyrol and so on as for any parts of other nations. The nation itself must decide in free voting controlled by neutrals to which state they will belong. A humiliation and exploitation of a people as punishment for the crimes committed by their sovereigns would contradict the nature of the world confederation and make its realization impossible. You we entreat as the most powerful proclaimer and supporter of the idea of the world confederation to direct your influence to the fact that no nation should lose its full unlimited right of self determination for reasons of retaliation or that their free will should be sophisticated [sic] by abusing their present distress.”