Ten Years Near the German Frontier Part 15

One of the French delegates asked me whether it was true that the Germans would try to make terms with us for a cession of some foreign territory for one of the Philippine Islands. Waldhausen was at my elbow; I, smiling, put the question to him.

'It is Arcadian,' he said.

'Germany never gives up what she holds,' said the Frenchman, also smiling. 'Otherwise, you might induce her to surrender Heligoland to England, for a consideration, with the understanding that England should give it back to Denmark.'

Waldhausen laughed.

'Such generosity is too far in advance of our time. I am afraid Admiral von Tirpitz might object.'

Von Tirpitz, for those behind the scenes in German politics, was much in the public eye. It was well understood that as far as the naval programme was concerned, he was Germany. If the seizing of Slesvig and the completion of the Kiel ca.n.a.l made the German Fleet possible, with the acquiring of Heligoland, the efforts of Admiral von Tirpitz had made it a Navy. Through all the financial difficulties of the German Government, difficulties that alone prevented it from attacking France, von Tirpitz had held fast to the axiom that Germany's future was on the ocean. He was not the kind of marine minister who sticks fast to his desk and 'never goes to sea.' He had become the 'captain of the King's navee' by knowing his business, and, more than that, by studying the caprices of his Imperial Master's mind, as well as its fixed determination. Many times I had been told by candid friends in the diplomatic corps that the German Emperor had no respect for our navy, that he knew every ship by heart, that nevertheless, he examined as far as possible any new inventions adopted by our naval experts who were most kind in permitting German naval attaches and experts to examine them. In 1911 the coming of the Atlantic Squadron had excited interest in the naval position of our country. One scarcely ever saw an American flag on the ocean. Whatever Columbia did or wanted to do, she did not rule the seas; so our flag on the ships of the Atlantic Squadron was a delight to all Americans and somewhat of a surprise to foreigners.

At Kiel the general impression seemed to be that the Atlantic Squadron represented our whole navy! The Kaiser and von Tirpitz knew better, of course. Privately the Kaiser expressed his amus.e.m.e.nt at our attempt to build warships--he and von Tirpitz had secrets of their own. However, America was important enough to be given a sedative until his designs on France and Russia were completed. One might suspect this, then; but who could believe it!

My correspondents in Germany--people who know are wonderful helps to a man in the diplomatic service--concerned themselves largely with von Tirpitz and General von Freytag-Loringhoven. Von Tirpitz was the German Navy and the very intelligent writings of General the Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven made us almost think that he was the Army.

'Is he related to Freytag?' I had asked.

'What, the novelist?'

'The author of _Debit and Credit_?' I added.

'Certainly not; he is one of the greatest of the Baltic baronial families.'

If I had asked a Bourbon, in the reign of Louis XIV., whether he was related to Crebillon, he could not have been more shocked. Von Freytag-Loringhoven cut a great figure in Berlin. He had Russian affiliations, being of a Baltic family; his father had been well known in diplomacy. He knew Russia as well as he knew Germany; he was technical and experienced, and his writings were supposed to give indications of the ideas of the General Staff. The Russians in Copenhagen talked much of von Freytag-Loringhoven. I must repeat that, in interesting myself in German personalities, I was not considering them in relation to the future of my own country. There were some among my friends, like James Brown Scott--men of foresight--who seemed to have a wider vision. I was interested because I feared that the autonomy of a little nation was at stake, and because the absorption of that little nation would mean the a.s.sumption of the Danish Antilles.

That Germany had consulted Russia about a question to make war with England a pretext for seizing Denmark, we suspected. The end of the j.a.panese War had curbed Russia's eastern ambition for a time. How were we to be sure that the Baltic and the North Sea might not, under German tutelage, attract her?

If von Freytag-Loringhoven's utterances were to be taken seriously, it was evident that war was in the air; and why was von Tirpitz building up the German Navy? The distributors of rumours in Denmark said that all hopes of a Scandinavian confederacy were to be ended by a quarrel with England, a move on France, and the division of Scandinavia into two parts, one nominally Russian, the other, Denmark, to be actually German, while Norway should gradually be terrorised into submission. This shows how excited public opinion was. The German propaganda spread pleasant reports of the peaceful intentions of the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and the personages in power in Germany. Above all, we were told how charming the Crown Princess Cecilia was, and how potent her influence would be in warding off any attempts of the Pan-Germans on Denmark, even if Germany and England should fly at each other's throats.

