The Craft Sinister 
 
Books by 
 GEORGE ABEL SCHREINER 
 
 ''The Iron Ration" 
 {LA DETRESSE ALLEMANDE) 
 "From Berlin to Bagdad" 
 
 "The Craft Sinister" 
 
 Harper & Brothers, New York 
 
 John Momij, London 
 
 Librairie Hachette, Pari* 
 
THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 A Diplomatico-Political History of the Great War 
 
 and its Causes — Diplomacy and International 
 
 Politics and Diplomatists as Seen at Close 
 
 Range by an American Newspaperman 
 
 who served in Central Europe as War 
 
 and Political Correspondent. 
 
 By, 
 GEORGE ABEL SCHREINER 
 
 Author of 
 
 "The Iron Ration" 
 
 (LA DETRESSE ALLEMANDE) 
 
 "From Berlin to Bagdad," etc. 
 
 G. ALBERT GEYER 
 
 Publisher 
 New York City 
 
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 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Copyright, 1920, George A. Schreiner 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 Published May, 1920 
 
 THE ANCHOR PRESS. Inc. 
 
 209 WMt 38Ui Street 
 
 New YoA City 
 
To my dear friends 
 Frieda and John A. BuUinger 
 
 50024^ 
 
Tu regere imperio populos Romano, memento. 
 Hae tibi erunt artes; pasisque imponere morem, 
 Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos. 
 
 —Virgil. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I AGREE with the reader that it seems nonsensical to add an "Intro- 
 duction" to a book, which already has a "Preface." But in this 
 case something had to be added, and if I have taken recourse to 
 the word "Introduction" it is for no other reason than that this word 
 seemed as good as any other. 
 
 This manuscript has been making the rounds of publishing houses 
 for a year now. The "Preface" was pre-dated to May 1, 1919. In 
 reality the book was completed two months before that, and repre- 
 sented then the labor of about eight months, not counting three years 
 of work in Central Europe and another year in the United States — 
 time devoted to the study of the subject and the experience that had 
 to be gained. 
 
 The publishers who had the manuscript were afraid to publish it. 
 One of them had indeed accepted the book and went so far as to 
 place it among his "Announcements" to the book trade. But some- 
 thing went wrong. Another publisher was torn by his emotions" 
 for the space of weeks and finally admitted that it would be "too 
 dangerous for his firm" to publish the book. The man feared the High 
 and Mighty in Washington, and well he might. He was of the opinion 
 that there was involved a public duty, and that he should meet it. 
 
 "But," he said, "if I get into trouble the public won't thank me." 
 
 For the man in question I will say that I fully sympathize with 
 him. A few might feel different about it, in case the Most Honorable 
 Burleson denied the mails of the United States to him, but the 
 dear public, that great mass of people which is swayed only by the 
 passions of the day, would, in its fervor to please the Powerful, do 
 little better than boycott his books besides. 
 
 But it seems wholly useless to go into further details of this sort. 
 Publishing is a business, not a mission, and wise indeed the publisher 
 who keeps this in mind. For not to keep it in mind means that he will 
 not be a publisher for long. 
 
 I have, then, no quarrel with any publisher. In fact, I sympa- 
 thize with all of them. On the other hand, I must state here what 
 has been stated, if for no other reason, then for the one that here 
 
 XI 
 
XII THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 and there the reader will find that I speak of things and conditions 
 that seem a little anterior now. True enough, I might have changed 
 the text in all such cases, but that could not have been done without 
 interfering seriously with the general aspect of the book and the 
 statements it contains. Recent events have somewhat modified this 
 general aspect — as the public is pleased to believe. That change, 
 however, is merely an apparent one. It is not real in any sense of 
 the word. The fact of today should remain that same fact even 
 tomorrow, and he who views in the light of a subsequent condition 
 the event of yesterday may write an interesting book but not a 
 true one. 
 
 I wish to state in this connection that most of the facts concern- 
 ing United States diplomatic representatives mentioned in this book 
 are now before the Congress of the United States in the form of a 
 Report, dated October 4, 1919, which Report was necessitated by the 
 conduct toward me of the State Department of the United States, 
 which, for the purpose of protecting the incompetents it had on diplo- 
 matic post in Central Europe, caused my virtual internment arid 
 "black-listing" at home. 
 
 Of course, the Congress has taken no action as yet. But the 
 State Department has. For the purpose of "shutting up" so dis- 
 agreeable a person, Mr. Lansing, himself, ultimately and personally 
 caused that a passport was issued me, without many of the usual 
 requirements being exacted of me. The State Department felt that 
 in August of 1919 the world was too interested in other troubles than 
 to give attention to things that had taken place almost three years 
 before. It also expected that I would take the passport in lieu of 
 the damages I claimed. In fact it was mistaken. For the Congress I 
 must say, however, that it is still too much occupied with justifying 
 and vindicating its suicidal conduct during the War years to find 
 time for something which would be more honest: A sweeping inves- 
 tigation of the State Department, its diplomatic chiefs and secretaries 
 and its inexplicable un-American policies. 
 
 I further wish to mention that I have called upon the State 
 Department to defend itself against my charges — to no avail. For 
 a while that was being considered, but, unfortunately for the State 
 Department, nothing could be found that would serve as a pretext 
 to have me brought in contact with the War Acts of our most 
 complacent Congress. After all it would not do to have a person in- 
 carcerated and then run the chance of having his trial on a trumped-up 
 accusation bring out that he for weeks was the real representative 
 of the State Department at Vienna and other points and as such 
 
INTRODUCTION XIII 
 
 prevented the summary dismissal of two ambassadors of the United 
 States and one diplomatic agent. No doubt, that would have been 
 very embarrassing, especially if in connection with that it would have 
 developed that one of these ambassadors was for months, aye, even 
 years, little more than the agent in a Central European state of the 
 Entente governments and conducted his great office of trust accord- 
 ingly. I repeat, that all this would have been most embarrassing. 
 To that alone I owe the freedom of movement which I have had in 
 the last two years. 
 
 Naturally, the good men in the State Department are averse to 
 having their acts reviewed for the purpose of showing that diplomacy 
 is a "Craft Sinister." They regard the man in the street as the 
 "Layman," who has no right to question the conduct of the Sacer- 
 dotals of Cypher and Code, the High Priests of the Temple of 
 National Avarice, the Sacrificers at the Altar of Blood and Famine. 
 Diplomacy is a Cult. Some look upon it as a necessity. If the 
 latter conclusion were correct we would have to assume that mankind 
 can manage its affairs best by being deceitful. For, in the words of 
 a man who at least in South Africa is immortal : All diplomatists are 
 liars. The sooner the public places those of its affairs now styled 
 "diplomatic" into the realm of decent transactions between national 
 units, the sooner will we come to a period in which wars will be 
 few and far between. And that, naturally, applies to United States 
 diplomacy and diplomatists as much as to any other, more so in fact. 
 
 With the proper men in Central Europe the government of the 
 United States could have brought the Great War to a close as early 
 as 1916, and again in April of 1917. The citizen here and elsewhere 
 would then have been spared many of the hardships that have come 
 his way. Public debts would be smaller. The world, instead of 
 continuing to tear down for another three years (and the end of 
 that is not yet in isight) would have started to build up again. We 
 would not then have been obliged to see everywhere the fatuous 
 endeavor of the radical who believes that the fine theories of the 
 Socialist philosopher are in reality applicable in a world where any 
 two men hold three opinions, each their own, and one for their 
 community of two. 
 
 In a few years from now mankind will have returned to that 
 much despised socio-political and socio-economic system at which 
 our ancestors labored so long without finding at all the road to 
 Utopia. From that moment on the old abuses are bound to rear 
 their heads again, and, if nothing is done to check them, our posterity 
 will find that, after all, the Great War was as unproductive of good 
 
XIV THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 lessons as the Thirty Years* War or the Convulsions of the Corsican 
 ward politician known as Napoleon Bonaparte. There is at least one 
 good lesson we should take to heart and that is expressed in the 
 words: Curb diplomacy, and if at all passible abolish it. 
 
 By the way, what has become of "open diplomacy"? Has the 
 Wilson administration practiced it in the least? Now, as before, 
 the public learns only of the diplomatic fait accompli. Of the barter- 
 ing done and the obligations assumed it knows nothing, and will 
 know nothing so long as it does not insist upon being a full-fledged 
 partner to the deals made in regard to its substance and future 
 weal. 
 
 To this I will add what was formerly an author's note. 
 
 The might-have-beens of history are like so many eggs that have 
 been scrambled in the making of an omelette — which human endeavor 
 will never restore to the primary place they had in nature — the state 
 of being hatchable. In the course of human events regret is of as 
 little value as the cackling of the hen that sees her eggs broken on 
 the rim of the skillet. 
 
 The purpose of this book, then, must be sought in another direc- 
 tion. That purpose is threefold. It is the writer's intention to bring 
 to the notice of the public everywhere the dangers of diplomacy, as 
 ** the "art of negotiation" has been practiced hitherto and recently; to 
 point out to the public of the United States in what respects its own 
 diplomacy was found wanting and defective, and, thirdly, to correct 
 a good many false impressions that have been fostered during the 
 Great War and before. 
 
 Some of the chapters of this book go into the modus operandi 
 of "the craft sinister," and depict its results, while others go more 
 deeply into the nature and methods of diplomatists. Much attention 
 is also given the handmaiden of diplomacy — the press. What cen- 
 sorship was and what it strove to do is made clear — astoundingly 
 clear, I venture to think. A persistent combat on my part with cen- 
 sorship, for three years in warring Europe and two in the warring 
 United States, has put me in position to thoroughly "spotlight" its 
 practices and motives. When left untrammeled the press does well 
 enough, despite the assertions of the chronic uplifter; it becomes the 
 great scourge of man with the moment it passes under control. 
 
 To draw an accurate and clear picture of diplomacy — the craft 
 
 sinister — was not possible without removing much of the obscurantism 
 
 in which government everywhere veils itself, so that the governed may 
 
 V be the more easily led to subscribe to the theory of governmental infal- 
 
 . libility. The government which must admit that it can err, and which 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 must make that admission in times of stress, does not remain a gov- 
 ernment de facto for long thereafter. On the other hand, the public 
 which permits its government to arrogate unto the theory of infalli- 
 bility, a "divine right" in fact, will not thereafter be far from disaster. 
 It is best in life — in all its phases and departments — to look at things 
 as they are, not as we wish them to be. 
 
 The term diplomacy covers for my purpose the international activity 
 of statesman and envoy alike, and the reader will find that all diplomatic 
 contact in this book is hostile — of sinister mien. This is due to the fact that 
 I deal here only with the political moves and countermoves directly related 
 to, or responsible for, the Great War. It will be noticed that the book 
 hardly admits that diplomacy is other than bad — vile and vicious, and the 
 question will be asked : How can that be ? No doubt, there was a certain 
 amount of decency and fair play in the deals made between members of 
 the same group — Triple Entente and Triple Alliance, but there was no 
 such thing at any time between the groups themselves. 
 
 In weighing acts and conduct of governments, I have kept in mind 
 that nothing is harder to keep in focus than international relations, a thing 
 that has as many angles and aspects as its constituents have moods and 
 desires. A strictly impartial attitude has been observed in that respect. 
 Contrary to general practice during the Great War, I have accepted Inter- 
 national Law, and applied it here, as something that was to dispense special 
 favors to none. To be sure that would seem rather naive, in the light of 
 what happened under the Orders in Privy Council, but after all we must 
 have something upon which to pin our hope. I have assumed that the 
 powerful criminal is no better than the slinking crook — ^the shameless cynic 
 not more virtuous than the blustering brute. 
 » In war the end justifies the means — that is why we have wars. In 
 
 diplomacy the purpose hallows the method — that is why we have diplomacy. 
 Let us not forget that so long as we have diplomacy we will have wars. 
 y The favorite device of all governments of the World Power type is: 
 War is the continuation of international relations by other means. Brutal 
 cynicism could not be carried further than it is in this hypocritical phrase 
 of the bully obliged to describe his overt acts. 
 
 It would seem that there has been little improvement in inter- 
 national relations in the last three thousand years or so. No doubt, 
 such a statement could be rated as being extremely pessimistic, and 
 to guard against that I have incorporated into this book a very small 
 amount of ancient data to reinforce certain assertions I make. There 
 is, for instance, the literal text of the oldest treaty of record, con- 
 cluded between Rameses II and Kheta-sar, king of the Hittites, on 
 Tybi 21st, in the XXIst year of the reign of the Pharaoh in question 
 
XVI THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 (November 28th, 1279 B. C), and a charming account of "The Battle 
 of Kadesh," by either a press agent of Rameses II, or some propaganda 
 bureau of the Royal Egyptian Government of Upper and Lower 
 Egypt, Ethiopia, Judea, Arabia and what not. I am sure that the 
 reader will have no difficulty at all seeing the appropriateness of the 
 presence of these rare documents, and his perspective on international 
 contact and relations and war will be further extended and widened 
 by the purely biological and historical, and diplomatico-technical mat- 
 ter placed before him. In regard to the latter I must state that 
 within the space of a single book it was quite impossible to give more 
 than what is absolutely essential to an understanding of things, sys- 
 tems, conditions and policies. 
 
 Since it is proper that men should acknowledge to whom they 
 owe their information, I must state that in my case thanks are due 
 to many. To give the names of all of them would be impossible for 
 the reason that I would place in jeopardy the interests and welfare 
 of scores — of men who spoke to me of things they were not "sup- 
 posed to know." Wherever it has been possible I have mentioned 
 my authority. 
 
 To "Historicus" I am obliged for some information on the Balkan 
 subjects treated, and to "The Nation" and Prof. R. C. McGrane, of 
 the University of Cincinnati, for the text of the Sixteenth Century 
 League of Nations. THE AUTHOR. 
 
 New York, January 25, 1920. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 MUCH has been heard recently of open diplomacy and open 
 covenant, openly arrived at. While the Great War v^as still 
 on, the public of the United States was led to believe that at 
 the Peace Conference all discussion would be done in the limelight of 
 publicity. Yet such was not the case. The Paris Conference was a 
 star chamber proceeding of the worst sort. Only its edicts have become 
 known, despite the promises that had been made, despite the fact that 
 the fate of neutral and foe alike was under treatment. Diplomacy of 
 the old type was again employed. Diplomacy started in again where it 
 had left off — for the good reason that it had never left off. 
 
 It has been said, and rightly so, that war is a continuation of 
 international relations with other means. In the past diplomacy has 
 used military strength as a means of persuasion in times of peace 
 and as the instrument of coercion in days of war. A diplomacy not 
 backed by a large and efficient military establishment is likely to be 
 a good diplomacy. Instead of force of arms it must employ the force 
 of morality. Good conduct, indeed, is its only argument. It must do 
 as it would be done by. Intrigue and machination may not be indulged 
 in, because in the end there will be no large army and navy to 
 prevent a reckoning or obviate the liquidation of the claims that will 
 be made by thoise who consider themselves injured. The diplomatist 
 of the small nation is obliged to work without the "prestige" that is 
 at once incentive and tool for the activity of the man representing 
 the "World Power." The "small diplomatist" must limit his endeavor 
 to the continuation of good relations. And, as a rule, he succeeds. 
 Unfortunately, the diplomatic representative of the World Power 
 is not in the same position. For all of the things he does, be they 
 good or bad, he has the sanction of what has been termed his country's 
 needs. Expansion in any direction and of any sort is considered an 
 absolute necessity by any large state, and within the frame of that 
 its diplomatists may work and intrigue to heart's content. The as- 
 surance that ultimately a declaration of war will wipe out every 
 mistake he may have made, every questionable practice he has en- 
 gaged in, is to the diplomatist of the World Power the very invitation 
 
 xvii 
 
XVIII THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 to do all those things which the representative of the small state 
 cannot afford to do, except when on the defensive. 
 
 Nothing has happened so far at Paris that could cause the student 
 of human affairs to believe that diplomacy of the big-power sort 
 has been abandoned. Of course, there are those who would have the 
 public take a different view. Yet the fact is that nothing has been 
 done so far that could cause the initiate in diplomacy and international 
 relations to be at all optimistic. To give a thing a new name is of 
 little consequence, and the poorest sort of anticlimax for a catastrophe 
 that cost the world 7,254,000 of its best lives and about $450,000,000,000 
 in wealth. There are some conservatives who marvel that so much 
 has been done. The tsensible human being must be astonished that so 
 little has really been accomplished. 
 
 Mihi cur a futuri! 
 
 It should not be impossible to live without so-called diplomacy 
 some day. Those who have the welfare of mankind at heart must 
 wish that this day will come soon. But right now this sort of diplo- 
 macy is still with us, and if left to itself it will, before long, again 
 revert to the practices for which it has become truly and deservedly 
 odious. Covenants arrived at may not encourage another sowing 
 \ of secret treaties, but they cannot prevent the making of ententes, 
 nor can they curb those who engage for purposes of their own in 
 the fostering of misunderstanding and hatred between peoples. 
 
 When Mr. Wilson declared himself opposed to secret diplomacy 
 he evidently had realized to what extent hidden intrigue was responsi- 
 ble for the riot of carnage and destruction that swept over Europe. 
 His many utterances on this subject leave no doubt as to this. Un- 
 fortunately, he was not in a position to change overnight a condition 
 that had prevailed for centuries, nor has he been able to apply to his 
 own relations with foreign governments the valuable lessons history 
 taught him. The fact that the executive with plein pouvoir of a strong 
 nation of 100,000,000 was unable to shape his own diplomatic course 
 so that it might agree with his views, as stated by himself, shows 
 how strong and well entrenched the modern system of diplomacy is. 
 The President of the United States, moreover, was so represented in 
 most of the capitals of Europe, especially in Berlin, Vienna, Constanti- 
 nople, Sofia and The Hague, that neither he nor the governments to 
 whom his diplomatic representatives were accredited benefited in any 
 degree thereby. The chiefs of the American diplomatic missions at those 
 posts were not only untrained for their duties, but were in addition unsuited 
 temperamentally. 
 
PREFACE XIX 
 
 With the possible exception of a single individual these chefs de 
 mission were sent abroad by Mr. Wilson and his party in return for 
 ' favors done. In some instances the favor consisted of substantial 
 / contributions made to the campaign fund of the Democratic Party. 
 That these men had given their money in order that the Democratic 
 Party might be successful at the polls is in itself nothing unusual or 
 dishonorable. Campaign contributions are one of the socio-political 
 evils we must put up with. Nor is there anything reprehensible in 
 doing such donors a return favor. It cannot even be said that appoint- 
 ing them ambassadors and ministers was a grave error. We must 
 bear in mind that before the outbreak of the Great War it was 
 generally assumed that ambassadors and ministers were in reality 
 little more than the messenger boys of state departments and foreign 
 offices. If blame attaches to any one at all in this respect it is the 
 general public that must bear it. 
 
 To lay into the hands of political favorites the power of peace or 
 war is reckless procedure, to say the least. But it was done — largely 
 because, I believe, few of us recognized that danger was associated 
 with the practice. With our notion that diplomatists were the mes- 
 senger boys of governments went the delusion that wars would be 
 short and parlor affairs. So much had been said concerning universal 
 peace that most of us had been lulled into a false sense of security. 
 The few who saw in the blatant peace apostles but the petrels 
 of disaster, and I have the distinction of having been one of these 
 few, were descried as militarists. With the utmost complacency the 
 world drifted on, forgot its duties toward the neighbor, grabbed for 
 markets and grew callous of all but the ego. The result was the 
 costliest of wars and the debacle of a social system on which better 
 men than ourselves had labored. Revolution instead of evolution 
 became the watchword. It was deemed necessary to pull down every- 
 thing in order that the fantastic structure of the idealist might be 
 raised. 
 
 Whether or no mankind is to derive benefit from this excursion 
 into Utopia remains to be seen. So long as municipal law in the well- 
 administered state is the result, rather than the cause, of good conduct 
 by the majority of citizens, so long will sound international relations 
 be the effect of good conduct by the majority of states. And that 
 majority, naturally, includes the leading elements in both categories. 
 A rapacious caste will influence legislation for the purpose of further- 
 ing its own interests ; the rapacious government and state will shape 
 international relations, and direct their course, agreeable to its own 
 objectives. Glib assurances will not do — nor should they longer 
 
XX THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 suffice. While the axiom, the end justifies the means, has fallen 
 somewhat into disfavor and has been disavowed by the idealists at 
 least, the fact is that the Great War was really a procession of such 
 cases — a sad procession, to be sure, but a reality for all that. All 
 the hypocritical protests that could be uttered in a thousand years 
 will not efface the sorry fact that the Great War was between two 
 camps, the test to what extent Might could be made Right. But 
 while arms settled the issue it was diplomacy that made the issue. 
 
 In this connection I deem it proper to call attention to the fact 
 that I had a great deal of experience with diplomatic circles and 
 diplomacy in Europe. This experience in fact is my justification for 
 treating this subject and documentation here thereof has the purpose 
 of letting the reader see diplomacy at close range. In the interest 
 of peace I caused the removal from his post of one diplomatist, and 
 for a little time took over much of the affairs of an embassy, to whose 
 chief I later brought the sad news that in the morning he would get 
 his passports. At the man's request I asked the foreign office in question 
 that the severance of diplomatic relations be postponed for a few 
 days. This was done and a little later it became my duty to argue 
 for a continuation of relations so that there might be left standing 
 a bridge over which relations with another power might be resumed. 
 
 Diplomacy had failed woefully. In desperation and despair, high 
 government officials had to turn to a mere scribe, a foreign corre- 
 spondent, for counsel and assistance. Diplomatists had arrived at a 
 point where they no longer trusted one another. Both sides seemed 
 willing to stay out of the Great War, yet neither had enough confi- 
 dence in the other to be frank in the least degree. So long had these 
 \ men lied to one another and so many deceptions had been practiced 
 that an outjsider had to be called in to interpret the Machiavellian 
 assurances that had been or were being given. In other words, di- 
 plomacy stood unmasked even before those who engaged in it. Greek 
 had met Greek. 
 
 The occurrence was tragic in the extreme. It caused the writer 
 to double his interest in diplomacy and its questionable practices, 
 of which by that time he had seen enough already. His present 
 effort is the result of the observations and investigations made by 
 him before and after the incident referred to. 
 
 Those who may conclude that American diplomacy and diplo- 
 matists get a disproportionate share of attention here are reminded 
 that I am writing for the American public, that, as American news- 
 paper correspondent, I, naturally, occupied myself more with American 
 diplomacy than with any other, and that, finally, the role of the United 
 
PREFACE XXI 
 
 States came to be a most exceptional one in Central Europe, the locale 
 of my work. There is another reason why I should select the United 
 States diplomatic service for purposes of illustrating what the pitfalls 
 of diplomacy may be. It is not necessary to have the foreign affairs 
 of a country in the hands of designing rascals to get that country into 
 trouble. The amateur diplomatist — the yokel in foreign affairs and 
 relations — can do that also. He can create situations by his own 
 effort, and, what is far worse, he serves so much the better the sinister 
 purposes of a man or group with a mission, a Woodrow Wilson, for 
 instance. 
 
 Next to nothing is so far known in regard to United States diplomacy 
 in Central Europe. The American public, like its Congress, knows that 
 there was trouble somewhere, and Mr. Wilson has steadfastly refused 
 to take either into his confidence. Mr. Lansing also has said little, know- 
 ing that no credit of any sort attaches to our participation in the Great 
 War. In fact nobody hath spoken, and nobody will speak.* To me it 
 seems that my co-citizens deserve better. I will afford them the means 
 toward that end, and it is possible that I, blazing here a trail, may induce 
 others to be heard from, because, I take it, and what is more, I know, that 
 our diplomacy at other capitals was not one iota better. I have written 
 here merely of the things I came in touch with. Were I to put down 
 even a part of what I heard five such volumes would be needed to perpetuate 
 the antics of men who, according to their own books, were little short of 
 being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent — in the eyes of the penny- 
 a-liners who wrote these books, if not by admission of His Excellency 
 himself. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the future historian will not give too much 
 heed to the drivel one finds in the books of diplomatist-authors. I at 
 least have found these books remarkably unreliable on the part played 
 by the author. It would seem that these literary productions are on 
 a par with the "blue books" published by governments for the edi- 
 fication of the public and their own amusement, as in some cases I 
 will show. And here it may be noted that so far the British and 
 French diplomatists on foreign post just before the outbreak of war 
 have not been heard from. In fact, they will not be heard from. 
 
 * ". . . Yet the fact that the Senate must ratify all agreements is likely to make us believe 
 that we really have popular control of foreign policy, when, as a matter of fact, less is known 
 about American diplomacy before and during the war than about the exchanges leading to and 
 accompanying the belligerency of any of the other Allies. . . . What actually did Wilson, 
 Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando say to each other in that stuffy room which housed the 
 Council of Four? These are things that we must know before even provisional estimates can be 
 formed of President Wilson's policy before and during the war; and, in spite of our machinery 
 for popular control of diplomacy, Americans know rather less of their own recent h.istory than of 
 European history. It is a nice ethical question, finally, as to whether the citizens of a democracy 
 should not be told these matters by official publications instead of personal memoirs." — lyindsay 
 Rogers, The Review, Feb. 28, 1930. 
 
XXII THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 because their government and Foreign Office would never let them. 
 Thus it will seem that only the diplomatists of the United States, and 
 of the countries defeated by the Allies, engage in writing memoirs 
 that are personal and partial, but which for all that aspire to being 
 accepted as "truth and nothing but the truth." Study of these books 
 will lead to no other conclusion than that they are at best a record of 
 backstairs gossip perpetuated by the mighty master of the house — a 
 rather ludicrous situation, to be sure. Yet it is from books of this 
 sort that the public of the United States has taken the scant knowledge 
 — or what it mistakes for knowledge — it has of the Great War. In this 
 regard it is not unique, of course, since the United States Senate was 
 obliged to gather its information concerning the sessions in Paris 
 from the Canadian, South African and Australian press. That Mr. 
 Wilson wanted to guarantee for ever and aye the status quo as now 
 existing in the Balkan was learned by our Senate not from Mr. Wilson 
 or American newspapers but from the Rumanian and Serbian press. 
 
 Since from a labor of this isort purpose cannot be dissociated, I 
 wish to say that I have the betterment of the methods of international 
 relations at heart. Above all, I would contribute something toward 
 the improvement of which the diplomatic service of the United States 
 stands in the sorest need. 
 
 I have certain recommendations to make, but before I speak of 
 them it becomes necessary to picture diplomacy as it was and still is, 
 and how it brought on the Great War. 
 
 In conclusion I wish to state that no single individual is in 
 position to know it all. I confine myself here strictly to the sphere 
 in which I moved and to the facts with which I became familiar. 
 
 New York, May 1, 1919. S. 
 
I 
 
LIST OF CHAPTERS AND SUB-DIVISIONS 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction XI 
 
 Preface XVII 
 
 List of Chapters and Sub-Divisions XXIII 
 
 I. WAR AND DIPLOMACY 1 
 
 The Varying Nature of Racial Fitness 2 
 
 The Causes of War in Mesopotamia 4 
 
 The Oldest Treaty of Record 6 
 
 Two Early Types of Arriviste 8 
 
 Expansion in Imperial Rome 9 
 
 II. DIPLOMATISTS AND THEIR CRAFT 12 
 
 Diplomatic Privilege of Ancient Origin 13 
 
 Diplomatists Receive Scant Salaries 15 
 
 Diplomacy As Seen ad hominem 17 
 
 The European Professional Diplomatist 19 
 
 On the MentaUty of the Diplomatist 21 
 
 A Hypothetical Demonstration of Diplomacy 24 
 
 III. XHEjmEMLALLJLAIiCS 27 
 
 The Three Emperors' League Superseded 29 
 
 Purpose of Franco- Russian Alliance 31 
 
 Russia and Germany Continue Friends 33 
 
 Europe's Three Political Camps 35 
 
 The Triple Entente Puts in Appearance 36 
 
 IV. XWT? T-PTPIrE FiNTFNTK 39 
 
 The Case of the Two-Power Standard 41 
 
 A Race Between Jingo and Chauvinist 43 
 
 The Anti-German Policy of Edward VII 45 
 
 Diplomacy in Its Heyday 47 
 
 A General Maneuvering for Position 49 
 
 Preparedness for War Gets New Start 51 
 
 —The Position of Austria-Hungary 53 
 
 The Profits of Tariff Discrimination 55 
 
 V. TUFi GREAT DKRACT.K 57 
 
 A Question of Royal Respectability 58 
 
 The Diplomatic Mines Are Sprung 60 
 
 The Terms of the Entente Cordiale 63 
 
 The Attitude of Prince Lichnowski 65 
 
 XXlll 
 
XXIV THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 PaC« 
 
 V. THE GREAT DEBACLE (Continued) 
 
 The Conduct of a Mad Militarist 70 
 
 A Diplomatic jeu de grimasse 72 
 
 A Bull in a Political China Shop 75 
 
 The Government "Official" as Statesman 77 
 
 What the German Government Overlooked 79 
 
 A Piece of Diplomatic Hypocrisy 82 
 
 VI. WHAT WILL AMERICA DO? 85 
 
 The "Orders in Council" Become Supreme 87 
 
 International Law Goes Into Discard 90 
 
 When Diplomacy Shirks Problems 92 
 
 The Position of Neutral Holland, 93 
 
 The Attitude of an American Diplomatist 95 
 
 Views of an Irate Diplomatic Censor 98 
 
 The Censor Assists Entente Diplomacy 100 
 
 Preparing American Public Opinion 103 
 
 The Case of Cardinal Mercier 105 
 
 Voice of Press Is Voice of People 107 
 
 VIL DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY 110 
 
 The Dardanelles in Early Diplomacy 112 
 
 Entente Diplomacy When Handicapped 115 
 
 A Balkan Problem in the Making 117 
 
 An American Ambassador Is Heard From 119 
 
 When and Why German Diplomacy Won 122 
 
 Diplomatic Sauce for Goose and Gander 124 
 
 A Diplomatist in a Quandary 126 
 
 Diplomatic Omnipotence at Close Range 128 
 
 The Foibles of a Diplomatic Agent. 132 
 
 Beyond the Bounds of Diplomatic Propriety 135 
 
 VIII. MACHIAVELISM A OUTRANGE 137 
 
 A Militaro-Diplomatic Move Foiled 138 
 
 Strange Diplomatic Bed-Fellows 141 
 
 Russia's Dream a Diplomatic "Desire" 143 
 
 Where Clarification Was Needed 146 
 
 Clarification Is No Longer Needed 149 
 
 Consequences of the Dardanelles Fiasco 151 
 
 IX. BULGARIA VERSUS SERBIA 154 
 
 The Roots of "Balkan" Diplomacy 156 
 
 Sazonoff 's Policy Toward Bulgaria 159 
 
 Bulgaria's Independence Displeased Czar 162 
 
 Bucharest Treaty a Mare's Nest 164 
 
 How Bulgarian Officers Viewed It 166 
 
 Entente Diplomacy at Sofia Bestirs Itself 163 
 
 Dr. Radoslavoff's Diplomatic Notions 170 
 
 Question of Guarantee Leads to Deadlock 172 
 
LIST OF CHAPTERS AND SUB-DIVISIONS XXV 
 
 Pa«e 
 
 X. SOME CASES OF DIPLOMANIA I77 
 
 Sofia Entente Diplomatists Depart I79 
 
 A Clash Between "Minister" and Consul General 182 
 
 Mr. Einstein a Most Zealous Guardian 184 
 
 The Pseudo-Minister Had a Free Hand 188 
 
 Pre-Conceived Views of a Diplomatist 190 
 
 A Diplomatist of Ingrown Intellect I93 
 
 Publicity is Used as a Corrective 196 
 
 XL DIPLOMACY IN RUMANIA 199 
 
 Diplomatic Constellation at Bucharest 200 
 
 Back of the Coulisses Diplomatiques • 203 
 
 How Senator Marghiloman Saw It 205 
 
 A Neutrality of Several Parts 209 
 
 The Value of the "Information Service" 211 
 
 A Diplomatic Deal In Wheat. 215 
 
 Political Business in Plain Language 219 
 
 Some Matters Incident to Warfare 221 
 
 Bratianu Makes a Diplomatic Deal 223 
 
 XII. DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 227 
 
 The Fruit of Diplomacy Begins to Ripen 228 
 
 Allied Diplomacy Is Editor-in-Chief 230 
 
 When the American Press Was Less Partial 233 
 
 The British Censors Were a Touchy Lot 235 
 
 Contradicting an English Balkan "Expert" 238 
 
 In Press Diplomacy First Version Counts 240 
 
 Mr. Lansing Thought It More Courteous 242 
 
 British Censorship Diplomacy Ubiquitous 245 
 
 Censorship Diplomacy in Bulgaria 248 
 
 Mr. Gerard Also Promotes Public Opinion 250 
 
 What the Wilhelmstrasse Thought of It 256 
 
 XIII. THE BERLIN VIEWPOINT 262 
 
 Diplomacy of the Palazzo Farnese 264 
 
 The Sacred Egotism of Diplomacy 266 
 
 The Pan-German's Dream of Empire 268 
 
 German Realpolitik vs. British Idealpolitik 270 
 
 — German Diplomacy as Seen From Within 272 
 
 International Law a Mere Rule of Conduct 274 
 
 The Earlier View of the American Government 276 
 
 The World from Now On "Privy-Counselled" 278 
 
 Diplomacy and the Question of Food 281 
 
 Fulcrum of a Diplomatic See-Saw 284 
 
 What Machiavel Would Have Done 286 
 
 A Diplomatic Splitting of Hairs 288 
 
 The Handicaps of German Diplomacy 290 
 
 In Diplomacy Might Is Right 293 
 
XXVI THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Pace 
 
 XIV. THE VIENNA VIEWPOINT 296 
 
 Diplomacy versus National Fact 297 
 
 In a Diplomatic cul-de-sac 300 
 
 Austro-Himgarian Diplomacy Less Handicapped 302 
 
 Diplomacy Reduced to Plain Business 304 
 
 Tisza's View of the Situation in 1916 307 
 
 Count Tisza Doubted Mr. Wilson's Integrity 309 
 
 Vienna Not Fond of Submarine Warfare 312 
 
 Diplomacy of the Barbed- Wire Brand 314 
 
 State Department Policy Not Consistent 317 
 
 The Cause of Future Political Moves 319 
 
 The Ever- Wakeful British and French Censors 321 
 
 An Attempt to Believe the Incredible 324 
 
 First of Two Major Political Moves 326 
 
 XV. DIPLOMACY AT CROSS PURPOSES 331 
 
 An Infested Diplomatic Woodpile 332 
 
 Count Czernin Before a Great Problem 335 
 
 An American Ambassador and "Free Press" 342 
 
 Strained Personal Diplomatic Relations 345 
 
 Washington Clears Decks for Action 349 
 
 A Diplomatist in Sore Predicament 352 
 
 The Aftermath of a Diplomatic Tea 355 
 
 Diplomatic Negotiations Under Difficulties 358 
 
 Diplomatists and Plain Citizen 360 
 
 XVI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 364 
 
 Products of the Diplomatic Laboratory 366 
 
 As to Open Covenants and Open Diplomacy 371 
 
 A Better Base for International Relations 374 
 
 The Field of the Interparliamentary Union 379 
 
 Why "Diplomacy" Should Get Its Passport 381 
 
 The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them 383 
 
 APPENDIX 389 
 
 A. Treaty of Alliance of 1279 B. C 389 
 
 B. The Battle of Kadesh 391 
 
 C. "League of Peace" of 1518-19 A. D. 394 
 
 D. The Entento-Italian Agreement of 1915 395 
 
 E. Censorship Regulations of Bulgaria, 1915 397 
 
 F. Societe Anonyme et S. E. le Cardmal Mercier 400 
 
 G. "The Pitfalls of Diplomacy" 404 
 
 INDEX OF PERSONNEL 409 
 
 LIST OF DOCUMENTS QUOTED 419 
 
¥ 
 
The Craft Sinister 
 
 WAR AND DIPLOMACY 
 
 THE causes of war advanced by the historian seem varied enough. 
 Close and impartial scrutiny, however, discloses that the prime 
 cause of war has been real or fancied necessity — economic pres- 
 sure in some instance, political factors in others. 
 
 It is no simple operation to divide in this instance the real from the 
 fancied. Economic pressure becomes generally a political factor; it is 
 that in all cases when the ultima ratio — war — is resorted to. When it is 
 considered that even the material needs of a state are not always a matter 
 of actual want, but may be no more than what is usually understood by 
 the term : Expansion — the enlargement at the expense of others, of domain, 
 markets or political influence, the task of delimitation appears in its proper 
 proportions. We do not deal here with a simple form of taking. Some 
 other party must lose before the taking can occur. The claims of a popu- 
 lation living under intolerable conditions due to overcrowding seem valid 
 enough so long as they are viewed by themselves. They lose, however, 
 much of their weight when contrasted to the position of the people at 
 whose expense more room is to be found for the claimant. The territory 
 in question may not be needed by the second party, but the fact is that the 
 latter thinks that the space will be needed before long for its own increase 
 in population. 
 
 Breaking away from the purely biological aspect of the case, we 
 come to the matter of wealth. Territory not actually occupied or made 
 use of is wealth, of course. Of this each nation would retain as much as 
 possible. To retain it, nations in all ages have taken recourse to arms, 
 either in a preventive manner, by being militarily prepared, or by entering 
 upon war. 
 
 Whatever aspect of decency there attaches to military operations is 
 found in the defense of such a right, so that, generally speaking, defensive 
 wars are the only ones which need appeal to our imagination. It follows 
 that where there is defense there must be aggression, and it is plain, then, 
 that the aggressor is in the wrong. 
 
 But the aggressor is not in the wrong from his own point of view, and 
 the instances are not few in which the historian and philosopher has sided 
 
2 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 with him. It is, for example, the universal acceptance that the subjuga- 
 tion, and ^ven the total elimination, of a people considered barbarous is 
 permissible, to say the least. Anciently such was the general practice 
 unblushingly adhered to by all. But there are even more recent examples 
 of this. iWe have but to remind ourselves of the fate of the American 
 Indian, the Aztecs and the Peruvians to see how little headway civilization 
 has really made. Antiquity, indeed, does not show us a single case in 
 which races and nations were treated so ruthlessly or were so completely 
 effaced. There is no doubt that the Jews suffered very hard treatment 
 at the hands of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans 
 and others. For all that the race survived, and mankind has lost nothing 
 thereby. 
 
 The fate of nations is, as that of individuals, a question of survival 
 of the fittest. The fact that the x\ztec and Inca civilizations disappeared 
 is not entirely a matter of Spanish cruelty. To be sure, both of them 
 would have survived, at least in part, had they first come in contact with 
 as enlightened a system of colonization as the modern British. Neverthe- 
 less, the Aztec and Inca civilizations contained within themselves the 
 elements of weakness that was to be their doom. The haughty and cruel 
 government of the Montezumas made it possible for Hernando Cortez to 
 find within Mexico the allies he needed to destroy the despotism of the 
 Aztec government, and in Peru another conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, 
 found a highly centralized government in a socialistically administered 
 state, the collapse of which left the people without leadership and made 
 the handful of Spaniards supreme. 
 
 In both instances the less fitted succumbed to the better fitted. The 
 fate of the North American Indian is very similar. In this case the 
 subject race was unable even to grasp what little opportunity there was 
 given it. Instead of reconciling itself to the new state of things, the 
 Indian preferred to pass into oblivion over the route of idleness and free 
 government rations on a Reservation. Only the confirmed sentimentalist 
 would shed tears on behalf of the "poor" Indian. 
 
 The Varying Nature of Fitness 
 
 Though some would have it otherwise, the fact is that the survival 
 of the fittest is the main trait in the history of mankind. That fitness, 
 however, has not been always of the same class and degree. In some 
 cases it has been entirely physical, in others superiority of intellect has been 
 the means of survival, as witness the case of the Old Greeks and the Jews. 
 There are cases even in which the mere superiority of numbers counted, as 
 was true especially of the migratory hordes that swept from Asia into 
 
THE VARYING NATURE OF FITNESS 3 
 
 Europe and dispersed strong governments and well-organized peoples as 
 if they had been so much chaff before the wind. That the Tartaric and 
 Mongolian elements in Europe are not more prominent is due to the fact 
 that superiority in numbers could not prevail in the end. The people 
 through whose territories these nomad armies spread had brains in addi- 
 tion to brawn, and so it came that before long there was little left of the 
 invaders. The Finns moved into uncontested districts and the Huns were 
 assimilated by a civilization. With the adoption of the arts and practices of 
 the Germanic peoples, among whorh they settled, the race of Attila armed 
 itself against ejection. The result has been that it has survived into our 
 own days and is still one of the most virile peoples in Europe. 
 
 It is not within the range of the subject discussed here to give further 
 examples of this sort. History is almost entirely made up of similar in- 
 stances. The point that is to be illustrated here is of what nature the 
 necessities leading to war may be, and what results they have generally 
 led to. We find on the one hand that a few adventurers bent upon the 
 accumulation of riches have destroyed great organized states, while on the 
 other whole racial groups went out in search of the promised land, found 
 it, and then either perished or prospered. 
 
 The war records of antiquity are entirely too meager and incomplete 
 to permit the drawing of a line of demarkation between the actual and 
 specific causes of, and the pretexts for, war. What little authentic data 
 there has come to us consists in the main of the self -laudatory records left 
 by rulers who had been successful on the battlefield, a condition which 
 would easily cause the impression, as it has done, that the wars of the 
 Ancients were nearly always personal exploits of a sportive character. A 
 closer study of the subject, however, shows that this is a fallacy in many 
 cases. Real and fancied necessity was even then the moving factor. Pre- 
 texts of one sort or another were already resorted to, showing that then, 
 as now, there was a sort of world public opinion that had to be appeased 
 when it was not actually appealed to. 
 
 In the valley of the Two Rivers, now known as Mesopotamia, the 
 population was already dense at the very dawn of history. For the 
 purpose of increasing the arable area the water of the Tigris and 
 • Euphrates had been led into thousands of irrigation canals, a labor which 
 in itself is the best evidence that the Chaldeans and Sumerians were meet- 
 ing the demand for more room made by the growing population in a manner 
 which could not offend the neighbor, except, possibly, in so far that the 
 neighbor grew alarmed at the increase in population itself or became envious 
 of the riches of these states. 
 
 It would seem that after a while the possibilities of development in 
 the central and northern reaches of the two rivers were exhausted, and 
 
4 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 that the Chaldeans had to look for more room elsewhere. Bounded in the 
 West by great deserts, similarly handicapped in the East, the Chaldeans 
 endeavored to find room in the North and South. The Eastern Taurus, 
 however, was inhabited by mountaineers, probably the ancestors of the 
 Armenians, and no headway could be made in that direction. 
 
 The result was that the Chaldeans turned toward the South, and be- 
 fore long became not only the masters, but also the sole inhabitants of what 
 had been the state of Sumeria. When the country was taken much of 
 the population was put to the sword and the remainder carried into captivity. 
 
 The same people, later known as Assyrians, repeated this practice else- 
 where, as did the Babylonians, their direct descendants. The Medes and 
 Persians finally put an end to the whole state structure in Mesopotamia, but 
 did not enjoy their empire for long. Greek and Roman came and put a 
 period to Persia and her empire, and within a very short time, so far the 
 life of nations goes, the new overlords of Southwest Asia themselves went 
 into oblivion, to be succeeded by the Arabs, cousins of the Chaldeans, As- 
 syrians and Babylonians. The same race was again in possession of the 
 Two Rivers country. The arteries of life, however, the great irrigation 
 canals, had dried up and little could now be done with a country into which 
 Paradise had been laid by the Ancients. 
 
 We have in this instance what may be called an entire cycle of national 
 life, extending well over seven thousand years, if we make allowance for 
 the time required to bring Chaldea into the relatively high state of develop- 
 ment it had when the curtain lifts on it. 
 
 The Causes of War in Mesopotamia 
 
 The tendency to expand in numbers, and possibly in commerce, as 
 shown by the inhabitants of the Two Rivers country, is indeed a most 
 sinister one. It led to the most cruel wars of conquest we have record of. 
 Military operations were, seemingly, undertaken on slightest provocation 
 and no regard whatever was shown for the rights of the state neighbor. 
 The absence of such a thing as international law and its sanctioning matrix, 
 a strong public opinion, tended to make these wars as ruthless as they could 
 be. That such was the case is shown by the tablets and steles of the time, 
 on which rulers boast with great satisfaction of the cruelties they commit- 
 ted. From the defeated enemy ruler was generally taken "the light of his 
 eyes, the speech from his mouth, and the sound from his ears," after 
 which he might suffer "the pain of the boat," the most disgusting method 
 of execution ever devised by the brain of man. To flay the captive alive 
 was nothing unusual in those days ; the morale of populations and besieged 
 garrisons was generally shaken by impaling within view from the city walls 
 
THE CAUSES OF WAR IN MESOPOTAMIA 5 
 
 the hapless creature from whom fate had withheld the swifter end that 
 came when the populace was put to the sword by the conqueror. When 
 the city had finally been sacked and razed, the comely females, and now 
 and then, the young men, were carried into slavery. 
 
 Ancient history is largely compiled from such records, because the 
 chronicles of kinder import are exceedingly scarce. Small wonder then 
 that the history of Southwest Asia is one long account of cruelty in war 
 and deceit in international relations, of conquest today and subjugation 
 tomorrow. 
 
 But we must guard against thinking ourselves entirely in a different 
 class. As pointed out, the records of the better side of life in the Two 
 Rivers country are scant. We must not forget that the blatant autobiog- 
 raphies of the ancient conquistador es are, at their very best, most frag- 
 mentary and extend over a period of almost four thousand years. To 
 condemn a whole civilization on such evidence would be unfair. It must 
 be borne in mind also that the rulers of those days and parts were absolute 
 despots, amenable only to the dagger of the assassin and the tender mercies 
 of another ruler. Apparent also is that much of the murder that was 
 done, on ruler and people alike, was in the nature of reprisal. Cruelty was 
 met with increased cruelty, and crime was visited with retribution in end- 
 less repetition, until it was looked upon as a perfectly legitimate incident 
 to war. 
 
 Agriculture, industry and commerce were too well fostered by the 
 Ancients in the Two Rivers country to permit the snap judgment that all 
 of its rulers engaged in war for the sole purpose of drowning their ennui 
 in bloodshed and destruction. When a city was razed and its people 
 massacred and deported, or when a whole country was laid waste and its 
 population put to the sword or carried into captivity, some sort of necessity 
 was behind the undertaking. In some cases more room was needed, in 
 others a commercial rival was to be eliminated, and when we read in the 
 chronicles of old that this or that king left his country greater than he had 
 found it we may be sure that he left it more prosperous and that the wars 
 he waged had that for an objective. 
 
 Ancient Egypt is a good example of this. Though a contemporary of 
 the states in Mesopotamia, its military history is on the whole a very gentle 
 tale. The Pharaohs were never a cruel lot. Expansion was attempted in 
 the direction of Ethiopia and Judea, but nothing of any account ever came of 
 this. Small territories were occupied for a time, to be ultimately abandoned. 
 In many respects Old Egypt was the Holland of her days, I should say, 
 without wishing to infer that dykes and annual inundations must of neces- 
 sity influence all peoples alike. The Egypt of the Pharaohs was separatistic. 
 Her borders were rather secure on the whole. To the East and West of 
 
6 THB CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the valley the desert formed natural means of defense. The shores of the 
 Red Sea and Mediterranean were easily guarded, and the Ethiopians in 
 the South seem to have been fairly decent neighbors, a condition to which 
 another desert and a good line of communication for the Egyptians, the 
 navigable Nile, must have contributed. 
 
 Old Egypt was thus able to nurse her civilization and from it must 
 have come the realization that wars of conquest are profitable only when 
 necessity for them exists. For reasons unknown to the historian the popu- 
 lation of the Nile valley does not seem to have increased at a great rate. It 
 is not improbable that the increase was regulated, either purposely or 
 through the influence of religious practices of a sexual character, the cult 
 of Isis. 
 
 At any rate the state in the Nile valley lasted, so far as our records 
 show, some five thousand years, and since we must take into consideration 
 that Egypt enters history a well-organized state, bearing the imprint of a 
 slow, and, therefore, long development at the time of her entrance, another 
 two thousand years may safely be added to her national life as we know it. 
 
 The Oldest Treaty of Record 
 
 It is of interest to know that the oldest treaties extant were made 
 between Egyptian kings and rulers in Southwest Asia, Asia Minor included. 
 Of one of them the entire text is known. Rameses II, Pharaoh, and 
 Kheta-sar, King of the Hittites, are the high contracting parties. The 
 treaties then in force, a defensive alliance, prohibition of change of al- 
 ( November 28, 1279 B. C), and provides for the reaffirmation of other 
 treaties then i nforce, a defensive alliance, prohibition of change of al- 
 legiance of the subjects of the two rulers, and extradition of fugitives 
 from justice with the rather humane stipulation that persons extradited 
 may not suffer cruel punishments. The document was evidently drawn 
 up at the Egyptian court, with two Hittite ambassadors, Tarte-sebu and 
 Rames, representing King Kheta-sar. 
 
 The treaty throws a strong light on international and diplomatic re- 
 lations in those days, and, though more than 3,000 years have passed since 
 then, it cannot be said that we have very much improved upon its text, 
 and, what is more important, its spirit. (See Appendix.) 
 
 Egypt, indeed, was the leader of international morality in her days, 
 and it would seem that this contributed not a little to her downfall. Sur- 
 rounded by a world in which brute force and political deception was rule 
 and practice, she neglected her military establishment and ultimately fell 
 prey to the invader. When she finally passed ofif she was in the condition 
 of the octogenarian, whose works and years were ripe alike. She had 
 
THE OLDEST TREATY OF RECORD 7 
 
 avoided and had been spared such wars as would have resulted in the in- 
 fusion of new blood into her people, and when the raider finally came she 
 was no longer virile enough to assimilate. Instead she was completely 
 assimilated — eradicated to such an extent that the very type of her people 
 has disappeared. 
 
 Of the state on the Nile it must be said, however, that a mini- 
 mum of wars left her a maximum of prosperity, so long as the struc- 
 ture lasted. And with that prosperity she coupled a degree of culture that 
 was really extraordinary. It was the matrix of Greek philosophy and 
 science, nor is there much ground for the belief that the sages of Hellas 
 carried their own culture very much beyond the confines of what they had 
 imported from the Land of Temples and Pyramids. 
 
 International relations between Egypt and Greece were the closest and 
 at times the best, despite the fact that the Greeks did not always deal 
 honestly with the Egyptians, did so very rarely, in fact. Greece in her 
 heyday, however, seems to have followed the Egyptian model of foreign 
 intercourse and relations. It is rather surprising that with the same means 
 and with a more favorable geographical position, the Greeks did not take 
 to a plan of expansion, empire-building, which later gave its stamp to Rpme. 
 
 The wars undertaken by Old Greece were mostly efforts to procure 
 colonies in the bona fide and afterward hold them. The colonies of 
 the Greeks were established to give room for the surplus population in 
 the home country, to further Greek commerce and procure raw material. 
 To find sites for the new cities, for of such a nature most of the colonies 
 were at the beginning, does not seem to have been very difficult at any time. 
 Trouble came when these cities and the surrounding country began to 
 flourish and excited the envy of rapacious rulers and governments. First 
 it was the Persian, later the Roman bandits who coveted them and in most 
 cases placed themselves in possession. 
 
 Two Early Types of Arriviste 
 
 It is very unfortunate that Greece's civilization finally fell prey to 
 the duplicity of her statesmen, most of whom were great diplomatists and 
 as such forever engaged in intrigue, against some neighbor now, against 
 a Greek state or colony then. Alcibiades and Themistocles, perhaps the 
 greatest of Greek diplomatistis and statesmen, may be considered the very 
 prototype of the modern intriguant of the diplomatic service. They were 
 arrivistes of the worst type, suffered forever from hurt feelings and closed 
 life as traitors to their own people. Since there were many of this type 
 in Greece, not to mention Pausanias, Hellas was doomed. The worst 
 enemy of the Greek was the Greek, and so it came to pass that, urged by 
 
8 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the demagogue and professional politician, the Hellenes exhausted them- 
 selves in internecine strife and passed under the rule of their enemies first 
 and out of existence a little later. The very people of modern Greece are 
 not Greeks. They are Slavs and stand in relation to the Hellenes very 
 much as the Fellah along the Nile stands to the Egyptian. 
 
 With the departure of Egyptian and Greek came a new era in war- 
 fare and international affairs. For want of a better term I will call it: 
 The Persian. 
 
 For a thousand years at any rate warfare had had a constructive char- 
 acter, that is to say, after every campaign the world seemed a little better 
 off than it had been before. The coming of the Persian and Roman 
 changed all that, though the last of the Roman emperors, again — alas, too 
 late — ^tried hard to reap other fruits from war than mere loot. I refer to 
 Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian. 
 
 The Persian kings were empire-mad, with the result that their wars 
 were entirely destructive. To the Greeks the Persians were known as 
 barbarians, and there is little doubt that this characterization was to the 
 point. The Persians had done little enough, in civics, in their own coun- 
 try. They did less in the conquered territories. Loot was the principal 
 objective of their military operations. Under their rule the irrigation 
 systems of Mesopotamia were so neglected that the country ceased to 
 produce enough food for the hapless remainder of the Babylonian nation. 
 Soon there was little to steal in Mesopotamia and with that the Persians 
 moved further westward. It was not development that interested this fine 
 race-brother of ours, but exploitation by the swiftest method then known — 
 the taking of some rich city and the levying of tribute thereafter. It is 
 rather amusing that this international highwayman of Antiquity should 
 have given his acts the purest of motives — if we are to take his word for 
 it. The plain fact is that he appropriated right and left without even so 
 much consideration for the inhabitants as is included in a thought for their 
 further productivity. The Persian is truly the conquistador of old. 
 When he finally subsided he left in his trail a dozen Mexicos and Perus. 
 His rulers and military leaders were the precursors of the Spanish ad- 
 venturers, with the same wild craze for gold and dominion, with neither 
 of which they knew how to deal judiciously. 
 
 The first imperialist of record, giving the noun the sense it identifies 
 today, was Rome. Heretofore wars had been waged for more room and 
 now and then to get rid of a neighbor whose prosperity was either a real 
 or fancied danger. The warring kings of Mesopotamia deported whole 
 populations after laying waste their country, and after the lust for blood 
 of their armies had been stilled. 'Colonization was not practiced by them 
 for the reason that contiguity of domains was considered very desirable, 
 
TWO EARLY TYPES OF ARRIVISTE 9 
 
 but was out of the question, since great trackless deserts lay between the 
 homeland and the districts that could serve as colonies. It is possible that 
 the Egyptians were similarly hampered, and, with the means of navigation 
 still very primitive, the founding and maintenance of overseas colonies 
 cannot have greatly appealed to the Egyptians since they, unlike the 
 Greeks, had no string of islands from the home shore to colonizable lands. 
 The colonies of the Greeks were merely the endeavor to find room in 
 which to plow, work, build and trade. The result of this was that most of 
 these colonies were autonomous. For reasons unknown to us the Greeks 
 were not fond in the main of ruling others. They probably found ruling 
 themselves strenuous enough. Their history, in fact, leaves no doubt as 
 to this. 
 
 Expansion in Imperial Rome 
 
 With Rome it was different. There was a time when her citizens oc- 
 cupied themselves entirely with their own affairs and problems. Ambitious 
 leaders, however, soon deprived them of this commendable habit. All 
 Italy was brought under Roman suzerainty, and, since Vappetite vient en 
 mangeant, it was not long before the Roman stay-at-home began to rove 
 all over the known world in quest of new colonies. That quest, especially 
 under the later consuls and emperors, meant a great deal of booty in loot 
 and slaves, and, above all, a large income for the state and its ministers 
 in the form of tribute — a regular revenue in gold and silver, and often 
 enslaved human beings. For the rabble the colonial policy of imperial 
 Rome meant free wheat, stolen in Egypt and Cilicia mostly, and free wine 
 from the shores and islands of the Mediterranean; free performances in 
 the Circus Maximus. This could not go on forever. Rome's population 
 grew poor mentally and so it was that Rome became the ne plus ultra in 
 having ended as a republic because it was rich, and as a monarchy because 
 it was poor — an intellectual beggar. 
 
 Back of the "splendor that was Rome" lies a disgusting picture of 
 militarism. Rome waxed fat on her brutality and cant. Might is right, 
 was the maxim which the senators in the Forum circumvented. Consul 
 and proconsul cudgeled their brains night and day how further conquest 
 could be made, or how the revenues could be increased to such an extent 
 that even the taxes farmer could not steal them all. Political leaders who 
 had fallen into disfavor with the capricious rabble of the city engaged in 
 tirades against "barbaric" states to divert the attention of the populace 
 from the shortcomings and crimes of the men in the toga. Wars were 
 started, lost and won, for no other purpose than to save the reputation of 
 the rascals in high places. 
 
10 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Let Carthage he destroyed! 
 
 The colonies of Rome experienced better times under the later em- 
 perors. Monarchs and monarchies have always paid much attention to 
 what may be termed a fixed state policy, in which respect they are much 
 superior to republican institutions. Most of the Roman emperors, even 
 the worst of them, subscribed to the continuation of principles and methods 
 that had been found advantageous. The colonies profited more by that 
 than did the city itself. Roads were built and shipping was placed on the 
 navigable rivers. The signal hills furnished a rapid means of communica- 
 tion, as did a sort of postal service. Little by little the taxes farmers were 
 curbed and a part of the revenues collected was spent among those who 
 contributed to them. In the cities great public buildings were erected and 
 such Roman temple-citadelles as Baalbec assisted in making the popula- 
 tion in the provinces feel that they were to some extent part of that mighty 
 empire far away. 
 
 It is a rather odd circumstance that Republican Rome was liberal and 
 farsighted only at home, while Monarchic Rome was liberal and progres- 
 sive in the colonies. Under the republic the colonials were expected to 
 pray to the gods of Rome, but refused to do it; in the monarchy the 
 colonials could pray to whatever god they pleased, but preferred the 
 Roman deities, worship of most of whom had been agreeably modified, so 
 that a Syrian, still fond of Baal, could without injury to his conscience do 
 his devotions in the Temple of Jupiter Ammon in Baalbec, while the Greek 
 could do likewise in the shrine to Venus on the same fortress platform. 
 
 Emperors Augustus and Trajan were probably the greatest builders 
 Rome had. Unfortunately, they built in the eleventh hour of Rome's 
 existence. The mortar in their edifices was scarcely dry and the pavement 
 on their roads had barely settled when the Germanic barbarians gave the 
 empire in the West its quietus. The empire of the Ekst, Byzantium, rie- 
 inforced by nearly all that was left of Greece, lasted a thousand years 
 longer, and then it, too, fell to pieces. The necessities of another race, 
 this time a Turanian, the Osmanli, had of a sudden grown into the pro- 
 portions of an empire — and an empire the needs of a small flock of nomads 
 were to be, even though it numbered but "four hundred tents" when it 
 squatted down before Old Dorylaeum, frontier post of the revolution-torn 
 Byzantium. 
 
 At that time, I am speaking of the Fifteenth Century A. D., diplomacy 
 was already a fine art in Europe. During the Dark Age it had flourished 
 greatly, especially in Italy, France and Spain. The Neo-Idealism of those 
 times, which ultimately took on the form of a wild scramble to free the 
 Holy Places in Palestine from the yoke of the Saracene, was the proper 
 hotbed for political intrigue. Italian diplomatists especially were famous, 
 
EXPANSION IN IMPERIAL ROME 11 
 
 so famous, in fact, that governments hired them as later they hired Swiss 
 Guards. When a certain Machiavel, a century later, published his fine 
 book on the conduct of princes and governments he was not by any means 
 as original as has been laid to his credit by some, to his discredit by others. 
 Those who condemn Machiavel usually overlook that he was a benign cynic 
 who saw the world in his day as it actually was, and as in our days it 
 usually still is. 
 
u 
 DIPLOMATISTS AND THEIR CRAFT 
 
 JUST when diplomacy became the occupation, professionally, of men 
 trained or selected for the art of negotiation, as known to govern- 
 ments, is uncertain, of course. The first professional diplomatists 
 seem to have served the governments of Genua and Venice, though in 
 making that statement one has to bear in mind that it is not always easy 
 to distinguish between the professional and the occasional, as the case 
 may be put here, seeing that amateur and dilettante are terms that can 
 hardly be applied. 
 
 Long before the diplomatic representatives of these two trade repub- 
 lics negotiated commercial treaties and trade concessions in the capitals 
 of the countries about the Mediterranean, and said wicked things of one 
 another, ambassadors and envoys had been sent and received by most 
 of the courts for several centuries. But the first of these resident envoys 
 were usually favorites of the court that sent them and had little to do 
 with diplomacy as we understand the term. To send a resident ambas- 
 sador to another court meant then that one monarch wished to pay a com- 
 pliment to another. That personages so delegated did now and then 
 occupy themselves with international aflfairs is quite possible, but on the 
 whole they seem to have been true to their proper mission, and that was 
 10 say little and let their presence speak for itself. To have an ambassador 
 at another court was the equivalent then of attesting that there was friend- 
 ship between the two monarchs. It meant little more, as is proved by the 
 practice of sending special envoys whenever some bit of state business 
 had to be attended to. 
 
 It would seem that ambassadors were not always as well received 
 as was expected. The first European ambassadors who arrived at the 
 court of a Turkish Sultan were presented to His Majesty in strong 
 cages especially made for the occasion. It is a matter of record that the 
 Prussian envoy did not relish this treatment and complained to his govern- 
 ment. But the Turk was in those days a master in Europe. His domain 
 extended as far north as the Carpathians, Budapest and the neighborhood 
 of Vienna, and when the Sultan saw fit to receive ambassadors in a cage 
 there was no help for it. 
 
 The Turk had but a little while before emerged from Asia Minor 
 
 12 
 
DIPLOMATISTS AND THEIR CRAFT 13 
 
 and his notions as to dignity were still somewhat Oriental. In this case 
 they dated back to the days of Darius and the Persian kings generally. 
 
 So far as known, the first ambassadors of record who negotiated a 
 treaty are Tarte-sebu and Rames, mentioned in the preceding chapter. 
 In view of the fact that the treaty made between Rameses II and Kheta-sar 
 speaks of other treaties, it is safe to assume that other ambassadors had 
 been similarly employed, except it be that the treaties mentioned were 
 negotiated by the high contracting parties in question themselves. If the 
 usual method of doing things, as prevailing in those days, figures in this 
 case, the facts are probably that Mauthnuro had offended the Pharaoh, 
 had thereby loosed the dogs of war on himself, and had been defeated 
 and killed, with his brother Kheta-sar succeeding him to the throne. The 
 new king of the Hittites acknowledged evidently whatever conditions had 
 been imposed upon him, and, agreeable with his status of inferior, pos- 
 sibly vassal to Rameses II, sent his ambassador to the Egyptian court. 
 Of interest is that the treaty, despite its fervent assurances that there shall 
 be friendship between the two kings forever, did not enjoy too long a span 
 of life, it would seem. Rameses III, who was king of Egypt from 1202 
 to 1170 B. C., is pictured in a tablet at Medinet Habu as receiving the hands 
 of slain Hittites, while an inscription explains that the expedition against 
 the ''chief of the Kheta" was undertaken because he organized a coalition 
 of all Syria against Egypt. This act, by the way, if the inscription is 
 to be trusted, terminated, for good, a case of relations that had existed 
 a good many years before Rameses made the treaty of record, as is shown 
 by an allusion to treaties made between Sety I, of Egypt, and Marsar, 
 of Kheta, and another concluded by Horemheb, of Egypt, and Saparuru, 
 of Kheta. (See Appendix — The Battle of Kadesh.) 
 
 The ambassadors we hear of before Tarte-sebu and Rames seem to 
 have acted in the capacity of parliamentary. Their person seems to have 
 been secure in all cases. The very first instance of this brought to 
 our attention by the records of the Ancients dates back to 2960 B. C. 
 
 Diplomatic Privileges of Ancient Origin 
 
 The practice of giving safe conduct to ambassadors is an old and 
 universal one, and was necessary if the person charged with communicat- 
 ing with an enemy or foreign court was to discharge his duties. Even 
 savages have subscribed to the inviolability of the person of an ambassa- 
 dor, which is nothing unusual since both sides were obliged to reckon 
 with the possibility of having to send a parliamentary. The case is one 
 of self-interest and the surprising thing about it is that in our own days 
 this very simple matter has expanded into a good many f oolsome notions, 
 
14 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 known collectively as the giving of diplomatic privileges. In addition 
 to extending extra-territoriality to the seat of a diplomatic mission, be 
 U embassy or legation, governments subscribe to, and guarantee, the 
 inviolability of the telegraphic dispatches, in cypher or texte claire, and 
 the mail of a diplomatic mission. When censorship has completely de- 
 prived the ordinary citizen of the right to use the telegraph, cable and 
 mails, without having the censors know the full contents of the dispatch 
 or letter, diplomatists, provided the "privileges" have not been withdrawn, 
 as happened so often during the War, may telegraph, cable and write 
 in letters what they please. The diplomatic courier, in charge of a mail 
 bag, is about the only individual in mufti who in times of war can cross 
 the borders of belligerent countries without being subjected to the closest 
 search. 
 
 There are many minor privileges which are granted members of 
 the diplomatic service. They may import and export whatever they 
 please, and without paying customs dues. Misdemeanors and even crimes 
 are made the subject of diplomatic correspondence instead of being aired 
 in the municipal courts of a country. There is a case on record in which 
 a diplomatist shot and killed several persons without suffering greater 
 punishment for it than comes of being transferred to another and better 
 post. 
 
 The life of a diplomatist on post is one long ceremonial. While the 
 foreign offices have now generally ruled that diplomatic callers will be 
 received in order of their arrival, strict attention is still paid to the rules 
 of precedence at official functions to which ambassadors and ministers and 
 their secretaries are invited. The dean of the corps diplomatique, as the 
 ranking resident ambassador is usually known, is a person whose dis- 
 pleasure it will not pay to invite. To his equipment for the post he holds 
 belongs a knowledge, and a thorough one, of one of the most intricate 
 set of social rules known. Great tact is necessary besides, though the 
 tendency, now evident in most capitals, to give precedence to ambassadors 
 and ministers in accord with length of service at the post has much reduced 
 the possibility of friction which existed in the days when diplomatists 
 insisted that the relative standing of the ruler they represented was also 
 to be considered in assigning them places at banquet tables, or in the lines 
 that are formed at receptions and similar affairs at court. To be punc- 
 tilious in the extreme is considered not only proper, but absolutely neces- 
 sary by some diplomatists, especially that class which by the newcomers 
 in the service is styled, as has ever been the case, the "old school." 
 
 There is a popular impression that ambassadors and ministers are 
 accredited by one government to another government. Such is not the 
 case. In addition to having greatly magnified the inviolability of the person 
 
DIPLOMATIC PRIVILEGES OF ANCIENT ORIGIN 15 
 
 of an ambassador, handed to us by the Ancients, we have clung tenaciously 
 to the habit of having ambassadors and ministers seem the personal repre- 
 sentatives of kings and presidents. So far as this concerns the United 
 States, I may mention that the American chief of mission is not ac- 
 credited by the State Department to some foreign office, but by the presi- 
 dent personally to the person of the foreign potentate. 
 
 Instructions to a chief of mission come as a rule from the branch 
 of the government charged with the care of foreign affairs, the State 
 Department in the case of the United States. The ambassador or minister 
 on the other hand addresses all of his communications to the same branch 
 of the government. That arrangement does not preclude, however, that 
 the actual head of the government also address his representative, or 
 that the latter place himself in direct communication with the head of 
 the government in case he is invited to do so, or thinks that departure 
 from the regular practice proper. 
 
 When the chief of a diplomatic mission is absent, or possibly prevented 
 from attending to his duties by sickness, the diplomatist next to him, 
 usually the so-called conseiller, or counselor, assumes the name of charge 
 d'aif aires and as such charges himself with the affairs of the post, be it 
 embassy or legation — that is, he attends to the duties of the chief of 
 the mission, known as chef de mission. All terms and designations in 
 the diplomatic service are French, because it is the language in which, 
 less rigorously now than formerly, the intercourse between the foreign 
 government and the diplomatic missions is still effected. Hence such 
 terms as here already used and such others as these: Note, note verhale, 
 memoire, conversation, pourparlers, laissez-passer, passeporte and many 
 others. 
 
 Diplomats Receive Scant Salsuries 
 
 In addition to the conseiller, each diplomatic mission has a number 
 of secretaries, known as first, second, third and so on. These men, too, 
 despite the fact that their pay is usually a mere pittance, subscribe, among 
 themselves even, to precedence, as will their wives at social events. Need- 
 less to say, the secretaries, not forgetting the military and naval attaches, 
 and the commercial experts, diplomatic agents, and what not, are generally 
 people with enough private income to make them independent of the 
 small salary paid by the majority of governments. If they do not have 
 such incomes they will not stay in the service long. To be a poor diplo- 
 matist is nothing short of wasting one's life entirely. 
 
 The lesser secretaries and clerks of a diplomatic post concern them- 
 selves with routine matters, such as issuing and viseing passports, getting 
 
16 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 a compatriot out of trouble occasionally, especially after he has appealed 
 to the government at home through his senator. I make special reference 
 to this because normally it is next to impossible to interest an American 
 diplomatist in the troubles of an American citizen, except upon special 
 instruction from the State Department. The United States diplomatic 
 and consular services are notorious for this the world over. 
 
 The popular notion that in times of peace the post of ambassador 
 is purely decorative, and that his function is confined to delivering with 
 due decorum the communications of the government he represents, and 
 receiving others in a like manner, is more of a fallacy in many cases 
 than has been thought. It takes a war to bring out at least some truths. 
 The Great War made it only too apparent that some of the ambassadors 
 in Europe had not been entirely messenger boys, as I propose showing 
 here. At the same time I must state that the United States diplomatic 
 representatives seem to have occupied themselves with little enough before 
 the outbreak of the War. 
 
 It has been brought to light that diplomatists of the balance of power 
 in Europe, to wit: The Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, had 
 been very busy for some years preceding the general debacle. Upon 
 orders from their governments and upon personal initiative, these men, 
 if not actually trying to avert the immediate coming of the disaster, did 
 their best to postpone its advent until the moment when a declaration of 
 war would be most propitious to their own side. Diplomatists, as a rule are 
 not patriots of the rabid sort. For all that they are patriotic enough, though 
 their sentiments in that respect are somewhat colored by personal and 
 professional interests. Especially is this true of the so-called arrivistes — 
 men who are prone to shape diplomacy to suit their own ends. An 
 individual of that type will walk on the brink of war for months in the 
 hope that ultimately he may settle to his own profit a situation he may 
 have artificially caused in order to get an opportunity for the display 
 of his talents. 
 
 To describe the operations of a diplomatist may be very simple and 
 again it may be most difficult. It depends upon the government whom 
 he represents and its affiliations in world politics, and, again, upon his 
 standing at his locale or post. A diplomatic representative of the United 
 States, for instance, has very little to do in normal times. In the course 
 of a week he might call once or twice at the foreign office, just to show 
 his face, as it were, and now and then he may actually have to handle 
 a small case. Once or twice a year he would attend some state function 
 at court, present the congratulations of the president on the occasion of 
 the ruler's birthday and do as much on his own behalf on the anniversary 
 of the premier, possibly the minister of foreign aflfairs, and such other 
 
DIPLOMATS RECEIVE SCANT SALARIES 17 
 
 high officials as he might have come to know. His official business ended 
 with that. The United States was not mixing in the politics of Europe, 
 and for that reason the ambassador or minister had ample time in which 
 to cultivate his social opportunities, if so inclined, and usually he was 
 that inordinately. 
 
 It was rather different with the European diplomatists at the capitals 
 of the World Powers. Most of them had a rather strenuous time of 
 it always. When it was no affair of their own government, or of the 
 government to which they were accredited, that concerned them, it was 
 the real or fancied activity of a fellow diplomatist that kept them occu- 
 pied. There was always the danger that this or that government might 
 be interested in a rapprochement with the government of his post, and 
 if he could not do anything to prevent its perfection he at least had to 
 keep his government informed on what was being attempted or actually 
 done. Generally it was not the fait accompli that bothered these men to 
 any extent. It was the making of such accomplished facts that caused them 
 to keep their wits ever sharp and their minds ever alert — ^that is to say, if 
 they understood not only their business but their duty, which in the diplo- 
 matist are two separate things. 
 
 In preventing another diplomatist stealing a march on them, the 
 ambassadors and ministers in Europe found their regular staff of attaches 
 very useles generally. At best the conseiller and secretaries could act as 
 intermediaries between the chef de mission and the many private informers 
 who were willing to be of use for a consideration. Informers of that 
 sort were not rare, of course. They might rank from an underpaid sons- 
 secretaire, who in order to be a hero at some cabaret sold the secrets of 
 his government, to the person who emptied the wastepaper baskets in the 
 ^foreign office or got away with the blotters that might reveal some secret 
 in a telltale mirror. The servants of high government officials also were 
 sought for, and above all it was important to have somebody on intimate 
 terms with the lady that was supposed to be bestowing her affection upon 
 men active in foreign affairs. 
 
 Diplomacy as Seen Ad Hominem 
 
 But that sort of work did not stop here. It was necessary that the 
 several members of the diplomatic corps spy upon one another. In fact, 
 there were several embassies in London, Paris, Petrograd, Berlin and 
 Vienna that needed much closer watching than either Downing Street, 
 the Quai d'Orsay, Novski Prospect, the Wilhelmstrasse or the Ballhaus- 
 platz. The modus operandi was similar to that employed in the case of 
 the foreign office. Lucky was always the man who managed to get into 
 
 \ 
 
 v 
 
18 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the confidence, second hand, of course, of the matt r esse of the ambassador 
 who was credited with evil designs. Since ambassadors seem to have a 
 failing for such attachment, much of Europe's politics before the War 
 was shaped and reshaped via the boudoir. The world will marvel at this, 
 or should do so. That the sweet lips of a diplomatic sweetheart should 
 have contributed to the killing of 7,254,000 able-bodied men, the maiming 
 for life of millions of others, the starvation and death of millions of infants 
 and adults and the wasting of, roundly, $450,000,000,000 seems incredible. 
 Yet such is the fact. World politics reduced to cases ad hominem are a 
 very queer spectacle. 
 
 Before I attempt to say more of this let me remind of the attitude 
 of the public to almost anybody connected with the diplomatic service. 
 To be in the diplomatic service was considered a great distinction. With- 
 out being in any way entitled to it, the average diplomatist, and that 
 is putting it mildly, was surrounded by a nimbus that would have done 
 honor to any saint. Without wishing at all to appear facetious I would 
 say that diplomatists before the Great War were awe-inspiring figures to 
 the average mortal. I hasten to make the same assurance before I say 
 that they seemed to be the last of the gods — remnants of the Gotterdam- 
 merung, whom the iconoclast had overlooked. Nor can it be said that 
 some men in the diplomatic service did not deserve some such tribute. 
 
 The ambassador who can keep his country out of war deserves prompt 
 translation to the Elysian fields. A few men have actually done that 
 and very many have claimed that they did it. A fine foundation, 
 indeed, for the credulity of the masses. Those who were not familiar 
 enough with the ins and outs of diplomacy to know this knew, at least, 
 that the diplomatist always had it in his hands to start a war when he 
 saw fit. Such, at least, was another popular notion concerning ambassa- 
 dors. Since man is so constituted that he reveres the evil god as much 
 as the good deity it really made not much difference which of the two 
 versions was the base of the reverence brought the diplomatist. After 
 all did not one's own government show such a person all the consideration 
 that could be shown? 
 
 Many of the men in the diplomatic service knew this well enough 
 and, being after all but human beings, they enjoyed it. Successful men 
 of affairs especially had their fancies tickled when contemplating them- 
 selves in the circles of awe-struck friends as a diplomatist, who could 
 deny that he was a modern Atlas but infer by his mien that he really was 
 that and much more. It was for this reason, and for the wife's social 
 ambitions, that many a man contributed to a political campaign fund 
 until it hurt on the promise that, his party winning, he would be made 
 ambassador to this or that court. 
 
DIPLOMACY AS SEEN AD HOMINBM 19 
 
 The United States government has been especially culpable in that 
 respect, though hardly more so than some of the other governments that 
 needed but a so-called figurehead in the European capitals. Diplomacy 
 in Europe was thought so innocuous by most of the American governments 
 that it became common practice down to Cape Horn to sell diplomatic 
 posts to the highest bidder. 
 
 At one time even the secretaries were appointed in this manner. 
 The reforms instituted by the late Mr. Roosevelt changed that, however. 
 Diplomatic secretaries, together with their much-disliked confreres in 
 the consular service, were expected to know something after that — a little 
 of international law and good social deportment at any rate. Up to that 
 time it had been nothing unusual to have United States diplomatic secre- 
 taries who employed in their speech the double negative. Not that a man 
 of such social handicaps may not be a good man. The fact is that he is 
 hardly an ornament to the corps diplomatique at a capital of a World 
 Power. At Sofia he might do; at Vienna, for instance, never. 
 
 Governments having big stakes in the European political situation 
 were more particular, though not alwa3''s as fortunate, in the appointment 
 of ambassadors and ministers. The safest way to keep out of trouble in a 
 country where one's interests are small was to have as chef de mission 
 a wealthy man interested in nothing but his own glory and the social 
 advancement of his wife and daughters. The great powers of Europe 
 were not in a position to follow this rule. 
 
 The European Professional Diplomatist 
 
 The diplomatists in the service of the World Powers were of the 
 strictly professional type. All of them had enjoyed the preferments of 
 ^ good education and an efficient nursery. Station and a moderate amount 
 of private income was theirs. For some years at least they had been 
 trained in their craft in the foreign office. After that they had been 
 given a small secretaryship. In the course of time they had become 
 conseiller, then minister and later ambassador, provided they belonged, in 
 the case of Germany and Austria-Hungary, to either the Ho chad el or 
 Uradel — high nobility or archaic nobility in free translation, or were of 
 enough importance otherwise, which was none too often the case. For 
 rapid advancement in Germany it was necessary to have studied at Bonn 
 or Heidelberg so that one might belong to the student fraternity known as 
 the Borussia, to which the male members of the Hohenzollern dynasty 
 have belonged for many generations. 
 
 In Russia the case was much the same, though nobility per se was 
 riot the open sesame it was in the Central Empires. If one had enough 
 
20 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 money one could get into the diplomatic service without much trouble. 
 If one had enough political backing one could become an ambassador 
 after a reasonable length of service in minor capacities. France followed 
 more or less the same plan. Money was a great consideration also to 
 become diplomat e de carrier c, and if one had enough senators and ex- 
 senators to promote one's aspirations, an ambassadorship could be had. 
 Great Britain's method does not differ much from this, though now and 
 then a fat post is; given to a deserving politician of the statesman type. 
 
 What has been said in these three instances applied more or less to 
 every other government in Europe. Always one of the prime prerequi- 
 sites was that the aspirant for diplomatic honor have sufficient private 
 means to look upon the small salary paid him as enough to meet his 
 pourboires. A little ability, a great deal of training, and much inborn 
 savoir faire constituted the purely personal qualifications. Political and 
 social backing did the rest. 
 
 The diplomatic service almost everywhere looks upon itself as a sort 
 of cult. The caste has social rites of its own and is extremely exclusive. 
 So long as the man in the service is below middle age he is prone to be 
 a most exasperating snub towards inferiors, socially and officially, while 
 towards his superiors, and they are not many, he will show a certain 
 amount of servility without feeling it, as a rule. There is one thing which 
 the diplomatist learns quite early in his career: To have a good opinion 
 of himself and to feign self-assurance so long as he does not actually have 
 this. He is very much of an enfant gatee of his government, and the 
 government to which he is accredited, from each of which he takes a 
 goodly share of the infallibility that is accorded such institutions by the 
 complacent public. To feel that the organization to which one is so 
 V closely allied is infallible is an invitation to conceit which few men can 
 withstand. 
 
 Governments themselves never admit that their diplomatic service is 
 capable of making mistakes. In the chancelleries that notion is not held, 
 of course, but toward the public that deception must be kept up. The 
 diplomatist, therefore, finds it easy to preserve that superiority which to 
 the uninitiated seems all too real. A government may be open to attack 
 in the press in all other respects, but, strange to say, it is a rare occurrence 
 to see its diplomatic service criticised from the point of view of personnel. 
 The service is sacrosanct. It is this for the reason that it is recruited, gen- 
 erally, from the classes whose influence is great ; that is so poorly paid in 
 most cases, and, finally, that it has always been treading on thin ice to 
 inquire too deeply into any of the things that concern the holy precincts of 
 a foreign office or state department. 
 
 The older professional diplomatists discard some of the silly notions 
 
THE EUROPEAN PROFESSIONAL DIPLOMATIST 21 
 
 they held in their own novitiate. They are no longer the enthusiasts 
 of youth. In the course of years they have learned that much in life 
 is futile. The plaint of Koheleth that vanitas vanitatum vanitas so much 
 is governed here below, comes to have a great meaning to them. At first 
 they become cynics, and later, provided there is enough of the milk of 
 human kindness left in them, benign pessimists. A life in which deceit 
 and simulation is the daily portion, so far as one's own conduct is con- 
 cerned, and in which the words and acts of others must be regarded with 
 the keenest skepticism, is bound to leave the mind in that frame. Thor- 
 oughly disillusioned, these men may come to the point where honesty 
 is a salve to them — a balm of Gilead as hard to find as the thing Diogenes 
 looked for with a lantern in the streets of Athens. 
 
 On the Mentality of Diplomatists 
 
 I have before made the statement that diplomatists are patriots 
 of a somewhat peculiar stripe. The good diplomatist is never a ranter. 
 He knows the enemy people and their problems too well by the time he 
 might harangue against them, and has too fine a conception of dignity 
 withal to contribute to the flood of abuse that is heaped upon men and 
 women who before the declaration of war may have been thought ever 
 so good. It is the diplomatist who realizes, more than anybody else, that 
 war is the continuation of diplomacy with other means. He knows that 
 war has come simply because the peace means of diplomacy failed. 
 Whether or no he had a share in the bringing on of the disaster, he under- 
 stands on how little the fate of international relations often turns. In 
 addition to that he realizes that his diplomatic career in the future might 
 be adversely influenced by what he could say. Certain it is that every 
 foreign office in the world would give the closest attention to his utter- 
 ances and that would be enough to make him persona non grata. To 
 have spoken at all would be considered a faux pas. The talking diplo- 
 matist does not remain a diplomatist long; promotion at least is out of 
 the question. What the government exacts from its diplomatic service 
 it expects of the diplomatists of other governments. 
 
 Thus it happens that the diplomatist to whom the passports were 
 handed does not, as a rule, reappear on the scene during the period of 
 hostilities. My own experience is that most of these men could not be 
 induced to talk. There is no human being that can be wholly indiflferent 
 to the facts of life. The diplomatist may defy them for years in the 
 routine of his activity, but he cannot deny them. When war comes and 
 the flood gates of vituperation and calumny are down the decent diplo- 
 matist (if there be such a thing) remains generally the only one who 
 
22 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 has nothing to say. He knows what the facts in the case are, and even 
 if he should not know all of them he understands his metier too well to 
 accept that all is so very onesided. The pretexts advanced by the parties 
 at war do not interest him personally. He may take a professional interest 
 in them, but knows that back of them lies a cause far greater than he 
 
 \ could regulate or direct. War is to him a detail of the laws of nature. 
 He realizes, more than any other class and individual, that before war 
 can be eliminated man generally must improve. 
 
 Men of that type are likely to be included in what the younger 
 element in the diplomatic service is fond of calling: The Old School. 
 I'here has always been an old and a new school in diplomacy, and the 
 distinction has been made either by the newcomers in the service or by 
 the arrivistes, who found the sane and conservative men de carrier e in 
 the way. In recent years the young and arrivist diplomatists have drawn 
 the line between themselves and their elders where Metternichism and the 
 "new diplomacy" were supposed to meet. The trouble with this was that 
 this new diplomacy was as Machiavellian as the older variety. So long 
 as into the art of negotiation enters a great deal of duplicity, so long will 
 it remain the sharp game of wits it is. 
 
 There is much more comraderie in the corps diplomatique at a capital 
 than is generally found among members of the same service. It is a 
 notorious fact that relations between the embassies and legations are 
 much more sincere and congenial than they are within the confines of 
 the mission itself, or within the same service. The trip made by Colonel 
 House to Europe in the winter of 1915-16 was undertaken partly for the 
 purpose of settling the difficulties that existed between the United States 
 
 ^ diplomatic posts at London, The Hague, Berlin, Vienna and Berne. The 
 chefs de mission at these points did not agree with one another on any- 
 thing. There was a great deal of interference with one another's affairs. 
 Quite early in the War, in the fall of 1914, Mr. Henry van Dyke, minister 
 at The Hague, had undertaken, without the least authority, to examine 
 the mails of Mr. James W. Gerard, ambassador at Berlin. In these mails 
 Mr. van Dyke had found matter which he thought did not belong there, 
 and, though not enjoying the powers of a censor, so far as the others 
 knew, he had destroyed some of this matter, as on one occasion he stated 
 to me. Naturally, the Berlin embassy did not like this. Mr. Gerard him- 
 self was not anxious to have his diplomatic mail littered with matter of 
 that sort, but, and properly so, took the stand that his mail was as invio- 
 late at the hands of a brother diplomatist as it was supposed to be at the 
 hands of the government to which he was accredited. 
 
 A little later the London embassy undertook to take over the duty 
 The Hague legation had charged itself with. The result was more 
 
ON THE MENTALITY OF DIPLOMATISTS 23 
 
 friction. The United States embassy at Vienna had trouble when Mr. 
 Frederic C. Penfield, its chief, began to use the diplomatic mail and 
 courier to import from London such articles of apparel as men of means 
 will buy, and such tidbits of the table as the Vienna market offered 
 no longer. An attempt after that to get these things via Paris caused the 
 United States legation at Berne to worry. One thing led to another, 
 and for a time it seemed as if the several United States diplomatic 
 missions in Central Europe were about to break off relations with one 
 another. The good offices of Colonel House prevented war. 
 
 Incidents of that sort are not confined to any particular service, 
 however, though in this instance they degenerated into an affair between 
 \ fishwives. As a rule, the members of the same service have great 
 difficulty being civil to one another, except it be that they have made 
 '" special pacts to promote one another. A world that thinks entirely in 
 terms of treaties, alliances and ententes is all too apt to spread over 
 its private affairs the varnish of its official conduct — its profession. 
 
 De Schelking, in his book, ^'Recollections of a Russian Diplomat," 
 tells the rather interesting story how Baron von Schon, of the German 
 diplomatic service, and ambassador in Paris at the outbreak of the 
 War, and M. Isvolski, of the Russian diplomatic service, and ambassador 
 in Paris also at the coming of the debacle, made a pact years before at 
 Copenhagen to promote one another's interests. The two men were then 
 on post at the Danish capital, not the most hopeful place in Europe. 
 It was decided that Schon should get to Petrograd as German ambassador, 
 while Isvolski was to be Russian ambassador at Berlin. A piece of 
 international deviltry which they had promoted in the interest of Russia 
 and Germany and to the detriment of Denmark in the summer of 1905 
 was to be the fulcrum of the scheme, the promotion of better relations 
 between the two empires the lever. 
 
 In the end they succeeded in promoting one another, though not as 
 per schedule. Isvolski was made minister of foreign affairs, a post he 
 held from 1906 to 1909, while Schon ultimately was appointed ambas- 
 sador at Paris, where Isvolski found him later on, and where the two 
 together saw what had become of the great scheme they were a part of. 
 
 I quote the case as a good illustration of how the "good" relations 
 between governments and nations may have a purely personal basis and 
 * what diplomatists can do when they set their minds to it. While this was 
 
 going on, Russia was bound to France by a treaty of alliance, and there 
 were times when this treaty might have become a scrap of paper overnight. 
 The Russian minister of foreign affairs, Isvolski, was still the same 
 Isvolski who made the pact with Schon, and the Russian ambassador at 
 Paris, Isvolski, while in the course of time he might have changed, was 
 
24 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 still a man susceptible to influences that were not particularly pro-French 
 nor in any way too friendly to the Franco-Russian entente. 
 
 A Hjrpothetical Demonstration of Diplomacy 
 
 There is no situation in international affairs that is too much for two 
 diplomatists of influence and ability who have made up their minds to 
 change it. Indeed, one of them can do it, if he be unscrupulous enough. 
 The means at his disposal, especially the fact that he can always falsely 
 \ incriminate any government and diplomatic mission, make that perfectly 
 simple. His government will always believe him. It will never believe 
 another government or its representative. Even if the facts ultimately 
 corroborate the protestant's statement, skepticism will remain. It will 
 be said that the entente or alliance, or whatever it was the falsely accused 
 wished to engineer, was not carried into being and effect because something 
 else interfered. In diplomacy all rumors are looked upon as at least half- 
 truths and every false move on the part of a foreign ofiice or diplomatist 
 constitutes a fait accompli. To try at a thing and fail has the same effect 
 as to succeed. The unsuccessful negotiation of a treaty is considered 
 a treaty plus aggression, plus the losing of standing that comes with 
 failure. 
 
 For the purpose of illustrating this better I will set up a purely 
 hypothetical case. 
 
 In the capital of Government X is the ambassador of Government A. 
 A has for some time occupied itself with the thought of forming an 
 alliance with X for the purpose of meeting a situation created by Govern- 
 ment Z. That situation may be one that calls for defensive measures 
 or it may be one that spells aggression. A may need more room, more 
 markets, more raw material, an outlet to the sea, a share in a "zone of 
 interest," or any of the things a nation may actually need or merely imagine 
 as necessary. Z, however, is too strong to be attacked without assistance, 
 and A, therefore, decides that X must be inveigled into giving it. Or 
 it may be that the ambitions of Z can be curbed only in this manner. 
 
 Government X may have its own cares and obligations just then and 
 careful sounding has established that for the time being, at any rate — 
 governments never turn down definitely such overtures — it cannot en- 
 tangle itself. Government A, however, sees in X the only possible, or 
 maybe, logical ally, and instructs its ambassador to bring about the de- 
 sired alliance by any means. 
 
 It is highly probable that the first diplomatist of ^ who attacks the 
 problem is instructed to limit his efforts of a direct nature to a better 
 understanding between the two governments and nations. With that in 
 
A HYPOTHETICAL DEMONSTRATION OF DIPLOMACY 25 
 
 view the ambassador of X in the capital of A will be taken in hand and 
 made to feel that he is quite the best diplomatist there ever was. 
 
 An entente cordiale being established, A sends to the capital of Z 
 an ambassador known to possess the special ability required by the con- 
 ditions existing. At first nothing unusual happens, of course. The new 
 ambassador of A goes out of his way to show that he cares more for 
 social prominence and favors than he does for professional prestige, 
 keeping meanwhile his eyes on the objective that is his. 
 
 After a while, and at the psychological moment, rumors about Gov- 
 ernment Z begin to float about the capital. They are not especially edi- 
 fying to the Government X, and its foreign office honestly doubts them. 
 The ambassador of X at the capital of Z, however, is instructed by means 
 of a cypher dispatch to be on the lookout for anything that might in any 
 manner shed some light on the report that, let us say, Government Z 
 was anxious to reach a better understanding with Government Y, known 
 already to be not especially friendly to Government X. 
 
 The ambassador of Government X, being in all matters concerning 
 his duties a conscientious man, thinks the thing over and discovers that 
 some of the happenings and rumors that have come to his attention 
 recently are now better understood. He knows that there is as yet no 
 alliance between Z and Y, but may remember that only last week the 
 foreign minister of Z was unusually cordial to the ambassador of Y, 
 going perhaps so far as to make the audience unduly long at the expense 
 of X, who arrived after ambassador Y. 
 
 But ambassador X, in order to demonstrate that such a thing could 
 not escape his notice, informs his Foreign Office that, while there is 
 reason to believe that Government Y has shown some uncalled-for friend- 
 liness to the Government Z, there is as yet no ground for the conclusion 
 that an alliance will be formed. No alliance has been effected so far, of 
 course, and the ambassador will continue to watch developments with the 
 care he has given the matter ever since the first signs of a desire for a 
 rapprochement on the part of Y with Government Z came to his attention. 
 He gives the assurance that as yet nothing has occurred that would have 
 justified him to make a report. 
 
 The Foreign Office of X is not wholly satisfied with this report, 
 but waits until it has heard from its ambassador in the capital of Y. 
 That personage may be frank enough to say that nothing has been heard 
 at his post of such endeavor on the part of Government Y, which would 
 be natural enough since the petitioner would be obliged to make his 
 presentations at the capital of Z through its ambassador. 
 
 But this diplomatist also will have grown at least a little suspicious, 
 and, together with his confrere at the capital of Z, he will begin to watch 
 
26 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 for evidence showing that a rapprochement between Governments Z. 
 and Y is fait accompli. When next the minister of foreign affairs of Z 
 or Y has occasion, at a banquet, let us assume, to use the usual formula in 
 referring to the relations between the two countries as especially good, 
 the harm is done. Though the foreign office of X may know perfectly 
 well that no secret treaty of alliance has been made, as it will know if it 
 be worth its salt, press and public of X will look upon the situation as 
 grave. A treaty of alliance against X is said to exist and after that 
 Government A will not have to wait so very long before X is willing 
 to make a "similar" treaty, this time a real one. War is the next step. 
 
 It would serve no purpose whatsoever did Government Z and Y 
 protest just before the break that there was no such alliance between them. 
 Such a statement would be looked upon as another violation of confidence 
 and a further endangering of the world's peace, so far as the combined 
 public opinion in the countries of A and X is concerned. To the Govern- 
 ment X such a protest would seem a sparring for time in order that Z 
 and Y might select a better moment for the attack, while Government A 
 would forget for good and always what its own share in the matter 
 was. 
 
 Diplomacy in such instances knows but one rule and guide: 
 
 ''Qui s excuse, s'accuse." 
 
Ill 
 THE TRIPLE ALUANCE 
 
 THE utter debacle of the mad military expedition into Russia in 
 1812 and the resulting rising in Prussia in the following year set 
 the star of Napoleon Bonaparte. Among the very ashes of France's 
 dream of liberty, which in the hands of the Corsican opportunist had 
 become the instrument of wildcat imperialism, was formed in September, 
 1815, by Alexander I, of Russia; Francis I, of Austria, and Frederik 
 William III, of Prussia, an agreement known as the Holy Alliance. 
 Reaction thus followed Radicalism. The pendulum swung once more 
 from one extreme to the other, as it has the habit of doing. 
 
 Ostensibly the league was formed for the purpose of preserving in 
 Europe "peace, justice and religion," all three of which had been endangered 
 by the French, as it was seen at the time. Great Britain did not join 
 the pact, because, after the fall of Napoleon, she was content with letting 
 the Continent attend to its own affairs. So long as her shores and her 
 colonies were secure, European situations did not greatly interest her 
 statesmen nor worry her public. The Holy Alliance was later joined by 
 all the sovereigns on the Continent, with the exception of the Pope, who 
 seems to have realized, as did Pope Leo X in 1519 in connection with 
 a similar pact, that the protection of religion by a combination of monarchs 
 and their governments was not to the best interests of the Church. The 
 Catholics of France had to be won back, moreover, and were willing to 
 return to the flock, now that the Reign of Reason was over — now that 
 Reason had shown herself rather incompetent in dealing with matters 
 highly abstract. There was nothing to be gained, therefore, by the Holy 
 See in joining an alliance that was unnatural enough despite its quite 
 natural composition. To the men in the Vatican, whatever their faults, 
 must be left the recognition that they have been fine students of human 
 nature. The limits of the feasible have ever been clear to them, and 
 so it came that the papacy did not join the Holy Alliance, despite the 
 fact that Austria always had been far more the daughter of the Church 
 than was France. 
 
 This "League of Nations," like its forerunner, the League of 1518-19, 
 did not endure for long. In 1830 it was dead. The league started with 
 an act of violence and gross injustice. The monarchs of Russia, Austria 
 
 27 
 
28 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 and Prussia divided Poland once more — in the interest of world peace, 
 of course; actually because they coveted the territory. At the Congress 
 of Vienna Metternich had an able opponent in the person of Talleyrand, 
 but the fact is that the former had force with him, and force has always 
 been the best argument at the peace table. To plead morality is well 
 enough, but it is the number of battalions which shapes the provisions 
 of the treaty. 
 
 In the same year the Orleanists reconverted France into a monarchy, 
 and for a time it seemed as if liberal institutions in Europe were to be 
 banished again. But the reaction that was setting in was due to popular 
 disapproval of tyranny by the masses. There have always been some 
 who would prefer government by a single despot to government by a 
 million tyrants, as a people misled by the demagogue is only too prone 
 to be. 
 
 But common sense was far better in the saddle than the reactionaries 
 believed. The revolutionary wave that swept over Europe in the forties 
 wrung concessions from many a government, induced even the Prussian 
 king to grant to the people a somewhat hamstrung Constitution. After 
 all, the French Revolution had made the world a little better — would have 
 made it much better had it not gone to such terrible extremes. 
 
 The revolution in France of 1848 re-established the republic for 
 the short spell of four years, when a pseudo-Napoleon came to the throne. 
 It seemed that the several experiments with republicanism made in Europe 
 up to that time did not meet the popular view, and for the next eighteen 
 years only Switzerland, and if San Marino and Andorra count in such 
 matters, they also, continued a form of government well suited, apparently, 
 to their needs. The remainder of Europe fell back to the "divine-right" 
 system of government. 
 
 For a time Emperor Alexander II, of Russia, was by far the most 
 liberal monarch in Europe. The Prussian kings and the other German 
 overlords regretted what rights and guarantees they had given their people 
 in the "Forties." In Hungary the Magyar class, ably supported from 
 Vienna, worked hard to return to feudalism and, in a measure, succeeded. 
 In Italy, on the other hand, men were at work "redeeming" the country, 
 politically only, to be sure, but not without bettering the lot of the people 
 so freed. A period was set these socio-economic and socio-political ups 
 and downs by the raid of Prussia and Austria upon Denmark in 1864, 
 their quarrel over the spoils and other differences in 1866, the formation 
 of the North German Union, and the war of a united Germany, under 
 Prussian leadership, with France, 1870-1871. 
 
 Up to the attack by Prussia and Austria on Denmark in 1864 the 
 political affairs of the continent of Europe had been rather chaotic, and 
 
I 
 
 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 29 
 
 the landhunger of three of the leading powers having been appeased by 
 the partition of Poland, peace for the time being was rather secure. The 
 density of populations, moreover, was not great, and industry had not 
 yet gone to mass production, so that there was no necessity of a wild 
 scramble for markets. Thus it came about that for a while the smaller 
 states were assured of their tomorrow. 
 
 But a cloud appeared on the horizon when Prussia, by means of the 
 gradual extension of the Zollverein, was slowly making herself the head of 
 an economic and, to some extent, political federation that needed but the 
 touch of a Bismarck to act as an entity, as it did when war broke out 
 between Prussia and France. French statesmen had watched with keen 
 interest and great anxiety the gradual congealment into a formidable unit 
 of the formerly disrupted neighbors in the East. The fact that a highly 
 efficient Prussia was at the head of the combination, a Prussia that had 
 wiped out the kingdom of Hanover, the Duchy of Brunswick and the old 
 Kurhessia, and which was now supreme on the Rhine, did not in any 
 way tend to allay the fears of the French. That being the case, a very 
 flimsy pretext was used by the French government to bring on war with 
 Prussia.* The enterprise ended diastrously for France. The loss of 
 Alsace-Lorraine and five billion francs indemnity was all that could be 
 shown by the French when the peace treaty of Versailles had been signed. 
 On the other hand, France was once more a republic. Whether or no, 
 from the viewpoint of national biology, that was a benefit only the future 
 can show. 
 
 The Three Emperors' Alliance Superseded 
 
 Germany was now an empire once more. The emperor of Austria 
 dismissed his claims to the German imperial crown and shortly afterward 
 became a constituent of the Three Emperors* League, of which Czar 
 Alexander III, of Russia; Emperor William I, of Germany, and Emperor 
 Francis Joseph, of Austria-Hungary, were the members. 
 
 For a time this arrangement seemed to suffice to preserve the balance 
 of power in Europe, for which there was now a necessity. It seemed 
 also that the Three Emperors' League would for many years, decades, 
 perhaps, remain the major political fact in Europe. But that was not 
 to be. In 1884, at Skyernewice, the league was renewed for another term 
 of three years, and when 1887 came around it was found that the league 
 had become obsolete. 
 
 * "Napoleon II a declare, sans rime nt raison, la guerra aux Russes, aux Autrichiens, aux 
 Mexicaines, aux Prussiens, et iinalement il nous a fait enlever I'Alsace et la Lorraine, sans 
 Parler des milliards xx payer." — A French School Book. "^'Instruction Civique." — Paul Bert. 
 
30 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Two factors contributed to this: 
 
 In 1882 there had been made between Germany, Austria-Hungary and 
 Italy a treaty, which later became known as the Triple Alliance. That 
 this alliance did not immediately supercede the Three Emperors' League 
 is due to the fact that, though Austria-Hungary and Italy had fairly well 
 ironed out their difficulties, Italy was still considered an unsichercr Kan- 
 tonist — uncertain "customer" — by the statesmen in Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary. Nor was it ever clear whether, after all, the military power 
 of Italy considered, the Italians were not more of a charge than a help 
 in a defensive alliance. The attitude assumed at the outbreak of the Great 
 War by the Italian government that the terms of this treaty did not 
 oblige her to side with Austria-Hungary on the ground that Austria- 
 Hungary had attacked instead of being attacked, while Germany adhered 
 to the spirit of the document, seems to justify the fears always entertained 
 by a large number of German and Aiustro- Hungarian statesmen, which 
 very recently indeed had been voiced frankly by Kiderlen Waechter, prede- 
 cessor of von Jagow, State Secretary of Foreign Affairs. 
 
 Russia continued a member of the Three Emperors' League after 
 the making of the Triple Alliance, as has been shown. She could well 
 afford to do that, nor was her prestige impaired by not being a member 
 of the alliance. The agreements she made with Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary, through the person of the czar, bound her only for three years 
 at a time and left her hands rather free. Again, Russia derived certain 
 benefits from being a member of the Three Emperors' League. She was 
 almost constantly at odds with Great Britain in regard to points of 
 unfriendly contact along the northern boundaries of India. Gradually the 
 sphere of influence of Russia had been extended southward. A dispute 
 over Afghanistan in 1885 led almost to war, nor had the affair in the 
 Crimea been forgotten yet. 
 
 There were many in Russia who regarded the Three Emperors* 
 League as a very illiogical combination. Russia was hostile to Great 
 Britain and never went out of her way to let this be forgotten. Germany, 
 on the other hand, had strong dynastic ties with England, and a little 
 unpleasantness at the time of the annexation of Hanover and Brunswick 
 overlooked, the Hohenzollerns had managed to get along very well with 
 the British government and reigning family. The consequence of this was 
 that all the Russian government could expect to find in Berlin, despite 
 the Three Emperors' League, was good advice rather, to keep the peace, 
 than an offer to go to war for the further aggrandizement, eastward, of 
 the Russian empire. Russia's imperialists were not looking for good advice 
 in Berlin. What they wanted was a guarantee from the Gerrrian govern- 
 ment to actively promote Russian interests in case of war between Russia 
 
THE THREE EMPEROR'S ALLIANCE SUPERCEDED 31 
 
 and Great Britain. This guarantee Bismarck might have given, but Emperor 
 William H never, being in those days intensely Anglophile. This is one 
 of the reasons why the impetuous, young monarch ''dropped his pilot." It 
 must not be overlooked, however, that the attitude taken by William II 
 was not an entirely unreasonable one. Long before there was a "German 
 peril" in the world was there a "Russian peril" in Germany. There were 
 about 160,000,000 Russians of all sorts to 68,000,000 Germans, whose 
 country had but little of natural wealth, while Russia's resources even today 
 have been hardly tapped. Out of these conditions grew the two major of 
 Germany's political tendencies : Orientation toward the East, or orienta- 
 tion toward the West. The latter tendency meant assuming a hostile 
 attitude toward Russia, the former had for its tangible objective an 
 alliance between Germany and Russia, which alliance would have been 
 made had the Berlin government been ready to go to war with Great 
 Britain in the interest of Russia, in addition to placing a premium on 
 Pan-slavism by surrendering to Russia the Balkan states and probably 
 Austria-Hungary. It was not easy to determine which of these was the 
 lesser of two evils. Berlin could not afford to affront either the one or 
 the other, and for that reason did its best to be on good terms with 
 both, St. Petersburg and London, hoping always, it seems, that the parting 
 of the ways would never come. 
 
