However, religious discipline is strong, and it is the business of those set apart from the world to overcome even their righteous anger. Still, when I saw the expression on the face of the Abbé de Noë, who had been a Papal Zouave and was still at heart a French soldier, on a great festival, as he gave the kiss of peace to two German priests on the altar steps, I felt that the grace of God is compelled sometimes to run uphill!
Commercial transactions formed a great part of the work of the Legation when Great Britain began seriously to restrain alien foreign trade and to put a firm hand on such neutrals as adopted the motto of some of the English merchants, before they were awakened, 'Business as usual.' I am afraid that I gave little satisfaction; our instructions were not precise. That some of our great business people should have fallen into a panic after August 1914,—men of the highest ability, of the most scientific imagination, who foresaw contingencies to the verge of the impossible—seemed amazing. In conversation with some of these gentlemen as late as the spring of 1914, when I had come home to deliver some lectures at Harvard University, I was convinced that they knew what Germany's aims were in the East. They were aware of the negotiations regarding the Bagdad Railway and the opposition which existed between German and Russian claims. How long would Germany be satisfied with the English and Russian predominance?
They discussed this. Some of them had travelled much in Germany; they were willing to admit that the Balkan question could be settled only by war. In 1914, Secretary Bryan seemed to be sure that no war cloud threatened. When I saw him early in that year, he was entirely absorbed in the Mexican question and in extending the knowledge of the minutiæ of the Sacred Scriptures among American travellers in Palestine. I had just opened my lips (having silently listened to the most delectable eloquence I have ever heard) to say that Russia had begun to mobilise and that Germany would be ready to pounce by September, when Mr. John Lind came in, and the Secretary had attention for no other man. The affairs of Europe faded.
The Germans, as far as I could see, had great hopes of a breakdown of the Allies through treachery in the French Government itself. From such private information as we could get, it seemed that they relied on treachery among the Italians—especially among the 'Reds.' There is a French lady who wore the pearls of the Deutsche Bank, whose husband they had bought, and there were others it was said.
Our means of getting private information was not great. We had no money for secret service or for organisation. When we went into the war, our Legation had neither the offices nor the staff to meet the event. This was not the fault of the State Department, but of the system on which it rests. It was necessary to have a decent official place in which to receive people, a place which was elegant and simple at the same time. This we had, but barely room enough for ordinary work.
If a distinguished visitor came, he was ushered into the salon or the dining-room. If Sir Ralph Paget, the British Minister, came hurriedly on business a moment after Count Szchenyi arrived, he was shown into the dining-room, as the three offices were always full of people. After the war opened, the Legation—a very elegant apartment, which I secured through the foresight [of] my predecessor, Mr. T. I. O'Brien—was often like a bit of scenery in a modern French farce, where people disappear behind all kinds of screens and curtains in order to avoid embarrassments. Mr. Allard, the Belgian, to whom we were devoted, came one day by appointment, and almost met Prince Wittgenstein in the salon, while the Turkish Minister held the dining-room, confronted by Lady Paget, who was led off to Mrs. Egan's rooms on pretence of hearing a Victrola which happened to have been lent to somebody a few days before.
The State Department would have permitted me to rent, on urgent request, a satisfactory place, but the coal bill would have amounted to three thousand dollars a year. As I had not recovered from the expenses of the entertainment of the Atlantic Squadron (they were small enough considering the pleasure the gentlemen of that squadron gave us) and other outlays, I felt that the coal bill would be too great, and even with the war cloud on the horizon, the State Department was not in a position to give us a reasonable amount of money or the necessary rooms for a staff such as the British had been obliged to collect. The British Government owned its own house, which answered the demands made on it. The fiery Captain Totten gave the Legation no peace. We were not prepared; we knew it. It would have absorbed twenty thousand dollars to put us on an efficient basis. And our staff for the very delicate work must be specialists; one cannot pick up specialists for the salary paid to a secretary of Legation or even to a Minister.
It is different to-day; the old system has broken down now. Money is supplied, even to that most starved of all the branches of the service, the State Department, where men, like ten I could name, work for salaries which a third rate bank clerk in New York would refuse—and poor men too! As things were, the Legation did the best it could.
The greatest difficulty was to get trustworthy information. What were the German military plans? What were the social conditions in Germany? As to financial conditions, it was comparatively easy to secure information. The German financiers would never have consented to the war had they not scientifically analysed the situation. Industrials, like Herr Ballin, counted on a short war; they had provided. We knew, too, that the military authorities, which overrode the civil, believed that the Foreign Office could manage to ameliorate the consequences of their insolence and arrogance. It was strange that these very military authorities thought that the United States would not fight under any circumstances, for they had voluminous reports in their archives on the details of our military position. Our Government had always been generous in giving information to foreign military attachés. In fact, a German officer once boasted to me that his war office had filed the secrets of every military establishment in the world, except the Japanese.
That we were despised for our inaction was plain; Americans were treated with contempt by certain Austrian officials, until some enterprising newspaper announced that a great army of American students had made a hostile demonstration in New York against Germany! A change took place at once; even in France, it was believed that the United States would make only a commercial war. I remember that the Vicomte de Faramond, who deserves the credit of having unveiled Prussian schemes before many of his brother diplomatists even guessed at them, asked me anxiously, 'You must fight, but is it true that it will be only a commercial war? I think, if I know America, that you will fight with bayonets.' He has an American wife.