Ten Years Near the German Frontier Part 5

'And, as to guests?'

'Only the Americans of your staff, I think, who have been already presented to the king.'

The announcement that the King of England would take tea with us did not cause a ripple in the household; the servants were used to kings.

King Frederick had a pleasant way of dropping in to tea without ceremony, and the princesses liked our cakes. Besides, Hans, the indispensable Hans, had waited on King Edward frequently, so he knew his tastes. But the king did not come; Prince Hans said that he was tired. He sent an equerry, with a most gracious message for Grover Cleveland, and another inquiry as to his health. The royal cigars lasted a long time as few guests were brave enough to smoke them. The king at the _Cercle_ at court was most gracious. 'I hope to see you in London,' he said. My colleagues seemed to think that his word was law, and that I would be the next amba.s.sador at the Court of St.

James's. I knew very well that his politeness was only to show that he was in a special mood to manifest his regard for the country I represented.

The King of England was failing at the time as far as his bodily health was concerned, but he had what a German observer called 'a good head' in more senses than one. He still took his favourite champagne; his cigars were too big and strong for most men, but not too big and strong for him. He showed symptoms of asthma, but he was alert, and firmly resolved to keep the peace in Europe, and, it was evident--he made it very evident--he was determined to keep on the best terms with the United States. During the pause between the parts of the performance at the Royal Opera House, where we witnessed Queen Alexandra's favourite ballet, _Napoli_, and heard excerpts from _I Poliacci_ and _Cavalleria_, the king renewed the questions about Grover Cleveland's health. Prince Hans suddenly announced that he was dead. As every minister is quite accustomed to having all kinds of news announced before he receives it, I could only conclude that it was true. Several ladies of American birth came and asked me; I could only say, 'Prince Hans says so.' Countess Raben-Levitzau, whose husband was then Minister of Foreign Affairs, seemed to be much amused that I should receive a bit of information of that kind through Prince Hans. Late that night, after the gala was over, a cable came telling me that the ex-President was well. I was glad that I was not obliged to put out the flag at half-mast for the loss of a President whom the whole country honoured, and who had shown great confidence in me at one time.

Prince Hans was full of the sayings and doings of the King of England after his departure. He called him 'Bertie' when absent-minded, recovering to the 'King of England' when he remembered that he was speaking to a stranger. Once, quoting the German Emperor, he said 'Uncle Albert.'

'Denmark will not become part of Germany in the Kaiser's time--"Uncle Albert" will see to that. England will not fight Germany in his time on any question; therefore Russia will not go against us.'

'But the Crown Prince. What of him?'

'"Uncle Albert" will see to that if the Kaiser should die--but life is long. The King of England will cease to smoke so much, and, after that, his health will be good; he has saved us, I will tell you, by defeating at Berlin the designs of the Pan-Germans against Denmark.'

The late King of England had new issues to face, and he knew it. The cause of sane democracy would have been better served had he lived longer. Perhaps he had been, like his brother-in-law, King Frederick of Denmark, crown prince too long. Nevertheless, he had observed, and he was wise. He may have been too tolerant, but he was not weak. In Denmark, one might easily get a fair view of the characters of the royal people. The Danes are keen judges of persons--perhaps too keen, and the members of their aristocracy had been constantly on intimate terms with European kings and princes. 'As for Queen Alexandra,' Miss Knollys once said, 'she will go down in history as the most beautiful of England's queens, but also as the most devoted of wives and mothers. The king makes us all work, but she works most cheerfully and is never bored.'

The visit of the King of England caused more conjectures. What did it mean? A pledge on the part of England that Denmark would be protected both against Germany and Russia? Notwithstanding the opinion that the Foreign Office in England did all the work, the diplomatists held that kings, especially King Edward and the Kaiser, had much to do with it.

CHAPTER IV

SOME DETAILS THE GERMANS KNEW

I gathered that Germany, in 1908, 1909, 1910, was growing more and more furiously jealous of England. To make a financial wilderness of London and reconstruct the money centre of the world in Berlin was the ambition of some of her great financiers.

Our time had not come yet; we might grow in peace. It depended on our att.i.tude whether we should be plucked when ripe or not. If we could be led, I gathered, into an att.i.tude inimical to England, all would be well; but that might safely be left 'to the Irish and the great German population of the Middle West.' It was 'known that English money prevented the development of our merchant marine'; but this, after all, was not to the disadvantage of Germany since, if we developed our marine, it might mean state subsidies to American ocean steamer lines. This would not have pleased Herr Ballin.

