Ten Years Near the German Frontier Part 19

The Danes, as I have said, are probably the most civilised people in Europe, but an average American high school boy thinks more logically on political questions. A union of such intellectual clearness with such a paralysis of the logical, political qualities of the mind as one finds in Denmark, is almost incredible. They seem to feel in matters of politics but not to think. After a large acquaintance among the best of the young minds in Denmark, I could only conclude that this was the result of unhappy circ.u.mstances: the pessimism engendered by the nearness to Germany, the fact that the Dane was not allowed to vote until he became almost middle-aged, and the absence, in the higher schools, of any education that would cultivate self-a.n.a.lysis, and which would force the production of mental initiative. Sentiment was against the sale of the Islands,--therefore, the cause already seemed lost!

The press, as a rule, would be against it, but the press in Denmark, though everybody reads, has not a very potent influence. I was sure of _Politiken_, a journal which most persons said was 'yellow,' but which appealed to people who liked cleverness. The press, I was sure, would be against the sale largely for reasons of internal politics.

The farmers would not oppose the sale as a sale--in itself--the possession of a great sum of money, even while it remained in the United States, meant increased facilities for the import of fodder, etc., but J. C. Christensen, their leader, must be reckoned with.

There were local questions. Politics is everywhere a slippery game, but in Denmark it is more slippery than anywhere else in the world, not even excepting in, let us say, Kansas.

J. C. Christensen had stubbed his toe over Alberti, who had, until 1908, been a power in Denmark, and who, in 1915, was still in the Copenhagen jail. He had been prime minister from 1905 until Alberti's manipulation of funds had been discovered in 1908. Under the short administration of Holstein-Ledreborg, he had been Minister of Worship, but he smarted over the accident which had driven him undeservedly out of office. Socialism, curious as it may seem to Americans, is not confined to the cities in Denmark. It thrives in the farmlands. In the country, the Socialists are more moderate than in the cities. In the country, Socialism is a method of securing to the peasant population the privileges which it thinks it ought to have. It is a pale pink compared with the intense red of the extreme urban Internationalists. J. C. Christensen represented the Moderates as against the various shades of Left, Radical and Socialistic opinions. Besides J. C. Christensen, though his reputation was beyond reproach, needed, perhaps, a certain rehabilitation, and he had a great following. A further complication was the sudden rise of violent opposition to the Government because of the decision made by the secular authorities in favour of retaining in his pulpit Arboe Rasmussen, a clergyman who had gone even further towards Modernism in his preaching than Harnack. However, as the Bishops of the Danish Lutheran Church had accepted this decision, it seemed remarkable that an opposition of this kind should have developed so unexpectedly.

In June 1915, my wife and I were at Aalholm, the princ.i.p.al castle of Count Raben-Levitzau. I was hoping for a favourable answer to my latest despatch as to the purchase of the Islands. A visit to Aalholm was an event. The Count and Countess Raben-Levitzau know how to make their house thoroughly agreeable. Talleyrand said that 'no one knew the real delights of social intercourse who had not lived before the French Revolution.' One might easily imitate this, and say, that if one has never paid a visit to Aalholm, one knows little of the delights of good conversation. Count Raben's guests were always chosen for their special qualities. With Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hagerup, Senor and Senora de Riano, Count and Countess Szchenyi,[16]

Chamberlain and Madame Hegermann-Lindencrone, Mrs. Ripka, and the necessary additional element of young folk, one must forget the cares of life. During this visit, there was one care that rode behind me in all the pleasant exclusions about the estate. It constantly asked me: What is your Government thinking about? Will the President's preoccupations prevent him from considering the question of the purchase? Does Mr. Brun, the Danish Minister, fear a political crisis in his own country? It is difficult to an American at home to realise how much in the dark a man feels away from the centre of diplomacy, Washington, especially when he has once lived there for years and been in touch with all the tremulous movements of the wires.

[16] Dr. Francis Hagerup, Norwegian Minister to Copenhagen, now at Stockholm. Count Szchenyi, Austro-Hungarian Minister, Senor de Riano, now Spanish Minister at Washington.

One day at Aalholm, the telephone rang; it was a message from the Clerk of the Legation, Mr. Joseph G. Groeninger of Baltimore. I put Clerk with a capital letter because Mr. Groeninger deserved diplomatically a much higher t.i.tle. During all my anxieties on the question of the purchase, he had been my confidant and encourager; the secretaries had other things to do. The message, discreetly voiced in symbols we had agreed upon, told me that the way was clear.

