Page - 867 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Wilson’s Fourteen Points 867 sing, commented on the appeal by saying that it would bring ‘international anarchy’.2063 President Wilson did not entirely share this view, and by all means sympathised with the self-determination formula used by the Russians.2064 However, the result for him of the approach taken by the new people in power in Russia was that the Bolsheviks were competing with him in an area on which he placed great value, namely that of moral authority. The right to self-determination of the peoples, and the abandonment of annexations, were after all not only revolutionary goals with no small degree of ex- plosive potential, but also substantially corresponded to what the USA was claiming to be the uppermost principles of its statehood. The Bolshevik version was however clearly targeted at revolutionising the world. And this was something the Wilson also did not want. For this reason, he felt confirmed by Trotsky’s appeal in his decision to announce an American peace programme and, in so doing, to counteract the Bolshevik propa- ganda.2065 The American President aimed to set out on paper point for point his vision for the containment of the war, for the curtailment of the power of the German Empire, and for the future of the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. While he was still making his initial deliberations, Wilson was informed of the details of a peace proposal that had been submitted by a certain Julius Meinl, a ‘Kommerzialrat’, as he was called in an American report from Bern.2066 Meinl, a Viennese businessman, had sought opportunities during several visits to Berlin and in the neutral states, and above all through contacts to American diplomats and confidantes of Wilson, to create a breakthrough for a negotiated peace. He was interested less in issues relating to Austria-Hungary than in the problems between the Germans and the French. Meinl, who had the support of Heinrich Lammasch, Josef Redlich, Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and others, had agreed with the businessman and confidante of Wilson, David Herron, as well as the American chargé d’affaires in Bern, Hugh R. Wilson, that several questions should be asked of the German Empire via the indirect route of Switzerland. These questions focussed primarily on the validity of the resolution passed by the German Reichsrat on 19 July 1917 and the German willing- ness to accept peace, on the declaration by Bethmann Hollweg on 4 August regarding the return of Belgium and, finally, on whether Germany would be prepared to grant autonomy to Alsace-Lorraine. The Americans and the British felt that on this basis, they could also persuade the French to agree to peace negotiations. Meinl returned to Vienna electrified, and wanted to report immediately to Czernin in Brest-Litovsk, but the Foreign Minister was not inclined to allow Meinl to join him there. However, since Czernin came to Vienna at the start of the year in 1918, Meinl took this opportunity to report to him. Even while doing so, he gained the impression that Czernin was anything but enthusiastic about his Swiss mission. Berlin had already made it clear that it did not wish to take any steps in the direction that had been brokered by Meinl. Except among the Americans, amateurs were not wanted, regardless of whether they