 Czar Alexander III was sensible enough to see that this could not be 
 otherwise, and his friendship continued to be enjoyed by William I after 
 the league was a thing of memory. This friendship was even transferred 
 to William II and lasted until the death of the czar in 1894. 
 
 Alexander was rather reactionary and had little sympathy with repre- 
 sentative and popular institutions. Republics were his bete noire. For 
 this reason he resisted consistently every endeavor to have Russia attached 
 to France with a treaty of alliance. M. de Giers, most prominent of 
 his foreign ministers, also disliked the idea of seeing the autocracy do 
 teamwork with a republic, but in 1893 was obliged to enter into such an 
 alliance. 
 
 Purpose of Franco-Russian Alliance 
 
 The alliance between Russia and France was not aimed at Germany, 
 which was the reason why Czar Nicholas and Emperor William II man- 
 aged to maintain the best of relations and even enter into agreements 
 against others. The Franco-Russian entente, as the agreement is popu- 
 larly known, was intended to be a curb upon Great Britain. It was 
 frankly anti-British, as was so often demonstrated during the late Boer 
 War, when Great Britain had hardly a friend in Europe, Emperor William 
 
32 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 excepted, despite the impulsive telegram he sent to President Kruger on 
 the occasion of the Jamieson Raid. 
 
 Russia had many grievances against Great Britain, or thought she had, 
 which in international affairs is the same thing. Her animus was founded, 
 however, not on clashes in the Far East and India, but on the deter- 
 mination of Great Britain to retain the Dardanelles and Bosphorus in 
 the peculiar status they had. The Russian Black Sea fleet was prevented 
 by the several treaties that established this status, and later by what was 
 known as the 'Concert of Europe," which in matters affecting the Near 
 E^st was always under the direction of Great Britain, from entering the 
 straits and the Mediterranean, while Russian mercantile shipping was 
 forever at the mercy of the fetwahs of the Turkish sultans, who could 
 close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles whenever they deemed this wise. 
 
 Such at least was the gravamen Russian statesmen advanced. As a 
 matter of fact, this was stating but half of the case. Long before the 
 Byzantian empire passed away, in 860 and again in 1048, of our era, 
 Russian fleets had attempted to "force" the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. 
 Ever since then it had been the dream of the men in Moscow and St. Peters- 
 burg to make Constantinople their third capital and the Balkan one of 
 their provinces. In addition to being a tremendous economic and political 
 advantage, that plan, if carried out, would have united the Slavs into a 
 single nation, and what was of greater importance even, during the su- 
 premacy of the clergy in Russia, it would have made Constantinople the 
 seat and glory of the Greek Orthodox Church. When Great Britain 
 refused to have Russia navigate the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to her 
 heart's content, Russia felt how bitterly her plan of expansion southward 
 was being opposed by the British. 
 
 The French also had reason to resent the pretensions of the British 
 about the time the treaty was made with Russia. Quite calmly Great 
 Britain had placed herself in control of the Suez Canal and most of 
 Egypt, to mention but two of the points of hostile contact. The boun- 
 daries of the British and French empires in Africa furnished ample 
 opportunity for more friction, the Fashoda Affair, for instance, and 
 France saw that she needed an ally and a strong one. Relations be- 
 tween Germany and Great Britain continued to be good, and complica- 
 tions with one meant an invitation to the other to strike, as the French 
 viewed it. 
 
 In addition there was the Levant and its many problems that kept 
 Russia and France meeting on the same ground. In that sphere the two 
 had much in common. France saw in the Balkan, though much more 
 so in Asia Minor, good markets close to her doors. She had been able 
 to meet Italian and Austrian competition. Germany had as yet not 
 
PURPOSE OF FRANCO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE 33 
 
 entered this market very strongly, and Great Britain seemed content with 
 getting all the railroad concessions the Turks had to give, without building 
 any of the lines, which was not necessary since railroad concessions in 
 hand are out of reach of the competitor and can be used for political 
 purposes. True enough, the Turks were partial to the French and favored 
 them in many ways. They were also ready to be good friends with the 
 Russians. But it was British anti-Russian diplomacy in Pera that was 
 successful at the Sublime Porte. 
 
 Turkish and British interests happened to coincide exactly in many 
 respects. The principal question on which Turkish policy, such as it 
 was, and British policy agreed was that the straits of the Bosphorus and 
 Dardanelles should retain the status given them. That status involved 
 a slight infraction of Ottoman sovereignty, in that it made a waterway, 
 which the Turks claimed to be territorial, the subject of international 
 agreement. But it left the Turks in full control of it, pending good 
 behavior, and the Turks, by that time, had learned that it was not well 
 to be too particular in matters affecting British interests. The Ottoman 
 government could have never held for long the straits, if not internationally 
 guaranteed in their possession. Both, the Ottoman and the British govern- 
 ments had to fear that overnight the Russian Black Sea fleet, which was 
 largely maintained for this very purpose, would swoop upon the entrance 
 to the Bosphorus, force entry, take Constantinople, close the Dardanelles 
 at Sid-il-Bahr and explain afterward, as is done in such cases. 
 
 To Turk and Britisher alike that would have been disastrous. The 
 Ottoman capital would then have been elsewhere again, probably Brussa 
 or Eskishehir in Anatolia, and with Russia in possession of the Black 
 Sea, the Bosphorus, Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, British control 
 of the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal would have been problematical, 
 to say the least. That much Great Britain could not risk, and so it came 
 that the Franco^Russian entente was arrived at despite the dislike of a 
 czar, who was logical enough to see that his autocracy could not very 
 well pair itself with a republic, and despite the liberals of France, who, 
 naturally, stuck up their noses when it was first proposed to link la 
 republique to a state as reactionary as Russia. 
 
 Russia and Germany G>ntinue Friends 
 
 Instead of drawing asunder, as the result of the entente, Russia and 
 Germany became more attached to each other for a while. In at least 
 one respect had William II heeded the advice of his illustrious grand- 
 father. The founder of the German empire had told his grandson on 
 his deathbed that whatever he did he was to treat with consideration and 
 
34 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 respect Czar Alexander. William II seems to have carried this out to 
 the letter. Alexander was the only man before whom the impetuous 
 young ruler of Prussia and Germany was ever conscious of a certain 
 degree of that inferiority which youth will feel before the dignified elder. 
 There were two other persons to whom William brought this tribute : Em- 
 peror Francis Joseph, of Austria, and Queen Victoria. While William 
 was on the best of terms with Nicholas of Russia the restraint alluded 
 to was absent, of course. The two men were of about the same age, and, 
 while they advised one another, neither was able to permanently influence 
 his fellow sovereign, a condition that was to make itself felt in the relations 
 of the two empires. 
 
 The elimination of Prince Bismarck had left William not only a free 
 hand in German internal affairs — to get that free hand the emperor dis- 
 missed the chancellor — but it also started Germany on a dangerous career 
 in foreign politics. There is no doubt that William was actuated by 
 the best of motives. He wanted his empire to grow and grow rapidly. 
 Bismarck was committed to slower methods, it seems, for none knew better 
 that gradual evolution is the best for a state, especially a state which had 
 grown into an empire overnight from a conglomerate of states and prin- 
 cipalities which none had feared in the past for the reason that their own 
 difficulties and differences, and the fancied divergences of interest, had 
 made them a danger more to one another than to their foreign neighbors. 
 The death of Czar Alexander took from William a curb — ^the last one — 
 which Germany could ill afford to lose. With this restraint gone, the 
 German emperor began to enwallow his people, entirely by utterances 
 that were indiscreet and injudicious, in a slough of international com- 
 plications that led from one crisis to another. 
 
 Czar Nicholas had taken over from his father, as foreign minister, 
 M. de Giers, a Russian statesman and diplomatist of what was then 
 known as the Old School. De Giers was decidedly pro-German and anti- 
 British, a great admirer of Bismarck and a stout adherent of the principle 
 of the Three Emperors' League. He had finally entered the Franco- 
 Russian pact, but only against Great Britain. He knew, of course, that 
 the French hoped to kill two flies with this stone, Germany and the British 
 Empire, but had no reason to believe, at that time, that the entente would 
 in the end find the application it had. In conformity with his policy, he 
 promoted as much as possible the marriage of Nicholas to Princess Alice 
 of Hesse-Darmstadt, who, though the daughter of a princess-royal of 
 Great Britain and granddaughter of Queen Victoria, was German enough 
 to take care for a time of German interests at the court of St. Petersburg. 
 
 M. de Giers was succeeded as Russian minister of foreign affairs by 
 Prince Lobanoff, a man whose greatest achievement has been that he 
 
RUSSIA AND GERMANY CONTINUE FRIENDS 35 
 
 ran away with the wife of a secretary of the French embassy at Vienna. 
 Lobanoff was a Germanophobe and an intriguant of the most vicious type. 
 He opposed the match between Nicholas and AHce to the best of his abihty, 
 but the de Giers element in the Russian capital, and its counterpart in 
 Germany, succeeded in their plan, all the easier since there was a great 
 deal of natural attachment between the two. 
 
 Europe's Three Political Camps 
 
 For several years after that Europe was divided into three political 
 camps. The Triple Alliance, which, despite its weak elements — the ineffi- 
 ciency of Austria-Hungary and the untrustworthiness of Italy — made the 
 three component states sufficiently secure against attack; the Franco- 
 Russian alliance, directed against Great Britain, so far as Russia was 
 concerned, and against Great Britain and Germany in the case of France, 
 and, finally. Great Britain herself, constituting then the object of an 
 isolation policy, unintentional so far as the Triple Alliance was concerned, 
 intentional in case of the Dual Alliance of France and Russia. The result 
 of this was that Great Britain came to adhere more and more to the 
 policies taught her by her own history and geographical location, of which 
 the two-power standard of her naval program was the most important. 
 
 It had been shown that from the Triple Alliance Great Britain had 
 nothing to fear. The governments forming it had been uniformly friendly 
 to Great Britain in the past. England had had no serious difficulties 
 with any of the German states. Her relations with Austria-Hungary had 
 been the best for generations, and Italy was not a serious factor in world 
 politics at that time. 
 
 For all that the Triple Alliance left Great Britain a little in the 
 cold, as it were. The interests of an allied group multiply with the 
 cube of the number of allies, and to feel that one has the power of an 
 alliance to back up one's plans and ambitions is not calculated to further 
 the interests, nor promote the good feeling, of a state which stands alone, 
 and has, in addition, a pact between two strong states directed against it. 
 The Dual Alliance was frankly hostile to Great Britain, and there is no 
 telling what would have happened had not William II and Francis Joseph 
 held Queen Victoria in too high an esteem to permit them to view vvith 
 complacency any attempt to strike at the British when the moment was 
 ripe — during the late Boer War, for instance, when overtures to that 
 effect were actually made at Berlin and Vienna. 
 
 There is a great deal of evidence to prove that Berlin and Vienna 
 did not look upon the Triple Alliance as the means of aggression in 
 those days. Italy continued to limp in loyalty and military strength. 
 William overlooked no opportunity to make the French feel that better 
 
36 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 relations between Germany and France were not as impossible as the 
 French chauvinists thought. To be sure, there was always an element 
 of condescension in these efforts, as the French viewed it. But that may 
 have been due to the fact that the people of France could not but look 
 upon the Germans as conquerors, who had taken from them two provinces 
 and five billion francs, in addition to humbling la grande nation on the 
 battlefield. At any rate William was never so proud in his life as 
 when the French government consented to place under the command 
 of a German general. Count von Waldersee, the military contingent it 
 contributed to the expedition against the Boxers. 
 
 It would seem that in those days Germany had the last of her good 
 statesmen. Count Caprivi was a great success as chancellor, despite the 
 criticism that was heaped upon him. Under him Germany had more 
 friends than she had ever had before and has had since. Prince Hohen- 
 lohe, married to a member of one of the most influential families in 
 Russia, the Wittgensteins, bettered relations with that country wonder- 
 fully, and even Prince von Buelow had a modest measure of success. 
 
 German diplomacy was rather successful then — which diplomacy easily 
 is when the government represented has friends. Good or bad diplomacy 
 is not by any means so much a question of personnel as is generally 
 believed. Against antipathy for his government and state the best diplo- 
 matist is absolutely powerless. 
 
 A good illustration of this is had in the case of Baron Marschall von 
 Bieberstein, a man looked upon by many Germans as the best diplomatist 
 they had had in generations. Baron Marschall has to his credit the fact 
 that he was the only German diplomatist who managed to get along with 
 the French and was held in high esteem by them. It was he who pro- 
 moted the rapprochement between Turkey and Germany, did the ground- 
 work for the Bagdad railroad and brought the German military mission 
 imder von der Goltz Pasha to Constantinople. Later he was sent to 
 London, where he died — all too soon. The interesting feature of the 
 case is that Baron Marschall was a typical "Prussian" — a man of brusk 
 manners, but withal sincere and forceful of character. Though his suc- 
 cesses in Constantinople had not left British influence in Turkey better 
 off, he was well received in London and enjoyed not only the esteem but 
 also the confidence of the British government. 
 
 The Triple Entente Puts in Appearance 
 
 The diplomacy involved in the conditions here outlined was on the 
 whole very simple. The situation in Europe called for direct action 
 in most cases. Intrigue could accomplish nothing which a reasonable 
 modicum of frankness did not achieve. Between Berlin, Vienna and 
 
THE TRIPLE ENTENTE PUTS IN APPEARANCE 37 
 
 Rome there were no issues that called for diplomacy, giving the word 
 its sinister meaning, nor were these capitals interested in creating situa- 
 tions elsewhere. St. Petersburg had made up its mind to reap the fruits 
 of the Franco-Russian pact, but did not rely solely upon that agreement, 
 taking good care to have Germany as a potential ally, through the 
 medium of the two emperors. Paris, however, had to continue cultivating 
 Russian friendship, largely by means of loans, and London for the 
 time being relied on the strength of the British empire and the great 
 probability that her statesmen and diplomatists could easily find a place 
 in either of the two camps in case of trouble. Moreover, there was Britain's 
 mighty fleet of war, and, with the exception of the Grover Cleveland 
 administration, the government of the United States could be considered 
 a potential ally, the British government having seen to it that the stage 
 was set and the lines written for the necessary blood-is-thicker-than-water 
 comedy. Mr. Hay, as Secretary of State, and Lord Pouncefote as British 
 ambassador at Washington were the first high contracting parties in the 
 "gentlemen's agreement" made. 
 
 Neither the open hostility of the Russian government nor the con- 
 cealed animus of the French perturbed the British. The fulsome exuber- 
 ancy which characterized expression in the French press at the time 
 the czar and czarina visited Paris left the British public calm. Though 
 every phrase had been whittled for British consumption, the men in 
 London also saw that some of the veiled threats between sentences were 
 meant for Germany. For the time being, then, the Franco-Russian alliance 
 bad no definite direction, so that it would always be possible to still 
 shape its final course. Ultimately the prime motive of the pact was 
 overlooked and Great Britain made the arrangement serve her own 
 purpose. 
 
 That was statesmanship of the highest order. But it is possible that 
 it was more the general situation throughout Europe than lack of ability 
 that prevented the leaders in government elsewhere from being statesmen 
 instead of mere politicians. 
 
 The statesman is a politician who can foresee what an act of his will 
 result in, not only tomorrow, but twenty years hence, while the politician 
 is a statesman who cannot do that. The former must have not only 
 ability, but opportunity as well. He must have space in which to move, 
 in which to exercise his imagination and energy, and such space was not 
 to be found on the continent of Europe at the end of the first decade 
 of the Twentieth Century. 
 
 So far as the Central Powers were concerned the Triple Alliance, 
 defective as it was, was the full measure of success attainable in a world 
 where "Balance of Power" was become a fetich and the only antidote 
 
38 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 for war. A rapprochement with the only available state, the Ottoman 
 empire, was the only political expansion now possible. This was effected 
 by Gemiany, despite the fact that Austria-Hungary, her ally, was forever 
 ready to shear the Turk of territory. This was no mean success of 
 German diplomacy, considering that Great Britain had in the past done 
 more than any other power to keep the Sick Man of Europe alive. 
 At the same time it marked the end of a cycle in national and international 
 life. 
 
 The opportunity for further development was rather better in case 
 of the Franco-Russian alliance. While Great Britain seemed hardly 
 suited to belong to that combination, as her moralists never tired of pointing 
 out, there were several reasons why in the end she would find it profitable 
 to join it, despite the fact that its first purpose had been to put an end to 
 British hegemony. 
 
 It is really very hard to say whether this twist in international affairs 
 argues for the great ability of the British statesmen or the great stupidity 
 of all others. Be that as it may the men in Berlin lacked all the means, 
 even had they had the ability, to undo what so strange a turn in the in- 
 ternational relations of Europe had brought about. It would be highly 
 unfair to blame them for anything in connection with this fait accompli. 
 Small, indeed, is the number of men in political history who would have 
 been able to meet such a situation along lines of aggression, but one must 
 wonder why the German government did not become more wary and more 
 diplomatic. 
 
IV 
 
 THE TRIPLE ENTENTE 
 
 INTERNATIONAL affairs, like the conditions affecting the lesser 
 groups of man, overlap one another. They did this in the instance 
 of the arrangement later known as the Triple Entente, and the 
 subject treated in the preceding chapter, the Triple Alliance. 
 
 The Franco-Russian pact was directed primarily against Great Britain 
 and secondarily, by France at any rate, against Germany and Great 
 Britain. Great Britain was virtually isolated and considered herself totally 
 so when the expansionists of Germany undertook to build a navy com- 
 mensurate, at first, as was said, with the growth of the German merchant 
 marine, agreeable later, as was announced, to the dignity of the new 
 German empire. iSuch was the compound program of the German Plot- 
 ienverein, which in Emperor William had so ardent a spokesman and 
 promoter. That tendency was considered a danger by Great Britain, 
 and properly so. Great Britain had never raised an objection against the 
 armament on land which Germany maintained; with preparation on sea 
 it was a different matter. 
 
 Thus "the German peril" came. 
 
 A strong German army could be useful to Great Britain against 
 Russia and France, whose alliance was an argument in that direction, 
 and no mean one. A strong German fleet, on the other hand, might be 
 turned against Great Britain herself, and there were not wanting in 
 Germany the indiscreet wielders of speech and pen who reminded the 
 British public of this. The emperor, in fact, was one of the worst 
 offenders. There were times when he could not contain his great dislike 
 for his uncle, later King Edward VII, and there is ample proof to show 
 that most of the vehement utterances William made were directed at 
 that relative rather than at Great Britain. The chancellors of William II 
 had a rather bad time of it, trying to place a curb on the imperial 
 tongue. They were men who realized that one of these days such 
 intemperance would have results detrimental to the nation. Unfortunately, 
 they never succeeded for long holding their master in check, and in the 
 end exactly that happened what they feared would happen. 
 
 There are two sides to every question, and the claim of Great Britain, 
 that she was fully justified in maintaining a naval establishment able 
 
 39 
 
40 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 to cope with a combination of the two foreign war fleets next in strength 
 to her own, should be viewed with more sympathy than at first it would 
 seem to deserve. 
 
 Great Britain depended as much upon her navy as Germany depended 
 upon her army. On that point, moreover, the statesmen in Berlin and 
 London had agreed long ago. But it is a characteristic of navies that they 
 can be used for a variety of purposes. An army is quite a negligible 
 factor in colonial enterprises so long as its line of communication with 
 the home country is not protected by a strong navy. Thus, in colonial 
 expansion overseas, a good navy is the prime prerequisite so long as inter- 
 ference with this policy must be taken into account. The lack of such 
 a navy makes one's colonial enterprises dependent upon the good will 
 of the nation that has such an arm. The best army becomes useless for 
 expeditionary purposes away from home when its transit on the seas 
 can be threatened, or when, transit having been accomplished, its supplies 
 can be cut off. 
 
 A strong navy also is able to protect one's merchant shipping. An 
 army is a nonentity in that respect, no matter how strong and eflficient. 
 
 Germany had brought into being a great merchant marine, and had 
 in the course of time, and somewhat by the grace of Great Britain, founded 
 a colonial empire of promise, the slow development of which had its 
 causes in the fact that the Germans were not colonizers in the sense in 
 which the British are this. Instead of getting the natives to do their 
 best under conditions as yet unsuited for the White Man, they had at- 
 tempted to do everything themselves in the manner which has become 
 known as "Potsdam." Too much thoroughness was expended on trifles, 
 and the major issues were never grasped. The result of this was that 
 the colonial possessions of Germany were a charge when they might have 
 been a factor of at least economic strength. 
 
 These things were known to the German colonial enthusiasts merely 
 by their effect, not by their causes. That the colonies did not pay was 
 thought due to inherent conditions. The colonies were no good, and a 
 place in the sun had to be sought elsewhere, therefore. To get that place 
 in the sun a large navy was thought necessary, as indeed it was, taking 
 the strictly German view of it. 
 
 Against the German naval program. Great Britain advanced a certain 
 number of arguments, all of them good for Great Britain, naturally, 
 yet none of them really bad for the Germans. When the Germans argued 
 that their merchant marine needed protection, and that its growth was 
 retarded by the lack of a strong navy, the British pointed to the fact 
 that the Dutch and Norwegian merchant marines were greater in pro- 
 portion than the German, and that in their case the absence of a strong 
 
THE TRIPLE ENTENTE 41 
 
 navy had been no handicap. To the contention that Germany needed 
 a strong navy for the good of her colonies, the British were in the 
 habit of replying that the Dutch colonial empire, much more valuable 
 than the German, had continued in spite of having no such protection. 
 
 The Kleindeutschen element — Little^Germans — were satisfied with 
 that presentation of the case. Not so the Alldeutschen — men who pro- 
 moted, supported and guided the navy and colonies associations. 
 
 The latter had a telling argument on their side. What the British 
 politicians said was all very well. It was quite possible that for the time 
 being Great Britain would not molest the German merchant marine and 
 would not take the German colonies, but what guarantee was there that 
 Great Britain might not do that tomorrow? 
 
 It is the habit of the German mind to do things for keeps. The 
 word forever has a real meaning to the average German. He is ever 
 concerned with the future, without realizing that a statesman's forever is 
 a mockery. Seeing that none are better students of history than these 
 very same people one must wonder that the duration of things and con- 
 ditions has never become clearer to them. Be that as it may, the fact is 
 that the navy and colony leagues saw things only from that angle. 
 
 The Case of the Two-Power Standard 
 
 But Germany also had a caste which for its opposition to the British 
 two-power standard did not even have that justification. It was the con- 
 tention of this class that acquiescence into this British policy meant a 
 woeful surrender of German sovereignty. Any measure by a foreign 
 government which at all influenced a German measure of the same general 
 category was to this element an infraction of sovereignty; consent to it 
 was adjudged supineness and even treason. If Germany wanted to build 
 a large navy it was entirely a German matter and the right of Germany 
 to do so. Did not Great Britain do the same thing? If Great Britain 
 wanted to increase her army she had a right to do that without asking. 
 
 All this was well only from the position of the casehardened doc- 
 trinarian in statecraft. To take such a view was neither prudent nor 
 profitable. The British nav)*^ and the German army could have kept 
 the world at peace, as they had done for forty years, and the cases of 
 Dutch and Norwegian shipping, and the Dutch East Indies, were certainly 
 in favor of the contentions of the British. Even the French colonial 
 empire was to a large extent at the mercy of the British, and despite that 
 it had done fairly well, would have done better yet were the French as 
 good colonizers as the British are. 
 
 Emperor William was an ardent navalist. He loved to dwell on 
 
42 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the possessive adjective: Mein — my. Meine Flotte was, next to meine 
 Armcc, tlie piece dc resistance of every speech he made. Coupled with the 
 unfortunate tendency to see in Great Britain but his uncle, Edward VII, 
 that failing was to bring on disaster in the end. 
 
 The impartial observer and student cannot fail to arrive at the con- 
 clusion that Germany's prestige would in nowise have suffered had she 
 completely acquiesced in the two-power standard. Moreover, she would 
 have benefited thereby. The claim advanced by apologists for the Ger- 
 man government, that Great Britain was jealous of Germany's com- 
 merce and merchant marine, sounds logical enough to those who are 
 anxious to hear it, but is not convincing. Germany herself was too good 
 a buyer in Great Britain and her colonies, and supplemented too well 
 British industry and trade, to have been selected by Great Britain for 
 destruction on that account. The boycott of German goods agreed on 
 later by the Allies was a French measure rather than a British one. 
 There is no doubt that, had Germany taken a more sympathetic view of the 
 facts in Great Britain's national defense scheme, there would have been 
 a perfect rapprochement between the two and the peace of the world would 
 have been far better secured than any other means or method can ever 
 achieve. The addition of Great Britain to the Triple Alliance would 
 have put an end to the mad race in naval and military preparation and 
 a partial disarmament would have been possible even. 
 
 There were men in both capitals who realized this. Lord Haldane 
 was one of the leaders in the British group of so-called pacifists, who 
 pleaded with the German government to be reasonable. His words found 
 indeed an echo in Germany, but not in the right circles. There was no 
 such thing as representative government in Germany; quite the last 
 thing William and his caste wanted was a responsible ministry. The 
 invasion of England by Roman, Saxon, Dane and Norman was thought 
 too anterior to be applicable in our day, said those in control of German 
 public opinion — as bad a set of swashbuckling militaristic politicians 
 and pressmen as have ever ridden a people over the brink of the abyss. 
 If Great Britain wanted to build a score of ships to Germany's ten that 
 was her business. The next naval program of Germany would provide 
 for forty for the twenty and the best man was to win. Great Britain 
 wanted to form a world hegemony and it had become the duty of Germany 
 to prevent that. ^'^ 
 
 Such childish twaddle found response in kind in London, of course. 
 "The German peril" was on every lip. Mr. Arthur Lee, then civil lord of 
 the admiralty, announced quite calmly one day that the German fleet 
 could be sunjc out of hand by the British. That extravagant framing of 
 the case was not only ill-advised but it was also an insult to the Germans. 
 
THE CASE OF THE TWO-POWER STANDARD 43 
 
 Needless to say, it furnished the German navaHsts with the very argu- 
 ments they needed. 
 
 Lord Haldane, being a farsighted Scot, continued to labor for an 
 understanding on this point between Great Britain and Germany. But 
 he labored under the handicap of having as many jingoes to fight as his 
 German collaborators had chauvinists to contend with. By 1902 the 
 growth of the German navy began to assume alarming proportions, as 
 the British saw it. The tension between the two countries grew with 
 every day. Propaganda for larger fleets had in the two countries invaded 
 every sphere of life. Banquet table, platform, pulpit, press, novel and 
 play, and the very schools were turned to the discussion of the same thing : 
 More armament on sea and then more of it. 
 
 A Race Between Jingo and Chauvinist 
 
 The coming into power of the Liberal Party in Great Britain in 1906 
 improved the situation a little. In London, as well as in Berlin, men began 
 to take stock a little, and for a while it seemed as if some degree of reason- 
 ableness was to prevail. There is ample evidence to show that on both 
 sides an awakening had come. But it was too late now. The furor was 
 travelling by its own impetus. Such men as Haldane and Asquith, and 
 even Sir Edward Grey, did their best to assure the British public that, 
 after all, the case was not as critical as had been thought. But they did 
 not succeed in reassuring their public, nor did the jingoes in official 
 position and in the press allow the British public to forget what so 
 recently had excited it. The fact is that the German peril had been much 
 exaggerated, as the developments of the Great War have so amply demon- 
 strated. The British fleet was shown still able to defend the home shores. 
 
 This, in short, was the case as it appeared before the public. 
 
 But while the flood gates of propaganda were open the several 
 foreign offices and diplomatic services were not idle. The man in the 
 street has ever been in ignorance of what goes on in the chancelleries, 
 foreign offices and embassies, which need not surprise since even parlia- 
 ments and congresses in this imperfect world of ours are generally con- 
 fronted by the executive branch of the government with little more than 
 the fait accompli. 
 
 In Paris, London and St. Petersburg diplomatists were feverishly at 
 work making of the Franco-Russian alliance the Triple Entente. The 
 busiest of them was King Edward VII. 
 
 For reasons that are only known in part, Edward VII was at no 
 time much of a friend of things German, despite the fact that his father 
 was a German; despite the fact that his mother was so typically of that 
 
44 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 race that she was not able to entirely rid herself of her German accent. 
 At any rate, Edward was no admirer of the country of his ancestors. 
 Some say that he took very much to heart the grievances of his sister 
 Victoria, who was married to Frederik, emperor of a hundred days, and 
 father of William 11. That princess-royal of Great Britain was never 
 acclimated in the chilly, stiff and discipline-ridden atmosphere of the Berlin 
 court, where everything moved according to the rules of the average, 
 typical German household. She was and remained the Auslaenderin — the 
 foreigner — to whom Bismarck was in the habit of referring as die Bng- 
 laenderin. The Iron Chancellor was not exactly the personification of 
 tact and the Crownprincess Victoria loathed the very sight of him. 
 Edward VII is said to have been influenced by this. 
 
 But that was not all. At the Berlin court much attention has always 
 been given to correct conduct in sex matters. Notable exceptions are 
 recorded, of course, but generally the monarchs and princes had to behave 
 after sowing their wild oats before marriage. Emperor William, especially, 
 was a stickler in this respect — was a puritan, in fact. All would have 
 been well had he, as a sensible monarch should do, confined such discipline 
 to himself. But the great meddler that was in him did not allow that. 
 There happened to be in the waters of Kiel, on the occasion of the annual 
 regatta, an American yacht with a particularly handsome woman aboard. 
 The lady had a somewhat frayed reputation, due to an acquaintance with 
 Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, that was considered too intimate. 
 Edward heard of the presence of his former love and promptly paid her 
 a visit — ^to the great disgust of the emperor. William, of course, consider- 
 ing himself the guardian and head not only of all the Hohenzollerns, but 
 their relatives by marriage as well, chided his flighty uncle. Edward told 
 his nephew, Willie, that he had better mind his own business. It is said 
 that this was the last time that the two men spoke to one another on a 
 strictly personal matter. 
 
 Among the many mistakes made by William II was the one that he 
 looked upon his uncle as a sort of royal good-for-nothing, as he put it 
 in a letter on one occasion. In addition to being somewhat presumptuous 
 for a nephew to thus adjudicate his uncle and elder, it was foolish, to 
 say the least. Queen Victoria had not given her son much of an oppor- 
 tunity to occupy himself with the very limited affairs of the British 
 crown. To what little actual business there was she gave attention her- 
 self. The ministry took care of the government from cellar to garret, 
 left the queen the parlor and the heir-presumptive the porch, as it were. 
 As Prince of Wales, the duties of Edward had been confined to laying 
 cornerstones, visiting hospitals and almshouses and receiving the lesser 
 potentates. That left him a great deal of leisure, naturally, and this 
 
A RACE BET!WEEN JINGO AND CHAUVINIST 45 
 
 the prince spent in a manner agreeable to himself and seldom agreeable 
 to his mother. Queen Victoria used to complain of this within the family, 
 and so it came that Bertie had not as good name entre eux as he would 
 have had under the cast-iron regime at the Berlin residence. Why 
 William II should have concluded that his uncle and brother-sovereign 
 was a puddinghead besides is not a matter of record, but a fact never- 
 theless. 
 
 The Anti-German Policy of Edward VII 
 
 Edward VII has been credited, or discredited, as the case may be, 
 with the intention of making the British sovereign less of a figurehead 
 than he had been in the past. To that have been ascribed his activities 
 known as the "isolation" of Germany. 
 
 The isolation of Germany was taken in hand by Edward VII imme- 
 diately upon the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. While the public of 
 Paris was still laughing over the Boer War caricatures in Le Rire and such 
 salacious publications as I'Assiette au Buerre, in which Queen Victoria 
 especially did not fare well, and while the humanitarians of France were 
 still demanding that, in the name of civilization and human progress, 
 France, Russia and eventually Germany and her allies strike Great Britain 
 without loss of time, and put an end to her hegemony, Edward was busy 
 laying the foundations of a policy that was to crush the man in Berlin, 
 who had been quite busy giving his grandmother good military advice how 
 the Boers could be overcome the quickest. From sending a telegram of 
 congratulation to President Oom Paul Kruger, at the time of the Jamieson 
 Raid, to that sort of thing was quite a step, to be sure. But to versatile, 
 volatile William that was nothing. 
 
 It really was not difficult to win the French diplomatists over. They 
 had discovered during the Fashoda Affair that it is not easy to perturb 
 the British lion, or to take what he has in his claws. There had also been 
 a rather annoying incident on the Lorraine border, and, above all, the 
 conduct of the Russian ministers of foreign affairs was not uniformly 
 satisfactory. There were times when the Franco-Russian alliance seemed 
 on the verge of expiring. Count Muravieff was an arriviste diplomatically, 
 somewhat pro-German by nature and easily influenced, and his successor, 
 Count Lamsdorff, was openly Germanophile. It was one's duty under such 
 circumstances to look about for a sort of supplementary insurance policy. 
 The German population was increasing at a truly remarkable speed, having 
 about 1900 reached its best birthrate, which meant a greater army twenty 
 years hence, and meanwhile a greater production, and so more exports 
 and more wealth. There was nothing else to do for the prudent states- 
 
46 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 man but to effect an understanding with a nation that was more vitally 
 interested in such things than was Russia, apparently. Czar Nicholas 
 meanwhile had shown toward the Franco-Russian alliance an indifference 
 that was disconcerting. The reactionaries of his court, and the nobility 
 of his empire, generally, had never been any too fond of this international 
 misalliance. To some extent also German influence in St. Petersburg 
 had undermined the standing of the Franco-Russian entente, as it was 
 still called, and the Germanic nobles in the Baltic provinces also threw 
 their weight in the scale against the arrangement with France. 
 
 But there were Russians, and a good many of them were to be 
 found in Paris, who were still ardent supporters of the alliance. Some of 
 them had looked rather farther into the future than M. de Giers and 
 Prince Lobanoff had done. They had not seen it merely as a curb upon 
 the imperialism of Great Britain, but they had also kept Germany in 
 mind. Though the Russo-Polish element could gain nothing by setting 
 Russia upon Germany, they, nevertheless, actuated by their greater hatred 
 'of the Prussians, and to some extent by their love of France, did every- 
 thing they could to keep the treaty alive. M. de Hansen, a Dane with a 
 grudge against Bismarck in particular, and all things German in general, 
 who was being credited with having engineered the Franco-Russian pact 
 with Gustave Flourens, then French minister of foreign affairs, had been 
 given a great deal of assistance by the influential Poles at Paris and St. 
 Petersburg, among whom was a certain Ratchkowsky, connected with the 
 Russian secret service abroad. Baron Mohrenheim, at that time Russian 
 ambassador at Paris, had never been more than lukewarm toward the pro- 
 posal, following in this the example of de Giers, his chief in St. Petersburg. 
 The treaty seems to have come about for no other reason than that both 
 of the contracting parties needed one another and were willing to let 
 matters rest with the strictly neo-platonic arrangement that was made. 
 
 France, therefore, was easily won over to the entente cordiale, which 
 Edward VII had in mind, when the British press began to speak of a 
 rapprochement. In 1904 relations between France and Great Britain were 
 already of so cordial a character that the entente cordiale could be referred 
 to in Downing Street without the press of Europe going either into ecstacy 
 or suffering a convulsion. 
 
 One of the first practical results of the entente between Great Britain 
 and France was that the latter acknowledged the justice of claims Great 
 Britain had made in regard to Egypt. France also receded from the 
 position she had taken, and stoutly defended in the past, on the exclusive 
 fisheries rights in the waters of Newfoundland, retained by her in the 
 treaty of Utrecht. In return for these cessions France was given i 
 free hand by Great Britain in Morocco, a transaction which left the 
 
THE ANTPGERMAN POLICY OF EDWARD Vll 47 
 
 German interests, mostly of a special concession character, high and dry, 
 as members of the German Reichstag claimed at the time. Prince von 
 Buelow, then chancellor, was not inclined to make an issue of the case, 
 and pointed out that Germany's interests in Morocco were entirely eco- 
 nomic, and that, since Spain had been left a place in Moroccan affairs, 
 there was no reason to suppose that German commerce would be excluded. 
 
 The Morocco affair was to keep the chancelleries and diplomatic 
 missions in Europe occupied for a long time — seven years. On at least 
 one occasion it came close to leading to war between Germany and France, 
 and the allies of both, probably. At this date it seems hardly worth while 
 to give too much attention to the event ; its main outlines must be drawn, 
 however. 
 
 Though the German chancellor had stated publicly that Germany had 
 only economic interests in Morocco, the German government a few months 
 later, urged by special interests with investments in the country, it is 
 charged, demanded that the status of the sultanate be reviewed at a con- 
 ference at which the representatives of all claimants should be heard. 
 The conference took place after the French minister of foreign affairs, 
 M. Delcasse, had resigned in protest. Even the French government was 
 not entirely sure of its ground, despite the attitude of its foreign minister. 
 It was really a case of Delcasse making the best of a bad bargain. Great 
 Britain had taken possession in Egypt, and France's compensation for the 
 concessions made on the Nile was now being questioned and placed in 
 jeopardy. Small wonder that the minister decided to abandon his post, 
 and was from that moment on one of Germany's arch enemies. 
 
 Diplomacy in Its Heyday 
 
 The conference of Algeciras was at first inclined to place Morocco under 
 international control. The Germans were satisfied with that proposal, 
 and, their vanity having been appeased, they consented readily enough 
 that France continue her work, after the sphere of influence of the Spanish 
 had been inconsiderably augmented. So far as the German government is 
 concerned, anyway, all the noise that was made at home was nothing more 
 than incident to a saving of face under difficult conditions. The Alldeutschen 
 — Pan-Germans — saw in the Morocco affair a good opportunity to embar- 
 rass the government, which after a short flaring up in regard to armament 
 on the sea, had again subsided into a closer adherence to the policies due the 
 Triple Alliance. That great conservative in Vienna, Emperor Francis 
 Joseph, was forever opposed, so long as his mind was active enough, to 
 innovations in Triple Alliance politics that might have war in their wake. 
 It is regrettable that the advice of the old man was not more often heeded 
 
48 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 by Berlin, which is easily understood since in that capital already men were 
 thinking of Austria-Hungary as a political incubus. 
 
 Though many promises had been made and many understandings 
 arrived at, the French did not always show German interests in Morocco 
 that consideration which they thought their due. The result was that, 
 after much wrangling, an agreement was entered into, in specific terms, 
 between France and Germany, 1909, by which the commercial interests 
 of Germany and the political position of France, in Morocco, were clearly 
 defined. In 1911 French troops, for the purpose of settling disorder 
 in the interior, penetrated beyond the zone given to France. This and 
 continuous complaints of German firms that they were being discriminated 
 against by the French caused the German government to send the gun- 
 boat "Panther" to Agadir Bay. Again, Europe was threatened by war, 
 and again the entente cordiale, of which the prime mover, Edward VI L 
 was now dead, saved the situation. The debates in the Reichstag of 
 these days show how completely checkmated had been Germany by Great 
 Britain — the country which but a few years ago had nary a friend and 
 no ally in Europe. 
 
 The French ceded some territory in the Congo regions to the Germans 
 and another Morocco incident was closed. 
 
 In 1907 there was effected an entente between Great Britain and 
 Russia. The pact was never committed to paper, so far as is known; 
 it was sealed with what amounted to a partition of Persia. The country 
 in question was divided into two zones of interests, or political spheres. 
 The northern went to Russia, the southern to Great Britain, which thereby 
 gained entry into the potentially rich valley of Mesopotamia. Here, too, 
 hostile contact was had with German interests. The Turkish government 
 had given, and was about to give more, railroad concessions to German 
 capitalists, the system projected being known as the Bagdad railroad. 
 The Deutsche Bank of Berlin was behind this enterprise. The Germans 
 built (1890) a branch line from Ismid to Ada Basar, extended the trunk 
 line to Eski-Shehir and Angora (1892) and then to Konia (1896). In 
 1902, the Deutsche Bank was given the concession to continue the main 
 line into Mesopotamia and immediately began work, starting at several 
 points at the same time. At first it was the intention of the company to 
 build the line through to Koweit on the Persian Gulf, but the British 
 government objected to this. An agreement between the Turkish and 
 British governments (1913) limited the concession of the Deutsche Bank 
 south of Bagdad to the line Bagdad-Basra, 585 kilometers long. 
 
 The ring about Germany and her allies was now complete. Prince 
 LobanoflF had been the first to give this political scheme his attention. 
 But he was not the man to carry it out, or rather before he could con- 
 
DIPLOMACY IN ITS HEYDAY 49 
 
 summate his plan death carried liim oft". It seems that his escapade with 
 the wife of the French diplomatic secretary had robbed him of much 
 of the prestige he needed to carry out his design. Though he was an 
 ardent Francophile, even government circles in Paris grew wary of this 
 adventurer in international politics — the fate of nations. King Edward 
 succeeded far better — beyond his own expectations, it would seem. The 
 isolation of Germany was complete. It was considered the more complete, 
 because everybody expected the Hapsburg monarchy to crumble from 
 one season to another, while Italy had long ago ceased to be regarded 
 as a staunch member of the Triple Alliance, a little matter to which M. 
 Barrere, the French ambassador at Rome, attended well. The Triple 
 Entente, therefore, was the major fact of the political situation in Europe 
 Germans who realized that a contest with the Triple Entente was in- 
 evitable and not far off were not few in number. Most of them were 
 Socialists, however, and to be a Socialist damned in those days whatever 
 view was held by one. In Germany, unfortunately for the people, it was 
 not a case of what was said, but rather one of who said it. Infallibility 
 of the government was more than ever the favorite doctrine, and the 
 privileges of this were extended in the most gratuitous manner to all 
 who seemed in authority, be that in state administration, politics oi 
 society. The Socialists alone were denied this, despite the fact that they 
 represented the common people much more than the artificial majority sent 
 into the state legislatures by the plural vote election system of the leading 
 state, Prussia, and its principal supporter in reactionism, Saxony. Social- 
 ists such as David, Scheidemann, Haase, Ledebour, Liebknecht, Braun 
 and Noske were not listened to, because it was assumed that they saw 
 the situation through the black spectacles of partisanship. Indeed a review 
 of the case nowadays fails to indicate an avenue of escape which Germany 
 might have taken, 
 
 A General Maneuvering for Position 
 
 It was especially the Alldeutschen, or Pan-Germans, who were ex- 
 travagant in their claims and intemperate in their speech. The Pan- 
 German League first came into prominence about 1890, when it distin- 
 guished itself in adverse criticism of the cession to Great Britain of minor 
 interests in Zanzibar and in East Africa in return for the transfer to 
 Germany of Heligoland, which up to that time had been held by the 
 British, despite its proximity to the German ports on the North Sea. 
 During the time of international stress which followed the Agadir inci- 
 dent and the realization that the Triple Entente was indeed fait accompli 
 and likely to stand any test in the fire, the Pan-Germanic Partv and its 
 
so THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 publications supported any movement calculated to promote armament. 
 The German people and even the government, as the attitude of the German 
 chancellors of those years shows, were eager to give their enemies a mini- 
 mum of affront, but the less the cautious element talked, the louder were the 
 Pan-Germans. Today one cannot read their fulminations without being 
 struck by the force of the adage of old: 
 
 "Whom the gods will destroy they first make mad." 
 
 The completion of the Franco-Russo-British entente seems to have had 
 little effect upon the radical Alldeutschen. More and more they pressed 
 for armament on sea and land. The fear of the Englishman that his 
 tight, little isle might be invaded had subsided at least a little by 1909. 
 The "Englishman's Home" seemed again as secure as the British navy 
 could make it. In that year, however, it was shown that the German 
 navy was still growing at too rapid a pace, and the news that Krupp, 
 with that fine impartiality that distinguishes the conduct of the princes of 
 industry, was delivering as many armor plates to Great Britain as to 
 Germany added to the fear in Great Britain. The plates might be bad. 
 
 A really unbearable situation had been brought about. It was so 
 unbearable that Winston Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, proposed 
 a naval holiday, a period in which no keels for new battleships should be 
 laid down. In Germany that proposal found no willing ears, because it 
 was interpreted as a ruse. Great Britain had more hulls on the stocks than 
 had Germany. Be that as it may, no concessions were made in Berlin. 
 The fight was on, and, while as yet no powder was being burned, it was 
 already a case of no quarter. 
 
 Lord Haldane, who had been so active in behalf of the limitation 
 of naval armament that he earned the reputation of being a Germanophile, 
 which was already the least desirable name one could have in Great 
 Britain, made another trip to Germany, this time officially for the Liberal 
 government. The German government had the utmost confidence in 
 Haldane, and showed itself most conciliatory. But it was no longer a 
 case of agreeing in regard to the two-power standard or anything con- 
 nected therewith. It was the Triple Entente that worried Berlin. The 
 German government was willing to reduce its own naval program greatly 
 in case the Liberal government would agree to remain neutral in case 
 there should be war between Germany and France. Lord Haldane was 
 not able to make that promise, but, after communicating with his govern- 
 ment, was ready to put Great Britain on record as willing to leave France 
 to her fate in case she attacked Germany. In view of what happened in 
 1914, a scant two years later, this is of interest. The offer made by Lord 
 Haldane was tantamount to a notice upon Germany that Great Britain 
 would side with France in case of aggression on the part of the Germans. 
 
A GENERAL MANEUVERING FOR POSITION 51 
 
 The remarkable feature of this is that, according to statements made to 
 me by men in high official position in Berlin, who were in a position to 
 know, the German government did not fully comprehend this at that time. 
 I have proof to show that Lord Haldane was, seemingly, not understood. 
 Had he been understood the history of July and August, 1914, might be 
 other than what it is. 
 
 With this incident came to a close all effort on both sides to limit 
 the naval programs of the two countries. In Germany every Socialist 
 leader and many of the prominent men in the government had spoken in 
 favor of it, and in Great Britain the Liberal Party had looked upon it as a 
 sort of plank in their platform. They had promised the electorate that 
 the money so saved was to be used in a number of socio-economic reforms 
 that were greatly needed. Such men as Campbell-Bannerman, Lloyd 
 George, Lord Morley, Vivian, Trevelyan and Haldane, not to mention 
 a score of others, had been behind the movement. Nothing whatever 
 had come of it, and for that secret diplomacy was responsible. 
 
 To say that every Englishman and German who favored an under- 
 standing between their countries on the question of naval armament was a 
 deceiver is to take it for granted that there are no honest men in govern- 
 ment. If that view should actually represent a fact then we must admit 
 that those cheerful pessimists, the anarchists, are right after all. But 
 there is no reason to assume that all the honest men are out of government, 
 though election speeches would have it so, as a rule. The fact is that, as 
 I will show in the chapter following, some forty men had made up 
 their mind that there should be war, a world war, if necessary, and that 
 they succeeded all too well. What is more, these forty men were not all 
 in one capital. They belonged to the foreign offices and corps diplomatiques 
 in London, Paris, Petrograd, Berlin and Vienna. The situation in Europe 
 had given diplomacy its heyday, and never before had the intriguant such 
 an opportunity. 
 
 Preparedness for War Gets New Start 
 
 The mission of Haldane, having been fruitless, the German govern- 
 ment decided upon the military law of 1913, which increased the estab- 
 lishment of the line to 866,000 officers and men, without affecting the 
 reserves and older bans, however. The increase itself was about 135,000 
 officers and men — not great in itself, but notice to the world that military 
 preparedness in Germany was being put on yet a larger base. The law 
 was passed June 30. On July 19 came the reply from France in the 
 form of a similar law, and the battle under cover was on more than before. 
 Most Germans r^f^.rred to the law as a new form of mobilization, and 
 
52 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 such, in effect, it was to be. Criticism of the government eHcited nothing 
 more than reference to what was being done in Russia. In March, 1913, 
 the Russian government also increased its standing army materially and 
 provided for a general and thorough reorganization, and, meanwhile, the 
 strategic railroads along the Polish-Prussian and Russo-Galician borders 
 were being pushed to completion as rapidly as possible. It was known 
 that the last of these roads would be completed in 1915. The French 
 banks and investors had furnished the money for the building of these 
 lines. It was difficult to claim that economic requirements were the reason 
 for their building, and St. Petersburg, therefore, calmly asserted that the 
 railroads were meant for defensive purposes only. Since the gun may 
 be used for aggression as well as in defense that was begging the question, 
 of course. 
 
 To what extent the constantly growing industries of Germany, with 
 their resulting exports and increase in wealth, were responsible for the 
 Great War is entirely a matter of controversy into which it will not pay to 
 enter. That Germany was getting to be a very dangerous neighbor to 
 France is true enough. But it does not follow that it was envy of German 
 industriousness and efficiency, as has been claimed, which induced the 
 French to risk a war. France herself was still richer than Germany — 
 richer especially in so far that she had room for her population, a rather 
 negative quality in this instance, since the rapid growth in population of 
 the German empire constituted in itself a sort of wealth which France 
 had to fear more than the rapidly accumulating savings of the German 
 people. In 1908 the density per square mile in Germany was 290.4 per- 
 sons, while in France it was 189, or about 100 less. The area of the 
 two countries was 208,780 square miles for Germany and 207,509 for 
 France; the population respectively 66,800,000 and 39,800,000. What 
 France had to fear was that she would lose more territory to the Germans 
 soon or late, and this, then, will be accepted by the future historian as the 
 actual causal motive of the Great War, so far as France and Germany 
 are concerned. The philosophical investigator will arrive at a similar 
 conclusion, no doubt, with the exception that he will state the case in 
 terms of national biology. That France and Great Britain, and the United 
 States destroyed completely Germany's manufacture and commerce — in the 
 most ruthless and impolitic fashion — is more to be looked upon, under 
 the circumstances, as a preventive measure than a policy completely in 
 being at the outbreak of the War. To cripple Germany in this manner was 
 the sine qua non of the prophylactis of the so-called Peace Conference 
 at Paris. 
 
 What has been said here for France would seem to apply to Great 
 Britain. Germany was a long way oflF from being the dangerous com- 
 
PREPAREDNESS FOR WAR GETS NEW START 53 
 
 petitor of the British, whom apologists in the German government have 
 pictured. There is something in the foreign trade figures of the two 
 countries which has been overlooked. In 1913 Great Britain imported 
 to the amount of $3,741,048,000, while the exports totalled $3,089,353,000, 
 leaving a deficit of $561,695,000. Germany in the same year imported 
 goods and materials to the value of $2,773,850,000, and exported $2,592,- 
 239,000, leaving a difference against her of $181,611,000. In the one 
 instance we have a population of about 46 millions importing 3,741 million 
 dollars worth of merchandise and exporting 3,000 millions worth, while in 
 the other we have a people numbering roundly 69 millions, or 23 millions 
 greater in number than the British population, importing only 2,773 
 millions worth of commodities and exporting again 2,592 millions worth. 
 Though the difference between import and export, in both cases, does 
 not wholly represent home consumption, it nevertheless is a fact that the 
 British public, 2Z millions less, consumed more than the German, as our 
 figures go, at least three times as much; much more in reality. 
 
 In the case of Russia, also, it was not a question of getting rid of 
 an economic competitor. The density of population of Russia in Europe 
 was in 1908 only 53.8 persons per square mile, while for the empire it 
 was only 14.92. What this means will be best understood when it is 
 considered that the density in Belgium was 589 persons for each square 
 mile. Americans will realize that better in comparison with the density 
 in Rhode Island, which is 508.5, by far the greatest in the United States. 
 The figures for Russian exports and imports were, in 1913, respectively 
 $782,869,000 and $707,627,000, with a favorable balance of $75,242,000, 
 a wholly negligible amount for a population of about 177 million persons. 
 Density and foreign trade figures show both that Russia was neither in 
 need of more room nor of more trade. 
 
 The case, then, was entirely a question of politics. That the elements 
 of national biology had something to do with it cannot be overlooked, 
 however. Still it would seem that if Belgium could get along with a 
 density of 589, Germany could have for some time managed with a 
 density of 290.4 — at least, the necessity for more room was not pressing 
 enough so as not to permit her government to select a more propitious 
 moment for a war of conquest and annexation. 
 
 The Position of Austria-Hungary 
 
 The position of Austria-Hungary in the setting of the stage for the 
 great tragedy is very unimportant. As second member of the Triple 
 Alliance, her role, politically, was great enough; militarily, it was any- 
 thing but that. For years she troubled nobody and managed to get along 
 
54 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 with all her neighbors. Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria and Czar 
 Alexander III, as well as his father, had been on the best of terms. The 
 first two were feudal enough in their state tendency to be perfectly en 
 rapport on all matters affecting the intercourse of their states. For 
 Alexander II the Austrian emperor was progressive enough to meet his 
 liberal views. Francis Joseph was a rare personage among monarchs. 
 Without having to simulate in the least he was everything to all men. 
 Hence his great success as the ruler of a dual state composed of no 
 less than ten races, having no less than ten sets of national aspirations, 
 and all that in an age in which liberal tendency was not as scarce or 
 as disregarded in his realm as some would have us believe. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian government made two great mistakes. The 
 one was the consequence of the other. In October, 1908, it annexed Bosnia 
 and Herzegovina, since the Berlin Congress under its control, without 
 consulting at all in any respect the wishes of the people thus brought into 
 the dual monarchy. Many of these people were of Slav origin, and 
 what is more important the majority of them felt attracted to what had 
 become known as Jugo- Slavism. 
 
 / The annexation of these two Turkish provinces had been contem- 
 plated in Vienna for a long time. But the moment was never propitious 
 until Count Aehrenthal, then Austro-Hungarian minister of foreign aflFairs. 
 made it that, by breaking the news privately to Isvolski under circumstances 
 that placed the Russian minister of foreign affairs at a great disadvantage. 
 In September of 1908 Count Berchtold, at that time Austro-Hungarian 
 ambassador at St. Petersburg, invited Isvolski, then travelling in Austria, 
 to spend a few days at a hunting lodge of his near Buchan in Bohemia. 
 It was there, while the Russian minister of foreign affairs was a guest, 
 that Count Aehrenthal initiated him into the design of his government to 
 annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. Isvolski was a man who liked to please, 
 and the sharp Count Aehrenthal, an apt pupil of Metternich at his worst, 
 outwitted him. For that Isvolski lost his post in the Russian cabinet and 
 later went to Paris as ambassador, there to nurse his resentment of both, 
 his own good nature and the sharp dealing of Counts Aehrenthal and 
 Berchtold. It has been said that a diplomatist must never say either yes 
 or no. Monsieur Isvolski seems to have taken that too literally. Needless 
 to say this little trick did not in any way improve relations between the 
 Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian government prepared the ground verv poorlv 
 for the annexation of the two provinces, because, two years before, it 
 had allowed the big Hungarian landowners to inveigle the country into 
 a sort of tariff war with Serbia. As the result of this Serbian exports 
 to the Danube country had gone down from 63,000,000 crowns in 1905 
 
THE POSITION OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 55 
 
 to 12,500,000 crowns in 1907, though Serbia had cut her imports from 
 the same country for the two years only from 32,000.000 to 25,000,000 
 crowns, that is to say, Serbia had exported to Austria-Hungary 50,500,000 
 crowns less in 1907 than in 1905, but had bought only 7,000,000 crowns 
 less. 
 
 For a while it seemed as if the Serbian farmers would have to 
 choke in the lard, pork and prunes they had to sell. But Germany came 
 to their assistance and bought to the tune of 32,000,000 crowns in 1907 
 as against 2,000,000 crowns in 1905. Belgium likewise increased her im- 
 ports from Serbia from 300,000 crowns to 13,000,000 crowns in 1907. Eco- 
 nomic war makes as strange bed fellows as the other sort. The fact that 
 Serbia could sell to advantage was due entirely to international railroad 
 agreements, which permitted German and Belgian freight cars to pass 
 in transit through Austria-Hungary without duty having to be paid on 
 their cargoes. That Serbia had no outlet upon the Adriatic Sea made 
 this atrocious case of tariff discrimination possible. There are times 
 when governments and governed as well must be protected against their 
 own stupidity, and this was such a case. Had fate willed it that Serbia 
 could get to the sea Austria-Hungary, in the first place, would have never 
 excluded her products, and, secondly, Austria-Hungary might not today be 
 in the position she is in. Again : 
 
 Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. 
 
 The Profits of Tariff Discrimination 
 
 The ruthless proceeding against Serbia roused the anger of every 
 Slav in the monarchy. It gave Jugo-Slavism and Pan-Slavism the very 
 impetus they needed. Overnight the quasi-secret organization of the 
 Jugo-Slavs, the somewhat notorious "Narodna Odbrana," became a tre- 
 mendous factor and in the end Austria-Hungary saw more of her people 
 and territory carried away by the tariff discrimination against Serbia than 
 she had gained by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And all 
 this to please a landed class, which thought that it was not getting enough 
 out of special privileges enjoyed in vested rights and the unlimited oppor- 
 tunity to exploit the peasant. 
 
 Here, too, was a case in which a sovereign state thought sovereignty 
 to be a patent for any sort of conduct toward the weaker neighbor. The 
 worst of fallacies is independence carried to extremes. Even the most 
 powerful of nations, the most absolute of monarchs, is not independent 
 wholly of others. The time usually comes when transgression againsi 
 natural law, even though it be one of the misunderstood factors in national 
 biology, will be visited upon the transgressor. The Great War had many 
 
56 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 examples of this — enough of them to last the haughty World Powers that 
 remain for the rest of their existence. Let us hope that at least this lesson 
 is not lost. 
 
 Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir-presumptive of Austria and Hun- 
 gary, had made the mistake — and for the future ruler of several millions 
 of Slavs it was a bad mistake — of permitting himself to become known 
 as a Slavophobe. To what extent he was this I have no means of ascer- 
 taining, but there is hardly ever smoke where there is no fire. At one 
 time he was credited with being anti-Magyar. Both rumors or claims 
 were probably greatly exaggerated. At any rate he was done to death 
 on June 28, 1914, by Jugo-Slav fanatics in the town of Sarajevo, Bosnia. 
 
 For several days it was feared that the political mine of Europe was 
 surely sprung. The world held its breath, so to speak. It waited for the 
 blow to fall for a week and then returned to its business, the diplomatic 
 world to its vacations. Twenty-six days passed and then the news came 
 that the Austro-Hungarian government had sent an ultimatum to Belgrade 
 the like of which had not been transmitted in years. When the ultimatum 
 was delivered the European chancelleries were virtually empty of the men 
 who attended to the affairs of state. Ambassadors and ministers every- 
 where were out in the country and at the season places summering. The 
 German emperor was on his wonted trip to the Northlands, and even 
 Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian minister of foreign affairs, was 
 not in the building on the Ballhausplatz, nor even in Vienna. It seemed 
 as if the ultimatum had fallen from the blue sky. For a day governmental 
 and diplomatic circles everywhere went through the motion of coming 
 to wakefulness, real in some cases, simulated in others, and then diplomacy 
 and all that appertains to it engaged frantically in efforts to prevent in 
 the last minute what it had labored and intrigued for during years. 
 
THE GREAT DEBACLE 
 
 WHEN Europe next occupied itself with the assassination at 
 Sarajevo it was the hard terms of the Austro-Hungarian ulti- 
 matum to Serbia that attracted attention. Reasonable men 
 everywhere felt that they might lead to war. There were many who 
 could not see why the blood of thousands, as it was then viewed, should 
 be spilled for the murder of an archduke and his wife, even though 
 they were Hapsburgs and the prospective sovereign couple of a World 
 Power. 
 
 The ultimatum expired on Saturday, July 25, at six p. m. Its 
 worst feature really was that it demanded of the Serbian government 
 that in its official publication it should on July 26th publish a statement 
 prepared by the foreign office at Vienna. That measure was punitive, of 
 course. It was hardly possible that the Serbian government could keep 
 from its people the fact that it had been humbled into the dust, as govern- 
 ments look upon such things. 
 
 Why the Austro-Hungarian government gave its ultimatum just that 
 form has puzzled many. The tenor and demands of the instrtiment could 
 easily be given that interpretation which much of the world placed uoon 
 them later on in the charge that Austro-Hungary wanted to have war 
 with Serbia at any price. The circumstance that a partial mobilization 
 of the Austro-Hungarian army had already been ordered, and the fact 
 that considerable bodies of troops were already on the borders of Serbia, 
 could not but serve in support of that conclusion. 
 
 Yet the actual fact is that the Austro-Hungarian government hoped 
 to settle its differences with Belgrade without recourse to war. The 
 mobilization which it ordered was a purely coercive measure, applied 
 by Vienna, as I have been able to establish to at least my own satisfaction, 
 so that the Serbian government would not be able to think lightly of the 
 intentions of the Austro-Hungarian government. That the procedure was 
 reckless in the extreme is true enough. Vienna and Berlin felt that they 
 could still afford extravagances of this sort. I say Vienna and Berlin, 
 because the German government has seen fit to assert that it knew nothing 
 of the intentions of its ally, which is absurd, of course.* 
 
 Since the writing of these lines this has been definitely established. 
 
 57 
 
58 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 I happen to know that the German ambassador in Vienna was fully ac- 
 quainted with what was going on, and it is not likely that he left his foreign 
 office in the dark. More likely is that the text of the ultimatum wa? 
 submitted to the government in Berlin through the Austro-Hungarian 
 envoy at that capital. 
 
 Six years before Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina with the assistance of the German government. That assistance 
 may have been limited to an assurance on the part of the German govern- 
 ment that in case of complications arising from the annexation it would 
 stand by the terms of the treaty of alliance. But that, naturally, was 
 all the assistance Austria-Hungary needed. When Isvolski had been 
 won over in the manner explained before, Austria-Hungary and Germany, 
 moreover, could proceed without having to fear anything. So long as 
 Russia, self-appointed guardian of all the Slavs in the world, had been 
 disposed of, Bosnia and Herzegovina could be incorporated without much 
 of a risk. The annexation was no affair of Great Britain nor of France 
 so long as primarily it benefitted only the dual monarchy, with whom 
 both governments maintained at least cordial relations despite its member- 
 ship in the Triple Alliance. It would have been different had Germany 
 made the annexation. The Triple Entente, so far as Great Britain and 
 France were concerned, was a measure against Germany, and both the 
 British and French governments could well afford to be on especially good 
 terms with the Austro-Hunsrarian government, which, as a member of 
 the already very shakv Triple Alliance, might yet further weaken that 
 pact, eventually leave Germany unallied entirely. But of this more fur- 
 ther on. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian government entertained little respect for the 
 Serbian government, peonle and royal family. The tariff discriminations 
 already referred to could leave no doubt as to that. Primarily, however, 
 it was the great disdain for the Karageorgevitch — Kara-Yiiriik — family 
 that was felt in Vienna, that led to the rudeness displayed in the ultimatum. 
 
 The social distinctions drawn in royal circles are many, as is known. 
 Upon them is based the elaborate system of etiauette which governs 
 the intercourse within this caste. The fact that most of the monarchs 
 of Europe addressed one another in the familiar "thou" form has little 
 to do with that, though the uninitiated mifrht easilv look upon this practice 
 as proof of the great solidarity sovereigns and their families are supposed 
 to maintain. 
 
 A Question of Royal Respectability 
 
 The Karageorgevitches had been a stench in the nostrils of royalty 
 for decades. They succeeded the Obrenovitches by means of assassina- 
 
A QUESTION OF ROYAL RESPECTABILITY 59 
 
 tion and were considered unfit members of the family of kings therefore, 
 especially since the Obrenovitch family was credited with better qualities 
 than its rival, that of Black George. The founder of the Obrenovitch 
 dynasty had been a humble Serb peasant who had distinguished himself 
 in leadership of armed bands against the Turks. The original Black 
 George was a man of a different type, though he also did his best to 
 make the lot of the Turks in Serbia anything but pleasant. George 
 was a gypsy, hailing from Bosnia, so far as records show. The story 
 is that he was born under a hedge somewhere in the Balkan peninsula. 
 Another story has it that he saw the light of day first in a gypsy tent pitched 
 at the base of the Theodosian Wall at Stamboul. Be that as it may, the 
 writer one day visited the village on the slopes of Mount Vidosh, near 
 Sofia, where George resided in a hovel, gypsy fashion, before he decided 
 to become a liberator and a statesman. In those days he herded pigs 
 now, and took a shot at Turks then, being one of the members of a 
 band of the variety later known as comitadjes. 
 
 A folklore which is not unfriendly in the main has it that George 
 earned himself the sobriquet Kara — black — for a number of crimes of a 
 particularly shocking aspect. It is said that he shot his father, raped 
 his sister and hung his brother. In extenuation of this conduct it may 
 be said that such crimes were nothing unusual among the lawless elements 
 in the peninsula, which only too often made the presence of the Turk 
 the mere pretext for organizing into bands of robbers, as was especially 
 the case in Serbia in those days, where a little later Karageorgevitch and 
 Obrenovitch vied with one another in cruelty toward Turk and Serb 
 alike. 
 
 All of this would have been well had it not been that King Peter, 
 as late as 1890-91, worked, like any other common individual, for a 
 photographer in Vienna, one Charles Scolik. With the notion held in 
 the Austro-Hungarian capital that royalty is something indeed sacrosanct 
 these things did not all harmonize. So it came that King Peter was looked 
 upon as the veriest of royal upstarts. To make the Obrenovitches feel 
 that they were vassals of the Austro-Hungarian crown they were given 
 a large annual stipend in return for nothing in particular. The Kara- 
 georgevitches, on the other hand, received such an income from the 
 Russian court. 
 
 With such men the Austro-Hungarian court, on the one hand, and 
 the very superior aristocrats in the Ballhausplatz building, on the other, 
 were not inclined to be any too diplomatic, as the tariff matter had already 
 demonstrated. Goaded into exasperation by the activities of the rather 
 notorious "Narodna Odbrana" and other Jugo-Slav patriotic organizations, 
 of which the assassination of the archduke was but the climax, the Austro- 
 
60 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Hungarian government was ready to treat Serbia in the manner which 
 has ever been followed by the powerful government in its dealings with 
 weaker states, especially when the latter were generally supposed to be 
 somewhat ''barbarian." In short, the attitude of the dual monarchy, and 
 most of its non-Slav constituents, was about the same as that observed 
 by many people in the United States toward Mexico and some of the other 
 Latin- American republics. All would have been well had it not been that 
 Sazonoff was just then Russian minister of foreign affairs, and that the 
 political ulcer of Europe was ready to break. 
 
 Men who know this situation only superficially have said that it was 
 Russia's fixed policy to get to Constantinople by the Balkan route, that 
 was responsible for the stiff-backedness which the Serbian government 
 developed — almost overnight. To some extent that is true, but the weak 
 and vacillating Czar Nicholas was not the man to give much attention to 
 this phase of Russian expansion. To be sure it was his foreign minister, 
 Sazonoff, who had engineered the vicious treaty of Bucharest, 1913, which 
 deprived the Bulgarians of a great deal of territory to which they had 
 every valid claim, and which took from them, in addition, a district as 
 Bulgarian as Maine is American — ^the Dobrudja. Needless to say, this 
 estranged the Bulgarian people, and created throughout Southeast Europe 
 the impression that Russia proposed marching to the Dardanelles via 
 the Balkan, with the favored Serbians on their right flank of advance 
 and with the Greeks doing a similar service on the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean. That the Rumanians had been pleased at the expense of the 
 Bulgarians, by getting the Dobrudja, was interpreted as the throwing out 
 of a fine bit of bait. It had a very sharp and strong hook in it, however, 
 as Senator Marghiloman explained to me. That hook was the passing 
 of Rumania under Russian suzerainty, if not rule. But all this did not 
 dictate the moves of Sazonoff just then. He knew well enough that the 
 conquest of the Balkan and the remainder of Turkey of Europe was not 
 yet something to which Great Britain would give her assent, though with 
 the French, with whom he dealt most, that might have made no difference 
 so long as the German situation was taken care of. For that enterprise the 
 world in Europe was not yet ripe. 
 
 r 
 
 The Diplomatic Mines Are Sprung 
 
 The fact is, as I will show better later on, that Sazonoff instructed 
 Belgrade not to pay much attention to the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. 
 With the assurance that the big brother in the North was coming to 
 help, the Serbian government had no reason to acquiesce into the extreme 
 and insulting demands of Austria-Hungary. As I later learned, the 
 
l^HE DIPLOMATIC MINES ARE SPRUNG 61 
 
 Austro-Hungarian government was sure that Serbia would accept her 
 terms. Baron von GiesHngen, Austro-Hungarian minister at Belgrade, 
 was under the impression, even sure, that the ultimatum would have the 
 desired effect. But he was ignorant of the intentions of Sazonoff and 
 the instructions rushed to the Serbian government, and made what, under 
 the circumstances, is a natural mistake. Had Pashitch, the premier and 
 foreign minister of Serbia, given him a tip that all was not as it appeared 
 on the surface, the minister might have changed his tactics, so far as he 
 could. It is very probable, however, that neither he, nor his foreign 
 office, would have believed the Serbian government. Most likely such an 
 intimation would have been looked upon as a ruse. There is also the cir- 
 cumstance that premiers are not generally allowed to speak of such mat- 
 ters. Thus it came about that on July 28 Austria-Hungary declared war 
 on Serbia. 
 
 For the next five days the telegraph wires of Europe continued to 
 be very busy trying to mend matters. There were meetings of crown 
 councils and cabinets everywhere. In the chancelleries the midnight oil 
 was burned. Embassies and legations were the scene of wildest con- 
 fusion. The press grew excited, and the public, throughout Central Europe, 
 stood silent in awe. Foreign ministers and premiers did this and that, 
 and arrived nowhere, and four of the monarchs of Europe, William, 
 George, Nicholas and Francis Joseph, engaged in as futile an exchange 
 of telegrams as could be imagined. The German emperor became the center 
 of this. He tried, and tried honestly, to avert the catastrophe that was 
 imminent. I realize fully that it will be considered daring to defend 
 William II in that respect, yet a fact is a fact. As George Bernard Shaw 
 put it recently: 
 
 "It is out of the question to present the truth concerning a war 
 to those who must chiefly bear the burden of it. Yet that should be done, 
 must be done, if the public is ever to fully realize its own position." 
 
 It is utterly futile to attempt the proving of anything in war by 
 means of the vari-colored books, so-called "blue" books, which govern- 
 ments are in the habit of issuing after they have entered upon a martial 
 adventure. The writer has reached that conclusion after studying, for 
 a matter of five years almost, the British white, Russian orange, French 
 yellow, German white, Belgian grey, Austro-Hungarian red and United 
 States white papers. 
 
 The general public cannot be expected to understand, is not per- 
 mitted to understand, in fact, what the purpose of these specious docu- 
 ments is. The vari-colored books are issued by the governments concerned 
 for the purpose of exonerating them before their own publics, putting 
 the enemy in as bad a light as possible and influencing the public opinion 
 
62 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 of the world. That is their sole purpose, and there is no other. At the 
 same time it is hard to understand how serious men, professors of history 
 among them, can take such garbled accounts as throwing really a "strong" 
 light on the guilt or innocence of this or that government. The documents 
 I have named and their supplements contain nearly 700 major communi- 
 cations. Yet not a single one of them speaks of what had transpired before 
 the situation was critical. The obligations of one state to another, as 
 caused by understandings and alliances, understood by the public, or secret, 
 which is more important, are not even touched upon. Nor is there among 
 this mass of so-called evidence so much as an allusion to an instruction 
 of a diplomatic envoy that made for war in case orders furthering peace 
 should not bring good results. The reasonable human being has every 
 right to think that a government would at least include, if it were honest 
 in its so-called defense, such instructions to ambassadors and suggestions 
 to allied governments as would be considered perfectly justified in case 
 a bellicose power conducted itself in such a manner as to make war a 
 strong eventuality. 
 
 But nothing of the sort is done in these "papers." Their authors 
 point to themselves with seeming satisfaction as the government or group 
 which alone tried to avert the calamity of war. The British white book 
 makes no reference to a fact, which Lord Haldane had already presented 
 to the German government as late as 1912, to wit: That there was a 
 definite understanding of the entente cordiale that Great Britain would 
 come to the aid of France in case there was an attack made upon her. 
 That much, at least, Haldane had made perfectly clear to Berlin by his 
 attitude in refusing to agree to it that in case of war between Germany 
 and France Great Britain would remain neutral. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey and other British statesmen have since then asserted 
 that the British government had made no promise to France of military 
 aid of any sort and that it was the violation of the neutrality of Belgium 
 that drove Great Britain into the war. How the world can be expected 
 to believe that is hard to see. Haldane had admitted that under certain 
 conditions Great Britain would go to war in the interest of France, and 
 he admitted it in an endeavor to bring Germany to reason. His motive 
 was the best. But apart from all that, may we not ask what was the 
 purpose of the entente cordiale if it was not, at least, an agreement of a 
 defensive-alliance character? That is the very least upon which govern- 
 ments have in the past been willing to give their foreign relations that 
 aspect which an entente between powers creates. The government that 
 would complacently permit itself to be known as the close friend of 
 another government without having more than the friendship and esteem 
 of another nation in the bargain would be very foolish, to say the least. 
 
THE DIPLOMATIC MINES ARE SPRUNG 63 
 
 Such a friendship would be seriously questioned by other powers, who, 
 misunderstanding this platonic love, would rightly cast about for an ally 
 to meet the day when the purely altruistic union of the others would sud- 
 denly unmask itself as something entirely different. Surely, British states- 
 men expect too much from this gullible world when they demand that 
 this fairy tale of theirs be accepted as presented. 
 
 The Terms of the Entente Cordiale 
 
 The fact of the matter was that the British government had promised 
 France to side with her in a war against Germany under any circumstances. 
 The mobilization ordered by the British government was a partial mobiliz- 
 ation in name only and was meant for an attack on Germany no matter 
 whether the German army attacked France through Belgium and Luxem- 
 burg or through Alsace-Lorraine, because such was the import and purpose 
 of the entente cordiale. This and the fact that there was in force an 
 entente between Great Britain and Russia and an alliance between Russia 
 and France, and the further fact that Russia would not consent to a 
 localization or limitation of the trouble on the Danube to letting it remain 
 an issue between Austria-Hungary and Serbia made the Great War 
 inevitable. / 
 
 It seems unreasonable to criticize for its own sake the attitude of 
 the Russian government in regard to Austria-Hungary's unreasonable 
 demands upon Serbia. At the same time, so far as Russia and Germany 
 were concerned, the possibilities for peace were not yet exhausted, as has 
 been shown by the failure of Czar Nicholas to get his orders to his minister 
 of war. General Soukhomlinoff, carried out so that the general mobiliza- 
 tion under way might be halted. A sane diplomacy, willing to preserve 
 the peace of the world, would have served notice upon the Austro- 
 Hungarian government that measures taken against Serbia would have to 
 be accounted for and their consequence borne. As it was, the diplomacy 
 of Europe and Great Britain was on the single track of maneuvering for 
 war, in the case of some governments; in the case of others treaty obli- 
 gations and prestige drove their nations over the precipice. 
 
 Great Britain alone could have prevented the Great War. Her special 
 position gave her that power and conferred upon her that duty. Had 
 Sir Edward Grey frankly informed the German government the catas- 
 trophe might have been averted. I say might have been averted for the 
 reason that I am not so sure that the German government would not have 
 run the risk for all that. In Germany the very thought of a big navy had, 
 as has been the case before, created in many the impression that such a 
 sea power was already in existence. The contemplation of the thing 
 
64 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 that was to be, had fired the brains of many with a wild desire to sec 
 it used. 
 
 But Great Britain did nothing of the sort. Prince Lichnowski, who 
 only recently published his very interesting but quite foolish memoirs 
 concerning his stay in London as German ambassador, was one of those 
 German diplomatists who thought their wishes and hopes to be reality. 
 Edward Grey had assured him on many occasions that Great Britain was 
 not as absolutely committed to France as was believed. The German 
 ambassador believed that, and has since then been paid the compliment 
 by Mr. Shaw that he was too honest a man to deal with the British 
 premier, that, as a matter of fact, he credited Sir Edward with the 
 qualities he himself had. I am not so sure that this is in accord with the 
 facts. In what particular respect Sir Edward was unusually dishonest, for 
 a politician, has not been shown. To leave Lichnowski under the impres- 
 sion that Great Britain had a free hand in regard to France was perfectly 
 lionest when viewed in the light of accepted diplomatic morality. Not 
 to leave the German ambassador in these false hopes would have been 
 an instance of altruistic conduct, not only toward Germany but to the 
 world as well. Governments, as a rule, are expected to be altruistic 
 only with themselves. Most of them follow that principle in statecraft. 
 
 Lichnowski actually believed that Great Britain would stay out of 
 the war. He has since then admitted this to the extent of confessing 
 that he thought Great Britain would come to the aid of France only in 
 case the neutrality of Belgium was violated. There was a time, however, 
 when he was positive that the British government would on no account 
 go to war with Germany — entente or no. 
 
 Of the great simplicity of Prince Lichnowski, and his need-born 
 optimism I have found telling corroboration in a book on official pre-war 
 correspondence, suppressed by the publisher thereof. I refer to von 
 Mach's "Diplomatic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the European 
 War." Pages 593-94: 
 
 German Ambassador at London to the German Imperial 
 Chancellor, dated 1st August, 1914. 
 
 "Sir Edward Grey has just called me to the telephone and 
 has asked me whether I thought I could declare that, in the event 
 of France remaining neutral in a German-Russian war, we would 
 not attack the French. I told him that I believed I could assume 
 responsibility for this. Lichnowski." 
 
 Pages 594-95 : 
 
 His Majesty King George to His Majesty the Emperor 
 William, dated 1st August, 1914. 
 
 "In answer to your telegram, which has just been received, 
 I believe that there must be a misunderstanding with regard to a 
 
THE TERMS OF THE BNTBNTB CORDIALB 65 
 
 suggestion which was made in a friendly conversation between 
 Prince Lichnowski and Sir Edward Grey when they were dis- 
 cussing how an actual conflict between the German and French 
 armies might be avoided, so long as there is still a possibility of 
 an agreement being arrived at between Austria and Russia. Sir 
 Edward Grey will see Prince Lichnowski early tomorrow morn- 
 ing in order to ascertain whether there is any misunderstanding 
 on his side. Gkorg^." 
 
 Page 595 : * ' 
 
 German Ambassador at London to the German Imperial 
 Chancellor, dated 2nd August, 1914. 
 
 "The suggestions of Sir Edward Grey based on the desire 
 of creating the possibility of lasting neutrality on the part of 
 England were made without any previous inquiry of France and 
 without knowledge of the mobilization, and have since been given 
 up as quite impracticable. Lichnowski." 
 
 Since the text of the telegrams, the dates and the general aspect of 
 the situation then prevailing are more eloquent than any explanation 
 possibly could be, the reader is left to draw his own conclusions, though 
 attention is directed to the apologetic tone of Lichnowski's telegram of 
 August 2, in which he explains for Sir Edward Grey what no longer 
 needed such treatment. 
 
 The Attitude of Prince Lichnowski 
 
 Far more eloquent is something which occurred about noon on July 30. 
 With Lichnowski was at the time Dr. Richard von Kuhlmann, subse- 
 quently minister at The Hague and ambassador at Constantinople and 
 later state secretary for foreign affairs. Kiihlmann was then the conseiller 
 of the German ambassador to the court of St. James, and as such had to 
 be consulted by Prince Lichnowski much of tener than this rich, well-trained 
 and somewhat overbearing diplomatist found agreeable. Kiihlmann had 
 the nasty habit of looking facts in the face. He was of the **new school" 
 of German diplomatists and decidedly Anglophile, yet not blindly so in 
 matters of duty. 
 
 The conseiller had just discussed with the ambassador what Great 
 Britain might do — would do, so far as Kiihlmann's judgment went. He 
 was about to leave when the doorman announced to Prince Lichnowski 
 that Captain von Miiller, the embassy's naval attache, was very urgent 
 in his desire to be received. The ambassador was not edified by this. 
 He looked upon the attache as a man with alarmist leaning, and felt 
 that he would bring another series of bad tidings. After saying as much 
 
66 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 to Kiihlmann, the ambassador told the doorman to invite the captain to 
 come in. 
 
 Evidently the naval attache had news of importance. To some 
 remark of Lichnowski's to that effect he laid on the table what turned 
 out to be a report to the person of the emperor. Under pressing conditions, 
 or when the subject was important enough, such reports were made by 
 military and naval attaches. 
 
 The ambassador read the report, then looked up at the attache and 
 at Kiihlmann with a pained expression on his face. 
 
 "My dear captain!" he said as he handed the paper to Kiihlmann. 
 "This report cannot be sent. I have been trying hard to keep this country 
 and Germany at peace, and have almost succeeded. All my work will 
 be in vain in case this report gets to His Majesty. I beg you not to 
 send it." 
 
 Captain von Miiller could not see it that way. His report said that 
 he had just learned that the mobilization orders of the British govern- 
 ment were of such a nature that the immediate general use of the naval 
 and military establishments was contemplated. It was certain also, said 
 the report, that Great Britain proposed coming to the assistance of France 
 in any event. Whether Germany attacked France through Alsace-Lorraine, 
 Luxembourg or Belgium would make no difference. 
 
 The German naval attache had his authority for these statements. 
 To him this seemed reliable enough, but Prince Lichnowski thought the 
 assertions of the report so out of harmony with the facts, as he thought 
 of them, that he questioned the accuracy of the information. He asked 
 Conseiller Kiihlmann what his opinion was and received a non-committal 
 reply. It was plain to the attache that Kuhlmann did not want to 
 interfere, but he, nevertheless, was inclined to side with the report. 
 
 To make a long story short. Captain von Miiller was prevailed upon 
 not to dispatch the report immediately, as he had intended, but to wait for 
 further developments. When, finally, the ambassador consented to the 
 forwarding of the telegram, having then been convinced that the attache 
 was right, it was too late. A few hours before the British government 
 had given orders to the telegraph service that no more dispatches in 
 code from the German and Austro-Hungarian embassies were to be ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 Lichnowski in this manner held up the means that might have caused 
 the men in Berlin to yet change their course. The report itself was not 
 authoritative, to be sure, but it would have been a warning. It might 
 have accomplished more than a statement from the British premier, because 
 such a statement from Sir Edward direct might have caused the Berlin 
 government to be more touchy than ever, while the same notice from the 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF PRINCE UCHNOWSKI 67 
 
 German naval attache at London, a man of high standing, would have 
 appealed more to common sense than to the susceptibilities of the pride of 
 monarchs and ministers. 
 
 The reader may ask how I come to know the details of the case. 
 My informants are Captain von Miiller himself. Dr. Richard von Kiihl- 
 mann, Baron Carl von Giskra, at that time Austro-Hungarian minister at 
 The Hague, and a neutral diplomatist at London whose name I am not 
 permitted to give. 
 
 Prince Lichnowski has made no mention of this incident and its 
 features in the pamphlet of self-defense published by him in Switzerland, 
 nor has he at all intimated to what extent the wool was pulled over his 
 eyes by Sir Edward Grey — all of which was natural enough in the 
 case of a man who smarted more under the treatment that was given 
 him at home, when his mission was terminated by a fiasco, than he resented 
 the masterly manner in which the British foreign minister convinced him 
 that black was white. 
 
 Meanwhile, the wires of Europe were hot with frantic endeavors to 
 avert the highly imminent war. Emperor William was wiring in all 
 directions. He pleaded with Czar Nicholas, and his cousin. King George, 
 but did little enough to bring Austria-Hungary to her senses.* In a large 
 measure that was due to the fact that Emperor Francis Joseph was no 
 longer the actual head of the Austro-Hungarian government. Nominally 
 still the chief of that government, the old man was living now entirely in 
 the past — a past in which monarchs made war according to personal 
 formula. Count Berchtold had persuaded him that Serbia deserved no 
 better than she was getting, and there was in Belgrade no brother 
 monarch in whom old Francis Joseph would have taken an interest 
 sufficiently great to cause him to occupy himself with the ultimatum from 
 that angle. The old emperor, in addition, had too fine an opinion of 
 the military strength of his German ally to worry over the possibility 
 of war, and when the moment came that war was inevitable he calmly 
 left affairs in the hands of the same ally. That there was some corre- 
 spondence on the subject of the ultimatum to Serbia between the two 
 emperors is most likely. It has not been published, however. Allied 
 rulers and allied governments, necessarily, do not include their own cor- 
 respondence in the "papers" they afterward publish. 
 
 That the German government stood so valiantly by Austria-Hungary 
 in those days has puzzled a good many impartial observers. An alliance 
 of defense leaves usually some way out for the signatory who may con- 
 
 * The recent publication of what is known as the "Kautsky" papers, dealing with this phase 
 of relations between the Austro-Hungarian government and Emperor William and his ministers, 
 corroborates this in a most absolute manner. 
 
68 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 sider that the co-signatory had been the aggressor in an imprudent de- 
 gree. Italy did this later on, and there is no reason to believe that the 
 German government could not have advanced .the same contention and 
 in this manner, with all honor saved, left Austria-Hungary at the mercy 
 of the Russians. There are limits even to loyalty, and generally these 
 limits are prescribed by the self-interest of the other party. 
 
 It must be accepted, therefore, that the German government had much 
 in common with the Austro-Hungarian government. But it was not in 
 Serbia itself where these interests met. In fact, so far as Serbia was 
 directly concerned German and Austro-Hungarian interests were opposed. 
 When the government in Vienna sanctioned the tariff war upon vSerbia 
 it was Germany which bought from the Serbs most of what they could 
 export, and so long as the German government supported Russia on 
 the Balkan as against Austria-Hungary, Belgrade had staunch friends in 
 Berlin. The support given the Austro-Hungarian government by the 
 German government had its causal origin in the general political situation 
 in Europe. 
 
 When Emperor William and his advisors stood for the localization 
 of the Serbian-Austro-Hungarian difficulty they had in mind the curb 
 that had to be placed upon Russian designs southward and southwestward. 
 It was Pan- Slavism that bothered Berlin. The Slavs of Austria and 
 Hungary and those in the Balkans were gravitating toward Russia. A 
 declaration of war by the Russian government against Austria-Hungary 
 would have caused the latter to fall to pieces if not supported by the 
 German army, and overnight Russia would have had Germanic Europe 
 at her mercy in that event. Just as the British had their "German peril" 
 so had the Germans their "russische Gefahr" — ^Russian peril. To meet 
 that peril before Russia could complete her strategic railroads close to 
 the German and Austro-Hungarian borders and carry through the reor- 
 ganization of her increased army was considered the paramount duty 
 by the men in Berlin. If that could be accomplished diplomatically so 
 much the better; if it had to be done on the field of battle then, as 
 most Germans thought, the inevitable had to be faced a little ahead of 
 time — a scant twelve months at that, as the situation was viewed. 
 
 Germany was not by any means unanimous in this matter. As 
 stated before, there were many who looked upon Austria-Hungary as a 
 poor sort of ally. From the military point of view the dual monarchy 
 was accepted by some of the leading German statesmen as a charge 
 rather than a gain. In that respect Austria-Hungary was not much better 
 than Italy, as these men thought. 
 
 On the whole the Junker element of Prussia, then quite the strongest 
 factor in the German imperial government, was rather Russophile. And 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF PRINCE LICHNOWSKI 69 
 
 it was this honestly. Being reactionaries mostly, the Prussian Junkers 
 looked upon the control of the Russian masses by a handful of autocrats 
 at St. Petersburg with admiration. East of the Elbe they had social 
 standards that differed from Russian social standards only in so far as 
 they were more genuinely paternal. So far as the proletariat was concerned 
 the Russian government was a neglectful father, while the Prussian gov- 
 ernment, equally stern and absolute, was really mindful of at least the 
 physical wants of the governed. 
 
 It was the Junker element of Germany which had in the past exam- 
 ined critically the Triple Alliance and subjected it to much scrutiny. Since 
 this group thought in terms of "Realpolitik" it was but natural that it 
 came to oppose the Austrophiles in Germany. For many years before 
 the War Russian and Austro-Hungarian interests had been in hostile 
 contact in the Balkans. Russia wanted to get to the Mediterranean by 
 way of Constantinople and the straits and thought the incorporation of 
 the Balkan Slavs a pleasant and profitable incident to this, while Austria- 
 Hungary wanted to prevent these very things, feeling that the loss of 
 her own Slav population meant the doom of the state. The Slavs in 
 the dual monarchy were the keystone of the state, holding up the German- 
 Austrian and Hungarian half-arches. To lose that keystone was synony- 
 mous with the end of the monarchy, and might even lead to Russian 
 suzerainty in all of Austria-Hungary. The Russian peril was much more 
 of a reality to Central Europe than the German peril was that to Great 
 Britain. 
 
 There were men in Germany who wished to placate that peril. In 
 Austria and Hungary that element was wholly absent. The Junker party 
 of Prussia was forever for a rapprochement with Russia, but made little 
 progress owing to the fact that the Liberals of Germany did not propose 
 having their country Russified in addition to being Prussianized. Liberal 
 South Germany was consistently pro-Austrian for no other reason and 
 was mainly responsible for the continuation of Austrophile politics in 
 Berlin, rendering futile in this manner the "orientation toward the East" 
 which the Junkers, as the better politicians, persistently advocated. Social 
 Russia was a stench in the nostrils of the German Liberals, as it was in 
 those of progressives everywhere. On the one hand this led to the 
 cementing of the Triple Entente, and on the other to the reinforcement of 
 the Triple Alliance, so far as Germany and Austria-Hungary were con- 
 cerned. To the claim of the Junkers that Austrophilism would in the 
 end prove the undoing of the German empire, the Liberals replied that 
 closer relations with Russia would do the same thing socio-politically. 
 Thus it^came about that the German government gave its support to the 
 Austro-Hungarian government in its program of action in Serbia. 
 
;0 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 We must now turn to Petrograd — then still St. Petersburg — to see 
 what was taking place there. The trial of General Yanushkevitch, chief 
 of staflF of the Russian army, during the initial phases of the War, has 
 established that he did not carry out the orders given him by Emperor 
 Nicholas. Backed by Minister of War General SoukhomlinofF, by Grand 
 Duke Nicholai Nicholaievitch and by Sazonoff, the chief of staff felt him- 
 self free to lie to his imperial master, the czar. Nicholas had learned 
 from Emperor William, Count Pourtales, the German ambassador at St. 
 Petersburg, and the German military attache that the Russian mobilization 
 was not a partial one, as had been ordered, but one of so general a char- 
 acter that the German government considered it a menace. At first Czar 
 Nicholas was not inclined to pay much attention to the claim of the 
 Germans, but finally decided to ascertain whether or no, after all, there 
 was some truth in what he had heard. He called General Yanushkevitch 
 to the telephone and questioned him, to be told that the mobilization was 
 indeed a partial one. It was from this angle that Czar Nicholas pursued 
 his correspondence with Emperor William. Meanwhile the general 
 mobilization continued, and left the German emperor in no other position 
 than to assume that his brother monarch in St. Petersburg was lying to 
 him. Berlin was well informed on what the Russian general staflF was 
 doing. It had many friends in Russia and the Russian army — many of 
 them Baltic Germans, who in the past had been zealous promoters of a 
 Russo-German entente. The news which these managed to get to the 
 German diplomatic mission at St. Petersburg, and through that agency 
 to Berlin, was a sweeping contradiction of the letter and spirit of the 
 telegrams Czar Nicholas was sending to Emperor William. 
 
 With every thought only on war and with the militarists supreme by 
 row, there was no longer any hope that diplomacy might effect a concilia- 
 tion. The mobilization of Russia was general and was making rapid 
 headway, and Germany saw herself obliged to follow suit. The attitude 
 of Paris and London was as menacing as that of St. Petersburg, and 
 there was now no time for any other move than to stand pat by Austria- 
 Hungary. 
 
 The Conduct of a Mad Militarist 
 
 To German apologies in regard to this situation it has often been 
 remarked that the German government could have mobilized its army, 
 concentrated it along the Russo-German border and then awaited develop- 
 ments. From the peace point of view that is indeed a good argument. 
 Two parties not willing to fight might do that; eager to fight they would 
 not do it, of course. In their mobilization the Russians had quite a start 
 
THE CONDUCT OF A MAD MILITARIST 71 
 
 over the Germans. It is not good policy when war is imminent to wait 
 until the other party has every man in the field; it would not have been 
 good policy for the Germans to do this in this instance, since the Russian 
 army was numerically much the superior of the German. Nor would it 
 have been easy for the German government to explain later on that it per- 
 mitted all initial advantages of war to sHp into the hands of the Russians 
 by a conciliatory attitude that might not have changed the situation at all in 
 the end. From that angle the German government acted indeed on the 
 defensive. Allowances must be made for a man, Emperor William in 
 this instance, who as chief executive of a nation receives from another 
 chief executive assurances that bear the stamp of sincerity, because they 
 were sincere, while from his own agents he gets information that the 
 preparations for war are proceeding on a general scale at maximum 
 speed. 
 
 The case of General Yanushkevitch is of more than incidental inter- 
 est. It has been said that he was a mad militarist and Germanophobe 
 and that for this reason he took the making of war into his own hands, by 
 telling the czar that a partial mobilization was going on, when he knew 
 that a general mobilization was in progress. There is no doubt that Czar 
 Nicholas was under that impression to the very last, though as yet it has 
 not been explained how the news was ultimately broken to him. There 
 is reason to believe that much would have been different had the facts 
 in regard to mobilization in Russia, as they reached Berlin, coincided with 
 the conciliatory and pacific spirit of Czar Nicholas' telegrams to the 
 German emperor. Minds would have sufficiently cooled off to permit the 
 taking of stock, and the European War might have still been avoided. 
 That it would have been avoided seems a reckless statement under the 
 circumstances ; at any rate, reason would have been given a chance. 
 
 Though M. Sazonoff himself has been one of those who have claimed 
 that General Yanushkevitch was solely responsible for the extent of the 
 Russian mobilization, it would be ridiculous to assume for even a moment 
 that such was the case. While the credulity of the world public has ever 
 been great, there are times when those presuming upon it go a little 
 too far. M. Sazonoff knew that the chief of staff had lied to the czar, 
 as did General Soukhomlinoff, the minister of war, and Grand Duke 
 Nicholai Nicholaievitch, the Russian commander in chief. Yet even these 
 could not shoulder so tremendous a responsibility without assurances that, 
 come what might, France and Great Britain would support every act of 
 theirs. The men who actually had the war machine in hand, so far as 
 contact between Russia and France and England was concerned, were: 
 Sir George Buchanan, the British ambassador at Petrograd; M. Paleo- 
 logue, the French ambassador at the same capital; Count Benckendorff, 
 
72 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the Russian ambassador at London, and M. Isvolski, the Russian ambas- 
 sador at Paris. Needless to say, the leaders of the British and French 
 governments were the source of their authority. 
 
 I make this statement on the strength of information which reached 
 me in Constantinople. M. N. de Giers, the Russian ambassador at that 
 point, maintained the friendliest relations with the Bulgarian legation, then 
 in charge of M. Koulocheff, a man of strong Russophile tendencies, 
 who in those days was anything but a friend of the Germans and Turks. 
 Mons. de Giers, oddly enough, was strongly pro-German, and spoke of 
 the international war camarilla in St. Petersburg in terms that were not 
 exactly flattering. De Giers was rather Anglophobe and doubted that 
 Great Britain would ever do anything to place Russia in possession of 
 Constantinople — a rather sound conclusion with which M. Koulocheflf 
 begged to differ. The Bulgarian minister thought otherwise. He saw 
 the future of his own country in the light of Pan-Slavism and the eradica- 
 tion of the Turks and Germans even after his country had become an 
 ally of theirs. He was a Russophile of the subservient type, and for that 
 reason always well informed on affairs in Russia. 
 
 In this connection I must state that Sir George Buchanan was the 
 leader of this bloody combination in Petrograd, while M. Isvolski worked 
 most of the wires abroad. Isvolski had been somewhat of a friend of 
 the Germans at one time. Of the Austrians he was rather fond, especially 
 of their women. But it seems that the experiences he had with Counts 
 Aehrenthal and Berchtold, in connection with the annexation of Bosnia 
 and Herzegovina, cured him of all Austrophilism. For this the man, 
 reducing the case to one ad hominem, cannot be blamed. Yet that is hardly 
 an endorsement of state representation that makes it possible to throw 
 whole nations into misery because a single person may have a grudge 
 against another. Isvolski would have served the world better to tell 
 Counts Aehrenthal and Berchtold that he could not bind his government 
 to any such bargain — such a one-sided one at that. 
 
 A Diplomatic Jeu de Grimace 
 
 On the fateful July 31 two rather interesting things occurred. The 
 British government thought it necessary to ask the French government 
 whether or no it would abide, in regard to the neutrality of Belgium, 
 by the terms of the treaty it had signed. A finer piece of cant is hard 
 to discover. Of course, the French government would respect the neu- 
 trality of Belgium ! The same inquiry went to Berlin. But Sir Edward 
 Goschen did not get so ready an answer as Sir F. Bertie received from 
 Premier Viviani. Sir Edward presented the inquiry of his government 
 
A DIPLOMATIC JBU DB GRIMACE 73 
 
 to Herr von Jagow, the German state secretary for foreign affairs, and 
 received from him the reply that he could not answer without consulting 
 first the emperor and the chancellor. Those who know what the German 
 imperial system of government was will concede that Jagow had no author- 
 ity to say either yes or no under the circumstances, all the more since 
 under the ministerial system of Germany, at that time, he was but little 
 more than vortragender Rat — reporting counselor, a straw-man in other 
 words. Von Jagow could receive inquiries and complaints, and could, 
 after bringing the matter to the attention of Chancellor von Bethmann- 
 Hollweg, transmit a reply. More than that he could not do; such being 
 the wonderful aspect of Byzantinism as practiced on the banks of the 
 River Spree. 
 
 Sir Edward Goschen knew this, of course, and made it his business 
 to see the chancellor himself. From Bethmann-Hollweg he received a 
 reply to the effect that "Germany, in any event (before committing 
 herself) would want to hear what the French government's answer was." 
 
 No doubt, that was a foolish playing with words. But Bethmann- 
 Hollweg was really in no position to give a clearer reply. The German 
 general staff had so long looked upon the use of Belgian territory as 
 necessary in case of war with France that the chancellor was afraid to be 
 specific. He was sparring for time and hoping, meanwhile, as he has 
 since then admitted, that something would happen to save him from having 
 to deal with this situation. He knew well enough that in case of war he 
 would be powerless to prevent the invasion of Belgium. The radical military 
 element would then have its way, no matter what objections he might 
 laise. A Bismarck would indeed have told Sir Edward that Germany would 
 respect the neutrality of Belgium. The making of such a promise might 
 not have pleased the militarists, but Bismarck would have realized that not 
 even the worst of that element would have dared to remove him so long as 
 the crisis was on. There are some things which even the German emperor 
 could not afford to do, and one of them was a change in chancellors in 
 July and August, 1914. 
 
 But Bethmann-Hollweg was not a heroic type of man. In his 
 official acts he was timid and shortsighted, as was to be expected from 
 an individual of a moderately arriviste character — from a man who had 
 risen in the government in the police department, in whom system and 
 orderliness of the extreme class had killed all initiative. 
 
 There was another condition that beclouded the mentality of the 
 German government at that moment, if the case may be expressed in those 
 words. The attitude of the French government was such that Baron von 
 Schon, the German ambassador at Paris, could make but the most pessi- 
 mistic reports to his government. The result of this was that he was 
 
74 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 instructed to immediately ascertain what the French government intended 
 doing. On July 31, as late as 7 p. m., the German ambassador served 
 notice upon the French premier, M. Viviani, that by 1 p. m. on the 
 following day the German government expected a definite declaration, on 
 the part of France, what she would do in case war should break out 
 between Germany and Russia. Viviani did not need the time given him. 
 His mind, or that of his government, had been made up long ago. He told 
 Baron von Schon that France would do that which the safeguarding of 
 her interests prescribed. 
 
 From that enigmatic reply the German government could draw no 
 other conclusion than that France had made up her mind to go to war on 
 the side of Russia. Indeed, no other course was open. The Franco- 
 Russian alliance was still in force, was, in fact, the written treaty upon 
 which the Triple Entente rested, and, according to its terms, France would 
 have to come to the aid of her ally in case of attack. 
 
 Another reply could have been given by Viviani had he willed to 
 do that in the interest of peace. He could have told Schon that France 
 v/ould live up to her treaty agreement in case Germany attacked Russia, 
 but that she was not obliged to do that in case Russia was the aggressor. 
 That would have been a bid for peace. The reply Viviani gave was 
 an incentive to war — a promotion of German distrust and fear, and 
 the direct cause of her declaration of war against Russia within a few 
 hours. 
 
 The piece of simulation which the British and French governments 
 had indulged in regarding the neutrality guarantees of Belgium stood 
 now unmasked in Berlin. It was a sinister writing on the wall. On 
 August 1 Sir Edward Grey had another occasion to discuss the neutrality 
 of Belgium with Prince Lichnowski. It was this conversation which 
 made the trustful German ambassador suspicious for the first time of the 
 attitude of the British government. So far he had lived in his delusion 
 that war could be localized. 
 
 The contents of the report which Captain von Miiller had made had 
 caused Prince Lichnowski to recognize the possibility that Great Britain 
 might go to war on the side of Russia and France. Already the man 
 was out of his wits, though still sure of his ground that Great Britain, 
 despite the frictions of years, would not strike at a country that had 
 been the traditional friend of the British. He asked Grey whether Great 
 Britain would remain neutral in case Germany did not violate the neu- 
 trality of Belgium and received a reply from the British secretary of 
 state for foreign affairs that was a worthy counterpart of the answer 
 the French premier, M. Viviani, had made. Sir Edward Grey replied 
 that he could not say whether or no Great Britain would remain neutral 
 
A DIPLOMATIC JBU DB GRIM ASS B 75 
 
 in case of war between Germany, Russia and France, but that the hands 
 of the British government were yet free, and that the position which Great 
 Britain might take had yet to he considered. PubUc opinion, said Sir 
 Eklward, had to be taken into account, and public opinion in Great Britain 
 was very much exercised over the possibiUty of Belgium's neutrality being 
 violated. On the other hand, Sir Edward would not promise neutrality 
 on the condition that Germany made the promise that she would respect 
 the status of Belgium. 
 
 That again left things in the air. The reply which Grey gave Lich- 
 nowski was virtually the same Baron von Schon had gotten from M. 
 Viviani. The text of the records made of the two meetings diflfers, of 
 course, and in the official white and yellow books they seem very dis- 
 similar. The fact is that neither of them is a stenographic report, made 
 at the time, but merely a statement of a conversation as an ambassador, 
 in the one case, and a foreign minister, in the other, remembered it. 
 
 A Bull in a Political China Shop 
 
 But so far nothing had really happened in Germany that could cause 
 the British and French statesmen to believe that the men in Berlin, at 
 least Emperor William, who was still telegraphing to and pleading with 
 his fellow-monarchs and relatives, would not abstain from violating the 
 neutrality of Belgium. At any rate Belgium had not yet been invaded, and 
 so far the German government had made no demands upon the Belgian 
 government. The first of these was made on August 2nd and was based 
 by Germany on the report that French troops were about to enter upon 
 Belgian territory, near Givet and Namur, for an attack upon Germany. 
 
 The writer has no means of knowing to what extent this report was 
 true. The French government has steadfastly denied that the German 
 claim was founded on fact, and we must bear in mind that in the excite- 
 ment of those days the information of the Germans may have been unre- 
 liable; may, in fact, have been the work of some zealous agent who had 
 more ambition than discretion. Since I have met many of that ilk who 
 were so constituted I am inclined to believe that such was the case. The 
 most dangerous human being I know is the government agent who wishes 
 to make his mark. 
 
 On the other hand, the Entente governments have claimed that the 
 substance of the "strictly confidential communication" which the German 
 minister at Brussels, von Below, transmitted to Baron van der Elst, 
 Belgian general secretary of the exterior, was a mere pretext for the open- 
 ing of negotiations by which Germany hoped to get the consent of the 
 Belgian government for the use of Belgian territory in the military 
 operations that seemed now more inevitable than ever. 
 
76 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 The facts of the case support this interpretation strongly, and the 
 admission by Bethmann-Hollweg that his government had done wrong 
 seems to be in itself enough to prove that Berlin was far too eager to 
 make an issue of what may have been no more than an incident to the 
 mobilization of the French army. The presence of large bodies of French 
 troops near the Belgian border was in reality symptomatic of nothing, 
 so far as Belgium was concerned. The troops might have been intended, 
 so far as the general aspect of things then went, to protect French territory 
 in case Germany did violate the neutrality of Belgium. France, of course, 
 had ^ right to mass troops along the Belgian border, to take care of an 
 eventuality of a critical character given prominence by specific diplo- 
 matic conversation. A sane government in Berlin would have paid no 
 attention whatever to the presence of French troops near Givet and Namur, 
 especially since troops held there would not have to be encountered along 
 the western border of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 Instead of taking that very prudent attitude the German government 
 did exactly what it should not have done. It made the neutrality of 
 Belgium, guaranteed by Prussia first and later accepted as an obligation 
 by the empire, the subject of debate, lost some time in doing that, sacri- 
 ficed her military chances in the south and gave its enemies a very excellent 
 weapon for propaganda warfare. , ■ ', ^ 
 
 The German government has made a great deal of certain state 
 documents found in the Belgian archives after the invasion of 
 Belgium had become a fact. Per se, these records prove only that Great 
 Britain and France were rather well informed of the plans of the German 
 general staff and government. They prove also that Great Britain had 
 of a sudden taken an unusual amount of interest in the status of Belgium, 
 and that in the course of the few years immediately preceding the war, 
 the British government had come to regard Belgium as a sort of naval and 
 military base on the Continent. Great Britain, if -we take the conventional 
 view of things, could not be prevented from doing that, nor was it feasible 
 to dissuade the French government from similar activity, any more than 
 later it was possible to keep Germany from actually invading Belgium. 
 The designs of our neighbors are something over which we have no con- 
 trol so long as no attempt is made to carry them into execution. 
 
