History's Greatest War

Front matter

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Foreword

This volume attempts to encompass the causes of the great conflict, the chief happenings of military and political importance during the bloodiest four years of the world history, and their results and their effects upon the nations involved. An earnest endeavor has been made to take the reader through the most important phases. The limitation of this work to one volume makes the giving of exhaustive details of every incident, every battle, every siege, every advance or retreat, an impossibility. But in this very limitation lies the book’s greatest value.

To please a tactician, chapters might be devoted to the battles along the Marne, the Somme, the Yser, or to the struggle before Verdun or to the Russian campaigns. But for the reader who seeks a straightforward, circumstantial narrative of the great war, without its chief events being clouded and obscured by a multiplicity of subsidiary details, this book has been written.

Devotion of time to research has been given that its facts may be accurate. It contains no statements based on rumors, no accounts taken from unauthoritative sources.

The United States undoubtedly was the great determining factor in the overthrow and crushing of junkerism, and for that reason this volume should be of the greatest interest to Americans. Two million sons of America were in France. Their concentration and transportation was the greatest military feat in history. America’s active share in the war, though it covered only a little over a year and a half, is the nation’s most glorious achievement. With this in mind, painstaking effort has been made to do the fullest justice to recounting the events of the last eighteen months of the crusade to crush autocracy and militarism.

Entertaining visualization of the war is best attained through photographs. For this reason this book has been profusely illustrated and the hundreds of scenes photographed during the four years of campaigning on all the great fronts, in themselves tell the narrative in a convincing manner. These pictures were taken by the most skilled men attached to the fighting forces. Many of them are the official output of the bureau of public information in Washington. Others were taken by men who risked death for a “close-up.”

The events of the war have been brought down to the present day. No vital episode of the struggle has been overlooked. The narrative is complete from the demolition of Liege to the signing of the terms of the armistice and the abdication of the German Kaiser. It is hoped that it will do full justice to the sacrifice, courage, steadfastness in the face of apparent defeat, of the tireless fighting men of Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Serbia and the United States.

D-C.

Z eed

Dedication

To Righteousness, The Foundation of Peace; To Freedom, The Spirit of Peace; To Democracy, The Dwelling of Peace; and to all Brave Men of whatever Clime or Creed, Who for these things fought and suffered even unto death.

Panorama of Paris.

Table Of Contents

History’s Greatest War

PAGE

CHAPTER XA merica’s LonG PATIENCE 02.000... ees 159 CHAPTER XI1.—THE UNITED STATES DRAWS THE SWORD..........c....---2---c00e2000+* 175 CHAPTER XII.—THE DECISIVE CAMPAIGN-IN THE YEAR 1918................ ..2------ 183

Chapter I Prussia Unscrupulous In Early History—bismarck The Empire Builder— Germany Victorious Over France

IN 1870 — HARSHEST

TERMS IN HISTORY— PRUSSIA PREPARED CAREFULLY FOR ALL WARS —

MIDDLE EUROPE EMPIRE PRUSSIAN

About two centuries and a half ago the Mark of Brandenburg, formerly known as the Nordmark, came under the sway of Frederick William the Great Elector.

That was the beginning of Prussia as an ambitious, aggressive and unscrupulous state.

The first act of Frederick William was the abolition of the constitution. He made himself absolute monarch. His second act was to create a professional army to sustain him in absolutism. ,

He trained his army, disciplined it rigorously and equipped it as well as was possible in those seventeenth century days. Then he set forth to conquer his neighbors.

In this he was measurably successful. Other little marks and duchies were added to the territory of Brandenburg, and Berlin became the center of a considerable domain.

So Frederick William the Great Elector set the style for all Prussian rulers who should come after him. ,

The three fundamental principles of Prussianism were absolutism, military power and conquest. They remained the fundamental principles of Prussianism thru two centuries and a half, and until the allied democracies of the world undertook to destroy them in the World War.

The domain of the Great Elector was joined with East Prussia by his successor, and in 1701 Frederick III assumed the title of King of Prussia, placing the crown on his own head with his own hands —that being the nearest approach to actual coronation by the Almighty that he could devise.

y

AMBITION

Meantime the sway of the Prussian dynasty extended in all directions. Swedish Pomerania, Silesia and the Posen and West Prussian provinces of Poland were added in the period from 1720 to 1795. v The fortunes of war fluctuated, it is true; Prussian arms were not always successful. Napoleon played havoc with Prussian dominions for a time, and the Hohenzollerns were stripped of territories and power; but the Napoleonic success was meteoric. At the Congress of Vienna, in 1814, Prussia recovered practically all that she had lost, and came into possession of several additional states that had hitherto escaped her rapacity.

