All these conversations were illuminating to me as Wangenheim’s revelation of the Conference of July 5th. That episode clearly proved that Germany had consciously started the war, while these grandiose schemes, as outlined by this very able but somewhat talkative Ambassador, showed the reasons that had impelled her in this great enterprise. Wangenheim gave me a complete picture of the German Empire embarking on a great buccaneering enterprise, in which the spoils of success came to be the accumulated riches of her neighbours and the world position which their skill and industry had built up through the centuries.
If England attempted to starve Germany, said Wangenheim, Germany’s response would be a simple one: she would starve France. At that time, we must remember, Germany expected to have Paris within a week, and she believed that this would ultimately give her control of the whole country. It was evidently the German plan, as understood by Wangenheim, to hold this nation as a pawn for England’s behaviour, a kind of hostage on a gigantic scale, and, should England gain any military or naval advantage, Germany would attempt to counter-attack by torturing the whole French people. At that moment German soldiers were murdering innocent Belgians in return for the alleged misbehaviour of other Belgians, and evidently Germany had planned to apply this principle to whole nations as well as to individuals.
All through this and other talks, Wangenheim showed the greatest animosity to Russia.
“We’ve got our foot on Russia’s corn,” he said, “and we propose to keep it there.”
By this he must have meant that Germany had sent the Goeben and the Breslau through the Dardanelles and so controlled the situation in Constantinople. The old Byzantine capital, said Wangenheim, was the prize which a victorious Russia would demand, and her lack of an all-the-year-round port in warm waters was Russia’s tender spot—her “corn.” At this time Wangenheim boasted that Germany had 174 German gunners at the Dardanelles, that the Strait could be closed in less than thirty minutes, and that Souchon, the German admiral, had informed him that the Straits were impregnable. “We shall not close the Dardanelles, however,” he said, “unless England attacks them.”
At that time England, although she had declared war on Germany, had played no conspicuous part in the military operations; her “contemptible little army” was making its heroic retreat from Mons. Wangenheim entirely discounted England as an enemy. It was the German intention, he said, to place their big guns at Calais, and throw their shells across the English Channel to the English coast towns; that Germany would not have Calais within the next ten days did not occur to him as a possibility. In this and other conversations at about the same time Wangenheim laughed at the idea that England could create a large independent army. “The idea is preposterous,” he said. “It takes generations of militarism to produce any thing like the German army. We have been building it up for two hundred years. It takes thirty years of constant training to produce such generals as we have. Our army will always maintain its organisation. We have 500,000 recruits reaching military age every year, and we cannot possibly lose that number, so that our army will be kept intact.”
A few weeks later civilisation was outraged by the German bombardment of English coast towns, such as Scarborough and Hartlepool. This was no sudden German inspiration, but part of their carefully-considered plans. Wangenheim told me, on September 6th, 1914, that Germany intended to bombard all English harbours, so as to stop the food supply. It is also apparent that German ruthlessness against American sea trade was no sudden decision of von Tirpitz, for on this same date the German Ambassador to Constantinople warned me that it would be very dangerous for the United States to send ships to England!
CHAPTER VIII
A CLASSIC INSTANCE OF GERMAN PROPAGANDA
In those August and September days Germany had no intention of precipitating Turkey immediately into the war. As I had a deep interest in the welfare of the Turkish people and in maintaining peace, I telegraphed Washington asking if I might use my influence to keep Turkey neutral. I received a reply that I might do this provided that I made my representations unofficially and purely upon humanitarian grounds. As the English and the French Ambassadors were exerting all their effort to keep Turkey neutral, I knew that my intervention in the same interest would not displease the British Government. Germany, however, might regard any interference on my part as an unneutral act, and I asked Wangenheim if there could be any objection from that source.
His reply somewhat surprised me, though I saw through it soon afterward. “Not at all,” he said. “Germany desires, above all, that Turkey shall remain neutral.”