"His [von Jagow's] remark, 'It is not true that the Foreign Office did not believe the reports that England would protect France under all circumstances,' is in contradiction with the well-known report of the then English Ambassador, Goschen, which describes into what surprise and consternation Herr von Bethmann and Herr von Jagow were thrown by the news of the English declaration of war."
In beginning his comment upon von Jagow, Herr Wolff threw a little more light upon the way in which Prince Lichnowsky's memorandum "for the family archives" got into more or less general secret circulation in Germany before it was printed by the Swedish Socialist paper Politiken last March, and also described the character of Captain Beerfelde, the member of the German General Staff who, according to some cabled reports, is to be tried for his part in distributing copies of the memorandum.
Herr Wolff said that Prince Lichnowsky had had five or six copies made, of which he had sent one to Wolff, one to Albert Ballin, head of the Hamburg-American line, and another to Arthur von Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank. All of these persons carefully hid the "dangerous gift" in the deepest recesses of their writing desks, but a fourth copy went astray and got into hands for which it had not been intended, and from these hands passed into those of still another individual. Then the editor wrote:
How Manuscript Became Public
"I made the acquaintance some years before the war of the officer who obtained the memorandum 'on loan,' and sent copies of it to State officials and politicians. He belongs to an old noble family, was treated with sympathy by General von Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff, occupied himself enthusiastically with religious philosophy or theosophy, and was a thoroughly manly but mystic person. * * * After hard war experiences, he felt the longing to serve the dictates of peace with complete devotion, and he surrendered himself to a pacifism which is absolutely incompatible with the uniform.
"Late one evening he visited me in a state of great excitement, and told me that he had manifolded a memorandum by Prince Lichnowsky which had been lent to him, and that, without asking the author, he had sent it to the 'leading men.' It was impossible to convince him by any logic or on any grounds of reason that his action was wrong, senseless, and harmful. He was a Marquis Posa, or, still more, a Horatius Cocles, who, out of love for Rome or for mankind, sprang into the abyss."
The Berlin Vorwärts, the leading organ of the pro-Government Socialists, began its editorial on the von Jagow reply by remarking that the article of the former State Secretary for Foreign Affairs was hardly calculated to convince the reader that Prince Lichnowsky's self-esteem was the only thing that had had a "painful effect" upon the German people in July, 1914, and since that time. It then said that "Herr von Jagow agrees with Lichnowsky upon the decisive point!" quoted what von Jagow had said about his desire for an Anglo-German rapprochement, and continued:
"These words show that, in 1913, the Wilhelmstrasse and the London Embassy were in the complete harmony of common beliefs and intentions. Herr von Jagow, exactly like Lichnowsky, exactly like Bethmann, and exactly like Wilhelm II., believed in the possibility of creating 'an atmosphere of confidence,' as Jagow says, between Germany and England, through a series of agreements, of which those regarding the Bagdad Railroad and Africa were to have been the first."
Vorwärts then proceeded to point out that the Albanian crisis had strengthened this faith instead of weakening it, took up von Jagow's reasons for Germany's refusal to have the proposed Anglo-German agreement on the Portuguese African colonies published, and exclaimed:
"What a fear of Tirpitz! A disturbing of the new relations through his intrigues and the howling of his jingo press was to be avoided through an affectation of secrecy. But three weeks later the war with England was here and the Pan-German sheets welcomed 'the longed-for day!' What had happened in the meantime? Of course, 'perfidious Albion' (even Jagow puts quotation marks on these words) had in the meantime thrown off the mask and revealed her perfidy! Let's hear what—after Lichnowsky—Herr von Jagow, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in July, 1914, has to say about it!"