Our Government was willing,--secrecy and discretion were paramount necessities in the transaction.

Returning to Copenhagen, I saw the Foreign Minister. The most direct way was the best. I said, 'Excellency, will you sell your West Indian Islands?'

'You know I am for the sale, Mr. Minister,' he said, 'but--' he paused, 'it will require some courage.'

'n.o.body doubts your courage.'

'The susceptibilities of our neighbour to the South----'

'Let us risk offending any susceptibilities. France had rights.'

'France gave up her rights in Santa Cruz long ago; but I was not thinking of France. Besides the price would have to be dazzling.

Otherwise the project could never be carried.'

'Not only dazzling,' I said, 'but you should have more than money--our rights in Greenland; His Majesty might hesitate if it were made a mere question of money. He is like his grandfather, Christian IX. You know how he hated, crippled as Denmark was in 1864, to sell the Islands.'

'You would never pay the price.'

'Excellency,' I said, 'this is not a commercial transaction. If it were a commercial transaction, a matter of material profit, my Government would not have entrusted the matter to me, nor would I have accepted the task, without the counsel of men of business.

Besides, commercially, at present, the Islands are of comparatively small value. I know that my country is as rich as it is generous. It is dealing with a small nation of similar principles to its own, and with an equal pride. Unless the price is preposterous, as there is no ordinary way of gauging the military value of these Islands to us, I shall not object. My Government does not wish me to haggle. And I am sure that you will not force me to do so by demanding an absurd price. You would not wish to shock a people prepared to be generous.'

He will ask $50,000,000, I thought; he knows better than anybody that we shall be at war with Germany in less than a year. I felt dizzy at the thought of losing the Gibraltar of the Caribbean! However, I consoled myself, while Mr. de Scavenius looked thoughtfully, pencil in hand, at a slip of paper. After all, _I_ thought, the President, knowing what the Islands mean to us, will not balk at even $50,000,000. While Mr. De Scavenius wrote, I tried to feel like a man to whom a billion was of no importance.

He pushed the slip towards me, and I read:

'$30,000,000 dollars, expressed in Danish crowns.'

The crown was then equal to about twenty-six cents.

I said, 'There will be little difficulty about that; I consider it not unreasonable; but naturally, it may frighten some of my compatriots, who have not felt the necessity of considering international questions. You will give me a day or two?'

'The price is dazzling, I know,' he said.

'My country is more generous even than she is rich. The transaction must be completed before----'

Mr. de Scavenius understood. My country was neutral _then_; it was never necessary to over-explain to him; he knew that I understood the difficulties in the way.

It was agreed that there should be no intermediaries; Denmark had learned the necessity of dealing without them by the experience in 1902. I was doubtful as to the possibility of complete secrecy. What the newspapers cannot find out does not exist. 'There are very many persons connected with the Foreign Office,' he said thoughtfully.

'I may say a similar thing of our State Department. I wish the necessity for complete secrecy did not exist,' I said. 'The press _will_ have news.'

A short time after this I was empowered to offer $25,000,000 with our rights in Greenland. As far as the Foreign Office and our Legation were concerned, the utmost secrecy was preserved. There were no formal calls; after dinners, a word or two, an apparently chance meeting on the promenade (the Long Line) by the Sound. Rumours, however, leaked out on the Bourse. The newspapers became alert.

_Politiken_, the Government organ, was bound to be discreet, even if its editor had his suspicions. There were no evidences from the United States that the secret was out. In fact, the growing war excitement left what in ordinary times would have been an event for the 'spot' light in a secondary place.

In Denmark, as the whispers of a possible 'deal' increased in number, the opponents of the Government were princ.i.p.ally occupied in thinking out a way by which it could be used for the extinction of the Council--President (Prime Minister) Zahle, the utter crushing of the Minister of War, Peter Munch, who hated war and looked on the army as an unnecessary excrescence, and the driving out of the whole ministry, with the exception of Erik de Scavenius and, perhaps, Edward Brandes, the Minister of Finance, into a sea worthy to engulf the devil-possessed swine of the New Testament. There are, by the way, two Zahles--one the Minister, Theodore, a bluff and robust man of the people, and Herluf Zahle, of the Foreign Office, chamberlain, and a diplomatist of great tact, polish and experience.

