CHAPTER III
THE KAISER AND THE KING OF ENGLAND
It was pleasant to renew old memories among diplomatists and ex-diplomatists in Copenhagen. I remembered the old days in Washington, when Sir Edward Thornton's house was far up-town, when the rows between the Chileans and Peruvians—I forget to which party the amiable Ibañez belonged—convulsed the coteries that gathered at Mrs. Dahlgren's, when Bodisco and Aristarchi Bey and Baron de Santa Ana were more than names, and the Hegermann-Lindencrones[2] were the handsomest couple in Washington. So it was agreeable to find some colleagues with whom one had reminiscences in common. Then there were the Americans married to members of the corps. Lady Johnston, wife of Sir Alan; Madame de Riaño, married to one of the most well-balanced and efficient diplomatists in Europe. These ladies made the way of my wife and my daughters very easy.
An envoy arriving at a new post has one consolation, not an unmitigatedly agreeable one. He is sure of knowing what his colleagues think of him. And for a while they weigh him very carefully. The American can seldom shirk the direct question: 'Is this your first post?' It required great strength of mind not to say: 'I had a special mission to the Indian Reservations, and I have always been, more or less, you know——'
'Ah, I see! Calcutta, Bombay——!'
'Not exactly—Red Lake, you know—the Reservations, wards of our Government.'
'Oh, red Indians! I was not aware that you had diplomatic relations with the old red Indian princes. But this is your first post in Europe?'
You cannot avoid that. However, the longer one is at a post, the more he enjoys it. In the course of nearly eleven years, I never knew one of my colleagues who did not show esprit de corps. They become more and more kindly. You know that they know your faults and your virtues. In the diplomatic service you are like Wolsey, naked, not to your enemies, but to your colleagues. They can help you greatly if they will.
After the peace of Portsmouth, which in the opinion of certain Russians gave all the advantages to Japan, the Emperor of Germany spoke of President Roosevelt with added respect, we were told. The attitude toward Americans on the part of Germans seemed always the reflection of the point of view of the Kaiser. From their point of view, it was only the President who counted; our nation, from the Pan-German point of view seemed not to be of importance.