The United States hardly counted; she was too far off and seemed to be hopelessly ignorant of the essential conditions of foreign affairs. Her diplomacy, if it existed at all, was determined by existing political conditions at home.
I visited Holland and Belgium; Germany loomed larger. She was bent on commercial supremacy everywhere. One could not avoid admitting that fact.
As to Denmark, it was piteous to see how the Danes feared the power that never ceased to threaten them. Prussia has made her empire possible by establishing the beginnings, in 1864, of her naval power at the expense of Denmark. The longer I lived in Denmark the more strongly I felt that Germany was getting ready for a short, sharp war in which the United States of America, it seemed to me (as I was no prophet), was not to be a factor, but Russia was.
The members of the German Legation were very sympathetic, especially the Minister, Count Henckel-Donnersmarck. He loved Weimar; he loved the old Germany. It was a delight to hear him talk of the real glories of his country. His family, in the opinion of the Germans, was so great that he could afford to do as he pleased; I rather think he looked on the Hohenzollerns as rather parvenus. He was of the school of Frederick the Noble rather than of William the Conqueror.
'Do you mind talking politics?' I asked him one day.
'It bores me,' he said, 'because there is nothing stable. My country feels that it is being isolated. Since Algeria, in 1906, she stands against Europe, with Austria.'
'Stands against the United States?'
'No, no; we shall always be at peace,' he said. 'Our interests are not dissimilar; our military organisation is almost perfect. Yes, we learned some lessons even from your Civil War, though you are not a military people. Your country is full of our citizens.'
'Your citizens, Count!'
'Ah, yes, – in Brazil and Argentine, everywhere, a German citizen is like a Roman citizen, proud and unchanging, that is the German citizen who understands the aims of modern Germany. Civis Romanus sum! The older ones are different; it is a question of sentiment and memories with them. Your great German population will always keep you out of conflict with us, though even you, who know our literature, are at heart English – I mean politically. You cannot help it. Your Irish blood may count, but the point of view is made by literature. It gets into the blood. See what Homer has done for those old savages of his. Our bankers can always manage the finances of New York, as they manage those of London. It would be a sad day for Germany if we should break with you; some of us know that Frederick the Great saw your future, and believed that we always ought to be friends. But do not imagine that your nation, great as it is, can do anything your people wills to do. Great power, I understand, is hidden in your country; but, as the actors say, you cannot get it across the footlights. It is not, as Gambetta spoke of the Catholic religion in France, a matter for export.'
'Our education,' Count Henckel-Donnersmarck resumed, 'is practical; Goethe and Schiller mean little now to us. Bismarck has made new men of us. I shall not live long, and I cannot say I regret it,' he said; 'and, as the lust of power becomes the rule of the world, my son must be a new German or suffer.'
'Count Henckel,' as he preferred to be called, did not remain long in Copenhagen; he was recalled because, it was reported, he did not provide the Kaiser, who carefully read his ministers' reports, with a sufficient number of details of life in Denmark.
When I took his hint and went to Germany, at Christmas – Christmas was a divine time in the old Germany! – I found that Count Henckel was right. Berlin was hygienic, ugly, and more offensively immoral than Paris was once said to be.
There was an artificial rule of life. Even the lives of the boys and girls seemed to be ordered by some unseen law. You could breathe, but it was necessary not to consume too much oxygen at a time. That was verboten; and there were cannons on the Christmas trees!
CHAPTER III
THE KAISER AND THE KING OF ENGLAND
It was pleasant to renew old memories among diplomatists and ex-diplomatists in Copenhagen. I remembered the old days in Washington, when Sir Edward Thornton's house was far up-town, when the rows between the Chileans and Peruvians – I forget to which party the amiable Ibañez belonged – convulsed the coteries that gathered at Mrs. Dahlgren's, when Bodisco and Aristarchi Bey and Baron de Santa Ana were more than names, and the Hegermann-Lindencrones2 were the handsomest couple in Washington. So it was agreeable to find some colleagues with whom one had reminiscences in common. Then there were the Americans married to members of the corps. Lady Johnston, wife of Sir Alan; Madame de Riaño, married to one of the most well-balanced and efficient diplomatists in Europe. These ladies made the way of my wife and my daughters very easy.
An envoy arriving at a new post has one consolation, not an unmitigatedly agreeable one. He is sure of knowing what his colleagues think of him. And for a while they weigh him very carefully. The American can seldom shirk the direct question: 'Is this your first post?' It required great strength of mind not to say: 'I had a special mission to the Indian Reservations, and I have always been, more or less, you know – '
'Ah, I see! Calcutta, Bombay – !'
'Not exactly – Red Lake, you know – the Reservations, wards of our Government.'
'Oh, red Indians! I was not aware that you had diplomatic relations with the old red Indian princes. But this is your first post in Europe?'
You cannot avoid that. However, the longer one is at a post, the more he enjoys it. In the course of nearly eleven years, I never knew one of my colleagues who did not show esprit de corps. They become more and more kindly. You know that they know your faults and your virtues. In the diplomatic service you are like Wolsey, naked, not to your enemies, but to your colleagues. They can help you greatly if they will.
After the peace of Portsmouth, which in the opinion of certain Russians gave all the advantages to Japan, the Emperor of Germany spoke of President Roosevelt with added respect, we were told. The attitude toward Americans on the part of Germans seemed always the reflection of the point of view of the Kaiser. From their point of view, it was only the President who counted; our nation, from the Pan-German point of view seemed not to be of importance.
It was rather hard to find out exactly what the Kaiser's attitude towards us was. Some of the court circle – there were always visitors from Berlin – announced that the Kaiser was greatly pleased by the result of the Portsmouth conference. He knew the weakness of Russia, and though he believed that German interests required that she should not be strong, he feared, above all things, the preponderance of the Yellow Races. I discovered one thing early, that the Pan-German party propagated the idea that the Japanese alliance with England could be used against the United States.
It was vain to argue about this. 'Japan is your enemy; the Philippines will be Japanese, unless you strengthen yourselves by a quasi-alliance with us; then England, tied to Japan, can not oppose you.' One could discover very little from the Kaiser's public utterances; but he indemnified himself for his conventionality in public by his frankness in private.
He described the Danish as the most 'indiscreet of courts.' He forgot that his own indiscretions had become proverbial in Copenhagen. Whether this 'indiscretion' was first submitted to the Foreign Office is a question. His diplomatists were usually miracles of discretion; but the city was full of 'echoes' from Berlin which did not come from the diplomatists or the court. The truth was, the Kaiser looked on the courts of Denmark and Stockholm as dependencies, and he was 'hurt' when any of the court circle seemed to forget this.
In his eyes, a German princess, no matter whom she married, was to remain a German. The present Queen of Denmark, the most discreet of princesses, never forgot that she was a Danish princess and would be in time a