Part 11 (1/2)
I complied with his request and it is characteristic of the President's desire to preserve good relations that publication was withheld. Now, when the two countries are at war; when the whole world, and especially our own country, has an interest in knowing how this great calamity of universal war came to the earth, the time has come when this message should be given out and I have published it by permission.
This most interesting doc.u.ment in the first place clears up one issue never really obscure in the eyes of the world--the deliberate violation of the neutrality of Belgium, whose territory ”had to be violated by Germany on strategical grounds.” The very weak excuse is added that ”news had been received that France was already preparing to enter Belgium,”--not even a pretense that there had ever been any actual violation of Belgium's frontier by the French prior to the German invasion of that unfortunate country. Of course the second excuse that the King of the Belgians had refused entrance to the Emperor's troops under guarantee of his country's freedom is even weaker than the first. It would indeed inaugurate a new era in the intercourse of nations if a small nation could only preserve its freedom by at all times, on request, granting free pa.s.sage to the troops of a powerful neighbour on the march to attack an adjoining country.
And aside from the violation of Belgian neutrality, what would have become of England and of the world if the Prussian autocracy had been left free to defeat--one by one--the nations of the earth? First, the defeat of Russia and Serbia by Austria and Germany, the incorporation of a large part of Russia in the German Empire, German influence predominant in Russia and all the vast resources of that great Empire at the command of Germany. All the fleets in the world could uselessly blockade the German coasts if Germany possessed the limitless riches of the Empire of the Romanoffs.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALLEGED DUM-DUM BULLETS, WHICH THE GERMANS DECLARED HAD BEEN FOUND IN LONGWY.]
The German army drawing for reserves on the teeming populations of Russia and Siberia would never know defeat. And this is not idle conjecture, mere dreaming in the realm of possibilities, because the Russian revolution has shown us how weak and tottering in reality was the dreaded power of the Czar.
Russia, beaten and half digested, France would have been an easy prey, and England, even if then joining France in war, would have a far different problem to face if the V-boats were now sailing from Cherbourg and Calais and Brest and Bordeaux on the mission of piracy and murder, and then would come our turn and that of Latin America. The first attack would come not on us, but on South or Central America--at some point to which it would be as difficult for us to send troops to help our neighbor as it would be for Germany to attack.
Remember that in Southern Brazil nearly four hundred thousand Germans are sustained, as I found out, in their devotion to the Fatherland by annual grants of money for educational purposes from the Imperial treasury in Berlin.
It was not without reason that at this interview, when the Kaiser wrote this message to the President, he said that the coming in of England had changed the whole situation and would make the war a long one. The Kaiser talked rather despondently about the war. I tried to cheer him up by saying the German troops would soon enter Paris, but he answered, ”The English change the whole situation--an obstinate nation--they will keep up the war. It cannot end soon.”
It was the entry of England into the war, in defence of the rights of small nations, in defence of the guaranteed neutrality of Belgium, which saved the world from the harsh dominion of the conquest-hungry Prussians and therefore saved as well the two Americas and their protecting doctrine of President Monroe.
The doc.u.ment, which is dated August tenth, 1914, supersedes the statement made by the German Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg in his speech before the Reichstag on August fourth, 1914, in which he gave the then official account of the entrance into the war of the Central Empires. It will be noted that von Bethmann-Hollweg insisted that France began the war in the sentence reading: ”There were bomb-throwing fliers, cavalry patrols, invading companies in the Reichsland (Alsace-Lorraine). Thereby France, although the condition of war had not yet been declared, had attacked our territory.” But the Emperor makes no mention of this fact, of supreme importance if true, in his writing to President Wilson six days later.
Quite curiously, at this time there was a belief on the part of the Germans that j.a.pan would declare war on the Allies and range herself on the side of the Central Powers. In fact on one night there was a friendly demonstration in front of the j.a.panese Emba.s.sy, but these hopes were soon dispelled by the ultimatum of j.a.pan sent on the sixteenth of August, and, finally, by the declaration of war on August twenty-third.
During the first days of the war the warring powers indulged in mutual recriminations as to the use of dumdum bullets and I was given several packages of cartridges containing bullets bored out at the top which the Germans said had been found in the French fortress of Longwy, with a request that I send an account of them to President Wilson and ask for his intervention in the matter.
Very wisely President Wilson refused to do anything of the kind, as otherwise he would have been deluged with constant complaints from both sides as to the violations of the rules of war.
The cartridges given to me were in packages marked on the outside ”_Cartouches_de_Stand_” and from this I took it that possibly these cartridges had been used on some shooting range near the fort and the bullets bored out in order that they might not go too far, if carelessly fired over the targets.
On August fifth, with our Naval Attache, Commander Walter Gherardi, I called upon von Tirpitz, to learn from him which ports be considered safest for the s.h.i.+ps to be sent from America with gold for stranded Americans. He recommended Rotterdam.