Mr. Edward Brandes and Mr. Erik de Scavenius, interviewed, denied that there was any question of the sale. 'Had I ever spoken to Edward Brandes on the subject of the sale?' I was asked point-blank. As I had while in Copenhagen, only formal relations with the members of the Government, except those connected with the Foreign Office, I was enabled to say No quite honestly. It was unnecessary for me to deny the possession of a secret not my own, too, because, when asked if I had spoken to the Foreign Minister on the subject of the sale, I always said that I was always hoping for such an event, I had spoken on the subject to Count Raben-Levitzau, Count Ahlefeldt-Laurvig and Erik de Scavenius whenever I had a chance. I felt like the boy who avoided Sunday School because his father was a Presbyterian and his mother a Jewess; this left me out. I trembled for the fate of Mr. de Scavenius and Mr. Edward Brandes when their political opponents (some of them the most imaginative folk in Denmark) should learn the facts.

A lie, in my opinion, is the denying of the truth to those who have a moral right to know it. The press had no right whatever to know the truth, but even the direct diplomatic denial of a fact to persons who have no right to know it is bound to be--uncomfortable! I was astonished that both Mr. Brandes and Mr. Scavenius had been so direct; political opponents are so easily shocked and so loud in their pious appeals to Providence! For myself, I was sorry that I could not give Mr. Albert Thorup, of the a.s.sociated Press, a 'tip.'

He is such a decent man, and I shall always be grateful to him, but I was forced to connive at his losing a great 'scoop.'

The breakers began to roar; anybody but the Foreign Minister would have lost his nerve. Two visiting American journalists, who had an inkling of possibilities of the truth, behaved like gentlemen and patriots, as they are, and agreed to keep silent until the State Department should give them permission to release it. These were Mr.

William C. Bullitt, of the Philadelphia _Ledger_, and Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, of the New York _Times_. The newspaper, _Copenhagen_, was the first to hint at the secret, which, by this time, had become a _secret de Polichinelle_. Various persons were blamed; the Parliament afterwards appointed a committee of examination. On August 1st, 1916, I find in my diary,--'Thank heaven! the secret is out in the United States, but not through us.' 'Secret diplomacy' is difficult in this era of newspapers. If we are to have a Secretary of Education in the cabinet of the future, why not a Secretary of the Press?

A happy interlude in the summer of 1916 was the visit of Henry Van d.y.k.e and his wife and daughter. It was a red letter night when he came to dinner. We forgot politics, and talked of Stedman, Gilder and the elder days.

The first inkling that the _secret de Polichinelle_ was out came from a cable in _Le Temps_ of Paris. Mr. Bapst, the French Minister, who had very unjustly been accused of being against the sale, came to tell me he knew that the Treaty had been signed by Secretary Lansing and Mr. Brun in Washington. I was not at liberty to commit myself yet, so I denied that the Treaty had been signed in Washington. Mr.

Bapst sighed; I knew what he thought of me; but I had told the truth; the Treaty had been signed in New York.

Sir Henry Lowther, the British Minister, was frankly delighted that the question of the Islands was about to be opened. Irgens, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs in Norway, and a good friend to the United States, shook his head. 'If Norway owned islands, we would never give them up,' he said; but he was glad that they were going to us. The other colleagues, including Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German Minister, were occupied with other things. Count Rantzau was desirous of keeping peace with the United States. I think that he regarded war with us as so dangerous as to be almost unthinkable. I found Count Rantzau a very clever man; he played his game fairly. It was a game, and he was a colleague worth any man's respect. He is one of the most cynical, brilliant, forcible diplomatists in Europe, with liberal tendencies in politics. If he lives, he ought to go far, as he is plastic and sees the signs of the times. I found him delightful; but he infuriated other people. One day, when he is utterly tired of life, he will consciously exasperate somebody to fury, in order to escape the trouble of committing suicide himself.

The plot thickened. The ideas of the Foreign Office were, as a rule, mine--but here there was sometimes an honest difference. I was willing to work with the Foreign Office, but not under it. De Scavenius never expected this, but I think it was sometimes hard for him to see that I could not, in all details, follow his plans.

Nothing is so agreeable as to have men of talent to deal with; and I never came from an interview with de Scavenius or Chamberlain Clan, even when, perhaps, de Scavenius did not see my difficulties clearly, without an added respect for these gentlemen.