 The documents found demonstrated also that members of the Belgian 
 general staff had been in co-operation with the British and French army 
 men, who had "organized," on paper, so far, the military exigencies in 
 Belgium. It can hardly be said that on the part of the Belgian government 
 this was the strictest adherence a treaty can be given. A treaty not 
 observed in spirit is bound to be ultimately disregarded in text. This is 
 one of the few rules that have no exception. Even the stoutest admirer of 
 
A BULL IN A POLITICAL CHINA SHOP 17 
 
 Belgium must concede that in this respect the treaty in question was 
 leaky, and had been made that by the Belgian government itself. To 
 consider with two of the signatories the eventuality of infraction of the 
 treaty by a third signatory may be diplomacy, but is not an out-and-out 
 honest transaction. 
 
 It must be borne in mind, however, that in international relations 
 the ideal is not to be obtained any more than in the other conditions and 
 problems that worry mankind. From this angle the Belgian government 
 was less culpable. The militarists and expansionists of Germany had been 
 so intemperate in their language, had given their country so threatening an 
 aspect that the Belgian government might indeed cast about for succor 
 to be summoned when the day of trial came. 
 
 Against that stands what the Germans came to identify as a national 
 and military necessity: The invasion of Belgium and the use of her 
 territory against the French in case of war. The number of Germans who 
 were against the invasion of Belgium was rather small, and dwindled to zero 
 as with the progress of the war the Germans began to feel that the cards had 
 been stacked against them. What pangs of conscience there were felt — if 
 war leaves room for such a thing — were set aside by the feeling that with 
 Germany attacked from every quarter any measure of self -protection was 
 allowed. In the course of time this became a recognized doctrine, and 
 after that discussion of the case was no longer possible. There were 
 the incriminating documents ! How and when they were found was over- 
 looked as was the fact that finding them was a bit of belated luck — nothing 
 more. Had Berlin been in possession of any evidence, showing that the 
 Belgian government had entered into military liaison with Great Britain and 
 France, that evidence, and not the fear of French troops massing along 
 the Belgian border, would have been made the substance of representations 
 by the Germans in Brussels on August 2. The finding of the papers 
 was, therefore, proof of nothing, so far as the position of the German 
 government was concerned. 
 
 The Government "Official" as Statesman 
 
 Even if the case had been one of evidence and proof, as outlined 
 above, the German government had as yet no specific cause for complaint, 
 at least no very weighty one. It could, indeed, have called upon the Belgian 
 government* for an explanation, and it would not have been easy to give 
 a satisfactory explanation. But invasion and war could have beeen averted, 
 so far as Belgium was concerned, by her promise to adhere to the treaty 
 of 1839, by which Holland acknowledged Belgium an independent state 
 with "eternal" neutrality, and to which Prussia, France, Great Britain, 
 
78 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Russia and Austria-Hungary became parties in the quality of guarantors. 
 The German government failed to approach the case from that angle 
 because it had no knowledge of what had been done behind its own back 
 and that of at least one other guarantor, Austria-Hungary. Instead it 
 made the possible intention of the French government the subject of 
 overtures calculated to get from the Belgian government the consent for 
 the use of Belgian territory against France, another guarantor. The 
 government in Brussels could not give such consent. That much at least 
 was clear to the men in Berlin. The best they expected was a lenient 
 protest against. the proposed invasion and the retirement of the Belgian 
 government to a city further west, Antwerp, for instance. 
 
 That such conduct would have given the French the right to also 
 enter upon Belgian territory, and that in such an event Belgium would 
 have become a theater of war in a quarrel in which her people were not 
 interested, was something which Berlin expected the Belgian government 
 to overlook in return for payment. To say that this ,was expecting too 
 much from a country and people is putting it mildly. Bismarck had 
 taken a more sensible view of this situation, the right view, in fact, 
 in 1870, when, over the head of the militarists of his day, he announced 
 that the Treaty of 1839 was something which Prussia considered binding. 
 
 But Bismarck was the Iron Chancellor, while Bethmann-HoUweg was 
 a mere government official. Bismarck was a statesman, Bethmann-HoUweg 
 a politician and a very poor one at that. The former measured his acts 
 by results they would have twenty years hence, the latter lived mentally 
 from hand to mouth, as he had done politically. 
 
 The claim of the German government that the use of Belgian territory 
 was a military necessity is hardly of sufficient importance to merit attention. 
 It is on a par with the assertions of Emperor William that he could not 
 stop his mobilization. To be sure, a mobilization is something that will, 
 for hours at any rate, travel on its own impetus, but in our days, with 
 telegraphic and telephonic means of communication, even the poorest of 
 general staffs ought to be able to arrest such a preparation for war. The 
 plea that the mobilization program contained no provisions for the 
 arrest of a mobilization and the diverting of troops to places other than 
 selected in the first place falls flat also. If such provisions had not been 
 made the great efficiency of the German general staff was indeed a very 
 one-sided affair, efficient only for war and totally inefficient for peace. 
 By and large the absence of so prudent a feature means that in Berlin, 
 and in all other capitals, for that matter, they thought that war there 
 must be once the dogs had been loosed. After all, we deal here with nothing 
 but lame excuses of a diplomatic sort. The facts were other. 
 
 The situation in Russia, where the czar made assurances of good will 
 
THE GOVERNMENT "OFFICIAL" AS STATESMAN 79 
 
 that were honest enough, and where Sazonoif, Grand Duke Nicholai 
 Nicholaievitch, General Soukhomlinoff and others were speeding a general 
 mobilization over the head of the sovereign and supreme commander, and 
 the replies given German ambassadors by M. Viviani and Sir Edward 
 Grey, left the German government no alternative to preparing for war. 
 Between the Serbs and the Austro-Hungarians war was already in prog- 
 ress, and the German government, therefore, could not but mobilize as 
 rapidly and completely as possible. German troops were concentrating 
 along the German border, from Dutch Limburg down to Switzerland, and on 
 August 3 the French government gave Baron von Schon, the German 
 ambassador, his passports. 
 
 The Great War was on. 
 
 Under Bismarck the Prussian government had managed to get its 
 own troops into battle position far south of the point which the general 
 staff of William II considered the tactical and strategic center of battle 
 formation, if that term may be applied to what the Germans know as 
 Aufmarsch. If that was possible at a time when Bavaria, Wuerttemberg 
 and Baden were merely the allies of Bismarck and Prussia, when they 
 were states whom France expected to remain neutral, how much more 
 was this possible with those countries an integral part of the empire and 
 with their own military forces directly under the control of the German 
 general staff in Berlin. The argument made by apologists for the German 
 imperial government that the situation was different in 1914 from what 
 it had been in 1870 is not very convincing. To be sure, the situation 
 was somewhat different, but it was diiferent only in so far that it was 
 more in favor of the German army and fortunes of war, as compared 
 with what Moltke and Bismarck had to cope with. The French had since 
 1871 greatly improved their defenses in situ adjacent to the border, but, 
 on the other hand, the German army had means to reduce this disadvan- 
 tage correspondingly. Advantages were on the side of the Germans because 
 in 1914 their army was being directed as an unit which in 1870 the Prussian 
 Allied armies were not. 
 
 With such matters the German general staff did not concern itself 
 any too much. It was out for a quick victory, through Belgium. The 
 fortifications of the French along the Belgian border were not as formida- 
 ble as those west of the Vosges hills. There was to be an Ueberrumplung — 
 defeat of the French by crushing surprise. Belgium stood in the way 
 of that, and Belgium had to make way. Such was the major and true 
 aspect of mentality in the government circles in Berlin now that the Triple 
 Entente had decided to measure issues on the field of battle with the 
 Triple Alliance. We must doubt that in London, Paris and St. Petersburg 
 they would have done otherwise. 
 
80 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 On the possibility that the Belgian parliament would have acted as 
 a check on the Belgian government in case the latter had shown partiality 
 toward the French and British we need not dwell too heavily. Parlia- 
 ments the world over, the Congress of the United States included, have 
 had little or nothing to do with the conditions that prevailed immediately 
 anterior to the state of war. In all cases the executive branch of the 
 government presented them with a fait accompli and a demand for war 
 credits. The accomplished fact was either that a state of war existed or 
 that relations with the foreign government were on the breaking point. 
 The best which any body of legislators has done in such circumstances 
 is to applaud the men on the ministerial bench and then vote money for 
 war ad libitum — ad nauseum. The Solons of our day become just plain 
 subjects and citizens on the day on which the government, impelled by 
 necessities of its own in which the "public interest" is supposed to be 
 crystalized, declares that a state of war exists and implies that this also 
 extends to those legislators who might have the temerity to examine into 
 the facts of the case — which temerity is adjudged to be treason by 
 nations everywhere. 
 
 What the German Government Overlooked 
 
 The German government would have done its people a great service 
 by keeping the troops massed against the Belgian border on German 
 territory, aflfording thereby the Belgian government the chance to declare 
 itself. In case French military forces really made use of Belgian terri- 
 tory knowledge of that would have been quickly gained by the German 
 government. The process of obtaining an explanation from the Belgian 
 government, as to its intention, would have been simple after that, so 
 simple in fact that it would have been automatic. Against an invasion of 
 Belgium by the French the Belgium government would have been obliged 
 to protest. Failure of that protest would have left the Belgian govern- 
 ment two courses open. One of them would have taken the form of an 
 appeal to the signatories of the Treaty of 1839 ; the other would have been 
 opposition to the violation of her status and territory by means of arms. 
 In that case Belgium would have become a co-belligerent of Germany, as 
 later she became that of France and Great Britain. The German troops 
 would have rushed to her assistance, no doubt, and France, instead of 
 Germany, would have had to bear the stigma of the "scrap of paper." 
 
 But the men in Berlin could not see that far. An emperor who, 
 to himself at least, enjoyed somewhat the blessings of omniscience, was 
 too shortsighted — too poor a statesman and diplomatist to see so simple 
 a case of logical development of a situation. The Belgian government 
 had no way out of this. Its neutrality remained either sacred to the French, 
 
WHAT THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT OVERLOOKED 81 
 
 or a declaration of war against France was, under the circumstances, 
 inevitable. It was violated by Germany, and Belgian participation in the 
 Great War resulted. 
 
 I have used the modification italicized above for a purpose. I say 
 under the circumstances because an appeal of Belgium to Great Britain 
 and Russia against the violation of her neutrality and territory by France 
 would have led to a situation of the most peculiar type. Let us imagine 
 the Belgian government calling to its assistance Great Britain and Russia 
 in an effort to maintain her status under the Treaty of 1839, with France 
 as the offender, the same France with whom Great Britain and Russia 
 were allied for the purpose of keeping Germany on good behavior. 
 What an impossible situation that would have been! Imagine further 
 that this situation had come into being in the first days of August, 1914. 
 Great Britain and Russia, according to the asserverations of their states- 
 men, would have been obliged to also side with Germany in its war upon 
 France. 
 
 It is entirely out of the question that this possibility had been over- 
 looked in London, St. Petersburg and Paris. It is not to be thought of 
 that Belgian neutrality was ever associated with so strange a proposition. 
 It was not only to the interest of the Triple Entente that Belgium remain 
 neutral during at least the initial stages of the war, but such conduct 
 on her part constituted the very principle of whatever measure the Triple 
 Entente would have to apply against Germany along the latter's western 
 frontier. If the Berlin government thought for even a moment that the 
 governments in London, St. Petersburg and Paris had left at all any 
 room for such an "accident" then Germany, indeed, had the poorest gov- 
 ernment and foreign office a people was ever cursed with. It was to the 
 interest, it was a sine qua non, of Triple Entente diplomacy and state- 
 craft, that Belgium, so far as France and Great Britain were concerned, 
 and so far as the initial stages of the Great War went, retain its neutrality 
 untouched — blemished only by what understanding there was between the 
 Belgian government and Paris and London. 
 
 It is remarkable, to say the least, that nobody in Berlin ever gave voice 
 to this fact. But it is not to be assumed on that account that nobody ever 
 thought of it. My opinion of German diplomacy is not very high, but 
 it is hard to believe that there were men in the German government who 
 would not have smiled, even in those days of stress, at the suggestion 
 that the Triple Entente had left room for a contingency in which London 
 and St, Petersburg had to protest against the violation of the neutrality 
 of Belgium by France, and then come to the aid of France against 
 Germany with large armies and a blockade, nevertheless. A more ludi- 
 crous situation could not be thought of ; a greater predicament could not 
 
82 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 be pictured by the cleverest writer of farce. Since it cannot be assumed, 
 within reason, that the German government was not fully aware of this, 
 we must needs accept, all assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, that 
 the violation of the neutrality of Belgium was a deliberate act on the part 
 of the German government, decided upon long beforehand by a general 
 staff that thought in terms of maximum results in a minimum of time 
 without thinking at all that the neighbor has rights which should be re- 
 spected.* 
 
 A Piece of Diplomatic Hjrpocrisy 
 
 I have already referred to the fact that Sir F. Bertie, the British 
 ambassador at Paris, on July 31 made a formal inquiry of the French 
 premier, M. Viviani, whether or no France, in case of war, would respect 
 the neutrality of Belgium. M. Viviani is on record as saying that France 
 would respect that neutrality, and that France might depart from that 
 policy only in case another violated the neutrality of Belgium and made 
 this act a factor of insecurity to the French republic. The reply of M. 
 Viviani was brought to the attention of the German government and the 
 German ambassador in London, a procedure which in itself was enough 
 to draw the attention of the government in Berlin to the subject involved 
 and the situations I have already treated. 
 
 The inquiry made of M. Viviani being entirely gratuitous, we must 
 look upon it as a piece of rank hypocrisy by Sir Edward Grey. British 
 diplomacy has forced a great deal down the throat of a gullible world, 
 but it would seem that the mentality of the general public might have 
 been respected enough, even in London, by not expecting reasonable 
 human beings to believe that this detail of entente was left to so late 
 
 • It would seem that here we have something for which those responsible for it should be 
 placed on trial before a tribunal set up by the nations that remained neutral throughout the 
 Great War. There are enough such neutrals to make this possible, and the small neutrals of 
 Europe certainly have the greatest interest in the case. The trial of such persons would be 
 both justified and prudent, because it would have a salutary effect of a preventive character. 
 There is no doubt that the premeditation of a military undertaking of this sort has every 
 aspect of a crime, and that it should be reviewed from that angle and its perpetrators punished. 
 The sooner general staff men the world over are made to realize that they may be held 
 responsible, though only, as is now the case, when their army has been defeated, compunction 
 is likely to visit them oftener. The same applies to the civilian part of the governmental 
 personnel which gives its sanction to such raids upon the small neighbor. 
 
 The conduct of the Allied and Associated governments in the matter of trying German 
 officers and officials charged with "crimes" committed at the front has been a series of bluffs 
 with a political purpose. So long as the principle of reprisal is recognized by governments so 
 long will it be difficult to say what is and what is not a "crime." It is different when, as in 
 the case of the invasion of Belgium, we have a clear case of criminal initiative. 
 
 If in connection with such a trial the activity of the British and French governments in 
 regrard to Belgium would be traced and weighed so much the better, and a great deal of maudlin 
 sentiment might be disposed of by looking over the conduct of the Belgian government, espe- 
 cially from 1911 to the outbreak of the War. 
 
 There is no use doing any of these things in case they cannot be undertaken by a tribunal 
 of neutrals, composed of, let us say, men from Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia with the 
 exception of Denmark, Spain and the neutrals in Latin America. It is to be hoped that the 
 Allied and Associated governments will respect mankind enough not to expect it to have 
 the least confidence in any verdict a handpicked entente tribunal would decide upon. 
 
A PIECE OF DIPI^OMATIC HYPOCRISY 83 
 
 an hour as July 31, 1914, especially since the discovery of documents, 
 showing that there had been contact between British, French and Belgian 
 authorities on what the status of Belgium was to be in case of war 
 against Germany. We may be excused for asking British diplomacy and 
 historians not to stress that point. 
 
 The fact is that Belgium had become a vassal state of the British. 
 The fact further is that in Berlin this was known. True enough, the 
 German government was still groping in the dark in this respect, but 
 enough had transpired to leave no doubt that Belgium, in case of a 
 world war, would be an unsicherer Kantonist — uncertain quality. A few 
 years before there had been a most violent campaign in the British press 
 in regard to alleged Belgian atrocities in the Congo, and for a time it 
 seemed as if the Congo would follow the Boer republics. Of a sudden, 
 however, that campaign subsided. The exposure by Sir Edward Carson 
 of the Putomayo atrocities, committed by Britishers, had a great deal 
 to do with diverting the attention of the British public. The British 
 and Belgian governments after that met on a different basis, as the 
 documents found by the Germans demonstrate all too well. France, too, 
 was a party to the understanding that was reached, and in the light of this, 
 as already pointed out, the great concern by Sir Edward Grey for the 
 safety of Belgium was a crass piece of sham. 
 
 The reply of M. Viviani was in absolute conformity with what had 
 been decided upon several years before by the two groups of poHticians in 
 Paris and London that had managed to keep the governments of France 
 and Great Britain in their hands for the purpose, as was well known, of 
 attendmg to the case of the Triple Alliance at a propitious moment. In 
 France the government had been largely in the hands of Clemenceau. 
 Briand, Pichon, Barthou and Viviani during that period. In Great Britain 
 the same set of office holders had not always followed so very closely 
 and unswervingly in the track of la revanche, as Caillaux knew well 
 enough, but in the main they had been dependable. When they were not, 
 the men in Paris had but to remind themselves of the hopeless naval con- 
 troversy that was going on between Great Britain and Germany to feel 
 that in the end their time and opportunity would come. 
 
 British interests demanded special scrutiny of Russia. The defeat 
 of the Russian army by the Japanese, and the destruction, virtually, of the 
 Russian war fleet by the same people, eased that situation so that later on 
 it was possible to meet on common ground in Persia. The rapprochement 
 of Germany and Turkey removed Constantinople a little more in the 
 plans of Russia's imperialists, and the annexation of Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina also pushed those plans farther away from realization. Bulgaria, 
 meanwhile, was showing tellingly that she was no longer minded to be 
 
84 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the child of Czar Alexander Oswoboditel — a political appanage especially 
 of the Romanoffs, and above all only a great war could clear the socio- 
 political atmosphere of the Muscovite empire and retain in control those 
 classes to which the mujik was still little better than a beast of burden. 
 So far as Russia is concerned none of these aspirations were promoted by 
 the enterprise which was inaugurated in Serbia and which centered so much 
 about Belgium. The British and French were rather more successful — 
 so far as developments permit us to see at present. 
 
 The period of 1907-14 was indeed the heyday of diplomacy. The 
 isolation of Germany was completed by the Anglo-Russian entente. On 
 this basis of power the diplomatists of the Triple Entente could proceed 
 to labor for the culmination of their purposes with that degree of dignity 
 which everywhere gave them prestige and made their cause holy long 
 before it had reached the distinction that attaches to "cause." Every 
 move of theirs was correct, because the potency of the political combination 
 behind them precluded almost wholly the possibility of mistake. 
 
 The diplomatists of Germany were not in so comfortable a position. 
 They probably had on the average as much ability as their Triple Entente 
 confreres. What they lacked was power in reserve. Nor was all of the 
 strength behind them real. Austria-Hungary did ultimately far better 
 than the greatest optimists in the Triple Alliance hoped and Italy had long 
 ago passed into the category of uncertain quantities. 
 
 Thus the Great Debacle came. It came in a manner that proved that 
 diplomacy can be successful only when there is a superiority of power 
 behind it, and when this superiority is actually admitted by those who 
 may be the subjects of diplomacy. British statesmen in the position of the 
 Germans could not have done any better. They would have been guilty of 
 the same "bungling" had their intentions been met, as were those of the 
 Germans, by the superior power and better strategic position of their 
 adversaries. From being isolated, Great Britain became the isolator, and 
 it is not exactly to her credit that she did this with a nation which at 
 one time was really her only friend in Europe. But perfidies of that sort 
 have ever been a favorite means of British statesmanship. For eight years 
 Great Britain maneuvered for position, and then she struck, with Belgium, 
 the poor little lamb, as a bait in the trap set for that most stupid of 
 animals of prey, militaristic Germany. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey, reduced to the necessity of having to ascertain 
 from M. Viviani in the eleventh hour whether or no France would respect 
 the neutrality of Belgium, will go down the corridors of time as the man 
 greater than a partnership of Machiavel and Metternich. 
 
VI 
 
 WHAT WILL AMERICA DO? 
 
 IT IS the practice of governments- to serve formal notice of neutrality 
 when a state of war is on between other nations. The United States 
 government has done that on the very heels of each declaration of 
 war, issuing no less than eleven such notices up to September 1, 1914. 
 The documents announced that in the war between the several belligerents 
 the United States government would observe a neutral attitude. The 
 public was enjoined to conduct itself accordingly and attention was drawn 
 to the fact that on the statutes there were laws that provided for the punish- 
 ment of those who forgot their neutrality far enough to engage in acts 
 giving affront to a friendly power. 
 
 President Wilson was to realize very soon that he would have to 
 give these proclamations a personal touch if they were to be observed in 
 a proper manner. On August 19th he made an "appeal" for neutrality by 
 the American public, from which I will quote here the most essential 
 portions : 
 
 "The effect of the war upon the United States will depend 
 upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really 
 loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, 
 which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to 
 all concerned. The spirit of the nation in this critical matter will 
 be determined largely by what individuals and society and those 
 gathered in public meetings do and say, upon what newspapers 
 and magazines contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, 
 and men proclaim as their opinion on the streets. 
 
 The people of the United States are drawn from many 
 nations, and chiefly from the- nations now at war. It is natural 
 and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sym- 
 pathy and desire among them with regard to the issues and cir- 
 cumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others 
 another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be easy to 
 excite passion and difficult to allay it. Those responsible for 
 exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for 
 no less a thing than that of the people of the United States, whose 
 love of their country and whose loyalty to its government should 
 unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection to 
 think first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of 
 
 85 
 
86 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself 
 in impulse and opinion if not in action. 
 
 ♦ ♦♦♦*** 
 
 "I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a 
 solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, 
 most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of 
 partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The tjnited States 
 must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that 
 are to try men's souls. We must be impartial in thought as 
 well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well 
 as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference 
 of one party to the struggle before another." 
 
 Mr. Wilson has been happier in his selection of words than he 
 was here, but the important fact is that his appeal made a deep impres- 
 sion in Europe. Naturally, Mr. Wilson could not please everybody. In 
 Paris and London they thought even then that it was the duty of the 
 United States government to take an active interest in the fate of 
 Belgium. They thought this all the more when a little later it became 
 loiown that President Wilson had not been particularly obliging to some 
 Belgians who called on him for the purpose of presenting their grievance 
 against Germany. 
 
 There were many Germans and Austro-Hungarians who at first paid 
 no particular attention to the appeal. To them it seemed a matter of 
 course that the United States should stay out of the war. The admoni- 
 tion of George Washington, warning against entangling alliances, was to 
 them the genesis of the foreign relations of the United States. Presidents 
 Jefferson and Monroe, not to mention virtually every other American 
 president, had heeded this advice by the Father of the Republic; few, 
 in fact, could see how the United States could become involved in the 
 war, except against Great Britain. The diplomacy of Central Europe 
 had moved so long in the groove of "Traditional Enmity" that most of 
 its managers could not see far beyond this sorry limitation. In the case 
 of Germany the idea of la revanche so tenaciously held by the French 
 was responsible for this sad state of affairs, and in the dual monarchy 
 it was disdain for, and fear of, all that was Russian that circumscribed 
 vision and kept it in narrow bounds. 
 
 There were a few farsighted men in Central Europe who did not like 
 the aspect of things in the United States, however. That President Wilson 
 had been obliged to make an appeal for neutrality, in addition to his neu- 
 trality proclamations, had a significance to these few. While censorship 
 prevented much of the more uncomplimentary expressions by the Ameri- 
 can press becoming known in Central Europe, it was felt, nevertheless, 
 that the American press and public generally was not as neutral as Presi- 
 
WHAT WILL AMERICA DO? 87 
 
 dent Wilson would have liked to see them. If that was not the case, 
 why this appeal for neutrality ? 
 
 The majority of American newspapers had been frankly hostile to 
 Germany and Austria-Hungary from the very first. The treatment 
 given Belgium was largely responsible for this, as it well could be. 
 Though the stupidity of the Berlin government was as yet not understood, 
 which, by the way, might have alleviated matters somewhat, the wanton 
 brutality that appeared on the face of the event could not but give journal- 
 ism in the United States the direction it had taken. In its conduct with 
 European nations the United States had always been most considerate and 
 obliging; no such incident had ever occurred within ken of the average 
 American writer and editor, and indignation ran high, therefore. It must 
 have seemed to President Wilson that it was going too high, for otherwise 
 there would have been no necessity for his appeal. At the same time 
 notice must be taken of the fact that the appeal for neutrality was to 
 some extent a notice upon the several foreign and unassimilated elements 
 in the United States, who had promptly taken sides in the great issue 
 and fought one another with means both fair and foul. The document 
 shows whom President Wilson had in mind especially — press, pulpit and 
 public meetings. Propaganda for both sides was on and daily gaining 
 greater proportions and new forms, and the government had to do within 
 its powers what it could. A little later Congress augmented these powers 
 by the Joint Resolution of March 4, 1915. 
 
 There was one thing which diplomatists of the Central Powers were 
 ever prone to overlook, as I had ample opportunity of ascertaining. They 
 l\ad come to look upon the United States as a nation as wholly separatistic 
 as any state in Europe. The fact that historically, intellectually and 
 sentimentally the majority of the people of the United States gravitated 
 toward Great Britain far more than toward Germany was only too often 
 ignored. At that particular time the statesmen of Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary were impelled to see everything in the light of war. Thus it 
 came that the relations between the United States and Great Britain 
 were viewed from the angle of the American Revolution, the War of 1812 
 and Great Britain's partiality for the Confederation in the Civil War. 
 Against these facts was contrasted the historically friendly attitude of 
 Prussia and Germany generally. 
 
 The "Orders In Council" Become Supreme 
 
 Things were to happen soon that opened the eyes of some of these 
 optimists. Governments at war issue, for the benefit of neutrals, lists 
 
88 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 of contraband, and declare, if that be within their necessity and their 
 sphere of power, the establishing of blockades. The British government 
 was not slow in doing this. The first list of contraband issued is dated 
 August 5, 1914. The selection of articles was, in the main, in harmony 
 with the provisions of the Declaration of London, 1909, that is to say, 
 as Absolute Contraband were designated those things which have spe- 
 cifically a military character, while under Conditional Contraband were 
 listed materials, commodities and necessities of life which the civil popu- 
 lation of a belligerent may need, which are no less needed by its army, 
 however. 
 
 For the purpose of sparing the reader the trouble of looking up both 
 the Declaration of London, 1909, and the British Oder in Privy Council 
 in question, I will here concisely give a list of these articles : 
 
 Absolute Contraband were declared : arms of all kinds, ammunition of 
 all kinds, explosives and projectiles included; clothing and equipment of a 
 strictly military character; harness; saddle, draft and pack animals suit- 
 able for use in warfare; camp equipment and its parts; armor plates; 
 warships and their parts; the means of aerial navigation, and machinery 
 and implements used in the manufacture of any of the above materielle. 
 
 Conditional Contraband were declared : foodstuffs ; forage and grain 
 suitable for feeding animals; clothing and shoes suitable for use in war; 
 gold and silver in coin or bullion and paper money; vehicles of all sorts 
 available for use in war, as well as their component parts; ships of all 
 kinds and floating docks ; railroad material of any sort, telo-electric equip- 
 ment included ; fuel and lubricants ; explosives not especially prepared for 
 use in war; barbed wire and nippers for cutting the same; horseshoes; 
 harness and saddlery ; field glasses, chronometers and nautical instruments. 
 
 Little by little this list was extended. On September 21 copper, lead 
 and magnetic iron ore, rubber and glycerine and hides were added, as were 
 all iron ores in general demand. October 29 the whole list of Absolute 
 Contraband was revised and extended so that it included everything used 
 by armies in modern times. The list of Conditional Contraband remained 
 virtually what it had been before. 
 
 These measures were still within the frame of the provisions of the 
 Declaration of London, 1909, but a sweeping change was made on the 
 same date in what had been the attitude in the past of the British govern- 
 ment as a signatory of the London Declaration. By giving the text of the 
 Order in Privy Council verbatim I can make that clear enough : 
 
 "1. During the present hostilities the provision of the Con- 
 vention known as the Declaration of London shall, subject to the 
 exclusion of the lists of contraband and non-contraband, and to 
 the modifications hereinafter set out, be adopted and put in force 
 
THE "ORDERS IN COUNCIL'^ BECOME SUPREME 89 
 
 by His Majesty's Government. The modifications are as follows : 
 
 "(i) A neutral vessel, with papers indicating a neutral desig- 
 nation, which, notwithstanding the destination shown on the pa- 
 pers, proceeds to an enemy port, shall be liable to capture and 
 condemnation if she is encountered before the end of her next 
 voyage. 
 
 "(ii) The destination referred to in Article 33 of the said 
 Declaration shall (in addition to the presumptions laid down in 
 Article 34) be presumed to exist if the goods are consigned to or 
 for an agent of the enemy state. 
 
 "(iii) Notwithstanding the provision of Article 35 of the 
 said Declaration, conditional contraband shall be liable to capture 
 on board a vessel bound for a neutral port if the goods are con- 
 signed "to order," or if the ship's papers do not show who is the 
 consignee of the goods, or if they show a consignee of the goods 
 in territory belonging to or occupied by the enemy. 
 
 "(iv) In the cases covered by the preceding paragraph (iii) 
 it shall lie upon the owners of the goods to prove that their des- 
 tination was innocent. 
 
 "2. Where it is shown to the satisfaction of one of His 
 Majesty's principal Secretaries of State that the enemy govern- 
 ment is drawing supplies for its armed forces from or through 
 a neutral country, he may direct that in respect of ships bound for 
 a port in that country, Article 35, of the said Declaration, shall 
 not apply. Such direction shall be notified in the London "Ga- 
 zette" and shall operate until the same is withdrawn. So long as 
 such direction is in force a vessel which is carrying conditional 
 contraband to a port in that country shall not be immune from 
 capture. 
 
 "3. The Order in Council of the 20th August, 1914, direct- 
 ing the adoption and enforcement during the present hostilities 
 of the Convention known as the Declaration of London, subject 
 to the additions and modifications therein specified, is hereby 
 repealed. 
 
 "4. This Order may be cited as "The Declaration of London 
 Order in Council, No. 2, 1914." 
 
 Article 35 of the Declaration of London is now cited here to show 
 what the modification was: 
 
 '^Conditional contraband is not liable to capture, except when 
 found on board a vessel bound for territory belonging to or 
 occupied by the enemy, or for the armed forces of the enemy, 
 and when it is not to be discharged in an intervening port. 
 
 "The ship's papers are conclusive proof as to the voyage 
 on which the vessel is engaged and as to the port of discharge of 
 the goods, unless she is found clearly out of the course indicated 
 by her papers, and unable to give adequate reasons to justify 
 such deviation." 
 
 Since it was Article 36 of the Declaration which ultimately played 
 
90 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 so great a role in the blockade measures of the British government, I will 
 give that also in this place : 
 
 ''Notwithstanding the provisions of Article 35, conditional 
 contraband, if shown to have the destination referred to in Article 
 33, is liable to capture in cases where the enemy has no seaboard." 
 
 Article 33 of the Declaration provides that "conditional contraband 
 is liable to capture if it is shown to be destined for the use of the 
 armed forces or of a government department of the enemy State, unless 
 in this latter case the circumstances show that the goods cannot in fact 
 be used for the purposes of the war in progress. This latter exception 
 does not apply to a consignment coming under Article 24 (4), to wit: 
 "Gold and silver in coin or bullion; paper money." 
 
 International Law Goes Into Discard 
 
 The principal difference between Absolute Contraband and Condi- 
 tional Contraband as drawn by the Declaration of London, 1909, is that 
 the articles constituting the first are liable to capture if it is shown that 
 they are destined to territory belonging to or occupied by the enemy, or the 
 armed forces of the enemy, and that it is immaterial whether the carriage 
 of the goods is direct or entails a transshipment or a subsequent transport 
 by land, while the items of Conditional Contraband were to be treated 
 as stated in Article 35. It is very plain, therefore, firstly : That the Declara- 
 tion of London, 1909, did not intend that the civil population of a State 
 at war should be starved, along with the armed forces — quite an impos- 
 sible undertaking, of course, and, secondly: That the British government, 
 by its Order in Privy Council, of September 21, violated the said declara- 
 tion by setting aside what indeed was a provision hard to meet, Article 35, 
 and substituting therefor a decision of its own, the Order in Privy Coun- 
 cil in question, without consulting first the other signatories of the Decla- 
 ration of London. The fact of the matter is that the British government 
 simply repealed its Order in Privy Council, of August 20, which was 
 sweeping enough, but which still directed "the adoption and enforcement 
 during the present hostilities of the Convention known as the Declaration 
 of London." To repeal that "adoption and enforcement ... of the 
 Convention known as the Declaration of London" was to say, in other 
 words, that the Convention would not be lived up to by the British gov- 
 ernment, that it was considered obsolete by Great Britain, France and 
 Russia, who were making common cause in this as in other respects. 
 
 To set aside in such a manner a convention which represented the 
 last word on contraband and blockade by the powers, and, to some extent, 
 world public opinion, was an act which the British government and its 
 
INTERNATIONAL LAW GOES INTO DISCARD 91 
 
 allies must have given considerable thought. It must be considered here 
 that the Declaration of London, though made by a conference that had 
 come together at the invitation of the British government, was an agree- 
 ment, in the nature of a general treaty, by the following signatory powers : 
 United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
 Spain, Holland and Japan. The Convention was never formally ratified, 
 but its authority was established by a preliminary provision which stated 
 solemnly that the principles enunciated were those constituting the sub- 
 stance of International Law. Its authority, further, was recognized by 
 the British government in "directing its adoption and enforcement during 
 the present hostilities," by the French government by stating that "the 
 declaration signed in London the 26 February, 1909, concerning the law 
 of naval warfare, shall be applied during the present war," and by the 
 Russian government by proclaiming the enforcement by its navy and 
 marine department, together with an imperial edict, "the rules on naval 
 warfare worked out by the London Maritime Conference of 1908-9" — 
 the Declaration, in other words. 
 
 The German government, on September 4, acquainted the government 
 of the United States, through the American ambassador at Berlin, that it 
 intended applying the provisions of the Declaration of London provided 
 "they are not disregarded by other belligerents," and the Austro-Hungarian 
 government committed itself in much the same terms. Though not a 
 signatory to the Declaration, the Ottoman government also declared its 
 readiness to be guided by the agreement, doing that at a time when the 
 British government had already substituted for the Declaration of London, 
 1909, the thing labelled by it "The Declaration of London Order in Council, 
 No. 2, 1914," whatever the import of this melee of terms was to be. 
 Surely, an Order in Privy Council had nothing to do with the Declaration 
 of London, when the provisions of the convention were being relegated 
 into the background by three belligerents, when two other belligerents were 
 adopting retaliatory paper measures in return for this, and when three signa- 
 tory neutrals, not to mention the rest of the neutral world that was not a sig- 
 natory but an adherent for all that, were not to be heard from. In effect, 
 "The Declaration of London Order in Privy Council, No. 2, 1914," was an 
 abrogation in toto of International Law. It was the application of might in 
 the place of what had hitherto been regarded right. 
 
 But this substituting of British Municipal Law for International Law 
 was not entirely without warrant, under the circumstances. There was 
 the question of : When does food become in effect Absolute Contraband 
 instead of Conditional Contraband ? Food was regarded Conditional Con- 
 traband by the Declaration, but there was the insuperable difficulty — in 
 that light, at least, the thing was viewed — of telling what amount of the 
 
92 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 food imported by a belligerent goes to the civil population and what to 
 the anny. The I/)ndon Convention did not intend to starve the popula- 
 tion of belligerents; it did intend to have the scarcity of food become a 
 problem of the military. The reduction by starvation of besieged garri- 
 sons had long been recognized as a legitimate means of warfare, though 
 little honor to the victor had ever come of its application. But to keep 
 the food of a belligerent civil population from its army is not so easily 
 accomplished. So long as the civil population has something to eat, so 
 long will the army have more than its share of it. Such an army, more- 
 over, is entitled to at least the food produced in its own country, to meet 
 the argument of the moralist d outrance, and Germany, for instance, could 
 not have been starved into submission, as later she was, if her army had 
 subsisted on the food grown in the country and the civil population on 
 the import of food which Great Britain and her allies would have per- 
 mitted. 
 
 When Diplomacy Shirks Problems 
 
 On that point there can be no difference of opinion. The point that 
 must strike the observer as odd, to say the least, is that the participants of 
 the London Convention did not see this difficulty in the proper light or 
 deal with it honestly, and therefore failed to come to an agreement on it. 
 If, on the other hand, they did see the point, what was the use in the 
 Declaration of Articles 33, 34 and 35 ? Were they not expedients to get 
 away from an impossible situation — mere subterfuges that left things as 
 they had been before? The fact is that the confer enciers knew only too 
 well that to put food definitely and permanently on the list of non-contra- 
 band would be futile, so long as food or the lack of it is so great a con- 
 sideration in war — the very thing, in fact for which most wars have been 
 waged. The men who labored in the conference knew well enough that 
 placing food on the "free goods" list would have been considered anarchical 
 by most of the governments represented. Great Britain, for one, would 
 have never consented to this, neither would France and Russia. The pro- 
 gram of the delegates from the United States was not far from this happy 
 solution of the problem of contraband and food. 
 
 Ultimately the thing known as "The Declaration of London Order 
 in Council, No. 2, 1914," was carried even far enough to exclude not 
 only food in any quantity from the civil population of a belligerent govern- 
 ment, but even the export to neutral civil populations was limited far 
 below their actual needs, a vicious policy which found in the govern- 
 ments of France, Russia, Italy and the United States a little too much 
 support as to permit the future historian to say aught in commendation. 
 
WHEOSF DIPLOMACY SHIRKS PROBLEMS 93 
 
 Naturally, it was not always thus. As late as October 21, 1915, the 
 government of the United States transmitted to the British government 
 a sort of general protest against the violations of the Declaration of London. 
 That document says, among other things : 
 
 **I believe it has been conclusively shown (in the text of the 
 note) that the methods sought to be employed by Great Britain 
 to obtain and use evidence of enemy destination of cargoes bound 
 for neutral ports and to impose, a contraband character upon such 
 cargoes are without justification; that the blockade, upon which 
 such methods are partly founded, is ineffective, illegal and inde- 
 fensible; that the judicial procedure offered as a means of repara- 
 tion for an international injury is inherently defective for the 
 purpose, and that in many cases jurisdiction is asserted in violation 
 of the law of nations." 
 
 The note goes on to say that "the United States, therefore, cannot 
 submit to the curtailment of its neutral rights by these measures, which 
 are admittedly retaliatory, and therefore illegal, in conception and in nature, 
 and intended to punish the enemies of Great Britain for alleged illegalities 
 on their part. The United States might not be in a position to object to 
 them, "continues the document," if its interests and the interests of all 
 neutrals were unaffected by them, but, being affected, it cannot with 
 complacence suffer further subordination of its rights and interests to 
 the plea that the exceptional geographic position of the enemies of Great 
 Britain require or justify oppressive and illegal practices." 
 
 I beg to draw attention to the fact that Mr. Lansing objects specifically 
 to practices which the British government had applied illegally, by reason 
 of geographic disadvantages of the enemy, against Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary. He states that he might not be in a "position to object to them" 
 if the interests of the United States and all other neutrals were not affected 
 by them. May I request the reader to keep that in mind particularly, 
 since this proposition comes into the foreground again and again? 
 
 The Position of Neutral Holland 
 
 The neutral who was to feel the heavy hand of Great Britain first 
 was the Netherlands. Against the Netherlands, in fact, was primarily 
 directed the notorious "The Declaration of London Order in Council, 
 No. 2, 1914." The territory of that people is contiguous to Germany, and 
 in the past there had been an active exchange of commodities between 
 the two. The Dutch government, as a neutral, had no reason to apply 
 against Germany a sort of retaliatory export prohibition, though so far 
 as its own needs went, it could, as it did, limit the exportation of goods 
 to Germany. But a great deal of food was still bought in Holland by the 
 
94 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Germans, and that, of course, was not a promotion of the British blockade, 
 which already aimed to starve the civil populations of the Central Powers. 
 The Order in Privy Council referred to above was to prevent that, though 
 the order in itself was merely the sanction of a sort of piracy that had 
 l)een going on for weeks in the waters adjacent to the British coast. In 
 September already British cruisers had brought up in the Channel and 
 taken to the Downs ports a number of Dutch freight and passenger ships 
 whose masters had complied with the Order in Privy Council of August 5 — 
 with the Declaration of London, therefore. Though it was plainly a case 
 of a neutral vessel, from a neutral port to a neutral port, with cargo for a 
 neutral consignee, in some instances the Dutch government itself, as in 
 that of several copper shipments, the British government seized whatever 
 part of the shipment it wanted and later bought it. The world was as 
 yet not any too familiar with the reign of terror that was on in the 
 North Sea and the Channel, and general public opinion had to be placated 
 for the time being. All that was to change, however. 
 
 The Dutch government took the seizure of its copper shipments much 
 to heart. It was grieved that the British government should have arrived 
 at the conclusion that the metal would ultimately find its way into Germany. 
 The fact is that the copper was needed to supply the mobilized army 
 of Holland with ammunition. Germany's violation of the neutrality of 
 Belgium had left the Dutch people no guarantee that their country might 
 not also be invaded before the war was very much older. Since copper 
 was needed to put Holland in a state of defense, and since the United 
 States was just then the only country where that metal could be found 
 in large quantities in the open market, Holland was obliged to take it 
 through waters in the control of the British cruisers and promptly lost it. 
 Moreover, the danger of invasion of the Netherlands did not come all 
 from the East. A few days before Antwerp was taken by the Germans, 
 October 9, and again later, the governments in London, Paris and Petro- 
 grad had considered the advisability of forcing the Scheldt, so that a large 
 expeditionary force might be brought to the relief of the Belgian city 
 and port. The Dutch government knew of this tentative project and 
 quickly moved its army, which had been stationed for the greater part 
 along the German border, to the points near the mouth of the Scheldt. That 
 served notice on the Entente that Holland meant to defend itself against 
 invasion no matter from what quarter it might come. To the Allied govern- 
 ments this was not the most pleasing of signs just then. In retaliation they 
 limited further the imports of the Dutch. 
 
 Holland had been perfectly willing to meet the wishes of Great Britain, 
 even at the risk of displeasing the Germans more. There was also an 
 easy business way of meeting the wishes of the British government with- 
 
THE POSITION OF NEUTRAL HOLLAND 95 
 
 out offering official affront to the government at Berlin. Dutch exports 
 had so far gone to Germany and Great Britain alike, and the government, 
 prudently, had done nothing to divert or direct this traffic. But it was 
 possible to let the Dutch merchants know that it would be best to favor 
 the importers of Great Britain, even if prices were not quite so good. 
 This, then, was done. For a while the greater bulk of Dutch dairy prod- 
 ucts and the like went to England. 
 
 All would have been well had it not been that the British government 
 put an embargo on coal and left Dutch shipping, the railroads, the factories, 
 and home consumption generally, without that fuel. Coal had to be gotten 
 if not every wheel in Holland was to stop turning, and Germany was 
 willing to furnish it, provided there was an exchange in kind — food. 
 Nolens volens the Dutch government had to enter into such an arrangement. 
 
 Coal was exchanged for food in precise quantities and the tyranny 
 of the high seas grew. In desperation, the Dutch government surrendered 
 much of its sovereignty and gave its imports from the West and exports 
 toward the East into the control of the Overseas Trust — a corporation 
 called into being for that purpose and standing under the close supervision 
 of the British commerce agency at Rotterdam, presided over by a zealous 
 convert to Britishism, one Sir Francis Oppenheimer, son of a Frankfurt 
 Jew. 
 
 When the copper shipments were held up, the Dutch government 
 placed itself in communication with the United States government, through 
 its minister at Washington, Chevalier van Rappart, and through Dr. 
 Henry van Dyke, American minister at The Hague. The former did not 
 accomplish much, and the latter, a most radical anti- German, was unwilling 
 to do more than was necessary. 
 
 The Attitude of an American Diplomatist 
 
 The copper cases were the newspaper sensation of the day and I had 
 a great deal to do with them, a circumstances which brought me in contact 
 with the Dutch government for the first time. I also ascertained then 
 what the views of Dr. van Dyke were. He was not inclined to at all urge 
 the case of the Dutch. Quite frankly he expressed to me the fear that 
 the copper might go to Germany, despite the protestations of the Dutch 
 government. I took the liberty to disagree with the United States minister 
 and tactfully reminded him that after all it was not his business to occupy 
 himself with the ultimate destination of the copper, so long as the Dutch 
 government was willing to pledge itself that the metal would not go to 
 Germany, which pledge the diplomatist had no reason to doubt. But evi- 
 dently Dr. van Dyke was not familiar with the statement of another 
 
96 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Secretary of State, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, who, on September 7, 1793, 
 instructed the United States minister at London, Mr. Pinckney, to inform 
 the British government that : 
 
 "When two nations go to war, those who choose to live in 
 peace retain their natural right to pursue their agriculture, manu- 
 factures and ordinary vocations, to carry the produce of their 
 industry for exchange with all nations, belligerent or neutral, as 
 usual." 
 
 The fact is that Dr. van Dyke even then had ceased to be a neutral 
 in regard to Germany, as later he admitted in an interview with a news- 
 paperman. On his arrival in the port of New York, from his post at 
 The Hague, in August, 1917, Dr. van Dyke stated to a reporter that he 
 was glad the United States had entered the European War and put an 
 end to its neutrality. He himself had never been much of a neutral at 
 any time since the outbreak of the War. For a man who had been in the 
 diplomatic service of his country that was not the best sort of an admission 
 to make. Utterances of that quality are likely to shake the faith of foreign 
 governments in all United States diplomatists. 
 
 What may have been news to a reporter of the New York Times 
 was not news to me any more. I knew only too well that Dr. van Dyke, 
 as the minister of a neutral government, favored the British cause in 
 Holland, as against the cause of American and Dutch interests. He did 
 this because he loathed the Germans — for their acts in Belgium, he used to 
 say to his friends and social acquaintances. The private individual may 
 be permitted to do that; the diplomatist, however, ought to keep such 
 opinions to himself. The minions of Baron von Giskra, Austro- Hungarian 
 minister at The Hague, and those of Herr von Miiller, the German min- 
 ister, had no difficulty ascertaining what Dr. van Dyke said and did. 
 Their reports to their respective governments could not but increase the 
 suspicion already felt in Vienna and Berlin that there was something 
 not altogether in the clear between Washington and London, an impres- 
 sion then entirely due to the discrepancy between expectation and per- 
 formance in regard to the British Orders in Privy Council. Many of the 
 Dutch government officials of lesser importance were decidedly pro-Ger- 
 man and they, too, thought that Dr. van Dyke, as diplomatic representa- 
 tive of a neutral power, was certainly too partial for one of the bel- 
 ligerents. 
 
 It was unfortunate that Mr. Soren Listoe, the United States consul- 
 general at Rotterdam, also had earned himself the reputation of being 
 ardently pro- British. To what exent this was based on fact I am not 
 able to say. At any rate the Dutch government began to look upon 
 the cases of Dr. van Dyke and Mr. Listoe as telling indications of what 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF AN AMERICAN DIPLOMATIST 97 
 
 United States neutrality was. The fact that the former was of Dutch 
 descent and the latter a naturalized Dane seemed to complicate matters 
 not a little. The United States government had in the past often sent 
 men to diplomatic stations who were of the same blood as the people 
 with whom they represented the government. That had been done for the 
 purpose of making understanding so much easier. In the case of Dr. 
 van Dyke and Holland that scheme had not worked, it seemed. Mr. 
 Listoe began to be looked upon as a man who had no particular interests 
 in keeping relations between the United States and Holland good. 
 
 For the purpose of keeping in touch with the developments of the 
 day I had established good relations with a high government official. All 
 I will say of his identity is that he was not Mr. John Loudon, then the 
 minister of foreign aifairs. 
 
 On the day in question the official was very much under the influence 
 of the dangers that were besetting Holland. There was some talk of 
 an Entente force landing: in Holland, at or near the mouth of the 
 Scheldt River, and the German government had again notified the Dutch 
 government that for more coal from Germany more food would have to 
 be exported. The Dutch were ready to pay good money for the coal of 
 the Germans, but gold was not just then what Germany needed most, 
 although the food shortage in the empire was as yet but the threatening 
 aspect of the near future. On the same day had been received from the 
 Dutch minister at Washington, M. van Rappart, a communication placing 
 the status of Dutch shipping in no better a light than it had been in the 
 past. There had been some exchange of views between the several neutral 
 chancelleries of Europe as to the feasibility of establishing a sort of 
 "League of Neutrals," with a view of combating the highhanded methods 
 of the British blockade. Chevalier van Rappart had been asked to sound 
 the Washington government as to its own position. But his reply, which 
 had come in in the morning, had not been encouraging. The Dutch govern- 
 ment was beginning to see how slim were the chances of forming a League 
 of Neutrals under leadership of President Wilson. 
 
 The official was very pessimistic. I could not see it just that way 
 at the time, but must say that every one of his predictions came true 
 shortly afterward. He was inclined to criticize Mr. Wilson. To that 
 I put the question, what he expected the United States government to do ? 
 "There is nothing to be done except serve notice on the British govern- 
 ment that it must observe International Law, and, above all, the Declara- 
 tion of London," replied the official. 
 
 That was well enough, but who was to serve that notice? A League 
 of Neutrals might do it, thought the minister. But no League of Neu- 
 trals, more than a name, was possible except the United States government 
 
98 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 joined and headed it. Meanwhile President Wilson and Secretary of 
 State Bryan seemed to be floundering about in a most erratic manner, 
 he thought. Their moves were uncertain, and would remain that so long 
 as there was no return on their part to the provisions of the Declaration of 
 London — so long as they permitted themselves and the world to be run 
 by "Order in Privy Council." It seemed to him that President Wilson 
 was vacillating between duty and sentiment. 
 
 When I asked the official whether that implied that Mr. Wilson was 
 considered pro-English rather than neutral I was given the answer that 
 such, indeed, seemed to be the case. I cited the neutrality proclamation 
 of the president in reply, but was answered with a rather cynical smile. 
 That had been done before, said the minister. And since the pronuncia- 
 mento there had been ample time to change one's mind. The fact that 
 Mr. Wilson had supinely accepted the edicts of the British government and 
 had for them abandoned the Declaration of London spoke louder than 
 words. The convention in question served no purpose if the most powerful 
 of the neutrals, party to it, did not insist that it be accepted by Great 
 Britain and her allies as binding without modification of any sort. The 
 elimination of whole articles from the agreement, and the impairment 
 thereby, of virtually every other proviso in the Declaration, was some- 
 thing which so powerful an institution as the United States government 
 would not have permitted had it been truly neutral. In proof of his 
 contention the official brought out a textbook on International Law and 
 drew my attention to a note sent by Mr. Thomas Jefferson to the British 
 government on September 7, 1793, at the time of the war between Great 
 Britain and France. 
 
 As is well known, this was to be the view, in a general manner, of 
 the German government, which as yet busied itself more with retaliatory, 
 but absolutely futile, anti-blockade measures against the Entente govern- 
 ments. 
 
 To a very large degree this opinion by at least one prominent 
 member of the Dutch government was due to the tactless conduct of 
 Dr. van Dyke. That diplomatist had the most peculiar manner of doing 
 things. I will give here an instance that is typical. 
 
 Views of an Irate Diplomatic Censor 
 
 Calling at the United States legation about noon, on October 8th, I 
 found Dr. van Dyke in a fine state of agitation. Mr. Marshall Langhorne, 
 first secretary of the post, a very quiet man with a fine sense of propor- 
 tions and commendable appreciation of his duties, had told me that the 
 minister wanted to see me on something very important. When I saw the 
 
VIEWS OF AN IRATE DIPLOMATIC CENSOR 99 
 
 man pacing up and down in front of the fireplace, like a caged and 
 impatient lion, I thought that another calamity had fallen upon mankind. 
 
 I took a seat and waited until the wrath of the diplomatist should 
 have subsided. After a while it did, and then my attention was drawn 
 by the minister to what seemed to be the remains of burned papers in 
 the grate. This done the diplomatist handed me two sheets of paper 
 with a remark to the effect that their contents were to be a warning 
 to me. I read the letter and notice, for such they were, and then in- 
 formed Dr. van Dyke that his cautioning me was superfluous — ^that I 
 had not attempted, nor would attempt, to be guilty of the crime set 
 forth in the papers in my hand. With that I left, somewhat put out 
 myself. 
 
 The smaller of the sheets of paper, a carbon copy, said or says: 
 
 "It must be distinctly understood that the United States of 
 America, a neutral country, will not allow its diplomatic service to 
 be utilized for the transmission of hostile communications or 
 war news. It is for this reason that I give a copy of the following 
 letter to the press. I wish it to be a warning to all persons, of 
 whatever nation, that the United States will resent and punish 
 every attempt to make an improper use of its diplomatic service. 
 
 Henry van Dyke. 
 
 The signature is in pencil — bold and flourishing. 
 The larger sheet of paper, also covered with a carbon impression, 
 contains this: 
 
 American Legation, 
 
 The Hague, Netherlands, 
 
 Octobeil 8, 1914. 
 
 E. F. B., Esq. (original address erased and initials surscribed), 
 c/o American Embassy, 
 London. 
 
 Sir: 
 
 Some one has sent from Berlin to this legation in a sealed 
 envelope, addressed to you as above, a number of printed docu- 
 ments and letters, some of them apparently from official German 
 sources, and all of them evidently of a distinctly partisan and 
 belligerent character. 
 
 I have opened the envelope because it is contrary to the 
 announced rule of this legation (the italics are mine) to forward 
 any sealed envelopes except on official business of the United 
 States. 
 
 I have destroyed its contents because our neutral government 
 does not intend its diplomatic representatives to be used as for- 
 warders of belligerent propaganda. 
 
100 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 If you have any idea who the persons in Germany are who 
 have attempted to make use of this legation in this improper way 
 you will do well to warn them not to repeat the offense. I 
 remain, sir, Your obedient servant, 
 
 Henry van Dyke, 
 American Minister at The Hague. 
 
 For the purpose of showing how Dr. van Dyke viewed things I 
 must explain that the offending reading matter had gotten into the 
 Berlin-The Hague United States diplomatic mail pouch with the consent 
 of the United States embassy at Berlin, and that I ascertained that 
 neither the newspaper copy nor the printed matter was in any way incen- 
 diary. Some American newspaper correspondent in Germany was bent 
 upon getting something past the British censors — that was all. I may say 
 here that American newspapers and news services sent correspondents 
 abroad not for the purpose of counting their ten fingers but to get news of 
 the Great War and its associated aspects. 
 
 That Dr. van Dyke had the right to open sealed envelopes from Berlin 
 was a little later seriously questioned by Mr. James W. Gerard, the 
 United States ambassador at that point. Nor does it appear that the 
 zealous minister at The Hague had been appointed by Mr. Bryan to be 
 censor of the United States diplomatic mail. If Dr. van Dyke thought 
 that the law had been violated it was plainly his duty, as an officer of the 
 government, to preserve the records in the case, instead of feeding his 
 fireplace with them. Last but not least, and that was the part which 
 Dutchmen find the most delicious, Dr. van Dyke had no authority to 
 threaten "persons, of whatever nation," with the resentment and punishment 
 the United States might mete out, seeing that diplomatic mail constitutes 
 a privilege and not a right. The "announced rule of this legation" was an 
 order of the State Department made much later. 
 
 The Censor Assists Entente Diplomacy 
 
 In itself the incident is not important. I have cited it here as an 
 index to the mental qualities of the United States minister at The Hague. 
 It also leads up to the question of censorship and the absolute control 
 by the British government of the means of getting news to the United 
 States. At the time of which I speak the British censors held up all 
 matter that did not please and often added and interpolated, and a few 
 months later even the mails were no longer secure. Still later, both cable 
 and mail were virtually closed to the American newspaper correspondents 
 in the Central States. 
 
 The censorship of the British went into effect a day or two aftei 
 war had been declared. For a week or so it was still possible to get 
 
THE CENSOR ASSISTS ENTENTE DIPLOMACY 101 
 
 "neutral" newspaper dispatches to the United States; after that it was 
 entirely a matter of hazard, or one of writing from the British point 
 of view. 
 
 At first British censorship was to be a matter of strictly military 
 precaution. That, of course, could only be applied to outgoing news- 
 paper dispatches, eastward bound. Dispatches intended for the United 
 States may have needed some scrutiny, but with Great Britain in absolute 
 control of the cables that was no reason why thousands upon thousands 
 of newspaper dispatches should have gone into the wastepaper baskets of 
 the British censorship, next to the French, the most absolute I have 
 encountered. The fact is that the British government suppressed nearly 
 all news from Central Europe for the purpose of influencing American 
 public opinion. 
 
 It is hard, nowadays, to draw a distinct line of demarkation between 
 matter of military import and matter that is not. I have here not the 
 space to go into this very interesting subject, suffice the statement that 
 alniost anything can be given the name of military "information" if one 
 sets out to do that. Political news, especially, is easily "military," par- 
 ticularly when it may be flavored with the condiments of propaganda. 
 Perhaps the most noxious sort of newspaper copy read by the censor is 
 the sort which is likely to put the claims and motives of his own government 
 in a bad light. 
 
 'Mr. Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press of 
 America, with which service I was connected at the time, was very much 
 interested in the early "atrocity" stories of the War. These lurid tales 
 had it that the most shocking crimes were being committed throughout 
 Central Europe and that Americans, together with English men and 
 women, were being treated outrageously. In a few cases Americans had 
 been mistaken for Englishmen and had been arrested. Appeal to the 
 American consulates had righted that. I said as much in my dispatches, 
 but seemed unable to still the demands of New York for more "refugee" 
 stories. Letters from the London office of the service complained of 
 the very strict censorship the British had established, and gradually it 
 dawned upon me that London had made up its mind not to permit copy 
 "favorable" to Germany to reach the United States. The word favorable 
 meant in this instance news of a sort which would not be welcome in 
 Great Britain. 
 
 As an example, I may cite a long dispatch of mine which dealt 
 with the arrival in Holland of the third American "refugee" train. The 
 dispatch contained over two thousand words. It was headed by a general 
 statement, then came several short interviews with the more prominent 
 Americans, among them Henry George, Jr., and finally the list of the 
 
102 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 "refugees." The purpose of the story was no other than to still the fears 
 of those Americans who had relatives and friends travelling in Germany 
 and Austria-Hungary. Inquiry I had made showed that there were still 
 about ten thousand American citizens "summering" in Central Europe. 
 To ease the anxiety of at least that number of American families seemed 
 very necessary to the service and myself — not to the British censors. 
 The dispatch was suppressed by the British censors. 
 
 A good picture of the censorship conditions already prevailing will 
 be gained from the following excerpts from the correspondence I had 
 with several Associated Press bureaus: 
 
 Septembers, 1914: 
 
 "From comparison of your mail copies with your recent mes- 
 sages it appears that the censor has been letting almost all of your 
 matter through. I do not see that statements from Germany which 
 mention the location of French and German troops can be objec- 
 tionable, because they do not give information to the Germans 
 but just the opposite. R. M. Collins." 
 
 Mr. Collins was the chief of the London Bureau of the Associated 
 Press. His reference to the "statements from Germany" was made in reply 
 to a question of mine concerning an order issued by the British cen- 
 sorship authorities concerning military information. The wording of 
 that order was so ambiguous that I could not understand it and asked Mr. 
 Collins for advice. 
 
 On the 16th of the same month the British had already in force a 
 search of the mails. From the London office I received the following: 
 
 "Let me remind you that all mail matter which you are for- 
 warding to us is now being opened by the censor and we have no 
 way of knowing what he takes out. 
 
 "Let me also remind you to preface every one of Conger's 
 dispatches with the word Conger and do not preface a dispatch 
 with "Berlin," which is like waving a red flag in the face of 
 a bull. Frederick Roy Martin." 
 
 British censorship had progressed considerably. The "mail copies" 
 to which Mr. Collins referred and the "mail matter" mentioned by Mr. 
 Martin was carbon copies of the cables I had sent. The messages were 
 numbered and that number showed on the carbon copy, of course. In 
 addition to the serial number the messages also carried a statement of 
 the number of words filed, so that the London office was able to keep 
 tally on the amount of copy suppressed by the British censors and the 
 amount added for propaganda purposes by the same authorities. 
 
 It was the season of the "atrocity" yarn. My experience was that 
 such tales were very much exaggerated, to say the least. But so many 
 
THE CENSOR ASSISTS ENTENTE DIPLOMACY 103 
 
 of these stories were making the rounds in the press that I deemed it 
 necessary to draw the attention of the Chief of the News Department of 
 the Associated Press to the case. A letter from him, dated September 19th, 
 contains the following: 
 
 "As you know, our Mr. Roger Lewis, John T. McCutcheon, 
 Irwin Cobb, James O'Donnell Bennett and Harry Hanson, all 
 well-known American newspaper men, went through behind the 
 German army and were taken prisoners and sent to Aix-la-Cha- 
 pelle under detention. The men followed the army from Brussels 
 clean through on the main line of action through Belgium. Every 
 one of them has written detailed mail stories giving the results of 
 their observations and saying that, although they made the most 
 careful investigation, they were unable to find a single case of 
 wilful atrocity on the part of the German soldiery. Mind you, 
 these stories were written by these men after they were out of the 
 country and under no duress in any way. Therefore, I think it 
 would be wise not to discuss atrocities, because you cannot do 
 so from first-hand knowledge but can only give ex parte accounts 
 of such incidents. ... 
 
 ''The censorship in England is very strict and very severe. 
 London writes us that much of your stuff is so mutilated by 
 the censors that when it reaches them it is not intelligible. 
 
 Charles E. Kloeber." 
 
 Mr. Kloeber thought it necessary to write me another letter on the 
 same day: 
 
 "In view of the fact that your stuff is so censored by the 
 time it reaches London and so few of your dispatches seemingly 
 are allowed to go through, I suggest that you write a connected 
 resume of the week's news that you have filed, supplemented with 
 other matter that occurs to you, and let us have it by each steamer 
 that comes direct to America. Charles E. Klo^bEr." 
 
 Preparing American Public Opinion 
 
 The following excerpts from a letter written to me by Mr. Stone 
 throws a strong light on the news situation and censorship of those days. 
 
 September 21, 1914. 
 "I enclose herewith clippings from the New York papers, 
 which you might transmit to Conger, so that he can see that both 
 by wireless and by Rotterdam, as well as via Copenhagen, we have 
 been getting a pretty fair report. . . . The Berlin report seems 
 to me to be rather dry and, of course, necessarily meagre. . . . 
 Also you might give us something of the same sort in Southern 
 Holland. The people of the United States are almost weary of 
 the daily see-saw of the armies. They are impatient for some 
 
104 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 definite victory, which, of course, they cannot have at the instant, 
 and, as a substitute, picture stories of a moderate sort — not trivial 
 stories — would be of value. 
 
 "Again, it would be well to ask Conger if he could confer 
 with the German authorities and see if there would be any possi- 
 bility of an Associated Press correspondent or two going with the 
 German army. Advise him that the British and French have 
 absolutely refused to allow any American correspondents with 
 their armies and I should think, under the circumstances, the 
 Germans might be willing to do it, and the reports from these cor- 
 respondents might come out either by wireless or through you. 
 Of course, they would have to be handled carefully in order to 
 pass the British censorship, which surpasses anything I have ever 
 known for stupidity. MelvilliS E. Stone." 
 
 In explanation of Mr. Stone's reference to a "fair report" I may say 
 that the report seemed even fair after the British censors had suppressed 
 virtually two-thirds of all matter relayed by me or written by me. With 
 the wireless the British could not interfere, and that helped greatly to 
 make the report of the Associated Press as good as it was. 
 
 On October 5, 1914, Mr. Stone wrote me another letter on this 
 subject. It said in part: 
 
 "The situation in London is extraordinary and has been very 
 trying, but I am glad to say that I think I see distinct marks of 
 improvement. Melvillk E. Stone." 
 
 Meanwhile, the London Bureau of the Associated Press was better 
 acquainted with the situation, as is shown in a letter dated September 21st: 
 
 "It is now apparent that a very large part of your work is 
 going to waste, at least so far as the cable is concerned. For 
 example, your telegram No. 134 was all killed, 135 was nearly all 
 killed, 136 all killed, 138 came through in full, 139 and 140 were 
 all killed, 142, 143, 144, 145 and 146 came through in full, 147, 
 148 and 152 were all killed. Frederick Roy Martin." 
 
 The fate of dispatches Nos. 137, 141, 149, 150 and 151 could not 
 be ascertained, it seems, because the censors in London had also taken 
 the carbon copies of them from the mail. The case deserves a few words 
 of explanation. The dispatches involved were numbered 134 to 152, 
 inclusive. That meant 19 separate messages. Of this number were passed 
 by the British censors, 7; mutilated, 1; wholly suppressed, 11. The 
 British mail censors, however, had found only 5 objectionable, because 
 the carbon copies of the other 14 had been permitted to reach the London 
 office of the service. 
 
 Mr. Martin doubted that his letter would reach me if he did not 
 explain what the numbers meant. To the typewritten letter he added as 
 postscript the following remark in handwriting : 
 
PREPARING AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION 105 
 
 "To mail censors : The figures in above are not code but num- 
 bers of dispatches. The only object of this letter is to save the 
 Associated Press hundreds of pounds now being paid for cable 
 dispatches that are not delivered." 
 
 This letter advised me to reduce cabling to a minimum and make a 
 more general use of the mails. This I did, of course. And after that 
 the American public received comparatively little news from Central 
 Europe, since I was then handling out of The Hague, to which point I had 
 transferred the bureau, virtually every dispatch of the Associated Press 
 correspondents in Central Europe, in addition to the news matter I gathered 
 myself. I must state here further that the Berlin dispatches of the Asso- 
 ciated Press were written for the greater part by two men who were 
 distinctly hostile to the Germans, a fact referred to by Mr. Stone in his 
 remark that the BerHn report was "dry." 
 
 The New York office, however, anxious to present both sides, con- 
 tinued to bombard me with demands for copy by cable. Since I knew 
 that to cable via London, as I was obliged to do, since there was no other 
 line open, was futile, I wrote on October 3rd the following to the Chief 
 of the News Division: 
 
 "However, the only thing to do is to carry on this most un- 
 satisfactory sort of labor. Meanwhile, I may not have to tell you 
 that the English censor is not concerned with suppressing military 
 news as much as news favorable to Germany — which, of course, 
 is the same thing in the end. I suspect strongly that some nine 
 interviews I secured from Americans returning from various parts 
 of Germany on August 19 never reached the London office even, 
 though the term 'mobilization' was the only military word used in 
 them. At any rate, I saw in one of the American newspapers the 
 bare announcement that a special train from Berlin had arrived 
 in Rotterdam with some 300 refugees aboard. After that I feared 
 the worst, of course, and a few days later Mr. Patterson, of the 
 Chicago Tribune, told me that he had good reason to believe 
 that the English censors went as far as to interpolate their own 
 views into copy." 
 
 The Case of CardinsJ Mercier 
 
 Before dismissing the subject of censorship, for the time being, I 
 must give here a copy of a letter I addressed to Mr. Martin, the assistant 
 general manager of the Associated Press, in connection with the famous 
 Cardinal Mercier incident.* My original message, saying that Cardinal 
 Mercier was virtually a prisoner of the Germans, went through. Mean- 
 
 • Cardinal Mercier has since then been quoted as saying that I had "saved his life," which 
 is not in accord with the facts since his life was at no time in jeopardy. 
 
106 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 while, British correspondents in The Hague and Rotterdam had given 
 their imagination full play, despite the fact that they had no other authority 
 than what I had, to wit : "De Tijd," a Dutch Catholic newspaper. Since 
 the stories then published proved one of the first great political sensations 
 of the War, but were devoid of all fact, I will here give the letter in full. 
 
 "In view of the fact that I am leaving tomorrow (for Berlin) 
 I thought it best to acquaint you with the steps I took in the 
 Cardinal Mercier matter. I am induced to do this, first, because 
 I do not think the incident closed ; secondly, because I want both 
 you and Mr. Berry (my successor at The Hague) to be thoroughly 
 familiar with the affair. With this in view I have asked Mr. 
 Berry to read the letter and then mail it to you. 
 
 "The various exhibits named in the letter are here enclosed. 
 
 "In my telegram No. 629 (see date on copy) the story was 
 first told as it appeared in the Amsterdam *Tijd' of that day — 
 certain non-essentials omitted, of course. On the following day, 
 in telegram No. 634, I added a few other details, also from the 
 *Tijd' — Dutch papers generally having paid little attention to the 
 *Tijd' story of the day before. 
 
 "As shown in Tel. No. 637, I received the German official 
 dementi about 10 a. m. on the 7th, obtaining the same at the The 
 Hague German legation, where I called for the purpose of getting 
 some data on the matter or an explanation. At the legation the 
 story, as told, was characterized as absurd. I sent the dementi as 
 received here direct from Brussels. 
 
 "On the same day I received your cable No. 1, and following 
 this sent to Mr. Conger Tel. No. 638. In reply to the latter 
 I received from Mr. Conger Tel. No. 2, and then sent Tel. No. 639. 
 
 "At 5.36 p. m. that day I received your cable No. 3. I 
 immediately called at the German legation with the request that 
 I should be given the papers necessary to enable me to leave for 
 Belgium that night, by automobile, if possible. I was told that 
 this was out of the question, for the reason that the legation did 
 not have the authority to issue any such papers. I made inquiry as 
 to what other way was open, and was told that there was none. 
 The legation regretted very much that nothing could be done in the 
 matter, and I have good reason to believe that they really tried 
 very hard to solve the problem. 
 
 "T returned to the hotel and wrote Tel. No. 641, which I 
 routed via the Platzkommando at Aix-la-Chapelle, acquainting 
 you of what I had done by means of Tel. No. 642, sending at the 
 same time Tel. 643 to Conger. A little before that I had sent Tel. 
 No. 4 a4b to the London office. Later in the evening I followed 
 this up with Tel. 644. 
 
 "At about 7 p. m. on the 9th I was called up by the German 
 legation. I was told a reply from General von Bissing had been 
 received there. The message was read to me over the telephone. 
 Tel. No. 647 was the result of this. Later in the evening: I 
 received from Mr. Conger Tel. No. 5, telling me that Mr. 
 
THE CASE OF CARDINAL MERCIER 107 
 
 Bouton had been dispatched to Belgium. On the following day I 
 received from Mr. Conger Tel. No. 6, of which my Tel. No. 652 
 is in the main a translation. 
 
 "So far Cardinal Mercier has not replied to my telegram." 
 
 The above was written on January 11, 1915. Of the several tele- 
 grams mentioned in it only two reached the London office of the Associated 
 Press. According to the "Tijd," Cardinal Mercier was a prisoner and 
 had been given very severe treatment. That story I had forwarded with 
 due credit. The German official dementi denied almost in toto the charges 
 that had been made and which I had repeated with mention of my 
 authority, the "Tijd," while the telegram from General von Bissing 
 reiterated the substance of the dementi. The fact of the matter was that 
 Cardinal Mercier had urged a part of the Belgian population to resist the 
 Germans in every way possible. What he probably meant is that the 
 Belgians were to engage in passive resistance. From the point of view of 
 the patriot the cardinal can hardly be blamed for that. 
 
 The truth is that under the conditions prevailing in Belgium his policy 
 was open to criticism. The country had by that time been occupied by 
 Germans, who were meeting the slightest outbreak of franctireur activity 
 with all the ruthlessness the militarist anywhere is capable of. The 
 Belgian army had been unable to hold back the Germans. Cardinal Mer- 
 cier was guilty of a grave error, to say the least, in calling upon his 
 hapless people to resist the Germans, since by doing that he was placing in 
 jeopardy lives without affecting in any manner the situation as it was. 
 Since the Germans did not want to have more trouble on their hands, 
 Cardinal Mercier was placed under surveillance, but not in any manner 
 abused or mistreated, as he has since then reluctantly admitted. 
 
 'My telegrams would have acquainted the world with the actual state 
 of affairs. But that is exactly what the British censors wished to pre- 
 vent. How admirably they succeeded is one of the major political facts 
 of the War.* 
 
 Voice of Press Is Voice of People 
 
 It is rather surprising that the United States government never 
 interested itself in the subject of British censorship. Now and then the 
 State Department would take in hand a particularly atrocious case in 
 which some large firm had lost money through interference with its cable- 
 grams by the British government. It does not seem as if anybody in 
 Washington paid the slightest attention to the one-sidedness of the news 
 
 See "SocUtS Anonyme" in Appendix. 
 
108 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 which resuhed from the suppression of nearly three-quarters of the dis- 
 patches written by American correspondents in Central Europe. Had it 
 not been for the wireless of the Germans the American public would have 
 heard even less of the "other" side. It heard almost next to nothing 
 as it was. 
 
 The German censorship usually saw to it that no really "disagreeable" 
 dispatch or mail story got through without pruning by blue pencil and 
 scissors. The dispatch, as it reached London, was bound to appear to 
 the British censors a rather partial account, and so it went into the limbo. 
 
 To make a long story short: What appeared good to the Germans 
 seemed bad to the British. Between the two the American newspaperman 
 had a hard time of it. 
 
 Since governments, statesmen and diplomatists are rather fond of the 
 press in times of war, so long as it is amenable, and since the press has 
 only too often demonstrated that it can make war at will, it would not be 
 so bad an idea if this subject of censorship was attended to a little better 
 by parliaments. Nations, moreover, owe it to themselves to keep their 
 news channels open and the water in them unmuddied. 
 
 It is all very well to be in a forgiving mood when a war is won, 
 as I have been able to abserve in this instance on the part of the American 
 public. But there is the possibility that the martial adventures of the 
 future may not always end so advantageously. The negligence displayed 
 in having the news channels of the American public wide open to foreign 
 interference, of a physical and moral character, may cost dearly some other 
 time. If public opinion is really and truly behind all wars, as one must 
 doubt, then public opinion, to be intelligent, must needs be formed of 
 the balance struck between the accounts from both sides — ^two belligerents, 
 when war is on. A public opinion resting upon one-sidedness is no public 
 opinion at all. It is partisanship of the most noxious character because 
 the sentiment thus formed has not even the advantage of being purely 
 selfish — ^the only redeeming quality that may be associated with frenzy 
 for war. 
 
 With the phase of initiatives of the Great War over, the acts of the 
 United States depended entirely upon the American diplomatist and the 
 American press. The answer to the question which many Central Power 
 statesmen were to ask soon: What will America do? was given by the 
 diplomatists and journalists of the United States. The American public 
 may be permitted to flatter itself that it decided the question of war or 
 peace. Ultimately it did what Mr. Wilson, the politicians, diplomatic 
 envoys and editors thought best — mass psychology attended to that. 
 
 Fully another two years passed before the answer was given. It 
 took that long to prepare public opinion in the United States and find 
 
VOICE OE PRESS is voice; OE PEIOPLE i09 
 
 the auspicious moment for entry into the War. The phase of expansion 
 of the Great Calamity was well over, and the phase of attrition had set 
 in with unprecedented savagery, when Mr. Wilson finally found the long- 
 sought opportunity to associate himself with the Entente group so that the 
 Central Powers could be brought to their knees.* 
 
 * The following interesting dialogue occurred between a member of the Senate Committee 
 on Foreign Affairs and President Wilson: 
 
 Senator McCumbER: "Would our convictions of the unrighteousness of the German war 
 have brought us into this war if Germany had not committed any acts against us without this 
 League of Nations, as we had no league of nations at that time?" 
 
 President Wilson: "I hope it would eventually. Senator, as things developed!" 
 
 Senator McCumber: "Do you think that if Germany ha!d committed no act of war against 
 our citizens that we would have got into this war?" 
 
 President Wilson: "I do think so!" 
 
 The above is, of course, a complete refutation of what has been advanced as the cause of 
 war by the administration. We deal, then, with a mere pretext, and not at all with a cause. 
 In the light of this admission by the nation's Chief Executive, we must look for the actual 
 cause elsewhere. Since it would be unfair to assume that any particular thing was the cause, 
 we must of necessity wait for an explanation. Just two things stand out at present. One of 
 them is that even a League of Nations, and, I presume membership therein for Germany, would 
 not have eventually kept the United States out of the war. The second is that the most 
 rigorous regard for citizens of the United States by Germany would not have "kept us out 
 of the War," despite the promises made before and during the election of 1916. 
 
 Indeed, such a regard for citizens of the United States by the German government would 
 have amounted to little in the end. The later notes diplomatiques of the State Department were 
 hair-trigger affairs of the most dangerous sort, especially the famous "Sussex" note. That note 
 placed a premium on trouble. 
 
 Let us assume that a ship with Americans aboard had been sunk by a mine! Let us 
 assume, further, that a government, face to face with defeat, had instructed one of its own 
 submarines to torpedo such a ship! Would the Department of State, and the world, have 
 believed the protestations of the German government that it was not one of its submarines that 
 sank the vessel — that it was a floating mine, or that it was, possibly, the submarine torpedo of a 
 government acting as its own agent provocateur? 
 
 Moreover, let us assume that just about that time one or several German submarines would 
 not have been heard from again, as was often the case! Would the German government have 
 been able to defend itelf, since now and then the commanders of submarines did make mistakes 
 or became too zealous entirely? Hardly! The hair-trigger situation created by the notes of 
 the United States government made war with Germany inevitable in the end — extended sub- 
 marine warfare or no. To say the very least, participation in the Great War by the United 
 States was too inviting, too necessary, too imperative to the Entente governments to weigh at 
 all against the cutting pangs of conscience of a submarine commander forced to torpedo a vessel 
 flying his own flag. S. 
 
 January 20, 1920. 
 
VII 
 
 DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY 
 
 THE Ottoman government was the first to join in the European 
 War on the side of the Central Powers. On October 30, 1915, 
 Belgium, France, Great Britain and Russia severed relations yrith 
 Turkey, and, within the next week, the three last of these Powers declared 
 war upon her, being joined by Serbia on December 2nd. Before these 
 steps were taken, the diplomatic representatives of the Entente group had 
 done their best to persuade the Ottoman government to the view that 
 the guarantee on the part of the Entente group, for the inviolability of 
 Ottoman territory for the space of thirty years, would be better than 
 risking another war. 
 
 There were many men in Stamboul who agreed with this. Turkey 
 had not fared well in her recent military enterprises. She had lost the 
 war against Italy. The Balkan allies had shorn her of almost the last 
 of her provinces in the peninsula, and the revolution also had weakened 
 the empire. There was every reason why the Ottoman government should 
 avoid entering the great struggle that was already on. The War was 
 already a fact, no longer an accommodating possibility to the diplomatists. 
 What the constellation of Mars would be was very plain. 
 
 The first successes of the German army had already been nullified 
 on the Marne, and the Austro-Hungarian forces were falling back rapidly 
 before the onslaught of the great Russian hosts. The Battle of the 
 Masurian Lakes was indeed the only hopeful sign on the horizon. More- 
 over, the British blockade had already shown itself absolute, and Great 
 Britain had not only announced, but was already demonstrating, that 
 she would come to the aid of the Entente with her last man and the 
 last "silver" bullet. Already it was clear that France would put up a 
 most valiant defense. Her army was not as decadent as speculators on 
 her birthrate were prone to believe, and Russia had done rather better 
 than was expected. On the other hand, nearer home, the Rumanians 
 were already shaky in their alliance with Austria-Hungary, the Bulgarians 
 were anything but committed to any given line of action ; that Italy would 
 ultimately join the Triple Entente no sane statesman in Central Europe 
 doubted any longer. Said Halim Pasha, the Ottoman grand vizier, was 
 sure of this, as he told me, when the Italian government refused to live 
 
 no 
 
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY 111 
 
 up to the spirit of the Triple Alliance treaty at the very outbreak of 
 the War. 
 
 To this list of discouraging factors must be added that the treasury 
 of the Ottoman government was, as ever, nearly empty; that the Ottoman 
 army was poorly armed and managed, the defenses along the Darda- 
 nelles and at the Bosphorus in a poor state, and the fleet entirely negli- 
 gible. Even the Osmanli part of the population was not united, and the 
 Arabs, Greeks and Armenians might strike for independence any day 
 after the Ottoman troops had been called to a front. To join the Central 
 Powers under such handicaps and then risk being cut off from them 
 by the people in the Balkan and by Rumania was rather more than even 
 an Enver Pasha, Germanophile, and a Talaat Bey, a most consistent and 
 and enterprising Talaatophile politician, could risk. That in the end they 
 did run this risk was due to their fear that the hour of the Osmanli was 
 come, no matter what agreements they might make with the Entente 
 group, and that in the possible victory of the Germans lay their only 
 hope. 
 
 Constantinople has ever been the "empire." It always was and still is 
 the metropolis par excellence. Of the several states of which it has been 
 capital in its history of, roughly, 2,700 years, it was the multum in parvo. 
 It was the glory and strength of the Hellenic colonies in Phrygia Minor, of 
 the Eastern Roman empire, of Byzantium and of the Ottoman state. 
 Founded in or about 660 B. C. by Dorians, the city had grown rapidly 
 into prominence. Her waterways, the Hellespont, Propontis and the 
 Ford of lo, and the seas beyond, the Pontus Euxinos and the wide 
 Mediterranean, were responsible for that. As the means of navigation were 
 improved, and trading by water more and more facilitated, the city on the 
 Golden Horn gained greater importance. Soon she was the mistress of a 
 great domain, and as such she did not often fall under the influence of 
 such men as Themistocles and Alcibiades. Together with Cyzikus, By- 
 zantium refused to be swayed by the quarrels of Athens and Sparta. 
 Having power and interests of their own, these two cities had adopted 
 policies of their own and were little inclined to listen to the ranting of 
 the demagogues in the market places of the capitals of Greece at home. 
 
 But Byzantion was to fall in the hands of the Romans. In 194 
 A. D. Septimus Severus blockaded and besieged the city, and two years 
 later took it. He went so far as to give the city another name. But 
 Antonia did not stay long, nor did Roman rule, for that matter. Con- 
 stantin made himself master of the city in 324 and began to build up 
 an empire in which the Greek was once more the chief political factor. 
 
 On May 11th, 330 A. D., Byzantium became Nova Roma, the new 
 capital of Rome, but to the people the city was and remained Constantinople 
 
112 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 -city of Constantin. Under Justinian, Constantinople was at the height of 
 her glory. The city was immensely rich and had a population of about 
 500,000. It was also well fortified. The natural defenses of the site, water 
 at two-thirds of the precinct, were reinforced by a stronger wall, and across 
 the base of the triangle, on land, was erected the strongest wall then known. 
 Europe at that time was being overrun by several barbarous races whom 
 something or other had dislodged from their homes in Asia. Constantinople 
 was the only nut they could not crack. 
 
 The Dardanelles in Early Diplomacy 
 
 The Hellespont — Dardanelles — ^had meanwhile been crossed and re- 
 crossed by many of the famous armies of antiquity. The Heptastadion 
 Ferry, as the narrows at the base of Cape Nagara were styled then, oflfered 
 the most feasible, if not a very convenient, passage into Phrygia Minor, 
 Asia Minor and Southwest Asia generally. Among others who passed 
 that way was Xerxes. That this robber baron of a Persian should attempt 
 to take Byzantion was natural. He failed, because a Spartan, Pausanias, 
 of evil reputation but considerable military ability, came to the city's 
 relief. For the first time the Thracian Chersonesus came to be looked upon 
 as the backyard, figuratively, of Byzantion, and on almost the very site 
 on which are now located the forts and redoubts of Bulair a great wall 
 was erected, the Makron Teichos. Perikles was the builder. Some fifty 
 years later Derkyglades either added to the strength of the defenses or 
 rebuilt them. 
 
 The Heptastadion Ferry continued to attract military adventurers. 
 Alexander passed over it, and so did the Roman leaders. The Makron 
 Teichos was hard to keep up, it seems, and, while the city on the Golden 
 Horn was not taken by every army that passed by, she, nevertheless, 
 suffered great economic losses, and was no longer what she had been. 
 Yet in 1001 she was still of enough importance to give sanction to the 
 coronation of King Stephen of Hungary, whom she sent a crown that 
 was later made into one with a similar insignia furnished by the Pope 
 of Rome. 
 
 But it seemed that the sun of Byzantium was setting. Emperor Ba- 
 silios succeeded for a while in putting a stop to the progress of the Seljuks, 
 who were rapidly eating up the empire and began to threaten its capital. 
 But he was on the defensive, and, being that, he had to do the best he 
 could with the Italian concessionaires who had gradually infested his 
 domain. Italian traders had the peninsula and city of Gallipoli, the 
 ancient Thracian Chersonesus and Kalliupolis, in their hands and valuable 
 concessions had been surrendered to the Genuese and Venetians, including 
 
THE DARDANELLES IN EARLY DIPLOMACY 113 
 
 extra-territorial privileges or rights at the very gates of Constantinople, 
 at Pera and Galata, of which the Tower of Galata is still the monument. 
 The Powers of Europe later made what is known as the capitulations of 
 this historic precedent. 
 
 A period of Neo-Idealism had meanwhile seized hold of thought in 
 Europe. The Holy Sepulchre was to be cleansed of the Saracene, and 
 the Crusades were undertaken for that purpose. Neo-Idealism was as 
 unpractical then as it is now, as the Children's Crusade demonstrates. 
 
 With the brief attack of religious fervor over, the good knights 
 turned to pillage and conquest en route. Constantinople, being unfortunate 
 to lie in their path, suffered greatly from this. To the Byzantians, the 
 Holy Places in Palestine, being so close at hand, had little attraction. 
 Familiarity with a thing has ever been the best counsel. For holding a 
 reasonable view in this matter, and having still in their possession much 
 that could be looted, the people of the city, just then engaged in one of the 
 many uprisings to which partisanship for Blue and Green led, were be- 
 sieged, overpowered in 1203 and treated with a brutality that has no rival 
 in history. For three days the good Christian knights murdered and 
 pillaged, raped and burned, and, when finally they desisted, it was from 
 sheer exhaustion and satiety. 
 
 Byzantium was never the same after that. Michael Palaeogos made 
 a desperate attempt to organize his state and city for the coming of the 
 Turk, but did not make much headway. The Crusaders had massacred 
 and pillaged the country side as thoroughly as they had Constantinople. 
 What that meant may be gathered by considering that the population of 
 the capital had been reduced to about 100,000. 
 
 Meanwhile, the "400 tents" of Osmanli which had been pitched on the 
 outskirts of Dorylaeum in 1074 had grown into a strong population by 
 reproduction and the assimilation of others. In 1354 the Turks crossed 
 the Hellespont at the Heptastadion Ford, overran Thrace, made Adrianople 
 their capital, subjugated the people in the Balkans shortly afterward, and, 
 in 1411, cast their eyes upon Constantinople. Eleven years later they 
 were able to lay the city under tribute and in 1453 they took it, largely 
 through the assistance of military engineers and artillerists who were 
 good Christians, to wit : Frenchmen. Constantin had a force that num- 
 bered but 7,500. He pleaded for help in vain. The succor that could 
 have been brought, at least by the Christian states along the Mediterranean, 
 was not brought, because the political situation in Europe did not permit 
 it and the Byzantians happened to be the hete noire — Huns — of the period. 
 
 This is the manner in which the Turks got possession of Constanti- 
 nople and her waterways. 
 
 I have not the room here to trace the further developments along the 
 
114 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 straits, with the exception of stating that the first of the Osmanli rulers, 
 and their able grand viziers, set about to fortify the entrance to the Dar- 
 danelles and Bosphorus in a maner which even today must excite admira- 
 tion. Grand Vizier Achmed Kopriilii erected the castles at Kum Kale and 
 Sid-il-Bahr, and armed them with the best guns of the times. Thereafter 
 the Dardanelles were closed to all traffic which the government in Stamboul 
 did not favor. Similar fortifications were laid out at the entrance to 
 the Bosphorus, and Russia, into which the republic of Nishni-Novgorod 
 had now grown, or degenerated, as the case may be, was now further re- 
 moved from the substance of her dreams, the Zarigrad on the Golden Horn, 
 than she had ever been before. The fleets she had sent into the Bosphorus 
 in 860 and again in 1048 had been able to sail as far as the Sea of Marmora. 
 Attack from that quarter was now out of the question. Russia tried to get 
 to Constantinople via Baltic, North Sea, Channel, Atlantic, Mediterranean 
 and Aegean. Her fleet managed to get past the Turkish batteries at the 
 entrance to the Dardanelles, in 1770, but lacked enterprise enough to 
 measure issues with Turkish batteries at Tchanak Kale and Kilid-il-Bahr. 
 At the headland of Kefes Burnu it came to and put about. 
 
 A British fleet, under Admiral Duckworth, was more successful in 
 1807. It reached Constantinople, but the peace treaty made two years 
 later recognized the Dardanelles, Sea of Marmora and Bosphorus as Otto- 
 man territorial waters. Such being the case no foreign warcraft could 
 hereafter enter the straits without the permission of the Turkish govern- 
 ment, which permission, by the way, depended again upon several of 
 the other signatory Powers. For warships, then, the Dardanelles and 
 Bosphorus were closed. For merchant vessels, of any registry, they re- 
 mained open so long as the Turkish government had no valid reason to 
 close them, which reason again was subject to what the Concert of Europe 
 might have to say. This status of the case was created and ratified, and 
 in some instances modified, by the Hunkiar Iskelessi Treaty of 1833, made 
 between Russia and Turkey; the Dardanelles Treaty of 1841, the Paris 
 Dardanelles Convention of 1856, the London Protocol of 1871 and the 
 Berlin Convention of 1878. It was modified in 1853, at the beginning of 
 the Crimean War, when French and British warcraft, as allies of the 
 Turks against Russia, appeared before Constantinople, and in 1878 when 
 several British ships arrived off the city for the purpose of defending it, 
 if need be, against the Russians. During the late Balkan War the Ottoman 
 government was persuaded to permit each of the Great Powers to station 
 in the Golden Horn a small cruiser, knewn as stationaire, for the pro- 
 tection of the Europeans in the city. That privilege was still given at 
 the outbreak of the European War, nor was it specifically recalled when 
 the Ottoman government abolished the capitulations — concessions of an 
 
THE DARDANELLES IN EARLY DIPLOMACY 115 
 
 extra-territorial character given governments for the protection of the 
 interests of their nationals, as the claims read. 
 
 As pointed out, the Byzantian government had seen fit, for very good 
 reasons, to grant the Italians similar concessions centuries before. It did 
 that when it was moving along swiftly on its downward curve. The 
 case of the Turk was the same. So long as the sultans were strong, 
 largely because they had good premiers and ministers, so long were the 
 haughty diplomatic envoys of the European powers obliged to appear 
 before the several Osmanli Majesties in cages. When the Turk was no 
 longer strong and able the process was reversed. Such is the course of 
 human events. 
 
 Entente Diplomacy When Handicapped 
 
 On August 9, 1914, a few days after the outbreak of the War, the 
 German dreadnaught cruiser "Goeben'* and the light cruiser "Breslau" 
 sought refuge in the Dardanelles from their British and French pursuers 
 in the Mediterranean. For two days the Ottoman government did not 
 know what to do. To give asylum to the two warships, for longer than the 
 time permitted by international practice, was dangerous. The diplomatists 
 of the Triple Entente would call, as they did, at the Bab-i-Ali, Sublime 
 Porte, and demand an explanation. Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha, 
 Enver Pasha, the minister of war, and Talaat Bey, minister of the interior 
 and general factotum of the Ottoman government, found themselves in 
 sore predicament. It would not do to offend the governments in London, 
 Petrograd and Paris. On the other hand, the Berlin government could 
 not be affronted. 
 
 For a day the problem remained unsolved, and then a solution was 
 found by the several heads that were stuck together, to wit : The Otto- 
 man ministers already named, Baron von Wangenheim, the German am- 
 bassador to the Sublime Porte, and the men in Berlin. The solution 
 was that the "Goeben" and "Breslau" should be bought by the Ottoman 
 government. They were bought over the protest of the British, French 
 and Russian ambassadors and governments. The prompt conversion of 
 the ships into "Sultan Jawus Selim,^' for the "Goeben," and "Midillih," 
 for the "Breslau," did not appease the anger of London, Paris and 
 Petrograd. 
 
 But the Ottoman government had an argument of its own. The 
 United States government had in the preceding month transferred by 
 an act of Congress, dated July 8th, and for a consideration of $12,535,- 
 276 and 98 cents, a regular bargain figure, to one Fred J. Gauntlett, the 
 United States battleships "Idaho" and "Mississippi." The understanding 
 
116 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 was, though Mr. Wilson could not himself appear in the transaction as the 
 seller, to transfer these ships to the Greek government, as was done. 
 
 The two battleships were of a rather obsolete type and fitted no 
 longer into the tactical scheme of the United States navy department. 
 But they were superior to anything the Greeks had, and the Turks also 
 had in their ramshackle navy nothing that came at all close in efficiency 
 to the two craft. The Ottoman government objected to the sale, and the 
 American ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., also 
 did not view the transfer of the warships with favor. It was generally 
 known that the Greek government bought the ships to attend at some day 
 not far oflf, under the aegis of another Balkan League, to the case of 
 the Turks for good. Graecia irredenta was to be redeemed. As yet the 
 Turks held several of the Greek islands in the Aegean, and Athens made 
 claims to certain parts along the coast of Asia Minor, notably the district 
 and city of Smyrna and the Cilician Plain, with the towns of Mersina 
 and Tarsus. 
 
 Graecia irredenta, so hoped the diplomatists of the Balkans, was to 
 be redeemed together with Bulgaria irredenta in Thrace. The Nationalist 
 Party of Bulgaria, headed by M. I. M. Guechoflf, one of the Bulgarian 
 premiers during the late Balkan War, was determined to make good the 
 defeat suffered at the peace conference in Bucharest, 1913, which fastened 
 upon a people as noxious a treaty as was ever signed. To make good that 
 defeat was possible, however, only at the expense of the Turks. The 
 Serbs stood in too high an esteem, if we may call it that, with the Russian 
 government, which just then was Sazonoff from cellar to attic, to figure 
 in the revanche scheme of the Bulgarian Nationalist Party. With the 
 Turk it was diflPerent, of course. He had few friends just then, as the 
 London and Bucharest conferences had demonstrated, and Russia had 
 not changed her plans — was still dreaming the dream of seeing the Ro- 
 manoffs, in temporal and spiritual sublimeness, enthroned in the Zarigrad 
 — the emperor city — on the Golden Horn. How eternally great a man 
 Sazonoff would have been in that case ! 
 
 The Neo-Idealists of reactionary Russia looked upon the substitution 
 of the Greek Cross for the Crescent on Hagia Sophia mosque as a god- 
 sent duty. Practical men of the Sazonoff type had plans of their own — 
 Russia's hegemony of the world south of the borders of the Russian 
 empire. Control of the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal was to follow 
 and after that it was to be seen whether or no Great Britain could keep 
 her empire in India with the route about the Cape of Good Hope the 
 only one open for her mighty armada. Sazonoff and his ilk were indeed 
 playing the lute of the Triple Entente in the Concert of Europe, but 
 they had not forgotten that the unbelievable, an alliance between demo- 
 
ENTENTE DIPLOMACY WHEN HANDICAPPED 117 
 
 cratic France and autocratic Russia, had been brought about because of 
 the antipathy of the Russian bear for the British lion. 
 
 M. Guechoff — I may say en passant that I know him very well — knew 
 all that and more. He was, in addition, a Russophile by conviction — one 
 of those quietly intense natures in whom gratitude and resentment are 
 lasting sensations. He believed implicitly in the cause of the Slav, and 
 the noble equestrian statue of Czar Alexander Oswohoditel, monumented 
 almost before his house in Sofia, was to him rather more than to the men 
 in the Sofia foreign office at that time. Alexander II, Czar Liberator, 
 had shaken the Turk off the Bulgars. M. Guechoff cherished the hope 
 that he would be able to drive the Turk out of Thrace. What he would 
 do with Constantinople, Zarigrad, was not so clear to him. But time 
 brings counsel. 
 
 A Balkan "Problem" in the Making 
 
 There was no entente yet between Greek and Bulgar, so far as I know, 
 though a lame sort of alliance between Greece and Serbia a la Italia. 
 But the fact is that the leaders of certain elements in Bulgaria and Greece 
 had decided upon the matter. I discussed the question with several of them, 
 and found that the more conservative and far-sighted thought that while 
 Greece was to have again control of all the Greek islands in the Aegean, 
 and the districts in Asia Minor I have named, Bulgaria might extend her 
 dominion as far as the Tchatdalja line of fortifications. The line Enos- 
 Media had formerly been the peace objective of the Bulgarians. Such a 
 border would join to Bulgaria nearly all of the Bulgarians still under 
 Turkish rule, and would also have the desired military advantages. A part 
 of this territory was ceded by Turkey in August, 1915, as a gage for 
 Bulgaria's entrance in the War on the side of the Central Powers group. 
 
 But there were also those extremists in Bulgaria who thought that 
 all of Thrace and the Gallipoli peninsula ought to be taken from the 
 Turks, Constantinople included. These men were trying to show the world 
 that this would be the best way of settling the problem of the control 
 of the waterways. With the Bulgarians in possession of the western 
 shores of the Dardanelles, Sea of Marmora and Bosphorus, the Greeks, 
 possibly, re-established in the western part of what had been Phrygia 
 Minor, anciently, and with the Turk limited to Anatolia north of the 
 Gulf of Ismid it would be easy enough to open the Dardanelles to all 
 shipping, war or peace. With three states abutting upon these bodies of 
 water it would be simple to make the straits neutral or international, since 
 each of the governments involved could claim them only as far as their 
 Thalsohle — central channel. To certain Russian statesmen that appealed 
 
118 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 strongly. Half a loaf was l^etter than none, and there was no telling when 
 trouble among the Balkanites would lead to the "realization" of Russian 
 "desires," 
 
 The Turks were well acquainted with this scheme, as I found, and 
 could not but discountenance the sale of the two American battleships to 
 the Greeks. They did that, but stopped a little short, so far as I know, 
 of making a protest to the Department of State. The United States 
 ambassador, Mr. Morgenthau, knew too little of the profession upon which 
 he had embarked from a real estate office, and was too timid to understand 
 the full meaning of the transaction, and the government in Washington 
 does not seem to have given the matter much thought, which, in regard 
 to politics in Europe, was living up to its traditions. In those halcyon 
 days, moreover, the Congress of the United States still bickered over 
 millions, being as yet unused to the reckless appropriation of billions, and 
 the twelve million dollars for what would have been scrap iron in a few 
 months looked very good to the watchdogs of the treasury. 
 
 To the argument of the Ottoman government that the "Goeben" and 
 "Breslau*' had been bought to offset the increase in the naval armament 
 of Greece produced by the "Idaho" and "Mississippi" the diplomatists of 
 the Triple Entente could make no effective rebuttal. There are some facts 
 which even a diplomatist can not deny, although they are few in number, 
 withal. 
 
 The sale of the two German ships could be attacked from another 
 angle, however. It was not a bona Ude transaction, claimed the British, 
 French and Russian governments and their ambassadors. To this the 
 Ottoman government replied that while the transfer would seem to suffer 
 from this aspect, it was nevertheless bona Ude. 
 
 Turkey had ordered two modern battleships in Great Britain. That 
 she had not ordered them in Germany was due to the fact that her naval 
 service just then was in the hands of the British Naval Mission to Turkey, 
 headed by Admiral Limpus, just as her army was under the administrative 
 control of the German Military Mission to Turkey, commanded by Field 
 Marshall Liman von Sanders Pasha. The two missions were commis 
 voyageurs in more respects than one, and bought each in their own country 
 what the Turkish national defense scheme needed. 
 
 The Ottoman government pointed out that the German commander. 
 Admiral Souchon, had sought refuge in the Dardanelles, before an over- 
 whelming force of enemies, and that sending him back into the Mediter- 
 ranean, to either go down in battle or suffer capture, might be construed 
 an unfriendly act on the part of the German government. In fact the 
 only alternative available was internment. The sale of the ships obviated 
 internment. The Ottoman government had the right to buy the ships, 
 
A BALKAN PROBLEM IN THE MAKING 119 
 
 especially since the Creek government also had bought ships. Would it 
 not be better to consider the incident closed? 
 
 But that was impossible, of course. Despite the evasion practiced by 
 the Ottoman ministers the sale of the "Goeben" and ''Breslau" could not 
 be dissociated from its sinister aspects. Admiral Souchon, who had come 
 into the Dardanelles as commander of the German Squadron in the 
 Mediterranean, and his officers and men remained on the two ships, though 
 already they were "Sultan Jawus Selim," and "Midillih." To make mat- 
 ters worse the Ottoman government dismissed the British Naval Mission, 
 and on September 27th closed the Dardanelles and Bosphorus. 
 
 Diplomacy on the Golden Horn was moving rapidly and in a direction 
 opposite to that desired in Ivondon, Paris and Petrograd. The immediate 
 effect of the closing of the Dardanelles was that Russia could not import 
 from Great Britain and France war materials she urgently needed, nor 
 could she exchange therefor the wheat and other foodstuffs wanted in the 
 countries of her allies. That, indeed, was the purpose of the closing. 
 
 An American Ambassador Is Heard From 
 
 Though "forcing" the Dardanelles had ever been a favorite phrase 
 of those dissatisfied with the treaties on the status of the straits — tem- 
 porarily, to be sure — the Russian, French and British governments did 
 not immediately speak of that. 
 
 Sir Louis Mallet, the British ambassador, especially would seem to 
 have taken the closing of the strait to heart. According to statements made 
 by Mr. Morgenthau he appealed to the ambassador of the United States, 
 to whom he suggested, if the report is to be believed, that the two of 
 them call together on the Grand Vizier and enter a protest. At any rate 
 Mr. Morgenthau selected to go alone, and according to his own admission 
 informed the Ottoman premier somewhat as follows: 
 
 "You know this means war!" 
 
 I think it is the practice, usually, of ambassadors to first get in touch 
 with their government before they enter climaxic protests, nor do they, 
 except on specific instruction, ever mention war as the only alternative for 
 something which a government has done. If the State Department of 
 the United States should be an exception to this rule, which I can not 
 believe, it would be time for Congress and the American people to look 
 into this matter. There is no assurance, it so happens, that an indiscretion 
 of that sort is always in the interest of the state. 
 
 The closing of the Dardanelles was to the governments of the Triple 
 Entente the signal that it was time to act. Sir Louis Mallet, M. Bompard, 
 ambassador of the French republic, and Mons. N. M. de Giers, the 
 
120 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Russian ambassador, had matters in hand at Constantinople, while Sir 
 Edward Grey, M. Viviani, and M. Sazonoff handled this great problem 
 at home. To have the strait closed was a serious matter of itself. To 
 have Turkey an ally of the Germans was not much worse, of course, as 
 it then seemed. But at best something had to be done to open the 
 strait again. It was a case of war, or of concessions to the Turks. 
 
 The oflfer of concessions was made. The interminable transactions 
 resolved themselves into this: The governments of the Triple Entente 
 would guarantee the integrity of the territory of the Ottoman empire 
 for the space of thirty years against all comers, if the Ottoman government 
 consented to what in the main would be a neutrality of benevolence toward 
 the countries of the Entente. 
 
 Said Halim Pasha, the grand vizier, was not the only one who at 
 first gave at least a willing ear, if not a willing mind, to the proposal. 
 Talaat Bey also was more than interested, though not by any means very 
 sympathetic. The grand vizier had thoroughly enjoyed, as he told me 
 once, his course at Oxford and his intercourse with Englishmen in Great 
 Britain and Egypt, from which latter country he hailed. But while he 
 was fond of the everyday-things of the English he had no great opinion 
 of "their political morality," as he put it. Egypt was already little more 
 than a British colony, since its abandonment by the French to Great 
 Britain as a pawn in the entente cordiale and consideration for a free hand 
 in Morocco. 
 