However, before the yoke of autocracy was finally fastened upon the necks of the subject peoples of Prussia; before they were made the helpless and unthinking tools of a madly ambitious imperialism, there was a revolt against absolutism. The fires of democracy that had swept thru the American colonies, France and England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were slow in kindling their torches in central Europe. But in 1848 and °49 Prussia heard the cry of popular defiance in the streets of Berlin, and saw the flag of insurrection raised in Baden and Saxony.

With brutal power she crushed the revolutionaries of her own domain.

Those of Baden and Saxony might have fared better—the king of Saxony, indeed, was forced to hide himself—but Prussia sent her armies into her neighbor states and trampled ruthlessly under foot the brave men who sought to win freedom,

That is typical of Prussia. Always and everywhere she has been the enemy of os Be, inated. ife were assassina hduke and wi d, his wife and children. The Arc Ferdinand, Archduke Franz freedom, the implacable foe of democracy. She has denied it to all people who came under her sway, and she has done her best to destroy it in the lands that she could not, or did not choose, to conquer.

The yoke securely fastened upon the necks of the people within her own realm and those of her neighbors; the revolutionary leaders exiled, imprisoned or slain, Prussia turned her thought and energy again toward the plans of aggression that were the chief concern of her rulers and statesmen.

Bismarck had come upon the scene— Bismarck the empire builder. His vision of Prussia dominant was challenged by the presence of a powerful rival in central Europe. The House of Hapsburg, rulsary preparation for war. When things were in readiness to strike a sharp, hard blow, he aggravated the dispute to the point of ruptured relations. The war he wanted followed. Prussia’s armies, ready for action, were hurled into Bavaria and Austria, the former state having elected to take Austria’s side in the quarrel.

The struggle was of short duration. In seven weeks Austria capitulated at the battle of Konnigsgratz, or Sadowa.

From that day Hapsburg never ventured to challenge Hohenzollern, or in any way to interfere with Prussian plans.

Bismarck, having cleared the field, went on with his work of building an empire. He welded the German states into a confederation under a constitution that

Serbian civilians hung by Austrians along the roadways.

ing Austria, had been often the ally of the House of Hohenzollern in expeditions of conquest and plunder. But Bismarck wanted no ally of co-equal strength, no possible competitor in imperialism. ‘The Prussian conception of an ally is a vassal, compelled to play the game as Prussia pleases.

Hence it was necessary to eliminate Austria as a potential rival in order to assure for Prussia the place she desired.

Bismarck had no difficulty in finding a cause for friction. There was a dispute over Schleswig-Holstein that he carefully fostered. He encouraged the belief that all difficulties could be settled amicably and, in the meantime, made every neceswas designed to fasten the Hohenzollern dynasty upon it forever, and to give to its successive monarchs autocratic control, supported by military power. It was provided in the constitution that it might not be amended without the consent of Prussia. This was the ultimate and absolute safeguard. Only Prussia could undo Prussia; only Hohenzollern could relax the grip of Hohenzollern upon the lives of the German people.

Bavaria, having suffered defeat with Austria in the Seven Weeks’ war, came reluctantly into the confederation. She did not love Prussia and the Hohenzollerns. For years it was against the law to display the German flag in Bavaria.

Funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife.

She never became fully reconciled to her new status as the subordinate of Prussia in the family of Teutonic tribes.

Hohenzollern ambitions were not satisfied to rest with the consolidation of territory under the German empire. The King of Prussia, had become German Emperor, and the new title merely quickened the inherent appetite for further - conquest.

France.

Envious eyes turned toward The rich provinces of Alsace-

Lorraine invited plunder and acquisition.

A comparatively short struggle resulted in a complete victory for Germany. It was another instance where preparedness prevailed over courage and devotion. Alsace-Lorraine was added to the German empire, and France was compelled to pay an indemnity of five billion francs in order to get the German army out of her territory.

