As a rule, I found the Russian diplomatists very well informed and clever. Their foreign office seemed to have no confidants outside the bureaucratic circle. The Russian journalist, like most other journalists, was not better or earlier informed of events than the diplomatists. As Copenhagen was the place where every diplomat in the world went at some time or other, one was sure to discover interesting rumours or real news without much trouble.
While the newspapers or magazines of nearly every other nation gave indications in advance of the public opinion that might govern the cabinets or the foreign offices, the Russian periodicals gave no such clues. There was no use in keeping a Russian translator; real Russian opinion was seldom evident, except when a royalty or a diplomatist might, being bored by his silence, or with a patriotic object, tell the truth.
'What prevents war?' I asked in 1909 of one of my colleagues.
'Lack of money,' he answered promptly, repeating the words of Prince Koudacheff. 'Germany and Russia will fly at each other's throats as soon as the financiers approve of it. You will not report this to your Foreign Office,' he said, laughing, 'because America looks on war, a general European war, as unthinkable. It would seem absurd! Nobody in America and only ten per cent. of the thinking people in England will believe it! As for France, she is wise to make friends with my country, but she would be wiser if she did not believe that Germany will wait until she is ready to make her revanche. There are those in her government who hold that the revanche is a dream—that France would do well to accept solid gains for the national dream. They are fools!'
'Iswolsky is of the same opinion, I hear,' I said, for we had all a great respect for Iswolsky. But when the London National Review repeated the same sentiments over and over again, it seemed unbelievable that the Kaiser's professions of peace were not honest. Yet individual Pan-Germans were extremely frank. 'We must have our place in the East,' they said; 'we must cut the heart out of Slavic ambitions, and deal with English arrogance.' In a general way, we were always waiting for war.
In 1909, Count Aehrenthal, then a very great Austrian, told a celebrated financial promoter who visited our Legation, that war was inevitable. The Austrians and the Russians feared it and believed it—feared it so much that when I was enabled to contradict the rumour, there was a happy sigh as the news was well documented. Austria did not want war; Russia did not want war.
'But the Emperor of Germany?' I asked of one of the most honourable and keenest diplomatists in Berlin.
'He is surrounded by a military clique; he desires to preserve the rights and prerogatives of the German Empire, above all, the hereditary and absolute principle without a long war. A war will do it for him—if it is short. He himself would prefer to avoid it. Yet he must justify the Army and the Navy; but the war must be short.'
'But does he want war?'
'He is not bloodthirsty; he knows what war means, but he will want what his clique wants.'