 Being a good Mohammedan the grand vizier also resented that the 
 world of Islam was everywhere passing under the suzerainty of Great 
 Britain and France. Of promises made by any of the Great Powers he 
 had the poorest opinion. That Turkey was perishing on the good promises 
 of others, was a favorite way of putting it with him. Talaat Bey, again, 
 saw in the Young Turk Party the only salvation of his country, and had 
 concluded that with the acts of that party the Ottoman empire would 
 either rise or fall. An alternative he could not see, as he admitted to me 
 in an interview, after Turkey was in the War. A victorious Triple Entente 
 would dismember Turkey, no matter what promises her statesmen might 
 have made. Turkey, he knew full well, had in the past continued a state 
 by the grace and for the benefit of the anti-Russian Balance of Power in 
 Europe. A victory of the Triple Entente meant a defeat for the Central 
 Powers camp, of course, which in its turn was equivalent for Turkey of 
 being entirely at the mercy of Great Britain, France and Russia for a 
 time. Seeing things in that light left the Young Turk cabinet no other 
 course open but to join the Central Powers sooner or later. The wholly 
 fictitious "session of the Crown Council at Potsdam, July 5, 1914," had 
 nothing to do with it. 
 
AN AMERICAN AMBASSADOR IS HEARD FROM 121 
 
 The alternative was to remain strictly neutral. Even that was difficult, 
 regardless of whatever viewpoint was taken. For one thing, the Young 
 Turks, with all their faults, were patriots. To remain strictly neutral 
 imposed upon the Turk a sort of conduct which neither side would like. 
 
 With the War over, Turkey again would have to live by and on 
 the clash of interest of the Powers of Europe. To Enver Pasha, especially, 
 that was a most unpalatable fare, though Said Halim Pasha, Talaat Bey, 
 and the few other men who had anything to say in the matter, were no 
 better pleased with this prospect. There would be a continuation of capitu- 
 lations and the revenues of the empire would still be in the hands of the 
 foreign capitalists who ran the Dette Publique in Stamboul. 
 
 With the occidental ideas of statecraft with which these men occupied 
 themselves that outlook did not in any way harmonize. They had promoted 
 the Revolution, and the elimination of Sultan Abdul Hamid, for the 
 avowed purpose of making the Ottoman empire an equal among nations. 
 In this they had failed not only in practical respects but also in principle. 
 But it has ever been difficult for men to be fair judges of themselves. 
 Last but not least the Ottoman government had to take into account that 
 an attitude of benevolent neutrality toward the Triple Entente would 
 have serious consequences in case the Central Powers should emerge from 
 the War with victory on their side. 
 
 Though the military aspect of the situation in Europe was just then 
 not in favor of Germany and her ally, the men in Stamboul knew that 
 the resources of the German empire were far greater than others were 
 pleased to believe. They all realized that they had in their hands the means 
 to embarrass at least, if not actually handicap greatly, one of the Entente 
 powers, Russia, by keeping the Dardanelles closed. That had been done 
 already — with the approbation, if this counted for anything, of every Turk, 
 no matter whether "Old" or "Young." 
 
 Upon Russia every Turk looked as the arch enemy, and Russia, indeed, 
 had merited that reputation. Constantinople and her waterways were still, 
 as they had been of yore, the multum in parvo of the state of which the city 
 was the capital. Without Constantinople there would be no state — without 
 Stamboul there would be nothing. Geographic factors and mixed popula- 
 tions produce such anachronisms. The Greek and Armenian subjects of 
 Sultan cared little enough for the Ottoman government. What interest 
 they had in the empire was represented by the capital. To perpetuate this 
 City on the Golden Horn, and its many suburbs along the same body 
 of water and on the shores of the iMarmora and Bosphorus, was to them 
 patriotism — a disemboweled patriotism, perhaps, but still the little they 
 could have under the circumstances. 
 
 Thus it came that even the Greeks and Armenians rejoiced a little, 
 
122 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 for a day or so, when the Dardanelles were closed. They were less 
 pleased as the drudgery of war started, as it did presently, when the 
 Ottoman government objected to the presence at the entrance of the 
 Bosphorus of Russian mine-laying ships. Negotiations came to an end, 
 relations were severed, and on November 3rd, the Allied fleet let the Turks 
 know that war was on. The bombardment of the Turkish batteries 
 at Sid-il-Bahr and Kum Kale lasted a scant fifteen minutes. Some 200 
 shots were exchanged, and one of them set off a powder magazine in 
 Sid-il-Bahr, not exactly an auspicious start for the Turks. 
 
 When and Why German Diplomacy Won 
 
 A great deal has been said concerning the activity of the German 
 ambassador at Constantinople. That Baron von Wangenheim was an able 
 diplomatist is true enough. Indeed, from the angle of events he was the 
 best of the German diplomatists. But the angle of events is nearly always 
 a poor guide. Had the situation of the Turks been different. Baron von 
 Wangenheim would have failed as completely as did most of his German 
 confreres. I say that on the ground that I knew the baron thoroughly well. 
 
 The German ambassador was principally able in so far as he did not 
 g^ve the natural direction of events any violent promotion, and that, after 
 all, distinguishes the good from the bad diplomatist. True enough, some 
 diplomatists have flattered themselves that they made this or that ally for 
 their country. The impartial student of human affairs has ever doubted 
 that. What a diplomatist can do is : To engage in acts of provocation that 
 will make enemies. Acts that would make friends lie entirely beyond his 
 reach. The system wills it so. Before two nations, or even two govern- 
 ments, become so friendly to one another that one will spill blood and dis- 
 sipate treasure for the other there must be a community of interests, be that 
 racial, economic or political. It seems to me that even the most conceited 
 diplomatist and statesman can afford to admit that much. 
 
 What Baron von Wangenheim did in Constantinople was to present 
 the case of the Central Powers in as favorable a light as possible, in which 
 respect his position was not dissimilar to that of the representative of a 
 firm trying to induce another house to do business with it. Though the 
 contrary has been maintained, I would indeed like to meet the man who 
 could influence Talaat Bey, who justly deserves the surname : The stubborn. 
 How little the Ottoman minister of the interior could be swayed was shown 
 later when Baron von Wangenheim insisted that the government in 
 Stamboul put an end to the deportations of the Armenians. 
 
 In view of what has been said it should be news that in July of 1915, 
 Baron von Wangenheim presented to the Ottoman government, on behalf of 
 
WHEN AND WHY GERMAN DIPLOMACY WON 123 
 
 the Armenians, what amounted to an ultimatum. The religious societies of 
 Germany had finally managed to present the case of the Armenians to the 
 emperor and had prevailed upon him to interest himself in these fellow- 
 Christians. The Foreign Office in Berlin did not like this interference in 
 an Ottoman affair that was considered strictly an internal matter. For all 
 that, it instructed Baron von Wangenheim to take the matter up with 
 a little more energy. This was done. But Talaat Bey casually informed 
 the German ambassador that the Turkish government would permit no 
 interference with anything that had no bearing upon Turkish- German 
 relations. Baron von Wangenheim would point to the evil repute Germany 
 was getting as the result of the treatment given the Armenians. His 
 plea, that the agents of the Entente used the case for propaganda calculated 
 to further hurt a government already laboring under the handicap of the 
 invasion of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania, would elicit from 
 Talaat Bey nothing but the rather cynical remark that Germany, "if 
 ashamed of her company with Turkey, could go her own way.'' 
 
 Some men in Berlin, possibly the emperor himself, found such conduct 
 on the part of Talaat Bey a little too presumptions. Baron von Wangen- 
 heim was instructed to demand the immediate cessation of the measures 
 employed against the Armenians and place the possible abandonment of 
 Turkey by Germany as the alternative. When Talaat Bey heard that he 
 smiled, as usual, and told the German ambassador to inform the German 
 government that in Turkey it was the 'Ottoman government that was 
 supreme, and that, if it was so minded, the German government could go 
 its own way without delay. It would be best, anyway, if the Imperial 
 German government began to realize a little more that in Turkey it had 
 not found a vassal but an ally — an equal. 
 
 For the German government that was a bitter pill to swallow. Nothing 
 of this was permitted to get into the press, lest the German public become 
 alarmed. After that Baron von Wangenheim refused to entertain similar 
 requests, and in the interest of good relations made a trip home, though 
 his health also needed a little more consideration than it had been given by 
 him. 
 
 On the whole the German diplomatists in Constantinople had a very 
 strenuous time with the Turks in Stamboul. Even the able and shrewd 
 Dr. Richard von Kiihlmann, at that time conseiller of the Germany em- 
 bassy, had his hands full, despite the fact that he was dealing only with the 
 overflow of friction. Not all of this was due to Germano-Turkish inter- 
 national relations. For the purpose of promoting the interests of Field 
 Marshall von der Goltz Pasha, at that time commander of the Ottoman 
 Second Army in Thrace, and formerly chief of the German Military 
 Mission to Turkey, a large and influential element at the German embassy 
 
124 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 had made up its mind to effect the recall of Field Marshall Liman von 
 Sanders Pasha, then head of the mission and commander of the Ottoman 
 forces on Gallipoli. It was charged that Liman Pasha had made a very 
 poor job of defending the peninsula. So far as could be judged the 
 complaint was unjustified. I had spent a great deal of time at the 
 Dardanelles and on Gallipoli and knew what difficulties Liman Pasha had 
 encountered most successfully. There can be no doubt that he did his best 
 with the means at his disposal. For all that the intriguants at the German 
 embassy persisted that he ought to be removed. 
 
 Since Enver Pasha, minister of war and vice-generalissimo of the 
 Ottoman army, was not yet through congratulating himself that the landing 
 at Sid-il-Bahr and Ariburnu had not resulted in worse, it was rather dif- 
 ficult to get his attention on this subject. I am sure that Enver Pasha had 
 a case of gooseflesh whenever he thought himself in the role of commander 
 in chief on Gallipoli. An uglier job could not be found. Quite impatiently, 
 therefore, he told Baron von Wangenheim one day that, while the German 
 general staff and the German emperor could not be prevented from re- 
 calling Liman Pasha and appointing another man as chief of the German 
 Military Mission to Turkey, he would deem it a great favor if he would 
 be allowed to have Liman Pasha enter entirely the Ottoman military 
 service as commander on Gallipoli. That ended it. Baron von Wangen- 
 heim had once more put his foot into it, as the saying goes, and he had 
 done this against his better judgment. Instances of that sort were many, 
 and all of them went to prove that so far as the post at Constantinople was 
 concerned it would have been better had the German Foreign Office for- 
 gotten that there was such a thing. 
 
 Diplomatic Sauce for Goose and Gander 
 
 The attitude of the German government toward the Armenians was 
 not always what I have pictured here. At first it was entirely different — 
 essentially Prussian. On a trip I made through Asia Minor in May, 1915, 
 I accidentally encountered a large column of deported Armenians in the 
 Cilician Gates in the Taurus Mountains. Though I saw none of the 
 cruelties the Turks have later been charged with, and I hold brief for 
 neither Turk nor Armenian, and flatter myself with being somewhat of a 
 truth-loving man, I could not but sympathize with the four thousand-odd 
 women and children and decrepit men, who on a cold and rainy day 
 were crossing over a mountain pass in a wilderness where even in worse 
 weather they would have been unable to find shelter, food or comfort. 
 
 The inquiries I made at that time and later have caused me to believe 
 that Turkish ineptness, more than intentional brutality, was responsible for 
 
DIPLOMATIC SAUCE FOR GOOSE AND GANDER 125 
 
 the hardships the Armenians were subjected to. On my return to Constan- 
 tinople I wrote of the matter and submitted it to the censors. These good 
 men were horror-struck at my audacity, to think that they would permit 
 anything of the sort to go through, but were rather apologetic when they 
 handed the articles back to me. When every other means to get the story 
 to the United States had failed, I appealed to Baron von Wangenheim, 
 making it clear to him that as the correspondent of a neutral press it was 
 my duty to get this piece of news out. The ambassador agreed with me, 
 and was willing to dispatch the copy as far as Berlin by means of the 
 courier — Feldjager — of his own embassy. But it was his opinion that in 
 Berlin my dispatches and mail articles would be held up, and that nothing 
 could be gained, then, by getting them that far. 
 
 I decided to try some other avenue, and finally found it in the 
 service of a train conductor, who promised to mail the matter from the 
 Bulgarian frontier railroad station. My articles were never delivered 
 to the headquarters of the news service at Berlin, instead I was ultimately 
 informed that I had no right to evade the Turkish censorship. The informa- 
 tion came from the German government, and the attache of the German 
 embassy in Constantinople who conveyed it took pains to have me under- 
 stand that the suppression of an uprising in times of war, as in times of 
 peace, no matter what means employed, was a right which all governments 
 reserved for themselves, and that so far no government was known that had 
 made common cause with rebels. It was a phase of sovereignty, etc., etc., 
 etc. 
 
 Sovereignty does cover a multitude of things, when applied propa- 
 gandically. The uprising of the Armenians was one thing, it seemed, that 
 of the Irish quite another. 
 
 Before I proceed with the general depiction of diplomacy in Turkey 
 I must devote a little more space to the United States embassy at that point. 
 
 Ex-ambassador Morgenthau has in his book devoted considerable space 
 to the occasions on which he was of some use to the diplomatic representa- 
 tives of the governments of the Triple Entente. He has also made it clear 
 that from the very first he was not in sympathy with the diplomatists, 
 diplomacy and general policies, of the Central Powers, all of them being 
 more or less noxious to his fine principles. To have been of special 
 importance to Sir Louis Mallet, and of gratuitous service to him at the time 
 of the closing of the Dardanelles, and again later, is one of the things he is 
 proud of. Yet in his neutrality proclamations, and especially in his appeal 
 to the American people to observe a true neutrality, President Wilson had 
 emphasized the necessity for an impartiality in words as well as in conduct. 
 
 But the books of diplomatists must not be taken too seriously. The 
 ambassador who avers that from the very inception of trouble he was 
 
126 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 with this or with that side may be doing nothing more than presenting just 
 one side of his attitude, with sHght exaggerations, possibly. The fact in this 
 case is, that Mr. Morgenthau was well liked by the German diplomatists in 
 Pera, and, long after the outbreak of the War, was not averse to being 
 known as a friend of Baron von Wangenheim. I happen to know that the 
 German ambassador consulted the American ambassador on subjects that 
 did not at all concern the latter. On the other hand, there was no more 
 constant caller at the American embassy than the Marquis Pallavicini, the 
 Austro-Hungarian ambassador, and the relations between the Central 
 Powers and United States diplomatists were rather more cordial than what 
 Mr. Morgenthau would have us believe. All of which would be of no 
 consequence to the general public, were it not that it seems necessary, in 
 view of the cost of the Great Disaster, and its effect upon the world in 
 general, to portray the diplomatic service as it is. 
 
 The United States diplomatists in Europe during the Great War were 
 in their local spheres the least omnipotent and omniscient of any. The 
 chiefs of the several missions were not hommes de carriere. They were 
 successful men of affairs, whom campaign contributions and political party 
 favors landed at their diplomatic posts. They possessed neither the training 
 nor the experience to make them good diplomatic envoys in a world entirely 
 foreign to them in political practice, ideals, and social systems. 
 
 A Diplomatist in a Quandary 
 
 When Mr. Morgenthau arrived in Constantinople, the officials in 
 Stamboul did their best to make him feel at home and at ease. Among 
 the men who especially cultivated the new United States ambassador was 
 Enver Pasha, who was a welcome guest at the teas and luncheons of Mme. 
 Morgenthau long after Turkey had entered the War. Talaat Bey, too, was 
 on the best terms with the American ambassador, and so were a number 
 of other officials and officers, even though, as has been averred, they lacked 
 the means to buy uniforms and wore, as the Turk always does, the 
 regulation Stambuli — a frock-coat with a high collar of clerical cut. By 
 and large the American ambassador was rather friendly with the Turks, 
 as the diplomatic representative of a friendly power ought to be; that he 
 was this is proved, moreover, by a statement made to me by M. Haim 
 Nahoum, Grand Rabbi of Turkey, who took particular delight in pointing 
 out that the really congenial qualities of the new American ambassador had 
 contributed greatly toward making the Ottoman government amenable to 
 certain requests that had been made in regard to the interests of the Jewish 
 colonists in Palestine. 
 
 It may be presumed that there are few people who expected Jews 
 generally to espouse the interests of Russia at the outbreak of the European 
 
A DIPLOMATIST IN A QUANDARY 127 
 
 War and for many months afterward. To be frank about it, I was one of 
 those who found such an attitude perfectly logical. Whatever the facts 
 back of the pogroms may have been, the truth is that the Russian govern- 
 ment had been guilty of gross negligence, to say the least, in permitting 
 such atrocities to happen. 
 
 When relations were severed by Russia with Turkey, the care of 
 Russian interests in the Ottoman empire was given into the hands of the 
 Italian embassy at Constantinople. When Italy became involved in the 
 War with Turkey, Russian interests were once more out in the street, so 
 to speak. The government in Petrograd requested the United States to 
 take charge of them, and the State Department, despite the fact that the 
 American embassy in Pera was already overcrowded with the care of 
 foreigners and their property in Turkey, asked Mr. Morgenthau to care 
 for the Russian subjects and their interests also. 
 
 The American ambassador had a caller one fine summer's morning in 
 1915. The person in question had visited the embassy on routine matters, 
 but had been asked by Mr. Antonian, private secretary of the ambassador, 
 to step into the sanctum sanctorum. 
 
 The ambassador seemed very much agitated. He asked the caller to 
 be seated, and then resumed his perambulations about the room. After 
 a while he stopped before the visitor. There was no doubt that he was 
 greatly perturbed. 
 
 He had been asked by his, the American, government, began the 
 ambassador, to take charge of Russian interests in Turkey. 
 
 "To comply with the request is hardly possible for me," he continued. 
 "What would my people in New York say to it — what would Jews 
 anywhere say to it, if I took over the care of Russian interests in this 
 country? Can you imagine what they would say? They would loathe 
 me for doing it. How could a self-respecting Jew do anything of the 
 kind? How could he lend himself to the protection of the subjects and 
 their properties of a government which for centuries has ruthlessly and 
 systematically persecuted and abused members of his race ? I won't do it. 
 I can't do it?" 
 
 The caller did not know whether or no an expression of opinion was 
 wanted and remained silent. The ambassador resumed his peregrinations 
 about the room, leaving the other to review pogroms, the refusal to recognize 
 passports of the United States issued to Jewish citizens, the abrogation on 
 that account by the U. S. Senate of the Russian commercial treaties, things 
 that happened outside the port of Odessa, and what not. 
 
 After a while the ambassador stopped again before the caller. 
 
 "I would like to hear what you think of it," he said. "You have 
 knocked about this world long enough to have an opinion on the subject." 
 
128 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 The caller said that he did not wish to give advice on such a matter. 
 It was hard to see how any Jew could take care of Russian interests. On 
 the other hand, the ambassador would have to consider that he was not 
 a Jew in this instance but the diplomatic representative of the United 
 States, a government at peace with Russia, despite the abrogation of the 
 commercial treaty in retaliation of Russia's discrimination against American 
 citizens of Jewish race, and that governments at peace with one another 
 could not very well refuse to be mutually of service in times such as they 
 were. 
 
 Rather than take that view, said the American ambassador, he would 
 resign. While he appreciated the trust placed in him, and the honor ac- 
 corded, in being given a diplomatic appointment, the State Department 
 could not expect him to do something that savored of an insult self- 
 administered. He would resign, if the government insisted upon his taking 
 over Russian interests in Turkey. 
 
 The caller saw the substance of a first-class news dispatch in the 
 interview, and suggested something to that effect. To that the ambassador 
 would not listen, however. There would be time enough in a few days. 
 The few days never came, of course. 
 
 In view of the fact that I am not a great admirer of anonymity I will 
 state that I am the caller. 
 
 Diplomatic Omnipotence at Close Range 
 
 Diplomatists off post are fond of having others believe that they were 
 not far from being omnipotent while accredited. That applies particularly 
 to those who served last in a country with whom their own government has 
 gone to war. 
 
 I met in Constantinople two excellent gentlemen : Captain J. P. Morton, 
 commander of the U. S. Cruiser "Scorpion," the American stationaire 
 in the Golden Horn, and Captain R. H. Williams, of the U. S. Coast 
 Artillery, attending to relief work in Turkey. The first of the officers was 
 also naval attache, while the latter had an uncertain status as military 
 attache. Both were very much interested in what was going on at the 
 Dardanelles and on Gallipoli, and had so far been unable to get to either 
 point ; both of them felt that the affairs at the gates of Constantinople were 
 of the utmost importance to military observers. Captain Williams was 
 keen to judge the effect of shell fire on the Turkish emplacements along 
 the Dardanelles, since coast defense is an important factor in the national 
 security of the United States, and Captain Morton, also, showed the 
 greatest interest. Here was a case in which two members of the arms 
 which were opposing one another in attack and defense, navy and coast 
 
DIPLOMATIC OMNIPOTENCE AT CLOSE RANGE 129 
 
 artillery, were within a stone's throw of the greatest demonstration that 
 had ever been seen, but had found their ambassador unable to get them 
 there. 
 
 I had, so far as this was permissible, and within my pledges to the 
 Ottoman minister of war, given to Captain Williams what data I could. 
 Though I had had some artillery experience myself, my knowledge was 
 confined to field artillery, and for the purposes of Captain Williams was 
 not definite enough. He was working on a report to his department, and 
 to make this complete he required better and more technical information 
 than I could give him. Captain Morton, also, had occupied himself 
 similarly, and on March 16th, Mr. Morgenthau had been to see himself 
 what little damage up to then the British and French fleets had been able 
 to inflict. In the major attack of March 18th the damage done to the 
 Turkish "forts" and emplacements along the strait was more extensive, 
 but not fatal. But these are things that must, for military purposes, be 
 seen by men who are more or less expert. 
 
 Together with another American correspondent, Mr. Raymond E. 
 Swing, Berlin correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, I had succeeded 
 in getting from Enver Pasha, the minister of war, a passport that amounted 
 to carte blanche at any of the Turkish fronts. The two of us had witnessed 
 the Allied operation against the Dardanelles, from A to Z, as the saying 
 goes, and had shown by our conduct, I believe, that we were to be trusted. 
 The result was that we could move about in Turkey very much as we 
 pleased, provided we gave notice of our intentions. 
 
 Captains Williams and 'Morton had suggested several times that I use 
 my efforts in their behalf to get them to the Dardanelles. Already it was in 
 the American embassy a case of being mistaken for pro-Turk when one 
 did not heap verbal abuse upon a country and government whose guest 
 one was. Captains 'Morton and Williams were sure that my standing with 
 the Ottoman government was better than that of the ambassador. Others 
 thought so, too, but hinted that it was love for the Turks that caused this 
 state of affairs. Especially, one G. Cornell Tarler, one of the embassy 
 secretaries, was sure that love for the Turk and "maybe something else" 
 was responsible for the good standing of Mr. Swing and myself with the 
 Turks and Germans. That newspapermen are as a rule very cold-blooded 
 in such matters — ^too cynical in fact to give much for the sentiments roused 
 by war, was not clear to some of the United States diplomatists in Constan- 
 tinople, who themselves had taken sides, quite frankly and openly at that, 
 in spite of the neutrality proclamations of their superior chief. 
 
 I was willing, even anxious, to help the two captains, feeling that 
 there were lessons in the Dardanelles coast batteries that would benefit 
 the United States coast artillery service and the navy. The matter was 
 
130 THE CRAF^T SINISTER 
 
 brought by me to the attention of Major Kiamil Bey, personal adjutant of 
 Enver Pasha, and to Major Sefid Bey, in charge of the Second Division 
 of the Harbiyeh Nasaret, the Ottoman ministry of war and general staff. 
 Both of them promised to do what they could, but feared that this would 
 be little enough. The Turk has the delightful quality of being frank with 
 persons whom he has no reason to placate with empty promises. 
 
 Kiamil and Sefid Beys did what they could, and it amounted to 
 nothing. Colonel Bronsart von Schellendorf, the Ottoman chief of staff, 
 and Major Fischer, a German officer in the Ottoman service, who was 
 charged with such matters, had expressed themselves against the trip of 
 Captains Morton and Williams, because, as they put it, they did not want 
 to establish precedents. Up to now, in fact, no other foreigners, not in 
 the Ottoman military and naval service, had been given the privileges Mr. 
 Swing and I enjoyed. From another source which I need not divulge I had 
 learned, however, that Turk and German, both, were afraid to let the two 
 American officers go to the front. In the circles that ran the military 
 machine of Turkey, Americans in official capacity were suspected of being 
 so much in sympathy with the cause of the Allies that they would transmit 
 to them information they gathered. 
 
 Mr. Morgenthau, meanwhile, was also doing his best. But Enver 
 Pasha, whom he addressed in the matter, made promises which he hoped 
 to be able to keep some day. The prospect that anything would come of 
 them were slim enough, and since Captains Morton and Williams thought 
 the thing very pressing, they asked me to get in touch with the Ottoman 
 naval staff. That organization, however, was entirely in the hands of the 
 Germans; its chief was Admiral Souchon, who, possibly, because he was 
 married to an American woman, was more easily approached than others. 
 Unfortunately, the admiral was away from the city just then. The man 
 next suitable for my purposes was Corvette^Captain Humann, commander 
 of the German Naval Base on the Bosphorus, and naval attache of the 
 German embassy. He would do his best, he said. That best was a letter, 
 dated April 18th, in which he said that he had taken the matter up with 
 Captain von Jansen, Souchon's chief of staff, but that the prospects were 
 not promising.* 
 
 That reply seemed final enough to me. Captains Williams and Morton 
 were not to get to the Dardanelles. 
 
 For some weeks the matter rested, and then, at a dinner given in the 
 quarters of one of the officers, it was decided to take it up aeain. I am 
 afraid that the two officers feared that I was not promoting their cause as 
 well as they thought I could. On the following day, the ambassador asked 
 me into his office. 
 
 • See footnote on opposite page. 
 
DIPLOMATIC OMNIPOTENCE AT CLOSE RANGE 131 
 
 He said that the two captains had importuned him until life was a 
 misery — as well they might since they considered their professional reputa- 
 tion at stake, in addition to being unable to make a thorough study of the 
 effect of modern high-explosives upon coast artillery works. Everything 
 possible had been done by him to get them to the scene of action. But 
 there was no end of promises and no performance. Enver Pasha had 
 told him time and again that the two officers would be given the opportunity 
 they sought, but it seemed that the Germans "up on the hill" — a reference 
 to the German embassy on the Boulevard Ayas Pasha — were against the 
 trip. It seemed, also, that one element was putting the blame on the other, 
 since German officers in high command had made the Turks responsible. 
 He wanted me to remove the obstacles. 
 
 I told the ambassador that he was mistaken. Whatever influence I 
 had was being exerted, and so far my efforts had led to nothing. It also 
 was brought to the ambassador's attention that there was no reason to 
 believe that I could do what he could not do. But Mr. Morgenthau was of 
 a different mind. 
 
 Having been given carte blanche in this manner, I set again about to 
 make the trip possible. This time I took the matter up with Enver Pasha 
 himself, and also interested the German ambassador in the project. Within 
 two weeks I had the promise of the two that the American officers would 
 be taken to the front. Some time was lost, however, in breaking down the 
 
 * I append a part of a report made to the Congress of the United States. 
 
 "Copy of a letter (original in existence) writ- "Trntitlnn^ti 
 
 ten by Corvette-Captain Humann, commander ..^ "^.°, "' xt , t> tt ^ 
 
 of the Imperial German naval base at Constan- Imperial German Naval Base Headquarters, 
 
 tinople, to the verbal request made to him that "B No 
 
 Seid"%o''vgi. 7h""lrT„.rat^ihrD^r°jrn« "Consuntinopl.. April 18.h. 15. 
 
 and on Gallipoli. "My dear Mr. Schreiner: 
 
 "According to information coming from 
 
 '• 'v-^:^ i;_t. r* .-t t. ■»«• • Herrn von Janson, there is little prospect of 
 
 " 'Etinnen KrSfm/n^n ^""* success for an application by Captain Williams 
 
 " 'B No ?^ . . ... ^^'^ ^^ inspection of the Dardanelles. 
 
 "The violation of the principle is feared, as 
 
 " 'C'pel, 18. 4. IS. is especially the precedent which would create 
 
 "•Sehr geehrter Herr Schreiner! inevitable consequence. 
 
 „ A 1 r. J TT T "With best greetings, 
 
 Nach einer Auskunft des Herrn von Jan- "Vmirc 
 
 son scheint mir ein Gesuch des Captain Wil- xours, 
 
 Hams fuer eine Besichtigung der Dardanellcn (Signed) "Humakk. 
 
 nicht aussichtsreich. ..jj^^^ ^^„ j^„^„ ^iU j„f^^„ y^„ ^5^^^^,^ 
 
 " 'Man befuerchtet den Durchbruch des Prin- concerning travel opportunities to the Darda- 
 
 zips und besonders den Praezedenzfall der nellcs. 
 
 unumgaengliche Konsequenzen schaffti ^. , ~ — 
 
 "Note. — The above letter was written at the 
 
 Mit ergebenstem Gruss! very beginning of the negotiations. Other cor- 
 
 " 'ihr respondence relative to the case of Captains 
 
 r'«;,Vrl«^^ " «TTrT«AM»T ' Williams and Morton is still among my effects 
 
 (.Mgneci; MUMANN. jj^ Switzerland, which, owing to the habit of 
 
 " 'Herr von Janson wird Ihnen wegen Fahrge- the French authorities, seizing the papers of 
 
 legenheit nach den Dardanellen direckt Nach- travellers, I did not attempt to take out with 
 
 richt geben.' " me. GAS." 
 
132 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 resistance of the Turkish and Cerman officers who in the past had opposed 
 the trip of inspection, but Captains Morton and Williams were finally 
 invited to make the trip, and had the experience of seeing the first Ameri- 
 can-made shells used on Gallipoli break about them. 
 
 I have pfone into the details of this case for a special reason. It has 
 been intimated already that the authorities in Constantinople were sus- 
 picious of the American embassy. The case, indeed, was much worse. In 
 the cafes of Pera and Stamboul it was openly discussed that the American 
 embassy was a sort of headquarters for the spies of the Entente govern- 
 ments, who, by the way, numbered hundreds. The U. S. stationaire 
 "Scorpion" was linked with the exploits of the British submarines in the 
 Sea of Marmora, and when, one fine summer's afternoon, a British sub- 
 marine penetrated into the Bosphorus, and nonchalantly blew up a coal 
 barge at a quay in Haidar- Pasha, under the very windows of the Ottoman 
 government offices in Stamboul, the Turkish populace swore that the 
 Americans were responsible for it, while the Greeks and Armenians, 
 waiting for a deliverer, saw in the sinking of the coal barge a sign that 
 the United States had made an alliance with the Triple Entente. 
 
 The Foibles of a Diplomatic Agent 
 
 Public opinion in times of war is the most unreliable thing there is. 
 The indignation of the Turks and the wishes of the non-Turks had to be 
 met by the Ottoman government. They were met by ordering the 
 "Scorpion" to take station inside the Golden Horn, between the new and 
 the old bridges. To Mr. Morgenthau's protest the Ottoman government 
 replied that it would be safer to have the stationaire at her new moorings, 
 since a British submarine might mistake her for a Turkish vessel and sink 
 her. The circumstance that this step was accompanied by a close search for 
 wireless apparatus at Robert College, the American School for Girls at 
 Arnautkoi, and in some of the houses inhabited by Americans, serves as an 
 indication that the Ottoman government was itself not entirely satisfied 
 with the appearance of things. 
 
 In March, 1915, the staff of the American embassy received re-in- 
 forcement in the person of Mr. Lewis Einstein, who had formerly been a 
 secretary at the same post, had left it as persona non grata, and had since 
 then filled a .small position as chef de mission in Latin America. Mr. 
 Einstein was not wanted at the American embassy in Pera. At the time 
 of his arrival I was at the Dardanelles, but even in that shell-raked region 
 the name of the new diplomatic agent was mentioned. It seems that the 
 Turkish government persisted in looking upon Mr. Einstein as entirely a 
 plain citizen and refused to extend diplomatic privileges to him. Since 
 
THE FOIBLES OF A DIPLOMATIC AGENT 133 
 
 more help was needed at the American embassy, owing to the increase in 
 work occasioned by the taking-over of the interests of belligerent govern- 
 ments, it was not easy to understand why Mr. Einstein should be given 
 such treatment. 
 
 Upon my return to the city I learned that the diplomatic agent was 
 even persona non grata with the embassy staff. He had been relegated into 
 a little cubby-hole of an office on the second floor of the embassy chancery 
 and his principal occupation seemed to consist of doing nothing in par- 
 ticular. The ambassador himself was highly displeased with this sort of 
 assistance, and indiscreet persons about the embassy let it be understood 
 that Mr. Einstein had been sent to Constantinople at the request of M. 
 Jusserand, the French ambassador at Washington. Since Mr. Einstein, 
 before his transfer to the Turkish capital, had been stationed at London 
 and Paris, that rumor had more color than was well. 
 
 I may say that many of my despatches from the Dardanelles were 
 relayed through the American embassy, though I had an assistant in Con- 
 stantinople with an address of his own, the Petit Club, next door to the 
 embassy. Since Mr. Damon Theron could get the dispatches at one place 
 as easily as at the other, and since Mr. Morgenthau was keenly interested 
 in what was going on at the front, I addressed my dispatches to his 
 embassy. In that manner he and his secretaries and attaches were kept 
 informed almost up to the minute. 
 
 My dispatches contained all the general public could be interested in. 
 Originally they contained more than what the Turkish and German officer- 
 censors at Dardanelles thought necessary, and from their own angle, wise. 
 Since the newspaper correspondent writing war copy can not afford to 
 violate confidence, should not do it, as a matter of fact, if he wishes to 
 retain his usefulness, let alone his good name, the dispatches which the 
 embassy members had read marked the limit to which I could carry dis- 
 cussion. Several members of the embassy staff did not think so. 
 
 Shortly after my return from the Dardanelles front I was invited to 
 have tea with the ambassador and his staff — a "stag affair," which took 
 place almost every day and to which usually only the secretaries and the 
 chief clerks were invited. On this day were present : Mr. Morgenthau, Mr. 
 Einstein, Mr. Shamavonian, first dragoman, Mr. Antonian, the ambas- 
 sador's private secretary, and one of the diplomatic secretaries. 
 
 There was no reason why for their entertainment I should not recount 
 the general features of the great bombardment in a more intimate manner 
 that newspaper writing permits. But I noticed that after a while I was 
 being cross-examined, with Mr. Einstein in control of the process. What 
 he wanted to know especially was what amount of ammunition there was 
 left in the Turkish emplacements. In military information that is a major 
 
134 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 subject, of course, and quite the last thing which a war correspondent 
 should discuss. Needless to say I avoided that question. When a diplomatic 
 agent shows too great an interest in so vital an aspect of a military situa- 
 tion it is usually best to be on guard. 
 
 Several efforts to bring Mr. Einstein off the subject failed. I pleaded 
 ignorance. That also was futile. The diplomatic agent thought that as 
 a former officer of artillery the detail of ammunition could not escape 
 my attention. In that he was right, of course. It did so happen that I knew 
 the exact number of shells, of the armor-piercing variety, which were left 
 in the main batteries of Anadolu Hamidieh and in the Kilid-il-Bahr works. 
 I also surmised that the agents of the Entente government would pay any 
 sum for the information, and think the bargain a good one. The blue-heads 
 left could not keep the Allied fleet from forcing the strait — ^the Dardanelles 
 in fact were open, as the Allied commander could have easily ascertained 
 by returning to the attack on March 19th, or for weeks thereafter. With 
 a little more initiative than was shown, the British and French fleets would 
 have been in Constantinople long before I could be there, as I have fully 
 explained in my book "From Berlin to Bagdad.'* 
 
 There is no doubt that I had in my hands a goodly share of the fate 
 of nations, but it was no business of mine to give the rudder of the war and 
 fate so violent a jerk. Had the Allies known that the Turkish batteries 
 along the Dardanelles were virtually out of ammunition of the armor-pierc^ 
 ing kind, had they known that the further resistance of the Turks could 
 at best be but a matter of minutes, not even hours, that Admiral von 
 Usedom Pasha, Mertens Pasha and the Turkish officers were sure that 
 a following-up of the bombardment of March 18th would result in crushr 
 ing defeat for them and a retreat into Anatolia, much of the history of the 
 Great War might be different. What the Allied governments did learn was 
 that on March 19th the Ottoman government was ready to go to Eski- 
 Shehir, but that did not seem to be enough. 
 
 Mr. Einstein must have surmised that I knew more than I was willing: 
 to admit. I am afraid that I was not enough of a simulator to deceive him. 
 He began to press the point anew, and this time stated that as a citizen 
 of the United States it was my duty to give the diplomatic service whatever 
 information I had. Mr. Morgenthau was inclined to support that view, 
 and Mr. Shamavonian also chimed in. The incident closed by my telling 
 Mr. Einstein and the company gently but firmly that I did not take this 
 view of the situation, and that the journalistic profession had rules of its 
 own — one of them being not to exchange confidences with a service, the 
 diplomatic, for instance, which normally made it its great principle not 
 to give more information to press and public than was deemed wise or 
 purposeful. 
 
THE FOIBLES OF A DIPLOMATIC AGENT 135 
 
 My actual motive in not telling Mr. Einstein what ammunition the 
 Turks had left was my desire to treat them as they had treated me. 
 There was no reason why the Turkish and German officers in the Ottoman 
 service should allow me to practically live in their emplacements — a most 
 incautious violation of every rule of military security. Still they had done 
 that, because I was personally liked by them and had, in return for the 
 privilege of being permitted at the fronts, placed myself under Ottoman 
 military law, with the especial understanding that in case of trouble I 
 would not appeal to the American embassy for help. But conduct of that 
 sort is not so easily understood by the members of a profession that will 
 violate every rule of good ethics when it can do that with impunity. 
 
 Though I had given Mr. Einstein to understand that on questions of 
 vital importance to the Turks I could not be interviewed, he tried again 
 later on to get the information he seemed to want so badly. For Captains 
 Morton and Williams, who had at least some reason to be interested in this 
 aspect of affairs at the Dardanelles, I must say that neither of them even 
 hinted at the subject of ammunition. 
 
 Beyond the Bounds of Diplomatic Propriety 
 
 It was the conduct of Mr. Einstein that brought the American 
 embassy in Pera into disrepute. Constantinople was the locale of an ex- 
 tended espionage of the Allied governments. One of their agents was a 
 man who had come to Turkey with an American passport, issued him in 
 London under false pretenses or with the connivance of some embassy 
 official, when he was in reality a British subject and had already served 
 in the British army in France. The man had in addition credentials from 
 Mr. Bell, of the Chicago Daily News, a paper which was represented at 
 that very moment by an able man I have mentioned, Mr. Swing, who did 
 not know that representation of his paper in Constantinople had been 
 duplicated in so imprudent a manner. I did not wish to see the young man 
 strangulated on a tripod, on the Seraskerkapu, and let him know that the 
 last boat for Rumania was to leave early the following morning. The 
 secret service of the Turks had been watching him closely, and Mr. Morgen- 
 thau had confirmed what I had suspected by asking me to tell the man that 
 a renewal of his passport had been refused by the Department of State 
 on the ground that he was not an American citizen. 
 
 I may say that the agent first attracted the attention of the Ottoman 
 authorities by coming to Constantinople with credentials for a paper that 
 was well represented in Turkey. Mr. Swing was questioned in regard to 
 the man before he had met him, and had stated that probably it was some 
 other Chicago paper, which the agent, who was not a newspaper man, of 
 
136 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 course, had come to represent. He had no reason to believe that the 
 "correspondent" had been appointed by the Chicago Daily News, as his 
 card actually said, nor did he believe it until he saw the letter from Mr. 
 Bell. There was nothing to do after that but accept the man as bona Ude, 
 at least publicly. The authorities, however, were not satisfied with these 
 features of the case, and in the end Mr. Swing himself was doubted, so 
 much so that he had to apply for a sort of safe conduct before he could 
 return to his regular post in Berlin. 
 
 The standing of the Americans in Constantinople was further injured 
 by the conduct of a man known as Captain Stanley Fortesque, an Ameri- 
 can journalist. The man had been taken to the Dardanelles on one of the 
 personally-conducted trips the war department organized for itinerant 
 newspaper men not regularly stationed in Turkey. Such a trip consisted 
 of a run down to the Dardanelles aboard a torpedoboat or destroyer and 
 a view of the Turkish emplacements from the outside, to which later a 
 short trip to the fronts at Ariburnu and Sid-il-Bahr was added. As the 
 result of this the man in question had written for the Paris periodical 
 V Illustration an article going into the min ite details of what was purported 
 to be the condition along the Dardanelles. The article was accompanied by 
 drawings, more or less inaccurate, but dangerous enough to the Turks to 
 necessitate a change in some of the emplacements. Needless to say, the 
 Turks were not pleased with that sort of conduct on the part of a man 
 who had been a member of the United Si ates army. 
 
 The incident had the eflfect that thereafter no foreign correspondents 
 of the itinerant type were permitted to ijo to any of the Turkish fronts. 
 In this connection I may say that the Tu/ks were unusually liberal in that 
 respect at the outbreak of the War. 
 
 To sum up this situation I wish to record that already the relations 
 between the Turkish government and the American embassy were the 
 poorest. They were so poor in fact that on the occasion of an audience given 
 Mr. Swing and myself by Sultan Mohammed Rechid Khan V, the sovereign 
 did not even think it worth while to express the usual formula according to 
 which the relations between two countries are supposed to be the best. 
 Though the audience was long enough to have included that little detail, the 
 sultan did not refer to it. The callers could not remind him of it, of course, 
 nor did Salih Pasha, the Sultan's aide de camp, who acted as interpreter, 
 think of this little matter. When later we came to it, Mr. Swing and I 
 concluded that no great harm would be done by supplying this little 
 formality ourselves. In this connection I must state that Mr. Morgenthau 
 had been unable to secure the audience for us, and that we made use of our 
 private connections in Turkish and German official circles. 
 
VUI 
 
 MACHIAVELISM A OUTRANGE 
 
 THE Dardanelles-Gallipoli fiasco is still puzzling the minds of the few 
 vho care to go into subjects of that sort with reason and logic as their 
 equipment. The peculiar aspects of the operations of the naval forces 
 and expeditionary armies of the Allied governments were to a certain extent 
 dealt with by the British Dardanelles Commission, which investigated the 
 obvious phases of this piece of military Quixotism, but nothing substantial 
 — that is, truthful — ever came of this. In the reports of this commission 
 it has been admitted that mistakes were made, and after that nothing was 
 heard again of Sir Ian Hamilton, who was in charge of the landing and 
 operations on Gallipoli. 
 
 Though the military features of this adventure are somewhat stale 
 just now, I must give enough of them to prepare the reader for the politics 
 behind them, promising to be brief in my outline. 
 
 The first attack by the Allied fleet on the Turkish works at Kum Kale 
 and Sid-il-Bahr was made on November 3, 1914, the bombardment having 
 in the main the character of a demonstration — notice to theTurks that the 
 War was on. On December 13th an Allied submarine penetrated the 
 Dardanelles as far as the Dardanos emplacement and there torpedoed the 
 converted hull of the Turkish former battleship "Messudieh," moored on 
 the shallows of Sari Siglar Bay and serving as a signal station. Two days 
 later the Turkish gunners sank nearby the French submarine that may 
 have done this, and on January 15th, 1915, the French submarine 
 "Sapphire" sank in the same locality by striking a mine. 
 
 On February 20th the Allied fleet began a severe attack on the batteries 
 of Kum Kale and Sid-il-Bahr, which guarded the entrance, and after a 
 seven-days bombardment, in which the Turks were sorely handicapped by 
 the lesser range of their guns, the works in question were silenced and in 
 part razed to the ground. For another two days the sites of the coast 
 batteries were subjected to bombardments and then the Turkish emplace- 
 ments along Erenkoi Bay were taken under fire, especially the five-piece 
 battery on the site of the ancient city of Dardanos. Little by little the 
 zone of the bombardment was extended, and on March 5th the works at 
 Killid-il-Bahr were seriously hammered for the first time. On the following 
 day the piece de resistance of the defense scheme of the Outer Dardanelles, 
 
 137 
 
138 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Fort Anadolu Hamidieh, was placed under fire by the Allied fleet, and 
 on the following day this was continued. After that a period of rest set in, 
 due in the main to the paucity of effect favorable to the Allies. 
 
 The Turks had placed howitzers on the elevations of Gallipoli and the 
 eastern shore of the strait and these were making themselves much more 
 felt than the German artillery experts, who had advised that course, had 
 themselves expected. While the shell of the howitzer is absolutely impotent 
 against the side of an armored warcraft, it can, nevertheless, penetrate 
 the decks of such ships, when these are unarmored. The Allied fleet had 
 been much molested by this, and their conduct indicated that re-inforce- 
 ments would be called to take care of this situation. 
 
 Caliber for caliber the guns in the Turkish emplacements were much 
 inferior to those of the British and French battleships. They were wholly 
 impotent in comparison to the large rifles of the "Queen Elizabeth," a 
 member of what was then the most modern type of superdreadnaught 
 battle-cruisers. The difference in range between gun ashore and gun afloat 
 was even in case of the older pre-dreadnaught types employed by the 
 Allies great enough to permit the total reduction of the coast batteries 
 without the ships having to come within what was at all an effective range 
 of the Turkish guns. 
 
 In the bombardment and reduction of the works at the entrance to 
 the strait that had been the deciding factor. The Allied fleet had destroyed 
 those batteries without suffering material losses of any kind. Within the 
 Dardanelles, in the Bay of Erenkoi, it was different, however. Outside the 
 Allied battleships had stayed well out of effective range of the Turkish 
 guns. In Erenkoi Bay that was not possible, since a ring of emplacements, 
 all of them more or less antiquated, surrounded them there. In addition there 
 were the howitzers of the Turks. A shell piercing the deck may easily ruin 
 the machinery of a ship, may even sink it, provided conditions are favorable. 
 
 A Militaro-Diplomatic Move Foiled 
 
 It was plain, then, to the commander of the Allied fleet, that he would 
 have to augment his forces sufficiently to take the major part of the coast 
 batteries along the Outer Dardanelles under fire simultaneously. He had 
 this fleet at Tenedos and Lemnos on March 16th. Two days later he came 
 to the attack with a force of eighteen battleships of the line and the 
 "Queen Elizabeth." 
 
 So far the Turkish gunners and their German associates had been 
 accustomed to dealing with from three to seven bombarding battleships. 
 The greater array left them somewhat diffused in mind and fire practice. 
 So many targets were offered and so few of them could be reached that 
 
A MIUTARO-DIPLOMATIC MOVE FOILED 139 
 
 a most uncomfortable feeling crept over everybody, as I have reason to 
 know, seeing that I weathered the opening salvoes in a Turkish emplace- 
 ment, Fort Tchemenlik. Knowing that a live war correspondent is better 
 than a dead one, I ultimately found better cover, a polite way for saying 
 that there was an unceremonious retreat, with little glory attaching thereto. 
 The fire of the Allied ships was an overwhelming one. But the great 
 range of it made most of the shells rather ineffective for lack of good aim, 
 to which must be added that the old earthworks of the Turks withstood the 
 impact of the huge projectiles much better than a modern concrete-armor 
 contraption of the Antwerp type would have done. Aerial observers had 
 established that much by about 1 p. m. and the result was that the Allied 
 ships, milling about the bay, ventured in closer, despite the mine field that 
 was believed to be more formidable than in reality it was. 
 
 At 2 p. m. the French battleship "Bouvet," was sunk by the Turkish 
 and German gunners in Fort Anadolu Hamidieh, and two hours later, the 
 Allied armada had seven disabled ships on their hands. About sundown 
 one of these, the "Irresistible," was sliced to pieces by the guns of the 
 Turks, and a little later, a third member of the fleet, the "Ocean" sank in 
 Morto Bay, a little bight on the Gallipolian shore, where British cruisers 
 intended beaching the injured vessel. The "Queen Elizabeth" had suffered 
 heavily from the shells of the howitzers and had also withdrawn. 
 
 All of this took more ammunition than the Turks had to give to the 
 affairs of a single day, and when night came the prospect was that a 
 return of the British and French en force on the morrow would certainly 
 "force" the Dardanelles. 
 
 There was no return engagement, however, contrary to the fulsome 
 newspaper reports of those days. The Allied fleet failed to appear, and 
 after sticking close to the islands of Tenedos and Lemnos for a few 
 days, most of the ships went to other parts for repairs and refitting. The 
 supreme commander of the armada could not know that the Turks were 
 practically out of ammunition, and, in addition to that, he was obliged to 
 count on the defense of the Turkish batteries along the Inner Dardanelles 
 as well as on the efforts of the works he had bombarded during a day 
 that cost him three battleships, several minor craft, and necessitated much 
 repair work. Nor had he learned that the Germans, theorizing that with 
 the defense of the Outer Strait the fate of the Inner Dardanelles would 
 be decided, had totally changed the system of batteries, as the British 
 Naval Mission to Turkey knew it. Admiral Limpus, the chief of that 
 mission, was indeed with the Allied fleet, and his advice under different 
 conditions would have been invaluable. But the Germans and Turks had 
 discounted that in the regroupment that was undertaken within the limits 
 set by time and equipment. 
 
140 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 The Allied fleet resumed the bombardment of the batteries in conjunc- 
 tion with the landing of the first expeditionary forces on April 25th, but 
 remembered too well the lesson it had been given on March 18th to venture 
 in very close. Moreover, a different plan of action had been decided 
 upon meanwhile in London. 
 
 The troops landed on Gallipoli on April 25th and for the three days 
 following were supposed to place themselves in possession of certain 
 elevations on the peninsula from which the Turkish coast batteries along 
 the Outer and Inner Dardanelles could be bombarded to greater advantage, 
 and silenced, so that the Allied fleet, in which the British units predominated, 
 could steam to Constantinople. The two principal elevations were the 
 Atchi-Baba, a little distance north of the points in and near Sid-il-Bahr, 
 where British troops were landed, and the Kodjatchemen Dagh, immediately 
 in the rear of Ariburnu, where the **Anzac" troops were set ashore. 
 
 The landing of French contingents near Kum Kale, on the Anatolian 
 shore, and a feint on the Thracian shore by Greek volunteers, in the Gulf 
 of Xeros, were measures designed to deceive Field Marshall Liman von 
 Sanders Pasha, who was in charge of the defense of the peninsula. 
 
 To some extent Liman Pasha was deceived. While he had not left 
 entirely undefended the shore at Sid-il-Bahr, and Ariburnu, he had, never- 
 theless, stationed the gross of his scant force, and his puny reserves, in a 
 manner agreeable to tactical and strategic practices that harmonized with 
 what the military world in general had expected. Some of Liman's spare 
 troops were concentrated to the west of Maidos, but more of them were 
 up at Bulair, about 65 miles north of Sid-il-Bahr, with no railroad to serve 
 them. The Turkish commander had expected, of course, that Sir Ian 
 Hamilton would make his major attack on the narrow isthmus which 
 connects the peninsula with Thrace, and which for such contingencies had 
 been fortified by the Turks across its entire width, about S^/^ miles, with 
 the defense face north, instead of south, as is so generally believed, 
 even by military men. The purpose of the forts and redoubts, and their 
 intervening infantry positions, was not to hold back an enemy in possession 
 of the peninsula from advancing into Thrace and on the capital, but to 
 protect the coast batteries along the Dardanelles against attack from the 
 rear. 
 
 Liman von Sanders Pasha realized fully that the successful occupa- 
 tion by Allied troops of almost any point along the shores of the Gulf of 
 Xeros might develop into a far greater problem for him, and for 
 Turkey, than the eiTective landing at Sid-il-Bahr and Ariburnu. It meant 
 at the very least a cutting-off of the peninsula by land, and the placing 
 in jeopardy of the line of communication with Germany, the Constantinople- 
 Sofia railroad line. True enough, an advance of the Allies on the Turkish 
 
A MILITARO-DIPLOMATIC MOVE FOILED 141 
 
 capital would have brought them up at the Tchataldja line of fortifications, 
 no easy nut to crack for an expeditionary force that depended upon a long 
 line of communication, but the effect of cutting the rail line from Berlin 
 to Constantinople was something which both, the Turkish and the German 
 general staffs, had to avoid. Militarily that would have been no especial 
 loss just then, but the political effect would have been tremendous. 
 
 Before entering upon a disquisition of the political motives behind 
 Sir Ian Hamilton's instructions, I will complete the outline of the Gallipoli 
 operation. 
 
 With the landing accomplished, the Allies, French and British troops 
 at Sid-il-Bahr, and the "Anzacs" at Ariburnu, engaged the Turks in a 
 series of most murderous offensives. But the Atchi-Baba hill, and the 
 Kodjatchemen Dagh, remained as far off as ever in August of that year. 
 On the 6th of that month Sir Ian Hamilton began to throw his second 
 expeditionary contingents upon the peninsula, especially at Suvla Bay, 
 and for another few months the wearying position warfare on Gallipoli 
 continued. 
 
 In December and in January, 1916, the Allied forces on the peninsula 
 were withdrawn, and thereafter the Dardanelles and its environments 
 ceased to be a theater of war. Despite the fact that the great undertaking 
 was prevented from being a debacle, as Turk and German hoped to make 
 it. Despite the fine management shown in the retreat from the peninsula, 
 the loss of prestige to the arms of the Allies was great. 
 
 Such a loss had to be taken into consideration before the order for 
 retirement was given, and had the political situation remained what it was 
 in the winter of 1914-5 the British would have never consented to the 
 abandonment of a plan that had cost them so many lives and so much 
 money. The fact is that the danger of losing Constantinople and her water- 
 ways to the Russians had subsided sufficiently to permit British statesmen 
 to regard the war with Turkey a secondary matter. Russia was for the 
 time being too busy with her disintegrating army, and with the bad fortunes 
 of war, to threaten seriously the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles and the 
 city between them. On the other hand, the entrance into the War of 
 Bulgaria, on the side of the Central Powers group, had given the situation 
 in the hinterland of Constantinople, the Balkans, a different character. 
 
 Strange Diplomatic Bed-Fellows 
 
 The decision of the Ottoman government to link its fate with that 
 of the Central Powers had led to an awkward political situation between 
 the members of the Triple Entente. War of some sort would have to be 
 made upon a government which in the past had subsisted almost entirely 
 
142 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 by the gmce and upon the good will of the Powers. To leave matters 
 with a declaration of war was highly dangerous, and might give force to 
 the fetwah of the Sultan, calling for a Holy War, which otherwise it 
 would and did lack. The British government, especially, had to fear the 
 consequences of ignoring the challenge of the Turkish government. The 
 millions of Mohammedans under British rule and control were bound to 
 keep a very close watch on what would happen in this fight between King 
 George of Great Britain, Emperor of India, etc., their temporal overlord, 
 and Sultan Mohammed Rechid Khan V of Turkey, Ghazi, Caliph, etc., 
 spiritual head of Islam. 
 
 The other side of this medal was not much prettier. The logical point 
 of attack for British troops was not in the southern extremes of 
 Mesopotamia, nor was Russia entirely satisfied with the case of necessity 
 pleaded by the British in connection with the Suez Canal. What Russia 
 wanted forthwith was the opening of the Dardanelles, so that her ships 
 might take wheat to Great Britain and France, and materials of war to 
 the Black Sea ports. That was sound enough, but for the British very poor 
 policy. What Russia wanted more, though, was to set foot into Constanti- 
 nople, so that she might actually have and hold what just then was nothing 
 more than the substance of a treaty. 
 
 It would not do, just then, for British statesmen to follow their tradi- 
 tional policy of being the friend of the Turks, for the sole reason of keeping 
 the Russian Black Sea fleet bottled up, and to the size which limitation 
 of radius to a mare clausum imposes. To be sure at that moment a large 
 Russian fleet would have been very desirable, as the Russian cruiser 
 "Askold," attached later to the Dardanelles fleet, demonstrated concretely. 
 But the British politician in office is generally a statesman for the reason 
 that he must follow a traditional policy — drops into it as a matter of fact. 
 The British empire today travels on the impetus and in the groove furnished 
 by her great political leaders, and in this instance the momentum and 
 channel were the exclusion in the future, as in the past, of the Russian from 
 the Mediterranean. 
 
 The Russian Black Sea war fleet was small because it was limited to 
 a relatively small sheet of water, on the shores of which live weak neighbors. 
 It had for military purposes no access to the high seas. There was no 
 reason why the Russian Black Sea navy should have been larger than it 
 was — indeed, there was no valid reason why it should have been so large. 
 But with the Dardanelles in the hands of the Russian, things would have 
 been entirely different. 
 
 Possession of the Sea of Marmora would have given Russia the 
 finest naval base in the world, and thereafter the Russian Baltic naval 
 ports would have rapidly become a thing of memory. In that event, also. 
 
STRANGE DIPLOMATIC BED-FELLOWS 143 
 
 Great Britain would have had for rival in the supremacy of the seas not 
 a Germany, that was poverty-stricken, in comparison with the reserve 
 resources of Russia, but a state to whose population control of the 
 Dardanelles would have been the signal for a united attempt to secure 
 h^emony of much of the earth. A Russia that had Zarigrad on the 
 Golden Horn for its real capital, would have needed no social reforms 
 of a violent character. In the widening of the political horizon of their 
 country, the Russian people would have found their liberation, while the 
 realization of a dream of a thousand years would have implanted into the 
 Russian the thing he never had — patriotism of the imperialistic brand. 
 
 These were possibilities, nay actualities, which the British statesmen 
 had to bear in mind. These men were indeed before the horns of a 
 dilemma. On the one hand they might lose their Mohammedan empire, 
 and on the other the Dardanelles, a waterway controlling, under the cir- 
 ciunstances, the highway to that empire — the Suez Canal. 
 
 Russia's Dream a Diplomatic Desire 
 
 Let us see how the Russian government looked upon the case. 
 
 The situation being what it was, that government decided to take off 
 for always the irksome barriers across the entrance and mouth of the 
 Bosphorus-Dardanelles channel. Sazonoff wanted much besides. When the 
 British government saw his program it regretted for the first time that 
 it had entered the European War "for the sake of Belgium." In London 
 they actually gasped for breath. 
 
 Sir Louis Mallet had been given no great welcome when he returned 
 to his capital. Though he had done his best, some thought he should 
 have done more, as is the lot of any "unsuccessful" diplomatist. The 
 entrance of Turkey in the War had brought British statesmen face to face 
 with a problem they had not counted upon a scant three months before. 
 The Ottoman government was thought absolutely safe, and when it was 
 shown that this was not so, the men in London were sure that a guarantee 
 for thirty years of the integrity of the domain of the empire was all there 
 was needed to keep the Ottoman government satisfied. 
 
 It is barely possible that the Sublime Porte would have taken a thirty 
 years' lease on life, instead of venturing existence at a single throw, 
 though this is not highly probable under the circumstances. The Young 
 Turk element was sure that the rehabilitation of their country had to be 
 preceded by a radical change in its international status. With special 
 privileges held by influential representatives and institutions from all parts 
 of the world, not to mention the special concessions which the capitulations 
 were, the leaders of the Turkish government contemplated the prospect 
 
•144 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 of national suicide with less perturbation than the slow strangulation of 
 government and state and Osmanli race to which the foreigner-controlled 
 reign of Abdul Hamid and his immediate predecessors had condemned 
 Turkey. 
 
 M. N. M. de Giers, the Russian ambassador, had been rather pro- 
 German during the days that followed the assassination of the arch-duke. 
 At any rate he had always been indifferent to the French and British 
 diplomatists on the Golden Horn, following in this, perhaps, the inclinations 
 of his father — the Russian minister of foreign affairs, who, together with 
 Czar Alexander III, had opposed the alliance with France. During the 
 negotiations on the thirty-years guarantee for Turkey, the younger de 
 Giers had been more of an interested spectator than a participant. M. 
 Bompard, the French ambassador, also, seemed incapable of furthering 
 the scheme, though in his case it was rather a lack of ability that handi- 
 capped the undertaking which the British ambassador was promoting. 
 
 Be that as it may, de Giers took the stand, as he expressed it to a 
 diplomatic acquaintance of mine, that, whatever might come of the offer 
 made the Sublime Porte, one thing was certain: The status of the 
 Dardanelles was bound to be a different one, after the War. It was 
 this very statement which later caused so much anxiety to the Rumanian 
 political group, headed by Senator Alexandru Marghiloman, and former 
 Premier Peter Carp, of which more later on. 
 
 Whether or no the Ottoman government knew the attitude of the 
 Russian government and its ambassador at Constantinople makes little 
 difference now. The fact is that the negotiations were cut short by the 
 activity of Russian mine-laying ships near the entrance to the Bosphorus. 
 The Turkish cabinet did not trust the advances of the Entente diplomatists, 
 and had no reason to trust the Russian envoy, who, moreover, was not 
 anxious to be trusted. The Russian government had made up its mind to 
 get to Constantinople and the Dardanelles this time — make or break. 
 
 The records of the Russian government show that up to the beginning 
 of March, 1915, Sazonoff had no assurance that Great Britain and France 
 would honor Russia's demands in and around Constantinople. It is shown 
 in a telegram, No. 168, March 11th, 1917, sent to his government by 
 Isvolski, the Russian ambassador at Paris, that a treaty between the 
 Russian and French governments, concerning the claims of Russia 
 generally, and those along the Dardanelles particularly, was not concluded 
 until the year 1915, while from March 4th (new style), 1915, comes a 
 memorandum handed by Sazonoff to the French and British ambassadors 
 in which the intentions of Russia concerning the annexation planned by 
 her government are outlined. Subject to modifications to be stated further 
 on Russia wanted to wrench from the Ottoman empire — • 
 
RUSSIA'S DREAM A DIPLOMATIC DESIRE 145 
 
 "the city of Constantinople ; the western shores of the Bosphorus, 
 Marmora Sea, and the Dardanelles ; Southern Frigia, to the line 
 of Enos-Media ; the shores of Asia Minor between Bosphorus, the 
 river Samara, and a point of Ismid Gulf to be determined later 
 on; the islands in the Sea of Marmora, and the islands of 
 Imbros and Tenedos." 
 
 In addition to stating that the special interests of France and Great 
 Britain in those territories were to be respected, the memorandum refers to 
 the fact that Constantinople was to be recognized as a free port for the 
 transit of merchandise not of Russian origin or destination, and that 
 merchant ships were to have free passage in the straits of Bosphorus and 
 Dardanelles. Something more is said concerning British and French rights 
 in Asia Minor, the preservation of sacred Mohammedan places, and the 
 placing of Arabia under independent Mohammedan rule. For Great 
 Britain the quid pro quo for all this was to be the inclusion within its 
 sphere of influence in Persia of the territory known as the neutral zone. 
 Not enough with that Sazonoff expresses himself in favor of separating 
 from the Turkish Sultanate the Caliphate. 
 
 Shorn of all verbiage the conditions which Sazonoff imposed, and 
 which Great Britain and France accepted so reluctantly, mean that Russia 
 would have been in complete control of the principal part of the Ottoman 
 empire — Thrace as far west as the Enos-Media line, with the remainder 
 west of that boundary ceded to Bulgaria, the city of Constantinople, 
 Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora and its islands, the 
 Bosphorus and as much of Western Anatolia as Russia pleased. 
 
 According to the program of the Russian general staff the Russian 
 army was to advance across Anatolia, thence into Cilicia, and occupation 
 would in that event have completed the annexation of all Turkey. For 
 its western neighbor Russia in those parts would have had the Bulgarians ; 
 for its eastern frontier on this southward expansion its own sphere of 
 influence in Persia. In the South the Taurus range would have made a 
 most practical military border, provided that Syria and Palestine had not 
 been annexed; at the entrance of the Dardanelles, the islands of Tenedos 
 and Imbros, not to mention the reefs known as the Tauschan or Rabbit 
 islands, would have served excellently as the sites of the needed Russian 
 Gibraltar s. If ; *?' "1 
 
 That the island of Lemnos is not mentioned in the memorandum is 
 rather surprising, but that may not mean anything, seeing that the Tauschan 
 reefs were also overlooked. With that much gone Great Britain would 
 have been driven out of the Aegean anyway, so the ignoring of an island 
 or two would not have mattered. Lemnos, moreover, could have been given 
 to the Greeks, who in this classic bit of earth would have seen the physical 
 
146 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 link that bound them to the Greater Russian empire — the Russia mare, 
 which Sazonoff had in view. 
 
 Of course, British statesmen trembled when they gave some sort of 
 assent to this Russian program. What they had promised Russia could be 
 snatched from the paws of the bear only by defeat, or by future political 
 maneuvering — one of these was not to be invited, and the other lacked as 
 yet the very room for its moves and countermoves. So we find that on 
 March 18th — ^the fateful — Sazonoff informs his agent in Paris, Isvolski, 
 that on March 8th, the French ambassador at Petrograd stated to him that 
 the French government was taking "a most friendly attitude towards the 
 realization of our desires * * * in connection with the straits and Constan- 
 tinople," for which he instructed Isvolski to express to Delcasse his ap- 
 preciation. The telegram continues: 
 
 "In his conversations with you, Delcasse, even before, 
 repeatedly expressed his assurances that we may depend on the 
 sympathy of France, and only referred to the necessity of clarify- 
 ing England's attitude, from which side he feared objections, 
 before giving us more concrete assurances to the aforesaid effect." 
 
 The excerpt speaks for itself. The italics are mine. 
 
 There was a little negotiating after that, on the merest trifles, com- 
 pared with the territories and interests that had been written over to the 
 Russians. In effect the situation remained what it was. Sazonoff even 
 succeeded in persuading his allied governments that it would be well to 
 separate the Osmanli Sultanate from the Islam Caliphate, which was just 
 as well as there was to be no longer any Turkey, when the Russian minister 
 of foreign affairs was through with it. He was willing, however, to 
 guarantee the freedom of pilgrimage to the Mohammedans that were to 
 pass under Muscovite rule, which meant nothing, of course, considering 
 that the Mohammedans of the Russian empire had enjoyed that privilege 
 long before Sazonoff was born. As a shamming hair splitter the man was 
 as exasperating it seems as an empire builder. 
 
 Where Clarification Was Needed 
 
 Such then was the status of Constantinople, her waterways, empire 
 and government, when the necessity for military endeavor on a much 
 larger scale arose. One would have thought that Russia would have 
 offered a large army for this "realization" of her "desires." That much 
 the Turkish government feared, for these things were not unknown in 
 Stamboul. In fact I discussed them with Said Halim Pasha, the grand 
 vizier, Enver Pasha, minister of war, and Talaat Bey, of the interior, 
 long before a serious attempt was made to carry them into effect. It was 
 
WHERE CLARIEICATION WAS NEEDED 147 
 
 rather odd that in this instance taciturn diplomacy shouted its plans to 
 the populace, or at least that part of the populace which takes an interest 
 in such matters. There were two neutral diplomatic missions in Constan- 
 tinople where I had no difficulty getting quite the latest turn and fashion 
 in diplomacy. Now and then one had to exercise a little judgment in not 
 mixing matters, but on the whole I had no trouble keeping well informed. 
 
 There was some talk in March that the Russians intended landing a 
 large army on the Black Sea coast of Thrace, near Media. As the result 
 of this more Ottoman troops were withdrawn from the Caucasus and 
 Mesopotamia than was wise, and the Ottoman Second Army, which also 
 had been intended for use at the Gulf of Xeros was rushed northward 
 overnight, with nothing but its cavalry contingents remaining in the Kuru 
 Dagh for emergency purposes. 
 
 But the Russians made no move in that direction. 
 
 Instead came news that large bodies of British troops were being 
 brought into the Mediterranean, landing in Egypt, on Cyprus, and o« 
 the island of Lemnos, the principal bay of which, Mudros, was being 
 converted into a general military base by the British and French. It 
 seemed that the Russians were too much occupied with the Germans and 
 Austrians in the Carpathians to care much just then for Constantinople 
 and its environments. The Russian general staff had its hands full 
 engineering maneuvers that kept much of the German army out of France 
 — ^the only reason why the French government and certain elements in 
 London had acquiesced into the ambitious schemes of Sazonoff. One 
 had to spar for time, even at the risk of having a most refractious and 
 gluttonous ally to deal with later on. 
 
 That Sir Ian Hamilton did not land his forces on the shores of Thrace, 
 Enos, if no other place, caused general excitement in Turkey, the Central 
 Powers, and throughout the world. By doing that he would have cut off, 
 as I have already stated, the Turks on Gallipoli, and severed completely 
 their direct land route of communication between the peninsula and Thrace, 
 no great calamity to be sure, since the Turks depended to within eighty per 
 cent on transport by water — on the Dardanelles. But edging a little 
 southward, as he would have been able to do, he would have gained absolute 
 control of the entrance to the Strait from the north, where it joins the 
 Sea of Marmora. Of course, the line of fortifications at Bulair was in 
 the way, but that line he could have razed to the ground as completely 
 as his supporting warfleet had razed the works at Kum Kale and Sid-il- 
 Bahr, seeing that the positions were open to flankal fire, and did not 
 have the support of other emplaced batteries. The case of the forts at 
 Bulair differed in that respect in nowise from that of the works at the 
 southern gate of the Dardanelles. 
 
148 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 With the isthmus of Bulair in the hands of tht Allied troops, and 
 with the entrance to the Dardanelles, opposite the town of Gallipoli, com- 
 manded by British and French artillery, the Turks would have been 
 obliged to supply their Third Army and the Third Army corps, the men 
 of the coast batteries, and a few other organizations, over the worst roads 
 imaginable. The only railroad line in Anatolia east of the Dardanelles, the 
 Ancient Phrygia Minor, runs from Panderma to Smyrna, and comes 
 nowhere closer than 90 miles to the contested waterway. Since it is but 
 half the distance from Karabiagh to Dardanelles, no railroad transporta- 
 tion of any sort would have figured in the efforts of the Turks to hold 
 the Strait. Being familiar with the roads in that part of the world, and 
 the requirements of an army, I may be pardoned for saying that these 
 efforts would have been futile, in the absence of good roads and thousands 
 of motor trucks. 
 
 Instead of bringing that state of affairs about, and giving himself 
 an excellent start for an advance into Thrace, Sir Ian Hamilton, selected 
 to land at Sid-il-Bahr and Ariburnu for the purposes I have already re- 
 ferred to — the taking of the Atchi Baba elevation and the Kodjatchemen 
 Dagh. From these points of vantage, and there were others just as good, 
 British long-range rifles and high-angle pieces w^ere to put a period to 
 Turkish defense of the Dardanelles. After that the Allied fleet, composed 
 six to one, of British and French battleships, was to steam to Constanti- 
 nople, as it was hoped it would do in March of that year. 
 
 But nothing came of this. The Turks and their German leaders 
 realized what the reaching of any prominent elevations by the Allies meant 
 and held on like grim death — doing themselves anything but a favor in 
 the light of the general situation which later ensued. 
 
 Nobody would have expected the British to hand over to the Russians 
 two waterways, an inland sea of the greatest tactical importance, and a 
 city like Constantinople. The British would have "internationalized" all 
 of this gain, and "internationalization" in this case meant that the conditions 
 imposed upon the Turk would have been extended in harmony with the 
 British and French interests in Turkey, as Sazonoff said in his memo- 
 randum, without giving it at all that meaning. Russia would have been 
 as near the "realization" of her "desires" as she had been a year before, 
 which was not any too close. 
 
 Of course, the British statesmen, from whom Sir Ian Hamilton, ac- 
 cording to rule and the findings of the British Dardanelles Commission, 
 took his orders, were playing a very dangerous game, ae Sir George 
 Buchanan knew only too well. To bilk the Russians in that manner 
 would have led immediately to peace negotiations between the Central 
 Powers and Russia, and these, as is well known, were launched several 
 
WHERE CLARIFICATION WAS NEEDED 149 
 
 times so far as court circles in Petrograd, Darmstadt and Berlin could 
 do it. That a peace on this basis was not actually concluded is due to the 
 fact that the interests of Russia and Germany also clashed in and about 
 the capital of Turkey. Berlin-to-Bagdad had indeed become an idee fixe 
 with the German Alldeutschen and expansionists, and into this scheme 
 could not fit the control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles by the Russians. 
 The two sets of expansion policies crossed one another at right angles in 
 Constantinople and permitted no satisfactory modus vivendi. 
 
 Clarification Is No Longer Needed 
 
 Good luck was to play an important role in this highly critical situa- 
 tion, and, as usual, it favored the British. The great drive of the Germans 
 into Poland and Russia throughout the summer of 1915 left the Russian 
 government no time to occupy itself with the landing of a large expedi- 
 tionary force in Thrace. The Russian general staff had its hands full with 
 problems nearer home. When it found time to breathe, it took stock 
 of a state of affairs that left every balance in favor of the Central Powers. 
 Its own army had been routed and badly disorganized on a retreat that 
 left the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in possession of twenty times 
 the territory the Russians had ever occupied in the countries of their 
 enemies. Fortress after fortress, base after base, had fallen into the hands 
 of the antagonist, and in the territory of the new front were not to be 
 found the fine strategic railroad lines built by the money of French in- 
 vestors, and which had served so well during the first advance. 
 
 Elsewhere the outlook was just as gloomy. On the West Front things 
 were stalmate and the War of Attrition was already on, wearing down 
 both sides with fine impartiality. In the Balkan the spectacle was dis- 
 heartening in the extreme. Bulgaria had joined the Central Powers, 
 thereby opening the direct route from Berlin to Bagdad, and making 
 possible, or at least less difficult, the complete crushing of Serbia, enfant 
 gatee of the Russian government. Greece had refused to come to the 
 assistance of Serbia, despite a treaty that provided for this, and in 
 Rumania, the Marghiloman faction was still defying the Bratianu-Jonescu- 
 Filipescu coalition, and was doing it successfully. 
 
 The Italian army was bleeding itself white on the treacherous Carso, 
 without getting anywhere, and on Gallipoli a sad chapter of the War was 
 coming rapidly to a close. All summer long British and Anzac had given 
 the Turks the fight of their history, and when fall came they were still on 
 the ground they had first occupied. In some cases even ground had been 
 lost. In the Caucasus and in Mesopotamia things were no better, and a 
 little later Kut-el-Amara was retaken by the Turks. 
 
150 THE CRAFT SINISTER '^ 
 
 Instead of thinking much of Zarigrad on the Golden Horn, the Russian 
 government and people were near distraction. Both of them were pa)ring 
 the first instalment of the debt Sazonoff had heaped upon them in his mad 
 foreign policy and later he gave up his office — favorite practice of 
 ministers who have plunged their own people, and the world besides, into 
 war and of a sudden feel the necessity of taking a rest — "getting from 
 under" in American parlance. The good luck of the British statesmen 
 in not having to cope with assistance from the Russians, across the 
 Black Sea, was augmented by the rapid decline of Sazonoff, and so it 
 came to pass that Great Britain and Russia did not have to end the War 
 in favor of Germany in order to fight with each other over the possession 
 of Constantinople, her territory, and her waterways. 
 
 No matter how the War with Germany would have ended for Great 
 Britain, she would have been the defeated had Russia actually carried out 
 her program of expansion southward. Within two decades Russia would 
 have had in the Sea of Marmora a fleet large enough to control the 
 A^ean and the Mediterranean Seas, and with that would have been 
 coupled the loss of control by Great Britain of the Suez Canal. To 
 occupy the Turks and Germans at the Dardanelles and on Gallipoli was 
 necessary and wise, but to do anything that would actually place Great 
 Britain in a position of having to refuse Russia that which had been 
 promised her would have been folly ; on the other hand there would have 
 been no British statesman who would have dared to carry out the terms 
 of the British-Franco-Russian entente in regard to Turkey. 
 
 Viewed in the light of national biology the entente in question was 
 Great Britain's death warrant. Small wonder that Delcasse had seen fit 
 to refer "to the necessity of clarifying England's attitude" on the question. 
 Her statesmen, after denying to themselves that the traditional in interna- 
 tional relations is the natural tendency of peoples, had been seized by a 
 panic, with the result that "autocratic** Russia forced from "liberal" Great 
 Britain a concession which the latter could not ultimately live up to, and 
 which she, therefore, intended contesting at a more favorable moment 
 than pressure of the German armies just then left the British politicians. 
 
 The British government had no reason to live up to the terms Sazonoff 
 had insisted upon. Even the strong may be placed under duress occasionally, 
 and in this instance the force majeure compelling Great Britain was not 
 alone the strength of the Germany army, but the "desires" of Russia, the 
 ally of the British — ^the same Russia, which for the culmination of her de- 
 signs in the same direction had concluded with France, in 1893, an alliance 
 calculated to put an end to British hegemony in Asia. 
 
 In the light of the entente regarding the partition, and so far as Russia 
 was concerned, the total annexation, of the Ottoman empire, it should be 
 
CLARIFICATION NO LONGER NEEDED 151 
 
 clear that the Turkish ministers took the only course that was open to 
 them. That the Ottoman cabinet paid so little attention to the guarantees 
 offered for the intregity of the empire need not surprise the world any 
 longer, and with that vanishes the vapid talk by diplomatic propagandists 
 who have insisted that Baron von Wangenheim was the evil genius of 
 Turkey. What the intentions of Russia were has been shown, and how 
 little these were calculated to benefit the world was demonstrated by the 
 acts of the British, for, with all respect to the Russian people, we, who 
 are more distinctly of the Occident, would prefer to pass under the rule 
 of Great Britain rather than under that of a Romanoff Russia. 
 
 There is one point to which I must hark back. I have said that the 
 British fleet was to steam to Constantinople, together with a small French 
 attachment, and that in this manner the "realization" of Russian "desires" 
 was to be foiled. The question is permissible: How was this to be done? 
 The presence of a large British fleet would have settled the problem at 
 the start. The fact that some French vessels were to be in the Allied fleet 
 in the Black Sea was some argument against the clamour that would have 
 come from Russia, for, as the memorandum of Sazonoff admitted : 
 
 "The French as well as the English government expressed 
 their assent to the fulfilment of our desires in the event of a 
 successful termination of the War and the satisfaction of a series 
 of demands of France and England within the limits of the 
 Ottoman empire as well as in other places." 
 
 Even the diplomatically uninitiated will realise that the terms were 
 very elastic and the possibility of interpretation large in these two categories 
 of eventualities. There was only one thing to be avoided and that was 
 actual occupation of any part of Thrace by Russian troops, and that 
 the good fortune of war prevented. Whether or no fortune was equally 
 kind in placing the Straits of Constantinople under the control of the 
 British at the end of the Great War remains to be seen. 
 
 Consequences of the Dardanelles Fiasco 
 
 I had been the first to express the opinion that the Allied fleet would 
 not get through to Constantinople, and that the landed forces of Great 
 Britain and France would not fare any better. Counting upon the renewal 
 of the stock of ammunition in the Turkish coast batteries, and having 
 seen what little actual damage had been done to the emplacements along 
 the Outer Dardanelles in an action that cost the Allies three very good 
 ships, and put six others out of commission for some time, I concluded 
 that an attack on the strait would not be repeated so long as the War 
 was young and every battleship a great asset. 
 
152 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 I did not understand the full complexity of British-Russian interests 
 at that time, to be sure, but was for all that far from inclined of accepting 
 the advanced aspect of the case without a healthy amount of skepticism. 
 The dispatches I had written had attracted the attention of the Ottoman 
 and German authorities, with the result that officers who were my superiors 
 in matters of technical knowledge wanted to hear more of my views. To 
 my great surprise I discovered that I was almost the only person in 
 Constantinople who held that the British and French would not renew 
 the attack by water again, but would synchronize the next offensive with 
 a landing of a large expeditionary force — in the Gulf of Xeros. 
 
 The case is of no special import except in so far as it shows that I 
 was with the rest of the world mistaken in the latter assumption. Already 
 in June, 1915, 1 wrote several dispatches in which I indicated that ultimately 
 the expedition on Gallipoli would end in withdrawal by the Allies. One of 
 these, I remember, caused a United States military publication a great 
 deal of mirth, but the laugh was on the other side six months later. If 
 Sir Ian Hamilton had set out to find the worst terrain for his troops he 
 could not have done better than at Sid-il-Bahr, Ariburnu and Suvla Bay* 
 Almost any point along the shore of the Xeros Gulf would have been 
 infinitely better. But it seems that the statesmen at home did not allow 
 him too much room for picking suitable landing places. 
 
 It has always been bad policy to give a military operation a political 
 objective, apart from the ultimate aim of decently conducted wars — the 
 re-establishment of peace as quickly as possible with a maximum of credit 
 to oneself and a minimum of injustice to the vanquished. 
 
 Developments at the gates of Constantinople were to have their effect 
 in the Balkan countries. iAji interview I had with the Bulgarian premier, 
 Dr. Radoslavoff, in February of the same year, had caused me to look with 
 suspicion upon the assertions of the Allied governments that ultimately 
 every Slav race would fight in their camp. Dr. Radoslavoff was rather 
 unfriendly to the Serbs in his remarks, and did not seem to care who 
 knew it. At any rate, he gave me permission to use everything he said, 
 and my dispatch was not questioned by the Bulgarian authorities, which 
 was not likely, however, seeing that no "preventive" censorship existed 
 at that time. 
 
 Thus warned I was forearmed against the many silly rumors that 
 were set adrift in Constantinople by the Greek and Armenian sympathizers 
 of the Entente. 
 
 The first report concerning Bulgaria that interested me at all seriously 
 was one which had it that Bulgaria and Turkey were coming together in 
 connection with some matter affecting the railroad line Swilengrad — 
 Kuleia Burgas — ^Dimotika, which the Bulgarians had to use in order to 
 
CONSEQUENCES OF THE DARDANELLES FIASCO 153 
 
 reach the port of Dedeagatch. The Hne in question was as far as Kuleia 
 Burgas, a part of the Sofia-Constantinople trunkline, and from thereon a 
 division of the branchline to the Bulgarian port named. Between Swilen- 
 grad and Dimotika it ran then on Turkish territory and this the Bulgarians 
 had found rather vexatious. 
 
 Since the Turkish government had no reason of its own to get rid 
 of the lines in question, the report that it intended ceding it to Bulgaria, 
 and was willing to make some other border "rectifications" at its own 
 expense, the remarks of Dr. Radoslavoff, to which I will come back further 
 on, began to have a new meaning to me. In August of 1915, the negotia- 
 tions were completed, and after that entrance into the war by Bulgaria 
 on the side of the Central Powers seemed certain to all who had followed 
 developments. 
 
 Mr. Koulocheflf, the Bulgarian minister in Constantinople, had taken 
 a hand in the negotiations, of course, but was no great admirer of the 
 sudden rapprochement of the two countries, which the agreement concern- 
 ing the border rectification represented. He took the view of the Bulgarian 
 Nationalists — men of the Guechoflf type — who felt that it was the duty 
 of Bulgaria to stand by Russia through thick and thin. 
 
 For the Turks Mr. Koulocheflf had little use, and of their military 
 capacity he was ever unconvinced. I remember having a conversation with 
 him on the prospects on Gallipoli. The number of Turkish dead and 
 wounded he mentioned was so great that I had to wonder how a man in 
 his position could believe such a fable. He was also of the opinion that 
 before very long the Allied forces would place themselves in possession of 
 the peninsula and that the taking of Constantinople was then a matter of 
 days. I took particular pains to set Mr. Koulocheflf right on these points, 
 and did not earn his appreciation therefor. 
 
 To Mr. Koulocheflf, as to a good many other Bulgarians, it seemed 
 at that time that their country ought to take arms on the side of the 
 Allies. The imminent possibility of having Russia for a neighbor who 
 would not be satisfied with an all water route to Constantinople, but who, 
 as strong imperial states will do, would find highly desirable the direct 
 rail connection to the shores of the Bosphorus, did not seem to bother 
 these Bulgarians. Such has ever been the case when in diplomacy senti- 
 ment takes the place of the practical things that constitute the necessities 
 of nations and individuals alike. Idealism of any sort is a condiment 
 that renders even more unpalatable the sorry broth of international relations 
 cooked by the diplomatists. 
 
IX 
 
 BULGARIA VERSUS SERBIA 
 
 TURKEY had entered the War in self-defence ; Bulgaria was to do 
 the same presently. The governments of the two countries were 
 face to face with a situation that could be solved in no other manner. 
 They took refuge to the ultima ratio, because they were driven to it. Vital 
 factors in national life — national existence in the case of the Turks; the 
 Serbian danger in that of the Bulgarians — ^had become the forces in crises 
 that meant going to war with either of the two camps of Europe. 
 
 It is difficult enough in times of peace to take matters out of the 
 hands of the diplomatists, once they have made up their minds to straighten 
 them out, according to their wishes ; it is impossible to make them release 
 their hold of a case in times of war. Both sides, then, have something to 
 gain and after a tug of war of wits one of them has it its own way. 
 That had happened in Constantinople. It was to take place again in Sofia. 
 The Turks had gone to war when the harvest of 1914 was in, and the 
 Bulgarians did the same when the crops of 1915 had been housed. In the 
 Balkan especially men do not go to war at any other time, as a rule. 
 Agricultural countries cannot afford to lose what is often their only 
 substance. 
 
 When I say that the political disturbances and wars of the Balkan 
 peoples have been almost entirely of ethnological and demographic origin, 
 I mean, of course, that they have been this more pronouncedly than in 
 other parts, for wars, generally, have this as causal agent, even in such 
 cases when purely political, dynastic or religious differences led to trouble. 
 In the lives of men everything is contained in, and comes to be the cause 
 of, the preservation of the self and propagation. It is so with races and 
 nations. The fact that organized society has found the means to keep 
 its human units from being constantly at each other's throat is, in fact, the 
 best indication that a society of nations, based on justice and enlightened 
 self-interest, is feasible and the best insurance that may be had for a 
 sweeping reduction of the possibilities of war. 
 
 The tendency to forget that life in the Balkans is still very elementary, 
 and therefore closer to the biological actualities than elsewhere, has been 
 the principal reason why the peoples in the peninsula and their problems 
 have seemed so inexplicable. Those who believe that Serb, Bulgar, 
 
 154 
 
BULGARIA VERSUS SERBIA 155 
 
 Macedonian and Albanian would prefer to come to blows over a difference 
 that seems perfectly adjudicable, instead of composing it in an amicable 
 spirit, forget that the primitive facts of life are the hardest to deny. 
 We have an example of this in two wide-awake businessmen of the city, 
 who will give their case into the hands of their lawyers for arbitration, 
 while the farmer will hardly ever do that. It is nothing for a farmer to 
 spend more money in the pursual of a claim to a rod of land than the 
 subject of litigation is worth. It is so with nations everywhere. We do 
 not wonder at that usually, but when the difficulty is shown up in the 
 light of primitive necessity we must needs think it extraordinary, if we 
 happen to be removed from the plane on which the quarrel moves. 
 
 The population of the relatively very small Balkan peninsula is more 
 diverse than that of any other area of similar extent. The Balkan in 
 fact is inhabited by almost as many races as the remainder of Europe: 
 Bulgar, Serb, Greek, Kutzo-Vlakh, Macedonian, Albanian, Italian, Turk 
 and Rumanian, with many other divisions possible if one should set out 
 to do it. For instance, the Serb may assert that the Croat is a Serb 
 also, yet I have known many Croats who denied that, answering the 
 claim of the Serb with the statement that to be a Southern or Jugo-Slav 
 was in itself no proof that one was a Serb. The Slovene may do the same 
 thing, as may the Bosniak, the Dalmatian and the Montenegrin. The 
 Southern Wallachian, or Kutzo-Vlakh, certainly is no Serb, as some would 
 have him. If related at all to any of the people now on the Balkan, he 
 is the cousin of the Rumanian. On the other hand, the Bulgar has claimed, 
 and the Macedonian has by his conduct admitted, that these two belong 
 together. To meet that argument it has been asserted that the Bulgar was 
 not a Slav at all, but of Turanian extraction, to which may be given the 
 retort that the Macedonians, numbering about one and one-half millions, 
 are at best a mixture of the race now known as Bulgars, and Albanian, 
 Greek and Serb elements. 
 
 It is not my plan to enter here the maze of ethnology which the 
 population of the Balkan peninsula forms. Volumes and volumes, veritable 
 libraries, have been written on this subject, and while the propaganda 
 of Serb and Bulgar alike may easily mislead us, the fact is that impartial 
 observers have generally agreed upon this : That the Bulgarians of today 
 are not the pure Turanian tribe which invaded the peninsula about 679 
 A. D., being instead, as is natural, the product to some extent of the people 
 whom they found in what is now Bulgaria and Macedonia, the Old- 
 Slovenes. 
 
 Though the Bulgars made themselves the masters of the country and 
 formed the ruling caste for about a century they were already completely 
 Slavicised in the middle of the Ninth Century, according to Byzantine 
 
156 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 historians, who had no reason to love them. Moreover, it is not at all certain 
 that the Bulgarians, were still a pure Turanian tribe when they appeared 
 on the Balkans. They had for so long lived on the river Volga in what 
 is now Russia that they either gave their name to the river or were 
 called after it : Volgarians, a term which modification by Byzantine writers 
 converted into Bulgarians. 
 
 The Roots of ''Balkan" Diplomacy 
 
 But even the Old- Slovenes were at that time no longer a pure race, 
 if it is to be assumed that there is such a thing as racial purity. They had 
 themselves arrived but lately, in 650 A. D., on the peninsula, driven hither 
 by the pressure from the East — a pressure which, in the absence of definite 
 data, has ever struck the historian as something uncanny, has, indeed, been 
 likened by some to the instinct that guides migratory birds. At any rate 
 the Old-Slovenes had settled in a country before them held, in the order 
 named, by Dacians, Thracians, Kelts, Huns, Goths, Gepides and an older 
 Slav tribe. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Old- Slovenes and the Bulgars found in a 
 country as mountainous as the Balkan peninsula, especially in the more 
 inaccessible districts of the wild and densely wooded ranges, descend- 
 ants of all of these people. While it has been possible to eliminate 
 from plain and valley populations entirely, it has ever been difficult to 
 overcome and dislodge them completely in the mountains. Indeed, we have 
 in the Balkans a very striking example of this in the Albanians, a fairly 
 pure type of Illyrians, who at one time inhabited the western parts of 
 the peninsula entirely. Another example of this are the Kelts, who, 
 after having been displaced by the pressure from the East, continued their 
 migration westward and strewed the Alps with their racial remnants, 
 where we find them today, and finally landed as far West as conditions 
 permitted — in extreme Western France and the British isles. 
 
 The Bulgarian of today, then, is a composite predominantly Slav, 
 speaking the language of the Old-Slovenes, which statement may be 
 supplemented in all prudence with the remark that the early culture and 
 literature of the Slavs, anywhere, was of Bulgarian origin. The alphabet 
 of the Russians, and until quite recently that of the Rumanians, is the 
 Kyrillika, an adaption of the Greek letters to the phonetic requirements 
 of the Slav, more especially, the Bulgarian, language. Two Bulgars, the 
 Bishops Kyril and Methode, are the inventors of this alphabet. 
 
 The Serbs and Croats, or Serbo-Croats, seem to be a race that under- 
 went no such viccissitudes. A Slave race originally, they assimilated or 
 displaced the people they found in the northwestern parts of the peninsula, 
 
THE ROOTS OF "BALKAN" DIPLOMACY 157 
 
 and were not molested by the Turanian invaders, who later gave their 
 name to the country known as Bulgaria. Whether or no the Serbs were 
 of immediately the same stock as the Old-Slovenes is not known, but the 
 closest relationship existed. There is also the fact that the two tribes 
 invaded the Balkans almost simultaneously, with the Serbs a few years in 
 the lead, so far as final settlement is concerned. How the Croats came 
 to be so closely linked with them is not known reliably. At any rate for 
 centuries they lived together in such harmony as the political aspirations 
 of the Serb element permitted, and later separated somewhat on account 
 of religious divergence. The Serbs remained Greek-Catholic, the Croats 
 embraced the Roman-Catholic faith, and most of the people of Bosnia 
 and Herzegovina, elected to become Mohammedans. The Serbo-Croat race 
 inhabits today, starting in the North, Slavonia, Syrmia, the greater part 
 of Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Northern 
 Macedonia. 
 
 I must in this connection draw attention to a map, issued by M. St. 
 Stanoievitch, professor of Serb history at the University of Belgrade, 
 and D. J. Derocco, a Serbian professor of geography. The map in ques- 
 tion has been circulated broadcast for the propaganda purposes of the 
 Serbian government, and was given to me by one of its agents for my 
 own enlightenment in 1915. I mention this fact, together with the map, 
 because it caused me to take a closer interest in the demographic problems 
 on the Balkan. For the sake of peace in the future, I must hope that 
 this perversion of the engraver's art did not influence the members of 
 the Peace Conference at Paris. 
 
 I have defined the actual limits of Serbo^Croatia above. The best 
 authorities agree that the districts named are inhabited by Serbs and Croats. 
 The authors of the map in question go much further, after including, for 
 the convenience and weight of argument, the Slovenes and their territory, 
 into their scheme. For the sake of those whom such matters may par- 
 ticularly interest, I will trace here what Messrs. Stanoievitch and Derocco 
 think Serbo-Croat- Slovene territory. After having laid its boundary on a 
 map, the observer will all the better understand why Bulgar and Serb 
 came to blows in 1915. The map was already out and excited the Sofia 
 Foreign Office, the government, and the people as nothing could have done. 
 There are some varieties of propaganda that are a direct provocation of 
 war, and this is one such instance. 
 
 The limits of Jugo-Slavia, I will call it that, though the map leaves 
 us to infer that the limits are those of Greater Serbia — the Serbia mare, 
 run as follows: 
 
 Along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, without regard for 
 Italian claims, from the mouth of the Isonzo to the mouth of the river 
 
158 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Drime, thence to the Proclevitie Mts., Pachtrick Mts., Babachnitza Mts., 
 Horab and Tablanitza Mts., Lake Ochrida, Galitchitsa Mts., Lake Prespa, 
 Neretchka Mts., Nitche Mts., Hoyouf Mts., Blatetz Mts., Lake Doiran, 
 Belasitza Mts., around the Strumnitza district, to follow the crests of the 
 Osgovia Mts., along the old Bulgaro-Serb border, then along the Danube 
 as far west as Moldawa ; thence into Hungary and Austria, from Oravitza 
 to Tchakovo, Nadjlak, Mako, Szegedine, Seksarde, Baroese, thence to 
 a point immediately south of Velika-Kagnija, to St. Gothard ; thence into 
 Austria north of Marburg in the Carinthian Alps, to Klagenfurt, Villach, 
 along the river Drava, south again into the Carinthian Alps, whence it 
 enters Italy near the town of Pontebba, to approach the banks of the 
 Tagliamento, and finally to continue in a slight southeasterly direction to the 
 mouth of the Isonzo. 
 
 There seems to be no reason why a Serbian government under 
 Pashitch, should not emulate the example of the Russian government under 
 Sazonoff. So it would seem. Yet the fact is that such intemperance will 
 not serve the peace of the world. In this instance it was directly responsible 
 for the war between Serbia and Bulgaria, and a further expansion of the 
 War of Europe. 
 
 The claims of the map in question had the backing of the Serb 
 government. They could not but fan into flame the animosity between the 
 two peoples, for in addition to the great boundaries drawn the map shows 
 zones — clairsemie — as the two authors put it, in which the Serbo-Croat 
 race was more or less scattered, according to admission. 
 
 The first of these zones takes in much of Albania, eastern Epirus and 
 northern Greece, without paying the slightest attention to the presence 
 of some 160,000 Kutzo-Vlakhs located along the actual borders of Albania, 
 Macedonia and Greece, and this in a country very thinly populated. The 
 third seems like an annextion of the Strumnitza district, which, as I happen 
 to know from personal observation, is peopled exclusively by Bulgars, 
 Macedonians, Turks and Gypsies. Zone ntunber four includes the better 
 half of the Banat, including the city of Temesvar, the fifth and sixth zones 
 lie immediately north and south of the Hungarian capital, Budapest, 
 where some Croats are to be found as immigrants, engaged in gardening 
 mostly. The seventh zone clairsentSe comprises most of the Hungarian 
 comitats of Baragna and Chomodje, and the eighth and last claims, for 
 the Slovenes, the comitats of Vaghe and Choprone and Lower Austria 
 between "Viener Naichtate,*' as Wiener Neustadt is naively spelled and 
 a point on the Danube halfway between Vienna itself and Marchegg. 
 
 To the authors of the map it seems to have made no difference that 
 Greater Serbia would have annexed every Italian along the shores of the 
 Adriatic, Albanians, Kutzo-Vlakhs, every Macedonian, Greeks, Old- 
 
THE ROOTS OF "BALKAN'* DIiPIX>MACY 159 
 
 Bulgars, Rumanians, Magyars, and German Austrians, and that in doing 
 this it would have given rise to a series of "irredentas" that would have 
 kept Europe in turmoil for centuries. Such is geography as the hand 
 maiden of political propaganda and diplomacy. 
 
 SazonofiF's Policy Toward Bulgaria 
 
 The Treaty of Bucharest, 1913, of which Sazonoff was the evil genius, 
 despite his obviously Bulgarophile telegrams to his Serbophile minister at 
 Belgrade, M. Hart wig, that he use his influence with Pashitch for the 
 securing of better terms for Bulgaria, had left the Bulgars in a bitter 
 mood. Among the things which the Bulgarian does not possess, in 
 common with his Slav cousins, is the light-heartedness and sense of humor, 
 which, coupled with a strong tendency toward day-dreaming and easy 
 surrender to the supposedly inevitable, have made Slav government 
 throughout Europe anything but agreeable. The treaty in question deprived 
 the Bulgar not only of what he had fought for in the Balkan War, but 
 it deprived him of territory of his own besides, the major part of the 
 Dobrudja, which Sazonoff, as guardian angel of Bulgaria, gave to the 
 Rumanians for their military excursion in the direction of Sofia. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the Bulgarians were the angels they 
 made themselves out to be. Far from it. I have followed their line of 
 march in Thrace on the highways from Usiinkoprii to Kazan and thence 
 to Bulair, and happen to know that a great deal of wanton destruction 
 was practiced to the detriment and eradication of the Turk. For that 
 at least I did not have to take the statements of the inhabitants. The ruins 
 spoke for themselves. Since Turk and Bulgar have an architecture of 
 their own for dwelling purposes, I had no difficulty observing that the 
 Bulgarian army set afire only the houses of the Turks, and left those 
 of the Bulgarians untouched. I was able, in that manner to ascertain that 
 the population of Thrace, of Bulgar origin, was a very large one, after the 
 Turks had been driven out by arson and pillage. 
 
 The Bulgarians also wanted just a little more than was their due. 
 Thrace was to be theirs as far as the Enos-Media line, upon which line 
 Sazonoff later fixed for his own boundary in "Frigia," as says his 
 memorandum. Southward and eastward they wanted the country as far 
 west as the right bank of the Struma river, that is Seres, Drama and 
 Cavalla, in Old Thessaly, and Macedonia was to be joined to Old-Bulgaria. 
 Bulgaria's claims were honored only in part by the Treaty of Bucharest, 
 and to Rumania she had to cede a part of the Dobrudja — the best part, 
 naturally. 
 
 The Macedonia of today is but a fraction of the Macedonia held by 
 
160 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Alexander of renown and his father, Phillip. Authorities agree in the 
 main that it is that part of the Balkans which lies within the Karadagh 
 mountain range, the frontier of Bulgaria, the river Mesta, the Aegean 
 Sea, the Greek boundary, and the crests of the ranges of Shar, Grammus 
 and Pindus. The district is now inhabited, to the number of roughly 
 1,500,000, by a mixed people of predominantly Bulgarian origin, with an 
 admixture of Serbs, Greeks and Albanians, surrounded on all sides by a 
 sort of racial twilight zone, in which the Bulgarian Macedonians finally 
 disappear. The natural result of this is that it would be extremely difficult 
 to draw a demographic line, or boundary, that would please everybody. 
 
 To the claims of the inhabitants in Southern Macedonia, the Serbs 
 had not been able to raise great objections at the preliminary peace con- 
 ference in London. These people, it seems, wanted to join Bulgaria, as 
 I was told by one of their distinguished comitadje leaders. Colonel 
 Protogeroff, who later commanded a Bulgarian division against the 
 troops landed by the Allies at Salonika. But it was different with the 
 Macedonians in the northern parts of the district, who also were eager 
 to join the Bulgarian kingdom. The Serbian government contested their 
 claim, and held that the site in question, the districts of Uskub and 
 Tetovo, had always been a part of Old-Serbia. The district then became 
 known in diplomatic parlance as the sone contestee, while the remainder 
 of Macedonia was labelled zone incontestee. These two zones were to 
 become the principal bone of contention just before Bulgaria's entry into 
 the European War. 
 
 It being impossible to apply the yardstick or thermometer to the 
 quality of effort and degree of success of armies that are allied in war, 
 the Serbs had let it be known that they themselves had defeated the Turks, 
 and driven them out of Albania, Macedonia and the country along the 
 Aegean shore. The Greeks claimed most of the remaining credit, and 
 so it came that Bulgaria found not the necessary support in world public 
 opinion in order to retain what her troops had occupied, among this much 
 more of Thrace than was in the end awarded. The diplomatic stage, 
 moreover, had been set against Bulgaria. Yet the fact is that the 
 Bulgarian mobilization of 1912 reached the total of over 600,000, while 
 the casualties were about 93,000, a shockingly high percentage. The 
 Serbian and Greek forces and losses were as one to three in this. 
 
 Without wishing to question at all the efficiency and the motives of 
 the Serb and Greek leaders, the fact remains that the Bulgarians did a 
 good sixty per cent of the fighting, and her Allies forty per cent together, 
 if it be possible to reduce so controvertible a thing to definite quantities. 
 
 As will happen when so infallible an institution as a General Staff 
 takes to figures, the quality of the Turk as soldier had been sadly under- 
 
SAZONOFF'S POLICY TOWARD BULGARIA 161 
 
 rated, and so it came that Bulgaria, instead of being able to conclude the 
 war with the army she was to employ in co-operation with her Allies, had 
 to actually treble it, while Serbia increased her contingent only from 
 150,000 to 201,115. That figure alone proves who fought and won the 
 Balkan War. 
 
 The Bulgarians thought that their grievances against the Serbs ought 
 to be presented to Czar Nicholas, as arbiter in the case of the contested 
 zone. But Nicholas was not Alexander II, who had made the liberation 
 of the Bulgars a fact. He was following more or less the example of his 
 father, Alexander III, who cared little for the waif in the Balkans, and 
 was very much put out when Eastern Rumelia was joined to Bulgaria in 
 1885. It seems that the czar resented very much that one of the provisions 
 of the San Stefano Treaty should have been carried into effect without 
 his specific permission. The father of Alexander III was one of the 
 high-contracting parties to this agreement, and his son might have been 
 consulted by Bulgaria, in all propriety. The fact was, however, that the 
 foundling state in the Balkan was growing up, and that its government 
 began to feel at home a little. The czar gave vent to his peevishness 
 by ordering home all the Russian officers serving in the Bulgarian army, 
 at a time when attack on Bulgaria by Serbia or Turkey, or both, was not 
 entirely out of the question. This was the first rift in the lute of Russo- 
 Bulgarian relations, which in the past had been those of mother and child. 
 
 Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a favorite of Alexander II, had been 
 installed at Sofia as ruler, under a Turkish suzerainty that was barely more 
 than a name. When the successor to the Czar Liberator gave Bulgaria 
 to understand that in the future she could not count on Russia, the resent- 
 ment of the Bulgarians even affected the reigning prince. A conspiracy 
 among Bulgarian officers resulted in Prince Alexander's kidnapping and 
 removal to the nearest Russian town, Reni on the Danube. Saner elements 
 in Sofia started a counter move and a little later the prince was back, 
 to find, however, that his position was untenable. He appointed a regency 
 and departed. 
 
 Bulgaria's Independence Displeased Czar 
 
 There were those who felt the necessity of coming to terms with 
 Czar Alexander, and the throne being vacant, they proposed that it 
 should be occupied by Prince Waldemar of Denmark, brother of the 
 Russian empress. But the prince declined, as Bulgarians have insisted, 
 at the instigation of the Russian emperor, if the refusal of consent could 
 be called that. The following year Prince Ferdinand of Coburg was 
 
162 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 offered the throne and accepted. Russia, however did not recognize him 
 until 1896, when Czar Nicholas was prevailed upon to do that, on the 
 condition, however, that Prince Boris, the heir-presumptive, be re-baptized 
 to the Greek Catholic Church, having up to that time been a Roman 
 Catholic, as was his father and family. 
 
