After presenting the communication to Secretary Bryan, Count
Cellere made public the following translation of its full text:_
The Triple Alliance was essentially defensive and designed solely to
preserve the status quo, or, in other words, the equilibrium, in Europe.
That these were its only objects and purposes is established by the
letter and spirit of the treaty as well as by the intentions clearly
described and set forth in official acts of the Ministers who created
the alliance and confirmed and renewed it in the interest of peace,
which always has inspired Italian policy.
The treaty, as long as its intents and purposes had been loyally
interpreted and regarded and as long as it had not been used as a
pretext for aggression against others, greatly contributed to the
elimination and settlement of causes of conflict, and for many years
assured to Europe the inestimable benefits of peace.
But Austria-Hungary severed the treaty by her own hands. She rejected
the response of Serbia, which gave to her all the satisfaction she could
legitimately claim. She refused to listen to the conciliatory proposals
presented by Italy in conjunction with other powers in the effort to
spare Europe from a vast conflict certain to drench the Continent with
blood and to reduce it to ruin beyond the conception of human
imagination, and finally she provoked that conflict.
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