* * * * *
Nothing illustrates the political lifelessness of Germany, the arrogance of its rulers and the docility of its people (for whom, as will be seen, the former have frequently expressed the utmost contempt) more than the tortuous course of German diplomacy during the years 1870–1900. I shall attempt to sketch very briefly the political history of those years, particularly in the light of the policy of calculated Terrorism by which the German Chancellerie sought to impose its yoke upon Europe. Well did Lord Odo Russell say that “Bismarck’s sayings inspired respect” (he might, had he not been speaking as an ambassador, have used, like Hohenlohe, a stronger word) “and his silences apprehension.”[22] If it be true, as von der Goltz says it is, that national strategy is the expression of national character and that the German method is, to use his words, “a brutal offensive,” nothing could bring out that amiable characteristic more clearly than the study of Bismarck’s diplomacy. The German is brutal in war just because he is insolent in peace. Count Herbert “can be very insolent,” wrote the servile Busch of Bismarck’s son, “which in diplomacy is very useful.”[23]
Bismarck’s attitude towards treaty obligations is one of the chief clues to the history of the years 1870–1900. International policy, he once wrote, is “a fluid element which under certain conditions will solidify, but on a change of atmosphere reverts to its original condition.”[24] The process of solidification is represented by the making of treaties; that of melting is a euphemism for the breaking of them. To reinsure Germany’s future by taking out policies in different countries in the form of secret treaties of alliance while concealing the existence of other and conflicting treaties seemed to him not only astute but admirable. Thus having persuaded Austria-Hungary to enter into a Triple Alliance with Germany and Italy by holding out as the inducement the promise of protection against Russia, Bismarck by his own subsequent confession concluded a secret treaty with Russia against Austria. To play off each of these countries against the other by independent professions of exclusive loyalty to both was the Leit-motif of his diplomacy. Nor did he treat the collective guarantees of European treaties with any greater respect. Good faith was a negotiable security. Hence his skilful exploitation of the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris (1856) when he wished to secure the friendly neutrality of Russia during the Franco-Prussian War. Russia, it will be remembered, suddenly and to every one’s surprise, denounced those clauses. The European Powers, on the initiative of England, disputed Russia’s claim to denounce motu proprio an international obligation of so solemn a character, and Bismarck responded to Lord Granville’s initiative in words of ostentatious propriety:
“That the Russian Circular of the 19th October [denouncing the clauses in question] had taken him by surprise. That while he had always held that the Treaty of 1856 pressed with undue severity upon Russia, he entirely disapproved of the manner adopted and the time selected by the Russian Government to force the revision of the Treaty.”[25]
Nearly a generation later Bismarck confessed, and prided himself on the confession, in his Reminiscences,[26] that he had himself instigated Russia to denounce the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty; that he had not only instigated this repudiation but had initiated it as affording “an opportunity of improving our relations with Russia.” Russia succumbed to the temptation, but, as Bismarck cheerfully admits, not without reluctance.
This, however, is not all: Europe “saved her face” by putting on record in the Conference of London (1871) a Protocol, subscribed by the Plenipotentiaries of all the Powers, in which it was laid down as
“an essential principle of the law of nations that no Power can repudiate treaty engagements or modify treaty provisions, except with the consent of the contracting parties by mutual agreement.”
This instrument has been called, not inaptly, the foundation of the public law of Europe. It was in virtue of this principle that Russia was obliged to submit the Russo-Turkish Treaty of San Stefano, and with it the fruits of her victories in 1877–8 to the arbitrament of the Congress of Berlin. At that Congress Bismarck played his favorite rôle of “honest broker,” and there is considerable ground for believing that he sold the same stock several times over to different clients and pocketed the “differences.” What kind of conflicting assurances he gave to the different Powers will never be fully known, but there is good ground for believing that in securing the temporary occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina he had in mind the ultimate Germanization of the Adriatic, and that domination of the Mediterranean at the expense of England which has long been the dream of German publicists from Treitschke onward.[27] What, however, clearly emerged from the Congress, and was embodied in Article XXV of the Berlin Treaty, was, that Austria was to occupy and administer Bosnia-Herzegovina under a European mandate. She acquired lordship without ownership; in other words, the territory became a Protectorate. Her title, as it originated in, so it was limited by, the Treaty of Berlin. Exactly thirty years later, in the autumn of 1908, Austria, acting in concert with Germany, abused her fiduciary position and without any mandate from the Powers annexed the territory of which she had been made the guardian. This arbitrary action was a violation of the principle to which she and Germany had subscribed at the London Conference, and Sir Edward Grey attempted, as Lord Granville had done before him, to preserve the credit of the public law of Europe by a conference which should consider the compensation due to Servia for an act which so gravely compromised her security. Russia, France, and Italy joined with Great Britain in this heroic, if belated, attempt to save the international situation. It was at this moment (March; 1909) that Germany appeared on the scene “in shining armor,” despatched a veiled ultimatum to Russia, with a covert threat to mobilize, and forced her to abandon her advocacy of the claims of Servia and, with them, of the public law of Europe.
Thus did History repeat itself. Germany stood forth once again as the chartered libertine of Europe whom no faith could bind and no duty oblige. May it not be said of her what Machiavelli said of Alexander Borgia: “E non fu mai uomo che avesse maggiore efficacia in asseveraie, e che con maggiori giuramenti affermasse una cosa, e che l’osservasse meno.”[28]
* * * * *