 The assassination of King Alexander of Serbia and his queen, Draga, 
 in 1903, which put the Austrophile Obrenovitch family of Serb rulers 
 out of the way for the benefit of the Karageorgevitch dynasty, opened a 
 new chapter in Balkan history. King Peter of Serbia did his best to 
 cultivate good relations with St. Petersburg and after a while got sufficiently 
 into the good graces of Czar Nicholas to get from him an annual stipend, 
 such a donation having in the past been accepted from the Austro-Hun- 
 garian government by Kings Alexander and Milan. Thereafter in all 
 matters of hostile contact, and there was little friendly contact with 
 Bulgaria at any time, the Russian government sided openly with the 
 Serbian government. Friction ran from the appointment of bishops to 
 opposition in Russia and Serbia to the establishment of complete independ- 
 ence from the Ottoman government for the Bulgarians, effected finally in 
 1908, as an incident to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by 
 Austria-Hungary. The vassalage to the Turks had been a very light 
 burden, indeed, but there was no reason why the Bulgars should not 
 throw it off. Isvolski had been tricked into acquiescence to the annexation 
 by Austria-Hungary of the last two quasi-Ottoman provinces along the 
 border of the Dual Monarchy, but the two promoters of this expansion 
 coup. Counts Aehrenthal and Berchtold, had also arranged it with 
 Ferdinand of Bulgaria, to do whatever he could to draw a red herring 
 across their trail. Ferdinand, therefore, said himself loose, forever and 
 always, from the Turkish Sultanate, promptly disconcerted European 
 diplomacy generally, and later was made a "czar" himself, that being his 
 official title as king. To the real czar of the Slav world, Nicholas II, 
 that was no mean affront. Bulgaria had taken the second step in her 
 national up-building without paying much attention to what St. Petersburg 
 throught of it, and again a Romanoff was peeved. 
 
 So it came that Sazonoff, while supervising the making of the terms 
 of the Bucharest Treaty of 1913, was not in any way friendly to the 
 Bulgars. He did, indeed, send a few telegrams to the Serbian government 
 in which the cause of Bulgaria was espoused. But it must be borne in 
 mind that the oldest trick of diplomacy consists of that. M. Hart wig, the 
 Russian minister at Belgrade, had his own instructions, and M. Pashitch 
 also knew how these appeals to reason were meant. To make a long story 
 short, the peace treaty in question left Bulgaria not only without some 
 territory she coveted unjustifiedly, but without much to which she really 
 
BULGARIA'S INDEPENDENCE DISPLEASED CZAR 163 
 
 was entitled on ethnological and military grounds. To the Serbs she lost 
 Macedonia, to the Greeks, Seres, Drama and Cavalla, and to the Turks, 
 Adrianople and much of Thrace, while the Rumanians amputated her of the 
 fattest part of the Dobrudja. 
 
 These claims must be given a little more attention. That the Mace- 
 donians wanted to join Bulgaria is established beyond cavil. In their case 
 it was with the Serbs merely a question of admitting whether or no the 
 inhabitants of Uskub and Tetovo were Macedonians. That could have 
 been established easily enough, and none could have done it better than 
 the Russians. After all it is no insuperable task to establish the identity 
 of the inhabitants of two districts. But the Russians, favoring the Serbs, 
 did not want to know whether the people of Uskub and Tetovo were 
 Macedonians or Serbo^Croats. It was their intention that Serbia should 
 keep all of Macedonia, if at all possible, and Sazonoff saw to it, in spite 
 of a rather active and well-directed opposition of the Austro-Hungarians, 
 that Serbia received all she wanted. Mention must be made here of the 
 fact that Germany was still playing the game of Russia and opposed her 
 ally, Austria-Hungary. 
 
 Sazonoff also wished to be on good terms with the Greeks, and for 
 that reason his delegates opposed the annexation by Bulgaria of Seres, 
 Drama and Cavalla, being backed in this instance by the protests of nearly 
 the entire convention, and again by the Germans, who felt that something 
 had to be left to the brother-in-law of Emperor William. Nor was the 
 Bulgarian claim any too strong inherently. The Greek population east 
 of the Struma is fairly numerous, and to merely barter people from one 
 government to another does not make for peace. What the exact proportion 
 of Greek to genuine Bulgar in those parts is I am not prepared to say 
 for the reason that I do not know. 
 
 That Russia should object to the annexation of all of Thrace, as 
 far as the Tchataldja line for fortifications, to the very gates of Constan- 
 tinople, figuratively, was very natural. Had the Bulgarians been cautious 
 enough not to include the ports of Gallipoli, on the peninsula, Rodosto and 
 Silivria, the entire Marmoran shore of Thrace, in fact, into their terms, 
 prospects might have been better, even though a city like Adrianople, 
 founded by Hadrian of Rome, and elevated to the dignity of capital by 
 the Osmanli, was to be snatched away from the Turks. Upon what 
 ethnological basis the Bulgars rested this demand I fail to see. After all 
 not everything in Thrace was or is Bulgarian. Long before the annexa- 
 tionists of Sofia were thought of, Thrakian, Hellene, Macedonian, Roman, 
 Byzantine and Turk had labored there, built the city, plowed the fields 
 and raised children, whose descendants can not have as completely dis- 
 appeared as the Bulgarians would have us believe. 
 
164 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 But the amputation of Dobrudja was a crime. The Rumanian govern- 
 ment, when the Balkan war was not yet weeks old, gave the Bulgarian 
 government to understand that for the purpose of bettering communication 
 with a Rumanian port on the Black Sea, it wished to enter into negotiations 
 of a boundary-rectification character. When in the Balkan they speak of such 
 a thing, war is never far oflF. Bulgaria paid little attention to the request, 
 but when the falling-out between the Serbs and Bulgars was there, 
 Rumania promptly took what she wanted and a little more, of course — on 
 the plea, made afterwards, that in the Dobrudja there were Vlakhs who 
 had fared poorly under the Bulgarian government. There were some 
 600,000 other Vlakhs, the Kutzos, further down in the Balkans, where 
 the frontiers of Serbia, Greece and Albania meet, who needed such solici- 
 tude much more. But for these Rumania did not speak. Serbia, on the 
 other hand, made no mention of the Bulgars — ^the Shapes — that had been 
 traded to her by the transfer of Pirot and Vranya, in 1878, in exchange 
 for Novipasar, which the Peace treaty of San Stefano had promised 
 Serbia. 
 
 Bucharest Treaty a Mare's Nest 
 
 It is not surprising that this shabby deal, for which SazonoflF was 
 wholly responsible, did not increase in the Bulgarian his love of Russia. 
 The Treaty of Bucharest made a bad dent in the old superstition of the 
 Bulgarian peasant that a bullet fired at a Russian by a Bulgarian, or vice 
 versa, would never find its mark. Bulgaria really had a democratic and 
 fully representative government — liberal thought and institutions — that 
 even went so far as to make the national legislature, the Sobranye, a single 
 body, with no senate to interfere with the acts of the people's delegates. 
 Virtually every able-bodied man in the country had been in the field against 
 the Turks, and, now that the fruits of victory were being snatched away 
 from Bulgaria, everywhere the question was asked why this should be 
 so. M. I. E. Guechoflf, who had been the first premier during the Balkan 
 War, as the head of a coalition government composed chiefly of the 
 Nationalist and Progressive parties, had to retire in favor of Dr. Daneflf, 
 who at the next election was succeeded by Dr. RadoslavoflF, heading the 
 Liberal, National Liberal and Young Liberal parties. General SavoflF, the 
 able Bulgarian officer, of whom so much was heard during the Balkan 
 War, was relegated for having attacked the Serb army on the night of 
 July 29th, 1913, without waiting for a formal declaration of war, and the 
 Russophile element, generally, was driven out of office. 
 
 But of adherents to Russia there was no great dearth even then. Dr. 
 RadoslavoflF, to be sure, maintained his position, often by the weirdest 
 of political moves, but he had a hard time keeping his coalition together. 
 
BUCHAREST TREATY A MARE'S NEST 165 
 
 It was composed, at the outbreak of the war between the Triple Entente 
 and the Central Powers, of the parties above named, and of such mug- 
 womps, political freebooters, and patronage-takers as he could attract and 
 manage. These came from every one of the other parties in Bulgaria, 
 to wit : Nationalists, still under M. Guechoff ; Progressives, under Theodor 
 Theodoroff; Democrats, under Alexander Malinofif; Agrarians, under 
 Stambulowski ; Radicals and Socialists. Political opinions varied from 
 the statement of Dr. Daneff, who was in the Guechoff cabinet during the 
 Balkan War and later premier, that: 
 
 "With Russia we Bulgarians do not practice politics," meaning that 
 the Bulgarians were one with the Russians, to the attitude of Ivan 
 Momtschiloflf, vice-president of the Sobranje, who from the very first was 
 the most ardent of the Germanophiles. 
 
 To keep these extremes within the bounds prescribed by the neutrality 
 proclaimed by the Bulgarian government when war broke out was no easy 
 task. Dr. Radoslavoff had his hands full. 
 
 Such was the situation when in February of 1915, I called upon the 
 Bulgarian premier. I had spent some time in Bucharest, and watched 
 political intrigue there. The efforts that were being made with money 
 from all parts of the world that flowed in streams, were only too strong 
 an indication that soon or late the war between the Central Powers and 
 the Triple Entente would spread into other parts. 
 
 I found Dr. Radoslavoff well in control, not only of the government 
 but also the relations with Rumania, and above all, Serbia. He seemed 
 to be a man whom nothing perturbed easily, as was shown when toward 
 the end of the interview we came to discussing the matter of Macedonia. 
 The premier said that since the control of Macedonia by Serbia some 
 300,000 Macedonians had come to Bulgaria. These people were welcome, 
 of course, he added, but the trouble was that they were a great charge upon 
 a population numbering only about five millions and none too well off 
 in the first place. 
 
 Dr. Radoslavoff proceeded to give me the details of this problem. It 
 appears that the Serbian officials did everything possible to encourage 
 emigration from Macedonia, and their program included such things as 
 torture and murder, arson and rape, said the premier. The closing of 
 schools and churches, the banishment of teachers and priests, and dis- 
 crimination of an economic and political character were quite the least 
 incidents in the plan of persecution which the Serb government was carry- 
 ing out. Great stress was laid by the premier upon the fact that the 
 Bulgars and Macedonians were "brothers" in everything two peoples can 
 have in common, and that on this account the burden of Macedonian 
 immigration would be borne, so long as possible. It could not be borne 
 
166 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 for always, however. On that point, Dr. Radoslavoff was so final that 
 I began to take notice. 
 
 I asked him what steps the Bulgarian government had taken in regard 
 to the matter. Dr. Radoslavoff replied that he had instructed his diplomatic 
 representatives abroad to bring the conduct of the Serbian government in 
 Macedonia to the attention of the Powers. But he feared, and rightly so, 
 that for the time being the Powers were too busy making war to do 
 much, if anything. 
 
 H<yw Bulgarian Officers Viewed It 
 
 The same evening I attended a ball at the Officers' Casino, given in 
 honor of King Ferdinand and his family. Their Majesties failing to 
 appear, and with the ball room terribly crowded, I repaired with Dr. 
 Acene C. Kermecktchieff, the United States consular agent at Sofia, to 
 the dining room in the basement of the clubhouse. Dr. Kermecktchieff, I 
 wish to state was then the sole and single United States resident diplomatic 
 and consular officer in all of Bulgaria, despite the fact that the Bulgarian 
 government had some time before sent to Washington, in the person of 
 Stephen Panaretoff, an "envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary," 
 whose United States equal, Mr. Charles J. Vopicka, at Bucharest, attended 
 to American diplomatic representation in Rumania, Serbia and Bulgaria. 
 
 Dr. Kermecktchieff was a Bulgarian citizen, of course, and lived 
 largely by his pen, not the most profitable way of making a living in the 
 Balkans. As a writer and speaker he had to be politically affiliated, which 
 he did by joining the Radoslavoff group of parties and leaders. The result 
 was that later he was dismissed from the United States consular service 
 on the charge of pro-Germanism. The case is illuminating, since it hap- 
 pened in the summer of 1915, and to the citizen of another country, whose 
 sole compensation for his service as consular agent had in that year been 
 a matter of two dollars, as I recall it. 
 
 The American consular agent introduced me to a number of officer 
 friends of his, and before long the party was discussing the European 
 situation, from which I gathered that all those present were thoroughly 
 anti-Russian and Serbophobe. They wished to see Russia beaten to her 
 knees, and hoped that before the War was over they would have another 
 chance at the Serbs. There was no bravado about the remarks that were 
 made. When I inquired where I might find traces of the great Russo- 
 philism I had heard so much of in Bucharest, one of the officers, a grizzled 
 veteran of a colonel, replied facetiously that in the house across the street, 
 referring to the residence of M. Ouechoff, I could be accommodated. 
 
 "Sir," he continued. "We are bound to get into this war. There is on 
 
HOW BULGARIAN OFFICERS VIEWED IT. 167 
 
 the Balkan not enough room for Bulgar and Serb. One of us has to go 
 under. So far as I am concerned it will be the Serb." 
 
 There was something decidedly savage in these words. 
 
 Until early in the morning I was entertained by what the Bulgarian 
 army thought of the Treaty of Bucharest, and every other word, almost, 
 was a vow that there would be a reckoning, and no pleasant one. 
 
 On the following day I was in one of the large rooms of the club 
 for the purpose of seeing a life-size portrait of Alexander II, which he 
 had donated to the club many years ago. I noticed that the officers who 
 had entertained me at luncheon spoke of the Czar Liberator with the 
 greatest respect and devotion. Suddenly one of them faced about to look 
 at a picture of Czar Nicholas II, on the opposite wall. 
 
 "We will turn that thing upside down one of these days," he said 
 tersely. "He is the man who deserted us and gave our victory over the 
 Turks to the Serbs and the Rumanians." 
 
 A few days later I met Mr. Guechoff. My discussion with him left 
 no room for doubt that he was ardently in favor of the Russians. He 
 hoped that the remnants of the Narew Army would be assembled in proper 
 time, and General Rennenkampf dismissed, in order that Russia might make 
 good her losses in the Masurian Lakes. A tea at the house of the 
 court physician of Ferdinand resulted in the information that Bulgaria 
 would not remain neutral for long, if nothing was done by the Serbian 
 government to check the conduct of its officials in Macedonia. All in all 
 I left for Constantinople with the impression that Bulgaria, if at all entering 
 the European War, would do it on the side of the Central Powers. I 
 also surmised that Count Tarnow von Tarnowski, the Austro-Hungarian 
 minister at Sofia, and Herr Michaelis, the German minister, would not 
 have so hard a time of it when the crucial moment came. 
 
 When next I was in Sofia it was plain that Bulgaria, like Turkey, 
 would enter the War on the side of the Central Powers, for the purpose 
 of mending her fences against her neighbors. The agreement with the 
 Ottoman government, concerning the border rectification along the Maritza 
 river and north of Adrianople had been reached and the public was about 
 to hear of it, as a notice, in the opinion of those who did not know any 
 better, to the Entente governments that Turk and Bulgar were about to 
 correct the miscarriage of the Treaty of Bucharest. 
 
 By that time I had become familiar enough with afifairs on the 
 Balkan to know that nothing could keep Bulgaria out of the camp of 
 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. In the first place no government 
 will cede territory to another, when there is still room for the fear that 
 the other may go to war against one's ally, Austria-Hungary, in this case ; 
 in the second instance, the Bulgarian demands upon Serbia were such 
 
168 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 that her government, with the best intentions in the world, could not 
 accept them. What Bulgaria demanded was virtually a surrender of what 
 the Serbian government had garnered at the end of the Balkan War. 
 Though Serbia was about to be hard pressed by the Austro-Hungarians 
 and Germans, her government could not meet the wishes of Sofia. 
 
 Of course, the Russophiles in the country had not been idle, it was 
 claimed. A bomb was thrown in the Citizens* Casino of Sofia, in the park 
 across from the royal residence. It was a most dastardly business, since 
 the persons killed were innocent merrymakers at a ball. None of them 
 was of political importance or influence, nor was there anybody near for 
 whom the bomb might have been intended. Rumors about town had it 
 that the Russophiles had thrown the bomb as a signal for an uprising against 
 the Radoslavoff government, and the Germanophiles were charged with a 
 conspiracy to bring about a state that would lead to the imposing of 
 martial law upon the city, so that the government of Radoslavoff could 
 not be embarrassed, and possibly removed, by losing a vote of confidence 
 in the Sobranje. These stories had a certain amount of color, though no 
 substance, to them, as I could ascertain. At any rate the crime was never 
 sifted to the bottom. 
 
 Elntente Diplomacy at Sofia Bestirs Itself 
 
 As yet the courting of Bulgaria was still going on in secret, nor was 
 the wooing very ardent. Messrs. Guechoff and Daneff were making as- 
 surances to the Entente representatives that went far beyond their power, 
 with Mr. Daneff doing a good business buying and exporting wheat for 
 the French government, for which he afterwards was sentenced to a term 
 of imprisonment for alleged irregularities. Count Tarnowski was rather 
 busy promoting the cause of his country and her ally, and later his 
 Foreign Office in Vienna made a great deal of his efforts, all of which was 
 buncombe, because the man who could sway or influence Dr. Radoslavoff 
 was not then in Sofia nor in any manner connected with the affairs of 
 the Central Powers. The Bulgarian premier, as I established to at least 
 my own satisfaction, was a man with a mind all his own. But ministries 
 of foreign affairs must now and then point to one of their diplomatists 
 with pride in order to let the populace know that the government is 
 efficient in diplomacy. 
 
 The fact is that the case of Bulgaria was all fixed, pre-determined by 
 the laws of national biology — ^the trend of events. Dr. Radoslavoff was 
 biding his time. That was all. 
 
 Among Englishmen who realized this were the Buxton Brothers, who 
 probably were better informed on Balkan affairs, if I am to judge by 
 
ENTENTE DIPLOMACY AT SOFIA BESTIRS ITSELF 169 
 
 their publications, than any other person of influence in the British govern- 
 ment. There used to be an element in journalism that found much pleasure 
 in looking upon itself as Balkan "experts." The class to which I refer 
 had a great deal to say just then. What they said was not worth the 
 ink used in bringing it to the attention of a gullible and trusting public. 
 
 M. Guechoff, however, was taking a very intelligent interest in the 
 general aspect of things, differing from some other statesmen in so far 
 that he was withal not incautious. When I arrived in Sofia, he sent me 
 an invitation to have tea with him. 
 
 I expected to find a tea aux dames, naturally. Instead there was 
 another man, the Bulgarian general who had been in charge of the engineer- 
 ing phase of the siege of Adrianople. My host was perfectly frank about 
 the invitation and the company. He said that he did not know very much 
 of military aflfairs, but was keenly interested in the state of affairs on 
 Gallipoli peninsula. Would I be kind enough to give the general the 
 benefit of my information? 
 
 I had been given a laissez-passer by Mr. Koulocheff, the Bulgarian 
 minister at Constantinople, who in that manner had learned that I intended 
 going to Sofia. I suspect that he had tipped off his friend, M. Guechoff. 
 A remark made by the former premier presently confirmed my suspicion. 
 
 The general and Mr. Guechoff were delightfully frank in their ques- 
 tions and their own remarks. But they would not believe what they heard. 
 They were polite about it, of course, but on the whole exasperatingly 
 skeptical, if that be the term. I had spent weeks and weeks with the 
 Ottoman troops on Gallipoli, and was objective in the manner which some 
 military training and responsibility are apt to instil into a man. Was I not 
 mistaken about the chances of the Turks holding out on the peninsula? 
 How was it possible that the Turkish army which had done so poorly during 
 the Balkan War could of a sudden, almost overnight, show such grit and 
 ability ? 
 
 When a former premier speaks in that fashion of an army against 
 whom he ordered a mobilization, it must be taken for granted that the 
 man is sincere. I made some such remark, and then capped the climax by 
 telling M. Guechoff and the other guest that before the coming winter was 
 over there would be no more Allied troops at the gates of Constantinople. 
 For a while that stunned the old soldier. When he had recovered, he 
 renewed his cross-examination of me. The result was that we parted the 
 best of friends late that afternoon, with the General and Mr. Guechoff 
 absolutely where they had been before, which was their privilege, of course. 
 Meanwhile, I had become acquainted at the Russian legation, where 
 much talk was being let off the stocks in regard to the rank ingratitude of 
 the Bulgarian government. The liberation of Bulgaria by Czar Alexander 
 
i;^ THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Oswoboditel was much exploited, but nothing was said concerning the 
 attitude toward the foundling on the Balkan of Alexander III and Nicholas 
 II. Now and then I would get in a word regarding more recent events, 
 to get the stout assurance that Russia had never favored the Serbs at 
 the expense of the Bulgars. At the other Entente legations they held 
 similar views — all of them empty protests in the light of what actually 
 occured. 
 
 Mr. O'Beirne, British charge d'affaires, and formerly conscillcr of the 
 British embassy at Petrograd, seemed to be the only diplomatist of his 
 camp who was inclined to take a rational estimate of the situation. He 
 was not hopeful from the very start of the negotiations and did his 
 packing early. There were men in London who were of a diflFerent mind. 
 Sir Henry G. O. Bax-Ironside, the British minister, had been asked 
 home by them, to make room for a man who was supposed to be of 
 greater ability and well versed with conditions in Petrograd, Mr. O'Beirne. 
 He answered to both specifications. Being an able man he did not fool 
 himself, as he once expressed it to me, without referring to himself, of 
 course. His French colleague, however, was a man who seemed to think 
 that if one talks long enough on a subject it will in the end turn out in 
 accord with one's wishes. He mistook his "desires" for reality. Mons. 
 M. A. de Panafieu also subscribed to the fine habit of telling his doorman 
 that he was not in, within hearing of the caller, when there was some nasty 
 turn in diplomacy to be explained. The Italian minister, on the other 
 hand, lived in fear and trembling of the moment when he should get his 
 passports. Ultimately, he was the first who was all packed up. 
 
 Dr. Radoslavoff's Diplomatic Notions 
 
 Soon the diplomatic whirligig was in full swing. The governments in 
 London, Petrograd and Paris wanted to know where Bulgaria stood. 
 Dr. Radoslavoff announced that he did not know that himself in view 
 of the spoliation carried through by means of the Treaty of Bucharest. 
 That was a disconcerting answer, for which the Entente governments were 
 Mot wholly prepared. They had in this instance taken contact with a man 
 who knew exactly what he wanted and what he had to do. 
 
 The attitude of the Bulgarian premier was in all respects the counter- 
 part of President Paul Kruger, when he measured words with Lord Milner 
 at Bloemfontein, in 1899, and told the representative of Great Britain 
 that all diplomatists were what King David had said of all men. Dr. 
 Radoslavoflf was the most refreshing opposite of the schemer I have ever 
 met, and since I met him often I attach some importance to that opinion. 
 He was always straightforward. When he did not want to answer a 
 
DR. RADOSLAVOFF'S DIPLOMATIC NOTIONS 171 
 
 question, he said as much, and circumlocution with an ulterior motive 
 tried his patience sorely, as I discovered several times for my own benefit. 
 
 The next move on the part of the Entente governments was to ask 
 what Dr. Radoslavoff would take for agreeing not to molest Serbia while 
 she was being pressed by the Austro-Hungarians and Germans, who were 
 already on the verge to swoop down upon her, under the leadership of 
 Field Marshal Mackensen. 
 
 The reply was Radoslavovianly frank. The Bulgarian government 
 wanted all that which the Treaty of Bucharest had deprived her off. 
 
 Of course, that was a large contract to fill. It meant also taking from 
 the Rumanians the Dobrudja. The Rumanians were being belabored 
 night and day to join the Entente; how could they be asked to disgorge 
 what Sazonoff and the remainder of Europe's concert had given them 
 in order that Bulgaria might be humbled into the dust ? That part of the 
 demands the Entente governments would have to think over, said their 
 diplomatists in Sofia. Would Bulgaria look upon Thrace as far as the 
 Enos-Media line as a sort of compensation until the Dobrudja matter 
 could be looked into with more leisure? 
 
 Dr. Radoslavoff knew that the same line was already the future 
 Russian boundary in Thrace, and said that according with the agreement 
 just made with the Turks, in regard to the rectification of the border, 
 Bulgaria had no further intentions in that direction, being fully satisfied 
 with having added to the kingdom the railroad line Swilengrad-Dimotika, 
 all territory on the left bank of the Maritza, and the northern hill country 
 of Thrace. 
 
 Bulgaria wanted to have the case of Seres, Drama and Cavalla re- 
 opened. That, too, was difficult since Venizelos was working hard for 
 the Entente. The re-opening of that sore point would have surely driven 
 Venizelos into hiding and Greece into the arms of the Central Powers. 
 
 It came to be Serbia's turn. Dr. Radoslavoff said that the Bulgarian 
 people, and they were as one man behind him in this matter, wanted 
 Macedonia, and without strings attached to its transfer. 
 
 The Entente governments let it be known through their agents in 
 Sofia that they could not think of presenting such a humiliating proposi- 
 tion to their ally, Serbia. Would it not be well to make at least some 
 of the claims on Macedonia a little conditional ; for instance, would the 
 Bulgarian people not be satisfied with getting the southern parts of the 
 district — zone incontestee — now, and the northern, Uskub and Tetovo, 
 later on. Of course, the transfer could not be an absolutely final one. 
 While Southern Macedonia would be ceded immediately, and might be 
 taken in hand by a civil administration. of the Bulgarians and Macedonians, 
 it would be necessary to keep the district under military control by the 
 
172 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Allied governments, to please the Serbians and the Italians. As to Uskub 
 and Tetovo — these two districts would be given to Bulgaria with the 
 making of peace. 
 
 With this counter proposal Dr. Radoslavoff and his cabinet, such men 
 as Major General Jekoff, minister of war; Pesheff, minister of public 
 instruction ; TontcheflF, minister of finance ; Ghenadieff, minister of public 
 works, and others were not satisfied. 
 
 Negotiations reached the argumentative stage. The Bulgarian govern- 
 ment pointed out that while it was actuated entirely in its demands by 
 an insistence upon what was a right of the Bulgarian and Macedonian 
 peoples, it would also have to look into the future. Serbia had been promised 
 so much by the Entente governments that Bulgaria, no matter how 
 considerate of her neighbor in the West, could not overlook that the 
 incorporation with Serbia of about 17,000,000 Slavs in Bosnia, Herzegovina, 
 much of Dalmatia, Slovenia, the Banat of Hungary, and Carinthia would 
 badly upset the balance of power on the Balkan — as it really would have 
 done, especially since the propaganda of the Serbs in favor of Jugo- 
 slavia had totally excluded the Bulgarians as being Slavs at all. Of a 
 sudden the Bulgarians, who in the past had been the very children of 
 Russia, were being labelled all over as Tartars, and half -Turks, arch- 
 Turanians and what not. To men of the Radoslavoff type, who know 
 what that means, this was the signal that before long somebody would 
 remember that the Huns had actually at one time inhabited Bulgaria. 
 Some savant would make some cephalic measurements and prove it, 
 moreover. 
 
 Question of Guarantee Leads to a Deadlock 
 
 An endless wrangling resulted. The intermediate solutions of the 
 problem that were proposed need not occupy us here. All negotiating 
 came in the end to this : The Entente governments would guarantee that 
 in case of a successful ending of the European War, Bulgaria would get 
 what she wanted of Serbia. To enter at all upon the Dobrudja question 
 was not feasible just then, though some steps would be taken as time 
 permitted. The matter of Seres, Drama and Cavalla was to be taken 
 in hand later also. Everything depended, however, on whether or no 
 Austria-Hungary could be separated in the end from the Banat, Slovenia, 
 Carinthia, Herzegovina, Bosnia and Dalmatia. 
 
 The Bulgarian government wanted to be specifically informed what 
 under these circumstances the values of the guarantees offered would be. 
 That was a difficult question to answer. The Serbian government was 
 not inclined to give up Macedonia without getting hold of the Austro- 
 
QUESTION O^ GUARANTEE LEADS TO DEADLOCK 173 
 
 Hungarian provinces and crownlands first, and said as much with a candor 
 that was the only refreshing aspect of the entire proceeding, so far as the 
 Entente was concerned. 
 
 Thus a deadlock had been reached. Meanwhile Mackensen was getting 
 ready, and a military convention had been entered into between Bulgaria 
 and the Central Powers. Colonel Ewald von Massow, the German military 
 plenipotentiary at Sofia, had already taken possession, for office purposes, 
 of a large building that was to be a hotel for the Companie internationale 
 des wagon-lits, and the coming event generally was casting large and dark 
 shadows ahead. 
 
 Mr. Guechoff, of the Nationalists, was moving heaven and earth 
 to keep Bulgaria out of the war, in which effort he was not entirely 
 unsuccessful, since his party included what capitalists there are in Bulgaria ; 
 Malinoff, leader of the Democrats, was doing his best also, and the Pro- 
 gressives were not lagging. The Agrarians, especially, were violently 
 opposed to another war, as were the Radicals and Socialists, who in the 
 Sofia cafes kept things in pandemonium. 
 
 A delegation of Agrarians, Radicals and Socialists decided to bring 
 the matter to the attention of Czar Ferdinand one morning, about ten 
 o'clock, just before the bubble of diplomacy burst. I had just visited 
 M. Dobrovitch, the private secretary of the king, and met the delegation 
 in the large foyer of the palace. There was grim determination on their 
 faces, and the intention to be heard from. Since I knew what the purpose 
 of the call was, I naturally made it my business to be on hand when 
 the delegation left the palace. The faces of the men were grimmer yet, 
 that of Stambulowski, spokesman, was not a pleasant thing to behold. He 
 was furious and the muscles of his jaws were working in a way that 
 showed that he had not fared so well with His Majesty. 
 
 The interview was a very unconventional affair. King Ferdinand 
 told his callers that the government was in the hands of Dr. Radoslavoff, 
 and that all he had been asked to do was sign the decrees of the cabinet, 
 which was true enough, seeing that Ferdinand was mindful of the fact 
 that he had taken the throne of a man whose stay in Bulgaria had been 
 made impossible because he was thought too great a partizan of Russia. 
 All nonsense to the contrary notwithstanding, Czar Ferdinand had very 
 little to do with the decisions of the Radoslavoff government. 
 
 Stambulowski would not believe that. 
 
 "Thou, king!" he shouted as loudly as he could, and with his face 
 red with rage, "take care that thou dost not lose thy head in this war." 
 
 For a moment King Ferdinand was at a loss what to say. Then he 
 looked at his son, Prince Boris, and calmly replied: 
 
 "I will take care of my head, do you take care of your hide." 
 
174 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 That ended the audience. The same night the Bulgarian cabinet pre- 
 pared the call to the people for the mobilization. 
 
 The Entente governments were now reduced to playing their last 
 card. Bulgaria was about to enter into a state of armed neutrality, and 
 since that neutrality could be directed only against Serbia, no time could 
 be lost in coming to a decision with Bulgaria. 
 
 On October 3, the Russian government transmitted to the Bulgarian 
 government the following note: 
 
 "The events which are taking place in Bulgaria at this 
 moment give evidence of a definite decision of King Ferdinand's 
 Government to place the fate of its country in the hands of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 "The presence of German and Austrian officers in the 
 Ministry of War and on the staff of the army, the concentration 
 of troops in the zone bordering Serbia, and the extensive financial 
 support accepted from our enemies by the Sofia Cabinet, no longer 
 leave any doubt as to the object of the military preparations of 
 Bulgaria. 
 
 "The Powers of the Entente, who have at heart the realiza- 
 tion of the aspirations of the Bulgarian people, have, on many 
 occasions, warned M. Radoslavoff that any hostile act against 
 Serbia would be considered as directed against themselves. The 
 assurances given by the head of the Bulgarian cabinet in reply to 
 these warnings are contradicted by the facts. 
 
 "The representative of Russia, which is bound to Bulgaria by 
 the imperishable memory of her liberation from the Turkish yoke, 
 cannot sanction by his presence preparations for fratricidal aggres- 
 sion against a Slav and allied people. 
 
 "The Russian minister, therefore, has received orders to 
 leave Bulgaria with all the staffs of the Legation and Consulates 
 if the Bulgarian Government does not within twenty-four hours 
 break with the enemies of the Slav cause and of Russia, and does 
 not at once proceed to send away officers belonging to the armies 
 of States which are at war with the Powers of the Entente." 
 
 It was the tone of outraged paternalism of the note which offended 
 the Bulgarian people most — many of those even who had up to now been 
 staunch Russophiles. Nor were the facts in the case at all agreeable with 
 this handiwork of Sazonoff's. That the Powers of the Entente had had 
 "at heart the realization of the aspirations of the Bulgarian people" was 
 hardly true. The Treaty of Bucharest, just two years old, was a monument 
 to that fact. With almost every able-bodied Bulgarian a soldier during 
 the Balkan War, and the inter-ally fighting between themselves and the 
 Serbs and Greeks, with the invasion of Bulgaria by Rumanian soldiers 
 still a memory of yesterday, and with Bulgaria deprived of the fruits 
 of her victory, as the Bulgars saw it, and with territory taken from them 
 
QUESTION OF GUARANTEE LEADS TO DEADLOCK 175 
 
 in the Dobrudja by main force, this Sazonoff note could not have the 
 desired result. 
 
 But for some reason Dr. Radoslavoff began to spar for a little more 
 time. Negotiations were dragged past this contretemps. Mackensen was 
 not yet ready and the harvesting of crops was not complete. 
 
 One evening, as I was about to go to dinner, I met in the lobby 
 of the Grand Hotel Bulgarie, where I was stopping, two German aviation 
 officers, whose appearance suggested that they had just stepped out of the 
 aeroplane. I noticed that the two men were being taken upstairs in a 
 manner that reminded me of being hustled out of the way. Out in the 
 street stood an automobile of the Bulgarian army, and just as I stepped 
 out of doors the machine sped off. I noticed, however, that an orderly 
 was folding up two Bulgarian army coats, which, as I surmised, had 
 been worn by the German officers to ward off detection. The two men 
 did not appear in the dining room, and later I learned that they had dined 
 in their quarters. Next morning they were taken to the Sofia aviation field 
 in the same machine, but without wearing the great coats. On the aviation 
 field they leisurely got into their flyer and made off. 
 
 That afternoon I learned that the two aviators had come to Sofia from 
 the Headquarters of Field Marshal Mackensen at Temesvar in Hungary. 
 Two days later the German-Austro-Hungarian offensive against the Serbs 
 was on, and on October 13th occurred, as is alleged by the Bulgarian 
 general staff, the border incident which caused the Bulgarian government 
 to declare that a state of war existed between Bulgaria and Serbia. I 
 for one do not believe that the Serbs were the provocators. There are 
 some cases in which cause and effect show a relationship that is more 
 convincing than the asseverations of any government, big or little. What 
 is more likely is that the Bulgars acted in the role of aggressor. What 
 is just as likely is that the incident in question did not occur at all. 
 
 The statement given me by the Bulgarian foreign office was a little 
 too "fishy" as the saying goes, to merit attention and for that reason I 
 did not go to the trouble of dispatching it to my news service — which 
 was something some people in Sofia could not forget, and which, I fear, 
 had something to do with my attempted explusion from the country by 
 M. Georgieff, head of the Bulgarian political police, later on. 
 
 That a newspaper correspondent may see the right and wrong of a 
 thing without being committed thereby to becoming partizan is some- 
 thing which few government officials ever concede. It was so in Sofia, 
 of course. 
 
 This is the manner in which diplomacy failed to accomplish anything 
 whatsoever in Sofia, the assertions of others notwithstanding. It was 
 very foolish of the Vienna Foreign Office to advertise that Count Tarnowski 
 
176 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 had brought about Bulgaria's entry into the European War. Such is not the 
 case. Herr MichaeHs, the German minister, moreover, would have been 
 the last person to influence Dr. RadoslavoflF. That he had something to do 
 with the understanding that was reached in regard to the military conven- 
 tion is a fact, of course. But aside from that he was a good diplomatist — 
 a diplomatist of the very best type in fact. He was that in so far that 
 he was not a diplomatist at all. Politics and war were not his forte. He 
 cared for neither, and was afraid of both — was, in other words, a dip- 
 lomatist of the innocuous kind. He was this to such an extent that before 
 long he was recalled in favor of Count Alfred Oberndorflf, who was almost 
 as good as Herr Michaelis. 
 
X 
 
 SOME CASES OF DIPLOMANIA 
 
 INTO the period marked by the events described in the preceding 
 chapter fall a number of cases of "diplomania" that require special 
 attention, though not all of them were of prime importance. The 
 world, literally, had become war mad. When governments were not 
 foaming at the mouth, they usually had their hands full apologizing for 
 the more recent faux pas that had been made, diplomatically or militarily. 
 The press also suffered from a convulsion of passion. In Great Britain 
 Lord Northcliffe was attending to the government with a will and con- 
 siderable effect. The journalistic politicians of France were running, or 
 thought they did, much of the War, and the press of Central Europe 
 just then was jubilant that finally the direct route between Berlin and 
 Bagdad was open. It would now be possible to rush to the Dardanelles 
 and Gallipoli all the materielle that was needed — additional troops, if 
 necessary. 
 
 Driving the Serbs from the Danube had first opened the water route 
 to Constantinople, and shortly thereafter the rail line was also free. To 
 the Central Powers that meant a great deal, naturally. "Mittel-Europa" 
 was now more than a mere phrase. It was now possible to ship into 
 Turkey what its people needed the most, and the rationed populations of 
 Germany and Austria-Hungary hoped to get much food from Bulgaria 
 and the Ottoman empire, realizing little, thanks to the strict censorship, 
 that there were bread lines in the Turkish capital long before they were 
 seen in Berlin and Vienna. 
 
 But there was a great deal of other traffic that began to move freely 
 now. From Germany moved southward thousands of tons of ammunition, 
 guns and army equipment of all sorts; chemicals and materia medica, 
 stationery and paper, glassware and porcelain, machinery and implements 
 and utensils. Northward went some cotton, wool, hides and leather. 
 
 Forcing the Serb from the banks of the Danube broke also the con- 
 necting link between Russia and Serbia. There had been an active traffic 
 on the river between those two countries. The Russian base at Reni 
 supplied the Serbs with ammunition and clothing, despite the many protests 
 that were made to the Rumanian government by the diplomatists of the 
 Central Empires. The Austro-Hungarian river monitors would have liked 
 
 177 
 
178 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 to put an end to this. But that was impossible. The Danube was well 
 mined in the narrows of the Pass of Kazan and the Iron Gate, and else- 
 where Serbian artillery, for a while under the command of English officers, 
 made navigation of the river most hazardous. The Russian ships did not 
 come up far enough to be taken under fire by the Austro-Hungarian 
 artillery stationed near the entrance to the Iron Gates, but usually stopped 
 at Praovo to discharge their cargoes. With the forcing back of the Serbian 
 army all this ceased. 
 
 That the Serbs would not be able to hold out against the new combina- 
 tion of German, Bulgar and Austro-Hungarian was realized long before 
 this. The Austro-Hungarian army, under General Potiorek, to which I was 
 attached for a while, had in November and December, 1914, made a very 
 poor job of subduing the Serbs. The pressure of the Russians in Galicia 
 and the Bukovina made Potiorek's force too small for the lightning 
 program that was to be carried through. In addition to that the weather 
 conditions were the worst for an army that proposed to advance as fast 
 as infantry can march. In the Machwa district of Serbia, through which 
 the main coup was being delivered, the country roads were quagmires, 
 which would freeze over during the night and thaw again at sunrise. 
 General Potiorek, in addition, was the poorest sort of a leader, and in 
 the end he was routed ignominiously and Belgrade retaken by the Serbs. 
 
 These events had given the Serbian army a fancied value it did not 
 have. The Serbian government, moreover, seems to have done little to 
 dispel the illusions held in Petrograd, Lyondon and Paris. If at any time 
 it made its representations strong enough they must have been ignored. 
 At any rate the Serb army was not given the support it needed and so well 
 deserved. If any of the armies engaged in the World War deserve an 
 unusual amount of credit, the Serbian army, more than any other, is 
 entitled to it. It fought under most adverse conditions, with a courage 
 and determination that must excite, or should, the admiration of any man. 
 I am speaking in this matter as an eye-witness to many of its heroic deeds. 
 
 The debacle of the plans of the Entente governments, so far as the 
 Balkan was concerned, caused Petrograd, London and Paris to fly into 
 rage, the reasons for which should be easily understood. At that very 
 moment the fortune of war of the Triple Entente and Italy was at its 
 lowest ebb, and to have Bulgaria enter the fracas on the side of the 
 Central Powers and Turkey was a bad blow to Franco-Russo-British 
 prestige and politics. Once more, as a first result in the political field. 
 Premier Bratianu of Rimiania decided to keep his hands and his country 
 out of the fire, of which more further on. 
 
 That the Entente governments kept up their negotiations with Bul- 
 garia after news of the border settlement along the iMaritza had come. 
 
SOME CASES OF DIPLOMANIA 179 
 
 is something which I have never been able to understand. To me, at 
 least, and I would be the last to claim great political sagacity, it was 
 fait accompli that Bulgaria would go with the Central Powers. I could 
 see no other culmination of the case, which may have been due to the 
 fact that I had access to the fountainhead of information in Bulgaria, the 
 small house in Rackovski street, where Dr. Radoslavoff held forth. There 
 was only one man in the Entente camp of diplomatists in Sofia to whom 
 that also was clear. Mr. O'Beirne, the British charge d'affaires, never 
 took a hopeful view of the situation. He realized that the demands of 
 the Bulgarian government could be met only at the expense of Serbia, 
 an actual ally, and at those of Rumania, a prospective one. If it had 
 depended upon him, the Dobrudja would have been returned to Bulgaria, 
 and the districts of Seres, Drama and Cavalla would have been lost by 
 Greece. Being on the spot he knew, much better than he could make the 
 men in London see by means of dispatches, that the Bulgarians had made 
 up their mind to wipe out the injustice of the Bucharest Treaty. But 
 nothing less than that could have changed the aspect of the case on the 
 Balkan. 
 
 Sofia Entente Diplomatists Depart 
 
 One rainy fall evening a train without lights pulled into a suburban 
 station of the Bulgarian capital. On the platform stood as disconsolate a 
 group of diplomatists and their secretaries, and consuls, as could be met. 
 Others were arriving. Much baggage was still being dumped from wagons 
 and into the baggage cars. 
 
 Mr. Kozeff, first secretary of the Sofia foreign office, was going 
 about giving orders, when not greeting one of the departing ones. I 
 was making observations. 
 
 Mr. O'Beirne, the British representative, was moving about in a most 
 dignified manner. The French minister, M. de Panafieu, was very sulky 
 and cross, taking his defeat and retreat with as little grace as he could. 
 Signor Cucchi-Boasso, the Italian minister, was downcast. The Russian 
 minister, M. Savinski, was home sick a-bed — really sick, as I had ascer- 
 tained within the flexible limits of the diplomatically possible. 
 
 The cars being not lighted yet, the departing ministers had to wait 
 on the platform. About the time set for the leaving of the special for 
 Dedeagatch, where a British cruiser was waiting for the party, several 
 other diplomatists in Sofia showed up. M. Derussi, the Rumanian minister, 
 reeked perfume as usual. He bid his colleagues de profession perfunctory 
 au revoir, and then sped ofif toward his rose-scented boudoir, the raw 
 atmosphere being anything but agreeable to a man who had to live in 
 surroundings made up entirely of the finest Turkish rugs and trimmings, 
 
180 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 shaded lights and violet de Parmc. Over snow-crowned Mount Vidosh 
 swept an icy wind, laden with rain, and all about the station were visible 
 the debris of the good international relations of diplomacy. Here was 
 a case in which diplomania had wrecked itself in deadly impact with the 
 necessities of a people. That much I learned from the face of M. Derussi, 
 who with all his idiosyncrasies was not the worst of the lot. 
 
 The Greek minister also came to say farewell, as did Mr. Einstein, 
 the man with whom I have acquainted the reader already. 
 
 Everything in order now, the dismissed ministers got into the cars. 
 The threat of the Russian minister of foreign affairs, that he and his allies 
 would recall their representatives, had come to nothing. I accompanied 
 Mr. O'Beirne to his compartment and then suggested the making of a 
 little statement. 
 
 The British charge d'affaires smiled. There was really nothing to say, 
 he replied. I was not so sure of that and pressed the point. 
 
 For some moments we discussed the propriety of the thing and 
 then Mr. O'Beirne authorized me to say for him that his stay in Bulgaria 
 had been very pleasant; he regretted the turn of events, but hoped that 
 the traditionally friendly relations between Great Britain and Bulgaria 
 would be re-established very soon. 
 
 It was my intention to get the views of the French minister. But 
 this intention did not prosper. When I came to his compartment he was 
 gesticulating wildly at one of his secretaries and shouting at the top of 
 his voice. To my knock at his door he answered with a glowering grimace. 
 Through the glass, forming the upper panel of the next door, I saw the 
 Italian minister — woe-begone and with tears in his eyes. I sped some 
 of the secretaries with farewells and then rushed off the train, which was 
 already in motion. 
 
 No handkerchiefs were being waved. The group left behind was as 
 serious and dejected as the one that was speeding off toward the Aegean, 
 and which, in going there, would pass through the territory that was the 
 first quid pro quo for Bulgaria's entry into the War. 
 
 Messrs. Guechoff, Daneff and Malinoff, and others, had done their 
 best to the very last minute. They put a period to their efforts only, 
 when one fine morning the populace gathered about the war proclamations 
 on the street corners. With them came "preventive" censorship and the 
 application of those specious laws intended to make things easy for govern- 
 ments at war. 
 
 The Russophiles had hoped that the miracle would happen, as others 
 have done since then. It was said that they were ready to start a popular 
 uprising against Czar Ferdinand and Dr. Radoslavoff. Stambulowski, 
 indeed; had already threatened the ruler, and there is no telling what 
 
SOFIA ENTENTE DIPLOMATISTS DEPART 181 
 
 the Agrarians and Radicals would have done. It was not that they liked 
 Czar Nicholas and his autocratic government more than their own institu- 
 tions, but they had absorbed so much Tolstoism that their bonds with 
 Russia were the strongest, nevertheless. But the people of Bulgaria, the 
 soldiers who had fought in the Balkan War, were with the government. 
 They were literally a unit in their desire to get at the Serbs. Nothing was 
 so J5bpular as a song in which the Serbians were referred to as bandits, 
 the singing of which was the special delight of the cadets of the Sofia 
 military academy. As the army saw it : There was room on the peninsula 
 only for one dominating state, and, as is natural for a people, that state 
 was to be Bulgaria. 
 
 The Foreign Office had a diflferent formula for that — a diplomatic 
 one, of course. The predominancy in the Balkans of Bulgaria would once 
 and for always put an end to the troubles and problems which in the 
 past had threatened the peace of Europe — had been a menace to the world 
 in fact. I suppose, they said the same in Belgrade, though there, as a 
 journalist agent of mine reported, desires went much further. 
 
 The chauvinists in that capital hoped to make Serbia not only the 
 dominating state on the peninsula, but they wished to make an empire 
 even greater than that of Emperor Stephan Dushan, who ruled over all 
 of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Epirus and Thessally, and 
 whose Woivodshes, after his death in 1355, prepared the Serb empire for 
 conquest by the Turks, in 1389, by engaging in internecine strife and the 
 state's division. The new Serb empire was to be greater than that. It 
 was to include Bulgaria and at least northern Greece, Thrace as far as 
 the Enos-Media line, and with the aid of SazonoiT all that could be wrung 
 from the Austrians and Hungarians, and from the Rumanians. To all 
 this the Serb chauvinists were laying claim in a matter highly agreeable 
 to the maps and literature of Professor St. Stanoievitch. Since there was 
 sitting at the door an army of Germans and Austro-Hungarians, under 
 the leadership of Mackensen, a man who had distinguished himself in the 
 rout of the Russian armies that very summer, that was the poorest sort 
 of conduct, so far as the Bulgarians were interested, who themselves had 
 not forgotten the glory of Bulgaria under Czar Simeon, who ruled the 
 Balkans from the Adria to the Pontus Euxinos, the Serbs included, and 
 to whom even Byzantium was tributary (893-927). 
 
 These were the factors that made the hatred between Serbia and Bul- 
 garia the thing it was. How far the two peoples despised one another 
 can best be illustrated by a little occurrence incident to the outbreak of 
 hostilities. Mr. KozeflF, of the Sofia foreign office, had in person delivered 
 to the British, French, Italian and Russian ministers their passports. To 
 the Serbian minister in Sofia this courtesy was not shown, despite the 
 
182 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 fact that the personal conduct of M. Tcholak-Antitch had been most 
 satisfactory. When the moment for the delivery of the papers came a 
 messenger of the foreign office was given a sealed envelope, addressed to 
 the Serbian minister in the usual manner. The messenger also was told 
 that the customary receipt was required. 
 
 The man mounted his bicycle and made off. M. Tcholak-Antitch must 
 have surmised what was coming, and the envelope was opened before 
 the receipt was given by signature in a book carried by the messenger for 
 that purpose. At any rate the Serbian minister hesitated for a few moments 
 and then signed. On the following day he was escorted across the border 
 at Zaribrod by a military guard. Those were things which might have 
 been omitted without Bulgaria losing anything thereby to the advantage 
 of the "arch-enemy." 
 
 A Clash Between ''Minister'' and Consul General 
 
 After a short trip to the new front, Pirot-Nish, I returned to Sofia 
 to occupy myself again with international political subjects, of which just 
 then the activity of Mr. Lewis Einstein, and his difficulties with Mr. 
 Dominic I. Murphy, the United States consul general at Sofia, were of 
 absorbing interest. 
 
 I have already referred to the fact that during the summer of that 
 year. Dr. Kermecktchieff, the consular agent of the United States in 
 Sofia, had been dismissed by the State Department in Washington for 
 activities that were considered pro-German. A little later it was deemed 
 necessary to send to Sofia a consul general in the person of Mr. Murphy, 
 who had been stationed at Amsterdam, London, and before that at Bor- 
 deaux. I was in Sofia when Mr. Murphy arrived — ^to make the acquaintance 
 there, a few days later, of Mr. Einstein. Since the appointment of a consular 
 general to Sofia in those days was not an epoch-making event, I paid little 
 attention to the matter, apart from dispatching a line or two upon his arrival. 
 The political situation in the Balkans was keeping me well occupied, and 
 thus it came that I accepted the presence in Sofia of Messrs. Murphy 
 and Einstein as a mere routine matter. After I had forwarded the news 
 that finally, also, the United States government had seen fit to send to 
 Bulgaria a minister plenipotentiary, I considered my duty done, though the 
 "Echo de Bulgarie," semi-official daily in French of the Bulgarian govern- 
 ment, celebrated the event in a column or so. I had no reason then to 
 believe that diplomania could be carried as far as it was by the new 
 United States "minister." 
 
 Mr. Einstein carried in those days a card upon which it said in neatly 
 engraved French, that he was minister plenipotentiary. He was indeed a 
 
A CLASH BETWEEN ^'MINISTER" AND CONSUL 183 
 
 minister of that sort, but a had been. The inscription on the card fooled 
 not only me, but scores of others. When my dispatch was days old and 
 either in the press or in the wastepaper basket of some British or French 
 censor, en route, I discovered that Mr. Einstein was not the minister 
 plenipotentiary to Bulgaria, but that Mr. Charles J. Vopicka in Bucharest 
 still filled his triplex appointment. 
 
 Mr. Einstein, and this time he came again from London and Paris, 
 had been detailed by the Department of State to act as "diplomatic agent" 
 in Sofia. That was a dififerent thing, of course. But it went still far 
 enough to permit the establishing in the Grand Hotel Bulgarie of a regular 
 legation with every diplomatic privilege, including that of sanctuary for 
 other diplomatists that might get into trouble. 
 
 Since the public had greater matters to consider than the rectification 
 of a mistake I had made in "appointing" Mr. Einstein minister to Bulgaria, 
 instead of stating that he was diplomatic agent, as I would have done 
 had Mr. Einstein disillusioned me, I let the matter rest and turned to more 
 important things. 
 
 So far as I knew the status of Mr. Einstein was now as clear as that 
 of Mr. Murphy, the consul g^eneral. Yet that was not the case. An 
 American citizen of Macedonian origin had trouble with the Bulgarian 
 government. It seems that the military authorites, needing every man able 
 to carry a gun, had detained the Macedonian- American and forced him 
 into the army. That was a matter calling for my attention. 
 
 Mr. Murphy was a man of very few words. Though he and his wife 
 had a room next to mine in the same Grand Hotel Bulgarie, we were barely 
 acquainted. Mr. Einstein had his "legation" on the floor below, and I had 
 noticed that diplomatic agent and consul general came to pass one another 
 without exchanging the conventional greetings. That struck me as odd, and 
 verified a hint which Mr. Stanciefif, of the Sofia Foreign Office, and in 
 charge of the consular bureau, had given me inadvertently one day while 
 I was interviewing him in the case of the Macedonian. Mr. Stanciefif had 
 said that it was rather hard to deal with Messrs. Einstein and Murphy for 
 the reason that both of them seemed to have the same amount of authority, 
 which meant, in this instance, that there was a clash of authority. 
 
 In the course of the next few days I learned that Mr. Murphy had 
 given the Sofia Foreign Office to understand that his consul-generalship 
 was linked with diplomatic duties, as in the absence of an accredited resident 
 diplomatist in Sofia itself that might have been the case anyway. The 
 arrival of Mr. Einstein in Sofia would have automatically confined the 
 consul general to his especial duties, had it not been that the State Depart- 
 ment had intrusted Mr. Murphy with certain seals and instructions which 
 he could not surrender except upon specific orders. 
 
184 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 For these orders Mr. Murphy waited and waited. But they came not. 
 
 The seals in question, I must state, were those that are used for 
 the authentication of passports when issued or viseed. 
 
 In issuing an exequator to Consul General Murphy, the Bulgarian 
 government had recognized the validity of the seals the United States 
 official was using, and there was no question concerning them. But such 
 a question arose when Mr. Einstein also began to issue passports and 
 verify them, and used a similar seal. 
 
 The Bulgarian government felt obliged to bring this to the attention 
 of the American Consul General, and in this manner Mr. Murphy learned 
 that Mr. Einstein had a set of seals also. As the result of this discovery 
 there was a scene in the "legation" on the first floor of the hotel. What 
 the result of the set-to was I do not know, nor can it have been very 
 satisfactory to Mr. Murphy since Mr. Einstein continued to use the seals. 
 
 While the quality of the official acts of Mr. Murphy was not ques- 
 tioned by the Bulgarian government, that courtesy was not extended to 
 those of the diplomatic agent. Before long the passports issued by Mr. 
 Einstein, or viseed by him, resulted in trouble for the holders thereof. 
 
 At the Foreign Office the United States diplomatic agent soon ceased 
 to be persona grata, and Mr. Murphy came to be the only official with 
 whom the Bulgarian government would treat. In addition to that Mr. 
 Einstein engaged presently in an affair which brought down upon him 
 the attention of M. Georgieff, the very efficient and equally ruthless chief 
 of Bulgaria's "political" that is, secret, police. M. Bosniakoff, assistant 
 to the chief, was detailed to keep the United States diplomatic agent under 
 closest surveillance and succeeded in doing that in a most effective manner. 
 Mr. Einstein used to meet his friends, among them a man by name of 
 Walker, in a house where the majority of callers were supposed to be 
 violent adherents of the Entente cause. I may mention that the modus 
 operandi consisted of keeping in the cellar of the house a stenographer. 
 
 Mr. Einstein a Most Zealous Guardian 
 
 Men in the Sofia Foreign Office had charged Mr. Einstein with being 
 not only the diplomatic agent of the several Entente governments, but 
 their most able agent provocateur besides. The rumor that Mr. Einstein 
 had been sent to Constantinople at the special request of M. Jusserand 
 would not down, and when the man appeared in Sofia, after having mean- 
 while been attached to the American diplomatic missions in London and 
 Paris, the report grew into a fact, as such facts go. 
 
 The British legation in Sofia had been left in charge of a man named 
 Hirst, who, to give his official status, was permitted to remain as "custodian 
 
MR. EINSTEIN A MOST ZEALOUS GUARDIAN 185 
 
 of records." With Mr. Hirst the United States diplomatic agent associated 
 a great deal in sharp contrast to Mr. Murphy, who may have thought that 
 to the observance of neutrality belongs, on the part of a government 
 representative, also a due regard for the susceptibility of others. Be that 
 as it may, the conduct of Messrs. Einstein and Murphy was radically 
 different and contradictory. Messrs. Murphy and Hirst associated officially 
 as much as was necessary, but drew the line there, while Mr. Einstein, a 
 great devotee of lawn tennis, was seen everyday in so public a place as 
 a tennis court, with the British custodian of records. That was a privilege 
 Mr. Einstein had, and one which in any other country he might have 
 indulged in as much as he pleased. But the Bulgarians are a people who 
 easily suspect. In this manner, then, the case against the United States 
 diplomatic agent was made complete and final. 
 
 The Entente governments had placed some difficulties in the way of 
 the Bulgarian ministers who were bound for home from their posts in 
 London and Paris. For a time they were held in detention, and the 
 Bulgarian government, in order to secure the release of these men, decided 
 to practice reprisal by arresting and holding in detention the custodian of 
 records in the British legation, Mr. Hirst. 
 
 Through a Russophile employe in the Sofia Foreign Office, whose lot 
 in life I will not make harder than it is, the tip went out to another 
 Russophile on the outside that Mr. Hirst would be arrested. Mr. Hirst 
 was the first to hear of this, and promptly notified Mr. Einstein that he 
 would seek sanctuary in the United States legation on the first floor of 
 the Grand Hotel Bulgarie. Mr. Einstein was not in at the time, but the 
 man whom Mr. Hirst had entrusted with the details of his plight found 
 him shortly afterwards. When the diplomatic agent arrived Mr. Hirst was 
 already in sanctuary, sitting in the drawing room of Mr. Einstein's suite. 
 It was later charged that Mr. Einstein had been tipped off first. The 
 known facts in the case do not seem to permit that conclusion. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later an official from the Bulgarian foreign office, 
 a police officer and several gendarmes, appeared in the hotel to arrest Mr. 
 Hirst. They were shown upstairs by the manager of the hotel, but stopped 
 short when, above the door of the suite, they saw the escutcheon of the 
 State Department of the United States. 
 
 The resulting parley between Mr. Einstein and the Bulgarian officials 
 led to a draw. Mr. Einstein said that his "legation," though hardly a 
 legation in the usual sense, enjoyed all diplomatic privileges, including 
 the right to give sanctuary to the diplomatic agent of another government. 
 The argument being based on an old custom in diplomacy, the Bulgarian 
 government decided not to press the point just then. Before making 
 further attempts to secure the person of the custodian of British records 
 
186 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 an effort was to be made to ascertain from the United States government 
 what its own attitude was. 
 
 But before that sane couse had been followed to its conclusion, a 
 long disquisition on extra-territoriality and the like, diplomatic privileges 
 and what not, was engaged in with Mr. Einstein. The appeal of the 
 Bulgarian Foreign Office to Mr. Murphy fell on deaf ears, nor did Mr. 
 Einstein get in any way encouragement or support from the consul general. 
 I have never met a man in the consular service of the United States who 
 could be so exasperatingly impartial and neutral. Mr. Murphy had advice 
 for neither of the contenders, and sat in his little office in the Slavianska 
 ulica like a man whom the quarrel did not in the least concern, though, 
 still living in the hotel, he came in contact with the locale of trouble every 
 day. 
 
 Whether or no any part of a hotel can be looked upon as a legation 
 resolved itself into one of the burning questions in diplomacy. Mr. Einstein 
 claimed that the residence of a foreign diplomatist enjoyed extra-terri- 
 toriality no matter where located, and that under no circumstances was the 
 extra-territoriality contingent upon other elements than the acceptance by 
 a government of the diplomatist's credentials. On that point Mr. Einstein 
 scored heavily, and established, I think, a precedent which will tend to 
 further make diplomacy intricate. 
 
 But more trouble was to come. Mr. Hirst had to eat, of course. For 
 the first two days that condition had been met satisfactorily by ordering 
 the meals from the waiter, and, since Mr. Einstein had been quick-witted 
 enough to get bedding for his extra-territorial guest, Mr. Hirst was now 
 quite comfortable, though somewhat the worse off for lack of exercise. 
 The wags of Sofia were sure that in the end Mr. Einstein would rent a 
 tennis court and extend extra-territoriality to that for the benefit of his 
 guest. 
 
 However, a government bent upon being nasty has more than one 
 way of doing that. The manager of the hotel was ordered to only serve 
 one portion of breakfast, lunch and dinner in the Einstein apartment- 
 legation. Of course, that did not force the enemy upstairs to capitulate. 
 Mr. Einstein ordered the meals for himself, and then ate in the city. 
 
 There was another way of applying to Mr. Hirst what his government 
 was trying hard to apply to the Central powers — starvation. The hotel 
 was instructed that no meals of any sort were to be served in the rooms 
 of the United States diplomatic agent. To see that this rule was observed 
 the guard about the corridor on which the suite was located was increased. 
 
 Mr. Hirst would have starved to death had it not been that Mr. 
 Einstein applied the very simple and perfectly obvious remedy of buying 
 food in town and taking it into the "legation." 
 
MR. EINSTEIN A MOST ZEALOUS GUARDIAN 187 
 
 There are certain things to which even a diplomatist in sanctuary must 
 attend. Unfortunately, the "legation" had no bathroom, and urged by an 
 outraged government, the servants of the hotel began to object to carrying 
 so much water in and out of the Einstein suite. That was a sore problem 
 now. Already, the attempt had been made by a particularly enterprising 
 Bulgarian police officer to seize the person of Mr. Hirst. Inadvertently 
 the custodian of records had shown himself in the open door and two husky 
 gendarmes had lurched forward to lay hands on the man whom the 
 government wanted so badly. Retreat into the adjoining "other" room 
 of the legation, on the part of Mr. Hirst, and the warning hand of Mr. 
 Einstein, alone prevented a situation that would have led to war, slaughter 
 and destruction. How nitroglycerineously instable and touchy international 
 relations can become in the smallest of matters should be illustrated by this. 
 
 The chamber servant having refused to be of service any longer, Mr. 
 Einstein was face to face with the first really serious problem. The lava- 
 tory was across the corridor, to be sure, a matter of eight feet at the most, 
 but how to get Mr. Hirst there was most difficult — impossible, in fact, 
 so long as the agents of the Bulgarian government stood ready in the 
 corridor to pounce upon the much wanted custodian of records. 
 
 Mr. Einstein met the situation in the end, as any resourceful diplo- 
 matist would, by proclaiming the corridor as under extra-territoriality. 
 To this the Bulgarian government objected violently. The argument was 
 reinforced by Mr. Einstein with the sound logic that since he had to 
 use the same lavatory, it was a part of the legation, and the fact that he 
 did not use it exclusively could not alter that aspect, since his payment of 
 rent to the hotel, for his quarters, comprised ipso facto the right to use 
 the conveniences provided for the guests of the house. 
 
 Again Mr. Einstein won, though not entirely since it was agreed that 
 he would have to accompany the man in sanctuary while crossing the cor- 
 ridor — a sort of safe conduct arrangement. 
 
 One would think that a government involved in a war would have 
 felt very keenly, even if it could not appreciate, the farcical qualities of 
 this wrangling over the person of a man who was of no importance in 
 the scheme eternal. Far from it ! The manager of the hotel was induced 
 to serve notice upon Mr. Einstein that his rooms would be wanted, that 
 they, in fact, would soon be occupied by a person, who was in the habit 
 of always wanting these very same rooms on the occasion of trips to Sofia. 
 At this display of naivete Mr. Einstein laughed, and invited the serving 
 of a dispossess notice. 
 
 In that state the diplomatic controversy was left when the ministers 
 of the Bulgarian government were released and when the cause for reprisal 
 had vanished, therefore. 
 
188 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 One may indeed wonder why the Bulgarian government did not show 
 amour propre enough to discontinue its fracas with Mr. Einstein. After 
 all what could it matter whether or no Mr. Hirst was held in detention. 
 To the sum and substance of the actual that contributed little. Men quite 
 innocent of diplomacy were being butchered by the thousands each day, 
 and here was a government willing to risk complications with the United 
 States in order to settle to its own satisfaction something that could not 
 be dignified even with being called a trifle in comparison with the great 
 issues that were being stressed on the battlefields in every part of Europe. 
 
 The Pseudo-Minister Had a Free Hand 
 
 One day I expressed myself to this effect in the Sofia Foreign Office. 
 The man to whom I spoke, he is among those mentioned already, listened 
 attentively, and then produced from a file a telegram in texte claire ad- 
 dressed by Mr. Lansing to Mr. Einstein, in which it was left to the dis- 
 cretion of the latter to turn over to the Bulgarian government the man he 
 held in sanctuary, Mr. Hirst. 
 
 "What we suspected has been proven," said the official. "Mr. Einstein 
 is not only an agent of the Entente, but an agent provocateur as well. 
 That is why we persisted in our efforts against him. We would have gone 
 much further had we cared to run the risk of offending the people of 
 the United States. The entire matter would have been dropped had we 
 not known that the Department of State of the United States took the 
 view that the case of extra-territoriality established by iMr. Einstein was 
 far from clear and reasonable. We carried this thing to its ridiculous 
 proportions in order to get rid of Mr. Einstein." 
 
 Though fully informed as to the details of the case, I had not dealt 
 with it very extensively, and it seem§ that the few dispatches I wrote 
 were suppressed by the British censors. It might not be well to let the 
 American people know what was actually going on in Sofia. Knowing 
 now that the State Department did not entirely sanction the conduct of 
 Mr. Einstein, I wrote up the case with more details and cabled it. A 
 little while thereafter Mr. Einstein was "transferred" from Sofia, and 
 today is no longer in the United States diplomatic service. 
 
 But before my dispatch could take effect, Mr. Einstein had another 
 occasion to show his mettle. A former attache of the American legation 
 at Bucharest, Mr. Frank A. Couche, had selected to engage in business in 
 Rumania. He was to import certain articles, and in connection with that 
 found it necessary to go to Salonica, then occupied by the forces of General 
 Sarrail. When Mr. Couche arrived at Sofia, he found that the Bulgarian 
 authorities were averse to having him get to Salonika via Dedeagatch. 
 
THE PSEUDO-MINISTER HAD A FREE HAND 189 
 
 Anxious to get to his destination, the former secretary of the American 
 legation in Bucharest attempted, so the Bulgarians alleged, to bribe an 
 inspector of passes working at the Sofia railroad station. The official in 
 question seems to have been selected for the post for more reasons than 
 one. Formerly the inspector had lived at Dallas, Texas, and was quite 
 familiar with Americanisms. He later swore that he took the money from 
 the man bound for Salonika and turned it over to the secret police. AH 
 of which seems to coincide with what happened. The traveller took a 
 train going south, but two stations beyond Sofia was arrested, and brought 
 to trial. 
 
 As piece de resistance in the attempt by the Bulgarian government to 
 prove culpability served a letter written by Mr. Einstein in a rather cryptic 
 way and addressed to the man who wanted to go to Salonika. 
 
 It was not very pleasant for an American to live in Sofia and Bulgaria 
 after that. M. Georgieff, the chief of political police, smelled a spy every 
 time he saw an American, as I was to discover myself shortly afterward. 
 
 Not long before the culmination of the Einstein-Hirst affair, I had 
 met another representative of the United States diplomatic service, who 
 seemed bent upon provocation. The critical state caused by the torpedoing 
 of the steamship "Ancona" in the Mediterranean had called me to Vienna. 
 A telegram from the office of the Associated Press in New York, relayed 
 to me via the Berlin bureau of the service, said a rupture of relations 
 between the United States and those concerned with the sinking of the 
 vessel in question was not out of the question. I am still surprised that 
 this message succeeded in getting past the German and Austro- Hungarian 
 censors. But it did. 
 
 To learn more of the details of the case I called one morning at 
 the Austro-Hungarian admiralty, there being no separate ministry of 
 marine in the governmental scheme of the monarchy. I told the chief 
 of one of the bureaus that the situation was really a serious one, and 
 that it would be best to clear up finally whether it was a German submarine 
 or an Austro-Hungarian that had done the damage. The "Lusitania" 
 case had left the people of the United States in no mood to view with 
 equanimity even a partial repetition of the offense, and it was believed, 
 therefore, that the Austro-Hungarian government, in order to avoid the 
 imminent possibility of war between the United States and Germany, had 
 shouldered blame which really should have rested upon the Germans. 
 Attention to the case for a week or so had left me also under that 
 impression. 
 
 When I was through stating my wishes the chief of the bureau 
 informed me that a report from the officer in charge of the submarine 
 that had sunk the "Ancona" had just been received. With that he took 
 
190 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 several sheets of paper from his desk and handed them to me. I noticed 
 that the report came from the Austro-Hungarian naval station at Pola. 
 It was a rather detailed account of what had happened to the steamship. 
 The language showed, if it did not prove, that it was an Austro-Hungarian 
 submarine that had torpedoed the "Ancona." 
 
 I requested permission to use the data of the report. The officer 
 said that he had no objection to that, but advised me to consult with Baron 
 von Montlong, the chief of the press department of the Foreign Office, 
 before attempting to forward my dispatch. So far as he knew, the note 
 in reply to the representations of the United States government had not 
 yet been finished, although in the main its tone had been decided upon 
 in accord with a preliminary report by wire that had been made by the 
 commander at Pola. Count Burian, the Austro-Hungarian minister of the 
 exterior, had wished to learn more of the details before turning the note 
 over to Mr. Penfield, the United States ambassador. 
 
 I copied such parts of the report as were important, wrote my 
 dispatch and submitted it to the chief of the press department, who said 
 that it would be bad taste to have my dispatch precede the actual presenta- 
 tion of the note to the United States ambassador. It would go as soon 
 as this had been done. 
 
 Pre-Conceived Views of a Diplomatist 
 
 Later in the afternoon I called at the American embassy, and found 
 that the note had not yet been delivered. Mr. Penfield was not in, and for 
 that reason I was received by Mr. U. Grant- Smith, the conseiller and first 
 secretary of the embassy. 
 
 My inquiry, naturally, led to a discussion of the "Ancona" aflfair, 
 despite the fact that Mr. Penfield, without more than knowing me as yet 
 by appearance, had told a colleague of mine, for no reason within my ken, 
 that all the news I would ever get out of his embassy I could "put in 
 one eye and not feel it." In view of the fact that Mr. Penfield was very 
 much overworked and, as a result, nervous, I paid no attention to this 
 uncalled-for remark of his, especially since on the whole he was given 
 to violent prejudices anyway, as I had learned. 
 
 I took it for granted that Mr. U. Grant- Smith would know more 
 about the "Ancona" aflfair than I did, and proceeded to question him. 
 To my surprise the first secretary accepted as an absolute fact that it was 
 a German submarine that had sunk the ship. He said he had every reason 
 to believe that such was the case. The Austro-Hungarian government was 
 ready to shoulder responsibility, because it feared that this additional 
 item was more than the account of the German Admiralty, Tirpitz et al. 
 
PRE-CONCEIVED VIEWS OF A DIPLOMATIST 191 
 
 could stand. The least that would come of it would be a rupture of 
 diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany. 
 
 Much of this was known to me, and so I began to question Mr. 
 Grant-Smith as to his evidence and proof that the "Ancona" had been 
 sunk by a German submarine. Since the secretary was not present when 
 the ship was sunk, and since the deposition of the captain, officers, crew 
 and passengers of the ill-fated vessel had not established the guilt of the 
 Germans, I wondered whether Mr. Grant-Smith had learned from Austrian 
 sources that it was a German and not an Austro-Hungarian submarine that 
 was responsible. 
 
 A question in that direction was not answered satisfactorily by the 
 secretary. At any rate, he advised, I would do well to send a dispatch in 
 conformity with his opinions. That I offered to do, if I could give my 
 authority. Would Mr. Grant-Smith permit me to quote him? No, that 
 was out of the question. He was not allowed to permit himself to be 
 quoted. I could use the informtion on my own responsibility, if I cared 
 to do that. 
 
 That I did not use the information, such as it was, was due to a 
 number of circumstances. Item number one in the list was that I could 
 get no such dispatch past the Austro-Hungarian censorship. Secondly, 
 I had to cite my authority in at least some manner, according to the cast- 
 iron rules of the service. I could have managed that by saying : "Accord- 
 ing to reliable sources," or, "it was learned authoritatively," or again, "it 
 is understood in well-informed circles." But that would have caused 
 the Foreign Office press department to make inquiry as to who my 
 source was, and since I could not say that the origin of my information 
 was Austro-Hungarian I would have let the cat out of the bag, or stood 
 there a self -convicted agent provocateur. 
 
 Mr. Grant-Smith, to whom I pointed out this situation, could not 
 see it that way, and grew rather excited, being of a very nervous disposi- 
 tion also. I finally taxed his patience too much by saying that for the 
 time being it would be best to wait for the note of the Austro-Hungarian 
 government. If that note showed this government as assuming all respon- 
 sibility nothing could be done other than holding it responsible for the act. 
 If Austria-Hungary was willing to incur the displeasure of the United 
 States more than it had already done in the Dumba affair, then it evi- 
 dently knew what it was doing. 
 
 To the remark of the secretary that this was a maneuver to draw from 
 Germany the wrath of the civilized world, I returned something to the 
 effect that there was no way of preventing that. 
 
 The next thing was that the secretary proved himself entirely 
 ignorant of the prime essential facts of the case. He maintained that the 
 
192 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Austro-Hungarian navy had no submarines capable of operating as far 
 out as the waters where the "Ancona" was torpedoed. I told him that 
 at Pola there were now such boats, having been brought there in exactly 
 the same manner as the "U" boat under Captain Hersing, which tor- 
 pedoed the British battleships "Triumph" and "Majestic" in the shore 
 waters of Gallipoli four months before — under their own power from 
 Wilhelmshaven. I thought it probable that this late type of submarine in 
 the Austro-Hungarian service was commanded by German officers and 
 men, but stated that if such a complement was dressed in Austro-Hungarian 
 uniforms, with the boat flying the flag of the dual monarchy, it would be 
 extremely difficult to lay responsibility for the sinking of the "Ancona" 
 at the door of the German government. 
 
 When finally I left the room Mr. Grant-Smith seemed to be under 
 the impression that I was pro-'German, The fact is that I had no reason 
 to assert or even insinuate that the note about to be transmitted to the 
 United States government was a fabrication, so long as I did not know 
 and could not prove that it was this. I knew no more than what I had 
 seen at the navy bureau, and what the note contained later, and had, there- 
 fore, to confine myself to the limits of my information. I would have 
 given publicity to the views of Mr. Grant- Smith had he been willing to 
 assume responsibility for them. There is no doubt that opinions of the 
 first secretary of the American embassy in Vienna had a certain value 
 in connection with the case. They had no value whatsoever when pub- 
 lished under the cloak of anonymity: Firstly, because they were not in 
 accord with the admissions made by the Austro-Hungarian government; 
 secondly, they were not based on reliable information. The difference 
 between our respective positions was: That I would have been held re- 
 sponsible by the several authorities concerned, and by the service which 
 employed me, while Mr. Grant- Smith would not have been held responsible. 
 
 The newspaperman dealing with diplomatists must always bear in mind 
 that in the end his diplomatic "friends" will sacrifice him when things 
 go wrong — do sacrifice him every time with the greatest facility, since 
 governments and foreign offices generally hold the journalist to be at best 
 an interesting pariah who lives on the morsels that fall from the table of 
 diplomacy. The newspaperman, generally, is persona grata with diplo- 
 matists only on two conditions. In the one he must be willing to be 
 and remain the convenient tool; in the other he must be able enough to 
 see through their schemes and hold his knowledge over them as a sword 
 of Damocles. 
 
 There is one person whom the average diplomatist and politician 
 temporarily in power cannot bear for any length of time — the newspaper- 
 man who feels that he has a duty toward the public and mankind. I have 
 
PRE-CONCEIVED VIEWS OF A DIPLOMATIST 193 
 
 been too long in journalism to longer hold the view that in newspaper 
 work and the public press field the ideal is attainable. So long as news- 
 papers must subsist on the revenues produced by circulation and adver- 
 tisements, and so long as it will remain impracticable and dangerous to 
 subsidize governmentally, or in any other manner, the press of a people 
 that wishes to remain free and independent, so long must society be pre- 
 pared to expect from the journalist nothing more than reconciliation, on 
 an ethical base, of the altruistic with the material, the enlightenedly selfish 
 with the striving for the better. 
 
 The views of some journalistic exploiters of the public, that this 
 scheme leaves their hands untied by obligations toward the aggregate that 
 bestows upon them the "freedom of the press," are no less detrimental to 
 a state than the "semi-official newspaper" and news service, the favorite 
 method of subsidy employed by governments that wish to retain absolute 
 control of public opinion by forming public opinion. Nor is it necessary 
 that this subsidy come from governmental sources, as such recognizable, 
 as the Great War has shown in too many instances. 
 
 The ethics of journalism are simple. The duty of the press is easily 
 recognized, and the metier of the newspaperman, especially that of the 
 editor, is not as intricate as some of them would have the public believe. 
 There are more charlatans in press work, and more unpunished criminals, 
 than in any other business I know — diplomacy, politics and government 
 alone excepted. 
 
 I make mention of these things here to draw attention to the fact 
 that any and all of the things I have touched upon so far would have 
 been impossible had journalistic conditions been different. To the person 
 that has run the gauntlet of censorship and propaganda for any length 
 of time that will be clear. 
 
 A Diplomatist of Ingrown Intellect 
 
 Needless to say, diplomania was not confined to just one camp of the 
 belligerents. Lest I should strengthen in some classes of Germans the 
 notion that their own service was as good and simon-pure as they were 
 then prone to believe — and as some still believe — I must mention here the 
 case of Prince Wolf-Metternich, successor to Freiherr von Wangenheim 
 as German ambassador to the Ottoman court. There are other cases, of 
 course, some almost as celebrated, but this one is of especial interest for 
 the reason that it never came to the attention of the German people. After 
 all, I am merely supplementing the world's knowledge of what it knows of 
 diplomacy, and what in a few years it will have again completely forgotten. 
 
 When von Wangenheim had been carried off, prematurely, by the 
 
194 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 climax that follows hardening of the arteries, he was succeeded by Prince 
 Wolf-Metternich, great noble, Borussian, and special friend of Emperor 
 William. It would have been much better to leave the man in Germany, 
 but the post being vacant, and the prince wanting it, the emperor decided 
 to do the Turks a favor. Thus it came that the most unbending and most 
 conceited member of the German diplomatic service came to inhabit the 
 great palace on the Boulevard Ayas Pasha in Pera. 
 
 Von Wangenheim had been an easy-going man. Though Prussian to 
 the very core, he was a man of the world, and as such rather out of 
 sympathy with the things that were Prussian in a bad sense. The result 
 of this was that he got along with the Turks very well, though there were 
 rough places which only Corvette-Captain Humann could negotiate. On 
 such occasions von Wangenheim would happily forget that he was an 
 "Excellenz" in His Majesty's service, and look for no more than speedy 
 solutions and favorable results. If von Wangenheim was anything at all, 
 he was as good an executive as could be found. In Captain Humann he 
 had an aide worth his weight in gold several times over — and the captain 
 always managed to do these things without feeling that he had become in- 
 dispensable. 
 
 Prince Wolf-Metternich took great offense at several things he found 
 at Pera. Item number one was that he detested the free and easy air of 
 the German ambassy, which von Wangenheim had left behind. The prince 
 loathed all commoners, and especially Captain Humann. Upon the Turks 
 he looked as half-barbarians, and their remarkably consistent democracy 
 in intercourse was revolting to this aristocrat par excellence. The prince 
 was not long in Constantinople before the Turks felt that he was treating 
 them as a vassal government. As Borussian and friend of the emperor, 
 Wolf-Metternich was divine-righter of the worst type. 
 
 I had heard of these things from Turkish friends of mine whom I 
 used to meet in Sofia, Vienna, Budapest and Berlin, but had never taken 
 much stock in them, because I knew how touchy the men in Stamboul 
 could be at times. 
 
 In August, 1916, I was in Berlin, and heard to my great astonishment 
 that Captain Humann was filling some detail in the Navy Office. I knew 
 the captain well, having been shown many a favor by him while I was at 
 the Dardanelles and on Gallipoli, and decided to call on him. 
 
 I was more astonished when he told me that he had little to do in the 
 Navy Office. His room looked it. It was my impression the able naval 
 officer was busiest chewing pencils. I made some remark to that efifect, 
 but the captain was reticent, and remained that even when I asked cautiously 
 whether or no he was doing a turn at ''Strafversetzung" — demotion detail 
 for disciplinary purposes. 
 
A DIPLOMATIST OF INGROWN INTELLECT 195 
 
 Captain Humann adniilled nothing. Knowing that he was too valuable 
 to sit in Berlin, when he was almost indispensable in the scheme of things 
 in Constantinople, I drew my own conclusions, got in touch with friends 
 of mine in Stamboul and learned the details. 
 
 The haughty prince-ambassador had no patience with a mere com- 
 moner, even if that commoner was the son of so distinguished a person as 
 Humann's father, the celebrated archeologist who had excavated Pergam- 
 mon and thereby enriched greatly the stock of knowledge of the world. 
 But the prince had met opposition in his endeavor to have Captain Humann 
 supplanted as naval attache and commander of the German Naval Base 
 on the Bosphorus. The men in the ministries of Stamboul, especially Enver 
 Pasha, the Ottoman minister of war, were very fond of Captain Humann, 
 who was born and raised in the Levant and understood the Turks, Greeks 
 and Armenians as no other person in the German embassy did. 
 
 But Prince Wolf-Metternich was not a friend of William II for 
 nothing. One day, then, the captain was transferred to Berlin to the pencil- 
 chewing detail in the Imperial Naval Office. There was but one person 
 in Pera who could tell the Turks what to do, and that was the prince, as 
 he thought. It was that same person in his dual capacity of prince and 
 diplomatist who intended preparing the Turks then and there for the role 
 they were to have in the future under German suzerainty. The prince was 
 not exactly a Pan-German. He was something far worse: A feudal 
 lord who feasted on the very moods of His Majesty. 
 
 To the Turks these things gave offense. They had not entered the 
 war to pass under the overlordship of the Germans. Whatever may be 
 said of them, one thing is certain : The Turkish leaders wanted to have 
 their country truly a sovereign state. 
 
 When Captain Humann had been removed, the princely ambassador 
 proceeded immediately with giving the Turkish government to understand 
 that from now on it would be different. The Turkish government would 
 in the future take its orders from the ambassadorial palace on the 
 Boulevard Ayas Pasha. 
 
 Diplomatists seem to be largely recruited from the class that learns 
 slowly, if it learns at all. Had it been otherwise. Prince Wolf-Metternich 
 could have delved into the prior effort by the Berlin government to remove 
 Liman von Sanders Pasha in favor of von der Goltz Pasha. He would 
 have learned that Enver Pasha had a mind of his own, and that, despite 
 his readiness to please the Germans, he had very appropriate notions as 
 to the fitness of things in state sovereignty. 
 
 But Prince Wolf-Metternich thought that he was by far a greater 
 man than Baron von Wangenheim, and, this being so, he could do things 
 which his predecessor in office CQuld not do. Again he was mistaken. 
 
196 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Quite blandly the Turkish government informed him one day that it was 
 ready to uphold its policy of non-interference in Ottoman internal affairs 
 by the Germans, even if it had to break off relations with its ally, the 
 German government. ' 
 
 Publicity Is Used as a Corrective 
 
 For once the cold ambassador fumed, but that did not help. Any other 
 diplomatist would have been recalled then and there, but William II thought 
 a great deal of his ambassador and did not recall him. To his Majesty 
 the men in control in Turkey were upstarts of the worst sort, of course. 
 Enver Pasha was to him never more than a second lieutenant, who knew 
 little of military affairs, which was true enough, but the fact was that 
 Enver Pasha represented just then a goodly half of the Ottoman govern- 
 ment. Talaat Pasha, then still a hey, and minister of the Interior, was the 
 other half of that government, but had started in life as a telegraph 
 operator and owed everything to the Turkish Revolution. With such men 
 William II could not be patient very long. They were not his equals on 
 the divine-right plane. What His Majesty totally overlooked was that 
 in the Ottoman empire there was no such thing as an aristocracy, and that 
 the commoner might rise in the government as ability and opportunity 
 permitted. All in all, William II held an opinion of the leaders in the 
 Turkish government which was but slightly better than that held by 
 Emperor Francis Joseph of King Peter of Serbia. 
 
 The Berlin Foreign Office had now and then essayed to bring His 
 Majesty to a better understanding of affairs on the Bosphorus. But it had 
 failed. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg was too much afraid of losing his 
 job to take the stand he should have taken — which the chancellor would 
 have taken had there been a responsible ministry in Berlin. Meanwhile, it 
 was again the censorship that kept the sorry fracas out of the press and 
 from the attention of the German public. The precautions that were taken 
 for keeping the imbroglio out of the newspapers were the most elaborate — 
 nevertheless it was a newspaper dispatch which finally brought about a 
 change. 
 
 When I had gathered the details of the case I brought them to the 
 attention of the Vienna government in form of a newspaper dispatch. The 
 subject being political, the story had to be submitted to the press department 
 in the Vienna Ministry of the Exterior. The men in the ministry knew 
 well enough what had been going on in Constantinople, but they were 
 powerless to effect a change. 
 
 My dispatch caused somewhat of a sensation. After all the secret 
 had not been as well kept as was thought. How had I learned the details ? 
 
PUBLICITY IS USED AS A CORRECTIVE 197 
 
 Naturally, that was not to be explained. I was asked not to insist that 
 the dispatch be forwarded to Berlin, which way I would have to route it 
 to get it to the United States. But I was obdurate — the dispatch would 
 have to go. To insist that the dispatch went might mean the end of my 
 usefulness in the Central Powers countries, I was told. With that I had 
 counted so often that it no longer influenced me. 
 
 In the end the dispatch was forwarded and thus it came that a few 
 days later Prince Wolf-Metternich was recalled. More than that, the 
 Ottoman government insisted that Captain Humann be reinstated as naval 
 attache and commander of the German Naval Base on the Bosphorus, and 
 one day the new ambassador to Turkey, Dr. Richard von Kiihlmann, and 
 Captain Humann passed through Vienna on their way to Constantinople. 
 Neither of them knew that it was the fear of the Berlin Foreign Office 
 of being confronted with the details of the imbroglio in a Swiss or Dutch 
 newspaper which brought about the change. 
 
 To the best of my knowledge my dispatch never reached the United 
 States, but a part of its substance leaked out, nevertheless. The rumor that 
 the Turkish government was ready to sever relations with the German 
 government, which at that time made the rounds, was caused by it. 
 
 Such is the value of conscientious newspaper work, and such the effect 
 of censorship. The story might have been published months before, and 
 the situation would have never become as critical as it was, had the German 
 journalists been able to treat the subject. While the German correspondents 
 in Constantinople, notably Mr. Paul Weitz of the Frankfurter Zeitung, 
 were well acquainted with the state of affairs, they could not afford to 
 write of it. There was the censorship, of course, and the doors of the 
 German embassy would have been closed on any correspondent who had 
 shown himself "audacious" enough to question for a second the superior 
 wisdom and august station of Prince Wolf-Metternich. Fortunately, I 
 was not in that position, and for the sake of mankind undertook what 
 others could not undertake. 
 
 When the gods of Greek mythology banished themselves from the earth 
 they, unfortunately, left behind them the diplomatists. I have not yet 
 encountered the ambassador who did not think himself omniscient and 
 omnipotent. Now and then a minister may be found ready to admit that 
 he is a plain mortal — the ambassador and diplomatic secretary will never 
 admit that. The sooner the public insists that these men are to be held 
 responsible for their acts, the sooner will the probability of wars be 
 lessened. So long as ambassadors are enabled to wipe out their own record 
 of malfeasance by fostering a state that will in the end lead to war, so 
 long will we have instances of the sort here described. 
 
 Quite the best thing that could happen just now would be to investigate 
 
198 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the conduct of every diplomatist who had a hand in the Great War, and 
 this world would be much the better off if a few of them could be made 
 to answer for their conduct. I think that was what President Wilson had 
 in mind when he framed the first of his famous Fourteen Points, con- 
 cerning "open covenants openly arrived at." That Mr. Wilson has 
 abandoned this very valuable tenet is no reason why the public should also 
 throw it into discard. There will be more diplomania unless the public 
 everywhere applies preventive measures. 
 
XI 
 
 DIPLOMACY IN RUMANIA 
 
 RUMANIA enjoys the distinction of being the most backward of 
 small nations in Europe. Of its rural population of five millions 
 less than 20 per cent can read and write. The urban populace, 
 numbering about 1.4 millions, has only 60 per cent of literates. Though the 
 form of government is a constitutional monarchy with a responsible min- 
 istry, the actual participants in politics number about 2,000 individuals: 
 The higher government officials, the great landowners, professional poli- 
 ticians and the leading lawyers. 
 
 The state is, of course, predominantly agricultural and the soil is held 
 by some 6,000 large and small landowners. The peasantry is held in 
 peonage, by a system resembling closely that of Mexico in the days of 
 Porfirio Diaz. Except the Great War should have brought about radical 
 changes in Rumania, the future of the peasant will be, as has been the past, 
 a round of hard labor, life in the hovel peculiar of the country, the 
 roughest of homespuns, and mamaliga, a dish of maize resembling polenta — 
 the only thing really that links Rumania to Italy, her so-called mother 
 country. 
 
 Though the Rumanians, especially the upper classes, are fond of 
 claiming themselves Romans, the fact is that they are Romanized Dacians 
 in the hills, and in the plains the descendants of all the peoples that 
 have swept in and out of the Balkan peninsula, to refer to a few of 
 them: Slavs, Goths, Huns, Gepides, Avars, Kelts and Bulgars. Through 
 later immigration a fairly strong Turkish element came into the country. 
 
 Little is known of the history of Rumania before and immediately 
 after its more or less complete organization by Emperor Trajan. It 
 seems that even then Rumania was backward. 
 
 The modern state had its inception in two principalities, founded by 
 Radu Negru, the one, and Bogdan, the other, about 1292. During the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries the country was in the hands of the Turks, 
 while from the end of the latter to 1829 Russia and Austria lost and retook 
 the territory. Tn that year Rumania was placed under the protection of 
 Russia, but the suzerainty of Turkey was still recognized. In 1848 the 
 inhabitants were affected a little by the wave of liberalism which swept 
 over Europe and rose in revolt. The consequence was that the country 
 
 199 
 
200 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 was occupied by Russian troops, who, from 1854 to 1856, were displaced 
 by Austrian forces, in which latter year the Russian protectorate was 
 removed from the country by the Treaty of Paris. Shortly afterward 
 the Rumanians in the two principalities, into which the country was then 
 divided, Moldawa and Wallachia, decided upon the same prince, who, in 
 1861, united the country into modern Rumania. In 1864 Prince Karl of 
 Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was elected ruler. 
 
 During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 Rumania declared herself 
 independent of Turkey, and the Congress of Berlin sowed here another 
 apple of discord by ceding the Rumanian Bessarabia to Russia and the 
 predominantly Bulgarian Dobrudja to Rumania as compensation. In 1881 
 Rumania proclaimed herself a kingdom, having a short time before that 
 declared her church an autocephalic institution. The Rumanian language 
 is of a general Roman character, but has retained many archaic, and incor- 
 porated a large number of Slavic, elements. 
 
 At the outbreak of the European War M. Bratianu, whose father had 
 served Rumania valiantly against the Turks, with Alexander II, the Czar 
 Liberator of the Balkans, was at the head of the Rumanian government as 
 premier. Rumania had a treaty of alliance with Austria-Hungary, a 
 condition which led to the calling of a crown council in August of the first 
 War year at which it was considered whether or no Rumania should enter 
 the great struggle. It is asserted that Senator Alexandru Marghiloman, 
 who had formerly served in the ministry, and who was still the leader of 
 the Conservative Party, was for entrance into the War on the side of 
 Austria-Hungary. In this he would seem to have had the support of Peter 
 Carp, a former premier, and associated with him at the time in the leader- 
 ship of the Conservatives. M. Filipescu, formerly minister of war ; Take 
 Jonescu, a prominent lawyer, and Michael Cantacuzene, were the leaders 
 of those who opposed joining the Central Powers. The premier, M. 
 Bratianu, was unable, it seems, to make up his mind. King Charles favored 
 coming to the assistance of Austria-Hungary and Germany, with the 
 reincorporation of Bessarabia in prospect in case the Central Powers won. 
 The council, being unable to agree, dissolved and shortly afterward 
 Rumania was in the throes of as wild a propaganda campaign as any 
 country saw during the Great War. 
 
 Diplomatic Constellations at Bucharest 
 
 This campaign was at its height when I arrived at Bucharest. The 
 country, that is, Bucharest, the capital, was divided into two factions that 
 fought as if Rumania herself were already one of the belligerents. The 
 Filipescu- Jonescu combination had been joined by Toma Jonescu, Con- 
 
DIPLOMATIC CONSTELLATIONS AT BUCHAREST 201 
 
 stantin Mille, and a large number of other prominent politicians, most of 
 whom belonged to the Conservative Democratic Party, while the Mar- 
 ghiloman-Carp group had been similarly augmented with such men as 
 Majorescu, Octavian Gogo, Nicolae Jorga, politicians, and Alexandru Tzi- 
 gara-Samurcas, director of the Carol Foundation and National Art Mu- 
 seum ; Rector Stere, of the University of Jassy, and Pater Dr. Lucacin, a 
 prominent clerical. 
 
 The active leadership was in the hands of Take Jonescu, for the 
 Ententeophiles, and Senator Marghiloman, for the Germanophiles. Most 
 of the telling press work for the first group was done by Constantin 
 Mille, owner and chief editor of the two most prominent Bucharest dailies, 
 the Adeverul and Dimineatcha. Peter Carp attended to the propaganda in 
 his camp in his personally conducted Moldawa. The remainder of the 
 Rumanian press, with many dailies in French as constituents, was in the 
 market from time to time, sold out and changed masters without notice at 
 the behest of the highest bidders. The Adeverul and Dimineatcha differed 
 from all other papers in so far that they were bound to the Russian 
 legation by long-term agreements. M. Poklevski-Koziell, the Russian 
 minister at Bucharest, was not the brightest mind in the diplomatic world, 
 of course, but he knew that the press can accomplish much, even in 
 Rumania. His military attache, Col. Tatarinoflf, on the other hand, was a 
 born diplomatist, which was just as well, since Sir H. Barclay, the British 
 minister, and M. Blondel, the French envoy, were hardly the men whom 
 a government should send out on the streets on a dark night. Diplomacy 
 was not their forte by any means, both of them being honest men. 
 
 It was rather better in the camp of the Central Power diplomatists. 
 In Count Czernin the Austro-Hungarian government was well represented, 
 and in Baron Hilmar von den Bussche-Haddenhausen the German govern- 
 ment could place all confidence. The latter was ably supported by a very 
 young man by name of W. von Rheinbaben, which is of no particular 
 consequence, except in so far as it goes to show that the able diplo- 
 matist is woefully handicapped when it comes to arguing against superior 
 strength. 
 
 To run even a partial list of all the propagandists whom I met in a 
 single fortnight in Bucharest is quite impossible. In the hotels every 
 room was occupied by an agent of some sort from any of the warring 
 countries of Europe. In the more pretentious Palace Athene dwelled the 
 chiefs of these agents, some of whom took keen delight in taking suites 
 for the mere fun of keeping some propagandist of an enemy country out. 
 
 This, then, was the setting of the diplomatic stage in the Rumanian 
 capital. And this the play : 
 
 There was a great deal of Rumania irredenta. The Congress of 
 
202 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Berlin, 1878, had given to Russia a district settled largely by Rumanians: 
 Bessarabia. Austria-Hungary had never again disgorged the Rumanian 
 population in Transylvania, and the eastern Banat, and there were those 
 who thought that Bulgaria should lose still more of the Dobrudja. The 
 extremists even went so far as to say that the Kutzo-Vlakhs on the 
 southwestern outskirts of Macedonia ought to be returned to the main 
 body of Vlakhs — the Rumanians. Last but not least, the Rumanians in 
 the Bukowina were thought necessary to the mother country. 
 
 It depended entirely upon what camp one was in before expression 
 could be made as to which of the Rumania irredenta districts should be 
 reincorporated first. Feeling ran so high that neither side could afford 
 to totally ignore the ambitions of the other. The Ententophile faction 
 announced openly that Transylvania and the Banat would have to be 
 annexed in toto, although there was a large ethnographic twilight zone 
 about both districts, not to mention the large German population on the 
 Burzen Plain, in and around Kronstadt, Hermannstadt and Klausenburg, 
 which had been brought into that part of Transylvania, in the twelfth 
 century, from the valley of the (Moselle, the Palatinate, Wuerttemberg 
 and, to a minor degree, from Saxony, though the latter country gave its 
 name to these immigrants, to wit: Sachsen. 
 
 In the Banat ethnology was equally involved. As in Transylvania, 
 so was the population in this instance a very mixed one. In both terri- 
 tories there is a strong Magyar element, and in the Banat, especially the 
 southwestern parts of it, the "Serbo-Croat" population is decidedly numer- 
 ous, a fact which was not overlooked later in the treaty made by Bratianu 
 and the Allied governments, which provided that the Slavs in the Banat 
 should be given two years in which to dispose of their property for a 
 fair compensation before departing for Jugo-Slavia or other parts, if they 
 wished to do that. 
 
 The Germanophile politicians did not allow their opponents to forget 
 that there was a Bessarabia, which actually clamored for admission into 
 Rumania, as was claimed. Considering what the lot of the Rumanian 
 peasant was, I have always taken the eagerness of the Bessarabians to 
 join Rumania, as advertised, cum grano salis. But this particular piece 
 of Rumania irredenta was used to make the arguments of the Ententophile 
 camp illogical. The result was that the Jonescu-Filipescu camp replied 
 that Russia would cede Bessarabia later, a statement which is not borne 
 out by the terms of the treaty to which reference has been made. The 
 friends of the Entente in Rumania said little enough about further an- 
 nexations in the Dobrudja. To do that would have been highly impolitic, 
 since the Bulgarians, most resentful of having lost a part of the district 
 by the Sazonovian Treaty of Bucharest, 1913, would have been heard from. 
 
DIPLOMATIC CONSTELLATIONS AT BUCHAREST 203 
 
 Only the Neo-Idealists of Rumania mentioned the Vlakhs in that part of 
 Bulgaria, and in Macedonia. 
 
 Nor could the Cermanophile leaders overlook entirely the districts 
 which the Ententophiles claimed. The program of the Marghiloman-Carp 
 camp was to annex all of Bessarabia, do the best possible with Austria- 
 Hungary in Transylvania and the Banat and leave the Dobrudja and the 
 Klutzo-Vlakhs alone. 
 
 Back of the ^'Coulisses Diplomatiques" 
 
 A week in Bucharest had left my mind rather confused on these 
 burning questions of the day. The service with which I was connected 
 had specifically instructed me to "study" the situation in Rumania, and 
 the Balkans, and here I should mention that the Rumanian is mortally 
 offended when one suggests that he is of the Balkan. Such being the 
 case, and being of an inquisitive turn of mind by nature, I undertook an 
 automobile tour through Rumania and her irredentas. That done, I was 
 in better position to listen to what the several leaders of the two camps 
 had to say. 
 
 My first interview was with Constantin Mille, the owner and chief 
 editor of the Adeverul and Dimineatcha. M. Mille speaks French fluently, 
 has lived in France now and then, and in the course of a fairly long life 
 as redacteur and Deputy of "Parliamentul" has acquired a glibness of 
 expression and inclination toward generality and platitude which I found 
 a little irritating. When one newspaperman talks to another a certain 
 adherence to the facts is expected, though the result of that is not neces- 
 sarily for publication. 
 
 M. Mille did not know that I had made a tour of the ''provinces," 
 and he spoke, therefore, of Rumania as a sort of Paradise Forgotten. I 
 listened to him for some time, and then wrung from him the admission 
 that after all there was some room for social improvement in Rumania, 
 to which he added that as a Liberal he had always labored ardently for 
 the betterment of the life of the peasant. 
 
 I asked M. Mille whether or no it was true that in the recent peasant 
 uprising some ten thousand insurrectos had been shot. He said that the 
 number was probably not as great as all that, but a good many had been 
 shot and fusilladed. In the end M. Mille admitted — I am using his own 
 words — that the Rumanian peasant still lived "in the age of the troglodyte." 
 That was better. 
 
 The conditions I had met in the rural districts — and Rumania is almost 
 all rural — were exactly what the great editor described them now. The 
 family lived in a hovel, half under the ground, and shared that hovel with 
 
204 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the few domestic animals it possessed. It subsisted on mamaliga, a pelagra 
 promoting dish of corn throughout the year, getting meat once a week 
 at the very best, and clothing itself in the crudest of raiment — a single 
 garment in the majority of cases. 
 
 Not enough with that, the family was owned by the boyar on whose 
 land it lived. In return for its labor the family was given the use of 
 a few acres of land, the produce of which had to keep it. Since in 
 good weather the peasant was obliged to labor on the crops of his owner, 
 he raised generally very little, and rapacity was carried so far that the 
 family had to pay for the privilege of pasturing the cow, if it had one. 
 In all respects the Rumanian peasant lived on a par with the Mexican 
 peon, with this difference: The climate of Mexico is better, and the peon 
 can afford clean cotton pants, which the Rumanian peasant cannot. 
 
 In five villages I found one human being that claimed ability to 
 read and write. When I tested the man I discovered that he had forgotten 
 all he ever knew. I gained the impression that he was ashamed to own 
 that he could neither read nor write and that he lied to me in behalf of 
 self-respect, for of that the Rumanian has a great deal. Though the custom 
 of the lex prima noctis was being frowned upon in Rumania now, I found 
 that the overlord so minded, at any rate his sons, still availed themselves 
 of it in all cases where the young woman seemed desirable. 
 
 I mentioned some of these things to M. Mille, and thereby put him 
 on the defensive. Yes, it was all very true! The Rumanian peasant, 
 unfortunately, was still in the "age troglodytien," and it was hoped that 
 the Rumanians in Transylvania and the Banat, who were "progressive," 
 would serve as a leaven to raise the soggy mass in the mother country. 
 It occurred to me that the Rumanians in question might become just as 
 soggy if placed under the rule of the men in Bucharest. M. Mille thought 
 that was out of the question. 
 
 The chief editor of the Dimineatcha, the afternoon edition of the 
 Adeverul, M. Branisteanu, a Rumanian Jew, was inclined to agree with 
 me rather than with his chief, M. Mille, but he did that only when he was 
 away from the great editor, reformer and deputy. 
 
 On the same afternoon I called on Mr. Take Jonescu. He, too, took 
 it for granted that Rumania was still terra incognita to me, as, indeed, 
 to quite an extent it still was. Mr. Jonescu, whose wife, by the way, 
 is a very clever English woman, outlined to me what I have already given 
 as the outline of the Ententophile camp in Rumania. Transylvania and 
 the Banat would have to be returned to Rumania, he said, and if in the 
 course of that process a few millions of Germans, Magyars and Slavs 
 passed under Rumanian rule that could not be helped. Those who found 
 the government of Bucharest unbearable could emigrate. There was to be 
 
BACK OF THE COULISSES DIPLOMATIQUBS 205 
 
 a Rumania mare, a Greater Rumania, and to fashion that it would be 
 necessary to join the Entente group of belHgerents. 
 
 Mr. Jonescu, besides being a very good lawyer, with an especially 
 evil reputation in inheritance cases, is also a journalist, being one of the 
 contributors to many of the Entente-controlled newspapers in Rumania 
 at that time, particularly the Ziua, of which a M. Slavitchi was at that time 
 the editor-in-chief. 
 
 Being familiar with journalism, and laboring under the impression — 
 not so misapplied at any time — that the average American newspaper- 
 man is the poorest hand at quoting people correctly, Mr. Jonescu insisted 
 that he write his own interview. I was to come back at six o'clock and 
 get it. 
 
 Upon my return he handed me a long statement, done in excellent 
 English, possibly by Mme. Jonescu. I read the several sheets of paper, 
 and then had to inform Mr. Jonescu that I could not use all of the 
 matter, since cable tolls to the United States were rather heavy. At 
 that the good man took umbrage and said that I would have to use all 
 of it or none. Later I used what I pleased, because our dealing had 
 clearly enough established that Mr. Jonescu did not mind being quoted 
 if he could be quoted in his own way — which way was too expensive. 
 
 The discussions I had with these men had led to mention of Russia, 
 of course. Messrs. Mille and Jonescu were sure that the Russian govern- 
 ment — this was in January, 1915 — would be reasonable in connection with 
 Rumania's interests in the Black Sea and Dardanelles. There was no 
 doubt that Russia would be established in Constantinople before the 
 War was very much older. The Muscovite empire needed a window upon 
 the high seas very badly, and presently that window would be broken 
 into the walls that surrounded Russia. Since the Russian minister, M. 
 Poklewski-Koziell, had said as much to a Rumanian journalist who was 
 assisting me, and since a danseuse who was on the most intimate terms 
 with an attache of the Russian legation had been more specific, the immi- 
 nent possibility of an attack on the Dardanelles by the Entente was brought 
 to my attention. 
 
