He always acted correctly and with eminent tact, and overcame many difficulties.

What was left of our independence was lost after Luck.
To return, therefore, to the plan developed above: a separate peace that would have contained an order for our troops on the Eastern front to lay down their arms or to march back would immediately have led to conflict at the front.

Following on the violent opposition that such an order would naturally have aroused in the German leaders, orders from Vienna and counter-orders from Berlin would have led to a state of complete disorganisation, even to anarchy.

Humanly speaking, it was out of the question to look for a peaceful and bloodless unravelment at the front.

I state this in order to explain my firm conviction that the idea that such a separating of the two armies could have been carried out in mutual agreement is based on utterly erroneous premises, and also to prove that we have here the first factor showing that we would not have ended the war by a separate peace, but would, on the contrary, have been entangled in a new one.
But what would have been enacted at the front would also, and in aggravated fashion, have been repeated throughout the entire country: a civil war would have been inevitable.
I must here explain a second misunderstanding, resulting also from my speech of December 11, which is due to my statement that "if we came out Germany could not carry on the war." I admit that this statement is not clearly expressed, and was interpreted as though I had intended to say that if we came out the immediate collapse of Germany was a foregone conclusion.