Ordeal by Battle

by Frederick Scott Oliver

In the pages of various official publications, and in newspaper reports immediately before and after war began, we caught glimpses of certain characters at work; but these were not professional soldiers; they were members of the Court and the Bureaucracy.

Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Imperial Chancellor, comes upon the scene—a harassed and indignant official—sorely flustered—not by any means master of his temper—not altogether certain of his facts—in considerable doubt apparently as to whether things have not passed behind his back which he ought to have been told of by higher powers, but was not. He appears to us as a diligent and faithful servant,—one who does not seek to impose his own decisions, but to excuse, justify, and carry out, if he can, decisions which have been made by others, more highly placed and greedier of responsibility than himself.

Herr von Jagow, the Foreign Minister, is much affected. He drops tears—or comes somewhere near dropping them—over the lost hopes of a peaceful understanding between England and Germany. We can credit the sincerity of his sorrow all the more easily, for the reason that Herr von Jagow behaves throughout the crisis as the courteous gentleman; while others, who by position were even greater gentlemen, forget momentarily, in their excitement, the qualities which are usually associated with that title.

Then there is the German Ambassador at Vienna—obviously a firebrand—enjoying, one imagines, the confidence of the war parties in both capitals: also apparently a busy intriguer. The documents show him acting behind the back of the Berlin Foreign Office, and communicating direct with the Kaiser.

We gather very clearly that he egged on the statesmen of Vienna, with great diligence and success, to press Servia to extremes, and to shear time so short that peace-makers had nothing left to catch hold of. Russia, he assured them, would never carry her opposition to the point of war. Even if she did so, he argued with much plausibility, she would be negligible. For she stood midway in a great military and naval reformation, than which no situation is more deplorable for the purposes of carrying on a campaign.

PRINCE LICHNOWSKY

When Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador in London, took his departure at the outbreak of war, he probably left no single enemy behind him. A simple, friendly, sanguine figure, with a pardonable vanity which led him to believe the incredible. He produced what is called in the cant of the day 'an atmosphere,' mainly in drawing-rooms and newspaper offices, but occasionally, one conjectures, even in Downing Street itself. His artistry was purely in air and touched nothing solid. He was useful to his employers, mainly because he put England off her guard. He would not have been in the least useful if he had not been mainly sincere.

But though he was useful to German policy, he was not trusted by the powers in Berlin to attend to their business at the Court of St. James's except under strict supervision. What precisely were the duties of Baron von Kuhlmann, Councillor to the Embassy? He was always very cheerful, and obliging, and ready to smooth any little difficulty out of the way. On the other hand, he was also very deft at inserting an obstacle with an air of perfect innocence, which imposed on nearly every one—even occasionally on the editors of newspapers. For some reason, however, very few people were willing to accept this plausible diplomatist's assurances without a grain or two of salt. Indeed quite a large number were so misled by their prejudices against him, that they were convinced his prime vocation was that of a spy—a spy on the country to which he was accredited and on the Ambassador under whom he served.[[2]]

We know more of the Kaiser than of any of these others, and we have known him over a much longer period. And yet our knowledge of him has never enabled us to forecast his actions with any certainty. British ministers and diplomatists, whose business it is to gauge, not only the muzzle-velocity of eminent characters, but also the forces of their recoil, never seem to have arrived at any definite conclusions with regard to this baffling personality. Whatever he did or did not do, they were always surprised by it, which gives us some measure of their capacity if not of his.

The Kaiser is pre-eminently a man of moods. At one time he is Henry the Fifth, at another Richard the Second. Upon occasions he appears as Hamlet, cursing fate which impels him to make a decision. Within the same hour he is Autolycus crying up his wares with an unfeigned cheerfulness. He is possessed by the demon of quick-change and restlessness. We learn on good authority that he possesses an almost incredible number of uniforms which he actually wears, and of royal residences which he occasionally inhabits. He clothes himself suitably for each brief occasion, and sleeps rarely, if reports can be believed, for more than two nights together under the same roof. He is like an American millionaire in his fondness for rapid and sudden journeys, and like a democratic politician in his passion for speech-making.