 How Senator Marghiloman Saw It 
 
 Mr. Charles J. Vopicka, the United States minister at Bucharest, 
 had meanwhile introduced me to Senator Alexandru Marghiloman. The 
 first time we met at the Jockey Club, and while I watched the gaming that 
 was going on, and in which the senator was a keen participant, I managed 
 my first interview. There being others about, Mr. Marghiloman was rather 
 reserved. But he informed me that for luncheon he kept open house 
 
206 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 throughout the week, Sundays excepted in favor of his family, and that 
 he would like me to drop in any day. En passant, I wish to mention that 
 this is one of the Roman customs which the Rumanians have perpetuated — 
 not a bad one for the politician and for those who may have dealing with 
 him. I suggest it as a substitute for the bar "free lunch." 
 
 After luncheon at the Villa Marghiloman, which still bore marks of 
 an attack which Ententophile students and members of the rabble had made 
 upon it, Mr. Marghiloman and I took several rounds in the solarium and 
 discussed the political situation. 
 
 The senator's keynote was that Rumania would have to stay out of 
 the European War. If she got involved at all, as her impetuous statesmen 
 hoped she would, entry at the very last minute alone could be recom- 
 mended. Speaking of the attack on the villa, which was synchronized with an 
 attack on the royal palace on the Galea Victoriei, the senator protested that he 
 was not pro-Cerman, as had been charged by his political enemies, but that 
 he was decidedly pro-Rumanian. He regretted that a time had come 
 when to love one's own country had to be interpreted as being anti-this 
 or pro-that. He was not so sure that the Entente would defeat the 
 Central Powers, despite the fact that just then the Russians were making 
 good headway in the Carpathians. 
 
 Senator Marghiloman pointed out to me that he spoke French much 
 better than German, which I found to be the case, that usually he spent 
 the better part of the year either in Paris or at the Riviera, having estab- 
 lishments at both points, and that he raced his horses in France, had a 
 chasse there, and had most of his money invested in French securities. 
 This, and the fact that his library was to within a small percentage entirely 
 French, and the fact also that he was in no need of money from any 
 government, being one of the wealthiest Rumanians, caused me to look 
 upon the former minister of finance as a man who had good reasons for 
 his attitude. 
 
 King Carlos had meanwhile died — from grief due to the conduct 
 of the Bucharestian mob, and his queen, Elizabeth, better known as Carmen 
 Sylva, was away from the capital, praying at the tomb of her late husband 
 for the repose of his soul. The new king, Ferdinand, was neither this 
 nor that, and his queen, Marie, as daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, 
 as granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and as daughter of the Grand Duchess 
 Marie of Russia, was doing her best to give Bratianu, the minister presi- 
 dent, every incentive to make up his mind in favor of the Entente. 
 
 Senator Marghiloman, therefore, occupied somewhat the position of 
 the lone fisherman. When, in the face of these conditions, he persisted in 
 retaining the attitude that was his, he was sure to have a special reason 
 for this. I found this reason to be the uncertainty of things, and his fear 
 
HOW SENATOR MARGHILOMAN SAW IT 207 
 
 that it would not be well with Rumania in case the Russian government, 
 especially Sazonoff, was able to carry into "realization" Russian "desires" 
 in the direction of the Dardanelles. 
 
 Senator Marghiloman had a sort of slogan. 
 
 "Rumania must remain at peace with all of her neighbors," it was. 
 
 He told me that he had never voiced a desire to see Bessarabia annexed 
 to Rumania under conditions that were bound to earn for his country 
 the illwill of Russia. Bessarabia should belong to Rumania, he said, but 
 what was the use of thinking of that so long as there was no assurance 
 that Rumania could keep what she took, nor avoid being later penalized 
 for her act, besides. That was sound logic — a fine specimen of "Real- 
 politik." 
 
 Though some shouters, taking too great an interest in the afifairs 
 of the Central Powers, were loud in their claims on Bessarabia, as loud 
 as their opponents were in their clamoring for Transylvania and the 
 Banat, it would be a grave situation for Rumania if the Russian govern- 
 ment ever came to take such matters seriously. Nor did the senator have 
 as good an opinion of the help Rumania could bring to either side, as 
 others were persisting in. He said that the Rumanian army, while it could 
 easily muster half a million men in the prime of life, was too poorly organ- 
 ized and equipped, too poorly led and trained, to be of much consequence 
 anywhere. The ammunition at the disposal of the Rumanian government 
 would last two weeks. There was not enough artillery and the mechanical 
 department of the government arsenal, recently installed, was virtually use- 
 less because the materials for the manufacture of munitions could not be 
 had. General Iliescu, the chief of staff, was incompetent, moreover, said 
 the former minister of finance. All in all it would be best to stay out of 
 the War. 
 
 But, said he, there was one aspect of the situation which ultimately 
 might drive Rumania into the camp of the Central Powers. If Russia 
 succeeded the Turks in control of the Dardanelles nothing would be gained 
 by Rumania. It was his understanding that this was the plan of the 
 Entente governments. 
 
 Then and there I learned what that plan was, as I have already inti- 
 mated in one of the opening chapters. Marghiloman had his own agents 
 in Germany and Russia, and possibly was in correspondence with persons 
 in France, Great Britain, Italy and Austria-Hungary, as I surmised from 
 what he told me on this and a later occasion. What the price to the 
 Entente of Russia's unstinted military support would be was as clear to 
 Senator Marghiloman as if he had read the text of the agreement which 
 a little later was actually made. M. Marghiloman even then knew every 
 provision, and what leaning toward the Central Powers he showed was 
 
208 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 due to his knowledge. He did not then understand that, treaty or no 
 treaty, Great Britain could not afford to have Russia supreme on the 
 straits. 
 
 With Russia in control of the Dardanelles, Rumania would not for 
 long remain independent economically, and after that the country would 
 eventually become a Russian dependency in the political sense proper. The 
 principal export of Rumania was cereals, mostly wheat and maize. In 
 this department she was the rival of Russia, as the keen competition 
 of the Braila, Rumania, and Odessa grain exchanges had already shown. 
 
 The assurance of the British and French governments that the Bos- 
 phorus, Sea of Marmora and Dardanelles would be free to traffic not 
 originating in, or going to, Russia, was well enough, thought the former 
 minister of finance. But with Russia enthroned in Constantinople the 
 aspects of such things might change. With this Greater Russia a defeated 
 Central Europe would not take up an issue on the Dardanelles, nor would 
 French and British statesmen, guilty of such an indiscretion as placing 
 Russia in possession of the single avenue to and from a sea upon which 
 other nations, besides Russia, depended, be likely to undo their bargain 
 after a war that would cost them a great deal no matter how much they 
 would gain from it. 
 
 If the Russian government, especially if still in the hands of a Sazonoff, 
 did not openly defy the stipulations of her agreement, to which Rumania 
 was no contracting party, by the way, and which at a pinch could have 
 been interpreted as applying to British and French vessels only, it would 
 find some good pretext to discriminate against Rumania. For instance, 
 the channel at Nagara, the Inner Dardanelles, needed improvement. The 
 Turks had not blasted the rock ledges out of the way because these were 
 rather useful in the defense and control of the strait and its shipping, 
 necessitating the stopping of merchantmen in Sari Siglar Bay if they 
 entered the strait late in the day. The same ledges made a dash of a 
 hostile fleet past the forts extremely hazardous. To blast these rocks out 
 of the way would be simple enough. Russia would not need their protec- 
 tion so long as the entrance of the Dardanelles had been sufficiently fortified. 
 What could be more inviting than to clear the channel and find in this 
 improvement the moral basis for limiting the rights of foreign shipping 
 in a waterway which occupancy of the adjoining territory by Russia would 
 make Russian anyway. The Dardanelles would be strictly Russian terri- 
 torial waters after that, and the Black Sea a mare clausum, or inland lake 
 of Russia. 
 
 Thus reasoned Senator Marghiloman. It would be hard to deny that 
 logic was on his side. The publication of the Russo-Franco-British entente 
 on this subject later on shows how well the senator was informed and how 
 
HOW SENATOR MARGHILOMAN SAW IT 209 
 
 just his conclusions were, so long as the treaty was accepted at its face 
 value. 
 
 I suggested to him that with the Dardanelles no longer absolutely free 
 to Rumania, the produce of her fields might be exported to Central 
 Europe over the Danube and the railroads. That could be done, was 
 the reply, but to get a good price for her grain Rumania depended upon 
 an unrestricted market. If the people of Central Europe knew that Ru- 
 mania was obliged to sell her wheat and maize to them they might apply 
 such discrimination as had been the lot of the Serbs at the hands of the 
 Austrians. There was but one really good market for Rumanian grain 
 in Central Europe and that was Germany. But to reach Germany the 
 railroads of Hungary and her sister state Austria had to be used, and 
 in that way Rumanian grain exports would have been subject to railroad 
 tariff discrimination if to no other. To the mineral oil products of Ru- 
 mania applied the same arguments, the senator pointed out. In short, the 
 outlook upon the future by Rumania was not the best. 
 
 M. Marghiloman had been active in the peace conference at Bucharest, 
 of 1913, and knew the quality of mind of Sazonoff, the Russian minister 
 of foreign affairs. He also knew that the Russians had favored the Serbs 
 for a purpose, and while, as a Rumanian, he had readily accepted a part 
 of the Dobrudja, which the attitude toward Bulgaria of the Russian 
 government had left in the hands of the Rumanian government, he was 
 not wholly pleased now with that attitude, regretting, in fact, that the 
 Treaty of Bucharest had taken the form it had. Of Serbia Rumania 
 had no fear. It was Serbia's great ally, Russia, that set on edge the teeth 
 of the former Rumanian minister of finance. Jugo-Slavism was a fact. 
 The War might bring a Jugoslavia, and then a Unislavia under the aegis 
 of the Romanoffs and Sazonoff s in Petrograd. That Zarigrad on the 
 Golden Horn might again be Nova Roma, from which the nations in 
 all Europe would have to take their orders, to which they might have to 
 pay tribute in fact. 
 
 For the very dignified combat which Senator Marghiloman continued 
 to give the Jonescu-Filipescu group, these views were the base. The 
 unbridled ambition of Sazonoff and the Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaie- 
 vitch had in Senator Marghiloman and Peter Carp two able, although 
 rather impotent, opponents. 
 
 A Neutrality of Several Parts 
 
 Minister-President Bratianu observed a sphinx-like attitude, mean- 
 while. In making several attempts to see him I never got further than 
 his private secretary. From that functionary, a very important one, by 
 
210 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the way, I learned that strictest neutrality was the objective of the head 
 of the government. 
 
 But that neutrality did not get far beyond the executive office, I am 
 afraid, if it was to be found within it at all. Rumania was neutral only in 
 so far as the fighting between two factions of "antis" could make it. At 
 Reni the Russian government had established a base for the Serbian 
 army, under the command of Admiral Vesselkine. From that point was 
 shipped over the Danube whatever the Serbs needed, and since they needed 
 almost everything an army has use for, the traffic was large. 
 
 The internationalization of the river, under the Danube Commission, 
 gave Russian vessels the right to proceed as far as they could, in face of 
 the Austro-Hungarian artillery above the Iron Gates, but the Rumanian 
 government closed its eyes whenever its own territoriality and its railroads 
 entered into the question. On the other hand, the same government was 
 lenient with trans-Rumanian traffic between Central Europe and Turkey. 
 At least it was not too inquisitive and much minor military equipment 
 reached Turkey in that manner. German officers and men, of both the 
 naval and military services, used the Rumanian railroads to go back and 
 forth, a practice which brought into the Rumanian foreign office many a 
 protest from the Entente governments. But with the Germans travelling 
 in mufti, and with passports issued by the civil authorities, there was noth- 
 ing to be done, even though the uniforms of the traveller were generally 
 the chief item of baggage. 
 
 Such things as could be transported in sealed box cars went through 
 Rumania without question for a time, but later all cars were examined. 
 After that such smuggling of "contraband" as was possible in piano cases, 
 barrels and large boxes became the practice. But little could be taken 
 to Turkey in that way, and the articles needed most by the Germans and 
 Turks in service on the Dardanelles, large calibered guns and their ammu- 
 nition, could not be hidden even in piano cases. The Germans succeeded 
 in getting through Rumania the more delicate parts of machinery that were 
 needed, when, under the auspices of Captain Piper, they established an 
 ammunition factory and a gun foundry on the Golden Horn. But even 
 that did no serious damage to the Allies since the ammunition produced 
 was of exceedingly poor quality, as I was able to establish myself, and 
 so far as my knowledge goes no guns were ever made in the foundry. 
 Captain Piper turning both plants to the manufacture, in large quan- 
 tities, of hand grenades, in the use of which the Ottoman infantry grew 
 to be expert. 
 
 I should state here, incidentally, that Bulgaria also gave her railroads 
 to this traffic. The cars carrying the materials in question were ferried 
 across the Danube at Giurgiu-Rustchuk and then continued into Turkey 
 
A NEUTRALITY OF SEVERAL PARTS 211 
 
 over the Rustchuk-Sofia-Adrianople railroad line. Compared with the 
 export of ammunition from the United States this traffic was as one to 
 thousands. It was always small in volume, and the hue and cry raised 
 in the Entente countries against these "shocking violations" of neutrality 
 must strike mankind today as immensely funny, or should do that. As a 
 matter of fact they were arrant nonsense. 
 
 But that was not their only aspect. 
 
 The Entente governments maintained in Bucharest great staffs of men 
 and women supposedly gathering "military" information of importance. 
 Some of them were serious people and expert in their line. But their 
 field was cluttered with a large element that had left home and restrain- 
 ing family bonds, in the service of the government and for the "good" 
 of their countries, to have a good time in the first instance, and to hold 
 the job in the next. These intentions called for an occasional effort. 
 After days and days had been spent on a tip, so-called, the pursuance of 
 which had its locale mostly in one of the many Bucharest cabarets and 
 maisons de plaisir, a report would be forthcoming, in which the Rumanian 
 government would be charged with every sin in the calendar. There had 
 been seen, on a certain day in one of the Bucharest freight yards, or in 
 that of some other place, a whole train of big guns, all covered with 
 black tarpaulins and labelled Berlin-Constantinople. It is quite possible 
 that the author of the report imagined all that. If he did not do that 
 himself, then some Rumanian in his service would do it for him, it 
 being with the latter really a case of bread and butter, or mamaliga. 
 
 I arrived once in Bucharest when a very stiflf note had been addressed 
 to the Rumanian government by the Entente governments in regard to 
 this misuse of Rumanian territory by the Germans. It was charged that 
 ever so many trainloads of guns and ammunition had gone southward. 
 If I recall the event properly the note was very specific and even gave the 
 number of the freight cars on which the guns had been transported. An 
 investigation by the Rumanian government proved that the things under 
 the black tarpaulins, as specified in the protest, were harvesting ma- 
 chinery of American origin going to some point in the Rumanian Dobrudja. 
 
 The Value of the "Information Service** 
 
 Needless to say, government officials far from the scene are apt to 
 believe their agents before they give much credence to an innocently incul- 
 pated government, especially when they wish to heap up on things that 
 may later be useful in bringing that government into their camp. So 
 it was in Rumania. The government could claim innocence and the best 
 intentions in the world as much as it pleased. In London, Paris and 
 
212 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Petrograd that made little impression. One's own "trusted" agent would 
 not make such a report if he did not know his facts. The case was 
 somewhat complicated by the tendency of the Rumanians to do, in a per- 
 fectly good-natured way, little favors in exchange for a few lei. 
 
 It came about in this manner that Rumania got a bad name and that 
 the governments of the Entente received "military" information of a very 
 doubtful character. 
 
 When the British Naval Mission to Turkey left Constantinople in 
 October, 1914, it knew every gun along the Dardanelles and had the 
 number of shells, of both blue-head and red-head variety, armor-piercing 
 and plain shell, down on paper. The emplacements along the straits had 
 for months been under British control, as was the Ottoman navy, and 
 for that reason there were for the British Admiralty no secrets of any 
 kind in the two Ottoman naval services, that is fleet and coast artillery, 
 except it be, and I can hardly assume this, that Admiral Limpus and 
 his officers were so unusually fair that they refused to impart their infor- 
 mation to the British Admiralty. Since such is not likely to have been 
 the case, we may take it for granted that the commander of the Allied 
 fleet, which bombarded the Dardanelles in March, 1915, had at his disposal 
 an accurate list of guns and ammunition, together with the plans of every 
 battery along the straits. 
 
 Two things he had to count upon. One of them was that the Ger- 
 mans would rearrange the batteries, abandon some of the emplacements, 
 as they did, and then import greater guns and their ammunition from Ger- 
 many. The latter, especially, must have been deemed probable by the 
 members of the British Naval Mission to Turkey, since they knew well 
 enough how badly outranged and outclassed the artillery in the Dardanelles 
 works was. 
 
 Acting upon this circumstance and knowing that the railroad route 
 between Germany and Turkey was not subject as yet to the British 
 blockade, knowing further that the country of the bakshish begins with the 
 northern borders of Rumania, the British government and admiralty had 
 no reason to be too skeptical of the reports they were getting from their 
 agents in Bucharest. The stories sent home by these agents, that ever 
 so many guns, and ever so much ammunition, was being shipped through 
 Rumania with the connivance of the minister of railroads, could not be 
 disregarded, of course, especially since some traffic directly related to war 
 was going on. On March 18th, moreover, the fire of the Turkish coast 
 batteries was conducted with such prodigality, considering the shells in the 
 casemates of the emplacements, that the Allied commander could have 
 easily arrived at the conclusion that the Turks had shells of the armor- 
 piercing sort a-plenty. There was also no reason why he should not have 
 
THE VALUE OF THE "INFORMATION SERVICE" 213 
 
 feared that the Turks had more and better guns than when Admiral Limpus 
 left, since the refusal of the Turks and Germans to measure issues at 
 long range could have been interpreted as being merely a strategic move. 
 
 I have no means of knowing whether or no this was the actual 
 reason for the failure of the Allied fleet to follow up the advantages 
 gained on March 18th. But it is reasonable to believe that such was the 
 case. Aerial observation had established that the Turkish emplacements 
 were not greatly injured. Three battleships had been sunk by the guns 
 of the Turks, five others had been badly mauled, and even the "Queen 
 Elizabeth," terror of the Turkish coast batteries, had been forced to 
 limp out of action. To the Allied commander no advantage that he had 
 gained was observable, therefore. The advantage in his favor could not 
 be established by reconnaissance in the air, since it was constituted of 
 empty ammunition casemates, hiding their voids under sod-covered parapets. 
 
 A stay of five weeks, continuously, at Tchanak Kale, through which 
 the only road serviceable for military traffic runs, daily visits to two of 
 the emplacements. Forts Anadolu Hamidieh and Tchemenlik — one passes 
 through the latter in going to the first — and continual rounds in the works 
 at Kilid-il-Bahr, Dardanos and Erenkoi, place me in a position to attest 
 that no new guns or ammunition from Germany had arrived as late as 
 August, 1915, at any of the coast batteries along the straits. The changes 
 made consisted of a regroupment of material that was in Turkey when 
 the British Naval Mission was still in charge, and of the importation from 
 Germany of modern sighting apparatus 
 
 When March 18th had demonstrated that the Allied fleet meant to 
 force the Dardanelles some guns were added to their defense system — 
 15 -cms flat-trajectory pieces and howitzers that came not through Rumania 
 and Bulgaria as charged, but from the works in and about Adrianople and 
 from the redoubts of the Tchataldja line. Since at that moment there was 
 no assurance, so far as the Ottoman government was concerned, that 
 Bulgaria might not join Russia ultimately, it ought to be relatively easy 
 to judge what conditions along the Dardanelles were. 
 
 I may mention in this connection again that on March 19th the 
 Ottoman government was ready to leave Constantinople for Eski-Shehir, 
 in Anatolia, a city which was the capital of the Osmanli before they estab- 
 lished themselves in Europe. All treasure and records had been loaded 
 on trains in Haidar-Pasha and were ready to pull out on a moment's notice. 
 Much of the packing had been done during the two weeks preceding the 
 major attack on March 18th. 
 
 While the daily communiquees of the Ottoman war office breathed 
 confidence galore, for the benefit of the Turk population and as a warning 
 to the Armenians and Greeks, the men in Stamboul knew well enough, 
 
214 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 as did those in charge of the Dardanelles, that it was a case of nip and 
 tug at the gates of the Ottoman capital. The actual increase of armament 
 along tlie straits before March 18th, consisted of five 15-cms rifles, in half- 
 turrets, on the site of the ancient city of Dardanos, which, together with 
 their ammunition of the armor-penetrating variety, had been taken from 
 the German light cruiser "Breslau," the "Middilih," companion of the 
 "Goeben." The Turks and Germans had no reason to hope that this would 
 make any great diflFerence in the defense of the straits. 
 
 But the Allied government had been misled into the belief that Ru- 
 mania had permitted large rifles and ammunition to be carried into Turkey, 
 and applied to that the logical conclusion that these pieces had been 
 emplaced at the Dardanelles. With the Great War still very young then, 
 the losses suffered on March 18th could not be repeated, and so it came 
 that the armada of the British and French withdrew ingloriously. 
 
 On the quality of military information much depends in war. To 
 have that information accurate is difficult even when experts occupy them- 
 selves with it. When its collection is left to crews of the sort the Entente 
 governments had at Bucharest anything may be ex])ected. There is no 
 class that can be quite as dangerous as the male and female camp- 
 followers of diplomacy. The slightest rumor they hear becomes a fact 
 when it has been reduced to the dignity of a report in the diplomatically- 
 privileged mail pouch of the ambassador or minister. 
 
 The information may be no more than the vaporing of a "neutral" 
 traveller, who has been in the country of the enemy — hope-inflated Greeks 
 and Armenians, in this instance. On the other hand, it may be a "tip" 
 that was investigated and, according to appearances, verified, or, again, it 
 may be no more than the imagination of an agent whose predilection for 
 cabarets and maisons de plaisir left him no time to seriously occupy himself 
 with the mission entrusted to him and who, to stay on the payroll, had 
 to invent "military information." 
 
 I have found that the latter class is the most dangerous, for the reason 
 that as a rule its members have the intelligence necessary to make their 
 reports very convincing and quite safe to themselves. Their prevarication is 
 of the most circumstantial sort, and generally defies every effort of excul- 
 pating undertaken by the incriminated authorities. The complaining gov- 
 ernment will under no circumstances admit that it has agents in the coun- 
 try, the government of which is drawn to account, nor will it ever divulge 
 identities. 
 
 Perhaps I should state here that already in January, 1915, I met in 
 Bucharest an individual of the latter class, whom a year later I again 
 encountered there. The man came to my attention through his offer to 
 act as my correspondent in Bucharest, when I should be away. 
 
THE VALUE OF THE "INFORMATION SERVICE" 215 
 
 While such a man could be very useful, I had not the necessary 
 authority to make the expenditure involved. Upon telling the man as 
 much, he offered to be very reasonable in his expectations. Even that I 
 could not accept. Several days later he invaded my room at the hotel 
 and offered to work for nothing if I would give him credentials as Asso- 
 ciated Press correspondent. That was a little careless on his part. I 
 began to question him and learned that he had a "private" source of 
 income that permitted him to be so magnanimous. I held the matter in 
 abeyance until I had satisfied myself that the man was a rounder on Galea 
 Victoriei, went to bed every morning at five o'clock, after spending the 
 night in the cabarets and maisons, and rose in time to have his feefe o'clock 
 tea as his breakfast. For that some diplomatic post in Bucharest paid 
 him enough to eat the finest supper afterward and buy champagne for a 
 little chanteuse, whom he also kept in board, lodging and raiment. I am 
 sure that the best he would have done with my commission would be its 
 presentation to some military attache as further proof of his wakefulness 
 and zeal in ferretting out the dark secrets in Bucharest and Rumania. 
 
 A Diplomatic Deal in Wheat 
 
 That Premier Bratianu had so hard a time making up his mind was 
 due to the uncertainty of his position as head of the government. While 
 he was the actual leader of the Conservatives, Senator Marghiloman, and 
 Peter Carp, the former minister-president, still had a great personal fol- 
 lowing in the party. M. Bratianu was obliged to constantly reckon with 
 a change in the government, though the death of King Carlos, the pliable- 
 ness of King Ferdinand and the efforts of Queen Marie had left him much 
 better off. 
 
 When the Dowager Queen Elizabeth, "Carmen Sylva," passed away, 
 in February, 1916, the last sentimental tie between the royal house of 
 Rumania and the monarchs at Vienna and Berlin was severed. From that 
 moment on the alliance between Austria-Hungary and Rumania was con- 
 sidered as another of the "scraps of paper" in Europe. Meanwhile, Italy 
 had entered the War, and in this the Ententophiles found another argument 
 why Rumania should join the Entente camp. 
 
 But the Marghiloman^Carp faction held on for dear life, and out of 
 consideration for its two leaders, Germany did not declare war upon Ru- 
 mania in January, 1916, the imminency of which was brought on by the 
 grain deals made between the Rumanian Central Commission and the 
 British Purchasing Bureau in Bucharest. 
 
 The Rumanian Central Commission had been established for the pur- 
 pose of regulating exports in breadstuff, legumes, meats, fats and the like. 
 
216 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Food was by now very scarce in the countries of the Central Powers, and 
 every effort was made to get from Rumania all that could be had. But 
 that was not in harmony with the starvation program of the Entente 
 governments. There was enough food in Rumania to offset to quite an 
 extent the endeavor of the British blockade. Feedstuff s for domestic 
 animals were also being produced en masse, German agents having in- 
 duced the Rumanian landowners to plant as many of them as possible. 
 By exporting her entire surplus farm production Rumania would have 
 substantially supported the Central empires, such in fact was the inten- 
 tion of the Marghiloman-Carp combination, which was very influential in 
 the rural districts. 
 
 That camp, moreover, had a strong argument on its side. Rumania 
 had in the past imported most of the manufactured commodities it needed, 
 and the War had not changed that. Against this import the country had 
 heretofore exported her large surplus of agricultural produce. The War, 
 also, had not brought any change in this field. Rumania, in order to 
 import had to export. It would have been easy to offset the drain on her 
 wealth, which importing without exporting constituted, by financial as- 
 sistance from the Allied governments. Indeed, that was attempted quite 
 early in the War. But the Germans had for such maneuvers methods of 
 their own. As in the case of Holland, and that of other neutrals, Germany 
 insisted that for everything exported kind had to be given in return. In 
 all cases food was demanded. 
 
 The Bratianu government cast about for deliverance from the con- 
 dition set by the Central Powers, but found none. The granaries and 
 larders of Russia were then still full to overflowing, being glutted with 
 the surplus of the 1914 and 1915 harvests, which closing of the Darda- 
 nelles and the control of the Baltic by the German fleet had left in the 
 country. Russia, therefore, was not importing food, and while the port 
 of Archangelsk had been used to some extent in the summer of 1915 for 
 the exporting of food to France and Great Britain, the Russian railroads 
 between the Rumanian border and Archangelsk were so overcrowded with 
 military traffic as to remove Rumanian grain shipments from the list 
 of probabilities. Then, too, Rumania had found it next to impossible to 
 import over that route. Russia is not a country in which manufacture 
 is carried on to an exporting extent, and to import from France and 
 Great Britain via Norway and Sweden was very expensive — via the 
 port on the White Sea it was most uncertain since Archangelsk had more 
 than it could do taking care of the strictly military traffic. 
 
 Rumania, then, faced the situation of having her crops spoil on her 
 hands — ^literally, since storage facilities were virtually non-existent — and 
 then do without needed imports besides. The governments of Central 
 
A DIPLOMATIC DEAL IN WHEAT 217 
 
 Europe became more and more exacting as the problem grew, and Rumania 
 was finally obliged to sell to them whatever they wanted — cereals of all 
 kinds, animal products, and mineral oils. 
 
 It seemed for a time that in this manner the efforts of the British 
 blockade would go by the board. While ultimately that blockade was 
 bound to be effective, its result upon the Central empires could, by means 
 of the food in Rumania, be so retarded that the Germanic camp might 
 achieve a victory over the Allies before the pinch was felt too much and 
 the morale of the army and civil population undermined. 
 
 Rumania had on hand at this particular period about one-half of the 
 large surplus of her crops in 1914, and the entire surplus of her 1915 
 harvest. For instance, there was then in the country about 340,000 
 carloads of wheat, ready for export. Since the European carload is ten 
 tons, that meant, if all of this wheat was taken into the Central States, 
 that every man, woman and child would have had about 57 pounds of 
 wheat, making roughly 95 one-pound loaves of bread, as wheat was then 
 milled, in addition to the breadstuffs produced at home. Starvation would 
 have been out of the question then, especially since the Rumanian wheat 
 crop of 1916, some 220,000 carloads, prospectively, would have further 
 reinforced them. Already the War of Attrition was in its first phases, 
 and famine was now more than ever looked upon as the most potent of 
 the Allied forces, as indeed it was, for without starvation the Allied and 
 Associated governments would have never defeated Germany. 
 
 The Rumanian premier was not in position to improve this situation 
 in favor of the Allies, so long as the governments in London, Paris and 
 Petrograd looked upon the situation as one solvent by the usual means 
 of export and import. But little by little the Allies learned in that respect. 
 The British Purchasing Bureau was established in Bucharest, and in the 
 last days of December it made an agreement with the Rumanian ministry 
 of agriculture, of which the Central Commission was but a sort of bureau, 
 for the transfer to British ownership of 80,000 carloads of wheat. A 
 general option for the next crop was also engineered. 
 
 News of the deal acted like the dropping of a bomb in the Central 
 Countries. The last chance of warding off the spectre of famine seemed 
 gone. Baron von den Bussche Haddenhausen, the German minister at 
 Bucharest, had a few days before been called to Berlin. While he was 
 away from his post the first rumors concerning the deal were heard in the 
 Rumanian capital. Herr von Rheinbaben immediately communicated with 
 his chief, who, after having been given plenary powers in the matter, at 
 a conference of the German cabinet, rushed back to Bucharest, arrived 
 there in the afternoon and an hour later put Premier Bratianu face to 
 face with a declaration of war. 
 
218 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 It seems that the grain deal made with the British Purchasing Bureau 
 was looked upon as an unfriendly act in Berlin and Vienna. The facts 
 in the case, as I had occasion to establish them in behalf of the news 
 service I was connected with, were these : The 800,000 tons of wheat had 
 been bought at a price a shade better than what the Germans were 
 paying. There being no opportunity of exporting the grain just then, 
 the Rumanian Central Commission had undertaken to store the wheat in 
 granaries not yet established. Until the transfer of the wheat from the 
 bins of the producers to the magazines all risk was to be assumed by the 
 seller. 
 
 It was this feature of the contract that brought out that the Rumanians 
 were dissatisfied with the deal. While the price paid was a little better, 
 there was bound to be a loss to the wheat holders if the grain was not 
 promptly taken oflF their hands. In addition, the contract was a little too 
 specific and exacting to please men who had sold any sort of wheat to 
 the Central Powers Purchasing Agency, the German and Austro-Hungarian 
 commission having been merged some time before this. The agency bought 
 almost anything that resembled food, and then saw to it that the losses 
 sustained, which at times were enormous, were made good at home by 
 an increase in the price of the articles exported to Rumania, the scheme 
 meaning that the whole of the Rumanian population was being taxed by 
 foreign governments in the interests of the Rumanian landowning class. 
 The contract of the British called for first-class ware, and even its terms 
 of payment were not the best obtainable. 
 
 It was frankly announced that the wheat would have to remain in 
 Rumania until the termination of the War. Indeed, there was no alterna- 
 tive for that. As I have already pointed out, the Dardanelles was closed 
 and the Russian railroads could not handle the trafiic. 
 
 So far, indignation in Rumania was limited to classes that were 
 rather pro-German: the large landowners and the grain dealers, most of 
 the latter being Jews. But when the terms of the deal were later pub- 
 lished in their entirety other elements began to denounce the Rumanian 
 government. The trade balance between Rumania and the Central Powers 
 had been liquidated in the past on a basis calling for payment in gold to 
 the extent of one-third. The wheat contract with the British had a similar 
 provision, but went a little further. 
 
 The National Bank of Rumania acted as the fiscal agent of the sellers 
 and purchasers of wheat and issued notes of its own for the purpose of 
 paying for the wheat, leaving the gold in the vaults of the Bank of London, 
 which had established a credit for the National Bank of Rumania to the 
 full extent of the sale, about eight million pounds sterling. Since the 
 gold was not actually placed in the possession of the National Bank of 
 
A DIPLOMATIC DEAL IN WHEAT 219 
 
 Rumania, and since the issuance of paper currency to the full amount of 
 the purchase price was not guaranteed by anything actually within Ru- 
 mania, it was charged that the deal amounted to no less than an inflation 
 of the Rumanian currency for the benefit of a foreign government. In 
 the end the case might be one in which the wheat had spoiled on the hands 
 of those who were being compelled by the Rumanian government to sell 
 to the Rumanian Central Commission, and then, according to the terms of 
 the contract between the commission and the seller, the National Bank 
 of Rumania would have the paper currency afloat, but no gold as yet, and 
 the holders of the wheat might have neither wheat nor money. To such 
 a wild-catting financial transaction even the Ententophiles objected. But 
 the deal had been closed before they could be heard and now it was too late. 
 
 Political Business in Plain Language 
 
 That the Rumanian Central Commission might engage in some such 
 enterprise must have been feared by the German minister. At any rate 
 he had, before his departure from Bucharest, for Berlin, obtained from 
 King Ferdinand the promise that nothing would be done before giving 
 the Central Powers agency a chance to compete with offers made by the 
 British Purchasing Bureau. After Baron von den Bussche-Haddenhausen 
 had interviewed Premier Bratianu, upon his hasty return from Berlin, he 
 immediately applied for an audience with the King of Rumania, and 
 obtained it the same evening. The scene which took place was not a very 
 polite one. The German minister went so far as to call Ferdinand a man 
 who could not be trusted, using expressions of the bitterest satire. 
 
 It was plain that the German minister wanted to provocate the Ru- 
 manian government into an act that would have led to war. The military 
 position of the Central States was a good one just then. The Allied forces 
 had been withdrawn from Gallipoli, and the expedition of Sarrail, at 
 Salonika, was somewhat of a jest as yet. In the battle of Kustorino and 
 the Golash Mountain, of which the world never heard anything, because 
 my dispatches dealing with the affair never got further than the British 
 censors, the Allied forces under General Sarrail had been manhandled by 
 the Bulgarians under General Todoroff, in a manner that left them sick at 
 heart, and the prospects at Salonika were just then the poorest. The 
 Russian army had not yet recovered from its retreat in the course of the 
 summer and fall of 1915. In the West the war of the trenches left the 
 French and British none too hopeful, and the Italians seemed unable to 
 get beyond the Tolmein bridgehead and the western fringe of the Carso. 
 In Mesopotamia the British were being driven back by the Turks, and 
 the Russians had a hard time of it in the Caucasus. The Central Powers 
 
220 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 governments thought it wise, therefore, to bring the issue of Rumania to 
 liquidation. 
 
 King Ferdinand pocketed the insults which the German minister had 
 hurled at him, and Premier Bratianu did the same. Under the circum- 
 stances that was the best. Generals Iliescu and Averescu, the leaders of 
 the Rumanian army, were not men whom even M. Bratianu, their patron, 
 could trust very far in questions of efficiency, and so it came that the 
 Rumanian Central Commission made up its mind to sell to the agency of 
 the Central Powers as much as possible — most of the remaining wheat, 
 great quantities of maize, beans, barley and oats, pork, butter, fats and 
 mineral oils. 
 
 Had it not been for the efforts of Senator Marghiloman and Peter 
 Carp even that would not have saved Rumania. The Central Powers 
 governments feared that in the end Bratianu would, as the general char- 
 acter of the wheat deal indicated already, join the Entente camp anyway. 
 
 Mr. Marghiloman began to use gentle words with the German min- 
 ister, and Mr. Carp did his best with Count Czernin, the Austro-Hun- 
 garian envoy. The two of them argued that it would be better to continue 
 Rumania as a food-producing neutral than to plunge her into the War, 
 which might lead to nothing more than the disorganization of the one 
 country which could meet to some extent the effects of the British 
 blockade. That much I learned from Senator Marghiloman. 
 
 What other promises he made I have no means of knowing. I should 
 mention, en passant, that after this incident M. Marghiloman thought little 
 enough of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. I lunched with him 
 quite often and during the long promenades made in the solarium he 
 showed me that he was a thoroughly disillusioned man. It could not be 
 otherwise, since his country was beset on all sides by nations that were 
 friendly only so long as Rumania could please them. Russia might assume 
 a threatening attitude at the very moment when M. Blondel and Sir H. 
 Barclay were using the softest words in persuasion. The temper of the 
 diplomatists of the Central Powers was enough to prove that the ultima 
 ratio was desired in Berlin and Vienna, and in the Bulgarian press writers 
 were very outspoken in regard to the Dobrudja and the Treaty of 
 Bucharest. 
 
 Accepting that the true patriot looks in such a crisis at the future of 
 his own country and people, even if he had exploited this people as much 
 as Senator Marghiloman had done, instead of considering the welfare of 
 other aggregates, I must say that the senator deserves to be classed as 
 one of the best of them. He was no demagogue of the Sylla type, but a 
 man who believed in government by the fit, without drawing fine distinctions 
 in this fitness. 
 
POLITICAL BUSINESS IN PLAIN LANGUAGE 221 
 
 After a while the wrath of BerHn and Vienna subsided, and since the 
 possibility of a war had been set back a little, for the time being, I decided 
 to return to Vienna. I mention this on account of an incident en route, 
 recording of which seems rather relevant. 
 
 Before I left Bucharest I was told that I could not get further than 
 Predeal by train, since right beyond the border a bad wreck had blocked 
 the line, with no prospect of its being cleared away in a hurry. There 
 had been heavy snows, and when these fall the Transylvanian Carpathians 
 are not the easiest mountains to cross. From Predeal to Kronstadt I 
 would have to travel by sleigh. I was advised not to risk that, travel on 
 the pass being anything but safe when there was a possibility of lavines 
 coming down the high mountain sides. 
 
 I decided to sleigh it, because I wanted to get a look at the military 
 preparations that were being made in the pass by the Austrians, on their 
 side, and the Rumanians, on theirs. That there was something going 
 on I had learned in this manner. On my trip southward three weeks 
 before the conductor had ordered all passengers into the dining car. When 
 this command had been complied with the trainbands and waiters pulled 
 down every window shade and then saw to it that none was raised while 
 the train sped through the border zone. That was a very fine way of 
 announcing that something was going on. I surmised what it might be and 
 was glad of the chance of sleighing through at least a part of the zones 
 on both sides of the boundary. 
 
 Some Matters Incident to Warfare 
 
 I saw little enough until I reached the scene of the wreck, and then 
 I learned how the Central Powers were getting rubber. It had been hoped 
 by their enemies that a shortage in rubber would soon hamper the Germans 
 and their allies, but that moment never came, as I ascertained from riding 
 about the fronts in cars having very good tires. 
 
 The wrecked train consisted of about thirty freight cars, most of 
 which had been derailed by brake-failure, on a steep grade, with the result 
 that now they lay at the base of a high embankment a little south of 
 Temes. 
 
 About one-half of the train had been piled up. Its freight of wheat 
 and mineral oil was now a scramble. Russian prisoners of war were 
 trying to save whatever they could, and I noticed that German officers 
 and soldiers commanded them. The wheat was soaked with the contents 
 of the oil tank-cars on top of the pile, and seemed to get little attention. 
 Some large, black disks, two inches in thickness, and about two feet in 
 diameter, seemed to deserve the greatest care. I wondered what the stuff 
 
222 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 was, and then noticed that the open belly of a freightcar was filled with a 
 mixed cargo of wheat and these disks. I smelled a rat, left the sleigh 
 and examined one of the black wheels, to find on one side of each of them 
 lettering in Russian and Latin, showing that the rubber, for such it was, 
 came from the PutiloflF Works in Russia. Evidently, there was some 
 room for "civil" traffic on either the Russian railroads or in some Russian 
 port. Rumanians no doubt had imported this rubber from Russia and 
 then sold it to the Central Powers. I am no expert in such matters, but 
 concluded that the shipment wrecked, but now about to be salvaged, would 
 keep hundreds of automobiles going for many months. No doubt, there 
 had been other shipments and there would be more. 
 
 Entering Temes and Kronstadt, further on, I found that German 
 troops of some sort were near the Rumanian border. Inquiry elicited 
 the information that these troops were concerned with the heavy imports 
 of wheat and such made from Rumania. That may have been so. At 
 least I have no right to say that it was not so, seeing that I know no 
 better. For all that I was not able to dissociate entirely the language of 
 Baron von den Bussche-Haddenhausen and the conciliancy of the Rumanian 
 government from the many billetting notices I saw on the housedoors, and 
 the sign above a schoolhouse in Temes which said that here were the 
 headquarters of a certain German cavalry organization. 
 
 I must state, however, that German cavalry did occupy itself a great 
 deal with transportation by motor truck. A few days later I had an 
 interview with Count Tisza, the Hungarian minister-president. From 
 his remarks I gathered that the crisis between the Central governments and 
 Rumania had been most acute, but that now it was in subsidency, as he 
 expressed it. 
 
 I will take the liberty to point out here that during the entire duration 
 of the Great War I never allowed myself to be influenced by the appear- 
 ance of things or the asseverations of governments and diplomatists. I 
 had watched the coming of the crisis in South Africa, in 1896 and again in 
 1899, had borne arms in the defense of the Boer republics, and had since 
 then occupied myself very much with political situations and war, doing 
 service as newspaperman in Mexico and along the border before and during 
 the revolutions. War had thus become to me what it actually is, a 
 strictly biological incident in the life of nations. The pretexts of govern- 
 ment meant absolutely nothing to me; toward statements made by poli- 
 ticians in office and diplomatists on and off post I reserved the skeptical 
 attitude with which we newspaper men are now blessed, then cursed. 
 
 An estimate, along these lines, of Rumania's chances of staying out 
 of the European War led to a conclusion that these chances were nil, 
 despite the fact that Count Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian minister at 
 
SOME MATTERS INCIDENT TO WARFARE 223 
 
 Bucharest, succeeded now to leadership in the management of Central 
 Power interests in Rumania. 
 
 The excitement having blown over already by the beginning of March, 
 1916 — ^the same year — Rumania again was looked upon in the old light. 
 It would be best to keep her producing food, even if some of it was 
 sold to the British Purchasing Bureau. At least one-half of the surplus 
 of harvests could be demanded, and half a loaf was now more than ever 
 better than none in Germany, Austria-Hungary and even Turkey, to which 
 country Rumanian wheat flour was also exported. It had been shown 
 by that time that occupying hostile territory made great demands on the 
 man power of the Central governments. In Russia, Poland, Serbia, and in 
 Belgium and France, not to mention Turkey and Bulgaria, and the long 
 lines of communication to the several fronts, hundreds of thousands of 
 men were needed for administrative purposes, and while few of these 
 were longer fit for service in the trenches, the man power of the Cen- 
 tral Powers group of belligerents was seriously lessened thereby never- 
 theless. 
 
 Bratianu Makes a Diplomatic Deal 
 
 Already it was plain that in the end Germany and her allies might 
 conquer themselves to death, a feature of the "war map'* which at first was 
 not given enough attention. But among the several truths which were 
 then breaking into the minds in Berlin and Vienna was also this one. 
 Rumania was left in peace and the several commercial understandings 
 reached with her were all more or less reasonable, some of them highly 
 advantageous to her in fact. It came to be the slogan in Central Europe 
 that Rumania was the best ally as a neutral, in which it was not forgotten 
 that her entry in the War on either side would lead to an extension of 
 the Russian front that might bring greater disadvantages than it could 
 bring advantages, even if her participation was in favor of the Central 
 Powers. 
 
 Senator Marghiloman had used that very often as an argument in 
 reply to those who wanted action on the part of his country, but he did 
 not always convince the enthusiasts on both sides who thought that Rumania 
 could decide the War — quite the most amusing hypothesis that was ever 
 set up. The value of the Rumanian army to either of the camps was a very 
 low one. There were indeed good troops, but the greater part of the 
 establishment was very poor in quality, and the War had shown that an 
 army not uniform in morale was a dangerous thing to handle on a long 
 front. The adage that no chain is stronger than its weakest link was 
 being proven by the Austro-Hungarian troops every day. 
 
224 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 It was a case of sentiment which later on drove Rumania into the 
 War on the side of the Allies. There was to be a Rumania mare — Greater 
 Rumania. 
 
 In April Premier Bratianu had finally made up his mind to a thing 
 he should have attempted while the Russian army was still good and was 
 pressing the Germans and Austro-Hungarian armies hard in the Carpa- 
 thians. The war spirit was at low ebb in the dual monarchy at that time, 
 late fall and winter of 1914, and Rumania's entry into the War would 
 have produced a political effect which it could not produce after the popu- 
 lation of the Danube countries had become used to losses and reverses, to 
 war with Italy, and to deprivation. Gradually applied, distress and 
 privation will harden any people finding itself in a desperate position, 
 and so it came that, in Austria and Hungary, Rimiania's decision caused 
 only a temporary stir, though the oppositionists in the Hungarian parlia- 
 ment, wishing to hit at Count Tisza, made much ado over the initial 
 successes of the Rumanian army and the occupation of much of Transyl- 
 vania in August and September of 1916. 
 
 I was at that time temporarily attached to the Ninth German army, 
 commanded by General Falkenhayn, the former chief of staff of the 
 German army, and thus was able, as I had already done in the case of 
 Turkey and Bulgaria, to see diplomacy translated to the battlefield. I 
 saw the wrecked camps and wagon trains of the routed Second Army 
 of the Rumanians, in the Voros Torony Pass, the futile attempts to hold 
 the passes further east, the childish attempts at fortification by Rumanian 
 military engineers, in the Torzburger Pass, and the crushing of Rumanian 
 resistance in the Predeal Pass, the one through which I had sleighed a 
 few months before. 
 
 Before the onslaught of that truly terrible German war machine the 
 Rumanian regiments were the veriest chaff, as I saw on the afternoon on 
 which Predeal was taken. I thought of Senator Marghiloman as I sat 
 in the fork of a stout oak, fifteen hundred yards away from the Rumanian 
 trenches, for the attack of which the German and Hungarian infantry was 
 deploying a few hundred feet away. 
 
 The treaty which bound Rumania to enter the War was finally signed 
 on August 16th. Rumania was to get all of Transylvania, the Banat and 
 Bukowina — the same Banat, by the way, which had already been promised 
 to another ally, Serbia. But at that moment the Serb army was hardly 
 in being and the Allied governments had to practice "Realpolitik" in the 
 chancelleries, while the ideal in international relations, and the weal of 
 small nations was attended to by the newspapers. To make ideal and 
 practice a little more agreeable to one another, Rumania was bound to 
 "indemnify the Serbians of the Banat, who, in abandoning their proper- 
 
BRATIANU MAKES A DIPLOMATIC DEAL 225 
 
 ties, wish to emigrate within two years from the conclusion of peace." 
 This, indeed, was a new twist in self-determination, but presently there 
 were to be more of these. It makes no difference to a diplomatist what 
 he promises or has promised. He will always lie his way out. 
 
 In the realization of the desire for a ''Rumania mare" — which two 
 words I found written on nearly every public building in Transylvania and 
 over every gate-keeper's cabin on the railroads in the district — the Rumanian 
 army was to get the following support : General Brousiloff was to continue 
 with increased vigor his attacks on the Centralists in the Carpathians, and 
 Russia was to send into Rumania, and against the Bulgars, via the Dobrudja, 
 two divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, while General Sarrail was to 
 start an offensive from Salonika. These reinforcements of the Rumanian 
 army could not be called excessive, nor even generous, considering what that 
 army really was. 
 
 On August 27th the Rumanian government declared war upon Austria- 
 Hungary, and, the passes of the mountains of southern Transylvania being 
 poorly defended, owing to the lack of man power and bad management 
 on the part of the Austro-Hungarian general staff, then still in the hands 
 of the congenial but rather inefficient Hoetzendorff, much Hungarian terri- 
 tory was soon in the hands of the Rumanian army. On August 29th 
 Bulgaria announced that a state of war existed between it and Rumania, a 
 course that was taken also on the same day by the Ottoman government, 
 which, in anticipation of this, had eight days before declared war upon 
 Italy, to which the government in Rome replied with a declaration of war 
 to Germany on August 28th. This cycle of war declarations was later 
 closed by Germany declaring war upon Rumania on September 14th, 
 when her Ninth Army was already in Hungary and ready to throw the 
 Rumanian forces out of Transylvania, which was easily accomplished with 
 a minimum of losses to the forces under General Falkenhayn. Mean- 
 while, Bulgarian, German and Turkish forces, under Mackensen, were 
 driving the Rumanian army and the Russian contingents before them in 
 the Dobrudja and across the Danube, northward. A few weeks later 
 Bucharest had been taken and the Russo-Centralist front extended from 
 the Baltic to the Black Sea. 
 
 Rumania had no great friends among the Allies. Russia was any- 
 thing but trusted, and the population did not have its heart in the business 
 on hand. In a very interesting report made by General Palivanoff, on 
 November 20, 1916, we find the following : 
 
 "From the standpoint of Russian interests, we must be guided 
 by the following considerations in judging the present situation 
 in Rumania. If things had developed in such a way that the mili- 
 tary and political agreement of 1916 with Rumania had been fully 
 
226 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 realized, then a very strong state would have arisen in the Balkans, 
 consisting of Moldavia, Wallachia, the Dobrudja (i. e., the present 
 Rumania), and Transylvania, the Banat and Bukovina, with a 
 population of about 13,000,000. In the future this state could 
 hardly have been friendly disposed towards Russia, and would 
 scarcely have abandoned the design of realizing its national 
 dreams in Bessarabia and the Balkans. Consequently, the col- 
 lapse of Rumania's plans as a Great Power is not particularly 
 opposed to Russia's interest. This circumstance must be exploited 
 by us in order to strengthen for as long as possible those com- 
 pulsory ties which link Russia to Rumania. Our successes on 
 the Rumanian front are for us of extraordinary importance, as the 
 only possibility of deciding once for all in the sense we desire 
 the question of Constantinople and the Straits." 
 
 After all Senator Marghiloman was right and Bratianu wrong. 
 
 For the author of the above it may be said that he was as good a 
 diplomatist of the modern type as he was a soldier. If you cannot gain 
 by the successes of your allies, profit by their failure. 
 
XII 
 
 DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 
 
 RUMANIA'S somewhat spectacular appearance in the arena of the 
 European War marked the end of the 'Expansion Phase of that 
 conflict. It was Hkewise the inauguration of the Attrition Phase. 
 The Russian successes on the Rumanian front of which General Palivanoflf 
 spoke were not so much feats of arms as tactical advantages over the 
 waning man power of the Centralist camp. Though the mass attacks of 
 General Brousiloff, commander of the Russian South Army, had been 
 virtually stifled by now in the blood of the Russians themselves, the 
 German general staflf saw the Eastern Front extended far beyond its means. 
 That front could be held, to be sure, and was held, but it was taxing the 
 military means of the Central Powers and their allies by its very length. 
 The German army, in the face of its successes in Rumania, which were the 
 cheapest it had so far bought, was very much in the position of the pugilist 
 whose arms are shorter than those of the antagonist. The Eastern Front 
 was a thing without end, and the Central Power troops found that holding 
 it was not dissimilar to beating the air with one's fists. Nothing came to 
 the occupation of almost as much territory as Germany itself, and nothing 
 could come of it. In a way the experience of Napoleon was being repeated, 
 though this time the catastrophe came leisurely, because the modern means 
 of transportation, which the Corsican did not have in 1812, held back for a 
 longer time the inevitable. 
 
 The number of men in Berlin and Vienna who saw this was not 
 small. I happen to know that Emperor Charles of Austria, and Count 
 Czernin, his really able minister of foreign affairs, were among the first 
 to stand in fear of the space that had been gained in the East. The 
 German chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, also, was no longer convinced of 
 the virtues of the "War Map." It was evident that all this sparring about 
 in the air, was not bringing the end of the War nearer — and the end of 
 the War, more than occupation and the like, seemed now the thing most 
 to be desired. Of land there was a surfeit now, but of the food that could 
 be produced on it, a great scarcity. To raise food requires labor and much 
 of it, and that labor could not be had, so long as the men were in the 
 trenches or in the ammunition works, and the women most of their time 
 in the food lines. 
 
 227 
 
228 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Thus it came about that Emperor William II made overtures for 
 peacOk. These overtures, as the world will have reason to remember for 
 many a day, were turned down, because the Allied governments, rather 
 than their peoples, chose to look upon them as beneath their serious notice. 
 It was said that the offer of the German government was insincere and 
 too indefinite. On the face of things it was that. The announcement 
 confined itself to saying that Germany and her allies were now in a mood 
 to be spoken to by the half-defeated enemies, and as a perfectly useless 
 jeu de grimace the "War-Map" was invoked again — for the last time, 
 so far as "foreign" relations of the Central Powers went. 
 
 But there is no reason to believe that a more tactful offer of peace 
 would have fared better, under the circumstances. Men in the French 
 government, especially, felt that the Central Power troops were beating 
 about wildly in the space they had conquered, and seeing now for the 
 first time a silver lining on the dark clouds that had hovered over France 
 for two long years they made up their mind to see the thing along a 
 little more. In France the stage had been reached where improvement only 
 was possible. It could not be worse, even if now and then a regiment 
 had to be disbanded and its men distributed to organizations with better 
 morale. In Great Britain the childish bombardments by Zeppelins and 
 aeroplane had roused public frenzy to the fusing point, and in Russia, 
 though Sazonoff was now no more, too much had to be gained by the 
 continuation of the War — everything to be lost by its cessation. The offer 
 of the German emperor was spurned therefore — with a hollow laugh at 
 that. Men in London, Paris and Petrograd knew perfectly well that the 
 United States would be heard from before the end came. 
 
 The Fruit of Diplomacy Begins to Ripen 
 
 There were a good many forms to the pitfalls of the War Map. One 
 of them was that the general public of Central Europe cared no longer 
 whether or no there was such a thing. It wanted food, not territory. Food 
 being on the wane, prices high, taxation already unbearable, and nothing 
 but more war in sight, the public had come to look at the War Map as 
 a mockery, which, indeed, it was. The great enthusiasm of the early war 
 days was now a thing of the past. War was becoming a matter of routine — 
 a never-ending succession of more levies in men and money, and more 
 dead and crippled, with an ever-increasing mortality rate, due to malnutri- 
 tion; an ever-gaining laxity in morals, and unceasing misery as a doleful 
 accompaniment. To be sure the efficiency of the German army had only 
 then reached its highest point, but that of the Austro-Hungarian army 
 was already sadly on the decline, and Bulgaria and Turkey were sick of 
 
THE FRUIT OF DIPLOMACY BEGINS TO RIPEN 229 
 
 the War, even if iMacedonia, for the one, and Gallipoli and the very 
 national capital, for the other, were now securely held, so far as appearances 
 went. 
 
 Great things were ahead. The British government was now about 
 to throw real armies irto France, and that country herself was scouring 
 her bans. Though Brousiloff had driven Russians into death by the tens 
 of thousands, the vast reservoir upon which he drew seemed as inexhausti- 
 ble as ever. On the Carso the Italians were making some gains now, and 
 more men were being drafted into the armies. There was on in every 
 enemy country a race for still greater armament than had yet been made. 
 Eighty per cent of the White Race was arming, and of that another eighty 
 per cent was arming against the Central Powers, with the United States 
 turning more and more into a huge military base and universal arsenal 
 for the forces of the Allies. Throughout Central Europe these things 
 were seen and discussed in camera. Government and population, in the 
 process of being pressed more and more into a compact mass by the 
 pressure from without, looked at one another and then turned away. 
 Times were hard, indeed ! 
 
 But even that was not all. Germany had not a single friend anywhere, 
 it seemed. "Belgium" and "Lusitania," which to many had remained 
 empty nouns, began to have a great meaning. The weight of world public 
 opinion was a crushing thing. It had been quite a favorite slogan of 
 some classes in Germany: "We can do without friends, so long as they 
 must respect us." Now it was seen that it was hard to get along without 
 friends. None was in sight. There was partial support of the cause of 
 the Central Powers in Sweden and Switzerland, and even in Holland it was 
 still possible to find now and then a person not entirely Germanophobe. 
 Denmark and Norway were on the list of unfriendly neutrals, and far- 
 away Spain was clearly divided in its sympathies. Farsighted men, among 
 them Count Tisza, had already realized that the Central Powers could not 
 emerge victors from the War without coming to a reckoning with the 
 United States also. On February 26th, 1916, already, the Hungarian 
 minister-president had expressed himself to me in that sense. At the 
 conclusion of a two-hours interview, Count Tisza, in reply to my question 
 as to how much of his statements I could use, placed a pad of paper in 
 my han5. Then he left his chair and walked several times up and down 
 the spacious room that was his office. 
 
 "Please, say this for me," he said, as he stopped before me: 
 
 "For the United States to engage in the European War would be a 
 crime against humanity." 
 
 When I had written this down. Count Tisza took the pad out of my 
 hand. 
 
230 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 "Yes! That is all I can say," he remarked. "It may be too much 
 at that. At any rate that is my conviction. Before this thing is over 
 President Wilson will have created the needed situation. But don't say 
 that. You would not get it past our censors. You would not even get 
 this much past our censors, for that matter. I will inform Latinovitch (his 
 private secretary) to do what is necessary to get this through." 
 
 That was more than a year before relations between the United States 
 and Austria-Hungary were severed by the latter. 
 
 Of the assininity displayed by the German government in regard to 
 Belgium I have already spoken. Though other small nations had mean- 
 while fared as badly almost at the hands of the Entente governments, 
 Belgium was a ghost that would not down. Presently it was to be joined 
 and reinforced by the Lusitania affair. 
 
 It is hard to understand what the mentality of Great-Admiral von 
 Tirpitz and his staff was when it was decided to attack the Lusitania with 
 the means of the submarine, the torpedo. To be sure the attitude of 
 President Wilson was as yet but poorly defined, and in 'Germany wholly 
 misunderstood. What his views were on the question of submarine warfare 
 versus cruiser warfare, on enemy and neutral merchant ships, was as yet 
 scarcely known. As a matter of fact it was the later exchange of notes 
 which seems to have crystalized in Mr. Wilson himself what his attitude 
 was to be. 
 
 Allied Diplomacy Is Editor-in-Chief 
 
 Since this matter will be more fully discussed further on, I will dismiss 
 the subject here with the statement that the sinking of the Lusitania was 
 in many respects an act more foolish than the violation of the neutrality of 
 Belgium. Granting that, from the point of view of the Germans, the 
 Lusitania should have been sunk, the act was, nevertheless, that of a 
 mad-cap militarist, incapable of recognizing the political features and con- 
 sequences of his conduct. No matter what the facts in the case, the 
 political discredit that was bound to come from sinking a ship well loaded 
 with passengers, many of whom were sure to be Americans, was too great 
 a responsibility for any man to assume. Nor is it possible here, from 
 the standpoint of statesmanship, to give weight to the protests made by 
 an apologizing government that the commander of the submarine had been 
 instructed to fire the torpedo in such a manner that it would serve as a 
 warning rather than the knell of doom for those aboard the vessel and 
 those owning and operating her. 
 
 It had been shown quite recently in the loss of the "Titanic" that 
 ships of that type could sink as quickly as a plummet. To send a torpedo 
 
ALLIED DIPLOiMACY IS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 231 
 
 into the side of such a structure was taking too great a risk at the expense 
 of a world as yet not initiated into the state of things that was to come. 
 News of the attack itself would have been stunning enough, and might 
 have produced the very result desired, to be sure, yet the flying stone 
 out of the hand of the thrower is the devil's weapon, as an old saying has it. 
 Tirpitz et al might have thought of that. But it seems that they did not 
 think of it. 
 
 The combination of Belgium and Lusitania was more than Germany 
 and her allies could stand, especially since an outraged public opinion was 
 thereafter to be fed entirely on what the British and French governments 
 prescribed. So far as communication between Central Europe and the 
 Western Hemisphere was concerned, Great Britain and France were in 
 absolute control. Between Europe and the Americas there was not a 
 single cable which the governments of the two countries did not control, 
 and, as I have shown already in a preceding chapter, that control was 
 ruthless in the extreme, especially when later the confiscation of the mails 
 was undertaken. 
 
 Concerning public opinion vague notions are held. Those who think 
 of it superficially seem to be under the impression that it is something of 
 the mind of men and women itself — an indigenous product of one's 
 mentality. But that is merely a snap judgment. The thing which in this 
 instance is mistaken for one's own opinion is not the substance of that 
 opinion but the faculty of being able to form such an opinion. Tool and 
 handiwork are confounded with one another. It is forgotten that between 
 hammer and anvil there is a substance that is being shaped, that the anvil 
 is the sum total of the individual's experience and the hammer the state 
 of mentality of the moment. 
 
 In times of stress and war the substance between the two is the news 
 of the day — the reports of the event that is engrossing the public mind. 
 It is the nature of these reports which ultimately determines the quality 
 of public opinion. If these reports be one-sided, by reason of originating 
 almost entirely in the same quarter, then, public opinion necessarily will 
 be one-sided, or partial. If, on the other hand, the reports come from 
 both sides, the public will have a better chance of forming an impartial 
 opinion, because it will make comparisons, and in the very nature of things 
 one set of reports will influence and modify the other. The public will 
 then be able to form a general opinion more or less in harmony with the 
 local situation and the elements of environment, as was observed in the 
 case of the small neutrals of Europe, whose press had access to the 
 news from both camps of belligerents. 
 
 Control of the cables, and later of the mails, by Great Britain and 
 France, placed in their hands by the International Postal Conventions, and 
 
232 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 later badly stretched to suit the needs of the Entente group, made it 
 absolutely impossible for the American public to ever get the right focus 
 on affairs in Europe. To prevent the people of the United States seeing 
 conditions in their proper light was indeed the very purpose of the ruthless 
 censorship applied in Great Britain and France, though I should name the 
 latter country first, because it was by far the meanest offender. Thus it 
 came about that the American public saw only one side of the European 
 War. 
 
 It is not certain that seeing both sides would have changed things very 
 much in the end. The affinity of the American people toward the British 
 public has always been greater than that toward any other, certain! 
 historical facts taken into consideration. Despite an occasional outbreak 
 of "philism" for this or that people in Europe or elsewhere, the A'merican 
 public has always been decidedly pro-British, which need not cause us 
 to wonder, since the two people have much more in common than both 
 have been willing to recognise and admit. Community of language, to 
 some extent history and tradition and institution, the same literature and 
 an American press that gathered four-fifths of its news in London or relayed 
 it from there, and, lastly many close family ties in the most influential of 
 classes in the United States, could not but bring about a situation such 
 as existed when Great Britain had been in the War a few months and when 
 "Belgium" and "Lusitania" were on every lip. 
 
 Though I was thousands of miles away at that time — in Europe — I 
 was from the very first half -convinced that the United States would be 
 heard from before the War was over, as a matter of fact, during the 
 interview with Count Tisza just mentioned I had expressed the fear that 
 the views of the Hungarian premier were all too well founded. When in 
 spite of his convictions. Count Tisza still hoped for the best, and therewith 
 coupled that it would be an injustice on the part of Mr. Wilson not to 
 see that there was every element of justification behind the stand the 
 Central Powers had taken on "submarine versus supramarine blockade," I 
 mentioned casually that the German- Austrians would in all probability take 
 the German view of a thing no matter what that view was and that the 
 effect of racial affinity would be the same the other way. I pointed out 
 that the very use of the same language was all that was necessary to bring 
 this about, for the reason that use of the same speech would have made 
 the mind of the one the more receptive for the arguments and appeals of 
 the other. What the voice of a mother is to her children, language is to 
 peoples using it. It wakes in both cases the dormant memories of a common 
 past and calls both to thoughts for the future even if, as in the case of the 
 United States population, such relationship concerns ethnologically but two- 
 fifths of the people. 
 
ALLIED DIPLOMACY IS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 233 
 
 Mr. Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press of 
 America, had, on October 5th, 1914, already found the censorship situation 
 in London "extraordinary." The fact was that little of the copy written 
 by four Americans in Berlin, an Englishman in Vienna, and myself and an 
 assistant at The Hague was getting to New York. The report of the seven 
 correspondents was very heavy, usually, running from 3,000 to 5,000 
 cable words every day, and reaching on several occasions the total of 8,000, 
 especially when one of the correspondents of the service had been able to 
 get into Holland from Belgium and was writing from there uncontrolled 
 by the German censors. 
 
 When the American Press Was Less Partial 
 
 In those early days of the War both sides were still wanted by the 
 American press, despite the fate of Belgium. On September 21st, 1914, 
 Mr. Stone wrote me as follows : 
 
 "There is not quite as much color in it as I would like. 
 (This in reference to the matter written by one of the men at 
 Berlin.) By color I mean descriptive of the conditions in Ger- 
 many: home life, farm life, etc., scenes and incidents in Berlin 
 which might be of human interest. I do not mean too much of 
 this and, therefore, I hesitate to make this suggestion. The Berlin 
 report seems to be rather dry and of course necessarily meagre. 
 
 You might forward these suggestions to (here follows 
 
 the name of the man). * * * Again, it would be well to ask 
 
 if he could confer with the German authorities and see 
 
 if there would be any possibility of an Associated Press cor- 
 respondent or two going with the German army. Advise him that 
 the British and French have absolutely refused to allow any 
 American correspondents with their armies and I should think, 
 under the circumstances the Germans might be willing to do it 
 and the reports from these correspondents might come out by 
 wireless or through you. Of course they would have to be handled 
 carefully in order to pass the British censorship which surpasses 
 anything I have ever known for stupidity." 
 
 For the purpose of dealing with the "extraordinary situation" in 
 London I had inaugurated, largely at first to make proper accounting 
 for the considerable sums of money I was paying out in cable tolls, for 
 my own, and the relayed matter from Berlin, a system of numbering 
 dispatches and keeping two carbon copies of each. One set of these copies, 
 together with a list of dispatches and the number of words contained in 
 each, I would forward at the end of each fortnight to the Associated Press 
 office at London, and the other set of copies and records to New York. 
 The counting of the words was necessary to prove first that the toll sheet 
 
234 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 was right, secondly, how much of the dispatch had been suppressed by the 
 British censors, and what interpolations had been made, if any, while the 
 numbering showed easily what dispatches had been **killed" entirely. It 
 was in this manner learned what great sums were being spent by the service 
 for nothing. Not enough with suppressing the dispatches, the British 
 government did not refund the tolls on telegrams it did not deliver. 
 
 On September 3rd I received a letter from Robert M. Collins, the 
 chief of the London Bureau of the service, in which he complained that 
 a large number of my dispatches had been held up, the censor being in 
 this instance kind enough to inform him that the cables in question would 
 not be delivered. 
 
 In reply I wrote in part : 
 
 "Dispatches from German war correspondents reveal the 
 location of French and English troops and while this in itself may 
 be of little importance to the public such data are almost indispen- 
 sable to an intelligent description of the action. I have written my 
 stories so that they would give the least possible degree of offense 
 to the censors — with the feeling, however, that I was successfully 
 ham-strung. Some directions from you on this subject, and 
 suggestions as to the betterment of copy would be highly ap- 
 preciated. Naturally, I am curious to know how much of my 
 stuff gets through. You might devote some spare moment to 
 dropping me a line on this subject." 
 
 The censors had in this case advanced the argument that my dispatches 
 contained military information. Since I was not at the front I had gathered 
 that "military" information from Dutch and German newspapers and the 
 private report of the "Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant" to which I had 
 access before publication in that paper. If there was "military" informa- 
 tion in my copy it could be of interest only to the British and French and 
 in no way harmful to them, since it came from the side of the Germans. 
 Accepting that it was possible to get news into Germany, over the Sayville 
 wireless system — the United States being the destination of my dispatches — 
 no stretch of the imagination would permit the British censors to claim that 
 the "military" information I picked up in Holland, be it from the news 
 service in question, or the newspapers, was not already at the disposal of 
 the German general staff. My dispatches were going away from Germany 
 and not into it, and for this reason the contention raised in London 
 was based on something else — ^keeping the public of the United States in 
 ignorance of what was going on. 
 
 But the British censors stoutly continued to defend their untenable 
 position. Mr. Frederick Roy Martin, assistant general manager of the 
 Associated Press, then active in London, wrote me a letter similar to that 
 of Mr. Collins, to which on September 15th, I replied — in part: 
 
WHEN THE AMERICAN PRESS WAS LESS PARTIAL 235 
 
 "Already the coast districts (of the Netherlands) are in 'staat 
 van beleg,' equivalent of state of siege, and while I was at Vaals 
 the 'gemeente' Rotterdam — country districts of this city — was 
 added to districts under military control." 
 
 I meant to say by that, that it was impossible to maintain across the 
 frontiers of Holland such an efficient "military" information service as the 
 London censors seemed to believe. The fact was that their own army 
 and that of the French permitted no war correspondents to be present in 
 the zone of action, and that such highly entertaining "news from the front," 
 as was then being dished out to the British and American publics, through 
 English and French channels, was the product of the imagination. With 
 this the stories written by the American correspondents who were ad- 
 mitted to the German front, although only for days at a time, could not 
 possibly agree. 
 
 It was not merely a case of reserving all possible space in the press 
 of the United States for reading matter of British and French origin and 
 tendency, but to also keep up the appearance of authenticity of that matter. 
 Up to that time, it will be remembered, the German army had things its 
 own way, a state of affairs which the battle of the Marne had indeed 
 changed somewhat but not enough to make any material difference in the 
 general situation, which was anything but promising to the Entente. News- 
 paper matter from Holland and Germany would have shown, at the very 
 least, that there was a great discrepancy between the accounts from the 
 two sides, and that would have led to questioning of an unwelcome sort 
 for the British and French, since the general aspect favored the versions 
 from the German side. 
 
 The British Censors Were a Touchy Lot 
 
 Meanwhile the British censors had complained that the reports of the 
 Associated Press correspondents in Berlin and The Hague were one-sided. 
 My reply to Mr. Martin on September 18th was in part as follows: 
 
 "I don't know what can be done to make our service from 
 here look more neutral. It would be folly to repeat to London 
 what comes from London, Paris and Petrograd. That I am taking 
 the best care of the Belgian side, as far as I do so by means of 
 the local specials has been demonstrated, I believe. You will agree 
 with me that a split service such as this, must of necessity appear 
 one-sided — just as one-sided as others could claim of the service 
 out of London. I am sure that '^r. Conger exercises the greatest 
 caution — and I am doing the same." 
 
 In explanation of the above I wish to state that the British censors had 
 complained that the stories coming from the Continent were one-sided 
 
236 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 in so far as they did not mention the British and French troops except 
 as the enemies of the Germans. I suppose, the matter originating on the 
 other side referred to the Germans and Austro-Hungarians as friends. 
 As I said in my letter it would have been "folly to repeat to London what 
 comes from London, Paris and Pctrograd.'* The American news services 
 could get that in London, without having to station men on the continent 
 and investing more money in cable tolls which usually resulted in nothing 
 practical. 
 
 It having meanwhile been shown to the management of the Associated 
 Press that the British and French governments were bent upon nothing 
 less than withholding from the American public the material upon which 
 an intelligent view of the War could be based, I was instructed to write 
 a weekly resume of the military activities. With the first one of these, 
 I forwarded on September 20th to Mr. Martin a letter which I will quote 
 the essentials of : 
 
 "I hope you will find the discussion as impartial as it should 
 be and as I have been trying hard to make it. You will notice 
 that there is no reference to the question of whether or no this war 
 was started by this or that party, or whether or no it is justifiable. 
 I have dealt altogether with military aspects and facts, and while 
 telling the truth has latterly become a punishable offense, I felt 
 that nevertheless the information contained in my screed might 
 be welcome." 
 
 But what the American newspapers wanted was not a weekly resume 
 that would be stale by the time it reached them, but what is known as 
 "hot-off-the-wire stuff." The New York office of the Associated Press 
 kept up importuning the London bureau, and Mr. Collins would promptly 
 relay these "kicks" to me, knowing only too well, however, that all this 
 was useless. On September 24th I wrote a letter to Mr. Stone, the general 
 manager, for the purpose of letting him know what the position of the 
 staff on the Continent was. It said partly: 
 
 "I am bringing this matter to your attention, because I for- 
 warded to the New York office last week the copies of the dis- 
 patches censored — delivered and suppressed. It is quite possible 
 that by looking over these copies you may be able to get a fair 
 picture of what British censorship is. 
 
 "Though I have no means of knowing now what the dis- 
 patches dealt with, I take it for granted that most of them were 
 'Wolff' taken from the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche C our ant, or pos- 
 sibly specials of that paper. At the time when these dispatches 
 were filed, I used a great deal of the matter supplied that paper 
 by an excellent staff of correspondents, sending no Renter or 
 Havas, of course." 
 
 The dispatches of the Renter and Havas semi-official agencies of Great 
 
THE BRITISH CENSORS WERE A TOUCHY LOT 23? 
 
 Britain and France, respectively, came into Holland via London, of course, 
 and where forwarded by the London bureau of the service long before 
 I saw them in The Hague or Rotterdam. The service of the Nieuwe 
 Rotterdamsche Courant dealt largely with the state of things in Belgium, 
 and was of the highest quality. It has been said that my use of it resulted 
 in the relief work which was later done in Belgium, because through these 
 dispatches the hardships suffered by the Belgian population were first 
 made known. 
 
 The New York general management of the service persisted in its 
 endeavor to get more news of the German side of the War. The full 
 purpose of the British and French censorships being as yet not entirely 
 understood, I wrote to Mr. Charles E. Kloeber, chief of the news division 
 of the Associated Press, on October 3rd, a letter which I think will stand 
 citing a second time : 
 
 "However, the only thing to do is to carry on this most 
 unsatisfactory sort of labor. Meanwhile, I may not have to tell 
 you that the English censor is not concerned with suppressing 
 military news as much as news favorable to Germany — which of 
 course is the same thing in the end. I suspect strongly that some 
 nine interviews I secured from Americans, returning from various 
 parts of Germany, on August 19th, never reached the London 
 office, though the term "mobilization" was the only military word 
 used in them. At any rate I saw in one of the American papers 
 the bare announcement that a special train from Berlin had arrived 
 in Rotterdam with some 300 refugees aboard. After that I 
 feared the worst, of course, and a few days later Mr. Patterson, 
 of the Chicago Tribune, told me that he had good reason to 
 believe that the English censors went so far as to interpolate their 
 own views into copy. What a person can do, with that sort of 
 'scrutiny' on the other end of the wire, I really don't know." 
 
 Shortly after this, I was instructed by Mr. Stone to go to Berlin in 
 an effort to improve the service from the countries of the Central Powers. 
 If possible, I was to go to the West front and stay there. But I found 
 the German general staff was not interested in having foreign correspond- 
 ents permanently at its press headquarters. The personally-conducted 
 parties that were made every two weeks or so did not interest me very 
 much, and so I decided to try my luck with the Austro-Hungarian army. 
 In this effort I was more successful. I was admitted as a permanent mem- 
 ber of the war press headquarters, but found that I was expected to write 
 only of those things which were thought advantageous to the Austro- 
 Hungarian government and Germany. After living in muddy, cholera- 
 infected and typhus-stricken Galicia for a while, and following in the 
 tracks of General Potiorek in Serbia for another few weeks, seeing the 
 Russians break into Hungary and visiting no end of hospitals, I decided 
 
238 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 that I was not worth my salt to the service, and took such steps as I 
 deemed necessary, an outline of which will be found in the following letter 
 to Mr. Stone, the general manager, dated December 12th : 
 
 "I found that it did not pay the Associated Press to keep a 
 man with the Austro-Hungarian 'Kriegspressequartier,' and asked 
 for my relief. After this had been given me, I was asked 
 to present the case in person at general staff headquarters. This 
 I did, but no improvement could be promised. I decided then to 
 leave. Old battlefields may be seen every day, but, as I told 
 the officer in charge of the correspondents, those are of greater 
 interest to the military critic and historian than to the American 
 public." 
 
 Contradicting an English Balkan ''Expert" 
 
 Cholera, typhus, small-pox, "kooties," mud and what not considered, 
 life at the Austro-Hungarian war press headquarters was most agreeable, 
 but it did not lead to much copy that was worth while — everything being 
 personally conducted and explained, which explanation the military censors 
 were in the habit of paying too much attention to when reading our dis- 
 patches afterward. 
 
 Shortly thereafter I found myself in the Balkans. I had been instructed 
 to study the situation there, because already the London press was sure 
 that before long the entire peninsula would be at war with the Germans 
 and their ally. I found that this was not so, as I have shown in previous 
 chapters, and thereby made myself a very bad reputation in London. The 
 views of Mr. J. D. Bourchier, the well known correspondent of the London 
 Titnes, on the Balkan, were very interesting, no doubt, but lacked a proper 
 realization of the actual conditions. Nevertheless, here was an American 
 newspaper man who undertook to contradict Mr. Bourchier — without 
 knowing at the time what Mr. Bourchier was writing. The result of this 
 was that the British censors invited Mr. Martin, the assistant general 
 manager of the Associated Press, to find another sphere of activity for me. 
 Mr. Martin refused to do this on the ground that, as he put it at the time, 
 the Associated Press was running its own business. 
 
 To send a man so marked to Constantinople was a risky undertaking, 
 yet it was done. But Mr. Martin was wise enough to "expect mostly mail 
 matter" from there, knowing too well that this would be the only means 
 of getting news from that part of the world past the British censors. The 
 mail was yet secure so long as it avoided British ports, as did some of the 
 steamers plying between New York and Norway, and a little later Mr. 
 Martin was able to write me: 
 
 "Your mail matter is extensively used and I think we got it 
 
 all. Your cabled matter is slaughtered, naturally." 
 
CONTRADICTING AN ENGLISH BALKAN EXPERT 239 
 
 Quite unexpectedly my account of the action of the Allied fleet against 
 the Turkish coast batteries along the Dardanelles, on March 18th had 
 gotten past the British censors. On March 26th I received the following 
 telegram : 
 
 "Roy Martin telegraphs congratulations excellent story 
 eighteenth first delivered us by cable stop reached here twenty 
 fourth stop spare no expense accelerate to damon." 
 
 The burden of this message was that the British censors had sup- 
 pressed every cable of mine which I had written from the Dardanelles — 
 eleven in number up to that time, as my records show, totalling 9782 
 words, and dealing with the futile attempts to silence the Turkish batteries, 
 delivered from March 1st to March 12th, 1915. The dispatch of March 
 18th, the British censors, even, could not suppress, because the world was 
 bound to learn anyway of the defeat of the Allied armada, and the total 
 loss of three battleships, besides the placing hors de combat of five others, 
 and the mauling which the super-dreadnaught "Queen Elizabeth" received 
 from the howitzers. The magnanimity of the British censors was great, 
 therefore. It brought me a message of appreciation and the instruction 
 to spare no expense even in face of the fact that so far I had invested 
 several thousand dollars in cable and telegraph tolls, every cent of which 
 was wasted. 
 
 I had by that time learned enough of British censorship to know 
 that in order to get matter through I would have to dwell strongly on the 
 shortcomings of the people I was with. The Turkish censors at the 
 Dardanelles I had convinced of the necessity of this, but the censors at 
 Constantinople, whom I could not reach from the scene of action, could 
 not take as lenient a view. The result was that I had a great deal of 
 trouble with them. To get around that I instructed Mr. Theron Damon, 
 my assistant at Constantinople, to have my despatches censored at the 
 bureau of the German Military Mission to Turkey, where my difficulties 
 were understood. To Major Fischer I had explained that I would 
 have to accompany each dispatch with something that was not compli- 
 mentary to the Turks and the Germans in order to get it past the British 
 censors. The major saw the point and undertook to be of help. But the 
 scheme was no great success. There were men in Berlin who were sure 
 that I was the worst Germanophobe there ever lived. 
 
 From the Berlin bureau of the service I received, on April 2nd, the 
 following message: 
 
 "Oberkommando Berlin declines accept as sufficient censoring 
 on your copy by military mission Constantinople and insists on 
 right recensor matter remailed at berlin might avoid delays if you 
 could mail direct to berry." 
 
240 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Mr. Berry, I must explain was then the correspondent at The Hague. 
 The gravamen involved telegrams as well as mail matter. "Oberkommando" 
 was the title of general military headquarters for the province of Branden- 
 burg at Berlin. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Stone, was trying to get in touch with me from New 
 York direct. He knew that I was at the Dardanelles, and knew further 
 that an effort was being made by the Allied fleet to force the straits. The 
 "story" was of the first magnitude and so far he had seen no dispatch 
 from me on the subject. The thousand odd members of the Associated 
 Press found it strange that the only news from the Dardanelles should 
 come from British sources and there was much importuning, with the result 
 that my incommunicado in Turkey had to be explained. The general 
 manager thought that he might help me with some suggestions, as indeed 
 he could have done under different conditions. He was finally able to get 
 a wire to me through the American embassy in Constantinople. It read : 
 "Send matter via athens address elmer roberts thirteen place 
 
 bourse paris. American embassy." 
 
 Since I had already established that the cables beyond Athens were 
 being watched by a double-crew of French and British censors, I felt that 
 little would come of this suggestion, but carried it into effect, nevertheless, 
 by filing my dispatches in duplicate. But that avenue for getting news to 
 the American public was quite as effectively closed as the one Constan- 
 tinople-Constanza-Budapest-Berlin-The lla.gue-London. 
 
 Mr. Martin also was again in despair. Though he knew what the 
 trouble was and what little there could be done, he wired me under date, 
 March 14th as follows: 
 
 "Wire daily graphic story" .... 
 
 It is possible that he intended no more than to remind the British 
 censors that such matter was wanted, and that as yet the press of the 
 United States was not content with hearing the one side only. 
 
 In Press Diplomacy First Version Counts 
 
 An attempt made to get dispatches to New York under diplomatic 
 privileges also failed, and the Turkish authorities soon put a stop to news 
 dispatches routed via Athens, being afraid that I might inadvertently, if 
 not intentionally, supply the Allied fleet with "military" information of 
 value. At any rate, Mr. Damon, the man at the base in Constantinople, 
 wired me at Tchanak Kale that : 
 
 "Suggestions paris or athens unfavored here." 
 
 Five dispatches had meanwhile been routed that way without anything 
 being accomplished. I finally suggested to Mr. Damon to take the matter 
 
IN PRESS DIPLOMACY FIRST VERSION COUNTS 241 
 
 up with Talaat Bey, the Ottoman minister of the interior, but nothing 
 came of this. I was at the straits and not in position to explain to 
 everybody that my dispatches had to be impartial, and, for the edification 
 of the censors in London and Paris, partial to the Entente cause, in order 
 to get them through. 
 
 News of the great action at the Dardanelles had first reached the world 
 through British channels. It occurred on March 18th, and on the 22nd my 
 anxiously-awaited story of it had not yet been received in New York. It 
 later developed that it took the British government four days to make up 
 its mind whether or no this dispatch of mine should also go into the 
 censor's wastepaper basket. Mr. Martin was going from one government 
 office to another to get my story released for transmission to New York, 
 its arrival having been announced. He was informed on this occasion 
 that this was not the only dispatch of mine, which was resting securely 
 in the care of the censor, that "there were stacks of them." But the 
 British version, which, by the way, was a very pretty concoction, had to 
 be given time to have its effect. 
 
 Mr. Stone brought the case to the attention of the Department of 
 State, as the result of which I received, through the American embassy 
 at Constantinople, the following cable: 
 
 Washington 7^ 45 23 4-40. 
 
 "523 twenty-second for George A. Schreiner quote no word 
 from you since twelfth stop think you could do better if were in 
 touch with Tenedos or other British cable points stop London and 
 French especially come through without difficulty stop Melville E. 
 Stone unquote. Bryan." 
 
 The advice that I cable via Tenedos shows how poorly informed even 
 the general manager of the Associated Press was in regard to general con- 
 ditions. The island in question does indeed have some sort of telegraphic 
 connection, but it was just then the main base of the Allied fleet, attacking 
 the Dardanelles batteries. On the other hand, the assurances of the British 
 government that commercial and press dispatches were not being interfered 
 with when they had no military information was fooling many — ^the 
 American government included. Mr. Stone had been led to think that 
 Constantinople and Berlin censors were to blame. 
 
 By that time the status of the telegrams, cables and mail of the 
 United States diplomatic missions abroad had been settled, Mr. Bryan, 
 then secretary of state, having undertaken as far back as November 25th, 
 1914, to get into clear water on this subject. It had been agreed that "in 
 view of an understanding between United States and belligerent countries 
 regarding inviolability of Department's diplomatic and consular correspond- 
 ence," the following rules should be observed: 
 
242 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 '''Communications from private individuals or institutions 
 to private individuals or institutions in the United States should 
 not be sent in Department pouches. * * * 
 
 "The Department reserves the right to censor all mail received 
 in the pouches." 
 
 This done the United States government surrendered the highways 
 and byways of international communication to the British and French 
 government and took notice of the conditions on them only when some 
 commercial cables had been delayed with loss to the party interested. Now 
 and then, to be sure, press cables were mentioned in the diplomatic cor- 
 respondence but nothing ever came of that. 
 
 We must turn to the American White Papers to see what was done. 
 
 After many protests made during the first two weeks of the War and 
 application of censorship the British Foreign Office informed Ambassador 
 W. H. Page as follows: 
 
 "As regards enquiries respecting the delivery of such mes- 
 sages as may have been stopped in the public interest it does not 
 appear to be practicable to remove the prohibition on such en- 
 quiries without impairing the usefulness of the censorship." 
 
 This meant that the British government would continue to refuse to 
 give information as to cables which had been suppressed. 
 
 On September 26th, 1914, Mr. Lansing, the acting secretary of state, 
 felt called upon to transmit the following to the American ambassador at 
 London : 
 
 "The department has received a great many protests from 
 commercial houses and boards of trade and transportation 
 throughout the United States in regard to the suppression by 
 British censors of cable communications to and from neutral 
 countries. This considerably interferes with legitimate foreign 
 commerce between the United States and neutral countries. You 
 may present the matter to the British Foreign Office with the sug- 
 gestion that the department deems it very desirable to discontinue . 
 suppressing harmless commercial cables." 
 
 All that could be sent in reply to this by Mr. Page was a laconic: 
 
 "No change in censorship regulations." 
 
 Mr. Lansing Thought It More Courteous 
 
 By October 5th, Mr. Page had taken the matter up with Sir Edward 
 Grey, who, according to a cable to the secretary of state, dated 13th, con- 
 firmed merely what had already been placed on record, i. e. : that no m- 
 formation would be given in regard to suppressed cablegrams. On the 
 following day, Mr. Lansing, thought "that notification of non-delivery 
 
MR. LANSING THOUGHT IT MORE COURTEOUS 243 
 
 would be more courteous and just," and meanwhile much effort was being 
 wasted on a trifle : Attempts to remove the stipulation of British censor- 
 ship that signatures and addresses of cablegrams should be given in full. 
 Information in regard to suppressed cables would have involved a 
 refunding of tolls in the end, and for that reason, the British government, 
 from motives best known to itself, never swerved for an instant from the 
 position it had taken. In spite of that the subject of returning the costs 
 of cables in case of non-delivery had to be made the object of official 
 correspondence. A communication from the office of the British post- 
 master general, dated November 2nd, 1914, says : 
 
 "I am directed by the Postmaster General to point out that 
 Article 8 of the International Telegraph Convention reserves to 
 each of the contracting states the right of suspending the inter- 
 national telegraph service for an indefinite period. Such a notice 
 was issued by the British Government when the present emergency 
 arose, but in order to avoid the inconvenience which would have 
 arisen from a total stoppage of communication it was decided as 
 an act of grace to accept telegrams for transmission on the under- 
 standing that they were to be accepted at the sender's risk and 
 subject to censorship by the British authorities ; that is, that they 
 might be stopped, delayed, or otherwise dealt with by the censors, 
 and that no claim for reimbursement could be entertained." 
 
 That was a very frank statement of the conditions, of course. Stop- 
 page meant suppression, and delay might amount to the same. The 
 "dealing otherwise" might mean the interpolation of matter promotive of 
 British interests throughout the world over whatever signature the cable- 
 gram had. 
 
 The case went so far that Mr. Hoffman, President of the Swiss 
 Confederation, came to occupy himself with it. But even that did not help. 
 
 On December 2, of the same year, Mr. Page cabled to the secretary 
 of state as follows: 
 
 "I have just received the following statement from Sir 
 Edward Grey: 
 
 "In connection with complaints about both press and com- 
 mercial cables, I can make no progress without specific instances 
 of difficulties. The censorship asks that the names of the ad- 
 dressees and senders of stopped telegrams should be given in order 
 that inquiry may be made. The chief censor is willing to make 
 most searching inquiry, and if it is found that any message has 
 been stopped without sufficient />nwa facie grounds, all the neces- 
 sary steps will be taken to prevent the occurrence of similar cases 
 in future. The chief censor would indeed welcome specific in- 
 stances, as they would possibly be accompanied by evidence of the 
 innocence of messages that have appearance of being suspicious 
 and this might give a clue to the nature of a whole class of mes- 
 
244 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 sages. The chief censor is confident that American and Swiss 
 telegrams are not being stopped wantonly, but only when there 
 appears on the face of them good reasons for supposing that they 
 may be improper messages." 
 
 It was ever hard to establish in censorship matters that anything is 
 prima facie. It all depends on what is considered "military" information 
 and what is not. As the Great War progressed information of any sort 
 was given a military character, if the censors so pleased. As to specific 
 instances — there were enough of them: The London Bureau of the 
 Associated Press alone had by that time over two hundred cases of sup- 
 pression, in which both the sender and addressee were known. One must 
 wonder that the government of the United States accepted this cynical 
 explanation of the case as complacently as it did, and that there was nobody 
 in the Department of State f arsighted and public-spirited enough to realize, 
 in those pre-Lusitania days, that it was in the interest of the American 
 public to know both sides, whether culpability for the war had been already 
 decided upon or not. The people of the United States were then still 
 sitting in the jury box as it were, and their attorney, the government in 
 Washington, was in duty bound to present the evidence of both sides. 
 
 My experience with censorship in Turkey was rather diflferent. When- 
 ever a dispatch of mine was suppressed, or when a part of it had been 
 "blue-pencilled" out of it, I would receive on the following day a letter 
 of which the following is an example : 
 
 Direction Generale des Postes, Telegraphes et Telephones Ottomans. 
 
 Bureau Central de Pera. 
 No. 76. 
 
 Pera, le 31 Mai, 1915. 
 "Monsieur : 
 
 "Je viens vous informer que pour votre telegramme No. 
 2315, date du 28 Mai, 1915, pour Berlin, il a ete pergu par 
 erreur deux piastres vingt paras en plus. Je vous prie done de 
 faire retirer susdite somme de la Caisse de notre bureau avec le 
 recepisse y relatif pour etre rectifie. 
 
 "Agreez, Monsieur, I'assurance de ma consideration dis- 
 tinguee. 
 
 Le Directeur, 
 du Bureau Central Telegraphique de Pera. 
 (Signed) " 
 
 Translation — 
 "Sir: 
 
 "I would inform that for your telegram No. 2315, dated 
 May 28th, 1915, for Berlin, two piasters and twenty paras were 
 charged in excess by error. I beg you to withdraw the sum 
 mentioned at the cash desk of our bureau, with the receipt con- 
 cerned so that it may be rectified." 
 
MR. LANSING THOUGHT IT MORE COURTEOUS 245 
 
 But then the Turk has ever been a fairly honest individual. 
 
 The same fine regard for the proprieties was exhibited by the Bul- 
 garians and Germans, and in Austria-Hungary the cost of suppressed 
 telegrams could be reclaimed upon application in writing. In all three of 
 these countries the senders of suppressed telegrams were notified of what- 
 ever action the censor had taken, and for the purpose of giving the foreign 
 newspaper correspondent the chance to appeal to a higher authority, all 
 press dispatches had to be filed in triplicate, one of which was used by the 
 telegraph operator, the other was kept by the censor and the third was re- 
 turned to the correspondent, who was thus able to see what had given 
 oflfense, if elimination had been practiced. If the sender was not satisfied 
 with the work of the censor he could bring the case to the attention of the 
 press department of the foreign office, if the dispatch was of a political 
 nature — to the press department of the general staff, if it was of a military 
 character. Correspondents in those countries were invited to make deposits 
 in the telegraph bureau, and in some cases the tolls were charged to ac- 
 count. In this manner no tolls were paid on suppressed telegrams or 
 parts of telegrams. 
 
 British Censorship Diplomacy Ubiquitous 
 
 The British and French censors were especially concerned with keeping 
 out of the United States my dispatches from Sofia in the summer of 1915, 
 despite the fact that they permitted their publication in their own news- 
 papers, which had access to them through Holland and Switzerland. Mr. 
 Stone made some more desperate attempts to get the matter through but 
 failed again. Through Mr. Paxton Hibbon, Associated Press correspondent 
 at Athens, Mr. Stone instructed me to try every telegraph-cable route I 
 could reach. For a time I filed dispatches in triplicate over the following 
 connections : 
 
 Sofia -Bucharest -Budapest -Berlin -The Hague- London -"New York; 
 Sofia-Constanza-Odessa-Petrograd-Stockholm-Z,owc?ow-New York, and 
 Sofia-Dedeagatch-Salonika-Athens-Marseilles-Pam-New York. Even this 
 effort resulted in very little and since it was already the fashion to take 
 neutral mail from neutral ships on the high seas and in British ports, the 
 outlook was the poorest possible. 
 
 A few messages via Athens went through, but on September 22nd, 
 Mr. Paxton Hibbon had occasion to write me: 
 
 "Your long and excellent dispatch about Bulgarian affairs 
 was held here by the censors a total of 23 hours ! From the time 
 it reached me it was filed within 25 minutes — but the delay was 
 the fault of the censor, not of the telegraph company. If events 
 
246 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 keep on as they are going, I think of going up to Nish — in which 
 case we may be able to make faces at one another from opposite 
 camps." 
 
 A carbon copy of that dispatch shows that in it I announced that 
 Bulgaria would before long bring the issue of Macedonia to a climax, and 
 war would be the inevitable result, "according to a reliable source of 
 information." The reliable source was Dr. RadoslavoflF, who, for reasons 
 of his own was very outspoken about that time. The censor referred 
 to was not British in this instance, but a Greek, a man, as I learned later, 
 who was well liked by the Agence Radio of Paris, a French propaganda 
 institution, whose manager at Athens, was later invited to a duel by Mr. 
 Hibbon. 
 
 Very shortly after this the Athens route failed us completely. It 
 seems that Mr. Hibbon, who was French enough to fight duels, could not 
 understand why the correspondent of an American news service was to 
 be looked upon as an adjunct to French and British propaganda in Greece. 
 About that time he was received about once a week by King Constantin 
 of Greece, so often in fact that a French paper thought it proper to refer 
 to him as "the American secretary of a pro-German Greek king," all of 
 which did not improve our telegraphic facilities. After a while I stopped 
 using that route. 
 
 Mr. Martin was again in London now, and the service needed news 
 of the highly critical situation in the Balkans. He sent a message to the 
 Berlin office which in part read thus : 
 
 "Long articles on diplomatic relations unarrived received 
 today your two service dispatches sixth seventh also yours of 
 October fifth latter not forwarded because facts already published 
 england." 
 
 The date of the telegram is October 9th. Its burden is that my dis- 
 patches from a country on the verge of war had been delayed three, two 
 and one days, and when finally they were delivered the facts of one had 
 been published in England, though not in the same dress. I had similar 
 service messages from New York, but will not weary the reader with 
 them. 
 
 In the meantime my Berlin dispatches were being delayed in a rather 
 mysterious manner. On October 8th I received a telegram from the 
 Berlin office saying: 
 
 "Nothing received from you since your October first." 
 
 It was evident that there was somebody "sitting" on the wire along 
 the SofiaL-Bucharest-BudsLpest-Btrlm route. On the tenth Mr. Martin was 
 heard from again: 
 
BRITISH CENSORSHIP DIPLOMACY UBIQUITOUS 247 
 
 "Approve schreiner remaining but we get almost none his 
 matter by cable stop advisable employ wireless importanest." 
 
 Allusion to my possible departure from Bulgaria was due to the fact 
 that I had been asked to go to Berlin, because the chief of that bureau had 
 taken a trip to the United States. Since Bulgaria was on the very eve of 
 war, I decided that it would be the poorest policy to leave Sofia then, but 
 was not able to get that information to the management. I finally suc- 
 ceeded in getting access to a diplomatic mail pouch into which I was able 
 to smuggle a letter to Mr. Stone. It is dated October 3rd, and contains 
 among other information the now doubly interesting remark : 
 
 "In view of the fact that I hope to get this letter to you 
 through the diplomatic mail. ... I may tell you that Bulgaria 
 will be obliged to take part in the European War before long, will 
 have done so, I think, by the time this letter reaches you." 
 
 The delay and suppression of my dispatches over the Rumanian route 
 had caused me to make representations first to the Bulgarian telegraph 
 administration and censors. The records of the operators who had 
 handled my copy showed, however, that my telegrams had been promptly 
 transmitted. Tracing the dispatches at Budapest showed that the delay 
 had been due to Rumanian influence, and that four of them had been 
 there suppressed. 
 
 Since the situation in Bulgaria did not aflFect the Rumanian govern- 
 ment, so far as I knew, I telegraphed several times to the Rumanian 
 telegraph authorities, but received no reply. It was bad enough to be 
 baffled by the censors of the countries at war. What Rumania should have 
 to gain or lose, at that stage, by interfering with telegrams, showing on 
 their face that they were intended for publication in the United States, 
 was a little more than I could understand. I sent to Mr. Charles J. Vopicka, 
 the United States minister to Rumania, Bulgaria and Serbia, at Bucharest, 
 the following dispatch: 
 
 "Sofia October eleventh fourthirty pm request you have kind- 
 ness interest yourself in fate my telegraphic messages sent from 
 here during period October first seventh stop sent about ten none 
 arrived berlin which point destination stop messages addressed 
 conger associated press stop inquiries here show messages duly 
 forwarded stop asserted here bucharest censorship possibly re- 
 sponsible stop kindly inform rumanian authorities my messages go 
 only america and that it not always well lose goodwill our 
 organization stop greetings many thanks — aux censeurs inutile 
 supprimer cette depeche parceque copie sera remise au ministre par 
 voie diplomatique." 
 
 The French text of the message says merely to the censors; It will 
 
248 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 be useless to suppress this dispatch since a copy of it will be remitted to 
 the minister through diplomatic channels. 
 
 Censorship Diplomacy in Bulgaria 
 
 A little while later I had the experience of being notified by M. 
 GeorgieflF, the efficient chief of Bulgaria's political police, or secret service, 
 that I would have some two hours before leaving Bulgaria and its capital 
 for good and always. War had in this instance, as elsewhere, worked 
 a complete metamorphosis. There was now a censorship that did not have 
 its superior anywhere. (See Appendix.) Major-General JekoflF, the 
 chief of staff, had put together a set of press regulations that permitted 
 only the really good news of Bulgaria and her war with Serbia and the 
 Entente to go out. Moreover, the chief censor, and the general manager 
 of the Agence Telegraphique Bulgare, and director of the Press Bureau 
 in the Foreign Office were one and the same person, a Mr. Joseph Herbst, 
 who a little while before had confided to me, in a fit of trustfulness, that 
 if he had his way about it he would hang with his own hands every 
 foreign correspondent in the country as soon as the mobilization had been 
 ordered. Incidentally, he wished to make this little massacre completer 
 still by hanging the military attaches at the same time. Cospodine and 
 Captain Herbst, being a pleasant man withal, did not attend to my execu- 
 tion, possibly because I was the one lone neutral foreign correspondent 
 with whom he had to deal. But we had our clashes, especially after I had 
 been with a Bulgarian division in Serbia, and later in Macedonia, and 
 had run into things that did not entirely please me. 
 
 The consequence was that one fine afternoon I was cited to appear 
 in the presence of Mr. Georgieff, who saw in every American, about that 
 time, another Mr. Einstein. The interview was terse. A police secretary 
 acted as interpreter, and the political police chief thought that he was 
 dealing with a person as amenable to threats as the poor devils whom he 
 used to beat, until the blood ran, with the great cowhide whip, model 
 d la knut, that hung behind his desk on the wall. M. Georgieff was 
 rather surprised when I told him that he could go to a certain warm 
 place and that I did not think of leaving Sofia that evening. I would 
 have to be out of the city and country on the following day, he snorted. 
 To which I remarked that I had no intention doing that even. The 
 chief then mentioned the deepest dungeon he had at his disposal and 
 similar tommyrot. He was pummeling the desk with both fists as I 
 walked from the room. 
 
 In times of war the secret police is a mighty institution, of course. 
 It is best to be on good terms with it, as I knew only too well by that 
 
CENSORSHIP DIPLOMACY IN BULGARIA 249 
 
 time. It is better yet to watch the secret police, which can be done by 
 the averagely wide-awake newspaper man, especially since he knows most 
 of the little tricks of the secret service himself, and in consequence does 
 not have before these ferreting minions of the governments at war that 
 awe and fear which seems to strike the meek citizen. Knowing that M. 
 Georgieff had taken an interest in me, being familiar also with what hap- 
 pened to the foreign newspaper men in Sofia at the outbreak of the 
 Balkan War, I had given certain men in the Foreign Office to understand 
 that I did not propose being railroaded out of the country with a police 
 escort, should the moment come when my copy might have to give offense. 
 The following letter will throw more light on this : 
 
 Sofia, April 14th, 1916. 
 Dimiter Stancieff, Esquire, 
 Chief Consular Division, 
 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 
 Sofia, Bulgaria. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Stancieff: 
 
 "During the past few days it has come to my ears several 
 times that I am being looked upon as a suspect by your secret 
 police. At first I was inclined to pay no attention to so silly a 
 rumor. Indeed, I am not yet convinced that the authorities in 
 question have been rightly reported on the subject. The fact, 
 however, that today again I was informed that I am being looked 
 upon with suspicion — this time by a person whose word I do 
 not care to doubt — compels me to bring the matter to your 
 attention. 
 
 "I do not for a moment question the right of the authorities 
 concerned to keep an eye on strangers, but it seems to me that 
 in the absence of all justification for such an absurd contention 
 it is overstepping the bounds of propriety to label unoffending 
 visitors to Bulgaria nolens volens suspects. You will have no 
 difficulty realizing, I am sure, that a reputation of that sort is 
 injurious not only to my work and standing here, but also in 
 the Central Empires. For these reasons I must ask you to take 
 the necessary steps for the cessation of such slanderous gossip 
 on the part of certain government officials. The least that could 
 be done under the circumstances is to point out to the secret 
 police that it serves no purpose whatsoever to treat all Americans 
 as Entente agents, or to listen to rumors possibly spread by the 
 Entente group of Americans in Sofia. 
 
 "You would very much oblige me by bringing this matter to 
 the knowledge of competent authorities, for which purpose I 
 have written this letter when I could have discussed the matter 
 with you personally.*' 
 
 I did not leave Sofia as M. Georgieff intended, but instead made a 
 trip to Macedonia, leaving meanwhile somebody in the capital to watch 
 
250 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the secret police, as it were. This person discovered that the chief of 
 the secret service, in addition to being sympathetic to complaining censors, 
 had listened to the fears and opinions of two German cavalry lieutenants, 
 who were now in the aviation service and who from some remarks I made 
 at a dinner table had concluded that I was at least in the service of the 
 Entente governments. 
 
 Unfortunately, the exigencies of war cause some men and nearly all 
 women to believe that their cause alone is good, and that the neutral 
 must either have no opinions of his own or must be hypocrite enough to 
 set his mental sails to every passion breeze that blows. M. Georgieff had 
 made up his mind to expel me, and in this he had also the support 
 of a Major Frederici, then in charge of German secret service in Bul- 
 garia and at one time connected with the secret police of Berlin. Before 
 both gentlemen changed their mind I had been obliged to enlist the 
 good service of M. Kozeff, general secretary of the Sofia Foreign Office, 
 and Dr. RadoslavoflF, the minister-president. Such is the power of the 
 political police and the military in times of war. 
 
 A little later, a member of the opposition of the government in the 
 Sobranje made the incident the subject of an interpellation of the ministry. 
 The man, it seems, was after the scalp of Captain Herbst, which I 
 enabled the latter to keep on by stating facts in the case which had not 
 become known. 
 
