The Chancellor also in effect asks us to bargain away whatever obligations or interest we have as regards the neutrality of Belgium. We could not entertain that bargain either.
Having said so much, it is unnecessary to examine whether the prospect of a future general neutrality agreement between England and Germany offered positive advantages sufficient to compensate us for tying our hands now. We must preserve our full freedom to act as circumstances may seem to us to require in any such unfavorable and regrettable development of the present crisis as the Chancellor contemplates.
You should speak to the Chancellor in the above sense, and add most earnestly that one way of maintaining good relations between England and Germany is that they should continue to work together to preserve the peace of Europe; if we succeed in this object, the mutual relations of Germany and England will, I believe, be ipso facto improved and strengthened. For that object His Majesty’s Government will work in that way with all sincerity and goodwill.
And I will say this: If the peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present crisis safely passed, my own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement, to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately.
This letter will give Sir Edward Grey lasting glory in the history of civilization. Its chivalrous fairness to France needs no comment, but its most significant feature is the concluding portion, in which the English Foreign Minister suggested to Germany that if peace could be preserved, England stood ready to join with Germany in an alliance which would have insured all the great European nations against any aggressive war on the part of either of them.
It was, in fact, the “United States of Europe” in embryo. It was the one solution possible for these long-continued European wars—essentially civil wars—namely an alliance by the six great Powers,—a merger of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente,—whereby any aggressive act on the part of any one of them would be prevented by the others. What an infinite pity that the imprudent act of the Kaiser, and the mad folly of his advisers probably made a fair trial of this most hopeful plan for the unification of Europe an impossibility for another century!
In order that Germany should have no excuse whatever to declare war on account of Russia’s preparations, the Russian Foreign Minister saw the German Ambassador in St. Petersburg on July 30th, and then offered on behalf of Russia to stop all military preparations, provided that Austria would simply recognize as an abstract principle that the Servian question had assumed the character of a question of European interest. As this proposal fully met the demands of the Kaiser with respect to the cessation by Russia of military preparations, the conversation as reported by the English Ambassador at St. Petersburg to Sir Edward Grey on July 30th deserves quotation in extenso:
French Ambassador and I visited Minister for Foreign Affairs this morning. His Excellency said that German Ambassador had told him yesterday afternoon that German Government were willing to guarantee that Servian integrity would be respected by Austria. To this he had replied that this might be so, but nevertheless Servia would become an Austrian vassal, just as, in similar circumstances, Bokhara had become a Russian vassal. There would be a revolution in Russia if she were to tolerate such a state of affairs.
M. Sazonof told us that absolute proof was in possession of Russian Government, that Germany was making military and naval preparations against Russia—more particularly in the direction of the Gulf of Finland.
German Ambassador had a second interview with Minister for Foreign Affairs at 2 A.M., when former completely broke down on seeing that war was inevitable. He appealed to M. Sazonof to make some suggestion which he could telegraph to German Government as a last hope. M. Sazonof accordingly drew up and handed to German Ambassador a formula in French, of which the following is a translation: