Seite - 903 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The ‘Parma Conspiracy’ 903 ation by the Czechs, and Edvard Beneš later described him as the last foreign minister who had still pursued Austro-Hungarian policy. According to Beneš, his successors, Burián and Andrássy, were no more than the ‘liquidators of a ruined enterprise’.2162 Although Karl had hastened to reassure Kaiser Wilhelm that the entire affair had been a shameless forgery by the Entente, and his denials culminated in the much- quoted phrase : ‘Our further response are My cannons in the west’, he failed to brush off the odium of lies and treachery. General Arz apparently told the German Plenipoten- tiary General, Cramon, that : ‘I have discovered that my Emperor is lying.’ Cramon was called to the Emperor, who gave him a document that he described as a draft of a letter to his brother-in-law Sixtus and, indeed, the contents did not contain everything that had been included in the published letter. In the draft, it was stated that Karl would offer anything to fulfil the French claims for Alsace, if these claims were justified, ‘mais ils ne le sont pas’.2163 However, as is the case with such draft documents, the question remained open as to whether the decisive sentence might not have been excluded from the document as it was written out, or whether the draft had been ‘post-edited’. In Cra- mon’s view, the only way of clearing the matter up would be for Karl to seek a meeting with Kaiser Wilhelm, make an apology, ban the Parma princes and, as he dispatched to Hindenburg on 14 April, ‘place all measures here of both a political and military na- ture under German control. One can now no longer have trust, and we must therefore demand guarantees’.2164 The consequences of the Sixtus Affair were widespread  – and not only in Aus- tria-Hungary and for the alliance of the Central Powers. The ‘Czernin-Clemenceau Affair’, as it was known in the west, also came as a shock to Great Britain, France and Italy, and, for a time, the leading statesmen of these countries had their hands full trying to play down and conceal the matter. In the British House of Commons in particular, Foreign Secretary Balfour was bombarded with questions. For days on end, the minister replied with the standard phrase that this matter could not be the subject of questions and answers in the House of Commons. Then, a secret analysis was made in which the leading figures in the British Cabinet admitted that probably a unique opportunity had been missed when, in 1917, the Italian wish that no separate peace negotiations should be conducted with Austria-Hungary was respected. There was a similar feeling in Rome. The following could be registered in chronological order :2165 on 17 April 1917, the British Prime Minister Lloyd George and the French Prime Minister Ribot had met in Folkestone. Ribot had urgently sought the meeting, and handed his British colleague a copy of the first Sixtus letter. Ribot wrung a promise from Lloyd George to keep the matter secret even from members of the British Cabinet. Only the King was permitted to be informed. On 18 April, Lloyd George came to Paris, where he met with Prince Sixtus. On the following day, the meeting described above between Ribot and the Italian Prime Minister Orlando and Foreign Minister Sonnino