Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Volume XII

Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/133

Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace

No. 102

Vienna, February 22, 1919.
[Received February 26.]

Sirs: I have the honor to report that in response to your telegram No. 11 [76?] dated February 5th⁶ I have been investigating the position of the former emperor Charles. As far as I can make out he is living in seclusion at Eckartsau, about twenty miles from Vienna, and is absolutely unmolested. His health has been bad, and I cannot find that anyone suspects him of being engaged in political intrigue.

I am told there is no truth in the report that any investigation is to be made about him, except for the fact that a committee has been appointed to investigate the conduct of the higher officers in the earlier part of the war. But this would hardly touch him. General Auffenberg referred to in your Telegram No. 11 is on this committee, but Mr. Katz is unknown.

Colonel Cunningham of the British Mission here has just been to call upon the ex-Emperor, as I learn from an extract from the Neue Freie Presse of yesterday which I enclose herewith with translations.⁷

I have been called upon by Baron Polzer, who was and still is one of the intimates of the former Emperor. He told me that in July 1917 the Emperor was anxious to come out with a pronouncement to the world in which he should express his adherence to the doctrine of self-determination for peoples, and to the consequent federalization of Austria-Hungary, granting equal rights to all nationalities. Accordingly, he gave an interview to Professor F. W. Forster of the University of Munich, and what the Emperor said at the interview was prepared for publication. At the last moment Count Czernin⁸ interfered and brought such violent pressure to bear from several sides that the Emperor was forced to consent to the suppression of the manuscript. Baron Polzer now came and confided it to me, it being explicitly understood that I was to make any use of it that I saw fit. He even intimated that he would be glad to see it published. The document seems to me to be of considerable historical interest even if of no particular immediate value. I inclose it herewith.

I have [etc.]

Archibald Cary Coolidge

[Enclosure]

Professor F. W. Forster of the University of Munich informs us: “I recently had the honor of a conversation with the Emperor Charles about the relation between the Decree of Amnesty and the present world situation. I am authorized to make public the following declarations of the Emperor:

“‘My Decree of Amnesty has provoked a great deal of uneasiness and contradiction in many circles. It has, however, long been my firm conviction that the thoroughly muddled situation of the Austrian peoples has demanded a radical change. The tradition of narrow Handedness and short sightedness is so deep rooted in us that only an entirely new way of looking at things can save us. An example must be set. It can only proceed from the dynasty which for centuries has been the symbol of unity for the Austrian peoples and whose spiritual authority over its peoples is based wholly on the dignity of its super-national mission. I know that thousands in all of my peoples long ago desired a fresh start of this kind. Abroad, however, we are not understood at all. There is no inkling of why we in this southeastern corner of Europe are united by Providence. Austria is once and for all neither a German nor a Slavic state. The Germans, it is true, were the founders of the Danube Monarchy, but today they are in the minority, surrounded by and permeated with peoples who are in active evolution. They can remain the leaders of the newer civilization only if they themselves set an example of the highest civilization and greet the newly awakened peoples with affection, regard and generosity. There have been faults on all sides. Where there was wrong it must be made good again. Therefore, draw a line through the past.

As to the self-determination of peoples, unless from being too abstract it leaves Austrian realities out of account I am not in the least afraid of it. If we magnanimously concede to each separate group the greatest conceivable scope for their individuality, for the exercise of their own cultural power of development, for the enjoyment of their own speech, in short for their whole national effort to make good, they will then in new forms be united with the whole far more intimately than before, and by so doing will have rid themselves of exaggerations that could not live. In Austria much less than anywhere else can the form of political unity be forced on the populations from without. It must proceed from the moral unification of the peoples. The very youth should be influenced in this sense. In place of the inflammatory text books on both sides other text books ought to be written in which the great talents and virtues of the Slavic Race should be brought home to the German youth, and in the same way the Slavic youths ought to be fairly told what Germanism has contributed to the culture of the world, and especially to the young peoples of the Slavic southeast.

What we have to do here on a small scale is also the task on a great scale. With my whole heart I am for a league of peace for the nations after the war. There is no other salvation. I am also ready for any internationally regulated disarmament. War agitators are either people without heart or people who do not know what war is. I have experienced war. Men were cut to pieces beside me …⁹ One cannot remain stuck in one’s old ideas.

The most urgent and immediate international disarmament consists, however, in at last and for good stopping mutual insults and accusations. In this war all are guilty. From now on all must feel themselves responsible for the peace of the world, and, to begin with, so regulate everything in their internal relations that no state through perturbed or clouded internal conditions shall give occasion for a new world conflagration. Now, let us begin to straighten out our internal questions in this new spirit of European responsibility—it will create a European confidence in us, and may serve as an example for a great league of peace of the nations.’

The Emperor spoke all these sentences with great emotion, with strong emphasis and visibly affected by the greatness of the present historical moment, and by the urgent duty of those highest in responsibility to become in this hour guides and leaders to the highest saving truths of national life.”

6. Not printed.
7. Not printed.
8. Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs to April 15, 1918.
9. Omission indicated in the original.