Ten Years Near the German Frontier: A Retrospect and a Warning

by Maurice Francis Egan

At the same time, it was plain that a great part of the landed nobility looked with hope to the United States as a nation which ought to understand their problems and assist, with technical advice and capital, in the solving of them. The Baltic Barons, many with German names and not of the orthodox faith, preferred that the United States, by the investments of her citizens in Russia, should hold a balance between the French and the German financial influences, for Germany was slowly beginning to control Russia financially, and French capital meant a competition with the German interests which might eventually mean a conflict and war. The well instructed among the Russian people, including the estate owners whose interests were not bureaucratic, feared war above all things. The Japanese war had given them reason for their fears.

To my mind there were three questions of great importance for us: How could we, with self-respect, keep on good terms with Russia? How could we discover what Germany's intentions were? And how could we strengthen the force of the Monroe Doctrine by acquiring, through legitimate means, certain islands on our coasts, especially the Gallapagos, the Danish West Indies and others which, perhaps, it might not be discreet to mention.

While the United States seemed fixed in her policy of keeping out of foreign entanglements, it seemed to me that the rule of conduct of a nation, like that of an individual, cannot always be consistent with its theories, since all intentions put into action by the party of the first part must depend on the action and point of view of the party of the second part. I had been largely influenced in my views of the value of the Monroe Doctrine by the speeches and writings of ex-President Roosevelt and Senator Lodge. It was a self-evident truth, too, that, for the sake of democracy, for the sake of the future of our country, the autonomy of the small nations must be preserved. This attitude I made plain during my ten years in Denmark; perhaps I over-accentuated it, but to this attitude I owe the regard of the majority of the Danish people and of some of the folk of the other Scandinavian nations.

The position taken by Germany, under Prussian influence, in Brazil and Argentine, certain indications in our own country, which I shall emphasise later, the intrigues as to the Bagdad Railway, [and ]the threats as to what Germany might do in Scandinavia in case Russia attempted to interfere with German plans in the East, were alarming. Then again was the hint that Denmark might be seized if Germany found Russia in an alliance against England.

From my earliest youth, I knew many Germans whom I esteemed and admired; but they were generally descendants of the men of 1848, that year which saw the Hungarians defeated and the German lovers of liberty exiled. There were others of a later time who believed, with the Kaiser, that a German emigrant was simply a German colonist—waiting! These people were so naïve in their Prussianism, in their disdain for everything American, that they scarcely seemed real! When a German waiter looked out of the hotel window in Trafalgar Square and said, waving his napkin at the spectacle of the congested traffic, 'When the day comes, we shall change all this,' we Americans laughed. This was in the eighties. Yet he meant it; and 'we' have not changed all this even for the day!

The alarm was sounded in South America, but few North Americans took it seriously, and we knew how the English accepted the German invasions to the very doors of their homes. However, when I went to Denmark in August 1907, deeply honoured by President Roosevelt's outspoken confidence in me, I became aware that Prussianised Germany might at any [moment] seize that little country, and that, in that case, the Danish West Indies would be German. A pleasant prospect when we knew that Germany regarded the Monroe Doctrine as the silly figment of a democratic brain unversed in the real meaning of world politics.

Again, I saw exemplified the fact that in the eyes of the Kaiser, a German emigrant was a German colonist. Once a German always a German; the ideas of the Fatherland must follow the blood, and these ideas are one and indivisible. Consequently, no place could have been more interesting than the capital of Denmark. Here diplomatists were taught, made, or unmade.

Until we were forced to join in the European concert by the acquirement of the Philippines, the post did not seem to be important. 'You always send your diplomatists here to learn their art,' the clever queen of Christian IX. had said to an American. It may not have been intended as a compliment!

In the second place, Copenhagen was the centre of those new social and political movements that are [affecting] the world; Denmark was rapidly becoming Socialistic.

She, one of the oldest kingdoms in the world, presented the paradox of being the spot in which all tendencies supposed to be anti-monarchical were working out. She had already solved problems incidental to the evolution of democratic ideals, which in our own country we have only begun timidly to consider.