Mr. de Scavenius understood. My country was neutral then; it was never necessary to over-explain to him; he knew that I understood the difficulties in the way.
It was agreed that there should be no intermediaries; Denmark had learned the necessity of dealing without them by the experience in 1902. I was doubtful as to the possibility of complete secrecy. What the newspapers cannot find out does not exist. 'There are very many persons connected with the Foreign Office,' he said thoughtfully.
'I may say a similar thing of our State Department. I wish the necessity for complete secrecy did not exist,' I said. 'The press will have news.'
A short time after this I was empowered to offer $25,000,000 with our rights in Greenland. As far as the Foreign Office and our Legation were concerned, the utmost secrecy was preserved. There were no formal calls; after dinners, a word or two, an apparently chance meeting on the promenade (the Long Line) by the Sound. Rumours, however, leaked out on the Bourse. The newspapers became alert. Politiken, the Government organ, was bound to be discreet, even if its editor had his suspicions. There were no evidences from the United States that the secret was out. In fact, the growing war excitement left what in ordinary times would have been an event for the 'spot' light in a secondary place.
In Denmark, as the whispers of a possible 'deal' increased in number, the opponents of the Government were principally occupied in thinking out a way by which it could be used for the extinction of the Council—President (Prime Minister) Zahle, the utter crushing of the Minister of War, Peter Munch, who hated war and looked on the army as an unnecessary excrescence, and the driving out of the whole ministry, with the exception of Erik de Scavenius and, perhaps, Edward Brandès, the Minister of Finance, into a sea worthy to engulf the devil-possessed swine of the New Testament. There are, by the way, two Zahles—one the Minister, Theodore, a bluff and robust man of the people, and Herluf Zahle, of the Foreign Office, chamberlain, and a diplomatist of great tact, polish and experience.
Mr. Edward Brandès and Mr. Erik de Scavenius, interviewed, denied that there was any question of the sale. 'Had I ever spoken to Edward Brandès on the subject of the sale?' I was asked point-blank. As I had while in Copenhagen, only formal relations with the members of the Government, except those connected with the Foreign Office, I was enabled to say No quite honestly. It was unnecessary for me to deny the possession of a secret not my own, too, because, when asked if I had spoken to the Foreign Minister on the subject of the sale, I always said that I was always hoping for such an event, I had spoken on the subject to Count [Raben-Levitzau], Count Ahlefeldt-Laurvig and Erik de Scavenius whenever I had a chance. I felt like the boy who avoided Sunday School because his father was a Presbyterian and his mother a Jewess; this left me out. I trembled for the fate of Mr. de Scavenius and Mr. Edward Brandès when their political opponents (some of them the most imaginative folk in Denmark) should learn the facts. A lie, in my opinion, is the denying of the truth to those who have a moral right to know it. The press had no right whatever to know the truth, but even the direct diplomatic denial of a fact to persons who have no right to know it is bound to be—uncomfortable! I was astonished that both Mr. Brandès and Mr. Scavenius had been so direct; political opponents are so easily shocked and so loud in their pious appeals to Providence! For myself, I was sorry that I could not give Mr. Albert Thorup, of the Associated Press, a 'tip.' He is such a decent man, and I shall always be grateful to him, but I was forced to connive at his losing a great 'scoop.'
The breakers began to roar; anybody but the Foreign Minister would have lost his nerve. Two visiting American journalists, who had an inkling of possibilities of the truth, behaved like gentlemen and patriots, as they are, and agreed to keep silent until the State Department should give them permission to release it. These were Mr. William C. Bullitt, of the Philadelphia Ledger, and Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, of the New York Times. The newspaper, Copenhagen, was the first to hint at the secret, which, by this time, had become a secret de Polichinelle. Various persons were blamed; the Parliament afterwards appointed a committee of examination. On August 1st, 1916, I find in my diary,—'Thank heaven! the secret is out in the United States, but not through us.' 'Secret diplomacy' is difficult in this era of newspapers. If we are to have a Secretary of Education in the cabinet of the future, why not a Secretary of the Press?
A happy interlude in the summer of 1916 was the visit of Henry Van Dyke and his wife and daughter. It was a red letter night when he came to dinner. We forgot politics, and talked of Stedman, Gilder and the elder days.
The first inkling that the secret de Polichinelle was out came from a cable in Le Temps of Paris. Mr. Bapst, the French Minister, who had very unjustly been accused of being against the sale, came to tell me he knew that the Treaty had been signed by Secretary Lansing and Mr. Brun in Washington. I was not at liberty to commit myself yet, so I denied that the Treaty had been signed in Washington. Mr. Bapst sighed; I knew what he thought of me; but I had told the truth; the Treaty had been signed in New York.
Sir Henry Lowther, the British Minister, was frankly delighted that the question of the Islands was about to be opened. Irgens, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs in Norway, and a good friend to the United States, shook his head. 'If Norway owned islands, we would never give them up,' he said; but he was glad that they were going to us. The other colleagues, including Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German Minister, were occupied with other things. Count Rantzau was desirous of keeping peace with the United States. I think that he regarded war with us as so dangerous as to be almost unthinkable. I found Count Rantzau a very clever man; he played his game fairly. It was a game, and he was a colleague worth any man's respect. He is one of the most cynical, brilliant, forcible diplomatists in Europe, with liberal tendencies in politics. If he lives, he ought to go far, as he is plastic and sees the signs of the times. I found him delightful; but he infuriated other people. One day, when he is utterly tired of life, he will consciously exasperate somebody to fury, in order to escape the trouble of committing suicide himself.