The Nobles' Club in Copenhagen is not a club as we know clubs. There are chairs, newspapers from all parts of the world, and bridge tables, if you wish to use them. You may even play the honoured game of l'ombre—after the manner of Christian IV., or, perhaps, His Lordship, the High Chamberlain Polonius, of the court of his late Majesty, King Claudius. People seldom go there. It is the one place in Denmark where the members of the club are never found.
The country gentlemen have rooms there when they come to town. It is in an annex of the Hotel Phoenix. A few of the best bridge players in Copenhagen meet there occasionally; the rest is silence; therefore it is a safe place for diplomatic conversations.
A very distinguished German came to me with a letter of introduction from Munich, in 1909—late in the year. His position was settled. He was not in the class of the spurious 'vons.' He was, however, high in the confidence of the Kings of Saxony and Bavaria, both of whom, he confessed, were displeased because the United States had no diplomatic representatives at their courts. He had been persona non grata with Bismarck because of his father's liberalism; he had been friendly with Windthorst, the Centre leader, and he had been in some remote way connected with the German Legation at the Vatican. We talked of Washington in the older days, of Speck von Sternberg[4] and of his charming wife, then a widow in Berlin; of the cleverness of Secretary Radowitz, who had been at the German Embassy at Washington; of the point of view of von Schoen, who had been Minister to Copenhagen. He spoke of the Kaiser's having dined in our apartment, which von Schoen had then occupied; and then he came to the point.
'Is the United States serious about the Monroe Doctrine—really?' he asked.
'It is an integral part of our policy of defence.'
'We, in Germany, do not take it seriously. I understand from my friends you have lived in Washington a long time. We are familiar with your relations with President Cleveland and of your attitude towards President McKinley. We know,' he said, 'that President McKinley offered you a secret mission to Rome. We know other things; therefore, we are inclined to take you more seriously than most of the political appointees who are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Your position in the affair of the Philippines is well known to us. It would be well for you to ask your ambassador at Berlin to introduce you to the Emperor; he was much pleased with your predecessor, Mr. O'Brien. There is, no doubt, some information you could give his Imperial Majesty. You have friends in Munich, too, and in Dresden there is the Count von Seebach whom you admire, I know.'
'I admire Count von Seebach, but I am paid not to talk,' I said; 'but about the secret mission to Rome in the Philippine matter—you knew of that?'
It was more than I knew, though President McKinley, through Senator Carter, had suggested, when the Friars' difficulty had been seething in the Philippines, a solution which had seemed to me out of the question. But how did this man know of it? I had not spoken of it to the Count von Seebach, or to anybody in Germany. No word of politics had ever escaped my lips to the Count von Seebach, who was His Excellency the Director of the Royal Opera at Dresden.
'Yes; we know all the secrets of the Philippine affair, even that Domingo Merry del Val came to Washington to confer with Mr. Taft. I want to know two facts,—facts, not guesses. Your ministers who come from provincial places, after a few months' instruction in Washington, cannot know much except local politics. They are like Pomeranian squires or Jutland farmers. We know that [Henckel-Donnersmarck] and you are on good terms, and we are prepared to treat you from a confidential point of view.'
This was interesting; it showed how closely even unimportant persons like myself were observed; it was flattering, too; for one grows tired of the foreign assumption that every American envoy has come abroad because, as De Tocqueville says in Democracy in America he has failed at home.