Count Henckel-Donnersmarck held no such opinions, but the members of the Berlin _haute bourgeoisie_, who occasionally came to Copenhagen, were firmly convinced that English money was largely distributed in the United States to prejudice our people against the beneficent German Kultur, which, as yet, we were too crude to receive. I gathered, too, that many of the important, the rich business representatives of Germany in our country reported that we were 'only fit to be bled.' We were unmusical, unliterary, unintellectual. We knew not what a gentleman should eat or drink. Our cooking was vile, our taste in amus.e.m.e.nt only a reflection of the English music halls.

We bluffed. We were not virile. The aristocrat did not express these opinions; but the middle cla.s.s, or higher middle cla.s.s, sojourners in our land did. 'Good Heavens!' exclaimed one American at one of our receptions to a German-American guest; 'you eat that grouse from your fists like an animal.'

'I am a male,' answered Fritz proudly; 'we must devour our food--we of the virile race!'

The pretensions of this kind of German were intolerable. He was the most brutal of sn.o.bs. He arrogated to himself a rank, when one met him, that he was not allowed to a.s.sume in his own country. It was often amusing to receive a call from a spurious 'von,' representing German interests in Milwaukee, Chicago, or Cincinnati, who patronised us until he discovered that we knew that he would be in the seventh heaven if he could, by any chance, marry his half-American daughter to the most shop-worn little lieutenant in the German army! To see him shrivel when a veritable Junker came in, was humiliating. I often wondered whether the well-to-do German burghers of St. Louis or Cincinnati were really imposed upon by men of this kind.

The n.o.bles' Club in Copenhagen is not a club as we know clubs. There are chairs, newspapers from all parts of the world, and bridge tables, if you wish to use them. You may even play the honoured game of _l'ombre_--after the manner of Christian IV., or, perhaps, His Lordship, the High Chamberlain Polonius, of the court of his late Majesty, King Claudius. People seldom go there. It is the one place in Denmark where the members of the club are never found.

The country gentlemen have rooms there when they come to town. It is in an annex of the Hotel Phoenix. A few of the best bridge players in Copenhagen meet there occasionally; the rest is silence; therefore it is a safe place for diplomatic conversations.

A very distinguished German came to me with a letter of introduction from Munich, in 1909--late in the year. His position was settled. He was not in the cla.s.s of the spurious 'vons.' He was, however, high in the confidence of the Kings of Saxony and Bavaria, both of whom, he confessed, were displeased because the United States had no diplomatic representatives at their courts. He had been _persona non grata_ with Bismarck because of his father's liberalism; he had been friendly with Windthorst, the Centre leader, and he had been in some remote way connected with the German Legation at the Vatican. We talked of Washington in the older days, of Speck von Sternberg[4] and of his charming wife, then a widow in Berlin; of the cleverness of Secretary Radowitz, who had been at the German Emba.s.sy at Washington; of the point of view of von Schoen, who had been Minister to Copenhagen. He spoke of the Kaiser's having dined in our apartment, which von Schoen had then occupied; and then he came to the point.

[4] Baron Speck von Sternberg died on May 23rd, 1908.

'Is the United States serious about the Monroe Doctrine--really?' he asked.

'It is an integral part of our policy of defence.'

'We, in Germany, do not take it seriously. I understand from my friends you have lived in Washington a long time. We are familiar with your relations with President Cleveland and of your att.i.tude towards President McKinley. We know,' he said, 'that President McKinley offered you a secret mission to Rome. We know other things; therefore, we are inclined to take you more seriously than most of the political appointees who are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Your position in the affair of the Philippines is well known to us. It would be well for you to ask your amba.s.sador at Berlin to introduce you to the Emperor; he was much pleased with your predecessor, Mr.

O'Brien. There is, no doubt, some information you could give his Imperial Majesty. You have friends in Munich, too, and in Dresden there is the Count von Seebach whom you admire, I know.'

'I admire Count von Seebach, but I am paid not to talk,' I said; 'but about the secret mission to Rome in the Philippine matter--you knew of that?'