This sketch of Prussian history is necessary in order that we may understand how wholly in keeping with the character

Serbian officers watching experiments with liquid fire.

Moreover France was a possible rival whose humbling was advisable in order to assure the dominant position of Europe.

Bismarck deliberately laid the foundation for war with France by provoking a quarrel thru the publication of a garbled telegram from the King of Prussia to the King of France. The wording of the telegram was made to carry an insult to the French monarch—and in those days there was only one way of dealing with insults.

and aspirations of the rulers and people of Prussia was the world war in which their ambitions culminated.

Prussia never blundered into wars unwittingly. She made them with deliberate purpose; prepared for them long in advance, and carried them thru to victory with only one intent—-to increase her own power ard territorial sovereignty.

The forty odd years of peace that followed gave the world time to forget Prussia’s history. Moreover, Proissia, herself,

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4 + was camouflaged in the German empire, and people who had known the German tribes before they became subject to Prussian rule and guidance found it difficult to believe that the industrious, home-loving folk of Germany could have in their hearts ambitions that menaced the peace and happiness of neighbor nations. It is probable, indeed, that such ambitions were foreign to these tribes or states in their earlier history as a confederation, but they were never absent from the minds of their Prussian over-lords.

During those forty years Prussia did two things—she Prussianized the rest of the German people, and she built up a great army and a great navy for enterprises of conquest conceived on a vaster scale than ever before.

The story of these four decades of miseducation for the German people is one that merits a volume to itself. The secu- Jar and religious instruction given the youth of the land was definitely directed toward inculcating a vaunting pride of race and nation and a contempt for all other peoples. They were taught to believe that the Germans were the chosen of God, with a destiny to subdue the world to their own peculiar “kultur.” The state, embodied in the kaiser and the general staff of the German army, became for them the voice of God. What the state decreed was right, no matter how it might violate individual conceptions of ethics. To live and die for the state, unquestioningly obedient to its commands—this was the supreme morality.

This education was part of the process by which the German people were made the docile tools of the Prussian dynasty, serviceable for the later execution of its maturing plans.

Such is the general background of the World War.

As we draw nearer the fateful year in which Germany launched her long preparing thunderbolts against the world, one incident after another shows that the hour of action was no chance hour.

Wilhelm II dreamed thru the earlier years of his reign of the day when the resting German sword would be again unsheathed to continue the traditions of his dynasty and to carve from Europe and the continents beyond a domain greater in extent and incomparably richer in resources than any autocrat of history had ever ruled.

In accordance with his ambitions there developed in Germany an organization devoted to the creation of a great middle Europe state, including Austria-Hungary in its scope, and extending its frontiers thru the Balkans to Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. Maps that were printed and distributed in Germany twenty years before the World War began showed the greater empire, and swept within its boundaries Belgium and Holland on the west, and the Baltic States of Russia, Poland, and the Balkan countries on the east and southeast, as well as the dual monarchy. Leaders in this movement spoke of acquiring territory in South America, notably in the southern Argentine. It was boldly predicted that the whole civilized world would become either part of the empire, or subject to it in the relation of vassal to master.

In order to promote the project for a

-middle-EKurope empire with an Asiatic annex, the Kaiser visited Constantinople, Damascus and Jerusalem. He addressed

Wm. Hohenzollern, ex-Kaiser of Germany, in the uniform of a Turkish officer. The shriveled left arm is most noticeable.

THEY FLASHED THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM ACROSS THE SEA. Down Chicago’s wonderful Michigan Boulevard they came, the heart under the blouse of every one of them beating in perfect accord with the great heart of America.

THE RED TRAIL OF PRUSSI,:

Von Tirpitz of the German Navy whose ruthless submarine warfare the world.

against women and children shocked a great audience of Turks in Damascus, and declared himself the friend of the Ottoman empire and the Mohammedhan faith. His immediate reward was a concession from Turkey allowing Germany to construct the Bagdad railroad, and giving it a right of way in European Turkey, thru what was known as the Sanjat of Novibazar, thus creating the link thru the Balkans that has been often referred to as the Bagdad corridor.

Austria-Hungary played her part in these plans, doubtless with the knowledge and approval of Germany. She seized Bosnia and Herzegovina, border Balkan states. When her act aroused the anger of Kurope, the Kaiser appeared as her champion, and declared that he supported the policy of his Austrian ally.

