In the World War

by Graf Ottokar Theobald Otto Maria Czernin von und zu Chudenitz

It was a crime committed by some Russian or Roumanian secret society, and the Governments of both countries showed surprisingly little interest in investigating the matter and delivering the culprits up to justice.

On June 15 I heard from a reliable source that Catarau had been seen in Bucharest. He walked about the streets quite openly in broad daylight, and no one interfered with him; then he disappeared.

To return, however, to my interview with the old King. Filled with alarm, he dispatched that same evening two telegrams, one to Belgrade and one to Petersburg, urging that the ultimatum be accepted without fail.

The terrible distress of mind felt by the King when, like a sudden flash of lightning from the clouds, he saw before him a picture of the world war may be accounted for because he felt certain that the conflict between his personal convictions and his people's attitude would suddenly be known to all. The poor old King fought the fight to the best of his ability, but it killed him. King Carol's death was caused by the war. The last weeks of his life were a torture to him; each message that I had to deliver he felt as the lash of a whip. I was enjoined to do all I could to secure Roumania's prompt co-operation, according to the terms of the Alliance, and I was even obliged to go so far as to remind him that "a promise given allows of no prevarication: that a treaty is a treaty, and his honour obliged him to unsheathe his sword." I recollect one particularly painful scene, where the King, weeping bitterly, flung himself across his writing-table and with trembling hands tried to wrench from his neck his order Pour le Mérite. I can affirm without any exaggeration that I could see him wasting away under the ceaseless moral blows dealt to him, and that the mental torment he went through undoubtedly shortened his life.

Queen Elizabeth was well aware of all, but she never took my action amiss; she understood that I had to deliver the messages, but that it was not I who composed them.

Queen Elizabeth was a good, clever and touchingly simple woman, not a poet qui court après l'esprit, but a woman who looked at the world through conciliatory and poetical glasses. She was a good conversationalist, and there was always a poetic charm in all she did. There hung on the staircase a most beautiful sea picture, which I greatly admired while the Queen talked to me about the sea, about her little villa at Constanza, which, built on the extreme end of the quay, seems almost to lie in the sea. She spoke, too, of her travels and impressions when on the high seas, and as she spoke the great longing for all that is good and beautiful made itself felt, and this is what she said to me: "The sea lives. If there could be found any symbol of eternity it would be the sea, endless in greatness and everlasting in movement. The day is dull and stormy. One after another the glassy billows come rolling in and break with a roar on the rocky shore. The small white crests of the waves look as if covered with snow. And the sea breathes and draws its breath with the ebb and flow of the tide. The tide is the driving power that forces the mighty waters from Equator to North Pole. And thus it works, day and night, year by year, century by century. It takes no heed of the perishable beings who call themselves lords of the world, who live only for a day, coming and going and vanishing almost as they come. The sea remains to work. It works for all, for men, for animals, for plants, for without the sea there could be no organic life in the world. The sea is like a great filter, which alone can produce the change of matter that is necessary for life. In the course of a century numberless rivers carry earth to the sea. Each river carries without ceasing its burden of earth and sand to the ocean; and the sea receives the load which is carried by the current far out to sea, and slowly and by degrees in the course of time the sea dissolves or crushes all it has received. No matter to the sea if the process lasts a thousand years or more—it may even last for ages, who can tell?

"But one day, quite suddenly, the sea begins to wander. Once there was sea everywhere, and all continents are born from the sea. One day land arose out of the sea. The birth was of a revolutionary nature, there were earthquakes, volcanic craters, falling cities and dying men—but new land was there. Or else it moves slowly, invisibly, a metre or two in a century, and returns to the land it used to possess. Thus it restores the soil it stole from it, but cleaner, refined and full of vitality to live and to create. Such is the sea and its work."

These are the words of the old half-blind Queen, who can never look upon the beloved picture again, but she told me how she always idolised the sea, and how her grand nephews and nieces shared her feelings, and how she grew young again with them when she told them tales of olden times.

One could listen to her for hours without growing weary, and always there was some beautiful thought or word to carry away and think over.

Doubtless such knowledge would be more correct were it taken from some geological work. But Carmen Sylva's words invariably seemed to strike some poetic chord; that is what made her so attractive.