People in the court circle, who knew how little royal family alliances count to-day in actual politics, admitted that the Crown Princess was most charming and sympathetic; she is the sister of the Queen of Denmark, and she had become as German as it was possible for the daughter of a Russian mother to be. Her sister, Queen Alexandrina, had become thoroughly Danish, but then her tendencies had always been towards democracy and the simplicities of life.

The German news vendors alternately praised the Crown Prince and depreciated him. If he were violent, it was against the wishes of his father--he was a second Prince Hal trying on the imperial crown. As a rule, however, he was brought out of the background to show his virtues. On several occasions he had evinced more knowledge of what was going on than his father. This was notable in the Eulenberg scandal, when he fearlessly laid bare a horrible ulcer which was beginning to eat into the heart of the army. On this subject he and Max Harden, of the _Zukunft_, were in amazing alliance. Whatever may be said of the Crown Prince's political ambitions--and we believed and do believe that they meant world conquest--he is very much of a man. In 1911, it was understood that he would not condescend to wear the peace-mask that seemed to conceal his father's face. Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor, was temporising as usual. The Moroccan affair led to nothing because Germany's financial backers were not ready for war. The Chancellor was attacked by von Heydebrand; the Danish press gave graphic accounts of the scene when the Crown Prince, from the royal box, applauded every insult that the powerful Junker heaped on the Chancellor, who was merely the tool of the Kaiser. It was the time of the Emperor to temporise; the time had not come to strike; Germany was not rich enough. Russia was still doubtful. France, in the imperial opinion, was not sufficiently corrupted, and the dissensions between Ulster and the rest of Ireland had not yet reached that poisonous growth which, in that opinion, would force mutiny and sedition to poison the English. The Crown Prince probably, in his frankness, voiced more than his own inner sentiments. At any rate, to us near the frontier, it seemed so.

However, the incident was used to the credit of the Crown Prince.

Fair and open dealing for him! England might interfere in Morocco and other places to prevent his country from taking a place 'in the sun'; but let us have it out!

In the secret councils of the Social Democrats was the hope that, if a Hohenzollern must succeed the Kaiser, it would not be the Crown Prince. In spite of his amiabilities and his apparently youthful point of view of life--though there were fewer indiscretions to his credit than are generally attributed to Crown Princes--it was known that he was military to the core, and that in his time the soldier of the world would never lack employment. While the Kaiser was constantly insisting that more soldiers and more sailors and Krupp von Bohlen's newest instruments of destruction were p.a.w.ns in the game of peace, his son made no pretence of agreeing with him. Clever or not, he had held that a straight line was the shortest way from one given point to another. And the Zabern incident and several others showed that the Crown Prince meant, when his chance came, to make war after the Napoleonic method and to exalt the sword above the pen and the ploughshare.

The Social Democrats in Denmark were not flattered when he said that 'one day the Social Democrats would go to court!' But he was right; they went to court as their old Emperor went to Carrossa, when they accepted the war! The German writers said, too, that in France his admiration for Napoleon endeared him to the French. If he appeared in Paris, he would be as popular as King Edward of England was when he was Prince of Wales! 'Who knows,' one of their writers said, 'he may make the hopes of the Duke de Reichstadt his own, and live to see them fulfilled'? I called the attention of an Austrian friend to this. This gentleman, high in favour in 1909, but somewhat gloomed in 1914, owing to a _bon mot_, said: 'But the French remember that the heir of Napoleon, who might have completed his father's conquests, was the son of an Austrian mother.' He was _gemutlich_, like his grandfather, they said, and how sweetly amiable to the American ladies who had married into the superior race! More than one t.i.tled American hoped to be saved from the position of morganaticism in the future through the kindness of His Imperial Highness. But the fixity of will has been underrated. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe; his eyes were on the kingdoms of Solomon and of the jewelled monarchs of the East. Why he failed, the Crown Prince believed he had discovered.

There was no reason, therefore, why a Prussian Napoleon might not succeed, and no necessity to repeat the defeats of Moscow and Waterloo. The Prince would begin by fighting Waterloo first and then putting Russia out of commission!

