Today, after two years of the war, there can be no further doubt that we
cannot hope for an unconditional victory over Russians, English, French,
Italians, Rumanians, and Americans, and that we cannot reckon upon the
overthrow of our enemies. But we can reach a compromised peace only upon
the basis of the evacuation of the occupied territories, the possession
of which in any case signifies for us a burden and weakness and the
peril of new wars. Consequently, everything should be avoided which
hinders a change of course on the part of those enemy groups which might
perhaps still be won over to the idea of compromise--the British
Radicals and the Russian Reactionaries. Even from this point of view our
Polish project is just as objectionable as any interference with
Belgian rights, or the execution of British citizens--to say nothing of
the mad submarine war scheme.
Our future lies upon the water. True, but it therefore does not lie in
Poland and Belgium, in France and Serbia. That is a reversion to the
Holy Roman Empire, to the aberrations of the Hohenstaufens and
Hapsburgs. It is the policy of the Plantagenets, not the policy of Drake
and Raleigh, Nelson and Rhodes.
Triple Alliance policy is a relapse into the past, a revolt from the
future, from imperialism, from world policy. Central Europe is
mediaevalism; Berlin-Bagdad is a cul de sac, and not a road into the
open, to unlimited possibilities, and to the world mission of the German
people.
I am no enemy of Austria, or Hungary, or Italy, or Serbia, or any other
State; I am only an enemy of the Triple Alliance policy, which was bound
to divert us from our aims, and to bring us on to the sloping plane of
Continental policy. It was not German policy, but Austrian dynastic
policy. The Austrians had accustomed themselves to regard the alliance
as a shield, under whose protection they could make excursions at
pleasure into the East.