 I have related the above for no other reason than to show that 
 governments at war have no room for the impartial newspaper man. It 
 is not the truth that is wanted, but the literary compositions that make 
 up propaganda. The interests of the neutral are not regarded at all, of 
 course. Every line, every word in fact, is weighed against the effect it 
 will have if brought to the attention of a people that may have no direct 
 interests at stake but whose sympathy may in the end become an asset. 
 
 Mr. Gerard Also Promotes Public Opinion 
 
 After a short vacation in the United States I was instructed to return 
 to my post in Vienna, from which point I was covering the Balkans — as 
 best as I could. My territory was larger than that of all other American 
 correspondents in the Central empires — in Germany I should say, because 
 few of them ever ventured far afield. In Vienna I was the only American 
 correspondent and had in the course of time succeeded in wearing down 
 the great distrust toward all who, by virtue of origin or domicile, were 
 likely to have leanings toward the Allies, 
 
 Since the chief of the Berlin Bureau of the Associated Press needed 
 also a vacation, it was decided that I should stay in his place long enough 
 for him to take a rest. 
 
MR. GERARD ALSO PROMOTES PUBLIC OPINION 251 
 
 I was familiar enough with the difficulty of getting news to the United 
 States and was not at all surprised, therefore, when I learned that the 
 American correspondents at Berlin had petitioned the United States govern- 
 ment to come to their rescue. Two things had to be considered by these men. 
 In the first place they were eager to get their copy through, after running to 
 some extent the risks of war at the front, and paying out good money 
 for it in telegraph and cable tolls as far as London, and, secondly, they 
 had to think of themselves. Editors and publishers in the United States 
 had begun to feel that nothing was gained by having a correspondent at 
 Berlin, since so little of his matter ever reached them, and since so much 
 of it arrived in mutilated condition, after the British censors had cut it 
 here and there so that often the dispatch was a mere jumble of words 
 in its most important essentials. The result was that little by little cor- 
 respondents were lopped off, which was exactly what the British govern- 
 ment wanted. Their number had never been great. I believe that thirty 
 was the maximum at any time of the War. Now they had dwindled 
 down to hardly a dozen. 
 
 Such being the case it was decided to petition the United States 
 government to use its kind efforts in London for the purpose of assuring 
 to dispatches originating with bona fide American correspondents at Berlin 
 unhindered transit. That much was explained to me by a member of the 
 Associated Press staff at the German capital, Mr. Miles S. Bouton. The 
 man also stated that the petition had been sent through the American 
 embassy, and that Mr. James W. Gerard, the ambassador, had been con- 
 sulted in connection with it. Mr. Gerard had said that he could not 
 endorse "this effort to interfere with the censorship of the British." The 
 correspondents had hoped that he would do this, but, knowing the man, 
 were not surprised when he refused. They asked him, however, not to 
 interfere with the petition otherwise, possibly by stating to the United 
 States government that he could not endorse it. 
 
 This Mr. Gerard promised to do, but did not do. The correspondents 
 knew Mr. Gerard too well, and decided, therefore, to watch his hands. 
 A day or two later they learned that Mr. Gerard had forwarded the 
 petition, but had accompanied it with a statement to the effect that he was 
 not in sympathy with the desires of the American correspondents. 
 
 It was at this juncture that I became involved in the affair. 
 
 One of the signers of the petition was Mr. Conger, the chief of the 
 Berlin Bureau of the Associated Press, who was on leave, and whose 
 place I was filling. One morning, then, a committee of American cor- 
 respondents called to acquaint me with what had occurred. This done they 
 suggested that in view of the fact that Mr. Conger was one of the 
 
252 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 petitioners I, having taken his place for the time being, should go with 
 them to see Mr. Gerard, whom they accused of a breach of faith. 
 
 We met at the offices of the Chicago Daily News, where presently 
 the other petitioners gathered. An appointment had been made with the 
 ambassador, but he seemed surprised when a little later the entire group 
 put in appearance, the members of which were : Ackerman, United Press ; 
 Bennet, Chicago Tribune; Brown, New York Times; Endress, Inter- 
 national News Service; Hale, New York American; Schiitte and Swing, 
 Chicago Daily News, von Wiegand, New York World, and myself. 
 
 Mr. Gerard greeted us airily enough. 
 
 "Why, you look like a crowd of undertakers," he remarked, as we. 
 following his invitation, seated ourselves about the large room. There 
 being no response to this greeting, Mr. Gerard seated himself at his desk 
 in the corner, and began to look from one of his callers to the other. 
 
 "Mr. Ambassador!" began Mr. Endress, "before we go into the mat- 
 ter which we wish to discuss with you, we would like to warn you that 
 everything you say may be used by us for publication." 
 
 "Well, what is it" asked Mr. Gerard, a little impatiently. 
 
 For a while Mr. Endress continued to have the word. He reminded 
 the ambassador of the promise that had been made, and asserted that this 
 promise had not been kept. In defense of himself Mr. Gerard said that 
 he had made no such promise, and that, aside from all that, he had the 
 right to give his opinion of anything he transmitted to the government. 
 
 "I do not think you have that after a different understanding has 
 been reached, Mr. Ambassador!" put in Mr. Schiitte, rather tersely. "It 
 was well understood, I believe, that if you could not endorse our request, 
 you were to forward the petition without comment of your own." 
 
 Mr. Gerard said that there had been no such agreement. The result 
 of this was that several men began to be heard from. My colleagues were 
 remarkably icy about it, and the cooler they kept the more the ambassador 
 lost his temper, though he tried hard to control it. 
 
 It came to the point where unpleasantries were passed back and forth. 
 Mr. Swing, the only man in the group whom I knew at all well, has a 
 biting sarcasm and it was not long before Mr. Gerard was the subject 
 and object of it. To some remark made by Mr. Gerard one of the group 
 said that he need not think that he was afraid of any ambassador, adding 
 sotto voce, even if that ambassador was in the habit of taking up the 
 passports of Americans who did not kowtow to him. 
 
 I gained the impression that Mr. Gerard was of the opinion that 
 the thing had been staged in order to make him lose his temper. That 
 was not the case, however. At the preliminary meeting held in the 
 office of the Chicago Daily News, no mention of that was made, though 
 
MR. GERARD ALSO PROMOTES PUBLIC OPINION 253 
 
 most of the correspondents agreed that no words were to be minced with 
 Mr. Gerard. I can attest that they kept their word. These men had 
 been goaded so long by the British censors and the telegrams of their 
 editors demanding copy and complaining when there was none, after they 
 had taken a turn in the mud of the trenches or were routed four times 
 a day by Allied aeroplane attacks, that they seemed glad to have found 
 somebody in authority upon whom they could pour a little of their indigna- 
 tion. 
 
 Since I was not one of the signers of the petition but was there as 
 proxy I did not deem it worth while to meddle much with the affair. I 
 had troubles of my own in Vienna, and knew the policy of the man whose 
 place I was filling merely to the extent of having learned that he was 
 one of the petitioners, number one, in fact, since he was looked upon as 
 the dean of the corps. Mr. Gerard, moreover, hardly knew me, having met 
 me once, a year before. 
 
 But presently I was to be drawn into the affair against my will. The 
 discussion, still very heated, had turned upon the attitude of the American 
 ambassador. That attitude was simple enough, it seemed. Indulging in 
 a generalization that was highly unwarranted, Mr. Gerard said that it was 
 far from being the concern of the American correspondents in Berlin what 
 the British censors did with their dispatches, so long as the same cor- 
 respondents did not demand that their matter was permitted to leave 
 Germany without being censored. He said that he would endorse their 
 petition on the day on which they could show him that their dispatches 
 were no longer subject to a censorship that was extremely rigorous, partial, 
 unfair and calculated to make every newspaper article going out of Ger- 
 many a piece of propaganda. Before expecting the American government 
 to ask for non-interference on the part of the British censors with their 
 dispatches, the American correspondents would do better to demand the 
 same treatment of the German government. They could get that treatment, 
 he was sure, if as a body they insisted upon getting it. 
 
 Several efforts were made to point out to the ambassador that there 
 was a great difference between censorship at the source of news and 
 censorship in transit. Several remarks of mine in that direction were not 
 well received by Mr. Gerard, who was on the verge of telling me that 
 he did not know me, or that the business in hand was no affair of mine 
 anyway. To save the ambassador that trouble I informed him that I 
 was acting for Mr. Conger, and that I felt myself entitled to my opinions 
 whether he thought so or not. 
 
 The conversation, if I may call it that, was carried on in high voices, 
 and presently one of the group suggested that it might not be a bad 
 idea to tone down a little. This done an attempt was made by almost 
 
254 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 every one in turn to show that while the American correspondents in 
 Berlin might have no rights in the premises, it was possible, nevertheless, 
 that the press of the United States and the American public had some 
 interests here— interests which, perhaps, were not recognized in Washing- 
 ton, but which were great for all that. It was the right of the American 
 public to know both sides, the right at least of those who cared to 
 examine the issues, as Mr. Bennet put it. 
 
 Before long the discussion was heated again. Mr. Gerard made a 
 faux pas. Rather heatedly he charged that all those present were the 
 agents of the German government, and even went as far as to suggest 
 that they were taking money from unholy hands. 
 
 "I presume, you do not include me, since I do not work here," I 
 remarked. 
 
 The correspondents were now on their feet. Some of them started 
 for the door. 
 
 "I regret to say, Mr. Ambassador!" said Mr. Schiitte, stopping a 
 moment as he walked past Mr. Gerard, "that we must use this story. We 
 expected to find you in a different frame of mind." 
 
 "Use this — what ?" almost shouted Mr. Gerard. "You will do nothing 
 of the kind. What passed here is confidential." 
 
 "Would have been, if we had not warned you," said Mr. Endress. 
 "You did nothing of the sort," shouted the ambassador. 
 "You were warned," said the chorus and filed into the hall and then 
 into the street. 
 
 There was a sort of indignation meeting on the next corner,, and it 
 was not until then that I learned that English and French correspondents 
 in Washington had cabled to their papers a story to the effect that the 
 petition of the American correspondents was not likely to get favorable 
 consideration by their government, because Ambassador Gerard had ex- 
 pressed himself as unable to support the move. 
 
 When the group dispersed it did this for the purpose of writing of the 
 interview and two hours later most of the dispatches were on the wire to 
 Holland and on the wireless from Nauen. There was also a sensation 
 in the Foreign Office, and a little later the German government was con- 
 sidering the advisability of suggesting to the government of the United 
 States that Mr. Gerard take a vacation. 
 
 Through the Wolff Bureau the affair had gotten into the Berlin after- 
 noon papers, most of whom promised their public editorials on the subject 
 later on. 
 
 Next morning those editorials were there. It cannot be said that 
 the American ambassador fared too well in any of them, nor did some of 
 them spare the American correspondents. Count Reventlow, for instance, 
 
MR. GERARD ALSO PROMOTES PUBLIC OPINION 255 
 
 called upon the government to cease immediately giving the American cor- 
 respondents the great privileges they seemed to enjoy, though I have never 
 understood, being a novice in Berlin, what those privileges consisted of 
 apart from first call on all interviews with the leading men in the govern- 
 ment and army. 
 
 All that day the Berlin press raged with might and main, and next 
 morning the storm grew worse. Over night there had arrived from 
 Switzerland news dispatches taken from the French press, which had it 
 that the Berlin correspondent of the Associated Press, in this instance 
 my humble self, had sent a wireless to New York in which he charged the 
 American correspondents in Berlin with being the paid agents of the 
 German government. I had done nothing of the sort. To be sure I had 
 stated that Mr. Gerard was of that opinion, but the men on the Eiffel Tower 
 who were ever on the alert for the news that flitted past them had either 
 made a mistake or some French bureau of public ^'information" had pur- 
 posely misquoted my dispatch. 
 
 The correspondents were not minded to let the matter rest there. 
 Another appointment was made with Mr. Gerard, and to our surprise he 
 consented readily enough to another meeting. 
 
 "It is a fine mess you have fixed up there," was Mr. Gerard's first 
 remark, when we had accepted his invitation to be seated. "What is to 
 be done about it? I think you were rash — what have I ever done to 
 you? Is that all the thanks I get for what I have done for the gang? 
 What's the matter?" 
 
 It was explained to Mr. Gerard that in adding his own comment to 
 the petition he had certainly not helped the cause of freedom in journalism 
 so far as the British and French censors were concerned. 
 
 "One would think that you were here representing British instead 
 of American interests," said one of the men. "That is what is the matter, 
 if you want to know." * 
 
 This time the group had a dissenter in the person of Mr. Ackerman, 
 of the United Press. He began to see things in the light of Mr. Gerard's 
 position, and planted himself on top of a little table that stood beside the 
 ambassador's desk. 
 
 To the reiterated question what the correspondents wanted, answer 
 was finally made to the effect that nothing short of a retraction — a 
 complete one — would be acceptable. It would have to be that or Mr. 
 Gerard would soon have reason to regret that he had charged the body 
 of correspondents in Berlin with being the agents of the German govern- 
 ment. Meanwhile, the ambassador could exclude from the retraction 
 all those whom he knew were in the service of the German government, 
 
 * Since then Mr. Gerard has been knighted by King George of England. 
 
256 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 provided he was willing to institute such proceedings against them as the 
 offense demanded. 
 
 The suggestion of Mr. Ackerman, that an understanding be reached 
 on a different and more amicable basis, was ignored. For a few moments 
 there was an awkward pause, and then Mr. Gerard reached for a thick 
 pad of yellow paper and began to write. 
 
 The retraction of which Mr. Bennet still has the original, and I only 
 the notes I made at the time, said that there seemed to have been a mis- 
 understanding at the recent meeting between the American correspondents 
 at Berlin and Ambassador Gerard. The latter had not wished to express 
 himself in the sense that the German censorship was unduly rigorous and 
 partial, that on the contrary it was rather liberal. For the American 
 correspondents in Berlin he could say that they were men who had always 
 lived up to the best traditions of their profession. 
 
 Mr. Gerard handed the sheets to me and I read them to the group. 
 Several of the men did not want to accept the retraction in that form, 
 seeing that there had been no misunderstanding in word and sense, but 
 when it was pointed out that the statement could not very well be given 
 another form, considering the dignity of the post of ambassador, an 
 agreement was reached to publish the statement in that form. 
 
 I am sure that American correspondents at London, of the same mettle 
 as the men in Berlin, could have done their public a great service. The 
 American newspaper men in Berlin could have broken down the censor- 
 ship of the German government overnight, at least so far as their work 
 was concerned. That they did not do this was entirely a question of 
 British censorship. None of the men felt that they could proceed along 
 these lines if their dispatches and articles were to be subject to the 
 British censorship in transmission as absolutely as they were. Two 
 "strikes" were won by the Americans, though they were only partial, because 
 the news service men, those of the Associated Press, for instance, did not 
 feel that they could embark upon such an enterprise. But there was a 
 way of getting them into line, since the German government cared more 
 for the "specials" than for the news service writers, whose reports were 
 extremely perfunctory and "dry" as Mr. Stone had put it. 
 
 More could be said on this subject, but since it would no longer 
 greatly interest the public it may as well remain unsaid. 
 
 What the Wilhelmstrasse Thought of It 
 
 On the day of the retraction I was called up from the Foreign Office 
 by a man whose name is known to every American. 
 
 I found the functionary in a rather perturbed frame of mind. He 
 
WHAT THE WILHE'LMSTRASSE THOUGHT OF IT 257 
 
 had asked me to see him on a rather important matter that might develop 
 into a sensational dispatch, which was to be given to the Associated Press. 
 As yet the question had not been entirely decided. What did I think would 
 be the effect on the American public in case Mr. Gerard was sent home? 
 
 Having known that the German government had on several occasions 
 occupied itself with that sort of thing I was much less surprised than 
 may have been expected. I replied that though I had only recently been 
 in the United States, I was not in a position to say what the effect upon 
 the American public and government of that course would be. There 
 was no reason to take the utterances of Mr. Gerard too tragically. To 
 some extent he had been carried away by his temper and ego, and so far 
 as I was able to judge the situation nothing could be gained by a step 
 that might lead to a rupture of relations between the United States and 
 Germany, and probably war. 
 
 In the course of the interview I gathered that the personage was 
 badly informed concerning the general state of affairs in the United States. 
 He seemed to be under the impression that despite all efforts made to 
 gain the sympathy of the American public nothing had been accomplished. 
 I corrected that opinion to the extent of saying that failure might be due 
 to these efforts, seeing that they were of the poorest quality and could 
 not begin to measure themselves with those of the Allied governments, 
 who had started with everything in their favor: The inherent racial 
 factors; the same language, a literature and press that was almost held 
 in common, similarity in institutions and to some extent in ideals — so far 
 as the British propaganda in the United States was concerned; Belgium 
 and the Lusitania, and absolute control of the world's news channels by 
 Great Britain so far as the endeavor of the Allies generally went. 
 
 In view of these odds nothing but a withdrawal from the field of 
 propaganda could be advised. It would be best to keep the padlock on 
 the lips and hands of every German propagandist in the United States, and 
 instruct Count Bernstorff to limit his own activity to reading the German 
 official communiques twice a day and tell callers that he had nothing to 
 say. Any of these things would be better than having Mr. Gerard re- 
 called. If all of them were carried through they might even keep the 
 United States out of the War, by bringing it forcibly to the attention of the 
 American public that it was really hearing but one side of the bloody 
 affair. I pointed out the tactical advantages of an orderly retreat in this 
 field, and finally left with the remark that into this scheme Mr. Gerard 
 would fit better than any other man. 
 
 Before I left for my post in Vienna I ascertained that my suggestions 
 had fallen on barren soil with the men "higher up." It was decided, 
 however, not to disturb Mr. Gerard, of whose quality of service as 
 
258 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 ambassador to Germany his book, "My Four Years in Germany," is 
 probably the best index. 
 
 I have throughout this chapter dealt with experiences of a personal 
 sort for the purpose of illustrating in that manner what the control of 
 the news channels by the British government was and what effect it had. 
 I hasten to say, however, that my American colleagues in the Central 
 Empires, notably those at Berlin, would be able to present a mass of evi- 
 dence of the same character. For two years and a half these men struggled 
 with a censorship in transit that was ruthless in the extreme, which, in fact, 
 was not only applied to keep the American public in the mental strait- 
 jacket of Allied propaganda, but which, in addition, was to make this 
 all the easier by discouraging the maintenance of American newspaper 
 correspondents in Central Europe and the adjoining neutral states. 
 
 Great Britain and France had made up their minds that the American 
 public was to learn only that which promoted their interests in the United 
 States, and since the two governments sat at the cableheads they had 
 no difficulty doing that. To the credit of American publishers it must be 
 recorded that they bore cheerfully the great costs which brought them so 
 little, and that, considering the public sentiment they dealt with, it could 
 only be the appreciation of sound journalism which was their motive for 
 procuring at so great an expense so small a volume of news. 
 
 To the credit of the American correspondents in Berlin it must be 
 recorded that to the very last they observed that equanimity of mind which 
 is the chief pre-requisite of the man who would write "war" copy. I 
 know that some of these men were charged with being pro-German. I 
 also know that in Berlin they were charged with being pro-British. But 
 that is bound to be the lot of the individual inclined to state a case with 
 malice toward none. The fine and impartial work of the American cor- 
 respondents in Germany, during the Great War, will always be a worthy 
 monument to the best there is in journalism. 
 
 It seems futile to moralize on the attitude of Great Britain and her 
 allies in regard to the press rights of others. I have failed miserably in 
 this effort if I have not made clear the danger there is for a public and 
 state in having to subsist on the crumbs that fall from the table of the 
 rich man who controls the news avenues of the world. That control 
 enables him to mould the public opinion of the world into any shape 
 he desires. Of diplomacy that control is the most noxious form, of 
 morality it is the ethics of the robber baron of old— the mercy of the 
 highwayman. 
 
 On this occasion, indeed, the public of the United States fared well 
 in the course of action it came to accept ultimately. But it may not be 
 always that so pleasant a termination of war comes from embarking 
 
WHAT THE WILHELMSTRASSE THOUGHT OF IT 259 
 
 wildly upon a huge military adventure, as promoted by the control of the 
 world's news channels by a nation not forever committed to be the friend 
 of the United States. 
 
 It is not inconceivable that some day the American public may find 
 itself in the position of the German public in 1917 — not through any 
 fault of its own, but because of the political ineptness of the men in the 
 government, or through external conditions over which it has no control. 
 In that case the people of the United States would be as anxious to 
 present their case to the world as were the Germans. They would want 
 to have their case understood by a public in order that the diplomacy of 
 its government might be counteracted if that should seem necessary. 
 
 A free news channel would be the first requirement in this. How 
 to get that should interest the several nations and their governments much 
 more than is now the case. By bringing but one side of a case in court 
 justice becomes a travesty? Moreover, the universal freedom of the cables 
 and other means of electric transmission would greatly discourage the 
 international bully. 
 
 To secure that freedom looks very difficult, I know. But it is 
 hardly that. Nor is it necessary at all to touch the sovereignty and ter- 
 ritory of nations in order to bring it about. The remedy is the simplest 
 and will not in any way interfere with the rights of sovereign states. 
 It consists of a law that will put an absolute prohibition on the publication 
 of news, be it military or political, from a country the government of 
 which may have applied censorship in any form, be it supervision of the 
 news as written or interference with the telo-electric and postal means of 
 communication at the point of origin or in transit. 
 
 The moral elements involved are obvious enough. Governments at 
 war exercise their ruthlessness in censorship and associated endeavor in 
 what is known as "public interest," which, however, may be nothing more, 
 fundamentally examined, than the ambition of the ruling caste. The 
 purpose of censorship is to mislead the public of the neutral world, and, 
 if possible, to enlist sympathy and aid in quarters where none might be 
 found without this exercise of absolutism. That means, of course, that 
 only favorable news and comment are allowed to pass on, while the treat- 
 ment of one's own faults is not permitted. 
 
 The censorship of any country at war is never confined to purely 
 "military" matters. Feeding the mind of the world on one-sided accounts 
 of the events on the battlefield leads to doing the same in every other 
 department. Uniformly, it is the intention of censors to fool others, and 
 during the Great War they succeeded as never before. 
 
 But against that sort of imposition and insult, the nations not at 
 war have a right to defend themselves. They can best do that by letting 
 
260 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 it be known that censorship in any form, be it at the point of origin, or 
 in transit, will lead instanter to the exclusion of all news from the 
 offending country. The resulting one-sidedness of information would not 
 obtain long, for there is no nation, however powerful, that would risk 
 being thus damned in the eyes of the public, as the case of the Central 
 Powers during the Great War so well demonstrated, though in their case 
 it was control of the news channels by the British and French that brought 
 about this result, and for that reason it was not directly of their seeking. 
 
 Such a state of affairs would make statesmen and diplomatists a 
 little more careful than they have been recently. And the example of 
 Germany and her allies would aid them in improving themselves. It was 
 not force of arms which finally overcame that most marvelous human 
 institution of all time — the German army — ^but world public opinion, the 
 realization by the German people and their associates that they had not 
 a friend in this world. It was this thought that led to introspection and 
 the breaking-up of that marvelous morale, which endured the agonies of 
 the damned for four years, which was the antidote for the great losses 
 on the battlefields and famine and general deterioration at home. 
 
 The victory of the Associated Governments over the German army 
 and people was not a military one in any sense of the word. No dishonor 
 can attach to the outcome of a struggle conducted against such odds 
 as the Central Powers group of belligerents faced successfully to the 
 very last. The credit belongs to starvation and to world public opinion as 
 this was shaped by the British and French censorships. 
 
 To the American public that can not seem very flattering, but the 
 facts in the case permit of no other judgment. Nor has it yet been 
 established that the ultimate result of this censor-promoted regulation of 
 world affairs is to be beneficial in the main. We can at best but hope that 
 it will be this. 
 
 Under these circumstances it behooves the people of the United States 
 to see to it that it may not have itself to face in the future a situation 
 in which a thoroughly corrupt diplomacy may by the control of the 
 world's news channels be clothed in the robes of a saint, with haloes for 
 every Neo-Idealist and Megalo-Idealist who choses to wear one. True 
 democracy has for its foundation strict adherence to the laws of nature 
 as they manifest themselves in the relations of the one to the many — the 
 social unit to the state. In that scheme it can not be tolerated that 
 individuals stricken with megalomania foist off, upon the public, their 
 notions and substitute them for what would have been public opinion — 
 might have been public opinion were it based upon the unlimited sifting 
 of the evidence. 
 
 That applies to the Great War, of course — in this instance. In the 
 
WHAT THE WILHELMSTRASSE THOUGHT OF IT 261 
 
 next it may apply to a war in which the United States may be the 
 object of a general attack. The world has always had its bete noire — 
 black sheep. It will be a better world when it makes up its mind to 
 see for itself whether the black sheep is really as bad as others say it is. 
 
 Sometimes correction is carried too far, a fact which is recognized 
 by the legislator, who provides both a maximum and a minimum punish- 
 ment for an offense before the law. And diplomacy is the least desirable 
 of prosecutors, for the reason that it is the accomplice of those who would 
 sit in judgment. When the judge — public opinion — also passes under 
 the influence of the prosecution, the case of the accused, even if he be 
 a hardened criminal of the Prussian militarist type, is not likely to lead 
 to a judgment to which posterity will point with pride. 
 
 To the American public which has been flattered into believing that it 
 entered the Great War for purely moral considerations, these things should 
 have several meanings. In the first place the liberation of the news 
 channels is something that should be undertaken in behalf of national 
 security, and, secondly, the welfare of all other nations, that of the despots 
 at the cableheads included, demands that this be done, in order that 
 diplomacy may in the future have to recognize at least one master — 
 strongest of them all: 
 
 World public opinion. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE BERUN VIEWPOINT 
 
 THE War was to be a swift and crushing affair. It was to be 
 terrible. To that the German government, and its sanctum sanc- 
 torum of the general staff was absolutely committed. Mobilization 
 was to be carried out with the greatest speed, and was to be followed 
 immediately by impetuous attack in order that every initial advantage might 
 fall into the hands of the German army. In pursuance of that policy, 
 Belgium was to be used in the "Aufmarsch," or first advance to the 
 attack, as it was used, though with unexpected military results. The 
 Belgian forts and the army put up a resistance that discounted entirely 
 the military advantage gained by being able to press the French army from 
 the Northeast. Since the fortifications and the army of Belgium existed 
 long before the outbreak of the War, it was shown that the military experts 
 in Berlin were not as wise as they thought, though against this seeming 
 miscalculation must be charged the possibility, which was deemed great, 
 of the Belgian government permitting the invasion of its territory by the 
 Germans after the making of a protest. 
 
 It was held in Berlin that the War would be short. Those who looked 
 with anxiety at the "neck of the bottle" through which Germany would 
 have to gain access to the high seas and foreign markets during war saw 
 indeed a sinister power in a most advantageous position, but were told 
 and assured, as they were to the last by Prince Lichnowski, that Great 
 Britain would not come to the assistance of the Dual Alliance. Should 
 that become the case, however, the war would still be short enough to 
 make the British blockade ineffective. Indeed, there were those who 
 hoped that the young German navy would be able to put a bad crimp into 
 its great antagonist, the fleet of the British. As I have said before, the 
 German government and people had given their youthful naval establish- 
 ment the value of an adult, which it had as yet only on paper and in 
 the imagination of the German chauvinists. 
 
 But there was ample evidence to shake the idee Hxe of the German 
 general staff. When a mere has-been soldier of my class was able to 
 see that the wars of the future would not be necessarily shorter than those 
 of the past, the great experts in Berlin might have done the same, had 
 their minds been bent toward peace a little more. I hope it will not be 
 
 262 
 
THE BERLIN VIEWPOINT 263 
 
 thought presumptuous when I reproduce here, in part, an editorial I wrote 
 
 in 1912. 
 
 "The Italians hold but a small part of Tripoli and seem 
 loath to attempt aggression at points where the Turkish army 
 would not be hampered by considerations of base. Italy today 
 is no nearer her objective than she was when her fleet attacked 
 the city of Tripoli. The whole affair is a bad draw; a waiting 
 game which in the end will be decided not on the battlefield but 
 on the bourses of Europe. 
 
 "The pet theory of the modern military expert has thus come 
 to grief. When the Franco-Prussian War ended the conclusion 
 was reached that the wars which would follow this lightning 
 campaign would be as short and even shorter. It was claimed 
 that hostilities between modern armies would last as many days 
 as formerly they had lasted months. There would be a tremendous 
 impact, accompanied by a fearful loss of life and on the morrow 
 negotiations for peace would be inaugurated. For many years 
 nothing occurred which seriously assailed this theory. The few 
 minor affairs in Europe, two of them involving Turkey as a 
 belligerent, were short and decisive, and the improvements made 
 in artillery and small arms tended to aflfirm the conclusions based 
 upon them. However, the late Boer War upset calculations con- 
 siderably, and so, of course, did the Russo-Japanese War. Neither 
 of them was ended by virtue of greater efficacy of modern arma- 
 ment. The Boer War held on for over two years and came to a 
 close because one of the belligerents had been exhausted by de- 
 privation, and the Russo-Japanese campaign came to an end be- 
 cause both sides found it difficult to raise further loans for the 
 pursuit of hostilities. That the Turco-Italian fracas will end as 
 ingloriously can no longer be doubted. 
 
 "Why better artillery, magazine rifles and machine guns 
 should not have the tendency to shorten the duration of wars is 
 easily explained, indeed any modern book on tactics will make 
 this clear. As the efficiency of the arm is increased the movements 
 of the force against which it is to be directed are modified. 
 The greater range and quicker fire of the modern magazine rifle 
 has merely resulted in tactical changes calculated to counteract 
 both, and since this is a game at which two can play it would 
 be ridiculous to assert that from this quarter the shortening of 
 wars is to be expected. 
 
 "We have but to consider the percentage of casualties of 
 the modern battlefield to convince ourselves that from a strictly 
 military point of view nothing has transpired which would justify 
 the belief that wars today must be shorter than they were 
 formerly? The frightful appetite of modern armament for loans 
 is probably the only influence it has to hasten peace. That it 
 cannot do this even in all cases is a lesson which Turk and 
 Italian are now being taught." 
 
 Since this is precisely the negative of what the German general staff 
 
264 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 believed, further discussion of the fallacy which induced Emperor Wil- 
 liam to think or believe that his mobilization could not be stopped or the 
 direction of the started armies changed, seems unnecessary. 
 
 Of course, the German government did not take into proper account 
 the attitude of Italy as a member of the Triple Alliance. That Italy was 
 decidedly lukewarm toward her allies was known, of course, but too 
 much attention was yet paid to the utterance of Signor Crispi, Italian 
 premier at the time when the Triple Alliance was made. That able states- 
 man then said: 
 
 "Weakened in the East, with the freedom of the seas subject 
 
 to detrimental circumscription, restless internally, without friends, 
 
 and without sufficient armament, Italy is compelled to care for 
 
 its safety." 
 
 Diplomacy of the Palazzo Famese 
 
 Italy did that for the next thirty years under the aegis of the Triple 
 Alliance. But times will change, and other days will give to the best 
 of treaties a meaning they did not have when entered into. In M. Barrere 
 the French had an ambassador at Rome who was just the man to wear 
 down the antipathies that were held in common by the two peoples. Italy 
 was the only weak spot where the Triple Alliance could be attacked as 
 an agreement between the signatories, and Barrere was the man to do it. 
 For years and years the occupant of the Palazzo Farnese labored away, 
 often in the face of great obstacles, very often in the fetters of indiscret 
 conduct on the part of men at home who did not fully know the plans 
 of the government. Admiral Bienaime, for instance, who on one occasion 
 was sure that he could sink the Italian navy in exactly 40 minutes. 
 
 For a while it seemed that the old hatred of the Italian for Austria- 
 Hungary would be superceded by something better. In Vienna they 
 hoped that Italia irredenta would be forgotten, and such seemed to be 
 the case when in 1893, a Roman mob stormed the French embassy and 
 then marched to the Austro-Hungarian embassy and cheered the ambassa- 
 dor and his government wildly. Too much attention was paid to these things 
 by men in Berlin and Vienna, who in them saw hopes realized — hopes 
 they were pleased to identify as actuality. There were cautious men who 
 felt that the antics of a mob must not be taken for anything, and that 
 international affairs must move on the plane from which they spring — 
 tradition and community of interest. A mob which today could storm 
 the Palazzo Farnese might tomorrow storm the Palazzo Cafarelli, as 
 it did some twenty years later while under the influence of the silver- 
 tongued and hare-brained Pan-Latin buffoon d'Annunzio. 
 
 M. Barrere, mindful of the fact that nations are biological phenomena. 
 
DIPLOMACY OF THE PALAZZO FARNESE 265 
 
 labored on patiently and was later joined by the efficient Rennel Rodd, 
 the British ambassador at Rome. He knew that while Italians had not 
 forgotten the occupancy of their country by the French and the tender 
 mercies of the Zuaves, his cause had the advantage of having to answer 
 to no irredenta arguments. He had no objection to seeing the Adriatic 
 Sea a mare clausum in the control of the Italians. The interests of his 
 country were on the wide Mediterranean and in the further Levant, while 
 those of Austria-Hungary were primarily in the Adria. To the French 
 it could not matter much in the end who held the Epirus ; to the Austrians 
 it meant a great deal, so long as the "corridor to Salonika" occupied the 
 minds of men of the Count Aehrenthal type. 
 
 Thus it happened that the Italian government disagreed with the 
 contention of Vienna and Berlin, that the War between the Triple Entente 
 and the Central Powers was to be looked upon as a war of defense in 
 the case of the latter. Nor can it be said that the general aspect of its 
 inauguration substantiated that assertion. Serbia could not attack Austria- 
 Hungary and thus make operative the terms of the Triple Alliance Treaty 
 and did not do that, of course. 
 
 But, as the Austro-Hungarians could well claim, Serbia had the 
 assurance of Sazonoff that Russia would come to her assistance, in case 
 Serbian stiff-neckedness were followed by a declaration of war. And so 
 far as Serbia was concerned the Italian government would not have lifted 
 a little finger. Jugo-Slavism along the Adriatic was already a fact, and 
 in Rome it was felt that this megali eedea would some day seriously 
 interfere with the Italian plans along the Adria — mare nostra. 
 
 Indeed, for the time being it was a case of either seeing the South- 
 slavs supreme in the Balkans, or the Austro-Hungarians. Since neither 
 was loved too well it really made no difference how the terms of the 
 Triple Alliance were interpreted. But Italy has a good many open cities 
 along her very extensive coast line. To join the Central Powers in the 
 War meant that these would be open to attack on the part of a fleet, the 
 British and French, which would at the same time keep bottled up the 
 German fleet in the North Sea and Baltic and the Austrian and Italian 
 in the Adriatic. That possibility was not to be invited except in extremis, 
 and that was not yet. In Berlin and Vienna that was well understood and 
 sympathetically considered. 
 
 The French government had been obliged to throw a fairly large 
 army against the Italian border when the War came. Italy's attitude was 
 at least one frought with uncertainties. Germanophile and Austrophobe 
 held each his camp and the government had to enter upon a strict 
 neutrality. But something happened shortly afterward. The advance of the 
 Germans through Belgium and their great successes in August, 1914, 
 
266 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 as the result of which much French territory was occupied, and the French 
 government obliged to prefer Bordeaux to Paris as a temporary capital, 
 necessitated the transfer of the French troops along the Italian frontier 
 to the north, and in a little while Marshal Joffre was able to bring with 
 their aid to a standstill the advance of the Germans, after a series of 
 maneuvers and actions known as the Battle of the Marne. The something 
 referred to are the terms of the treaty made by Italy with the Entente 
 governments, on May 9th, 1915, fourteen days before Italy declared war 
 upon Austria-Hungary, one year, three months and nineteen days before 
 Italy declared war upon her other ally, Germany. I suppose nobody has 
 taken it for granted that the terms of this treaty were arrived at over 
 night. 
 
 Since the treaty is to be found in the appendix, I will not go into 
 it here any further than saying that the quid pro quo involved the annexa- 
 tion of much Austro-Hungarian territory, of districts in the Balkans 
 inhabited by Slavs, Albanians, Kutzo-Vlakhs, Macedonians, Greeks and 
 Turks, of some desirable territory in Asia Minor, to be taken from the 
 Turks, and other districts in Africa, involving annexations of large popu- 
 lations not Italian along with some that really were. 
 
 The Sacred Egotism of Diplomacy 
 
 Thus Italy entered the War against Austria-Hungary and entered 
 upon a state of armed neutrality against Germany. The frantic attempts 
 of the German government to prevent all this was unavailing. The 
 removal of Herr von Flotow, the German ambassador at Rome, who was 
 charged with being inefficient, when he was merely handicapped by the 
 situation, and the filling of his place by Prince von Buelow, the former 
 chancellor, was so much beating of the air. Nothing could help — not 
 even the fine social connections of the Princess Buelow, an Italian of 
 influence, formerly Maria di Bologna, principe di Camporeale. Against 
 d'Annunzio at home. Sir Edward Grey in London, Messrs. Barrere and 
 Rodd in Rome, Count Benckendorf , the Russian ambassador to the Court 
 of St. James, the Marquis de la Toretta, Italian ambassador at Petrograd, 
 and the Marquis Imperiali at London, Prince Buelow was as helpless as 
 a child, even in the face of the concessions which the Austro-Hungarian 
 government made in Italia irredenta. 
 
 The war came despite all this, and found the Isonzo border in the 
 poorest state of defense so far as the Austrians were concerned. General 
 Stoeger-Steiner, later Austro-Hungarian minister of war, managed to 
 drive the Italians from the Sveta Maria hills at Tolmino, and established 
 there the one position which Cadorna's forces were never able to take. The 
 
THE SACRED EGOTISM OF DIPLOMACY 267 
 
 fact that General Stoeger-Steiner had to do this with a battalion of 
 indifferent garrison troops stationed at the nearby Laibach, and a scant 
 company of rural gendarmes, shows to what extent the Central Powers 
 counted on the efficacy of the methods employed by Prince and Princess 
 von Buelow. The German special ambassador himself seems to have 
 overlooked that he was trying to hatch the hard boiled egg of d'Annunzio's 
 sacre egoismo, of which useless endeavor nothing could come, naturally. 
 
 After that the men of the Berlin Foreign Office turned their faces 
 in other directions. Turkey was already in the War and all promises in 
 that quarter had been made. To what extent these were committed to 
 paper, I do not know. But the Ottoman government would not have 
 fared badly by any means, especially if the Sultan-Caliph's fetwah for 
 a Holy War had produced better results than it did. At any rate Turkey- 
 oi-Europe was to be continued. So was Turkey in Southwest Asia. Egypt 
 was to be re-incorporated in the Ottoman empire. Arabia was to be made 
 to understand that thereafter it was really a province of Constantinople. 
 When Italy had entered the War all of Northern Africa was to be re- 
 covered, and if fortune permitted it, Morocco was to become a German 
 sphere. The Holy War call being effective the Caliphate was to be again 
 what it had been of Old. In the Caucasus region the boundary of the 
 Ottoman empire was to be extended at least to the crest of the central 
 chain. From Persia the British and Russians were to be driven, and with 
 India rising, as was hoped, the ruler of the Osmanli, an aged and kind- 
 hearted man, who for years had been the prisoner of his brother Abdul 
 Hamid, might have found himself over night in the possession of an 
 empire larger than that which Alexander the Great had in mind. 
 
 The Wilhelmstrasse made some promises also to the Bulgarians. One 
 of them was actually carried out at the expense of the Turks — the border 
 rectification along the Maritza. Bulgaria was to get, and for a time did 
 hold, the entire Dobrudja. Macedonia was to be joined to her, and in 
 Thessaly gain was to be made according to the conduct of the Greeks. 
 So long as King Constantin did his best to keep his country out of the 
 War these gains remained unknown quantities. Later they came to include 
 all territory east of the Struma and west of that river as far as the Vardar. 
 In addition the Bulgars intended to hold whatever they had occupied in 
 Old Serbia, though actual consent had been obtained from Berlin and 
 Vienna only for the districts of Vranya and Pirot and the Timok valley, 
 through which latter was to run a new railroad that was to make Berlin- 
 to-Bagdad so much more of a reality. Covetous eyes were cast by the 
 Bulgarians also upon small parts of eastern Albania. 
 
 At one time the German government had offered Rumania all of 
 Bessarabia and retention of the Dobrudja as far as the Bulgarian border 
 
268 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 of 1913. Austria-Hungary was willing to cede the part of the Bukowina 
 peopled by Rumanians. And that country, anyway, seemed to be the 
 only one which had no great appetite for new lands and more races. The 
 aspiration of the Macedonians and Bulgarians had made impossible now, 
 put into the background at least, for the time being, the ''corridor to 
 Salonika" physically, over which Count Aehrenthal was so enthusiastic. To 
 Italy had been offered the Austrian Italia irredenta, so far this seemed 
 reasonable, and one of the last things Emperor Francis Joseph did was 
 to give the Galicians autonomy, as a pledge to the Poles that he at least 
 meant well by them. 
 
 The Pan-Germans' Dream of Empire 
 
 What territories Germany herself wanted is hard to say. Its censors 
 saw to it that the "Kriegsziele" — war aims — were never discussed in the 
 press, and on this point her government officials never shed the weakest 
 ray of light. Not even her allies were taken into confidence, as was 
 natural, perhaps, seeing that the German army was the alpha and omega 
 of everything that had to be done before any of these "desires" could 
 be realized, as Sazonoff might put it. For all that the world did not 
 remain entirely ^ignorant on this point. Russia was to be separated from 
 her Baltic provinces, and at the expense of Great Britain and France 
 a large colonial empire was to be founded. To incorporate large foreign 
 populations found little echo among the German people, who seemed to 
 look upon the Poles and some of the Alsace-Lorrainers more as a punish- 
 ment than a blessing. Still that does not mean that the Alldeutschen 
 would not have insisted upon some such adventure. The appetite of some 
 of these chauvinists was a wonderful thing to behold. 
 
 A victory of the German army would have had other results, more- 
 over. Mittel-Europa would have become a fact. German hegemony would 
 have extended from Riga to Calais and from there on along the borders 
 of France, Switzerland, Italy, along the boundaries of the new Turkey 
 in Africa, the shores of the Red Sea, up the Persian Gulf, along the 
 eastern boundaries of Persia to the Caspian Sea, Caucasus, Black Sea, the 
 eastern border of the Greater Rumania and Poland, and the Baltic princi- 
 palities that were to be formed, as far as Riga, with Finland and Sweden, 
 and therefore, Norway included. The Dutch East Indies would then have 
 been territory under German protection, and if by any chance this Germania 
 mare — Greater Germany — wished to have coaling stations and naval bases 
 in the Caribbean, they could have been established with a Dutch label on 
 them. 
 
 Such was the tentative program of the Alldeutschen. To them as to 
 
THE PAN-GERMANS' DREAM OK EMPIRE 269 
 
 others, the world and its peoples seemed items, mere details, in dreams 
 as extravagant as Sazonoif ever had. But there were several flaws in 
 this great program, and sensible Germans were not unmindful of them. 
 In the first place the political constellation would change — was bound to 
 change in very little time. Austria-Hungary, especially its Hungarian and 
 vSlav populations might not be willing to pass under the orders of the 
 Prussian Feldwebel — sergeant, despite the fact that he never bites as 
 hard as he barks. Bulgaria, too, might have felt her oats, and of the 
 Turks no German could ever predict anything for the future. The Turk 
 is by nature Francophile and would have done what always has been done : 
 Deal with the man who gives the best value for the least money. Persia, 
 Rumania and Poland might have shown minds of their own, and the Dutch 
 and Scandinavians are not fire-proof by any means. That project would 
 only have amounted to much had the German politicians and statesmen 
 the qualities of the British in addition to their own, and since they did 
 not have these, we need not lose too much sleep over the Mittel-Europa 
 that was to be, but was not. 
 
 Mittel-Europa was, after all, but the dream of the Alldeutschen, despite 
 the fact that it became in the end the nightmare of the German race. The 
 peaceful penetration of the territories named was indeed the plan of a 
 larger number of Germans, but that differed in nowise from the practices 
 that had obtained in the past, with the benefits of being secure against 
 discrimination, and the profits of great prestige added. In other words, 
 the German manufacturer and trader wanted to enjoy the advantages 
 which in the past had been peculiarly the boon of the British. He had for 
 so long dealt in mass-production at small profit that the megali eedea of 
 the Alldeutschen tickled his fancy, and for at least a partial realization of 
 their desire he staked everything in the form of service at the front, war 
 loans, heavy taxation, and finally the starving of his wife and child. 
 
 In the Berlin Foreign Office these things were not discussed, of 
 course. In the main entrance to that diplomatic temple crouch two rather 
 puny sphynxes in stone. I passed them many times and will admit that 
 I found it difficult repressing a smile when I saw that warning to the 
 officials and denizens to observe silence and discretion. 
 
 That, I take it, was the purpose of putting the lion-women there. It 
 was a naive idea to me, bringing thus to the attention of the foreign callers 
 the "Byzantinism" that reigned upstairs. On the faces of the two creatures 
 in stone seemed to be written the statesman's and monarch's "forever." 
 
 Passing them, I could not help being forcibly reminded of the 
 holes in the rockfaces along the right bank of the Danube in the Pass of 
 Kazan, which once held the miles of bracket-bridge which connected the 
 great highway of Trajan in Dacia with its western and eastern stretches. 
 
270 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Of the great highway nothing is left but a tablet and the holes in which 
 the stout timbers rested. From the face of the rock the Danube has in two 
 thousand years washed away a scant two inches, as the holes — fine 
 nilometers of eternity — show. None was fonder of the "forever" than 
 the Roman, and today he is no more. The education of the politician and 
 diplomatist should include at least a trip through the somber pass and its 
 swirling, racing waters, and at each of the holes in the rockfaces, that hold 
 easily all that remains today of a Caesar's forever, a lecture should be 
 given them. 
 
 The little sphynxes in stone were somewhat symbolical of the mentality 
 of the German foreign office. The minds of the men who passed them 
 going to or coming from their work were hardly more plastic. These men 
 were intelligent enough, to be sure, were industrious and had a keen 
 perception of their duty, but few of them ever were able to see Germany 
 from without. Most of them, indeed, were hardly inclined to look at their 
 country from within. The caste system made that seem unnecessary in 
 the case of some ; it made it superfluous in that of others. If it was not 
 the privileges of the nobility, it was the annointment of the "akademische 
 Bildung" — academic training — which gave to each and every higher German 
 government official full warrant to slip, clamlike, into the shell of his own 
 self sufficiency and stay there. Men were valued by their conservatism only. 
 Those who showed tendencies toward enterprise were often, if not always, 
 thought dangerous. In the scheme eternal of the German empire everything 
 was to move along in the manner beloved by the grandfather, and nowhere 
 was worship of yesterday carried so far as in the government circles of 
 Prussia and Germany. The statesman's forever was the command there 
 for the erection of a huge and imposing state edifice, resting on sands of 
 time that were the more fluid the more solid they were thought. 
 
 German Realpolitik Against British Idealpolitik 
 
 German diplomacy was sadly handicapped by reason of the fact that 
 those who shaped and applied it were not versed in matters related to 
 public opinion. 
 
 The Germans have generally been credited with a strong penchant 
 for philosophy, and there is no doubt that they possess this. Inclined as 
 a people to be painstaking, analytical and thorough, it was natural that 
 they should have been masters in philosophy. But the shoemaker wears 
 often the most neglected of foot covering. On the same principle philosophy 
 was neglected by the German government. It vaunted its great "Real- 
 politik" — practical politics — but practiced a system that was excessively 
 ideal, in so far as it was much removed from the realities and actualities 
 
RBALPOLITIK AGAINST BRITISH IDBALPOLITIK 271 
 
 of life, quite in contrast to the politics of its principal antagonist during 
 the Great War, the British government, which professed to be committed 
 to "Idealpolitik" — ideal politics — but applied them only practically. 
 
 The German government would first announce what it proposed doing, 
 and give the world a chance to exercise its imagination on the terrible 
 things that were to come, and when public opinion had been duly inflamed, 
 it would proceed calmly with whatever the innovation was and thus add 
 fuel to the flame. The British government would do the thing first and 
 explain its great necessity in the "public interest" of the world afterward, 
 and thus demonstrate easily that it was obliged to do these things — not for 
 itself but for others. Its cruisers would seize neutral vessels on the high 
 seas, carry them into British ports, detain them, take their cargo, seize 
 their mail, arrest their passengers, establish zones of blockade and later on 
 the British government would leisurely explain that according to "The 
 Declaration of London Order in Council No. 2" or whatever the number 
 might be, these things were just because in the "public interest" at home 
 and abroad they were necessary. 
 
 Public opinion of the world remained a closed chapter to German 
 diplomacy for the reason that there was in Germany no public opinion on 
 which her statesmen and officials could practice, of which they would 
 see the result, in fact. To be sure, there was an "offentliche Meinung." 
 But that public opinion was looked down upon as something inferior and 
 unimportant. In a state in which one individual questioned the right to 
 independent thought of the other, in which the class above denied that the 
 class below had at all a right to think, in which the government thought 
 the masses really unfit to govern themselves, and in which the masses 
 tacitly conceded all this by paying but the scantest attention to the adminis- 
 • tration of the public domain, that could not be otherwise. The press 
 itself promoted this, fostering all sorts of separatisms. 
 
 German public opinion became in that manner a very impotent thing. 
 It was never heard by the government, except in protest against another 
 advance in taxation. The question of what was being done with the money 
 hardly ever was broached, and if it was actually put, the answer was 
 accepted with all readiness and without further inspection. Most of the 
 taxes went for armament on land and sea. So long as the armament 
 resulted all was well. What the ultimate end would be, bothered none but 
 the socialists and the few who were enterprising enough to assume that 
 certain causes will have a certain effect. 
 
 The character of any instance of public opinion is not so easily 
 established. Just what is public opinion is a question that may lead to 
 many replies, especially when with it is coupled the thing known as govern- 
 ment opinion, which is never quite the same thing. Governments being 
 
in THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 organisms within another organism — society — and often parasitic ones at 
 that, they have, of course, an opinion of their own. The natural influence 
 of the leader upon those whom he leads, and his control of a great deal 
 of information, makes the opinions of a government usually of greater 
 value than the views of the masses. When the latter are not inclined to 
 take an intelligent interest in their own affairs, or are prevented from 
 doing so, government opinion becomes public opinion. But at best public 
 opinion anywhere, even if it be of high quality, is the refined product of 
 the process of neutralizing the opinions of the masses with those of the 
 government and vice versa. The process being reciprocal in such cases, 
 it follows that the best public opinion is obtained when this operation of 
 the law of selection and elimination is least opposed, which was far from 
 being the case in Germany. Even during the War ''ofifentliche Meinung" 
 was never sufficiently respected by the men in power to be heeded. 
 The government class thought no other but its own opinion of import- 
 ance, and the result was that its international policy and diplomacy 
 were of the same brand and, therefore, entirely unequipped to deal with 
 public opinion abroad — in the Anglo-Saxon countries, especially. I do not 
 mean to imply that public opinion in the British empire and the United 
 States is the last word in that department of human affairs, but there 
 is no doubt that with German public opinion it compared as dross to 
 silver. 
 
 German diplomacy was woefully handicapped, therefore. Its agents 
 disdained public opinion abroad, because they had been permitted and 
 taught even, to disdain it at home. They found that other governments 
 did more or less what their own did, but were unable to see that the 
 thing immediately before them was government opinion unrefined and as 
 yet not modified by public opinion. In this manner it was brought about 
 that the German government looked upon the world in general through the 
 glasses of its own failings, and the result was to be catastrophal. 
 
 German Diplomacy as Seen from Within 
 
 Germans who had been abroad understood all this well enough and 
 were mindful of the dangers that came from it. Many of them made 
 attempts to bring the thing to the attention of the government, but in this 
 they failed miserably. In the first place every German who selected to live 
 away from the Fatherland was regarded little better than a traitor, whose 
 counsel could be of no worth, and, secondly, there was nothing superior 
 to anything that was German, especially government. Paternalism in its 
 unloveliest form, starting with the "Dienstbuch" of the servant, in which 
 the authorities attested the quality of service given, to the itemizing of 
 
GERMAN DIPLOMACY AS SEEN FROM WITHIN 273 
 
 ambassadors' expense accounts, was the main ingredient in this fine Chinese 
 system of social regulation. 
 
 Small wonder that the German diplomatist, already hampered by the 
 fact that Entente superiority of strength and prestige was against him, made 
 so poor a job of it. The chefs de mission were often men who made use of 
 their plenary powers, who were able to exercise initiative governed by 
 discretion, but when they were not handicapped by the poorest quality 
 of assistance by their attaches, they were hamstrung by their Foreign 
 Office, in which, for instance, it was possible to have an imperial chancellor 
 of the Bethmann-Hollweg type, a promoted police official whom the Great 
 War took by surprise and left bewildered to such an extent that he was 
 able to leave the British government the political advantage which the 
 use of the words : Scrap of paper, resulted in. 
 
 It is not to the interest of a nation when its highest official selects 
 to wear the boots of a great predecessor. Prince Bismarck, for instance. 
 There is in the history of the Great War no more pathetic figure than 
 that of Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, given, a la Bismarck, to wearing 
 a military uniform — a major's, tall and bulky and small-headed; brought 
 up in the Prussian state service, bureaucrat, arriviste, servant of the 
 emperor and slave of a catastrophe, head of a civil government cowed 
 by military decrees and master of a misled people — an egotist hanging 
 on to an office for which he was the least fitted. 
 
 The European War was not very old before the German government 
 was engaged in controversy with the government of the United States 
 in regard to questions of International Law arising from the blockade 
 decrees and practices of the Entente governments, the purpose of which 
 was to place the Central Powers under the disadvantages of siege, to wit: 
 To make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to carry on their military 
 operations by cutting off, so far as possible, supplies having a military value. 
 International Law had already delimited Absolute Contraband and Con- 
 ditional Contraband, so far as this was feasible in face of a variety of 
 diverging national interests that had to be considered. In the Declaration 
 of London, 1909, a few other faint lines of demarkation had been drawn. 
 These, however, together with policies formerly supported by the British 
 government itself, had been totally obliterated by the several "Declaration of 
 London Orders in Council," upon which the fate of all shipping, enemy 
 and neutral alike, now depended. In other words, Great Britain had 
 substituted the Orders of her government's Privy Council, in the guise 
 of "Declaration of London Order in Council" for what had been Inter- 
 national Law. 
 
 Before proceeding, it may be well to remind the reader of what 
 "International Law" is. In the first place there was no "International" 
 
274 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 law, or, to put it in other words, International Law was not a law in the 
 sense in which municipal law is this. The laws passed by a community 
 in behalf of social regulation are known, in contradistinction to Inter- 
 national Law, as Municipal Law, and the former is in all cases subject 
 to the latter in matters concerning the sovereignty of a state, or any 
 community having the right to make municipal laws without regard of 
 any sort for the laws made by a superior body or government. Thus, the 
 laws made by a colonial government, or by a vassal state, do not effect 
 international relations except in so far as they are sanctioned and assumed 
 by the governmental body which has charge of the international affairs 
 of the country. Municipal law, then, has a sanctioning authority, that 
 is to say, it has been accepted by the executive branch of a government, 
 and usually has been called into being under the supervision of such a 
 body, as a rule of conduct for individuals and groups, the non-observance 
 of which will be punished. In fact the ability to apply such municipal law 
 is regarded by most governments as prima facie evidence that another 
 government, after a revolution, for instance, is recognizable as de facto, 
 or the government in fact, as well as of pretension — de jure. 
 
 International Law a Mere Rule of G>nduct 
 
 International Law differs from municipal law in so far as in the 
 past it has been found impossible to devise a means by which it could be 
 applied with enforcement, by penal means, as the alternative to non-com- 
 pliance. Moreover, International Law, is in principle not obligatory. It 
 is at best but a doctrine adhered to by nations large and small, which, 
 regardless of prominence, are admitted as equals under the operation of 
 the principle known as sovereignty. 
 
 Non-observance of the terms of International Law may indeed bring 
 the offender to the bar of world public opinion, it may also make the 
 offender liable to punitive measures employed by other governments, but 
 at best the judicial adjudication of infractions of International Law may 
 be attempted only before a body of reviewers, under an agreement of 
 arbritation, to which the name of court cannot be given for the reason that 
 the body in question lacks the peculiar and inherent powers of a court — 
 it can not punish. The findings of the body may indeed assume a lenient 
 punitive character, but that does not mean that they will be accepted in that 
 light by the culprit government. In fact that government could not accept 
 them without surrendering, temporarily at least, a most essential quality 
 of sovereignty — the inviolability of its integrity, be this of a material or 
 a metaphysical aspect. The whole category of often so-called questions of 
 honor belongs into this department of sovereignty. 
 
INTERNATIONAL LAW A RULE OF CONDUCT 275 
 
 International Law, then, is not law at all. It is an agreement among 
 civilized and independent states, almost entirely founded on precedents, to 
 govern conduct in times of peace and of war so that it will harmonize with, 
 what in the absence of a better term, may be styled, international morality. 
 
 When this agreement is given a more concrete form in a contract 
 between two nations or groups of them, it is given the character of treaty. 
 So long as a treaty is such that it does not openly violate the rights of 
 another state or group, and International Law, therefore, its terms are 
 generally published by the contracting governments. Treaties that are not 
 in this manner given publicity are known as secret treaties, and their terms 
 are generally withheld from common knowledge, because openly or im- 
 pliedly they threaten another nation or a group of other nations. 
 
 International Law, in addition to being no mandate of a law-giving 
 body, may, as is shown here, be violated in contemplation by such govern- 
 ments as may band together for that purpose, and, who, before that, are 
 fairly certain that their overt act will bring upon them no consequences 
 they need fear. The conspiracy would not be apparent until its result was 
 there — a war of aggression, and after that even it would not be so very 
 simple to fix the blame so long as the diplomacy of the offending govern- 
 ments was able to mislead the neutral public. Then, too, with a state of 
 war prevailing, the offending government would still enjoy every advantage 
 of International Law, and could meet all contentions of the neutrals with 
 the plea that the "public interest" of its state did not permit just then 
 a stricter adherence to rules of conduct promotive of the "public interest" 
 of neutrals. So elastic a thing is International "Law." 
 
 This is the attitude which was assumed by Great Britain in regard 
 to its blockade of the German ports and the condition that arose therefrom 
 to neutral ships and cargoes. Had there been a sanctioning authority for 
 International Law, the Declaration of London, 1909, would not have been 
 superceded by the "Declaration of London Orders in Council." The sanc- 
 tioning authority, if disposed to be just, would have informed the British 
 government that International Law, as interpreted by the Declaration of 
 Paris, 1856, would have to be observed. But since it is not easy to make 
 accountable and punish a powerful and sovereign state. Great Britain went 
 her way and disregarded consistently every protest made by the neutral 
 governments. 
 
 The Declaration of London was based on the Declaration of Paris in 
 regard to Maritime Law. Of the latter I will give here Articles 2, 3 and 4, 
 which deal with this subject. 
 
 (2) "The neutral flag covers enemy's goods with the exception of 
 contraband of war. 
 
276 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 (3) "Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are 
 not liable to capture under the enemy's flag. 
 
 (4) "Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective, that is 
 to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the 
 coasts of the enemy." 
 
 We find, according to the American White Papers, that the govern- 
 ment of the United States, in a communication to the British government, 
 dated March 30th, 1915, replying specifically to the Order in Privy Council, 
 of March 15th, still adhered stoutly to the terms of the Declaration of Paris. 
 In that note the Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, said : 
 
 "Moreover the rules of the Declaration of Paris of 1856 — 
 among them that free ships make free goods — will hardly at this 
 day be disputed by the signatories of that solemn agreement." 
 
 The signatories are : Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, 
 Sardinia (the former government in Italy) and Turkey. 
 
 The Earlier View of the American Government 
 
 On October 21st, of the same year, the government of the United 
 States was still of the same opinion, it seems. In a note to the British 
 government, bearing that date, and "relating to restrictions upon American 
 commerce by certain measures adopted by the British government during 
 the present war," the Secretary of State, Mr. Lansing, says: 
 
 "The Declaration of Paris in 1856, which has been universally 
 recognized as correctly stating the rule of international law as 
 to blockade, expressly declares that 'blockades in order to be 
 binding, must be effective; that is to say, maintained by force 
 sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy." 
 The effectiveness of a blockade is manifestly a question of fact. 
 It is common knowledge that the German coasts are open to trade 
 with the Scandinavian countries and that German naval vessels 
 cruise both in the North Sea and in the Baltic and seize and 
 bring into German ports neutral vessels bound for Scandinavian 
 and Danish ports. Furthermore, from the recent placing of cotton 
 on the British list of contraband of war, it appears that the 
 British government have themselves been forced to the conclusion 
 that the blockade is ineffective to prevent shipments of cotton 
 from reaching their enemies, or else that they are doubtful as to 
 the legality of the form of blockade which they have sought to 
 maintain." 
 
 Further on the note says : 
 
 "I believe it has been conclusively shown that the methods 
 sought to be employed by Great Britain to obtain and use evidence 
 of enemy destination of cargoes bound for neutral ports and to 
 impose a contraband character upon such cargoes are without 
 
EARLIER VIEW OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT 277 
 
 justification; that the blockade, upon which such methods are 
 partly founded, is ineffective, illegal, and indefensible; that the 
 judicial procedure offered as a means of reparation for an inter- 
 national injury is inherently defective for the purpose, and that 
 in many cases jurisdiction is asserted in violation of the law of 
 nations. The United States, therefore, can not submit to the 
 curtailment of its neutral rights by these measures, which are 
 admittedly retaliatory, and, therefore, illegal, in conception and 
 nature, and intended to punish the enemies of Great Britain for 
 alleged illegalities on their part. The United States might not be 
 in a position to object to them if its interests and the interests 
 of all neutrals were unaffected by them, but, being affected, it 
 can not with complacence suffer further subordination of its rights 
 and interests to the plea that the exceptional geographic position 
 of the enemies of Great Britain require or justify oppressive and 
 illegal practices." 
 
 The note from which the above citations are taken had the nature of 
 a general protest against the infraction of International Law by Great 
 Britain, the general character of which is made clear in a communication 
 transmitted to the United States government by the British ambassador 
 at Washington, on March 1st, 1915, the burden of which is that: 
 
 "The British and French governments will therefore hold 
 themselves free to detain and take into port ships carrying goods 
 of presumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin. It is not 
 intended to confiscate such vessels or cargoes unless they would 
 otherwise be liable to condemnation." 
 
 What such "presuming" meant was clear to the government of the 
 United States when it expressed itself in the note of October 21st, 1915. 
 An appendix to the note gave the names of 273 vessels and the nature of 
 their cargoes, together with the date of arrival and departure from the 
 port of Kirkwall, incident to the change of course forced upon the com- 
 manders of the neutral ships by the British Government. The period 
 covered was a short one: 'March 11th to June 17th, 1915. Before that 
 155 neutral vessels had been taken to British ports, of which in 40 cases 
 the cargo had to be discharged to be held for prize court proceedings. In 
 the case of seizures antedating the British communication of March 1st, 
 1915, the British government had employed a favorite method of its own: 
 It had gone ahead and done what it thought best in the public interest. 
 The explanation could wait. 
 
 By the end of August of that year incomplete data showed that the 
 British government had obliged 511 neutral vessels to put into British 
 ports against their will. Ships no longer sailed to or from their neutral 
 ports, but made the British ports of Kirkwall and Falmouth, and others, 
 ports of obligatory call, as ordered by the Orders in Privy Council. This 
 under the penalty, that if caught on the high seas by the British cruisers, 
 
278 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 without having their papers viseed in one of the British ports of search, 
 they would lay themselves open to : From long detention in a British port to 
 confiscation of ship and cargo. International Law, specifically the Declara- 
 tion of Paris, 1856, had been superceded in this respect entirely by the 
 "Declaration of London Orders in Council," to which France, Russia and 
 later, Italy, gave their willing assent. 
 
 The World from Now On "Privy.&)un8elled" 
 
 I will give here one of the Orders in its entirety, so that it may do 
 service as an illustration of the acts to which the note of the United 
 States government, cited above, protested in such vigorous language : 
 
 ORDER IN COUNCIL 
 
 At the Court at Buckingham Palace, the 20th day of Octo- 
 ber, 1915. 
 
 Present, the King's Most Excellent Majesty in Council. 
 
 Whereas by the Declaration of London Order in Council 
 No. 2, 1914, His Majesty was pleased to declare that, during the 
 present hostilities, the provisions of the said Declaration of Lon- 
 don should, subject to certain exceptions and modifications therein 
 specified, be adopted and put in force by His Majesty's Govern- 
 ment; and 
 
 Whereas, by Article 57 of the said Declaration, it is provided 
 that a neutral or enemy character of a vessel is determined by 
 the flag which she is entitled to fly; and 
 
 Whereas it is no longer expedient to adopt the said Article: 
 
 Now, therefore, His Majesty, by and with the advice of His 
 Privy Council, is pleased to order, and it is hereby ordered, that 
 from and after this date Article 57 of the Declaration of London 
 shall cease to be adopted and put in force. 
 
 In lieu of the said Article, British Prize Courts shall apply 
 the rules and principles formerly observed in such Courts. 
 
 This Order may be cited as "The Declaration of London 
 Order in Council, 1915." 
 
 And the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, 
 the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and each of His 
 Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, the President of the 
 Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of 
 Justice, all other Judges of His Majesty's Prize Courts, and all 
 Governors, Officers, and Authorities whom it may concern, are 
 to give the necessary directions herein as to them may respectively 
 appertain. J. C. Le^duE. 
 
 But British "public interest" was to demand a more sweeping measure 
 before long. Ati Order in Council, dated March 30th, 1916, orders as 
 follows : 
 
 "The provisions of the Declaration of London Chrder in 
 
THE WORLD NOW "PRIVY-COUNSELLED'^ 279 
 
 Council No. 2, 1914, shall not be deemed to limit or to have limited 
 in any way the right of His Majesty, in accordance with the law 
 of nations, to capture goods upon the grounds that they were 
 conditional contraband, nor to affect or to have affected the 
 liability of conditional contraband to capture, whether the carriage 
 of the goods to their destination be direct or entail transhipment 
 or a subsequent transport by land. 
 
 "The provisions of Article 1 (ii) and (iii) of the said 
 Order in Council shall apply to Absolute Contraband as well as to 
 Conditional Contraband. 
 
 "From and after the date of the Order, Article 19 of the 
 Declaration of London shall cease to be adopted or put in force. 
 Neither a vessel nor her cargo shall be immune from capture for 
 breach of blockade upon the sole grounds that she is at the moment 
 on her way to a nonblockaded port." 
 
 The heavy hand of Great Britain was now upon all trade on the high 
 seas, to and from neutral ports, or through waters that had been declared 
 within the zone of the British blockade. Thereafter, all Dutch, Danish, 
 Swedish and most of the Norwegian shipping had to put into a British 
 port of search, since meeting with an Allied cruiser without evidence that 
 the ship had been in such a port of search for an inspection of papers, 
 cargo, mail, passengers and crew meant going through the British Prize 
 Courts, with condemnation and seizure in prospect. The previous protests 
 of the government of the United States had been so much beating of the 
 air, and the small neutrals were helpless. There was none but British and 
 Allied freedom of the seas, and the very scant sphere that had been left 
 to neutral shipping was a little later wiped out completely. 
 
 Under the auspices of the United States government, Great Britain 
 went in the public interest so far as to deny neutrals the right to import 
 anything from any neutral port without consent secured from the belliger- 
 ents. Maritime Law of any sort was no more. The Declaration of London 
 had been forgotten, and the government of the United States, hitherto 
 the stoutest champion of the Declaration of Paris, complacently forgot 
 that there ever had been such a thing. 
 
 The fact is that neutral public interests had made way for Allied 
 national necessities and emergencies of war, and that these were met by 
 the Entente in a manner agreeable to the strong — themselves. In harmony 
 with that, neutral shipping was detained in United States ports for weeks 
 and months at a time, and, ultimately, this went so far as to lead to the 
 commandeering of every Dutch vessel in Allied and United States ports 
 under the invoking of a measure that was thought obsolete but which 
 was resuscitated when it was convenient. There was a precedent for this, 
 of course. But it was a precedent made in the same camp, by the British 
 
280 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 government, when it discarded Article 57 of the Declaration of London and 
 substituted therefore the rules and principles of prize court procedure 
 applied by Great Britain before that — during the Civil War, to mention 
 one of the occasions. 
 
 On May 10th, 1916, the government of the United States did indeed 
 voice a feeble protest against the Order in Council of March 30th. The 
 note dealt with specific instances. It is of enough interest to have its last 
 two paragraphs quoted : 
 
 "I observe from your note that you have been instructed by 
 Sir Edward Grey to inform me that *'the immunity from capture 
 at present enjoyed by the American Transatlantic Company's ves- 
 sels can only be continued provided that an assurance is given 
 by the company that the vessels will not trade with Scandinavia 
 or Holland." 
 
 "Under the circumstances, before giving further consideration 
 to the matters referred to in your note I would like to be informed 
 whether, as would appear from your note, it is the intention of 
 the British Government to repudiate their promise respecting the 
 treatment of these vessels, which in good faith has been relied on 
 by this government and by the owners of these vessels. 
 
 Robert Lansing." 
 
 Here I may add that at this time there were already active in the 
 port of New York, under the very eyes of United States government 
 officials, agents of the British government, who inspected cargoes and the 
 passports of passengers, and were in position to refuse transport to either 
 at will. No master of a vessel could be induced to take aboard a shipment 
 or passenger upon which a British agent had frowned. Meanwhile the 
 British blacklist was in operation, despite the fact that on J^nnary 25th, 
 1916, the United States government had expressed itself as follows: 
 
 "As it is an opinion generally held in this countrv, in which 
 this government shares, that the act has been framed without a 
 proper regard for the right of persons domiciled in the United 
 States, whether they be American citizens or subjects of countries 
 at war with Great Britain, to carry on trade with persons in 
 belligerent countries, and that the exercise of this right may be 
 subject to denial or abridgment in the course of the enforcement 
 of the act, the Government of the United States is constrained 
 to express to His Majesty's Government the grave apprehensions 
 which are entertained on this subject by this government, bv the 
 Congress, and by traders domiciled in the United States. It is, 
 therefore, necessary ... to contest the legality and right- 
 fulness of imposing restrictions upon the freedom of American 
 trade in this manner." 
 
 The answer to all this by Germany was the employing of submarines 
 in an ineflFective blockade that was as much contrary to the terms and 
 
THE WORLD NOW "PRIVY-COUNSELLED" 281 
 
 spirit of the Declaration of Paris, 1856, as was the British, The measure 
 of the Germans had for all that proper support in the principle of reprisal 
 fully recognized by International Law. 
 
 By and large the attitude of the government of the United States 
 liad been that the British blockade was not effective, because it was not 
 in fact complete, since German merchant vessels could with immunity 
 trade with Norway and Sweden and secure via these countries supplies 
 from the United States and other countries. German men-of-war were 
 still able to take prizes in the North Sea. The British blockade was indeed 
 a paper affair, which was rendered effective only, and in violation of 
 International Law, when the British government placed under duress and 
 coercion all neutral shipping. At first this was accomplished by the con- 
 ditions under which bunker coal could be obtained in British ports, and 
 later, the timidity of the neutrals having sufficiently encouraged Great 
 Britain, this was done frankly by Orders in Privy Council in the manner 
 here described. To the interests of the neutrals and to International 
 law no attention was paid by the Entente bent upon winning the war. 
 
 Diplomacy and the Question of Food 
 
 The first reply of the German government to the British blockade 
 rules was the announcement that it had established a zone of blockade in 
 the waters of Great Britain, chosing the term "war zone," for the reason 
 that with the means to be employed, the submarine, any other term could 
 not well serve the purpose. The British announcement was dated November 
 4th, 1914, and took effect on the following day. The German announcement 
 came on February 4th, 1915, and become operative on the 18th, the longer 
 notice — 14 days — ^being due to the fact that it was desired in Berlin 
 to give sufficient warning to such neutral vessels as were bound for 
 British ports with cargoes already loaded, and to warn others not to take 
 such cargoes. 
 
 Germany had done this in reprisal of the efforts of the Entente govern- 
 ments to starve her population, military and civil, into submission. 
 
 In a note dated December 26th, 1914, the United States government 
 had drawn the attention of the British government to the illegality of the 
 treatment accorded by the latter to cargoes of contraband and conditional 
 contraband character. Touching upon foodstuffs, the note said: 
 
 "That a consignment *to order' of articles listed as condi- 
 tional contraband and shipped to a neutral port raises a legal 
 presumption of enemy destination appears to be directly contrary 
 to the doctrines previously held by Great Britain and thus stated 
 by Lord Salisbury during the South African War : 
 
 " ^Foodstuffs, though having a hostile destination, can be 
 
282 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 considered as contraband of war only if they are for the enemy's 
 forces ; it is not sufficient that they are capable of being so used, 
 it must be shown that this was in fact their destination at the time 
 of their seizure/ " 
 
 To this note the British government replied : 
 
 "We are confronted with the growing danger that neutral 
 countries contiguous to the enemy will become on a scale hitherto 
 unprecedented a base of supplies for the armed forces of our 
 enemies and for materials for manufacturing armament. The 
 trade figures of imports show how strong this tendency is, but 
 we have no complaint to make of the governments of those 
 countries, which so far as we are aware have not departed from 
 the proper rules of neutrality." 
 
 We seem to deal here with a contradiction in the same sentence. If 
 the neutral government had not departed from the proper rules of neutrality, 
 as they indeed had not, then where was the danger of which Sir Edward 
 Grey speaks? That danger lay, of course, in the fact that adherence to 
 International Law, on the part of the Entente governments, would have 
 resulted in the importation of food for the civil population of the Central 
 States. 
 
 Speaking of the notice of the German government, in regard to the 
 war zone in British waters, the American government, on February 10th, 
 1915, expressed itself to the effect: 
 
 "The Government of the United States views those possi- 
 bilities with such grave concern that it feels it to be its privilege, 
 and indeed its duty in the circumstances, to request the Imperial 
 German Government to consider before action is taken the criti- 
 cal situation in respect of the relations of this country and Ger- 
 many which might arise were the German naval forces, in carrying 
 out the policy foreshadowed in the Admiralty's proclamation, 
 to destroy any merchant vessel of the United States or cause the 
 death of American citizens." 
 
 On the same day a note to the British government pointed out, that: 
 
 "Assuming the foregoing reports are true, the Government 
 of the United States, reserving for future consideration the legality 
 and propriety of the deceptive use of the flag of a neutral power 
 in any case for the purpose of avoiding capture, desires very 
 respectfully to point out to His Britannic Majesty's Government 
 the serious consequences which may result to American vessels 
 and American citizens if this practice is continued." 
 
 The note was due to the practice, already indulged in by British 
 merchant ships, of sailing under neutral flags, and a distinction was drawn 
 between the "occasional use of the flag of a neutral or an enemy under 
 the stress of immediate pursuit" and the "explicit sanction by a belligerent 
 government for its merchant ships generally to fly the flag of a neutral 
 
DIPLOMACY AND THE QUESTION OE EOOD 283 
 
 power within certain portions of the high seas which are presumed to be 
 frequented with hostile warships." 
 
 The government of the United States was then still mindful of an 
 example in neutrality which Thomas Jefferson had given, in a note to the 
 British government, September 7th, 1793, in which he said in part: 
 
 "It is not enough for a nation to say we and our friends will 
 buy your produce. We have a right to answer that it suits us 
 better to sell to their enemies as well as their friends. Our ships 
 do not go to France to return empty; they go to exchange the 
 surplus of our produce which we can spare for the surplusses of 
 other kinds which they can spare and we want; which they can 
 furnish on better terms, and more to our mind, than Great Britain 
 and her friends. ... ; 
 
 **Were we to withhold from her (France) supplies of provi- 
 sions, we should in like manner be bound to withhold them from 
 her enemies also, and thus shut to ourselves all the ports of 
 Europe where corn is in demand or make ourselves parties in the 
 war. This is a dilemma which Great Britain has no right to force 
 upon us, and for which no pretext can be found in any part of 
 our conduct. She may, indeed, feel the desire of starving an 
 enemy nation, but she can have no right of doing it at our loss 
 nor of making us the instruments of it." 
 
 To reach an agreement that would be fair to all concerned the govern- 
 ment of the United States proposed, on February 20th, the following : 
 
 "Germany and Great Britain to agree: 
 
 "That neither will plant any floating mines, whether upon the 
 high seas or in territorial waters ; that neither will plant upon the 
 high seas anchored mines except within cannon range of harbors 
 for defensive purposes only. ... 
 
 "That neither will use submarines to attack merchant vessels 
 of any nationality except to enforce the right of visit and search. 
 
 "That each will require their respective merchant vessels 
 not to use neutral flags for the purpose of disguise or russe de 
 guerre. 
 
 "Germany to agree: 
 
 "That all importations of food or foodstuffs from the United 
 States (and from such other neutral countries as may ask) into 
 Germany shall be consigned to agencies to be designated by the 
 United States government; that these American agencies shall 
 have entire charge and control without interference on the part 
 of the German government . . . and shall distribute them 
 solely ... to noncombatants only; and that such food 
 and foodstuffs will not be requisitioned by the German govern- 
 ment for . . . the use of the armed forces of Germany. 
 
 "Great Britain to agree: 
 
 "That food and foodstuffs will not be placed on the absolute 
 contraband list and that shipments of such commodities will not 
 be interfered with or detained by British authorities if consigned 
 
284 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 to agencies designated by the United States Government in Ger- 
 many for the . . . distribution solely to the noncombatant 
 population." 
 
 To this proposal the German government agreed readily enough. It 
 accepted the conditions in regard to floating and anchored mines, and 
 announced itself as ready to limit the use of submarines as suggested. 
 The conditions governing the importation of food and foodstuffs were 
 also accepted, it being reserved, however, to import also raw material needed 
 for the noncombatant population, and forage, in accordance with the 
 provisions concerning Conditional Contraband of the Declaration of Lon- 
 don. In its note the German government hoped that an agreement would 
 be reached and that a way would be found for excluding the "shipping 
 of munitions of war from neutral countries on ships of any nationality." 
 
 The replies of the French and British government were almost similar 
 and equally negative. Nothing came of the plan, on that account. 
 
 The British note said: 
 
 "Her (Germany's) opponents are therefore driven to frame 
 retaliatory measures in order in their turn to prevent commodities 
 of any kind reaching or leaving Germany. These measures will, 
 however, be enforced by the British and French governments 
 without risk to neutral ships or to neutral or noncombatant lives 
 and in strict observance of the dictates of humanity." 
 
 What these eloquent words came to mean before very long has already 
 been seen. The fact is that at the very moment they were uttered they 
 were a hollow phrase. Such is diplomacy. 
 
 Fulcrum of a Diplomatic See-Saw 
 
 The American note of February 20th should have convinced the 
 Berlin government that the government of the United States had done 
 everything within reason to bring about the state of affairs which Germany 
 desired. The proposal made by Mr. Bryan was a wholehearted one, and had 
 Great Britain and France willed it the European War would have assumed 
 a totally different complexion then and there. Knowing what the temper 
 in Germany was at that time, I must remain somewhat skeptical toward 
 the possibility that Mr. Bryan's kind offices would have led to a quick 
 peace, as he hoped. The militarist party was still strong in the saddle. 
 
 On the other hand, it is probable that the acceptance by the Triple 
 Entente of an agreement of the sort outlined by him would have taken 
 much of the wind out of the sails of the chauvinists. The government was 
 vehement in its assertions that the war was for the Germans one of 
 defense, as indeed it was become, and by February of 1915 the first 
 
FULCRUM OF A DIPLOMATIC SEE-SAW 285 
 
 excitement of the War, and the flush of victory, had cooled down very 
 much. It is but reasonable to assume that a readiness on the part 
 of the Entente governments, to restore that which they had taken away, 
 the import in sufficient quantities of food, would have been accepted by 
 the German public as an indication that the men in Berlin had drawn 
 the long bow in their protestations as to the causes and nature of the 
 conflict. On the other hand, the German militarists might have disregarded 
 such an offer of peace entirely. 
 
 To engage now in vain speculations as to what might have been is a 
 vain effort, of course. As the government of the United States had to 
 point out, again and again, it could not shape its negotiations with either 
 belligerent camps by conditions set by the other. The fact that the Berlin 
 government — now on the defense in all matters diplomatic — was by far 
 the worst offender in that respect shows how little these men really knew 
 of statecraft and diplomacy. That aspect of their notes was but another 
 expression of the fact that they could not see anything beyond their own 
 frontiers. Such tactics could only tend to aggravate a situation, and the 
 veriest novice in statecraft should have known that there was nothing 
 to be gained by promising the government of the United States something 
 which was contingent upon a certain sort of conduct on the part of the 
 Entente. Berlin simply did not know when to say yes or no. In routine 
 that 'Metternichian indulgence may have its place, but when great issues 
 are to be decided plain transaction should take the place of "diplomacy." 
 
 Meanwhile, it was not borne in mind that the United States govern- 
 ment had problems of its own to meet. So far as these were due to the 
 arrogant conduct of the Entente government they might have, soon or 
 late, led to exactly the situation which Germany desired, to wit : strained 
 relations. The most foolish of tactical mistakes which the German govern- 
 ment made was to press its own case, by acts of a precarious nature, at 
 a time when it should have given the people of the United States every 
 opportunity to look upon the Entente governments as the only violators 
 of International Law, the Declaration of Paris and that of London. 
 
 The men in Berlin, being totally ignorant in the management of public 
 opinion and very disdainful of it, were never able to see that the government 
 of the United States was still hampered by the impression which the 
 violation of Belgium's neutrality had made upon the British propaganda- fed 
 American people. The leaders in Germany looked upon such acts as an 
 attendant evil of war, and, the proof of duplicity, by the Belgian govern- 
 ment, having now been obtained, they allowed themselves to totally for- 
 get that a grave wrong had been done, feeling, meanwhile, it seems, that 
 the finding of the documents had totally absolved them. In that they 
 had against them the "first" impression, always a dangerous thing, and 
 
286 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 while the authenticity of the papers could not be doubted, they were 
 of little avail now, especially with a people so subject to impulsiveness 
 and snap-judgment as that of the United States. 
 
 There is no country in which explaining has ever helped so little 
 as in the United States. The facts were these : The German army had 
 invaded Blegium without provocation by the Belgians, so far as then 
 known. That such provocation was proven afterward could not affect 
 the situation very much. Indeed, one can not see why it should have 
 done this. The Belgian government might yet have repented at the eleventh 
 hour, and our conception of equity and fairness is against the hanging of 
 a man for a crime he may have merely contemplated. In that direction 
 the German government, had it known anything of public opinion in the 
 United States at all, would have looked for no alleviation of its condition. 
 
 What Machiavel Would Have Done 
 
 To be sure many things might have been different at that moment. 
 With a Machiavel in the chair of the German chancellor, Sir Edward 
 Goschen would have left with the assurance that the German government 
 knew positively that Belgium intended to cast off her neutrality herself. 
 And the world public would have heard of it. Such a diplomatist would 
 have said that the German government had indubitable proof that there was 
 an anti-German understanding between Belgium and the Triple Entente. 
 If the documents had then been found in Brussels there would have been 
 a real case, and many expressions of surprise and disgust. If they had 
 not been found, assuming that the case had stopped short of forgery, 
 there would have been many who would have believed the assertion of the 
 Machiavel anyway. As it was the German government and people were 
 laboring under the punishment which Bethmann-HoUweg's reference to a 
 "scrap of paper" had so justly earned. Whatever may be said of the 
 defunct governmental machine in Berlin, one thing must remain to its 
 credit: That it was frank enough to avow that the invasion of Belgium 
 was a deliberate act. It will always be doubted that some other statesmen 
 of the time would have done the same thing. There would have been a 
 regulation sentence, in the shape of a "valid'^ pretext first, and then 
 Machiavel would have gone to work to prove his case, which is easy 
 enough when one has the necessary diplomatic talent. 
 
 The fervor of the militaristic Alldeutschen was still unbounded, when 
 the German government acquiesced into the proposal of Mr. Bryan, at 
 which by the way, some of the chauvinists did not mind sticking up their 
 noses. Though the trench outlook in Flanders and France, where men were 
 being led into death like sheep every day, was not good, the prospects in 
 
WHAT MACHIAVEL WOULD HAVE DONE 287 
 
 the Carpathians not very promising; though Russia was getting second 
 breath, and with things in Turkey very uncertain, this plague of a people 
 was still howling vociferously. The press being also in a jingo mood, the 
 refusal of the Entente to consider the proposal of the United States was 
 received with much indifference. The War would be over soon ! 
 
 Toward the end of April, 1915, it was already clear to many in Central 
 Europe that Italy would before long have to be counted as an active enemy 
 instead of an unreliable ally. Despite that, the German government and 
 the Admiralty found the courage to send out a submarine to waylay the 
 "Lusitania." The fact that complaints had already been made then that this 
 Leviathan was in the habit of sailing under the United States flag while in 
 dangerous waters, proves at least that she had been watched. The inference 
 may be made that for a time the German submarine commanders had 
 orders not to attack the vessel. If it could be asserted in all good faith 
 by submarine commanders that the ship was flying, the Stars and Stripes, 
 she could have been sunk.* It is hard to see in fact how she could have 
 escaped. 
 
 At the end of April, then, somebody decided that the "Lusitania" was 
 to be made a horrible example. Whether it was Great- Admiral von.Tirpitz 
 who issued the order, or whether it was some other person does not 
 matter now. At any rate it is certain that no one individual decided to 
 shoulder all responsibility himself. On the other hand some credence may 
 be given the claims that it was not intended to sink the vessel. Be that as 
 it may, the attack on the ship was in itself the most foolish of political 
 moves. So much shipping was still going in and out of British ports that the 
 tonnage of the "Lusitania" was a veritable trifle. But even if her cargo 
 had been the most important and largest which left an American port at 
 that time, the act of attacking the ship was still unjustifiable from the 
 political standpoint. Those responsible for this reprehensible undertaking 
 must have lacked all foresight. The German government had been warned 
 that the loss of American ships and lives would lead to unpleasant situations, 
 and it was but reasonable to assume that this ship of all others would have 
 a large American passenger list, and that many of these would be persons 
 of some prominence. 
 
 It is hard to understand how any government, however determined to 
 win a war, could have placed at so high -a value its own proclamation 
 concerning the establishment of a War Zone on paper, which had already 
 been protested by a government traditionally committed to "free ships, 
 free goods." It is hard to understand, moreover, how any government 
 
 * Flying the Stars and Stripes, however, was not the reason why the "I<usitania" was sunk. 
 She was torpedoed by the Germans for the reason set forth by Lord Mersey, chairman of the 
 Court of Enquiry into the sinking of the "lyusitania.." in the words: 
 
 "The 5,000 cases of ammunition on board were fifty yards away from where the torpedo 
 struck the ship." — (Glasgow Evening Citizen, July 17th, 1915.) 
 
288 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 could have risked so much at a single throw. That government had 
 also to consider that the means of its blockade, the submarine, had no 
 standing whatsoever in the rules of "visit and search," this for the very 
 simple reason that in tactical respects it was not the equal of the smallest 
 tramp, the bow of which could cut the hull of the "U" boat in two. 
 
 One must wonder how the men in Berlin had pictured to themselves 
 the situation in the United States. The only feasible explanation, in the 
 absence of information on the subject is, that the German government and 
 Admiralty took it for granted that the tone of some of the notes sent to 
 the Entente governments by the Department of State seemed really sharper 
 than it was.* Men who are anxious to believe a thing will believe it, 
 despite every discouragement. In that frame of mind adverse circumstantial 
 evidence is underrated and the favorable thing in hand examined miscro- 
 scopically, with the result that it is magnified a thousand times. 
 
 One of the results of the sinking of the "Lusitania" was the arming 
 of the British merchant marine. That this would have been done anyway 
 before very long is certain. But Great Britain might not have fotmd it 
 so easy to make her arguments weighty had it not been that the "Lusitania" 
 case recommended a lenient attitude on the part of the government of the 
 United States. The contentions on this and that side, in regard to caliber 
 of guns, and their location aboard, are hardly worth attention. Great 
 Britain was arming her ships for their protection, and there was no 
 assurance worthy of the name that a gun barbetted aft could not be 
 shifted forward once the ship was out of a neutral port. At any rate 
 from that moment onward the situation of 'submarine versus supramarine 
 warfare' on merchant shipping was and remained critical. On September 
 1st, 1915, the German government instructed Count Bernstorflf to say: 
 "Liners will not be sunk by our submarines without warning 
 
 and without safety of the lives of noncombatants, provided that 
 
 the liners do not try to escape or offer resistance." 
 
 A Diplomatic Splitting of Hairs 
 
 Meanwhile the sinking of the "Arabic" had demonstrated what the 
 new international political danger, submarine against armed merchant ves- 
 sel, would lead to, and the many attempts on the part of the German 
 government to induce the government of the United States to view 
 analytically this latest departure in sea law in war did not lead to anything. 
 The Berlin government offered to arbitrate the "Arabic" case, but decided 
 to "pay an indemnity for the American lives which to its deep regret have 
 been lost on the 'Arabic' " 
 
 • An English editor of prominence has since then explained on a lecture platform in New 
 York City that the British government knew that the tone of the notes of the U. S. Department 
 of State was artificial. 
 
A DIPLOMATIC SPLITTING OF HAIRS 289 
 
 The case of the "William P. Frye," that of the "Hesperian" and the 
 conduct of Dr. Dumba, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, had meanwhile 
 aggravated the general situation in the United States. Notwithstanding 
 this, the government of the United States sent, on October 21st, to the 
 British government the strongest note it was ever to get, that in which 
 Great Britain's substitution of her own volition for International Law was 
 characterized as "ineffective, illegal and indefensible." 
 
 The German government continued its diplomatic fight against the 
 arming of merchant men. The fact that it had the edicts in that regard 
 of International Law on its side helped no longer, of course. The world 
 had long passed out of the reign of international morality, and if the 
 Germans could not see this it was due largely to the fact that they saw 
 only the faults of their enemies and their enemies' sympathizers, but not 
 their own. 
 
 Some months before that, Mr. Bryan had in a letter to William J. 
 Stone, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, defined 
 very aptly what the position of the United States government was. A 
 part of the press had accused the government of having shown partiality 
 to the Entente governments as against the Central Powers. Mr. Bryan was 
 able to refute all of the charges that had been made, and in conclusion 
 said: 
 
 "If any American citizens, partisans of Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary, feel that this administration is acting in a way injurious 
 to the cause of these countries, this feeling results from the fact 
 that on the high seas the German and Austro-Hungarian naval 
 power is thus far inferior to the British. It is the business of a 
 belligerent operating on the high seas, not the duty of a neutral, 
 to prevent contraband from reaching the enemy. Those in this 
 country who sympathize with Germany and Austria-Hungary 
 appear to asume that some obligation rests upon this government 
 in the performance of its neutral duty to prevent all trade in con- 
 traband, and thus to equalize the difference due to the relative 
 naval strength of the belligerents. No such obligation exists; 
 it would be an unneutral act, an act of partiality on the part of this 
 Government to adopt such a policy if the Executive had the 
 power to do so. . . . The markets of this country are open 
 upon equal terms to all the world, to every nation, belligerent or 
 neutral." 
 
 Such indeed was the case. The attitude of Mr. Bryan was far from 
 that of Mr. Jefferson, whose view on neutrality was more a moral than 
 a technical matter, which, even in his times did not find universal approval 
 by any means — might have found none at all had it not been that the 
 Revolution and the participation therein of some Frenchmen had been 
 too recent to make any other attitude popular. The political situation of 
 
290 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 then made the United States government toward France a friendly neutral, 
 while the state of affairs during the European War caused that same 
 government to follow a neutrality that was legally correct, but otherwise 
 pro-British. 
 
 There was nothing to be done but to pursue the best course, after 
 the government of the United States had failed to take a firm stand when 
 the British government set aside, at leisure and with design, every rule 
 of Maritime Law as pronounced by International Law, and defined by 
 the Declarations of Paris and London. Maritime Law was in flux, and 
 the Orders in Privy Council placed upon its poor and flayed verbiage 
 whatever interpretation seemed desirable, setting aside whole Articles and 
 interpolating whatever it pleased, so that the Declaration of London was 
 indeed become a series of **The Declaration of London Orders in Council." 
 To have permitted this, in face of its staunch support in the past 
 of the "free ships make free goods" principle, is of no credit to the 
 administration of Mr. Wilson. This sin of omission encouraged banditry 
 on the high sea, and piracy under it. It also gave the affairs of the world — 
 mankind — a turn from which it will need many a decade to recover. That 
 the German government, composed of men who had grown up in the 
 atmosphere of bureaucracism, interpreted this failure as a proof of weakness 
 on the one hand, and an unfriendly act, on the other, should not surprise us. 
 
 The Handicaps of German Diplomacy 
 
 We may well doubt that any other set of diplomatists and officials 
 would have seen the situation in a different light.* As a matter of fact 
 the diplomatic conduct of the British government was no better, but it 
 was backed by the fact that the British public had in the governing and 
 possessing classes and in the government of the United States many staunch 
 supporters, while the German public had in the country only some un- 
 organized and dollar-chasing race-fellows of far less importance than they 
 themselves could believe. The German in the United States had indeed 
 contributed his share to the upbuilding of the country, but so had the 
 racial relatives of the other belligerents. In a majority-run country, there- 
 fore, they could but expect the inevitable — the ultima ratio that is the 
 lot of the weaker. 
 
 For the German government it may be said that it never fooled itself 
 on the position of the Germans in the United States. But that was an 
 odd sort of enlightenment. It did not spring from an intimate knowledge 
 of conditions across the Atlantic, but from the disdain in which it held 
 all those who had sought respite from the burdens of militarism at home. 
 
 * See "The Pitfalls of Diplomacy" in Appendix. 
 
THE HANDICAPS OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY 291 
 
 I do not wish to appear facetious when I say that this was the only 
 subject on which the men in BerHn were well informed. How rightly 
 they were informed is another matter, of course. If that wonderful 
 espionage service of the Germans really existed, it must have been an 
 institution in which employment was dependent upon one's negative quali- 
 fications. 
 
 In considering these things we must not overlook that in whatever 
 German diplomacy attempted it was handicapped also from without. The 
 prestige of Great Britain, the power of Russia, and the privileged position 
 of France, were all matters against which the German government and 
 its diplomatic agents found it hard to argue effectively. The Triple 
 Entente had enlisted the sympathies of Europe, and to a large extent the 
 world, and Germany, as leading member of a decrepit alliance, as a state 
 that was making itself felt as competitor, the head of whose government 
 was a man given to impetuousness and oratorical indiscretions — a nation 
 whose chauvinists saw their ideals realizable only by the application of 
 force — was hardly fitted to upset this scheme. 
 
 Already the control of the world's news channels gave Great Britain 
 in times of peace the opportunity and means to disseminate of German 
 "news" only the worst, and when it was clear to the British that there was 
 to be no understanding on the Two Power Standard in naval armament they 
 inaugurated a campaign of anti-German propaganda the like of which had 
 not been seen before. The "German Peril" became a world slogan. The 
 childish babbling of the emperor, whose forensic effusions dealt hardly 
 ever with anything but the "shining armor and the trusty sword," the 
 wild incantations of the Alldeutschen to their new Wotan in the Walhalla 
 of Pan-Germanism, the native idiosyncracies of the German people — all 
 these were things which the British press and its agencies peddled 
 throughout the world. This world came to know the German as a rather 
 stupid, beefy caricature addicted to beer and a pipe, when it did not see him 
 in Anglo-Saxon literature as a crafty though ill-mannered, intriguant, 
 buying forever the secrets of other governments. 
 
 Against that sort of military preparedness the best diplomacy is 
 impotent. While the government of a country may remain polite enough 
 in such campaigns, and while the populace at first may find such extrav- 
 agances no more than amusing, both come to assimilate them ultimately 
 in the manner the promoter of them intended. For a new twist of public 
 opinion such things are the foundation. Anything that will create and 
 foster the impression that one people is the superior of the other will find 
 a warm reception with the masses whose vanity is appealed to. That later 
 on this vanity, like all others, will have to be paid for, occurs to but a few. 
 
 An able government would have paid more attention to such things. 
 
292 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 But the German government was not an able one. In that lies the answer. 
 Its diplomatic representatives were quite satisfied when their own social 
 standing" was well launched, and since on the whole they were rather 
 "charming fellows" that matter was quickly attended to. The German 
 chef de mission, though usually an accomplished linguist, did what most 
 other men of his class do : He read only that part of the newspaper which 
 the clerk or secretary in charge of that department, digested into a sort of 
 literary review every day. The opinions of diplomatic secretaries are 
 none too highly valued by their chiefs, and thus it came about that the 
 German diplomatic agents had each his little Chinese wall, exact replica 
 of the great mental circumvallation in which labored the government at 
 Berlin. 
 
 That interesting state of affairs brought on the following conditions. 
 Before the Great War was over, Germany and her puny allies, had against 
 them the entire civilized world, some small states, between the upper and 
 nether grindstones, duly excepted. A picture of that is given in the table 
 below : 
 
 Population National Popul. Number 
 
 at Home Area Wealth in Colonies Area of Military 
 
 (millions) (sq. miles) (billions) (millions) (sq. miles) Effectives 
 
 British Empire.. 46.2 121,331 $69.2 399.6 13,505,481 5,500,000 
 
 Russian Empire. 145.8 1,996,743 65.5 31.5 6,650,914 9,700,000 
 
 French Empire.. 39.8 207,509 58.2 48.0 4,836,032 5,400,000 
 
 Serbia 4.7 34,000 4.5 510,000 
 
 Belgium 7.6 11,373 8.2 15.0 900,000 500,000* 
 
 Japan 53.8 147,655 42.5 20.5 110,611 5,800,OOOt 
 
 Italy 36.4 110,623 22.5 1.9 596,000 3,800,000 
 
 Portugal 6.2 35,490 6.5 9.6 832,267 540,000$ 
 
 Rumania 7.8 54,000 5.7 680,000 
 
 United States... 103.0 3,616,484 190.5 10.3 125,344 5,500,000§ 
 
 Totals ....451.3 6,345,208 473.3 536.4 27,566,649 37,930,000 
 
 German Empire. 66.9 208,780 83.2 14.1 1,027,820 7,400,000 
 
 Austria-Hungary 52.0 260,034 55.5 5,400,000 
 
 Ottoman Empire 21.8 710,224 11.3 1,740,000 
 
 Bulgaria 5.1 43,000 3.9 600,000 
 
 Totals ....li^5.8 1,222,038 153.9 14.1 1,027,820 15,140,000 
 
 • Partial mobilization. 
 
 t Inactive. 
 
 t Partial participation. 
 
 § Number mobilized at end of war. 
 
THE HANDICAPS OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY 293 
 
 Against such odds the German army and the forces allied with it 
 could not prevail, of course. For all that the Great War lasted over four 
 years, and cost 7,254,000 lives, and in direct war expenditures the great 
 sum of $200,000,000,000, while the indirect losses to all involved have 
 been estimated at $250,000,000,000, or about $450,000,000,000 in all— a 
 rather costly enterprise this breaking up of the world's greatest military 
 machine. The large sum of $29,722 had been spent in the maintenance 
 of each Central powers group soldier, and in opposing him, to the ac- 
 companiment of the economic losses included in this sum, before The Great 
 War was a thing of the past. In other words, it cost mankind that much 
 to render innocuous each man in the Centralist camp. 
 
 Since the combined national wealth of the states at war was only 
 $627.2 billions at the outbreak of the European War, not so much was 
 left when finally the Germans agreed to an armistice. 
 
 The display of military and economic strength and efficiency of the 
 Germans was truly phenomenal. To almost the very last moment they were 
 successful against forces that were their superior numerically as two to 
 one, and which for their munitions and supplies had the world for their 
 arsenal and base. Had it not been for the British blockade, Germany would 
 have won the War. 
 
 The "Declaration of London Orders in Council," sophistical as they 
 will seem to the historian, and the future writers on International Law, 
 had, from the point of view of British public interest, their absolute 
 justification in the fact that without them the German army could not have 
 been beaten. To lay all Central Europe in a state of siege was the direct 
 purpose of the Orders in Privy Council, and in this they were eflFective, 
 because the neutral governments had at first not the inclination, later not 
 the courage, and still later not the incentive to insist that, according to the 
 genuine Declaration of London, and the agreements on Maritime Law 
 in Paris, 1856, "free ships make free goods," which was already the 
 notion held by Thomas Jefferson, though he expressed it in terms of 
 neutrality as a moral conception. The London Orders in Privy Council 
 were further the agent that brought the United States into the War. 
 
 In Diplomacy Might Is Right 
 
 There are those who have criticized adversely such statesmen as have 
 in the past defended the proposition that might is right. The British 
 government has never admitted that its policy of expansion was in any 
 manner tainted by that. Yet one has but to inquire into the acquisition 
 of the units of the vast British domain to see that conquest and annexation 
 were the principal factors in its growth. As late back as 1902 the British 
 
294 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 government snuffed out the lives of two small republics in South Africa, 
 and did that in the most ruthless manner. The concentration camps of 
 General Weyler, in Cuba, were hardly less the graveyard of a people's 
 spirit than were the iniquitous institutions of the same name, which the 
 late Lord Kitchener, with astounding cynicism, conducted on the South 
 African veld, until 26,000 Boer women and children had been done to 
 death, by absence of sanitation and lack of proper food. 
 
 Filth and famine have ever been a potent ally of the British, and the 
 German government knew that. Against these means of war it felt 
 called upon to employ its steel sharks of the deep, and had it been possible 
 to do that without endangering the interests of the neutrals, the world 
 might not have been so full of indignation as it was. 
 
 As between two law breakers the neutral public could well afford to 
 remain the spectator, as Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway 
 and Spain did to the very last, because they knew that the protestations 
 made in London were not one whit better than those that came from 
 Berlin. There is nothing like knowing one's neighbors by the washing 
 they hang in the backyard, and in the capitals of the neutrals mentioned 
 the British brand was as well known as the German, the sole reason why 
 Mr. Wilson's appeal to the neutrals of Europe in the spring of 1917 found 
 not the least response, and why American propaganda among them remained 
 ineffective. 
 
 Spain knew Great Britain too well to do anything in her favor that 
 was not immediately a question of export balance, and with the French 
 government the Spaniard dealt in the experience gained in Morocco. Those 
 who believe that the Roman Catholic Church had much to do with Spain's 
 attitude must be counted among those who know much because they have 
 learned so little. It was Gibraltar and the loss of a vast colonial empire 
 which made the Spanish averse to anything promotive of Anglo-Saxon 
 interests. 
 
 In the Wilhelmstrasse these things were not overlooked, of course. 
 But they were given a false value. As said before, adverse circumstantial 
 evidence was not properly weighed, and favorable testimony was magnified. 
 When a government becomes the victim of the mania of making the wish 
 father of the thought, and its own necessities the mother, the state is not 
 far from debacle, as events in Germany have demonstrated. 
 
 The German government was expert enough in military matters to 
 know that its army was by far the best of any, it was efficient enough to 
 feel that the country's economic resources could be stretched, but it was 
 not perspicacious enough to so shape its conduct that there would come 
 within view of army and population the end of the War. Had it been 
 competent in that respect it would have done what it did not do — 
 
IN DIPLOMACY MIGHT IS RIGHT 295 
 
 exercise every effort to keep the United States out of the Great War, in 
 which case the Central Powers would have been victorious. That this 
 was difficult must be admitted, but it still seemed possible at one time.* 
 
 Not to resume unlimited warfare on merchant ships with the submarine 
 was for Germany to sacrifice a great military advantage. Of that there 
 can be no doubt. On the other hand, the political factors were such that 
 they could not be overlooked. Behind those political factors stood the 
 power of the United States. But the Berlin skeptics who doubted that 
 this would be turned against them, who in the unprepared ness of the 
 United States saw a handicap great enough to prevent active participation 
 by American forces in the Great War, had seemingly forgotten that 
 there was ever such a thing as the Civil War. That these men had indeed 
 some foundation for their optimism must not be denied. In the presidential 
 campaign of 1916 "He kept us out of the War" had been the general 
 slogan of one faction, but it was overlooked that the other faction, which 
 did not have this cry, was able for a few hours to claim the election, so 
 close was the result of the ballots cast for and against participation in the 
 Great War, for such was the true import of the campaign. 
 
 But with the immediate aspect and nature of a situation no competent 
 government will busy itself too much. It is the ultimate of a crisis that 
 is kept in view by the statesman, for which reason he may be described as 
 a politician who today can do that which twenty years hence he need not 
 regret. Of such men German statecraft and diplomacy had none. Hence 
 the steps which led to the accession in the camp of the Allies of the moral, 
 material and military resources of the United States. 
 
