I protested strongly against that statement, and said that, in the same way as he and Herr von Jagow wished me to understand that for strategical reasons it was a matter of life and death to Germany to advance through Belgium and violate the latter’s neutrality, so I would wish him to understand that it was, so to speak, a matter of “life and death” for the honour of Great Britain that she should keep her solemn engagement to do her utmost to defend Belgium’s neutrality if attacked. That solemn compact simply had to be kept, or what confidence could anyone have in engagements given by Great Britain in the future? The Chancellor said, “But at what price will that compact have been kept? Has the British Government thought of that?” I hinted to his Excellency as plainly as I could that fear of consequences could hardly be regarded as an excuse for breaking solemn engagements, but his Excellency was so excited, so evidently overcome by the news of our action, and so little disposed to hear reason, that I refrained from adding fuel to the flame by further argument.
As I was leaving he said that the blow of Great Britain joining Germany’s enemies was all the greater that almost up to the last moment he and his Government had been working with us and supporting our efforts to maintain peace between Austria and Russia. I said that this was part of the tragedy which saw the two nations fall apart just at the moment when the relations between them had been more friendly and cordial than they had been for years. Unfortunately, notwithstanding our efforts to maintain peace between Russia and Austria, the war had spread, and had brought us face to face with a situation which, if we held to our engagements, we could not possibly avoid, and which unfortunately entailed our separation from our late fellow-workers. He would readily understand that no one regretted this more than I.
After this somewhat painful interview I returned to the Embassy, and drew up a telegraphic report of what had passed. This telegram was handed in at the Central Telegraph Office a little before nine p.m. It was accepted by that office, but apparently never despatched.
At about 9.30 p.m. Herr von Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary of State, came to see me. After expressing his deep regret that the very friendly official and personal relations between us were about to cease, he asked me casually whether a demand for passports was equivalent to a declaration of war. I said that such an authority on international law as he was known to be must know as well or better than I what was usual in such cases. I added that there were many cases where diplomatic relations had been broken off, and, nevertheless, war had not ensued; but that in this case he would have seen from my instructions, of which I had given Herr von Jagow a written summary, that his Majesty’s Government expected an answer to a definite question by twelve o’clock that night, and that in default of a satisfactory answer they would be forced to take such steps as their engagements required. Herr Zimmermann said that that was, in fact, a declaration of war, as the Imperial Government could not possibly give the assurance required either that night or any other night.
CHAPTER XI
JUST FOR “A SCRAP OF PAPER”
“Just for neutrality—a word which in war-time had so often been disregarded—just for a scrap of paper, Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation.”
The frame of mind which generated this supreme unconcern for the feelings of the Belgians, this matter-of-fact contempt for the inviolability of a country’s plighted word, gives us the measure of the abyss which sunders the old-world civilization, based on all that is loftiest in Christianity, from modern German culture. From this revolutionary principle, the right to apply which, however, is reserved to Germany alone, radiate wholly new conceptions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, plain and double dealing, which are destructive of the very groundwork of all organized society. Some forty or fifty years ago it was a doctrine confined to Prussia of the Hohenzollerns: to-day it is the creed of the Prussianized German Empire.
Frederic the Great practised it without scruple or shame. It was he who, having given Maria Theresa profuse assurances of help should her title to the Habsburg throne ever be questioned by any other State, got together a powerful army as secretly as he could, invaded her territory, and precipitated a sanguinary European war. Yet he had guaranteed the integrity of the Austrian Empire. What were his motives? He himself has avowed them openly: “ambition, interest, and a yearning to move people to talk about me were the mainsprings of my action.” And this wanton war was made without any formal declaration, without any quarrel, without any grievance. He was soon joined by other Powers, with whom he entered into binding engagements. But as soon as he was able to conclude an advantageous peace with the Austrian Empress, he abandoned his allies and signed a treaty. This document, like the former one, he soon afterwards treated as a mere scrap of paper, and again attacked the Austrian Empire. And this was the man who wrote a laboured refutation of the pernicious teachings of Machiavelli, under the title of “Anti-Machiavel”!
Now, Frederic the Great is the latter-day Germans’ ideal of a monarch. His infamous practices were the concrete nucleus around which the subversive Pan-Germanic doctrines of to-day gathered and hardened into the political creed of a race. What the Hohenzollerns did for Prussia, Prussia under the same Hohenzollerns has effected for Germany, where not merely the Kaiser and his Government, or the officials, or the officers of the army and navy, or the professors and the journalists, but the clergy, the socialists, nay, all thinking classes of the population, are infected with the virus of the fell Prussian disease which threatens the old-world civilization with decomposition.
To this danger humanity cannot afford to be either indifferent or lenient. It may and will be extremely difficult to extirpate the malady, but the Powers now arrayed against aggressive and subversive Teutonism should see to it that the nations affected shall be made powerless to spread it.