In 1913 Mr. Frederick Wile, then correspondent of the London _Daily Mail_, wrote: 'He is the idol of the German Army almost to a greater degree than his father. His _Hunting Diary_ is amusing. He writes of his sympathy with his 'sainted' ancestor Frederick the Great, in the dictum that everybody should be allowed to pursue happiness and salvation in his own sweet way.' Holy Moses!

It was not difficult to get near to the characters of the important men in power in Germany. A night's run took one to Berlin, and at Flensberg, a few hours from our Legation, one could see the German war vessels. There were constant visits of Germans of distinction; Prince Eitel Friedrich often came in his yacht, and the Waldhausens--Madame Waldhausen was a Belgian--were constantly entertaining guests of all countries. Princess Harald, the wife of Prince Harold, brother of the King of Denmark, attracted many Germans, with whom she was in sympathy.

At court very few Germans appeared, unless they were of high official rank. Both King Christian X. and the Queen seemed to prefer to speak English, and nothing irritated the King, who speaks English and French and German well, more than any attempt on the part of a diplomatist to speak to him in Danish. It is best, I think, for diplomatists at court to use French. One is always more guarded in speaking a foreign language, but every member of the Danish Court spoke English and seemed to like it. Prince Valdemar and the Princess Marie always spoke English in their family. Prince Valdemar's French was not so good as his English, and, in the beginning, the Princess Marie found the learning of Danish slow work, and she had, during the exile of her family in England, become entirely at home in the English language. Prince Axel, their son, who recently visited America as the guest of the American Navy, spoke English admirably.

Like all his family, he is in love with freedom.

Nevertheless, German was much spoken in Denmark, and the intercourse between the two countries close. The point of view of Germany, or, rather, the Germans, was better understood in Denmark than perhaps in any other country, the more so because the Danes, naturally satirical and entirely disillusioned as to the altruism of great European nations, looked with clear eyes at the progress, or, rather, the evolution of Germany. Whatever progress Germany had made, many of them, like the learned Dr. Gudmund Schutte, who reluctantly agreed that the reconquest of Slesvig would be 'to commit suicide in order to escape death,' never seemed to utter a word of German without remembering the loss of their provinces.

The most astonishing things were the intellectual greatness and exact training of the German thinkers and doers, and, at the same time, their lack of independence. With the outside world, as far as one could gather from the press and conversations with the English, French and Americans--though my fellow countrymen, as a rule, showed little interest in foreign affairs--it was plain that the German political parties were supposed to be static: the Conservatives Junkerish, the Centrists intensely Catholic, following the slightest signal of the Pope, the Socialists devoted to the ideas of Bebel, and the Liberal-Nationalists fixed in their opinion that a moderate const.i.tutional monarchy was to be, in Germany, the solution of all problems.

We knew better than that in Denmark. Through the whole Catholic world the German propagandists spread the opinion that the Centre party was strictly 'denominational.' Nothing could be more untrue. The traditions of Windthorst, who had boldly defined to Bismarck the difference between what was due to Christ and what to Caesar, were rapidly disappearing. The fiction remained that the Centre was constantly opposing the policy of the emperor, when at every session of the Reichstag, the Centre became more and more 'political' and more subservient to the designs of the Government. One could see the changing policy in the pages of the _Social Democrat_, the Socialist organ in Denmark. The Danish Socialists were always influenced by their German brethren; but destructive Socialism finds, up to the present time, no place in the Social Democratic scheme, and this is due, not only to the Danish temperament, but to the dislike on the part of Social Democrats to the growing power of Syndicalism.

The leaders of the Socialists and of the Centrists are not great men.