It was more than I knew, though President McKinley, through Senator Carter, had suggested, when the Friars' difficulty had been seething in the Philippines, a solution which had seemed to me out of the question. But how did this man know of it? I had not spoken of it to the Count von Seebach, or to anybody in Germany. No word of politics had ever escaped my lips to the Count von Seebach, who was His Excellency the Director of the Royal Opera at Dresden.

'Yes; we know all the secrets of the Philippine affair, even that Domingo Merry del Val came to Washington to confer with Mr. Taft. I want to know two facts,--facts, not guesses. Your ministers who come from provincial places, after a few months' instruction in Washington, cannot know much except local politics. They are like Pomeranian squires or Jutland farmers. We know that Henckel-Donnersmarck and you are on good terms, and we are prepared to treat you from a confidential point of view.'

This was interesting; it showed how closely even unimportant persons like myself were observed; it was flattering, too; for one grows tired of the foreign a.s.sumption that every American envoy has come abroad because, as De Tocqueville says in _Democracy in America_ he has failed at home.

'Mr. Poultney Bigelow, whom you doubtless know, once said in conversation with the Kaiser, that his father would rather see him dead than a member of your diplomatic corps, and he was unusually well equipped for work of that kind. With few exceptions, as I have remarked, your service is _pour rire_. What can a man from one of your provincial towns know of anything but local politics and business?'

I laughed: 'But you are businesslike, too; I hear that, when the Kaiser speaks to Americans--at least they have told me so--it is generally on commercial subjects. He likes to know even how many vessels pa.s.s the locks every year at Sault Sainte Marie, and the amount of grain that can be stored in the Chicago elevators.'

'It is useful to us,' my acquaintance said. 'You would scarcely expect him to talk about things that do not exist in your country--music, art, literature, high diplomacy----'

My reply shall be buried in oblivion; it might sound too much like _eloquence de l'escalier_.

After an interval, not without words, I said:

'It is not necessary for a man to have lived in Washington or New York in order to have a grasp on American politics in relation to the foreign problem at the moment occupying the attention of the American people or the Department of State. Every country boy at home is a potential statesman and a politician. I recall the impression made on two visiting foreigners some years ago by the interest of our very young folk in politics. "Good heavens!" said the Marquis Moustier de Merinville, "these children of ten and twelve are monsters! They argue about Bryan and free silver! Such will make revolutions." "I cannot understand it," said Prince Adam Saphia. "Children ask one whether one is a Republican or Democrat."'

'That may be so,' he said. 'Your Presidents are not as a rule chosen from men who live in the great cities.'

'You forget that, while Paris is France, Berlin, Germany----'

'No, Berlin is Prussia,' he said, smiling; 'but London is England; Paris, France; and Vienna would be Austria if it were not for Budapest.'

'New York or Washington is not, as you seem to think, the United States.'

'That may be,' he said, 'nevertheless it is difficult for a European to understand. It may be,' he added thoughtfully, 'there are some things about your country we shall never come to understand thoroughly.'

'You will have to die first--like the man of your own country who, crossing a crowded street, was injured mortally and cried: "Now I shall know it _all_." You will never understand us in this world.'

'That is _blague_,' he said. 'We Germans know all countries. Besides, you know the German language.'

'Who told you that? It's nonsense!' I asked, aghast.

'The other day, I have heard that the Austrians were talking in German to the First Secretary of the German Legation at the Foreign Office, when you suddenly forgot yourself and asked a question in good German!' he said triumphantly.

This was true. Count Zichy, secretary of the Austrian-Hungarian Legation, had dropped from French into German. Now, I had read Heine and Goethe when I was young, and I had written the German script; but that was long ago. There were great arid s.p.a.ces in my knowledge of the German language, but something that Count Zichy had said about an arbitration treaty had vaguely caught my attention, and I had blundered out, 'Was ist das, Herr Graf?' or something equally elegant and scholarly. This was really amusing. My friends had always accused me of turning all German conversation toward _Wilhelm Meister_ and _Der Erlkonig_, since I could quote from both!

'You can _finesse_,' continued the great n.o.bleman. 'You are not usual. Your Government has sent you here for a special mission; it is well to pose as a poet and a man of letters, but you have been reported to our Government as having a _mission secrete_. You are allied with the Russians; we know that you are not rich.' This very charming person, who always laid himself at 'the feet of the ladies'

and clicked his heels like castanets, did not apologise for discussing my private affairs without permission, and for insinuating that I was paid by the Russian Government.