The smoothly and swiftly toward the achieve-

Prussian plans were moving ment of Prussian ambitions, when the The utter defeat of Turkey deprived Germany of her right

Balkan war broke out.

of way thru the Sanjat of Novibazar, which became Serbian territory, and closed the Bagdad corridor.

Bulgaria was prompted to renew the struggle in a second war by the intrigues They hoped by this means to recover the advantage they ‘had lost in the Balkans—the necessary link of empire by which Hamburg would be joined to Bagdad. The plan failed. Bulgaria was defeated by her erstwhile of the central empires.

allies.

And thus it was that in 1918 Germany

The Ex-Crown Prince of Germany whose flight showed his weak character,

Serbia, enlarged in territory, lay squarely across found her ambitions checked. her path to the east. Serbia was antagc- She looked to Petrograd—then St. Petersburg—for friendship and support. Germany realized that diplomatic efforts to open a way nistic to Vienna and Berlin.

thru the Balkans could not succeed.

She knew only one way in which to realize her ambitions—and that was force. Force, for Prussia, was the normal and most desirable method of obtaining anything she desired.

Such is the trail of intrigue and bloodshed that leads up to the critical day in June 1914, when a deed of assassination furnished the pretext that Prussia needed for the execution of her designs.

{HE RED TRAIL OF PRUSSIA 2

The German Ex-Emperor’s Palace in Berlin.

Chapter. II

ASSASSINATION OF AUSTRIAN ARCHDUKE— AUSTRIA CHARGED ANTI-DY- NASTIC PLOTS— ASSASSINATION IN FACT PLOTTED BY GERMANY — ULTI- MATUM, TO SERBIA—SERBIA MAKES CONCESSIONS TO KEEP PEACE —GER. MANY AND AUSTRIA REFUSE TERMS—AUSTRIA DECLARES WAR ON SERBIA, GERMANY DECLARES WAR ON RUSSIA, BELGIUM AND FRANCE— AUSTRIA DRIVES ON SERBIA AND GERMANY INVADES BELGIUM—GREAT BRITAIN SENDS ULTIMATUM TO GERMANY —STATE OF WAR DECLARED BETWEEN

GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY.

The Balkan wars were over, and with their settlement Europe heaved a sigh of relief. Jor a time a general conflagration had threatened the nations of the old world. The European war cloud, familjar in the headlines of the newspapers, had hung upon the horizon with low mutterings of thunder. But the crisis was passed safely, and men again began to talk as tho a great war were a, thing impossible.

They pointed to the growing intercourse among nations; the spread of democratic institutions; the rising intelligence of the masses of the people; the multiplying of international peace treaties and agreements for arbitration. Had not the Hague peace tribunal been established, and were not many of the great powers of the world signatory to its conventions, in which they pledged themselves to regard international law, and to live with one another on a basis of reasonableness and humanity ?

These things were all true.

And yet from all of these things men derived a false sense of security.

Nations ruled by responsible governments, controlled by the enlightened sentiment of their peoples, could not understand the peril that remained latent in the world’s autocracies.

Prussia was rapidly completing her plans. We have learned from the disclosures made by Dr. Muehlon, a former Krupp director, and others who were in a position to know what was transpiring within the councils of the empire, that conspiracy against the world’s peace was on foot in Germany. There were conferences of the business men and the imperial chancellor, and the men of finance and industry were warned to set their affairs in order and to prepare for a great war.

Then came the spark that exploded the powder magazine of Europe.

The Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, went with his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, on a visit of state to Serajevo, the capital of Bosnia.

Bosnia had been annexed by Austria- Hungary in 1908. There were many Bosnians who bitterly resented the Hapsburg interference with their national life. The state had its secret political organizations, its intrigues and plots, all concerned with frustrating Austrian rule and promoting Slav interests.

Serajevo was not a safe city for the heir to the Austrian throne to visit, and this fact must have been well known to the authorities. Yet, in spite of the perils that always beset royalty in Europe, and that were peculiarly acute in southeastern Europe; in spite of the known existence of enmities and conspiracies in Bosnia, practically no precautions were taken by the municipal officials of Serajevo to protect the lives of the imperial heir and his wife.