I also had a conversation on this day with Geheimrat Letze of the Foreign Office with reference to the proposition that English and German s.h.i.+ps respectively should have a delay of until the fourteenth of August in which to leave the English or German ports in which they chanced to be.
The second week in August, my wife's sister and her husband, Count Sigray, arrived in Berlin. Count Sigray is a reserve officer of the Hungarian Hussars and was in Montana when the first rumours of war came. He and his wife immediately started for New York and sailed on the fourth of August. They landed in England, and as England had not yet declared war on Austria, they were able to proceed on their journey. With them were Count George Festetics and Count Cziraki, the former from the Austrian Emba.s.sy in London and the latter from that in Was.h.i.+ngton. They were all naturally very much excited about war and the events of their trip. The Hungarians as a people are quite like Americans. They have agreeable manners and are able to laugh in a natural way, something which seems to be a lost art in Prussia. Nearly all the members of Hungarian n.o.ble families speak English perfectly and model their clothes, sports and country life, as far as possible, after the English.
The thirteenth saw the departure of our first special train containing Americans bound for Holland. I saw the Americans off at the Charlottenburg station. They all departed in great spirits and very glad of an opportunity to leave Germany.
I had some negotiations about the purchase by America or Americans of the s.h.i.+ps of the North German Lloyd, but nothing came of these negotiations. Trainloads of Americans continued to leave, but there seemed to be no end to the Americans coming into Berlin from all directions.
On August twenty-ninth, Count Szoegyeny, the Austrian Amba.s.sador, left Berlin. He had been Amba.s.sador there for twenty-two years and I suppose because of his advancing years the Austrian Government thought that he had outlived his usefulness. Quite a crowd of Germans and diplomats were at the station to witness the rather sad farewell. His successor was Prince Hohenlohe, married to a daughter of Archduke Frederick. She expressly waived her right to precedence as a royal highness, and agreed to take only the precedence given to her as the wife of the Amba.s.sador, in order not to cause feeling in Berlin. Prince Hohenlohe, a rather easy-going man, who had been most popular in Russia and Austria, immediately made a favourable impression in Berlin and successfully occupied the difficult position of mediator between the governments of Berlin and Vienna.
On September fourth the Chancellor gave me a statement to give to the reporters in which he attacked England, claiming that England did not desire the friends.h.i.+p of Germany but was moved by commercial jealousy and a desire to crush her; that the efforts made for peace had failed because Russia, under all circ.u.mstances, was resolved upon war; and that Germany had entered Belgium in order to forestall the planned French advance. He also claimed that England, regardless of consequences to the white race, had excited j.a.pan to a pillaging expedition, and claimed that Belgian girls and women had gouged out the eyes of the wounded; that officers had been invited to dinner and shot across the table; and Belgian women had cut the throats of soldiers quartered in their houses while they were asleep. The Chancellor concluded by saying, in this statement, that everyone knows that the German people is not capable of unnecessary cruelty or of any brutality.
We were fully occupied with taking care of the English prisoners and interests, the Americans, and negotiations relating to commercial questions, and to getting goods required in the United States out of Germany, when, on October seventh, a most unpleasant incident, and one which for some time caused the members of our Emba.s.sy to feel rather bitterly toward the German Foreign Office, took place.
A great number of British civilians, men and women, were stranded in Berlin. To many of these were paid sums of money in the form of small allowances on behalf of the British Government. In order to facilitate this work, we placed the clerks employed in this distribution in the building formerly occupied by the British Consul in Berlin. Of course, the great crowds of Americans resorting to our Emba.s.sy, when combined with the crowds of British, made it almost impossible even to enter the Emba.s.sy, and establishment of this outlying relief station materially helped this situation.
I occupied it, and employed English men and English women in this relief work by the express permission of the Imperial Foreign Office, which I thought it wise to obtain in view of the fact that the Germans seemed daily to become more irritable and suspicious, especially after the Battle of the Marne.
On the night of October second, our Second Secretary, Harvey, went to this relief headquarters at about twelve o'clock at night, and was witness to a raid made by the Berlin police on this establishment of ours. The men and women working were arrested, and all books and papers which the police could get at were seized by them.
The next morning I went around to the place and on talking with the criminal detectives in charge, was told by them that they had made the raid by the orders of the Foreign Office. When I spoke to the Foreign Office about this, they denied that they had given directions for the raid and made a sort of half apology. The raid was all the more unjustified because only the day before I had had a conversation with the Adjutant of the Berlin Kommandantur and told him that, although I had permission from the Foreign Office, I thought it would be better to dismiss the English employed and employ only Americans or Germans; and I sent round to my friend, Herr von Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank, and asked him to recommend some German accountants to me.
The Kommandantur is the direct office of military control. When the Adjutant heard of the raid he was almost as indignant as I was, and on the tenth of October informed me that he had learned that the raid had been made on the joint orders of the Foreign Office and von Tirpitz's department.