XI. That Italy should renounce any further claims under Article VII of the Triple Alliance for the whole duration of the war, and that Austria-Hungary should renounce any claim to compensation for Italy's occupation of the Dodecannesus. These demands were pressed by Italy in the face of disquieting rumors that Austria-Hungary was on the point of concluding a separate peace with Russia, which would leave her free to devote her whole attention to Italy and Serbia if the former refused to make terms. They were rejected by Austria, April 16, with a few unimportant exceptions: Article VIII was accepted. As regards Article IX, Baron Burian asserted that the amount offered was totally insufficient, but suggested that the question of pecuniary indemnity be referred to The Hague. He held that the pledge of neutrality should be extended to Turkey as well as to Germany and Austria, and asked for the insertion of an extra clause in Article XI, providing that Italy's renunciation of further claims under Article VII of the Triple Alliance should cover all such advantages, territorial and otherwise, as Austria might gain from the treaty of peace which should terminate the war. The only cardinal point on which Austria offered concessions was in regard to the proposed Trentino frontier. This she agreed might follow a course more advantageous for Italy than that suggested in Austria's former proposals. Baron Sonnino's reply was sent from Rome on April 21, 1915. It declared that these additional concessions failed to "repair the chief inconveniences of the present situation, either from the linguistic and ethnological or the military point of view." Austria, he pointed out, seemed determined to maintain positions on the frontier that were a perpetual threat to Italy. There were three more conversations between Baron Burian and the Italian Ambassador at Vienna before negotiations were broken off, and on April 29, 1915, the Italian Ambassador telegraphed to Rome that Austria virtually negatived all the Italian demands, especially those contained in the first five articles. The real break, which made war inevitable, came on May 3 when Baron Sonnino sent to Vienna a formal denunciation of the Italo-Austrian alliance. It must be remembered that behind the text of these formal proposals and counterproposals lay a belief in the minds of many Italians that Austria made even the slight concessions she granted unwillingly and under pressure from Germany, and that if the war resulted successfully for the Central Powers, Austria would immediately begin to scheme for a restoration of her old frontiers. Since it is an axiom of diplomatic bargaining that each side asks more than it expects to receive, there is no doubt that Italy would have been willing to modify her demands if her statesmen and people had been sure that the concessions obtained from Austria under these circumstances would not have been disturbed in the event of a Teutonic victory.