Of the Centre, which had rightfully boasted of Windthorst and Mallinkrot as the opponents of ultra-Imperialism, Hertling and Erzberger were the most important. All Germany recognised the intellectual ability of Hertling. Baron von Hertling, Professor of the University of Munich, represented apparently everything that the fashionable Prussian philosophical system did not. 'Glory is the only religion of great men' is a doctrine he abhors; philosophically, he is the direct enemy of Kant and Hegel, above all, of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. n.o.body denies those qualities of mind that had made his name as well known philosophically in learned circles as that of Cardinal Mercier. He had been prime minister of Bavaria, and he, of all men, might have been expected to see the abyss to which Imperialism was tending. It was easy, in Denmark, to perceive that, in the Reichstag, all parties--there were some individual exceptions, like Liebknecht--had begun to be slaves of the emperor as represented by his subservient grand-viziers, the Chancellors. Both the Centre, from which much was expected, and the mixed party, called the Social Democrats, from which stronger resistance to Imperialism had been hoped, gradually became the upholders of the doctrine of conquest.

Erzberger, of the Centre, is a later development of the change that took place in the att.i.tude of Hertling. With Lieber and Spahn, veteran politicians, the Centre position became one of compromise.

The Centre had managed to grow stronger and stronger after the _Kulturkampf_, against which it had started as a party of defence.

Matthias Erzberger, who had begun as a school teacher, wisely chose the Centre Party as a road to power. He has gained step by step by his unconquerable audacity. In 1911 even the Chancellor seemed to fear him. He is a bold speculator, and his rivals, even in his own party, predicted that he would come to grief through his Napoleonic idea of finance. From 1911 the parties in the Reichstag became more and more Imperialistic, the Prussian tone more and more insolent as regards foreign countries. The _cameraderie_ of the Kaiser at times, his fits of arrogant indiscretion--checked suddenly after the 'interviews' of 1908--continued to give us 'lookers-on in Vienna'

grave concern. In spite of the encomiums made by nearly all my best European friends--many of them English--and all my compatriots who had been received at court, we in Denmark distrusted the Kaiser. I must say that my Danish friends, except the Chamberlain and Madame de Hegermann-Lindencrone, seldom praised him. To them he had been most courteous. I remembered that the most chivalrous of men, Hegermann-Lindencrone, never would speak ill of a sovereign to whose court he had been accredited. Count Carl Moltke, a good Dane, never, even in confidence, allowed a word of censure to pa.s.s his lips when the Kaiser was mentioned by his critics; I often wondered what he thought!

As to the Emperor Francis Joseph, I had reason to have a great respect and affection for him--even of grat.i.tude. It is the fashion to tear his reputation to pieces now, a fashion that will pa.s.s.

At any rate, even his detractors will be glad to hear the story that, when the war broke out and he was ill and very drowsy, one of his Chamberlains said, 'Our army is in the field, sire!' 'Fighting those d.a.m.ned Prussians again!' he said, contentedly; and went to sleep again! He liked France, but he disliked the French Government. 'Your President,' he said to a distinguished French sailor, with a touch of contempt, 'is a bourgeois!' He did not mean a 'commoner'--with him 'bourgeois' implied a man who was not a soldier; and the emperor could not understand that a European country should be well ruled by a man who could not himself take the field; at any time, the Emperor would have gladly taken it against these 'Prussian parvenus,' I am sure.

More and more, the representatives of the stolen provinces, like Slesvig and Alsace-Lorraine, became disheartened by their weakness in the Reichstag. The representatives of Poland received no political support from the Centre; yet these Poles were ardent Catholics, and their representative, Prince Radziwell, made eloquent speeches. The delegates from Alsace-Lorraine, the Abbe Wetterle being the most audacious, were as little regarded as 'Hans Peter,' H. P. Hanssen, the one Danish representative in the Reichstag. If the Centre had not posed as Catholic, which implied, if not an unusual regard for the liberties of the oppressed, at least a certain Christian charity for the persecuted, censure might have been silent. If the Socialists had not been the open and apparently unrelenting opponents of political oppression, the good Samaritan might have tried to succour their victims, while reflecting that the robbers who had inflicted the wound were at least not hypocrites; but here were von Hertling and Martin Spahn and Groeber and the rest of the Centre, who knew what the tyranny of Bismarck had meant; here were the followers of the later Bebel--willing to join the Centrists on many political questions, the friends of the Imperial autocracy! Here were two groups, antagonistic and irreconcilable in principle, but both united when it was expedient to support plans of world conquest!

The Centre still used religion as a tool to uphold the Government.

