We see now on the basis of documents how our allies aided us in the Lybian undertaking. The operations brilliantly begun by the Duke of the Abruzzi against the Turkish torpedo boats encountered at Preveza were stopped by Austria in a sudden and absolute manner. Count Aehrenthal on Oct. 1 informed our Ambassador at Vienna that our operations had made a painful impression upon him and that he could not allow them to be continued. It was urgently necessary, he said, to put an end to them and to give orders to prevent them from being renewed, either in Adriatic or in Ionian waters. The following day the German Ambassador at Vienna, in a still more threatening manner, confidentially informed our Ambassador that Count Aehrenthal had requested him to telegraph to his Government to give the Italian Government to understand that if it continued its naval operations in the Adriatic and in the Ionian Seas it would have to deal directly with Austria-Hungary. [Murmurs.] And it was not only in the Adriatic and in the Ionian Seas that Austria paralyzed our actions. On Nov. 5 Count Aehrenthal informed the Duke of Avarna that he had learned that Italian warships had been reported off Saloniki, where they had used electric searchlights--[laughter]--and declared that our action on the Ottoman coasts of European Turkey, as well as on the Aegean Islands, could not have been allowed either by Austria-Hungary or by Germany, because it was contrary to the Triple Alliance Treaty. In March, 1912, Count Berchtold, who had in the meantime succeeded Count Aehrenthal, declared to the German Ambassador in Vienna that, in regard to our operations against the coasts of European Turkey and the Aegean Islands, he adhered to the point of view of Count Aehrenthal, according to which these operations were considered by the Austro-Hungarian Government contrary to the engagement entered into by us by Article VII. of the Triple Alliance Treaty. As for our operations against the Dardanelles, he considered it opposed, first, to the promise made by us not to proceed to any act which might endanger the status quo in the Balkans, and, secondly, to the spirit of the same treaty, which was based on the maintenance of the status quo.