To General Pershing, Marshal Foch had entrusted the task of ascertaining the truth or falsity of the report. General Pershing, in turn, had passed the word along where he felt it would do the most good. This was how it happened that Hal and Chester found themselves so fortunate as to be ordered within the German lines at Sedan on the mission which opened this book.
That Germany would have profited greatly at that time could the Americans, French and British have been fooled by the false rumor goes without saying. And it is true, too, that the longer the rumor was permitted to live the greater became the danger of over-confidence in the ranks of the allies.
It is for this reason that General Pershing was immensely pleased to receive so soon a report from Colonel O’Neil, at Rheims that this first rumor of an impending appeal for peace by Austria was nothing more than a German plot. Immediately the word was passed along the whole battle front. The result was, that Germany, instead of having gained by this piece of duplicity, suffered. For when allied troops went into battle they struck that much harder. For a time they had believed that their efforts were to be crowned with immediate success, and now that they learned the Germans had been playing with them they fought with the desperate energy of the man who fears he has been made ridiculous.
It was learned later that this rumor of Austria’s decision to break with Germany was started by the Germans themselves for the reason we have seen.
Austria was not so much as consulted in the matter, and it has been shown since that this very fact was responsible, in a measure, for Austria’s decision some time later to sue for a separate peace. So the bomb launched by the kaiser and his advisers proved a veritable boomerang.
But President Wilson and his advisers had not been fooled by the German plot. President Wilson, some time before, had laid down conditions on which Germany and Austria might have peace, and to these he stuck. He had informed the German and Austrian people that they might have peace at any time by laying down their arms, provided they ousted the militarists who were responsible for the war. Several efforts had been made by German and Austrian officials to fool America by changes of cabinets and other political tricks but President Wilson, with his allies, was adamant.