of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum to Turkey; commercially she was made a preserve for the Central Powers; and the two million German colonists in Russia were exempted from the legislation of, and allegiance to, the Bolshevik Government. Trotsky had given up foreign affairs on March 8 and devoted himself to the more promising task of organizing a Red army; it was left for Lenin to persuade the Soviets of the necessity of temporarily bowing to the inevitable. Consequential and similar treaties were signed between the Central Powers and Finland on March 7 and with Rumania, provisionally, on March 5 and finally on May 7. German control over their commerce, industry, and finance was established'in both, and Rumania further ceded the Carpathian crests and the Dobruja.
Germany and the Fourteen Points. These deeds were a more convincing reply to President Wilson's "Fourteen Points" than the disingenuous speeches made in concert by Kuhlmann and Czernin at Berlin and Vienna on Jan. 24. The Central Powers had been given the opportunity of demonstrating the inter- pretation which they put on victory; and there could not remain the slightest doubt that they would impose similar, if not severer, conditions upon the rest of the world if they got the chance. Nothing could have been more sinister or more impressive than the complete contradiction between their words to Powers which they did not yet control and their deeds to those which they did; and whatever criticisms might be made of the ultimate settle- ment, they would have to be based not on the ground that the Central Powers suffered more than they deserved, but that the penalties were impolitic and fell on the wrong shoulders. The treaties were approved of by all parties in the Reichstag except the Minority Socialists and the Poles; and early in March the Minority Socialists lost a seat at Nieder Barnim.
There was little more for diplomacy to say. It was obvious, although the fact was not universally recognized, that the speeches of Teutonic ministers afforded no basis for negotiation, since from Brest Litovsk onward the German G.H.Q. super- seded the Government; but it was a blunder on the part of the supreme war council at Versailles to issue.on Feb. 4 a statement that it would not accept Hertling's and Czernin's professions and had decided on a vigorous prosecution of the war, thereby creating the impression that the same supersession of the civil by military power was also taking place in the Entente. Never- theless, President Wilson did, indeed, on Feb. u give a useful definition of Four Principles on which the settlement, must be based; and he used what his Secretary of State, Lansing, subsequently denounced as an explosive expression when he declared that " ' Self-determination ' is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril." But he was in closer touch with the realities of the situation when on April 6, commenting on the contrast between Hertling's professed acceptance of those four principles and the militarist terms dictated at Brest Litovsk, he declared: "Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether Right as America conceives it or Domin- ion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make Right the law of the world, and cast every selfish Dominion down in the dust."
It needed, however, a crisis to elicit an adequate display of American force on fields where the issue would be decided. In the previous Nov. the Kaiser had declared that the only means to secure peace was for Germans to hew their way through those who would not make it; and the terms of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk are intelligible only on the assumption that he relied upon a German offensive on the western front to constrain the Entente to recognize those terms if not to accept similar ones for themselves. From the beginning of the German offensive on March 21 until the first Austrian peace-note on Sept. 15 the pen gave way to the sword. Czernin resigned on April 1 5 after his controversy with Clemenceau over the Sixte of Parma pour- parlers in the summer of 1917, but the fact that he was suc-
ceeded by Burian indicated a stiffening rather than a relaxation of the Austrian attitude. Nor had the growing discontent and the declining moral of the German people any effect upon the diplomatic situation, although in Jan. strikers had demanded peace on the basis of self-determination without annexations or indemnities, and crowds in Berlin had vociferated against a fresh offensive on the western front.
War Weariness. More potent than social ferment in Germany was imperial disintegration in Austria. The disaster at Capo- retto had a wholesome effect upon the Italian attitude toward the Yugoslavs, and the revelation of the secret Treaty of London by the Bolsheviks gave more progressive opinion in Italy an opportunity of expressing itself. In Feb. 1918 a committee was formed to promote an understanding with the Yugoslavs, and on March 7 Signer Torre on a visit to London arranged with Dr. Trumbitch the holding of a congress of oppressed national- ities at Rome. It met early in April, Jtnd on the loth produced the " Pact of Rome," by which the " unity and independence " of the Yugoslav nation, " known also as the nation of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes," were recognized as a vital interest for Italy, and the completion of Italian unity as a vital interest for the Yugo- slavs. It was also mutually agreed to defend the freedom of the Adriatic against every enemy present or future, and to decide amicably the territorial questions between them on the basis of nationality and self-determination. This entente was of the utmost value in promoting the successful Italian resist- ance on the Piave in June and victory in Oct. President Wilson hastened to bless the practical application of his own principles; on June 28 he asserted that all branches of the Slav race must be completely freed from German and Austrian rule; on Sept. 3 he formally recognized the Czechoslovak National Council as a belligerent Government; and on Oct. 18 in reply to the Austrian peace- note declared that he was no longer at liberty to accept the " autonomy " of these peoples as indicated in the tenth of his Fourteen Points as a basis of peace, but " is obliged to insist that they, and not he, shall be the judges of what action on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Government will satisfy their aspirations and their conceptions of their rights and destiny as members of the family of nations."
For the time, the success of the German offensive made all I talk about terms of peace irrelevant except on the German j side, where it generally took the form of repudiating the peace resolution of July 1917. But before the end of April confidence began to wane, first at G.H.Q. and then in the public mind in Germany itself. The difference was that the worse the situation became, the more determined Ludendorff grew in his persistence, and the more sceptical the public showed itself of his success; the reason was that the militarism of the German Government became more and more involved in the fortunes of the war. On June 24 Kuhlmann in a long speech let fall the phrase, " an absolute end can hardly be expected through purely military de- cisions alone "; and a fortnight's disputation over his meaning ended in his resignation at Ludcndorff's behest on July 9. It had become heresy, in the waning prestige of militarist ortho- doxy, to dispute what the German G.H.Q. could do; and Kiihl- mann's successor was von Hintze, its nominee without any pretence of that " parliamentarization " which both the Reichs- tag and President Wilson had demanded as a preliminary to peace. On July 4 President Wilson laid down four great ends of < the war, which he said " can be put into a single' sentence. What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind." Next day Mr. Lloyd George said the Kaiser could have peace to-morrow if he would accept the President's terms. But Luden- dorff's conception of the reign of law was the will of G.H.Q. sustained by German arms, and he was desperately bent on giving it effect.
He refused to admit in words that his increasing lack of success and resources, or even Foch's counter-offensive on July 18, had made his position hopeless. But he confessed that Aug. 8 was Germany's " black day," and on the I4th at a crown council at Spa the Kaiser decided that negotiations must begin on the
