I am not writing from the point of view of any creed at this moment, but only from that of a democracy which encourages reasonable freedom of speech, the use of equal opportunities, and preserves to everybody alike the free exercise of his religion. The Centre has shown as little sympathy with democracy of this kind as the Socialists. The latter party deserve no sympathy from any class of Americans. Their methods are, as worked out in Denmark and Germany, admirable. Religious bodies, interested in actively loving their neighbours as themselves, have much to learn from them, but the German Socialists played a worse part during the war than Benedict Arnold in our Revolution. They did not act the part of Judas only because they never acknowledged Christ.
The bane of every civilised country seems to be party politics. After theological hatreds, the ordinary variety of political hatreds and compromises is the worst. The Centre has become corrupt and time-serving, the Socialists expedient and slavish, all because the Imperial Head, the Chancellor, could scatter the spoils!
CHAPTER X
A PORTENT IN THE AIR
'This is the first page of my diary and the last,' wrote William H. Seward. 'One day's record satisfies me that, if I should every day set down my hasty impressions, based on half information, I should do injustice to everybody around me and to none more than my intimate friends.'
This is true; and, when suspicion seemed to reign everywhere, after August 1914, and one's private papers were never safe, in spite of the fidelity of our servants—and no strangers were ever blessed with better servants than my wife and I—it became all the more necessary not to put down explicitly the day's talk. And the colleagues were very frank—except when their Foreign Officers instructed them to say something for export. If we were at the end of the world, I might give daily conversations that would have a certain interest, but probably some persons whom I have the honour to call friends, and even intimate friends, might be misunderstood. A diplomatic corps in a city like Copenhagen is one large family, and in Copenhagen the court treats its members, who are sympathetic, with unusual courtesy, and, at every fitting opportunity, makes them of the royal circle, which is a very cosy and cheerful one.
The years 1910, 1911, and 1912 were eventful ones, not because things happened, but because things were about to happen. It was a period of unrest. The diplomatic conversations at this time occupied themselves with the position of Germany.
Henckel-Donnersmarck had gone to Weimar, much to my regret. He was supposed to have retired to private life because the Kaiser did not find his reports minute enough, but, knowing him, it seemed to me that he was glad to be out of a position which bored him thoroughly, and which exacted of him duties that he did not care to fulfil. Denmark was becoming more and more Socialistic, and even the Conservatives were so extremely 'advanced,' that Count Henckel found himself rather out of place. He made no country-house visits in the summer, and gave dinners in the winter only when he could not help it. Beyond certain conversations with me on political subjects already mentioned, he did not go. Literature and the simpler aspects of life interested him—children especially. We amused ourselves by mapping out the career of his son, Leo, a very young person of marked individualistic qualities.
For impressions of Germany and Austria, one had to go to other sources. The upheaval in Germany caused by the Kaiser's disregard of public opinion in 1908 had caused most of my colleagues some concern. Nobody wanted war. The Austrians and the Russians alike were horrified at the thought of it.