One, a general peace, i.e.including Germany, and the other, a separate peace.

Of the overwhelming difficulties attending the former course I will speak later; at present a few words on the question of separate peace.
I myself would never have made a separate peace.

I have never, not even in the hour of disillusionment--I may say of despair at my inability to lead the policy of Berlin into wiser channels--even in such hours, I say, I have never forgotten that our alliance with the German Empire was no ordinary alliance, no such alliance as may be contracted by two Emperors or two Governments, and can easily be broken, but an alliance of blood, a blood-brotherhood between the ten million Austro-Germans and the seventy million of the Empire, which could not be broken.

And I have never forgotten that the military party in power at that time in Germany were not the German people, and that we had allied ourselves with the German people, and not with a few leading men.

But I will not deny that in the moments when I saw my policy could not be realised I did ventilate the idea of suggesting to the Emperor the appointment, in my stead, of one of those men who saw salvation in a separation from Germany.