"First of all it seems to me that those who consider the progress of the negotiations too slow cannot have even an approximate idea of the difficulties which we naturally had to encounter at every step. I will in my remarks take the liberty of setting forth these difficulties, but would like first to point out a cardinal difference existing between the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk and all others which have ever taken place in the history of the world. Never, so far as I am aware, have peace negotiations been conducted with open windows. It would be impossible that negotiations of the depth and extent of the present could from the start proceed smoothly and without opposition. We are faced with nothing less than the task of building up a new world, of restoring all that the most merciless of all wars has destroyed and cast down. In all the peace negotiations we know of the various phases have been conducted more or less behind closed doors, the results being first declared to the world when the whole was completed. All history books tell us, and indeed it is obvious enough, that the toilsome path of such peace negotiations leads constantly over hill and dale, the prospects appearing often more or less favourable day by day. But when the separate phases themselves, the details of each day's proceedings, are telegraphed all over the world at the time, it is again obvious that nervousness prevailing throughout the world must act like an electric current and excite public opinion accordingly. We were fully aware of the disadvantage of this method of proceeding. Nevertheless we at once agreed to the wish of the Russian Government in respect of this publicity, desiring to meet them as far as possible, and also because we had nothing to conceal on our part, and because it would have made an unfavourable impression if we had stood firmly by the methods hitherto pursued, of secrecy until completion. _But the complete publicity in the negotiations makes it insistent that the great public, the country behind, and above all the leaders, must keep cool._ The match must be played out in cold blood, and the end will be satisfactory if the peoples of the Monarchy support their representatives at the conference.