Vienna, Thursday

The papers here are filled, you might even say ablaze, today, with contradictory reports from western Europe in regard to the proposed war indemnities. Lloyd George is reported as saying that Germany must pay the full amount of war damage, even if it takes fifty years to do so. Wilson is reported as not backing him up very strongly. He thinks the Allies should be content with getting the money to replace what has been actually destroyed, and no more—reparation payments but no indemnities. Also, under unusually striking headlines the papers publish a report which they ascribe to Havas. This runs:

“Yesterday the budget committee of the French Chamber reached a unanimous report on the actual financial situation and the immediate prospects, and sent it on to Clemenceau. It reads: ‘It is now clear that the financial burden of the French people will reach twenty-two milliards of francs annually, in which sum pensions for widows, the invalids of war, and also for civilians who have been crippled, are included. In the light of these figures, it is an elementary and a just demand that the enemy should be made to pay war burdens as well as damages, with priority being given to the bill for replacing what human values have been destroyed or impaired. The sums that will be required for this purpose should not be estimated on present capacity to pay; the future ability to pay, after financial recuperation, should be carefully weighed.’ ”

These reports have created consternation and some rather unusual expressions of sympathy for those whom the Viennese persistently call “the Germans of the north.” “From our carcase they will get nothing,” said Renner to me today; “perhaps a few feathers; and if they ask too much of Germany, they will kill the goose that might, with coddling, be induced to lay a few, a very few, golden eggs. But the end of Austria is in sight; the time has come to write Finis Austriae. No wrong or insult is being spared us. The Italians are taking from our public galleries and private collections pictures and works of art which belong to us as much as does the tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The Czechs are on the march and they have reached the Danube; some of their advanced posts are in Lower Austria; the Roumanians are devastating Hungary; the South Slavs are not lagging behind, they are within a few miles of Graz. I try to keep an open mind on the veto of the Anschluss which you brought me, but in my heart I feel that the Allies are acting in a very shortsighted manner. I am not blind to the consideration that weighs heavily with them. They feel, and feel very keenly, that the defeated Germans should not emerge from the war with an increase of territory and a greater population. I suppose they would not deign to read German history, but if they did, they could learn that, not so long ago, Louis Napoleon sent an ambassador to Nikolsburg to prevent the union of the northern and southern Germans; and that this ill-advised step led to Sedan. That they would see if they were not blind. I seem to remember that in one of the classics it is written that those whom the gods mean to destroy are first made mad.” For the first time Renner was bitter.

These press rumors brought Botho Wedel, the German Minister, into action. He was now back from Berlin. He sent for an editor of the Neue Freie Presse and, expressing great indignation, asked that the following statement be printed: (This is on the authority of Fuchs.)

“Our delegation has been invited to appear in Paris on April the 25th to receive the Allied terms. I hope then we shall get some light on the future, but even now our position is clear. I cannot see how anyone should be uncertain about it. In accordance with the offer of the Allies, we accepted a preliminary peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points. This agreement we shall carry out, although in view of our losses and the distress prevailing among our people before and since the Armistice it will be difficult for us to live up to a peace settlement, even on the Wilson terms. Certainly we cannot do more, and I am confident we shall refuse to attempt it. No honest man would sign a promise to pay which he knows it is quite impossible for him to fulfill. We are all of one mind on this point, the Government, the National Assembly, and Das Volk. We have a proverb which runs: ‘Where nothing remains, not even the Kaiser can collect,’ and that, of course, applies to the presidents of a republic in a similar unhappy plight. Undoubtedly my people would even prefer a continuance of the anarchic conditions with which we are confronted, than to sign a treaty which would surely destroy Germany and make of us and our descendants slaves. No sane man would sign his own death warrant, and anyone who thinks we shall, has lost his sense of reality.”