WHERE AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN WAR AIMS DIFFER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16760, 29 January 1918, Page 5

WHERE AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN WAR AIMS DIFFER.

LOST COLONIES NO CONCERN OF DUAL MONARCHY. Australian and N.Z. (Received 8.35 p.m.) AMSTERDAM, Jan. 27.

Tho Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Czernin, informed the Austrian delegations that the text of his speech on peace terms had been forwarded to the President of the United States before its delivery. He refused to discuss with the delegations Germany's internal affairs, but frankly referred to the. difference between the Austrian and German war aims. Germany possessed extensive colonies and she had to fight to get them back. Therefore Germany would not consent to abandon the occupied territories in Europe without guarantees for the restitution of her colonies. Austria was differently situated, standing everywhere on enemy territory except in Eastern Galicia.

The eagerness with which the Austrian Government accepted the offer of the Bolsheviks to conclude a separate peaco has already produced complications within the conglomerate Empire, the Berne correspondent of the Morning Poet wrote on December 4. The idea promulgated by the .Leninists that every nation shall have a right to determine its own fate appeals to the Czechs and Slavs, who have aroused a storm of official indignation against themselves for drawing public attention to it. The Executive Committee of the Czech Union, tho Southern Slav Club, and the Ukrainian members of the Reichsrath met in Vienna on December 1 and passed a resolution which was' immediately published. In it they state that the Austrian Government has concealed the fact that the present Russian Government offered to conclude peace not only without annexations or indemnities, but also on the principle that all nations shall have the right to decide their own fate. In view of this fact they fear that the negotiations will not result in the conclusion of peace, and for this they hold the Austrian Government responsible. They conclude with a reiteration of their own demand that the right referred to shall be accorded to all nations. This resolution produced a violent outburst of wrathful indignation among the Germans of Austria. The Reichspost, the leading organ of the Roman Catholics, stated that the Slav deputies of the Reichsrath are becoming a public danger. As soon as there is a prospect of peace on the eastern horizon they place barbed wire impediments charged with murderous electricity in the way of it. The Neue Freie Presse informed the Slavs that not only Lenin, but also England and France, have other matters to think of than the union of the Slav nationalities of Austria. The Arbeiter Zeitung, the organ of the German Socialists in Austria, declared that the Czechs and Southern Slavs are ready to sot the whole world in flames if only they can achieve certain national aims. It is apparently a matter of indifference to them, it adds, that if the right of nations to determine their own fate is advanced now the peace negotiations must certainly fail. Socialists also wish to secure that right, it observes, but not in the midst of a world war.