The Pope and the Kaiser were as antagonistic on many questions as Popes and Kaisers have ever been since Christianity was imperfectly accepted by the Teutons. Windthorst, a great man of the type of O'Connell, but greater, had forced Bismarck to revoke some of the infamous May laws in 1888. Still, certain German citizens, the members of the congregation of the Redemptionists, were exiled. The Centre protested--for effect. The Jesuits were at last admitted on condition that they were not allowed to speak in the churches, and that under no circ.u.mstances should they be permitted to speak in public on religious subjects. Prince von Bulow publicly admitted that there was a lack of toleration shown to Catholics, and there were certain parts of Germany in which professors of the Catholic faith were still under disabilities. The question of the admission of the Jesuits and the other religious congregations ought to have been considered as justly as it would have been in the United States. The Centrists' representatives gave the impression of being violently interested in the preservation of the rights of German citizens to preach and teach any doctrines that were not immoral or seditious, and then, at a breath from the Government, allowed these priests to be treated as the Danish Lutheran pastors were treated in Slesvig.[13]

[13] 'My old commander, the late General Field-Marshal Freiheer von Loe, a good Prussian and a good Catholic, once said to me that, in this respect, matters would not improve until the well-known principle of French law "_que la recherche de la paternite etait interdite_" is changed to "_la recherche du confessional etait interdite_."'--Von Bulow: _Imperial Germany_, p. 185.

I am not writing from the point of view of any creed at this moment, but only from that of a democracy which encourages reasonable freedom of speech, the use of equal opportunities, and preserves to everybody alike the free exercise of his religion. The Centre has shown as little sympathy with democracy of this kind as the Socialists. The latter party deserve no sympathy from any cla.s.s of Americans. Their methods are, as worked out in Denmark and Germany, admirable. Religious bodies, interested in actively loving their neighbours as themselves, have much to learn from them, but the German Socialists played a worse part during the war than Benedict Arnold in our Revolution. They did not act the part of Judas only because they never acknowledged Christ.

The bane of every civilised country seems to be party politics. After theological hatreds, the ordinary variety of political hatreds and compromises is the worst. The Centre has become corrupt and time-serving, the Socialists expedient and slavish, all because the Imperial Head, the Chancellor, could scatter the spoils!

CHAPTER X

A PORTENT IN THE AIR

'This is the first page of my diary and the last,' wrote William H.

Seward. 'One day's record satisfies me that, if I should every day set down my hasty impressions, based on half information, I should do injustice to everybody around me and to none more than my intimate friends.'

This is true; and, when suspicion seemed to reign everywhere, after August 1914, and one's private papers were never safe, in spite of the fidelity of our servants--and no strangers were ever blessed with better servants than my wife and I--it became all the more necessary not to put down explicitly the day's talk. And the colleagues were very frank--except when their Foreign Officers instructed them to say something for export. If we were at the end of the world, I might give daily conversations that would have a certain interest, but probably some persons whom I have the honour to call friends, and even intimate friends, might be misunderstood. A diplomatic corps in a city like Copenhagen is one large family, and in Copenhagen the court treats its members, who are sympathetic, with unusual courtesy, and, at every fitting opportunity, makes them of the royal circle, which is a very cosy and cheerful one.

The years 1910, 1911, and 1912 were eventful ones, not because things happened, but because things were about to happen. It was a period of unrest. The diplomatic conversations at this time occupied themselves with the position of Germany.

Henckel-Donnersmarck had gone to Weimar, much to my regret. He was supposed to have retired to private life because the Kaiser did not find his reports minute enough, but, knowing him, it seemed to me that he was glad to be out of a position which bored him thoroughly, and which exacted of him duties that he did not care to fulfil.

Denmark was becoming more and more Socialistic, and even the Conservatives were so extremely 'advanced,' that Count Henckel found himself rather out of place. He made no country-house visits in the summer, and gave dinners in the winter only when he could not help it. Beyond certain conversations with me on political subjects already mentioned, he did not go. Literature and the simpler aspects of life interested him--children especially. We amused ourselves by mapping out the career of his son, Leo, a very young person of marked individualistic qualities.

For impressions of Germany and Austria, one had to go to other sources. The upheaval in Germany caused by the Kaiser's disregard of public opinion in 1908 had caused most of my colleagues some concern.

n.o.body wanted war. The Austrians and the Russians alike were horrified at the thought of it.