The air was full of a rumour that the United States, suspected in Europe, in spite of the fair treatment of Cuba and the Philippines, of imperialism, had made threats against Denmark, involving what was called 'pressure.' Whether it was due to enemy propaganda or not, the insinuation that the Danish West Indies would be taken by force, because Denmark was helpless, underlay many polite conversations.

'The United States would not dare to oblige France or England or a South American Republic to give up an island. She does not attempt to coerce Holland; but in spite of the pretensions to altruism, she threatens Denmark.'

This was an a.s.sertion constantly heard. The charges of imperialism made in our newspapers against some of the 'stalwart' politicians who were supposed to have influenced President McKinley in older days, were not forgotten. Letters poured in, asking if it were possible that I had used threats to the Danish Government.

The Danish politicians were turning their ploughshares into swords.

On August 4th the Rigstag went into 'executive session.' Chamberlain Hegermann-Lindencrone still heartily approved of the sale. He had, he said, tried to arrange it, under President McKinley's administration, through a hint from Major Cortelyon when he was in Paris. The att.i.tude of the press became more and more evident. Mr. Holger Angelo, one of the best 'interviewers' in the Danish press, and very loyal to his paper, the _National News_ (_National Tidende_), came to see me. Personally, he was desirous not to wound me or to criticise the conduct of my Government; but he was strongly against the sale, yet he could find no valid arguments against it. He was obliged to admit reluctantly that the only ground on which his paper could make an attack was the denial of the Cabinet Ministers that any negotiations had existed. This was the line all the opposition papers would follow.

n.o.body would say that the purchase had been negotiated on any grounds unfavourable to the national sensibilities of the Danes. Even Admiral de Richelieu admitted that neither my Government nor myself had failed to give what help could be given to his plans for improving the economic conditions of the Islands.

On August 10th the debate in the Rigstag showed, as had been expected, that Mr. J. C. Christensen, who held the balance of power, would demand a new election under the New Const.i.tution. A furious attack was made on Messrs. Brandes and de Scavenius for having denied the existence of negotiations. All this was expected. n.o.body really wanted a new election. It was too risky under war conditions.

Suddenly the rumour was revived that the British Fleet would break the neutrality of Denmark by moving through the Great Belt, and that the United States was secretly preparing to send its fleet through the Belt to help the British. The reason of this was apparent: every rumour that corroborated the impression that the United States would become a belligerent injured the chances of the sale. Such delay, to my knowledge, was an evil, since the continued U-boat horror made a war imminent. In spite of all optimism, advice from the American Emba.s.sy at Berlin, direct and indirect, pointed that way. The crisis would no doubt be delayed--this was our impression--but it must come.

Count Brockdorff-Rantzau hoped to the last that it might be avoided, and Prince Wittgenstein of his Legation, who knew all sides, seemed to believe that a conflict with the United States might yet be avoided. And there was still a dim hope, but it became dimmer every day, so that my desire to expedite matters became an obsession.

On August 12th, J. C. Christensen seemed to hold the Folkerting (the Lower House) in the hollow of his hand. He moved to appeal to the country, and to leave the question of a sale to a new Rigstag. This meant more complications, more delay, and perhaps defeat through the threatening of the war clouds. J. C. Christensen's motion was defeated by eleven votes.

On August 14th it was concluded that the quickest and least dangerous way of securing a.s.sent to the sale was by an appeal to the people, not through a general election, but through a plebiscite, in which every man and woman of twenty-nine would vote, under the provisions of the New Const.i.tution.

The Landsting (the Upper House) held a secret meeting. If a coalition ministry should not be arranged and the motion for a plebiscite should fail, there would certainly be a general election. This would, I thought, be fatal, as it would probably mean a postponement of the sale until after the close of the war. In the meantime, we heard the German representatives of the Hamburg-American Line at St. Thomas were carrying on 'some unusual improvements.' These activities, begun without the knowledge of the Governor, who was then in Denmark, were stopped by the Minister of Justice, Mr. Edward Brandes, when the knowledge of them was brought to the Danish Government. On August 15th I was convinced that one of the most important men in Denmark, indeed in Europe, Etatsraad H. N. Andersen, of the East Asiatic Company, approved of the sale. This I had believed, but I was delighted to hear it from his own lips.