It was on Sunday, June 28, 1914, that the Archduke arrived at the Bosnian capital. He and his wife at once got into an automobile and were driven toward the town hall, where they were to be welcomed officially. The crowd that watched them pass thru the city streets showed little enthusiasm. Their automobiie had not gone far before a man dashed from the throng on the pavement, and hurled a

MAGAZINE

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THE SPARK IN EUROPE’S PO

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‘ploysuoijs JeaeN UeUtay 9y} ‘purjosjay bomb at the car. He missed the archduke. The bomb fell on the road, and exploded just as a second car passed over it, containing members of the archduke’s staff.

The would-be assassin attempted to escape in the crowd, but was caught and put under arrest. He was a youth—21 years of age—named Gabrinovics.

Archduke Ferdinand was livid with fear and indignation when he reached the town hall, and, when the burgomaster exposed the royal visitor to attack. On the way back from the town hall the imperial car passed a youth named Gavrilo Prinzip, standing on the curb, who calmly drew a revolver and fired twice. The first shot fatally wounded the duchess, the second pierced the neck of the archduke, severing the jugular vein. Both died without uttering a word.

Prinzip was arrested. He denied any knowledge of Gabrinovics, and declared that the first attempt at assassination was

German soldiers decorated for exceptional bravery during the Battle of Verdun. These soldiers are being rewarded for making one of the many furious attacks on the Verdun front.

tried to read to him an address of welcome he interrupted with the angry exclamation:

“Herr Burgomaster, it is perfectly scandalous. We have come to Serajevo, and a bomb is thrown at us.”

The burgomaster stammered an incoherent apology and went on with his address. But the archduke’s sharp rebuke had no practical effect. Nothing was done to remedy the neglect that had a surprise to him. He said he was a Serbian student, and had for long entertained the idea of killing some eminent person.

The Austrian authorities immediately promulgated the story that they had discovered an anti-dynastic plot, the source of which was in Serbia.

The circumstances of the assassination have led many people to believe that it was deliberately planned, not by Bosnians or Serbians, but by Austrians and

IN EUROPE’S POWDER MAGAZINE

K

THE SPAR

Germans who desired a pretext for attacking Serbia as the initial step toward recovering the Bagdad corridor and opening the road to world conquest. It is assuredly true that the taking off of the archduke coincided exactly with the culmination of Prussia’s preparations for war. It is, too, rather extraordinary that Prinzip, the youth who killed him, was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment instead of to death. In a country where the death penalty was common, twenty years imprisonment for the murderer of ized that a serious situation had developed involving grave possibilities.

Early in July it was rumored in diplomatic circles that Austria-Hungary was planning drastic reprisals for what she alleged was a Serbian crime, committed, if not with the authority, at least with the sympathy of the Serbian government.

Then Count Tisza, at that time premier of Austria, reassured the capitals of Kurope by a speech in the Austrian parliament in which he held out strong hope that there would be an amicable settle-

The Arch Conspirators—The Ex-Kaiser, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the Ex-Sultan of Turkey, and the late Franz Josef of Austria.

the heir to the throne seems strangely lenient.

The world was slow to realize the significance of the Serajevo tragedy. People were horrified at the deed, and editorials were written denouncing anarchy; but no one seemed to see—at first —the figures of war and famine and pestilence walking in the funeral procession of the dead archduke.

In the chancelleries of Europe, however, there was much anxiety. In London, Paris, Rome and Petrograd men conversant with European affairs realment of the whole matter. Apprehensions were allayed, and the world thought it saw the war cloud passing.

One week later Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, demanding a reply in 48 hours. -

The ultimatum recited the facts of the assassination and alleged that the crime was due to Serbia’s tolerance of propaganda and intrigue against the peace and territory of the dual monarchy. It demanded that the Serbian government should condemn this propaganda and utterly suppress it.

IMPORTANT TOWN e ENEMYS OBJECTIVE g Troops & ‘ ni further

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The German Offensive: The New Methods by Which It Was Pursued and Ho

I Germany made her advances on the Western Front. ee se

The new method was devised by the famous v nage

: . : i inci hich "Ths i does not represent any particular battle or area, but illustrates the principles by w Neearr Pea ky poohed for his ideas by the German General Staff at the outbreak of the war. 3 .

Count Von Bernstorff The German arch conspirator and ex-ambassador.

