Premier Clemenceau replied to this Vienna statement on the same day by
issuing the following:
A diluted lie is still a lie. Count Czernin told a lie when he
said that some time before the German offensive began Premier
Clemenceau caused him to be asked "if he was ready to open
negotiations and upon what basis."
As to the passage in the manuscript note of Count Revertata,
where he says he acted for Austria to obtain peace proposals
from France, the solicitant's text is authentic, and Count
Czernin has not dared to dispute it.
To hide his confusion he tries to maintain that the conversation
was resumed at the request of M. Clemenceau. Unfortunately for
him, there is a fact which reduces his allegation to nothing,
namely, that Clemenceau was apprised of the matter on Nov. 18,
1917, (that is to say, the day after he took over the Ministry
of War,) by communication from the intermediary dated Nov. 10,
and intended for his predecessors. For Count Czernin's
contention to be true, M. Clemenceau would have had to take the
initiative in question before he was Premier. Thus Count Czernin
is categorically contradicted by facts.
He is reduced to maintaining that Major Armand was M.
Clemenceau's confidential man. Well, until this incident M.
Clemenceau had seen this officer of the Intelligence Department
only once, for five minutes at a riding school fifteen or twenty
years ago.
Finally, Count Czernin, as a last resource, says that what he
attributes to M. Clemenceau is unimportant. "What is really
important," he affirms, "is not to know who took the initiative
for the conversations before the offensive, but who caused them
to fail." Then why all this fuss? To demonstrate that every
French Government, like France itself, is immovable on the
question of Alsace-Lorraine?
Who could have thought it would have been necessary for Count
Revertata to elucidate for Count Czernin a question upon which
the Emperor of Austria himself has said the last word? It was no
other than Emperor Charles who, in a letter dated March, 1917,
put on record in his own writing his adhesion to "France's just
claim relative to Alsace-Lorraine." A second imperial letter
stated that the Emperor was "in agreement with his Minister." It
only remained for Czernin to contradict himself.
Ex-Premier Ribot stated on April 9 that during his Premiership "France
never directly or through a neutral intermediary took the initiative in
any such proceeding as the Austrian official communication asserted."