"and even to fall back before an Austrian advance in order to
gain time."

He urged that the Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg should be
furnished with full powers to continue discussions with the Russian
Minister for Foreign Affairs,

"who was very willing to advise Servia to yield all that could
be fairly asked of her as an independent power."

The only reply to this reasonable suggestion was that it would be
submitted to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

[English "White Paper," No. 56.]

On the same day the German Ambassador at Paris called upon the French
Foreign Office and strongly insisted on the "_exclusion of all
possibility of mediation or of conference_," and yet contemporaneously
the Imperial German Chancellor was advising London that he had

"started the efforts toward mediation in Vienna, immediately
in the way desired by Sir Edward Grey, and had further
communicated to the Austrian Foreign Minister the wish of the
Russian Foreign Minister for a direct talk in Vienna."

What hypocrisy! In the formal German defense, the official apologist for
that country, after stating his conviction

"that an act of mediation could not take into consideration
the Austro-Servian conflict, which was purely an