The ultimatum then continued:

In order to give a formal character to this undertaking the royal Servian government shall publish on the front page of its official journal of the 26th June (18th July) the following declaration:

“The royal government of Servia condemns the propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary—i. e., the general tendency of which the final aim is to detach from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy territories belonging to it, and it sincerely deplores the fatal consequences of these criminal proceedings.

“The royal government regrets that Servian officers and functionaries participated in the above mentioned propaganda and thus compromised the good neighborly relations to which the royal government was solemnly pledged by its declaration of the 31st March, 1909.

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“The royal government, which disapproves and repudiates all idea of interfering or attempting to interfere with the destinies of the inhabitants of any part whatsoever of Austria-Hungary, considers it its duty formally to warn officers and functionaries, and the whole population of the kingdom, that henceforward it will proceed with the utmost rigor against persons who may be guilty of such machinations, which it will use all its efforts to anticipate and suppress.”

This declaration shall simultaneously be communicated to the royal army as an order of the day by his majesty the king and shall be published in the official bulletin of the army.

The royal Servian government further undertakes:

1. To suppress any publication which incites to hatred and contempt of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and_ the

Alfred Zimmerman, Germany’s ex-foreign minister.

One of the German Sanitary Posts before Laon,

Bethman Hollweg, the weak-minded member of the Ex-kaiser’s War Board.

in America.

general tendency of which is directed against its territorial integrity;

2. ‘To dissolve immediately the society styled Narodna Odbrana, to confiscate all its means of propaganda, and to proceed in the same manner against other societies and their branches in Servia which engage in propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The royal government shall take the necessary measures to prevent the societies dissolved from continuing their activity under another name and form;

3. To eliminate without delay from public instruction in Servia, both as regards the teaching body and also as regards the methods of instruction, everything that serves, or might serve, to foment the propaganda against Austria- Hungary;

4. To remove from the military service, and from the administration in gen-

Remarkable Photograph of German Submarine U65, Terror of the Sea. in Act of Holdi i This is probably the only photograph showing a German U-boat actually ba i i ape holding up a liner at sea to arrive eral, all officers and functionaries guilty of propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy whose names and deeds the Austro-Hungarian government reserves to itself the right of communicating to the royal government;

5. ‘To accept the collaboration in Serbia of representatives of the Austro-Hungarian government in the suppression of the subversive movement directed against the territorial integrity of the monarchy;

6. To take judicial proceedings against accessories to the plot of the 28th June who are on Servian territory. Delegates of the Austro-Hungarian government will take part in the investigation relating thereto;

7. To proceed without delay to the arrest of Major Voija Tankositch and of the individual named Milan Ciganovitch, a Servian state employe, who have been compromised by the results of the magisterial inquiry at Serajevo;

8. To prevent by effective measures the co-operation of the Servian authorities

General Von Hindenburg, commander-in-chief, and his chief of staff.

This Photo was taken in 1914. The Crowds were Optimistic.

Type of Germany’s Long-Distance Bombing Machines.

across the frontier, to dismiss and punish severely the officials of the frontier service at Schabatz and Loznica guilty of having assisted the perpetrators of the Serajevo crime by facilitating their passage across the frontier;

9. ‘To furnish the imperial and royal government with explanations regarding the unjustifiable utterances of high Serbian officials, both in Servia and abroad, who, notwithstanding their official position, did not hesitate after the crime of the 28th June to express themselves in interviews in terms of hostility to the Austro-Hungarian government; and, finally,

10. To notify the imperial and royal government without delay of the execution of the measures comprised under the preceding heads.

Immediately the terms of the Austrian ultimatum became known in diplomatic circles in Europe there was consternation. It was seen that Austria had imposed conditions no nation could accept without an utter humbling. The war cloud gathered

The Late Count George von Hertling, the Ex-Bavarian Prime Minister and Ex-Imperial German Chancellor.

Ukraine and Germany Signing Peace Pact. created Ukrainian state on the other concluding a treaty of peace.

Germany and her allies on the one side and the newly again, darker and more threatening than before.

We have since learned, through the disclosures made by Dr. Muehlon, the former Krupp director to whom I have already referred, that the kaiser had a hand in drafting this drastic document. He was consulted by Austria, and approved its form without consulting his advisers, according to the story that Muehlon had from Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg.