In order to keep up our credit we were drawing a hundred million marks a month from Germany, a sum which during the course of the war has grown to over four milliards; and this money was as urgently needed as were the German divisions and the German bread.
And, despite this position of dependence, the only way to arrive at peace was by leading Germany into our own political course; that is to say, persuading Germany to conclude a peace involving sacrifice.

_The situation all through was simply this: that any momentary military success might enable us to propose terms of peace which, while entailing considerable loss to ourselves, had just a chance of being accepted by the enemy._ The German military party, on the other hand, increased their demands with every victory, and it was more hopeless than ever, after their great successes, to persuade them to adopt a policy of renunciation.

I think, by the way, that there was a single moment in the history of this war when such an action would have had some prospect of success.

I refer to the famous battle of Goerlitz.
Then, with the Russian army in flight, the Russian forts falling like houses of cards, many among our enemies changed their point of view.
I was at that time still our representative in Roumania.

Majorescu was then not disinclined to side with us actively, and the Roumanian army moved forward toward Bessarabia, could have been hot on the heels of the flying Russians, and might, according to all human calculations, have brought about a complete debacle.