 * Though testimony given by Mr. Wilson himself would seem to deny this, it may be 
 doubted that even he could have carried so completely off its feet the Congress of the United 
 States as to make war with Germany absolutely inevitable. — Note made on January 20. 1920. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE VIENNA VIEWPOINT 
 
 WHILE the unreasonable terms of the Austro-Hungarian ulti- 
 matum to Serbia were directly responsible for the crisis that led 
 to the European War it was not the intention of the Austro- 
 Hungarian government to bring on the catastrophe which ensued. By and 
 large that government had for a long time been in the habit of doing as 
 it pleased in the Balkans, and, for a time, in what later became Rumania. 
 That habit had been acquired in dealing with the Turks. 
 
 The emperors of Serbia had been able to maintain the rivers Danube 
 and Sava as their border towards Austria and Hungary, the first of which 
 was then Germany proper, but their successors were not able to do this. 
 Already in 1640 the Roman Catholic Church in Albania passed under the 
 protection of the Austrian emperors, and it was largely due to the efforts 
 of the Austrian-Hungarian government that Albania, in 1913, was made 
 an independent principality under Prince William of Wied. 
 
 Serbia had passed completely under the Turks in 1459, when the 
 capital, then Semendria, was taken. This accomplished, the Turks invaded 
 the remainder of Hungary, beat back the Austrian forces and laid siege 
 to Vienna. From then on, war by the Austrians and their allies 
 against the Turks continued to be the order of the day. In 1717, Prince 
 Eugene, the famous, succeeded in taking Belgrade, and from 1718 to 
 1739 northern parts of Serbia were Austrian territory. During the first 
 decade of the Nineteenth Century the Serbs finally gained their independ- 
 ence, though as yet that was to be enjoyed only under Russian and 
 Turkish protection. In 1882 Serbia was again a kingdom and under the 
 Obrenovitch kings the traditional relations of friendship between Austria- 
 Hungary and Serbia were carefully fostered by both. So far did these 
 relations go that King Milan, and his successor, Alexander I, were allowed 
 a sort of pin-money by the Austrians, King Peter, of the Karageorgievitch 
 family, deciding later to take such an allowance from the Russian crown. 
 That, however, was not entirely his own choice. The Austro-Hungarian 
 government was under the impression that Alexander and Draga had been 
 murdered at the instigation of the Karageorgievitches, and decided to turn 
 its back upon them, which it did, having in this the hearty approval of 
 the British government, which was the last to recognize King Peter. 
 
 2% 
 
THE VIENNA VIEWPOINT 297 
 
 Since I have already mentioned in a previous chapter that Austria 
 did for a time occupy itself with the affairs of Rumania, I need not go into 
 that subject again here. The fact is that Austria-Hungary had had a free 
 hand in the Balkans, though now and then Russian influence was in the 
 lead in the eastern parts of the peninsula. The Turks had been driven back, 
 and the Austrian armies did much to get them into motion southward and 
 eastward. 
 
 This was recognized by the Congress of Berlin, 1878, giving Austria- 
 Hungary a protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina, which in 1908, 
 resulted in complete annexation, in the manner already gone into. Count 
 Aehrenthal, then the Austrian minister of the exterior, was a rather 
 ambitious man, and labored besides under the misfortune of being some- 
 what of a Serbophobe, a circumstance which opened anew the door in the 
 Balkans to Russian intrigue with a view of getting to Constantinople 
 over land, the "Concert of Europe" discountenancing still advance across 
 the Black Sea. His policies were continued by Count Berchtold, who suc- 
 ceeded him in office, the man who was the accomplice in the sharp deal 
 with Isvolski. It was for this reason that Count Berchtold was the only 
 one who objected strenuously to the further strengthening of Serbia, which 
 Sazonoff engineered by the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest, at the expense 
 of Bulgaria. 
 
 Diplomacy Versus National Fact 
 
 While the tariff discriminations against Serbia were intended to bene- 
 fit especially the Hungarian landowners and farmers, the measure was also 
 designed to discipline the Serbs, and above all their government. King 
 Peter continued to remain in bad odor in Vienna and Budapest. That he 
 was a regicide could not be charged officially, but the Austrian government 
 proceeded from that basis in all its dealings with the Serbian government. 
 
 This, then, explains the peremptory tone of the ultimatum. The men 
 in Vienna would not concede that they were dealing with an equal and 
 a sovereign state. 
 
 But there was also another reason. The Serbs had hoped that, soon 
 or late, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which before the rule of the Turk had 
 been a part of the Serbian empire, would be joined to their country. The 
 annexation of the two districts, with some two millions of Croats, by 
 Austria-Hungary, in 1908, put an end to this hope. Its place was taken 
 by the movement which today is known as Jugo-Slav. 
 
 By means of propaganda, industriously supported by the Russian govern- 
 ment, the attempt was made to make the South-Slavs of the Dual Monarchy 
 eager for incorporation into Serbia. That at least was the objective, though, 
 naturally, the thing was given a different name. The fact is that religion 
 
298 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 divided the two families of Slavs. The Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina 
 are Roman Catholics for the greater part, and Mohammedans, while the 
 Serbs subscribe to the Greek Orthodox faith. In a country like the Balkan 
 that means more than it does in other parts. Intellectually these people 
 are in the days of the Reformation, and since religion is to most of them 
 the principal impetus to mental life, violent prejudices founded on it are 
 the inevitable result. 
 
 It is quite a common trick for governments to impose economic burdens 
 and handicaps upon a state or people they later wish to annex. The Austrian 
 government, though in this case Hungarians were the principal offenders- 
 Count Berchtold, despite his German name, being one of them — ^had realized 
 that Jugo-Slavism was one of the facts of the day. 
 
 The empire had the reputation that it was on the verge of disintegration 
 and it was feared that it could hardly stand trouble from that quarter. It 
 was later proven that, as in the case of Mark Twain, the obituary notices 
 were a little premature, but that could not deter the Austrian government 
 from doing what seemed logical under the circumstances. 
 
 The total annexation of Serbia was not intended, so far as I have 
 been able to ascertain, but a humbling into the dust of the Jugo- Slavism- 
 promoting government in Belgrade was the program. The terms of the 
 ultimatum were chosen with that in view. That they were not accepted 
 was due entirely to Sazonoff. Before the Serbian government decided upon 
 the course it was to take, the Russian minister of foreign affairs was con- 
 sulted, and when he declared his readiness to stand by Serbia in any event 
 compliance with the ultimatum was refused. 
 
 The Austrian government, as has been noted, waited a full three weeks 
 after the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand before it made up 
 its mind to send the ultimatum, and with the ink still wet on it. Count 
 Berchtold decided to continue his summering. It is entirely out of the 
 question that he did not consult the German government in the matter, 
 and that Berlin had given him a free hand, as Bethmann-Hollweg has 
 attested.* It is quite possible that to the German chancellor, who had been 
 brought up in the police service of Prussia, and who had a police official's 
 mind, withal, the terms of the ultimatum seemed perfectly proper. The 
 case of Serbia seemed to call for punishment and full power was given 
 given the authority concerned. 
 
 That the murder of the heir apparent and his wife was the spark that 
 set off the mine which double-dealing diplomacy had laid in Europe, need 
 not blind us to the fact that the Serbian government would not have fared 
 
 * This has since been proven by investigations made by the Ebert Government. The German 
 government, especially Emperor William II, gave the advace tb^t Austria Hungary should do 
 what she did do.— Date of this note. January 20. 1920. 
 
DIPLOMACY VERSUS NATIONAL FACT 299 
 
 better, had some other "power" been the injured party. It is all very well 
 to protest the terms of the ultimatum. The fact is that much less has 
 brought on wars between nations. 
 
 Since Great Britain had been the last to recognize the status of King 
 Peter, and since she had made the killing of an Englishman in Johannes- 
 burg, by a Boer policeman, a very important item in her bill of complaints 
 against the government of the South African Republic, she might have been 
 the last to prate of arrogant conduct and the like. Surely, even an Austrian 
 archduke is the equal of an English commoner. And what difference, 
 indeed, should it have made to Great Britain if Austria-Hungary had 
 annexed Serbia, since she had only recently annexed the Transvaal and 
 Orange Free State for reasons that were alike, if we go by pretext. 
 Instead of all that, Sir Edward Grey, coming valiantly to the rescue of 
 his friend and ally, M, Sazonoff, made a mountain of a molehill, as such 
 things are looked upon by and between governments that have not pre- 
 meditated to cut each other's throat. 
 
 But we are looking at this thing from the point of view of humanity 
 — from the position of self-determination for small peoples, a very noble 
 principle aired so much at that time, but again totally forgotten now. There 
 is no reason that I can see, and I have investigated the Jugo-Slav on the 
 spot, notably in and about Agram and Serajewo, which towns were the 
 hotbeds of the movement in Austria-Hungary, why the Serbs, Croats 
 proper, and Slovenes should not come together if they are so minded. 
 
 On the other hand, taking the economic side of the thing, the people 
 of Bosnia and Herzegovina were better off than they would have been 
 under Serb rule, for, to say the least, the Serbian government has always 
 been notorious for its corruption, ineptness and inefficiency. What Serbia 
 was before the War she was in spite of that government, and by virtue 
 of the good qualities of her people. In making that statement I take into 
 account the fact that from the Balkan we can not within reason expect 
 as yet too much. Its people were but too recently a subject race, to have 
 thrown off the effects of that condition, and government for the greater 
 part has not as completely dissociated itself from the methods of the 
 Turkish valis and begs as might be expected. 
 
 The Austrian government did consider the possibilities that might arise 
 so far as Russia was concerned. But only a little while before the annexa- 
 tion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the complete emancipation of Bulgaria, 
 had been accomplished by Austria-Hungary in the face of much German 
 opposition without any real interference from Russian quarters. It was 
 believed that the Russian government had its hands too full with internal 
 unrest to care whether or no Serbia was taken to task for the alleged 
 complicity in the murder of the archducal couple. 
 
300 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 The revolution in Russia had never really subsided, and the Muscovite 
 government had to keep its eye on it, as later developments have shown. 
 In Vienna, then, it was thought that this would act as a deterrent, in spite 
 of the fact that the building by Russia of a great mileage of strategic 
 railroads along the borders of Galicia and in Poland was accepted through- 
 out Central Europe as being the sure sign that trouble was coming. So far 
 as Germany was concerned there was the additional fact that these railroads 
 were being built with money raised in France. 
 
 In a Diplomatic Cul-de-sac 
 
 But this calculation was wrong. Governments have ever found a 
 foreign war the best antitode for revolution, and Russia was to find it 
 that. When finally it became clear that Russia would not consent to a 
 "localization" of the difficulty between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, it 
 was too late to do anything. Withdrawal of the ultimatum would have 
 damaged the prestige of Austria-Hungary, and in Petrograd, the war 
 clique — Sazonoff, Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaievitch, Sir George Buch- 
 anan and M. Paleologue, the French ambassador — saw to it that the Czar 
 negotiated with Emperor William on the basis of a partial mobilization, 
 while a complete one was actually in progress. Sir Edward Grey and M. 
 Viviani were in the meantime exchanging compliments on the status of 
 Belgium, though that seemed, and must always seem, superfluous in view 
 of the fact that both, Great Britain and France, were signatories to the 
 treaty which guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium, and had at that time 
 no reason to think that Germany, another guarantor, would violate that 
 pact. The men in Berlin were not particularly good statesmen, but they 
 were able to think, and in Vienna they thought even more rapidly, if not 
 as deeply. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian government loved public opinion as little as 
 did the German, but conditions within the realm had in the course of time 
 forced the study of the public's mind upon the men at the head of affairs. 
 With ten races in the empire, and with political antagonism ever present 
 in the Austrian Reichsrat and the Hungarian parliament, that could not 
 be different. Nolens volens the Austrian government had to take public 
 opinion into account. Now this, then that, racial element had to be placated 
 — had to be shown that it was profitable to be a part of the Danube 
 monarchy. 
 
 To meet the several irredenta movements a protective tariff policy had 
 been adopted, by which, for instance, the Italian in Austria was shown that 
 he could sell his products to greater advantage in Austria than in Italy 
 so long as he was under the Austrian flag. Even if proximity to good 
 
IN A DIPLOMATIC CUL-DB-SAC 301 
 
 markets had not been an advantage in itself, he could always count on 
 having in his favor the import duty which the Austrian government exacted 
 from the Italian producer across the boundary. The Austrian Slavs were 
 similarly favored, as against the non-Austrian Slavs, as had been shown 
 in the tariff discriminations invoked against Serbia. The Rumanians in 
 Hungary enjoyed like privileges, though the Magyars saw to it that they 
 themselves were the chief beneficiaries. At any rate the Rumanian in the 
 Danube monarchy was able to send his children to school, if he had a 
 mind to, and later he was forced to do that, which was not the case in 
 Rumania. In Galicia, Pole and Ruthenian also had protection from the 
 tariff, and the Bohemian, being the most active of the Austro-Hun- 
 garophobes in the monarchy, had succeeded in building up, at the expense 
 of his other co-nationals, a great and flourishing industry — the best in all 
 the land. 
 
 That this policy of the Austrian government was not the outcome of 
 an inherent liberalism must be granted, yet it certainly was the proof of 
 a broadmindedness, which the German government did not possess. In 
 Berlin they were still the carping hairsplitters, when in Vienna and Buda- 
 pest Grosszuegigkeit — enterprise coupled with generosity — was already 
 the rule. 
 
 In many respects the Austro-Hungarian government was far better 
 then the German. That the difference between the two was interpreted in 
 Berlin as due to a laissez-faire spirit need not concern us too much. The 
 efficiency of the German government, of which so much has been heard, 
 and which certainly came to the front during the Great War, was not so 
 much the work of the government as a quality of the governed. In fact, 
 much of that quality was stifled by the unreasonable caste system to which 
 the German government seemed hopelessly committed. The men in Berlin, 
 being for the most part governmental charlatans and political sophists, 
 had arrogated unto themselves much that did not belong to them. They 
 took credit for the thoroughness and thrift of the people and succeeded in 
 giving the act an aspect that fooled all. 
 
 In Vienna that was not done. The government did have a somewhat 
 sleepy look, to be sure. But it had that largely because nobody cared to 
 adorn himself with the feathers of the governed. There was some 
 Schlamperei — negligence — as some saw it, but when honestly examined this 
 neglect was nothing but an abstinence by the government from mixing in 
 affairs that were not strictly administrative. 
 
 Austria-Hungary came much closer to the ideal in government than did 
 Germany, and most other countries for that matter. In the absolute this 
 ideal is the non-existence of government ; within the realm of the practical 
 it is government eliminated from all spheres that can be left in the 
 
302 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 hands of the individual. In that respect the two governments were some- 
 what antithetical. Just as the ideal of the social extremist is anarchy, so 
 was the ideal of the German government, a monarchic extremist, for the 
 total submergence of all public activities and interests into the ever rising 
 flood of government. 
 
 Had the Austro-Hungarian government enjoyed the advantage of 
 dealing with a single people — a united race — it would not have done any 
 better than did the German. The case is, therefore, not one of govern- 
 mental morality and virtue, but one of necessity. Austrian, German, Hun- 
 garian, Czech, Pole, Ruthenian, Rumanian, Italian, Slovak, Slovene and 
 Croat had each and all their own inclinations, and since these had to be 
 reconciled with one another, the Austro-Hungarian government came 
 to be rather susceptible to public opinion. While it did modify the opinion 
 of the several groups, individually and collectively, its own views were 
 necessarily affected also. 
 
 Austro-Hungarian Diplomacy Less Handicapped 
 
 This, then, was the reason why Austro-Hungarian statecraft and 
 diplomacy were in foreign questions much more competent than the Ger- 
 man brand. World public opinion was well understood in the Vienna 
 Ministry of the Exterior, and being well understood, it was efficiently met 
 and never assumed toward Austria-Hungary the ferocious attitude it took 
 in matters related to Germany. To avoid stating the case one-sidedly I 
 must add that Austria-Hungary did not appear as prominently in the 
 arena of war politics as did Germany, and with her, Great Britain and 
 France, the two principal promoters of anti-German propaganda, had no 
 particular quarrel. 
 
 While Sir Edward Grey had made a great deal of fuss about the 
 ultimatum to Serbia, he knew only too well that he had done this for the 
 purpose of pleasing Sazonoff and his ambassador Benckendorf. Against 
 the Austrian government he had nothing, apart from the fact that it was 
 an ally of Germany, and France had only too often divided spoils with the 
 Austrians in Italy to become of a sudden a violent hereditary enemy. 
 
 To the British in fact, Austria-Hungary had been very useful in the 
 past. She had been one of the means of keeping the Russians out of the 
 Dardanelles. Having no colonies, Austria-Hungary came hardly in contact 
 with British imperialism, and the small fleet she kept in the Adriatic did 
 not in any manner menace British control of the Mediterranean. So close 
 were the two governments, especially during the reign of Queen Victoria, 
 that the Austro-Hungarian government did not mind exporting a great deal 
 of munitions and ammunitions for use by the British army during the late 
 
AUSTRIAN DIPLOMACY LESS HANDICAPPED 303 
 
 South African War, to which the government of the United States referred 
 incidentally in reply to a note of the Vienna government protesting against 
 the large exports of war materials to the Entente countries from the United 
 States in August, 1915 : 
 
 "During the Boer War between Great Britain and the South 
 African Republics the patrol of the coasts of neighboring neutral 
 colonies (Portuguese East Africa, especially) by British naval 
 vessels prevented arms and ammunitions reaching the Transvaal 
 and Orange Free State. The allied Republics were in a situation 
 almost identical in that respect with that in which Austria-Hun- 
 gary and Germany find themselves at the present time. Yet, in 
 spite of the commercial isolation of one belligerent, Germany 
 sold to Great Britain, the other belligerent, hundreds of thousands 
 of kilos of explosives, gunpowder, cartridges, shot and weapons ; 
 and it is known that Austria-Hungary also sold similar munitions 
 to the same purchaser, though in smaller quantities. While, as 
 compared with the present war, the quantities sold were small (a 
 table of the sales is appended) the principle of neutrality involved 
 is the same." 
 
 To this I would add, as a combatant on the Boer side during the late 
 South African War, that when later a party of Boer soldiers, myself in- 
 cluded, were obliged to leave South Africa for the United States and 
 effected our emigration via the Austrian port of Triest, the authorities there 
 made our transit to Hamburg and New York, over Austro-Hungarian 
 territory, conditional upon the understanding that none of us would re- 
 main within the boundaries of the Danube Monarchy. After that we were 
 transported across the country under police escortment, lest one of the 
 ex-soldiers of the two Boer republics should select to remain in Anglophile 
 Austria-Hungary. 
 
 On the other hand, the United States government did not wholly 
 state the case in its note. It was overlooked entirely that from American 
 ports more munitions of war, ammunition, general equipment, food, forage, 
 wheel-transportation, and saddle and pack animals were exported to South 
 Africa, by the British government, under the auspices of the government 
 of the United States, than from the remaining non-^British world together ; 
 that the ports of New Orleans and Galveston were regularly established 
 British military bases, and that the United States government, regardless 
 of protests and an action in a Federal Court initiated by the governments 
 of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, permitted these 
 things and remained heedless to the fact that American muleteers were 
 forced into the British army against their will. 
 
 On the side of Germany I would add that Emperor William II, 
 stretched his neutrality so far, for love of his grandmother, it would seem, 
 that he submitted to the British general staff his own ideas how the resist- 
 
304 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 ancc of the Boers could be broken. For those ideas I will say that they 
 were useless in the guerilla warfare we were practicing. 
 
 Such are the asj^ects of yesterday in diplomacy. The United States 
 Department of State answered with an argument based on its own sins, 
 and the British government supplied the ''tables of sales ... ap- 
 pended" to give that argument an extra sting in those days and for our 
 times and posterity a most peculiar flavor. 
 
 Diplomacy Reduced to Plain Business 
 
 Mr. Archbald, the American "war" correspondent, who later managed 
 to bring on a critical international situation, and the recall of Dr. Dumba, 
 the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador at Washington, by letting everybody 
 aboard his steamer know that he was the carrier of important political dis- 
 patches, a blossoming diplomatist, therefore, was brought to my attention 
 in Vienna on one of my trips through Austria. A gentleman, whom I will 
 not name for his own sake, and with whom I had dealing in matters 
 referring to censorship, asked me one day, how much I could tell him about 
 Mr. Archbald. I replied that I had met the gentleman in the hotel I was 
 stopping at, the "Bristol." That did not seem to be enough. Did I know 
 Mr. Archbald well ? No, not so well ! Could I vouch for him as reliable ? 
 To which I replied that I never vouched for any man, except he was well 
 known to me. Mr. Archbald, no doubt, would meet the requirements at 
 the front, and then there was the censorship to take care of his literary 
 efforts. 
 
 But it seemed that I was talking in a direction diflFerent from that of 
 which my questioner was thinking. Did I know Mr. Archbald as a man 
 whose conduct was one of discretion and perspicacity? My reply was as 
 before, to wit : I was not in the habit of passing judgment upon persons 
 I did not intimately know. For some time I was interrogated on what 
 Mr. Archbald's standing was in the American journalistic and social world. 
 Since I had heard of the man for the first time in my life when I met 
 him at the hotel, and when he calmly informed me that in a day or two 
 he would be received by Emperor Francis Joseph, I could give no informa- 
 tion that seemed satisfactory to the government official, who later expressed 
 himself to the effect that I seemed to be overcautious. 
 
 A year later the man confessed to me that after all he was now able 
 to value my attitude. Mr. Archbald had been found out, as it were, and 
 Dr. Dumba had passed me on the stairs of the Ballhausplatz building not 
 in a mood to be interviewed. His notions on the propriety of things had 
 led to his dismissal by the government of the United States and his com- 
 plete relegation in the Austro-Hungarian diplomatic service, as will happen 
 in such cases. 
 
DIPLOMACY RBDUCED TO PLAIN BUSINESS 305 
 
 But something far worse had happened. Though the Austro-Hungarian 
 government had been one of the first to agree to the inviolabiUty of the 
 diplomatic cyphergrams and mail pouches of the United States embassies 
 and legations, the government in Washington had thought it necessary to 
 now deny the Austro-Hungarian diplomatic mission in the United States 
 that very same privilege. It was argued that since Dr. Dumba had been 
 exposed as a fomenter of acts inimicable to the American public interest, 
 his embassy could no longer be left in the possession of a privilege which 
 made secret communicating between the Austro-Hungarian embassy in 
 Washington and the government in Vienna possible. 
 
 Without wishing to inject myself into this, I would go on record as 
 saying that this was poor policy. The concessions known as "diplomatic 
 privileges and the inviolability of diplomatic telegrams and mail" can no 
 longer be defended. They have been the very invitation to intrigue. 
 International machination, indeed, would be of the riskiest nature an 
 enterprise, if it were not that in the past ambassadors and ministers 
 plenipotentiary have been able to communicate with one another and their 
 governments by means of code messages that generally defied scrutiny if 
 done in a good cypher, which in addition to being secret itself defied detec- 
 tion by being constantly changed or substituted by another. 
 
 The withdrawal of the "diplomatic privilege" in question, left the 
 Vienna Ministry of the Exterior in the plight of being now unable to re- 
 ceive from its charge d'aif aires in Washington, Baron Zwiedenik, the tips 
 and information it needed to shape its conduct so that it would give the 
 minimum of ofifense to the government of the United States. 
 
 On the other hand, the system of communication substituted was most 
 unsatisfactory to the Austrians. Its general form was this : The Austro- 
 Hungarian diplomatic mission in Washington was required to submit to 
 the United States Department of State its communications addressed to 
 the government in Vienna in texte claire. The plain text of the message 
 was then transcribed in the State Department into a code of the United 
 States diplomatic service. After that the cyphergram would be cabled to 
 the United States embassy at Vienna, where decodization took place, the 
 result being transmitted to the Austrian Ministry of the Exterior in plain 
 text. 
 
 Later this system was somewhat modified. I had several occasions to 
 point out in my dispatches that the modus operandi was an expedient of an 
 unfair and dangerous character under the circumstances. One of them 
 was when a secretary of the United States embassy in Vienna, a Mr. S. 
 L. C, failed to deliver promptly, as was the intention of Mr. Penfield, 
 the ambassador, a rather important communication so transmitted, keeping 
 
306 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 it in a coat pocket for twenty-four hours, and improving thereby greatly 
 the chances of war. 
 
 While a universally applied innovation of that sort could only be 
 recommended, in this instance it left a government badly handicapped in 
 the face of a condition which to a large extent had been created by the 
 abuse of "diplomatic privilege." in a war that had been brought about by 
 this very means of secret diplomacy. Nothing whatever can be said in 
 condonation of activity of the nature Dr. Dumba was linked with. 
 Sabotage is indeed looked upon as a perfectly admissible means of war. 
 if employed in the country of the enemy, but, together with its twin brother, 
 propaganda, which is but sabotage of a mental character, it certainly is 
 out of place in a neutral country, no matter how much that country may 
 aid one of the belligerents. On strictly moral grounds the practice is 
 justifiable, of course, but international relations can not be put on that 
 plane, if war is to be confined to its hearth. The public interest of a neutral 
 must be respected by the belligerents, or ought to be respected, no matter 
 what the situation on the other side of the ledger. 
 
 As it was, the withdrawal of * 'diplomatic privileges" from the agents 
 of Austria-Hungary, made havoc unavoidable. Thereafter the Vienna 
 government found it impossible to keep itself properly informed on the 
 attitude of the government of the United States, and the quality of Ameri- 
 can public opinion. This is to be regretted from several angles. The 
 Austro-Hungarian government was far better able to put a correct interpre- 
 tation upon this attitude and public opinion than was Berlin, and, as I 
 have good reason to say, the cause of peace would not have suffered had 
 the United States government confined its resentment of Dr. Dumba's 
 activities to his dismissal, especially since it counted upon separating 
 Austria-Hungary and Germany as allies. 
 
 In attending to the duties of war and political correspondent, I had 
 in the course of time met every Austro-Hungarian government official of 
 prominence. With some of them I became well acquainted, and not a 
 few of them were friends of mine. Being inclined to look under the sur- 
 face of things, and to regard government anywhere as the agency of public 
 administration, instead of an avowedly or unavowedly heaven-sent mission, 
 I was able to see behind the screen of obscurantism which governments like 
 to surround themselves with, and found in the dignity-scented atmosphere 
 of the Ballhausplatz, a sincere, albeit selfish, desire to remain at peace with 
 the United States. 
 
 Against this, however, was placed Austro-Hungarian public interest, 
 which was no less important to the men in Vienna than was British pub- 
 lic interest to the gentlemen who in Buckingham Palace undid Interna- 
 tional Law at their leisure. To reconcile Austro-Hungarian public in- 
 
DIPLOMACY REDUCED TO PLAIN BUSINESS 307 
 
 terest with United States public interest, in order that peace might be 
 preserved, was not easy, however. The Vienna government was not in 
 a position to entirely place in a secondary class the public welfare it was 
 caring for, and there had to be a certain amount of maneuvering for points 
 of vantage in the attempts to reconcile the interests of the United States 
 with those of Austria-Hungary. 
 
 Good international relations are the result of give and take, just as 
 good relations are that within the state, social groups and family. But 
 give and take become impossible when one of the parties is blindfolded and 
 gagged in such a manner as the Austro-Hungarian government was this 
 by the withdrawal of diplomatic privilege from its mission in Washington. 
 
 It was entirely out of the question for the Austro-Hungarian charge 
 d'affaires to warn his government of this or that move, the advent of 
 which was clear to him because he not alone understood the position of 
 his country but was, supposedly at least, familiar with the policies and 
 idiosyncracies of his government. On the other hand, the men in the 
 foreign ministry, could not beforehand ascertain what, in the opinion of 
 its diplomatic agent, the effect of this note or that act might be. The 
 situation was very similar of having the defendant in an action represented 
 by the attorney of the plaintiff. The United States State Department did 
 not place prescribed limits upon the communications of the Austro-Hun- 
 garian government and its diplomatists in Washington, but it did impose 
 a condition which made the free and frank exchange of opinion between 
 the two impossible, which under the circumstances was the only way of 
 avoiding an extension of the European War, which had to be feared. 
 
 I have gone into this at some length, because it was this state of 
 affairs which ultimately made me one of the advisers of the Austro- 
 Hungarian government, and later ipso facto the "diplomatic" representative 
 of the United States in Vienna. 
 
 Tisza's View of the Situation in 1916 
 
 Before I enter upon that sad chapter in diplomacy, I must outline 
 what the actual attitude of the Austro-Hungarian government was toward 
 the United States. I will do that by recording what the leading officials of 
 this government thought and did. 
 
 Previously I have mentioned an interview with Count Tisza, minister- 
 president of the Hungarian government, and within the boundaries of that 
 state rather absolute. I must state here, since so little is known of the 
 governmental systems of the Dual Monarchy, that Austria and Hungary 
 were confederated states by treaty, and that each retained independent 
 control of its own internal affairs, being susceptible to Austrian or Hun- 
 
308 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 garian influence only, as the case might be, to the extent in which the 
 Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary, the same person, 
 might through his own influence and powers modify or shape the legislation 
 of the Austrian Reichsrat and the Hungarian parliament. The Minister 
 of the Exterior was the minister of the imperial house, and the diplomatic 
 service, or better, foreign representation, was therefore an adjunct of the 
 two crowns, held in common. The military establishment, in harmony 
 with this, was of a triple character. The forces of the line and certain 
 reserve bans were known as "das Gemeinsame Heer," and were under 
 the control of the Austro-Hungarian minister of war and his general staflF. 
 The older bans of reserves, known as the "Landwehr" in Austria, and the 
 "Honved" in Hungary, were under the administration of the national 
 defense ministries in Vienna and Budapest. The person of the emperor- 
 king, however, was the supreme commander of the three branches of the 
 Austro-Hungarian military establishment. 
 
 Count Tisza, then, was the actual head of government in Hungary, and 
 as such his position in Vienna was one of great influence. So great was 
 this, in fact, that he had succeeded in keeping Hungarians in charge of 
 Austro-Hungarian foreign relations for some time. Count Berchtold was 
 a Hungarian aristocrat, whom another Hungarian nobleman, Baron Burian, 
 replaced. To placate the Slavic elements in the monarchy the post of 
 Minister of the Imperial House and of the Exterior was later given to 
 Count Czernin, a Czech noble. 
 
 As the result of the interview I had with Count Tisza on February 
 26th, 1916, I was allowed to quote the Hungarian premier to the extent : 
 
 "For the United States to engage in the European War would be 
 a crime against humanity." 
 
 That was not all Count Tisza said in the course of a two-hour inter- 
 view. Even then Count Tisza was fully convinced that the European War 
 could not end without becoming a world war. When I reached my hotel 
 I made such notes as I deemed necessary, as is my practice, since I never 
 interview a person with a pad of paper and pencil in my hands, having 
 learned long ago that this is the best way of not getting the information 
 sought. From these notes I gather the following : 
 
 After having asked my opinion in regard to the situation in Rumania, 
 Count Tisza left his chair and began to walk up and down in his office. 
 For some time he said nothing. 
 
 "The outlook in Washington is not particularly encouraging to me," 
 he said, as he passed me on his way to and fro. "Of course, there are 
 a good many optimists who do not agree with me. Some men have the 
 habit of translating their wishes into facts. I am not of that sort. 
 
 "It is impossible to get reliable information from the United States. 
 
TISZA'S VIEW OF THE SITUATION IN 1916 309 
 
 When I ask the ministry of the exterior to give me data on this or that, 
 it says that it does not have it, and can not obtain it. Instead of reports 
 from our cJmrge in Washington, they send me the daily digests that are 
 made, in the press department, of the news contained in the foreign news- 
 papers. Since all of that news has passed over British and French cables, 
 and has then been doctored by the censors, no credence can be given it. By 
 the way — you are familiar with cable conditions and the like, is there a way 
 of getting news into and out of the United States, through some neutral 
 country, perhaps, without having it interfered with by the British and 
 French censors. What is your own experience?" 
 
 I pointed out that there was no channel of telegraphic communication 
 from or to anywhere in this wide world which was not watched by the 
 British and French governments. I had been able to get mail matter past 
 them by routing it via Bergen in Norway, but was never sure of its arrival, 
 because the British cruisers would often search these steamers. 
 
 "I thought so," was the laconic comment of the premier, who resumed 
 his walking. After a while he stopped again before me. 
 
 Count Tisza Doubted Mr. Wilson's Integrity 
 
 "It has been asserted that there is some sort of understanding between 
 the government of the United States and Allied governments," began Count 
 Tisza. "I am familiar enough with government in your country to know 
 that this can not have been done in accord with the provisions of the 
 United States Constitution. But gentlemen's agreements can be made, and 
 my experience permits me to say that such agreements can be carried 
 into effect over the head of any parliament." 
 
 I found it difficult to repress a smile. Count Tisza saw it, and 
 wondered. 
 
 "In times of war, parliaments are confronted by the government only 
 with faits accomplis, Your Excellency!" I remarked. 
 
 Count Tisza's face brightened up for a second. 
 
 "Well, all journalists are cynics," he said. "I suppose, they get that 
 way against their own wishes." 
 
 The premier resumed his perambulations. After a while I became 
 conscious of his intention to have me make a remark in regard to the sub- 
 ject of agreements. 
 
 "In the United States treaties are made by and with the consent of 
 the United States Senate, Your Excellency ! But that you know, of course ! 
 I am not able to say whether or no these rumors concerning a gentlemen's 
 agreement, by which the United States government would come to the 
 rescue of the Allies, if necessary, are true or not. I have heard the same 
 thing, but have no means of learning whether the rumors are founded on 
 
310 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 fact or not. It seems to me that the rumors are not founded on a known 
 fact, since the person or persons involved would be obliged to maintain the 
 strictest secrecy. My impression is that the rumors are the result of 
 a combination of conditions everywhere. 
 
 "Nobody in the United States has the right to make such an agreement, 
 and since the general policy of the Wilson administration, in regard to 
 foreign affairs, has not a few opponents in the United States Senate, it is 
 not even probable that a gentlemen's agreement of that sort has been 
 reached. The Senate is rather jealous of its prerogatives and if I know 
 anything at all concerning that body, and the mood of Mr. Wilson's 
 opponents, I may say that the slightest knowledge of such an agreement 
 would have led to an interpellation of the government before now. I am 
 not inclined, therefore, to believe the rumors." 
 
 "But what is there that could prevent Mr. Wilson from giving some 
 such assurance to — the British ambassador, for instance?" asked Count 
 Tisza.* 
 
 "Assurance there is none, Your Excellency!" I replied. "But the 
 
 ♦ I could not do better than to reproduce here a part of the preface of Joseph Reinach's 
 6ook. "Lcs Commentaires de Polybe," published by the Bibliotheque-Charpentier, Paris, early 
 .u 1917. 
 
 M. Relnach wrote: 
 
 "Why was it that I did not doubt America, even in the days when I wrote some rather sharp 
 remarks concerning its slowness, or, again, when men of importance^ maintained that her neu- 
 trality was of greater advantage to the Entente than her intervention? I had for that two 
 principal reasons, one of them of a particular, and the other of a general, order, which to relate 
 will be of some interest, perhaps, 
 
 "As to the first: An enthusiastic friend of Roosevelt brousfht to me one day the intimate 
 friend of President Wilson, Colonel House. I had hardly talked to him freely when I found 
 myself overwhelmed by the intelligence and sincerity of the man; a soul at once exalted and 
 clear. When he assured me (it was in the first months of 191 S) that Wilson was convinced of 
 the good cause of the Entente in the war. I believed it. When he assured me, moreover, that 
 Wilson would never obey anything but his conscience, and that as a result he would intervene, 
 before the end of the war, in favor of the Entente, I believed it. 
 
 "Colonel House, as you may surmise, did not fix a date. He strove at the same time, 
 with much tact, not to compromise the highest magistrate of his country, and not to have mis- 
 understood the moral quality of his friend. He told me In addition that \Yilson was following 
 Ills designs farsightedly. and that his will was strong and tenacious. His (Wilson's) ambition was 
 to first convert to the ideas he thoueht iust the grand maiority of his cocitizens; he would not 
 act until later. Incapable of going beyond a line of the Constitution, he would use every right 
 he held under it. 
 
 "House sooke in the same strain a year afterwards, when he was on his second trip to 
 Europe. In that manner he armed me against my impatience and, to be quite frank, against the 
 failures of his friend which presently came. 
 
 "Wilson became candidate for a second time for the presidency. The gross of the Democratic 
 forces is in the Middle West and in the Western States. The taste for peace there was akin 
 to pacifism. The Germans there are numerous and also the German Americans; they were excited 
 or troubled by an active propaganda. Finally, Wilson would have for a rival Roosevelt or a friend 
 of the impetuous Teddy. . . From then on, Wilson, descending into the electoral arena, 
 descended himself, so to speak, and as candidate was no longer his better self. It was then that 
 \t defied his vehement adversaries to find a single man capable of establishing who was right and 
 who was wrong in the srreat conflict and that he pronounced the words just as famous: Too proud 
 to a^ht.^ But re-elected, and prevented bv usage from seeking for the third time the royalty of 
 the White House, he was freed of all foibles or necessary prudence (sic). At present he allows 
 only his heart to speak in accord with his reason. He is sending into the world splendid and 
 ttrong formulas, being the first writer of his country. Very soon he made an unanimity of that 
 rast people^ of a hundred millions, carrying it to new horizons, and he has written his name under 
 those of his most illustrious predecessors, Washington and Lincoln. . , ." 
 
 ^ Note. — The fact that Monsieur Reinach is so poorly informed of political conditions in the 
 United States brings it nowise into doubt his veracity in connection with the extraordinary state- 
 ments made in the preface, only a part of which Is here reproduced. By order of United States 
 governmental agencies, the book in question was withdrawn from the marked and "put aside" in the 
 American libraries. 
 
COUNT TISZA DOUBTED MR. WILSON'S INTEGRITY 311 
 
 conditions are against the making of such an agreement. At any rate 
 the agreement could never be cited in Congress as an obligation of the 
 United States government to go to war for the benefit of the Allies." 
 
 "That is perfectly clear to me," said the premier. "But as I have 
 intimated before, the United States government, as well as any other, can 
 create a situation which will meet with the terms of a gentlemen's agree- 
 ment. I may say that it is quite easy for a government to not only create 
 such a situation, but to bring it about in such a manner that the public 
 will be none the wiser. 
 
 "Things are happening every day just now that would form the 
 substance of a really fine pretext. More of them will happen, and whether 
 the United States stays out of, or enters, the war is entirely a question 
 to be decided upon in Washington. For the purpose of meeting, as effec- 
 tively as we can, the British blockade, so that it may not reduce us by 
 starvation, we may have to do things in the future that would give Mr. 
 Wilson every opportunity to enter the war. 
 
 "In fact, I am sure that this will take place — gentlemen's agreement 
 or no. So long as Mr. Bryan was Secretary of State we had a chance, 
 I think. I fear that the natural tendencies of the American people are 
 against us, or at least are such that they may be turned against us at any 
 moment. The people of the United States have too much in common to 
 ever look with equanimity upon disaster to the British arms. Is not that 
 your opinion also?" 
 
 I replied that such was my opinion. 
 
 "Very well, then," continued Count Tisza. "We have the conditions 
 favorable to bringing the resources of the United States against us. In 
 fact that is already being done on a scale that has now ceased to alarm me, 
 because I am under the influence of the realization of a much greater 
 danger — active participation by the United States in the war against us. 
 
 "The note concerning the furnishing to the Allies of such prodigal 
 quantities of war material, which we sent to the United States government 
 not so long ago, was framed by Count Burian at my request. I did not 
 expect any other answer than what we received. I was interested only 
 in what tenor the reply would have. That tenor confirmed my worst 
 fears. 
 
 "I have learned that whole industries in the United States have been 
 converted into munition and ammunition plants. Only yesterday I had 
 a report on that. Huge loans are being negotiated, many of them openly, 
 others secretly, so that the Allies may have the necessary credits in the 
 United States. That will go on, of course. 
 
 "In the end the indebtedness of the Allied governments in. the United 
 States will be so great that a defeat of the Allies can not be contemplated 
 
312 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 in the United States without the probability of large losses. To express 
 myself more clearly, I will say that the day will come on which the 
 government of the United States will engage in this war against us for 
 the mere purpose of rescuing the investments in the war loans and war 
 debts of the American capitalist. Do you follow me?"* 
 
 I did indeed follow the words of the premier, and said so. 
 
 "That means that we can not bring this war to a conclusion without 
 having to measure issues with the United States. 
 
 "Well, for the time being there is nothing to do but to follow a policy of 
 conciliation. I hope that our internal conditions will permit us to do that. 
 Food is getting to be very scarce. If we have a good crop this year, we 
 may be able to weather the storm, if not, the crisis will be here. 
 
 "I have spoken very frankly to you. The men in the Ministry of 
 the Exterior could not do that. I heard from them concerning you some 
 time ago, and I may say that they have a high opinion of your work. 
 Since your service reaches so many people in the United States, I thought 
 it best that I should outline to you what the basis of negotiations between 
 the Austro-Hungarian and United States governments is to be, so far 
 as we are concerned. Always bear in mind that we do not want a war 
 with the United States, and that we shall do our best to get Berlin to 
 adopt the same principle. 
 
 "I beg you to take toward that attitude of ours a sympathetic stand, 
 and in consideration of that will be of assistance to you in case you 
 should have trouble with our censors. Some of those men do not seem to 
 realize that the neutral correspondent must not permit himself to show 
 partiality and that his reports must be accurate in order to retain their 
 value. Let me know whenever you run into that state of affairs." 
 
 Vienna Not Fond of Submarine Warfare 
 
 To this verbatim rendition of my notes on this interview, I must add 
 that Count Tisza was rather bitter in his comment on Mr. Wilson and 
 
 • "The financial history of the six months from the end of the summer of 1916 up to the 
 entry of the United States into the war, in April, 1917, remains to be written. Very few 
 persons outside the half dozen officials of the British treasury, who lived in daily contact with 
 the immense anxieties and impossible financial requirements of those days can fully realize what 
 steadfastness and courage were needed and how entirely hopeless the task would soon have 
 become without the assistance of the United States treasury. — John Maynard Keynes, in The 
 Economic Consequences of the Peace. 
 
 It is to be presumed, of course, that a man who served in the British treasury would know 
 what he is talking about. Mr. Keynes, moreover, is too serious a person to make the above 
 statement without realizing what full responsibility for it means. On the other hand, by whose 
 authority did the United States treasury, in the six months in question, assist the British treasury, 
 and what means did it make use of, seeing that Congress voted no appropriations for the 
 purpose? In the face of the fact that Congress did not empower anybody at that time to 
 come to the assistance of the British treasury, it seems reasonable to assume that considerable 
 juggling was undertaken. I say considerable juggling, because to prevent the task of the British 
 treasury becoming hopeless just then took vast amounts in either gold shipments or credits. Who 
 authorized either or both in a manner that the United States treasury became a party to the 
 transaction? Would Congress deem it necessary to look into this? 
 
VIENNA NOT FOND OF SUBMARINE WARFARE 313 
 
 Mr. Lansing. At any rate there was no doubt that the Hungarian premier 
 understood the situation thoroughly and had the courage to face it with 
 that grim determination which marked the whole of his political career. 
 When finally we parted he authorized me to use but the one sentence, I 
 have here repeated, and also suggested that I write as little as possible 
 about him. To get that lone sentence through he had to issue a special 
 order to every censor along the Atistro-Hungarian route of my dispatch. 
 
 An interview with Baron Burian was of more or less the same tenor. 
 Since the Austro-Hungarian minister of foreign affairs knew that he 
 was talking for publication, he was less direct in his statements, and con- 
 fined himself largely to the situation in the monarchy as created by the 
 British blockade. He made a few sarcastic references to the attitude of 
 the United States government toward the British "The Declaration of 
 London Orders in Council," and, being more savant than politician, he 
 found it hard to realize why the government of the United States had 
 supinely accepted the substitution of the British Orders in Privy Council 
 for International Law. 
 
 Meanwhile food conditions were worse in Austria and Hungary 
 than even in Germany. While the assassination of Count Stuergkh, the 
 Austrian premier, had indeed removed a stumbling block in the way of 
 efficient food regulation, the tenure of office by that man had left little 
 enough to do it with. When finally the food problems were taken in hand, 
 the larder was almost empty. 
 
 The death of Emperor Francis Joseph was a hard blow to the Austrians 
 and Hungarians. Somewhat given to superstitions, the light-hearted people 
 of the Danube Monarchies saw in this bereavement a bad omen for the 
 future. The old ruler had been so long an institution in Austria and 
 Hungary that most people found it hard to understand why death should 
 have carried him off before the War was ended. The man was no longer 
 able to give the affairs of state intelligent attention, but his very figure 
 seemed to be a promise that the days of the Dual Monarchy would yet be 
 many, and that better times were ahead. 
 
 In democracies such things may be hard to understand, but the fact 
 is that in monarchies the state finds in the ruler a very patent incarnation. 
 He is in effect and for practical purposes the visualization of an idea, and 
 logically, or illogically, the weal of the monarchical commonwealth is 
 brought into relation with the personal vicissitudes of the sovereign. 
 
 It was so when Francis Joseph died. 
 
 His death, however, had another consequence. The old man still lived 
 in the age of chivalry — the times when the commander of a besieged town 
 could treat with the commander of the besieging forces and get the latter's 
 respectful attention — ^the days of pleasant memory, when soldiers still wore 
 
314 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 uniforms gay and gaudy with color and so cut they they showed off the man. 
 Francis Joseph had grown up in the times of the hollow square and ball 
 ammunition and military decencies generally. Such things as a submarine 
 disgusted him, and, though he was not exactly a sentimentalist, the thought 
 of having people drown at sea after a torpedo attack was as loathsome 
 to him as the starving of woman and children. Francis Joseph was not 
 a very lovely sort of father, not what one might call an "old dear," but 
 for all that he was a good father to his children — a good ruler to his people. 
 
 The infirmities of age had left little political sagacity in the old emperor, 
 and American institutions were a smell in the nostrils of this aristocrat 
 Df aristocrats. Upon the United States, the irascible old man looked with 
 cynical disdain, and it was not regard for the government in Washington 
 that caused him to counsel, as he constantly did, never to use the sub- 
 marine against merchantment so long as the lives of passengers of any 
 nationality, enemies included, were thereby placed in jeopardy. 
 
 I had some intimate acquaintances at the court, and from these I 
 learned that Francis Joseph was unalterably opposed to the submarine, was 
 this in fact long before the European War. On several occasions he had 
 sounded foreign governments on their inclinations in the matter, but he 
 never succeeded in finding any encouragement for the total suppression of 
 this "pest." This in spite of the fact that his own little war fleet was in 
 position to greatly benefit by the murderous innovation. He placed the 
 submarine in the same class as the Maxim silencer, saying that both 
 were unfit for use by decent men and governments. Had Emperor Francis 
 Joseph lived on, some parts of the history of the Great War would have 
 a different aspect. There would have been no renewal of the use of the 
 submarine against merchant shipping. From that angle a long life and 
 tenure of trust was still too short to accomplish its best. 
 
 Diplomacy of the Barbed- Wire Brand 
 
 What Count Tisza thought in February, 1916, was known in Berlin, 
 of course. It is quite possible that up to the "Sussex" affair that was 
 not as well understood, as it was when the first notes on this subject 
 arrived from Washington. The Hungarian premier had counselled caution, 
 and the records of submarine warfare of that period show that his words 
 were not entirely lost. Commanders of German submarines were more 
 careful than they had been, but seem to have fallen victim, in the case 
 of the "Sussex" to the hazards of their metier. The sinking of the ship 
 on March 24th, caused the government of the United States to go into 
 n^otiations with the German government in regard more to the general 
 principles of German submarine warfare as to specific instances. Many 
 
DlPtOlViACY OF THE BARBED-WIRfe BRAND 315 
 
 notes were exchanged and as the result of this Germany declared in the 
 note dated May 4th, 1916, her position to be as follows: 
 
 "As the German Government has repeatedly declared, it can- 
 not dispense with the use of the submarine weapon in the conduct 
 of warfare against enemy trade. The German government, how- 
 ever, has now decided to make a further concession in adopting 
 the methods of submarine warfare to the interests of the neutrals ; 
 in reaching this decision the German government has been actuated 
 by considerations which are above the level of the disputed 
 question. 
 
 **The German government attaches no less importance to the 
 sacred principles of humanity than the Government of the United 
 States. Again, it fully takes into account that both Governments 
 have for many years cooperated in developing international law 
 in conformity with these principles, the ultimate object of which 
 has been always to confine warfare on sea and on land to the 
 armed forces of the belligerents and to safeguard, as far as pos- 
 sible, non-combatants against the horrors of war. 
 
 *'For in answer to the appeal of the United States government 
 on behalf of the sacred principles of humanity and international 
 law, the German Government must repeat once more that it was 
 not the German but the British government which, ignoring all the 
 accepted rules of international law, has extended this terrible war 
 to the lives and property of non-combatants, having no regard 
 whatever for the interests and rights of the neutrals and non- 
 combatants that through this method of warfare have been 
 seriously injured. 
 
 "In self-defense against the illegal conduct of British warfare, 
 while fighting a bitter struggle for her national existence, Germany 
 had to resort to the hard but effective weapon of submarine war- 
 fare. 
 
 "The German people knows that the Government of the 
 United States has the power to confine this war to the armed forces 
 of the belligerent countries in the interest of humanity and the 
 maintenance of international law. The Government of the United 
 States would have been certain of attaining this end had it been 
 determined to insist against Great Britain on its incontestable 
 rights to the freedom of the seas. But, as matters stand, the 
 German people is under the impression that the Government of the 
 United States, while demanding that Germany, struggling for her 
 existence, shall restrain the use of an effective weapon, and 
 while making the compliance with these demands a condition for 
 the maintenance of relations with Germany, confines itself to pro- 
 tests against the illegal methods adopted by Germany's 
 enemies. ... 
 
 "Accordingly, the German Government . . . does not 
 doubt that the Government of the United States will now demand 
 and insist that the British Government shall forthwith observe 
 
316 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the rules of international law universally recognized before the 
 war, as they are laid down in the notes presented by the Govern- 
 ment of the United States to the British Government on December 
 28, 1914, and November 5, 1915. Should the steps taken by the 
 Government of the United States not attain the object it desires, 
 to have the laws of humanity followed by all belligerent nations, 
 the German Government would then be facing a new situation, in 
 which it must reserve itself complete liberty of decision." * 
 
 In the reply of Mr. Lansing, dated May 8th, no prospect was left 
 the German Government that its suggestions, in regard to Great Britain, 
 would be accepted. That note said with curt brevity, what Count Tisza 
 expected it would, as he stated to me: 
 
 "The Government of the United States feels it necessary to 
 state that it takes it for granted that the Imperial German Govern- 
 ment does not intend to imply that the maintenance of its newly 
 announced policy is in any way contingent upon the course or result 
 of diplomatic negotiations between the Government of the United 
 States and any other belligerent Government. ... In order, 
 however, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, the Government 
 of the United States notifies the Imperial Government that it can- 
 not for a moment entertain, much less discuss, a suggestion that 
 respect by German naval authorities for the rights of citizens of 
 the United States upon the high seas should in any way or in 
 the slightest degree be made contingent upon the conduct of any 
 other Government affecting the rights of neutrals and non- 
 combatants. Responsibility in such matters is single, not joint; 
 absolute, not relative." 
 
 It is safe to say that future text writers of International Law will 
 not agree with Mr. Lansing, if he be the author of the note, that ''respon- 
 sibility in such matters is single, not joint; absolute, not relative." It 
 would be, morally, just as easy for a government to set up the principle 
 in jurisprudence that a law broken leads to prosecution in the one case 
 and immunity in the other. In other words a crime would not be a 
 crime in all cases, or at least enforcement of the law in one instance 
 would not of necessity have to lead to enforcement in another. 
 
 In the United States Senate were men who did not think in so 
 peculiar a groove. After long consideration of the problem they arrived 
 at the conclusion that it would be best to warn American citizens against 
 travelling on armed vessels in the mercantile service. In a letter to Mr. 
 Stone, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Mr. 
 Wilson refused to do so. To the impartial observer it would seem that to 
 listen to the advice of the Senate in this instance would have been the 
 least the president could have done after showing himself so accommodating 
 
 • It was under this stipulation that Germany resumed the submarine warfare on a larger 
 scale in 1917. 
 
DIPLOMACY OF THE BARBED-WIRE BRAND 317 
 
 to the decrees of the British government known as "The Declaration of 
 London Orders in Council." 
 
 For the sake of argument it may be conceded that the detention of 
 all neutral ships in British ports of search, the restraints on American 
 commerce, the violation of neutral mail, and the exercise of a ruthless 
 censorship, were not in themselves as grave an offense as the killing of 
 American citizens in the war zones of the seas, and that the threat to 
 sever relations was much more justified and merited in the case of Germany 
 than it would have been in the case of Great Britain. But those who 
 are familiar with the attitude of the government of the United States to- 
 ward native-born and naturalized citizens of the United States must 
 at least wonder why it was that such solicitude was shown in the one 
 case and not in the other. Under the aegis of the Department of state the 
 several United States diplomatic missions in Europe, and the consular 
 service, denied every obligation which the natural contract of citizenship, 
 or the contract of naturalization, sets up for the government as against 
 the loyalty of the subject. In other words, while citizens of the United 
 States, usually members of crews of British armed merchant ships, could 
 endanger, without hindrance, the relations between the United States and 
 Germany, citizens of the United States in Europe were at the mercy of 
 whatever government wanted to annoy them, and force them into military 
 service, may be, as soon as some diplomatic secretary or consular official, 
 had refused to extend a passport or issue one, in compliance with in- 
 structions from the State Department. 
 
 State Department Policy Not G)nsistent 
 
 It came to a point where such citizens were arrested and jailed for 
 days at a time by the belligerent governments, without a government 
 anxious for the preservation of the rights abroad of the citizen caring 
 one iota. Is it possible that the lack of co-ordination in the several divisions 
 of the State Department made it impossible for Mr. Wilson to know what 
 happened on terra iirma, while the incidents of the high seas received his 
 special care? 
 
 Be that as it may, the German government, knowing only too well 
 that in regard to protecting its citizens on land, the United States govern- 
 ment had not yet departed from its rule "to do nothing," selected to put 
 upon the attitude of Mr. Wilson, in regard to citizens at sea, its own 
 interpretation. 
 
 Regardless of the highhanded manner in which this government would 
 now and then proceed against citizens of the United States, it had as a 
 glorious example of the State Department's indifference toward the govern- 
 
318 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 ment's obligation incident to citizenship, the case of Mr. Frank Ghiloni, 
 a native born American, whom the ItaUan government detained at Barga, 
 Italy, January, 1915, who was later forced into the Italian military service, 
 in the face of a year's good-natured protests, and who did not secure 
 his release until he had been made a prisoner of war by the Austro- 
 Hungarian army, after being wounded, February, 1916. 
 
 Mr. Lansing handled this very interesting case in the following tele- 
 gram to Mr. Penfield, United States ambassador at Vienna : 
 
 "Ask release Ghiloni upon his sworn statement that he will 
 return immediately United States, and will not leave United 
 States during continuance of war. Say Department received 
 positive assurances Ghiloni impressed into Italian army against his 
 will, and upon such assurances Department endeavored obtain 
 his release. Department assured Ghiloni will not revisit Italy 
 during war." 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian government consented to release Ghiloni in 
 case certain conditions were complied with. To this Mr. Lansing replied, 
 under date May 8th, 1916: 
 
 "Mr. Penfield is informed that the first two conditions for the 
 release of Mr. Ghiloni mentioned in his telegram of May 5th are 
 agreed to by the Department. As to the third condition, while an 
 absolute guarantee can not be given, the Department does not 
 believe that Mr. Ghiloni would be seized by the entente powers. 
 The Government of the United States does not recognize the right 
 of the entente powers to seize Mr. Ghiloni, and it would demand 
 his immediate release in case he was seized. Of course it is 
 understood that Mr. Ghiloni would not enter territory of Italy, 
 and his return to the United States by the Scandinavian route 
 would seem advisable." 
 
 On June 19th, Mr. Ghiloni was set free by the Austro-Hungarian 
 government, and left for home. 
 
 It seems that what the Government of the United States was not able 
 to accomplish in Italy it eflfected in Austria-Hungary, despite the fact that 
 the Italian government violated the person of the man, while the Austro- 
 Hungarian government had the perfectly sound defense that it had not 
 taken in the person of Mr. Ghiloni a citizen of the United States, but an 
 Italian combatant on the field of battle. Mr. Lansing merely believed that 
 Mr. Ghiloni would not be seized by the Entente Powers, and he must 
 have hoped that his demand for immediate release would in this case work 
 better than it had before. It was to be understood, of course, that Mr. 
 Ghiloni was not to enter Italian territory, and it would be best if he re- 
 turned to his home by the Scandinavian route. Such is the concern of 
 governments for their citizens in times of war, such their consistency ! 
 
STATE DE;PARTMENT POLICY NOT CONSISTENT 319 
 
 There were many such cases, and, so far as Italy is concerned, they 
 did not always come to a happy conclusion for the subject by being found 
 wounded on the battlefield by the Austrians. On the other hand, the 
 Austro-Hungarian government did never feel that the detention and im- 
 pressment into military service of citizens of the United States, even if 
 they were of Austro-Hungarian origin or descent, would greatly augment 
 its armed forces. 
 
 Such matters depend upon conditions over which the plain man has 
 no control. 
 
 The Cause of Future Political Moves 
 
 With these things known to the Austro-Hungarian government many 
 of the notes of the government of the United States fell on ground that 
 was ill prepared. But the many bitter pills that came from the Department 
 of State were swallowed heroically. The object was to keep the United 
 States out of the War if that were possible, and with that in view every- 
 thing possible was done to meet the views of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lansing. 
 
 Throughout the late summer of 1916 the German and Austro- 
 Hungarian governments let it be understood that the crop outlook was 
 favorable. But the men whom I interviewed on this subject did not seem 
 any too sincere in their statements. One of them, Dr. Carl Helfferich, 
 at that time food administrator of the Prussian government, merely hoped 
 that the crops, on which so much depended, would be as good as wished 
 for. He admitted in the course of a long conversation that there would 
 be trouble in store for the populations of Central Europe, if there was 
 the usual bad spell of weather to make harvesting precarious. September 
 is a most unreliable month in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Very often 
 it will rain heavily for the space of three weeks, and it is nothing unusual 
 to have the entire month and part of October one succession of rains 
 and cloudy skies. This condition was aggravated by the fact that poor 
 cultivation of soil and lack of fertilizers retarded the development and 
 ripening of the crops in 1916. 
 
 Such were the conditions in that year. Crops everywhere fell below 
 expectation. A trip from Berlin through northern Germany, another to the 
 districts along the Dutch border, one through Rhenish Prussia, Hessia- 
 Darmstadt, and the provinces of Hanover, Saxony and Brandenburg, 
 showed me that crop conditions in Germany were worse than they had ever 
 been since the war, applying averages. In the kingdoms of Saxony, Bavaria 
 and Wuerttemberg conditions were a little better, but still below the worst 
 average of peace. 
 
 It was no better in Austria and Hungary. Mr. Moritz Benedikt, 
 owner and editor-in-chief of the Vienna Neue Freie Presse, a man well 
 
320 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 versed in the affairs of the monarchy, and one of the most influential peace 
 advocates in Austria, confided to me one day that the encouraging reports 
 which the government was spreading through the press had no other founda- 
 tion than to still the fears of the public. These reports had the peculiar 
 feature of admitting that in some localities the crops were really bad, but 
 in all others they were said to be so much the better. Care was taken, of 
 course, to have different sets of reports, and complete surveillance by the 
 press and its news channels enabled the government to say that in Carinthia 
 the crops were bad, but they were good in Bohemia, while in Bohemia 
 the report would have it vice versa. 
 
 What conditions really were I learned on a trip to the Rumanian front 
 in Transylvania, which took me through central Hungary and through the 
 valley of the Danube. I learned that an unfavorable spring, a wet summer 
 and fall had resulted in an almost complete failure of the wheat crop. 
 The only thing that was doing well was the sugar beet, and in some dis- 
 tricts maize had given fairly good returns. In Transylvania I found that 
 the Rumanians had driven off all livestock and had burned most of the 
 crops on the stalk. Conditions there were so bad that the population of that 
 rich agricultural district would have to be supported from other parts 
 of Hungary. 
 
 On my way back from the front, three weeks later, I took another 
 route and found that in northern Hungary the situation was no better. To 
 make sure of the impressions I had gained, I undertook some other trips 
 in October, to Galicia, Bohemia, Moravia, Upper and Lower Austria, 
 Steiermark, Carinthia, Istria, Croatia and Bosnia. When this had been 
 done I felt sure that the end was not far off, if the Centralist troops could 
 not find in Rumania enough grain and foodstuffs to offset the failure of 
 crops at home. The governments encouraged the spreading of news to the 
 eflfect that the grain taken in Rumania would tide the Central Powers 
 over. I knew better. From General Falkenhayn, commander of the Ninth 
 German army in Rumania, I had learned that whatever food there was 
 found in Rumania would be kept for the soldiers. The civil populations 
 would get the surplus, if there was any, which he doubted. 
 
 All publics are plagued with short memories, and so it came that few 
 brought the stricter regulation of food consumption into relation with the 
 sanguine reports concerning the harvest which had been circulated in the 
 summer. Rations were reduced in Germany, and more so even in Austria 
 and Hungary. But the measures taken had also one advantage, and that 
 was that finally food distribution had been put on a more or less equitable 
 basis, though illicit trading in foodstuffs was never wholly eradicated. 
 
 Already in September of that year was discussed the possibility of 
 re-opening and extending submarine warfare. As yet the public was not 
 
THE CAUSE OF FUTURE POLITICAL MOVES 321 
 
 in the confidence of the two governments. Those of us who spent much 
 of their time in the government offices knew well enough that the question 
 was up. But the American correspondents were averse to mentioning it 
 in print. In the first place there was the censorship, and whether a cause 
 be just or not the average man cannot help sympathizing with a starving 
 population, especially when he himself has to starve along with it, as I 
 did quite often, going without bread on many occasions, because, there 
 was either none to be had, or the product of the Austrian bakers was so 
 poor that one did not dare eat it. When a Vienna baker fails to make 
 bread that is at all palatable, the materials he uses must be anything but 
 flour, which was the case, of course. To a small quantity of flour was 
 added anything that was suitable, from dried clover hay to a meal made 
 of frozen potatoes. 
 
 From that angle the submarine war seemed justified. As George 
 Bernard Shaw has expressed it, drowning quickly women and children 
 is to be preferred to starving them to death slowly. I believe that the 
 average statesman, be he Neo-Idealist or Megali-Idealist, or just a plain 
 reactionary, would accord that even to the rat he caught in a trap. At 
 least such is the practice among civilized peoples. 
 
 The Ever-Wakeful British and French Censors 
 
 The withdrawal of diplomatic privileges from the Austro-Hungarian 
 diplomatic mission in Washington had, as I have already pointed out, made 
 it impossible for the Vienna government to ascertain from its chargS 
 d'affaires, what a resumption of the submarine warfare would lead to. 
 The Berlin government was no better off, of course, and the result was that 
 in the Wilhelmstrasse and on the Ballhausplatz nobody knew to what extent 
 the government of the United States would carry out its ill-concealed in- 
 tention indicated in Mr. Lansing's note of May 8th, 1916. In Berlin men 
 thought that German propaganda in the United States had somewhat 
 modified the attitude of the American public, and possibly, that of the 
 United States government. 
 
 The American correspondents also had been permitted to express them- 
 selves a little more frankly in regard to economic conditions in Central 
 Europe. There is no doubt that this was done intentionally, despite the 
 immediate consequence, which was giving comfort to the enemies of the 
 Central Empires. American correspondents in Berlin were never so 
 copiously quoted in the press of the Allied countries as when in the fall 
 of 1916 they wrote of general economic conditions in Central Europe. My 
 dispatches used to reach me again through the Swiss and Dutch papers, and 
 there was many an occasion to wonder at the depth of depravity some 
 
322 I'HE CRAFT SINISTfil^ 
 
 editors will sink to in times of war. It was well that the Austro-Hungarian 
 censors were responsible for what I had telegraphed— it was well in the 
 light of an experience I had as the result of what French and British editors 
 did with my dispatches. 
 
 While French and British newspapers, and to some extent the Swiss 
 publications, were no longer given free entry into Austria and Hungary, 
 copies of all of these papers reached the governments in Vienna and 
 Budapest, of course. They were sent in by the Austro-Hungarian diplo- 
 matic missions at Bern, The Hague and Copenhagen and were minutely 
 examined by men expert in such matters. 
 
 Thus it came that my distorted dispatches would reach Vienna after 
 making the rounds in the French and British daily press. While I did not 
 sign my name to my articles and dispatches, I was nevertheless easily 
 identified by mention of the sources of origin, especially since I was the 
 only American correspondent in Austria-Hungary and the Balkans, though 
 other men would drop in and out. To give the garbled version of what I 
 had actually written additional prestige, re-publication in the British and 
 French dailies would be accompanied by the remark that this dispatch 
 came from the Associated Press correspondent at Vienna, Budapest, Triest, 
 Sofia or wherever I happened to be. In that mannner the culprit, as some 
 Austrians saw it, could always be easily identified. 
 
 In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, especially in its press 
 department these "dispatches" of mine were often brought to my notice. 
 It was also suggested that I protest against such use of my service and 
 name, but that was out of the question, of course. It would have served 
 no purpose whatsoever to write a letter of protest to one of these journalis- 
 tic liars, especially since I was dependent upon the good will of their 
 censors to let such of my matter pass as they thought promotive of their 
 own public interest. Like many another journalist so was I obliged to 
 worry about getting a certain amount of copy through for bread-and- 
 butter considerations. 
 
 Here again I was run against the condition that dispatches of mine, 
 which the British and French censors had suppressed in transit to New 
 York, would later appear distorted in the press of the Allied countries. 
 There was no means of ascertaining how this was done. But it was done ! 
 Either the censorship authorities turned these news telegrams over to a 
 central propaganda bureau of theirs, or the news came into possession 
 of the Allied press through the Renter and Havas affiliations of the 
 Associated Press of America. Without actually adding anything to 
 what I had written, the dispatch could be made to serve the purposes 
 of the Allied governments by being given only in part. Such, indeed, was 
 the usual method of procedure. What was bad for Austria-Hungary was 
 
THE EVER- WAKEFUL ALLIED CENSORS 323 
 
 printed; what was favorable was suppressed — quite the commonest and 
 easiest form of propaganda there is. It is all the more effective since the 
 use of a foreign source of reliability is made possible in that manner. 
 
 Baron von Montlong, chief of the Vienna foreign office press depart- 
 ment, understood these things, but at the headquarters of the chief military 
 censor, then at Baden, near Vienna, they were not understood. In this 
 manner, then, it came about that eight of my dispatches, dealing with the 
 food and fuel situation in and near Vienna, were held up by the military 
 censors and carefully weighed. 
 
 Before that could be done the authority of the foreign office press 
 department had to be attacked. My dispatches of an economic or political 
 nature were censored in the press department of the foreign office, and after 
 that left from Post Office No. 8 without hitch. But the military censors 
 were getting the garbled versions of them through the foreign newspapers. 
 It was decided by the military censorship to review all of my dispatches 
 censored in the Foreign Office, and the result of that was not very pleasant 
 for me. 
 
 I was cited to appear before Dr. Brandl, chief of the Vienna political 
 police. Like all his ilk, the man was grave and pompous, and was 
 ready to carry out the instructions from the chief military censor, which 
 were the usual — expulsion from Austro-Hungarian territory. 
 
 But this time the proviso was added that I could once more repeat 
 my offense — writing newspaper articles detrimental to the public interest 
 of Austria-Hungary. The very moment that was done I would be under 
 arrest and on the train going to Buchs, in Switzerland, where I, no doubt, 
 would be received by my friends of the Entente. Said friends, undoubtedly, 
 would give me a hearty welcome, seeing that I was so ardent a supporter 
 of their cause. Austro-Hungarian police officials would see that I met 
 none of them so far as Feldkirch, the frontier station. 
 
 After the man had become a little better acquainted with me, he pro- 
 duced in support of the action a large folio full of clippings and manuscript 
 telegrams of mine, which were the gravamen of the military censors. The 
 collection was quite interesting. It included many British and French clip- 
 pings, among them items from the London Times, Daily Mail, Chronicle 
 and others, while the French press was represented by the Matin, Journal 
 des Debats, Echo de Paris, Pigaro, ard the Journal de Geneve. Then came 
 eight of my detained telegrams, fished up in Postoffice No. 8, and a score 
 of mail articles. There was also a large report on my activity. There was 
 no doubt in the mind of the several chair-warming lieutenants, captains, 
 majors, colonels and generals of censorship, that I was truly a dangerous 
 man to have around. Items this and that proved conclusively that I was 
 an ardent admirer of the British and French, despite the fact that my 
 
324 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 record as a citizen of the South African Republic was rather against this 
 assumption. It seemed to be a fact, however, that I was a man of the 
 Botha and Smuts type. 
 
 I ended the interview by saying that I would take the matter up with 
 Count Czemin, the minister of foreign affairs. When the chief of the 
 political police heard that I had access to His Excellency, he became 
 rather diffident. 
 
 "To be quite frank about this," he said, "I do not fully agree 
 with the military censors, I am afraid that they have taken a snap judg- 
 ment. From the matter in your own handwriting I should judge that you 
 have been fair enough, and I know what takes place with news dispatches. 
 They are tailored to suit one's own ends. You understand, of course, that 
 I am merely carrying out the orders of the chief military censor." 
 
 I understood that, and on the same afternoon there was dispatched 
 from the bureau of the private cabinet of Count Czernin a rather sharp 
 communication to the chief military censor, the burden of which was that 
 the military authorities, before acting in regard to foreign correspondents, 
 no matter under what circimistances, had better consult before the Ministry 
 of the Exterior. An apologetic letter, promising that this would be done, 
 reached Count Czernin on the following day. 
 
 An Attempt to Believe the Incredible 
 
 Emperor Charles looked upon all military and political measures with 
 the eyes of the promising statesman he was. To get peace as quickly as 
 possible was his sole thought. Count Tisza supported him in this. 
 
 In Austria-Hungary there was not at that time a single man who 
 wished to protract the tragedy that had the nation in its grip. Mr. Benedict, 
 owner and editor of the Vienna Neue Preie Presse, was agitating peace 
 in his paper to the limits of the feasible, and Dr. Henry Lammasch, one 
 of the contributors of this daily, and probably the best expert on Interna- 
 tional Law anywhere, did the same. The thing went so far that the govern- 
 ment, though anxious for peace itself, had to suggest to the Neue Preie 
 Presse and nearly every other newspaper in the monarchy, not to overdo 
 it, lest the enemies find more comfort than was wise to give them. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian pacifists had the greatest confidence in Mr. 
 Wilson. Mr. Benedict went so far as to offer me a most generous rate 
 for articles that were to point out, from the American point of view, just 
 why Mr. Wilson would in the end see to it that Great Britain would not 
 be able to carry out her program of starving the Central Empires into 
 submission. 
 
 The matter was taken up at a sort of editorial conference, which young 
 
AN ATTEMPT TO BELIEVE THE INCREDIBLE 325 
 
 Dr. Benedikt, son of the editor, and a well known Austrian journalist, 
 also attended. I was told that the Austro-Hungarian public was getting 
 very restless, that the food problem was crushing, that thousands of babies 
 were dying for the lack of proper nourishment, and that under these circum- 
 stances I could well afford to break the rule of my service, not to write 
 for other publications without specific permission. 
 
 My reply was that under the circumstances I would not let that rule 
 stand in the way, so far as an unsigned article, or several such, was con- 
 cerned, but that, on the other hand, I would not be able to write of Mr. 
 Wilson in that light, because of my inability to say whether or no he was 
 of that mind. To Mr. Benedikt that was quite a shock. For some reason 
 or other he was under the impression that this was my opinion of Mr. 
 Wilson also. I told him that he was mistaken. So far as I knew and could 
 ascertain from the American papers which reached the United States 
 embassy in Vienna, especially the Philadelphia Public Ledger, New York 
 World and Times, and several others, there was not the least likelihood of 
 Mr. Wilson ever taking that stand. I considered it entirely out of the 
 question that the government of the United States would do anything, 
 contrary to the wishes of the Allies, that would alleviate food conditions in 
 Central Europe. Washington had completely and irrevocably acquiesced 
 into the "Declaration of London Orders in Council," despite the fact 
 that now and then the subject of International Law was still referred to in 
 diplomatic correspondence. 
 
 To the Benedikts that came as a surprise. It was then argued that an 
 article from me on Mr. Wilson would at least be a comfort to the people 
 of Austria, provided it was so written that comfort could be had from it. 
 I dismissed the subject by stating again that I was unwilling to write for 
 a purpose. 
 
 A day or two later I had a letter from a Dr. Lippe, one of the editors 
 of the paper, to see Mr. Benedikt again soon. The owner of the Neue 
 Freie Presse, a paper often referred to as the Times or Thunderer of the 
 Continent, had been taken sick. When I looked him up at his residence 
 I found that my refusal to write on Mr. Wilson had worried him greatly. 
 
 "You mean to say," he began, "that you are not of the opinion that Mr. 
 Wilson will in the end prevent the population of the Central states from 
 being starved as a measure of war?" 
 
 '^Exactly, that is what I mean," was my reply. "The offer which Mr. 
 Bryan made was not accepted by the British and French governments, as 
 you know, and the tone of the "Sussex" note should have left no doubt 
 in your mind as to what the attitude of the United States government 
 now is." 
 
 "Then it would seem that all is lost," said the old man. "The Allied 
 
326 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 governments have* but to keep up this war long enough— to win it." 
 
 "Such is also my opinion, Mr. Benedikt !" I said. "The conditions are 
 against you, even if the submarine war is resumed and on a larger scale." 
 
 Mr. Benedikt was rather surprised that I mentioned this subject. 
 Being a man of great political influence and good connections in the 
 government, he knew what was going on, but had no reason to suspect that 
 news of the proposed renewal of submarine warfare had reached me also. 
 
 "Then you have heard of it" he asked. "What will be the result 
 of it?" 
 
 "At least war between the United States and Germany," I replied. 
 
 "And we — Austria-Hungary?" came the question. 
 
 "That depends on what your government does," I answered. "If you 
 do join Germany, you will probably find yourself in the same position. If 
 Austria-Hungary stands aloof she may escape a declaration of war." 
 
 "Which would not make much difference, of course," remarked the 
 editor. "We are defeated, if Germany is defeated." 
 
 "You might get better terms in the end," I suggested. 
 
 "Not from the Russians and Italians!" put in Mr. Benedikt. "More- 
 over, Germany has stood by us. We must stand by her. In that case we 
 will go down together. 
 
 But the old man found it far from easy to accept these obvious and 
 very imminent aspects of the case. For hours and hours, thereafter, he 
 would try to find comfort in what he might induce me to say in the course 
 of an argument. But, I am afraid his efforts were futile. While at times 
 I would try to improve his spirits, I never allowed him to think that from 
 the United States the Central Powers had anything to expect but what 
 they had been given in the "Sussex" note. The only way of getting food 
 for the starving civil population was in surrendering. I finally permitted 
 myself to be persuaded into writing several articles for the Neue Freie 
 Presse in which I occupied myself with the attitude of the United States 
 congress. Of the future I never said anything, because what that future 
 would bring I knew, not as the result of inspection and speculation, but 
 from information that reached me directly from the Department of State. 
 
 The First of Two Major Political Moves 
 
 There was not much in prospect for the Central Powers when Novem- 
 ber of that year came. The food situation was bad. On the West Front no 
 gains had been made, instead, large numbers of the best troops had been 
 uselessly sacrificed by Falkenhayn at Verdun. That, indeed, was the sum 
 total of military achievements of the German troops on the West Front 
 when winter approached. The British government was calling new armies 
 
THE FIRST OF TWO MAJOR POLITICAL MOVES 327 
 
 into being, and with every British plant suitable for the purpose now busy 
 making munitions and ammunition, the outlook in Flanders and France 
 was most discouraging to the men in Vienna and Berlin. On the Julian 
 front, the Italians had not made gains that were worth the sacrifices in men 
 and material, but Triest, for all that, was almost within reach of Cadorna's 
 armies. Only the strongly fortified Hermada position, near Opcina, kept 
 the Italians back. In Rumania things were as stalemate as on the remainder 
 of the Russian front, and it was known that General Brousiloflf would in 
 the spring resume his operations with increased vigor. The Bulgarians were 
 heartily sick of the war, and the Turks, though no longer obliged to fight 
 the enemy at the gates of the capital, had all they could do to slow up the 
 British advance in Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, also, the want of metals of 
 the better sort was making itself felt in the war supply departments — 
 substitution everwhere had been more or less a failure, or at best a costly 
 expedient. 
 
 On the other hand, the Central troops had done well on the defensive, 
 and the policy of the Entente governments, as again seen in Rumania, had 
 sufifered serious defeat. It was thought, in Vienna first, and in Berlin later, 
 that the suggesting of peace might, under these conditions, have some good 
 results. 
 
 That the peace note of Emperor William II had the peculiar tone it 
 took was due to two circumstances. 
 
 When a man is in the market for a horse he does not say that he wants 
 to buy a horse for, let us say, five hundred dollars, but that he wants an 
 animal of a certain kind. That being the case in all transactions of give 
 and take, the peace ofifer of William II could not very well say what 
 Germany was going to pay for the thing it wanted. 
 
 To make the offer less haughty, might have been good policy, had there 
 been assurance that this would not have been interpreted as a sign of 
 weakness. The governments of the Allies were well informed what 
 economic conditions in Germany and the countries of her allies were, but in 
 the end they would, for all that, give the psychological character of the 
 peace proposal much more attention than the reports of their agents. 
 
 Be that as it may, the proposal was rejected by London and Paris in 
 a manner that left no doubt as to the temper and intentions of those 
 governments. While Petrograd expressed itself similarly, the Central 
 governments had a little more encouragement from that quarter. For 
 some time efforts had been made through the Grand ducal family of 
 Hessia-Darmstadt to establish some sort of understanding between the 
 HohenzoUern and Romanoff houses. The mail incident to this was carried 
 in the German and Russian diplomatic mail pouches, and the point of 
 exchange was Copenhagen for a while, Stockholm being selected later. 
 
328 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Nothing definite had so far been accomplished. Though the Czarina 
 was doing her best to interest Russian government officials in behalf of 
 peace, the Sazonoflf-Nikolaievitch element was still too strong to let these 
 come to anything tangible. Czar Nicholas was still the man he had been 
 when his chief of staff undertook to lie to him about the mobilization— • 
 a vacillating servant of other people's plans. As an autocrat he will certainly 
 go down in history as the very antithesis of what an autocrat is supposed 
 to be. 
 
 The refusal of the Allied governments to consider the peace proposal 
 was a hard blow to Emperor Charles. Through my connections at the court 
 I learned that he took it very much to heart. So far, he had consistently 
 and firmly opposed the resumption of submarine warfare upon merchant 
 men. He felt that the next step would bring the United States into the 
 war, and while he was a little skeptical as to what that might mean militarily, 
 he realized that the moral and material support gained by the enemies of the 
 Central Powers in that manner would in the end bring defeat to his army 
 and those of his associates. Men like Count Tisza, moreover, answered 
 such arguments as: The United States could not hurt us more if it was 
 an open enemy, with the remark that this might not be the case. Count 
 Tisza would point out that military unpreparedness in the United States had 
 no meaning under the circumstances. Great Britain had raised armies 
 under similar conditions and had transported some of them even greater 
 distances. If England had found a Kitchener, America might do that also. 
 
 But the advocates of submarine warfare had a good argument for 
 this. The number of submarines built and the technical improvements made 
 would end the War before the United States could put a large army in the 
 field. With the exception of a few hare-brained chauvinists there was 
 nobody in any of the Central Powers governments, so far as I have been 
 able to ascertain, who did not admit that if the submarine failed the war 
 was lost, even if it were possible to hold the fronts long enough to make 
 the Entente publics a little more war-tired than they were. The entrance 
 into the War by the United States would hearten these peoples into a further 
 submission to the hardships of a protracted campaign of such proportions, 
 and if the United States needed as much as three years to raise the needed 
 armies that could make no difference. Defeat was the sure portion in the 
 end. Against the flagging spirit of the Central populations would have to 
 be placed the determination of the Allied governments and publics to hold 
 out until the armies of the United States should be ready. While the one 
 group was starving, the other would have the markets of the world to 
 draw upon. Subjection, therefore, was inevitable. 
 
 But as will happen in such cases the very arguments against a renewal 
 of submarine warfare brought into stronger relief the need for the measure 
 
THE FIRST OF TWO MAJOR POLITICAL MOVES 329 
 
 and the injustice of the condition against which the submarine was to 
 be employed, as the Central public saw it. Things had reached a stage in 
 which terms and conceptions of International Law had no longer any mean- 
 ing. On all sides the argument was heard that in self-defense all means 
 are fair. The existence of a means suited for the purpose, if not the prac- 
 tice, of cruiser warfare upon merchant ships, was looked upon as sufficient 
 to legalize its acts, and in this, it must be stated, a good many text 
 writers on International Law could be cited, though as Mr. Lansing had 
 said in a note, they were in the minority. 
 
 On the other hand, Maritime Law had been given its character by the 
 acts and views of governments of maritime nations, so that the public 
 interest of such nations was far better protected than the public interest 
 of nations living away from the sea. The traditional policy of the United 
 States in regard to Maritime Law, that "free ships make free goods," had 
 indeed fared badly at the hands of the British government, and even the 
 government of the United States, but there was no inclination in Washing- 
 ton to look upon the transgression of one as the justification for the trans- 
 gression of another, whether the application of the Orders in Privy Council 
 was unfair to the other or not. 
 
 That the men in Berlin and Vienna were impatient of this attitude, 
 need not surprise us, since they, necessarily, saw the thing in the light of 
 their own public interest, not in the one of the government whose population 
 was growing rich on the war orders of the enemies of the Central Powers 
 group of belligerents. 
 
 For all that. Emperor Charles was hard to move when ultimately the 
 question was approached at a meeting held for the purpose at German gen- 
 eral headquarters, shortly after New Year in 1917. The discussions and 
 disputes lasted three days, and to get a settlement the matter was finally 
 left to the decision of Hindenburg, the taking of position for and against 
 having resulted in a draw. 
 
 Field-Marshall Hindenburg was not inclined to assume responsibility 
 for the step. When finally he had been assured that he was to act only as 
 a judge, who was to pass on the practicability of the measure, he consented 
 to make the decision. He had listened to argument pro and con for weeks, 
 and was fully familiar with every technical and political detail. He was 
 reported to me as having said: 
 
 "What the consequences of this step will be, in so far as the United 
 States is concerned, is clear, of course. The best we can hope for in that 
 direction is that a declaration of war will not follow. I think it will follow. 
 We have to consider then that war with the United States is inevitable. 
 What that means we know. 
 
 "The question then is: Will the submarine be able ta carry out the 
 
330 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 program it has been given in this scheme — ^in other words, has from the 
 mind of the naval experts been removed all doubt that the submarine can 
 (U) what they expect of it? 
 
 "Before I make the decision, I must ask the gentlemen of the naval 
 commission to once more go over their papers and plans with the utmost 
 care. If there be the slightest weakness in their conclusions I beg to have 
 it brought to my attention. It is better that we face those things now 
 than later." 
 
 As results have shown there was a weakness in the conclusions of the 
 naval experts. I have no means of knowing to what extent the ingenuity, 
 resources, and resourcefulness of the Allied naval services and engineers 
 were taken into consideration. Such things as depth bombs, the efficacy 
 of convoying, and the submarine facing merchant ships fully armed, must 
 have been considered. How the conditions thus arising were reconciled 
 with the great risks taken I have not learned, of course, despite the fact 
 that my informant was a member of the Austro-Hungarian group at the 
 conference. It is possible that the ingenuity, resourcefulness and willing- 
 ness of the United States '*to go the limit" were not properly weighed; 
 these, in fact, were totally unknown factors then so far as the War was 
 concerned. My own impression is that Great Britain's timid naval per- 
 formance of the past was the only thing taken into account. Thus the 
 grave error was made. Emperor Charles and Count Czernin accepted the 
 decision made by Hindenburg, and a few days later, Bethmann-Hollweg 
 made the announcement, in the Reichstag, that Germany would resume 
 submarine warfare against merchantmen of any nationality, if found 
 within the extended zones of war or proscription. 
 
XV 
 
 DIPLOMACY AT CROSS PURPOSES 
 
 SINCE diplomatists at present are not accredited by one government 
 to another, but are looked upon as the personal representatives of 
 the heads of governments, b)e they presidents of republics or 
 monarchs, it is necessary, of course, to re-accredit the ambassador or 
 minister in case another sovereign ascends the throne, or another president 
 is inaugurated. 
 
 It was so, when after the death of Francis Joseph, the successor to 
 the crowns of Austria and Hungary, Archduke Charles Francis Joseph 
 took charge of the affairs of state. Mr. Wilson sent to Mr. Penfield, the 
 United States ambassador at Vienna, a large carton, neatly engraved, with 
 the formal accreditation of Mr. Penfield to His Majesty's person. Since 
 I read the contents of this message of cordial greetings and heartiest good 
 will, I could not but wonder how mighty a force etiquette becomes at 
 times, and how hypocritical it may be, withal. 
 
 Mr. Penfield was quite proud of the occasion. He was received at the 
 palace with all the pomp that will mark such ceremonies. There is nothing 
 that can make the average republican and democrat so glad as to be shown 
 honors by royalty. It is a failing of mankind that is easily explained, 
 understood and forgiven — even under circumstances such as they were 
 just then. My own share in the matter was that I sent a dispatch announc- 
 ing the event, and for the British and French censorship I must say that 
 they permitted the little notice to get past them without pruning. 
 
 This little formality attended to, the world resumed its round of 
 murder, mayhem and arson — continued also to foster diplomacy. 
 
 Very soon after this there was a little surprise for me. Without 
 wishing to infer that I can not be "scooped" by some enterprising colleague, 
 I came this time close to overlooking something very important. As a 
 matter of fact I saved what little reputation I have, or had, in the veriest 
 nick of time. My friends in the Vienna Foreign Office kept me well in- 
 formed, as a rule, but this time they did not think it necessary to speak 
 of the matter under consideration. 
 
 I had submitted to Baron von Montlong, the chief of the press depart- 
 ment, my usual budget of dispatches and mail matter, when quite casually 
 he said: 
 
 "I really do not see the necessity of sending an ambassador to Washing- 
 
 331 
 
332 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 ton if at the same time the government of the United States does not 
 restore diplomatic privileges to our mission there." 
 
 I did my best to show that I was not startled. Ambassador to Wash- 
 ington — where had I been all this time? 
 
 "Yes, that would be an improvement, Herr von Montlong" I said. 
 "But it is quite possible that diplomatic privileges will be restored." 
 
 The case was one that required caution. For one thing: At whose 
 suggestion was the ambassador going to be sent, and who was the man? 
 It certainly could not be Mr. Wilson who wanted to make this improve- 
 ment. But it occurred to me that, since Mr. Penfield had just presented his 
 credentials anew, and since the Austro-Hungarian government had before 
 that unsuccessfully tried to even up a little diplomatic representation in 
 Washington and Vienna, and was not likely to renew that effort so closely 
 upon the heels of the re-accreditation of the American ambassador, it must 
 be that the rapprochement came from the banks of the Potomac after all. 
 I felt also that it would have been a graceful thing to do that, since poor 
 Emperor-King Charles had as little to do with the European War as I had. 
 
 "So far there is no indication of that," continued the press department 
 chief. "Of course, we hope that it will come to that. Count Tarnowski 
 does not like going to Washington with that handicap on his hands. But 
 he hopes that this will be removed when he gets over there. You know he 
 is a Pole and quite able — very able in fact! We picked him — well, not 
 altogether we ourselves, Mr. Penfield suggested him — because the Poles are 
 said to enjoy a certain degree of popularity in the United States." 
 
 It seemed that Count Tarnow Tarnowski, whom I had met in Sofia 
 over a year ago, was not particularly anxious to go to Washington. It 
 had taken even a talk with the Emperor to get him interested in this 
 mission, which he considered quite useless. Of course, when Emperor 
 Charles requested him to do his best, there was nothing to do but go. 
 Right now the government of the United States was trying to secure safe 
 conduct for the new ambassador to Washington. So far the Allied govern- 
 ments did not seem to have paid much heed to the request of the American 
 government. Mr. von Montlong asked me not to mention the matter just 
 then — not until he had released it. A few days later he gave his consent 
 to a dispatch which I wrote in his office. 
 
 An Infested Diplomatic Woodpile 
 
 Since Mr. Penfield had not gone to the trouble of telling me anything 
 of this, I had no reason to discuss the matter with him. On the other hand, 
 I had made up my mind, now that I was "protected," as we newspaper 
 men put it, to see just what the American ambassador would do. 
 
AN INFESTED DIPLOMATIC WOODPILE 333 
 
 Days passed and Mr. Penfield did not say a word. Meanwhile, the 
 American embassy had informed the Vienna Foreign Office that it was 
 sorry to report that the British and French governments had refused to 
 give a safe conduct for as many persons as Count Tarnowski intended 
 to take with him. At first the suite was to be about a score, more or less. 
 It finally dwindled down to eight. 
 
 It was this seeming reluctancy on the part of the United States govern- 
 ment, to induce the governments in London and Paris to be generous in 
 this little matter of safe conduct, which first caused the Vienna government 
 to suspect that all was not well in the affaire Tarnowski. 
 
 Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld, formerly attached to the Austro-Hun- 
 garian embassy at Paris, and husband of a former Miss Iselin, had mean- 
 while been made chief of the private cabinet or chancery of Count Czernin. 
 I called on him to get some points in connection with the mission of Count 
 Tarnowski as ambassador to Washington cleared up. The thing had a most 
 irregular aspect, when I came to delve into it. An attache of the American 
 embassy had been led into telling me that it was the Austro-Hungarian 
 government which had suggested to Mr. Penfield that since he had been 
 received again as ambassador it would only be fair and proper if another 
 Austro-Hungarian ambassador be received by President Wilson. I knew 
 enough of diplomatic etiquette, and the attitude of governments, to feel 
 that this could not be so. Quite the last thing the men in the Vienna 
 Foreign Office would do was to become guilty of so gross a breach of good 
 diplomatic manners as to ask Mr. Wilson to receive an Austro-Hungarian 
 ambassador just because Emperor Charles had received the American am- 
 bassador. 
 
 Still there was a certain amount of evidence that pointed that way. 
 I could not for a moment believe that the United States government would 
 not take a firmer stand in the question of securing safe conduct for Count 
 Tarnowski and his party, if it had itself suggested the re-establishment on 
 a footing of equality of diplomatic relations with Vienna. But many things 
 were possible just then. It was not impossible, for instance, that the 
 government of the United States would be as congenial in this respect 
 as it had been in many others, so far as Great Britain was concerned. It 
 was necessary, therefore, to proceed with caution. 
 
 Count Tarnowski was staying at the Hotel Sacher. I learned that he 
 was greatly vexed at the turn' afif airs had taken. For a day or two it 
 seemed as if, after all, nothing would come of his trip. Though in a tight 
 fix, the Austro-Hungarian government was as yet not willing to make 
 concessions to the British government in an aflFair that did not concern 
 London as much as Washington, as it seemed. 
 
 With that stage reached I thought it best to consult Mr. Penfield. It 
 
334 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 was well to be careful in the presence of a man who could then and there 
 lift my passport and cancel it, as the "plenipotentiaries" of the embassy did 
 several times a week in other cases. But one or two hints brought Mr. 
 Penfield into action. He wanted to know how I came to know so much 
 about the appointment of Count Tarnowski, to which I replied, timidly 
 enough, that it was my duty to keep informed on so important an affair. 
 
 When enthusiastic or excited, Mr. Penlield had the habit of stabbing 
 the right arm-rest of his chair with one of the steel arrows that were thrown 
 down by the gross from aeroplanes, when the War was relatively new. 
 He would also repeat the last few words of a sentence several times. All 
 of this he did today. * 
 
 "Let me tell you, young man!" he said, "that I am sending Count 
 Tarnowski to Washington and nobody else — nobody else. Do you think 
 for a moment that I would sit and see a war come on without protecting 
 myself — protecting myself — myself. 
 
 "Not much! I am sending the Count to Washington. When the 
 moment comes — and let me tell it is not far off — I want to have somebody 
 in Washington for whom I am going to be exchanged. I trust these people 
 here, but you can't trust those Germans. They are likely to keep me here— 
 keep me here. 
 
 "But not if I know anything about it. That's why the Count goes to 
 Washington. Do you get that — ^get that?" 
 
 I admitted that this was clear to me, but humbly suggested that this 
 was a very unusual motive and a dangerous one for the appointment of 
 ambassadors — a sort of sending hostages in advance of a declaration of war. 
 
 "No, young man," continued the ambassador. "There are some things 
 you don't know anything about. And this is one of them. I am going to 
 have protection for myself and Mrs. Penfield when the day comes — Der 
 Tag, you know. 
 
 "O, it's coming all right !" 
 
 I left with the feeling that the many headache powders Mr. Penfield 
 was in the habit of taking had unstrung him. He had on several occasions 
 complained to me of the violent headaches, he was subject to, and which 
 hard work at his post had not in any manner alleviated. I also felt that 
 the American ambassador had created a situation that was as unfair to 
 the government in Washington as to the one in Vienna. To protect himself, 
 as he viewed it, he had done a most imprudent thing. 
 
 Being merely a recorder of the doings in my environment I kept Mr. 
 Penfield's admission to myself and hoped that nobody would be the wiser 
 until Count Tarnsowki had landed in New York and been received by 
 President Wilson. 
 
 Count Tarnowski left and a day or two after his departure from Rot- 
 
AN INFESTED DIPLOMATIC WOODPILE 335 
 
 terdam the good news came from Washington that the conditions under 
 which the Austro-Hungarian charge d'affairs, Baron Zwiedenick, had 
 transmitted dispatches to his government had been somewhat modified in 
 his favor. That left some hope — at any rate to those who did not know 
 any better and that included Count Czernin. 
 
 At the Vienna Foreign Office they were still under the impression 
 that the sending of an ambassador had really been suggested by the govern- 
 ment of the United States, an impression which could have been easily 
 removed had the Vienna Foreign Office been able to get in touch directly 
 with its charge d'affaires in Washington, without having its dispatches read 
 and transposed into cypher in the American embassy at Vienna. 
 
 To that extent Mr. Penfield had in his hands the entire machinery 
 of diplomatic intercourse. By that means one ambassador was enabled to 
 get another sent to his capital as hostage if there should be need for one. 
 The long and short of the affair was that the United States government 
 had been led to believe that it was the Austro-Hungarian government that 
 wanted to put diplomatic relations on a better footing, while Vienna thought 
 the same of Washington. Since that could easily lead to more trouble in a 
 situation already f rought with many great dangers, 1 could not but marvel 
 at the power that is given into hands least qualified to use it. 
 
 But the end of that was not yet. Before I deal with it, however, I 
 must for the sake of chronology, enter upon a different subject. 
 
 I have already mentioned that Bethmann-Hollweg, the German chan- 
 cellor, announced in the German Reichstag, the resumption of submarine 
 warfare in an extended zone. The Austrian Reichsrat being not then in 
 session, having been adjourned since the outbreak of the War, in fact, 
 the Austro-Hungarian government was not able to announce its adherence 
 to the policy of her ally, Germany, in quite so convenient a manner. 
 
 Count Czernin Before a Great Problem 
 
 One morning early — January 31st — I was called up on the telephone 
 by the press department of the foreign office. Count Czernin, the minister 
 of the exterior, wanted to see me as soon as possible, I was told. I hurried 
 up to the Ballhausplatz and was taken to the quarters of the minister. 
 
 For a while I sat in the large ante-chamber, locale of the meeting of 
 the Vienna Congress, and still adorned with the pictures of some of the 
 men who then shaped the course of Europe, under the auspices of Metter- 
 nich, the famous. It was very quiet in the building, I noticed. The only 
 sound falling upon my ears was the closing of doors in the distance. The 
 Diener — door man of the apartment — sat immobile on the red-upholstered 
 chair beside the door, as was his wont. He had for so many years been so 
 
336 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 close to the secrets of state and their makers, and yet so far, that he seemed 
 to have made up his mind to be as Httle interested in the affairs about him 
 as they were in him. 
 
 Meanwhile, I had learned that an event of great importance was about 
 to be announced through me. The chief of the press department had in- 
 formed me, with awe in his voice, that few newspaper men, indeed none, 
 so far as he knew, had ever written so epoch-making a story as I was about 
 to write. I suspected what that story would be, and for a few moments 
 sharr d the excitement of the man. 
 
 From the distance came the noise of the streets — rumbling wagons and 
 clanging street cars. Behind the double doors, leading to the office of 
 the minister of the exterior, two men were talking. Then the outer door 
 opened, and a man emerged hastily. The Diener jumped up to see him 
 out, returned presently, and went into the office of Count Czernin. 
 
 When the servant appeared again, he left the door open, stepped to one 
 side, bowed, and then with a movement of his hand indicated that I was 
 expected. 
 
 Count Czernin met me in the middle of the room. I noticed, as we 
 shook hands, that there was a grave expression on his face. But the voice 
 was calm, as he invited me to be seated at the side of his roll-top resk. 
 
 "I have taken the liberty to send for you," he said in English, after 
 some perfunctory remarks of greeting in German, "for the purpose of 
 having you make an announcement for the Austro-Hungarian government. 
 It is a sad mission, which I am about to ask you to undertake. Who knows 
 what will come of it! 
 
 "I do not wish to influence you in any manner, and I know that you 
 can be relied upon; at the same time, as you will learn presently, I must 
 ask you to be particularly careful as to what you write in connection with 
 this matter. The possibilities involved are great and grave. They affect 
 nothing less than our diplomatic relations with the government of the United 
 States. They may bring war, and of that we have had enough, as you 
 ought to know. 
 
 "I suggest that you do not look upon this matter as affecting any 
 particular nation, but all mankind. You have had ample opportunity to 
 see that we have been anxious to put an end to this war. We have had 
 enough of it. If there was a chance of talking this thing over with our 
 enemies we would do it tomorrow. But that chance does not exist. The 
 War continues, because the Allied governments want it to continue. 
 
 "We have every reason to believe that the populations of the Allied 
 group would welcome the cessation of hostilities as would our own. But 
 that is not to be, except we are willing to consider ourselves the vanquished. 
 
 "I am not one of those who have much faith in the War Map. There 
 
COUNT CZERNIN BEFORE A GREAT PROBLEM 337 
 
 is such a thing as being victorious at the front and defeated at home. We 
 are getting to that fast enough, and have done our best to put a stop to 
 this useless shedding of blood. But we have been turned down. In the 
 face of that, the War must go on until the enemy has a better reason to 
 enter into negotiations with us. 
 
 *'We have notified the neutral governments, or will do that today, and 
 through them our enemies, that the submarine war zone has been extended 
 and shipping to Great Britain and her allies laid under new restrictions." 
 
 Count Czernin took from his desk a copy of the diplomatic note in 
 question and handed it to me, with the request that I read it. I read parts 
 of the note several times to familiarize myself with its principal contents 
 and then laid it down. The minister then handed me a statement he had 
 drafted. 
 
 "I would like you to publish that," he said. "If you don't care for 
 the text the way it is written, change it, but be sure to get into your own 
 version that I say here. At any rate you will have to translate the thing. 
 Be kind enough to let me see it before you telegraph it." 
 
 The statement of the minister seemed a little too formal and academic. 
 I expressed myself to that effect. He was eager to have the world public 
 know what the position of the Austro-Hungarian government was, and I 
 thought it my duty to make the process as simple as possible, so that he 
 who ran could read. 
 
 Count Czernin left his desk and walked toward a far corner of the 
 room, in which stood a large table, covered with maps. 
 
 "These are the charts the note refers to," he said, taking up one of 
 them. 
 
 I rose and walked to the table. 
 
 The map in Count Czernin's hands was done on hydrographic prin- 
 ciples, and executed in blue, with red cross hatching showing the pro- 
 scribed zones. 
 
 "This white lane has been left open for the Greeks, while the one, 
 entering the Channel from the Atlantic is for American shipping. The 
 white spaces about the red zones mark the waters left open for the other 
 neutrals. We do not want to interfere with the legitimate trade of the 
 neutrals. What we do want to accomplish is to prevent neutral ships in 
 addition to enemy ships from reaching British and French ports. For 
 American ships we have left this lane in the Channel. More than that we 
 can not do. What is your opinion ?" 
 
 While I was studying the chart. Count Czernin was looking for 
 another one. The chart in my hands showed all the waters about Great 
 Britain and France, and the entire Mediterranean. There was another, 
 he said, which gave the several safe lanes for neutrals on a larger scale 
 
338 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 with a better regard for accuracy in longitude and latitude. All the charts 
 on the table before me were of the kind I had in my hands. Count Czernin 
 walked over to the other side of the room, but returned presently, saying: 
 
 **I do not seem to have another chart of the other kind here. Well, 
 that won't matter. You can tell from this one what the new zones are." 
 
 I looked up from the chart, and Count Czernin must have felt that I 
 had my misgivings about the step. He looked at me rather searchingly, and 
 repeated his inquiry : 
 
 "Well, what is your opinion of this thing?" he asked. There was a 
 note of care and uncertainty in his voice. 
 
 **My opinion can not be of any value to Your Excellency," I said. "I 
 may say, however, that this is a grave situation. So far as Germany is 
 concerned there is bound to be a severance of diplomatic relations. I say 
 that on the strength of what I know. Your Excellency is, of course, 
 familiar with the recent address of Mr. Wilson, the burden of which is that 
 there is to be a peace without victory. Under the circumstances that must 
 be interpreted that there is to be a peace without victory for the Central 
 Powers, This decision on the part of the German government, and the 
 adhesion thereto of the Austro-Hungarian government, aims at a condition 
 that will be contrary to the announcement of Mr. Wilson, so long as the 
 Allied governments persist in the attitude they assumed toward the recent 
 peace proposal. I do not think that the men in London and Paris are 
 willing to make a peace without victory. In that lies the difficulty. A 
 rupture of diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany 
 seems imminent to me. Austria-Hungary may fare better. But even of 
 that I am not convinced." 
 
 I waited for an instant to give Count Czernin the word. 
 
 "And then?" he asked. 
 
 "That, Your Excellency, depends upon the action of Congress," I 
 replied. "There is the possibility that the opponents of Mr. Wilson in the 
 Senate and House may take more interest in this affair when relations are 
 broken off by Mr. Wilson with Germany. That step is likely to be the 
 denouement to the situation. If Congress does not act then, it will, like 
 all other such bodies, be ultimately faced with a fait accompli — a declara- 
 tion of war." * 
 
 "Declaration of war?" asked the minister. 
 
 "Something of that sort, Your Excellency!" I said. "Much depends 
 upon the frame of mind of the American public. Unfortunately, I am not 
 able to say what that is. If the tone of the American newspapers is to be 
 relied upon, >yar is now inevitable. There has been a gradual building up 
 
 * I was at that time under the impression that Congress, before giving Mr. Wilson a free 
 hand, would undertake a sort of general review of the entire situation. That was the least I 
 and others expected the "willful men" to insist upon. 
 
COUNT CZERNIN BEFORE A GREAT PROBLEM 339 
 
 of war sentiment in the United States. On the other hand, the press of 
 the United States is not always truly representative of public opinion, but 
 like all other institutions of its sort it can make public opinion." 
 
 Count Czernin walked back to his desk and seated himself. 
 
 "Well, if the worst comes to pass, we can't help it," he said. "We 
 have to use the submarine to shorten the war. There is such a thing as 
 being victorious at the front and defeated at home. The food situation 
 here is most pressing. Our people are half-starved all the time. Babies 
 perish by the thousands, because we cannot give them enough milk. If this 
 war does not come to an end soon, the effects of the chronic food shortage 
 will impair the health of the entire nation. We must try to prevent that. 
 It is our duty to prevent it by all means. 
 
 "I grant that there are certain technicalities of international law in- 
 volved here. But we can no longer regard them. It is all very well for 
 some men to set themselves up as sole arbiters of international law, nor 
 would we have any objections against this if these arbiters dealt as fairly 
 with one side as they have dealt with the other. But they have not. 
 
 "The Central governments could not do anything right for some of 
 their friends — the American government included, by the way — if they 
 stood on their heads. Save me from the man who prates loudly of inter- 
 national law and then interprets his own acts by the public interest of one 
 of the belligerents. Of neutral advise we have had enough. These good 
 neutrals remind me of men who would stand idly by while some person 
 was being done to death piecemeal and who would think that they had 
 done their duty with an occasional : 'O, don't hurt him.' " 
 
 Count Czernin was bitterly satirical at that moment. I saw that his 
 hands had closed, and that their knuckles were showing white from the 
 exertion. The man was in a rage, but had himself under full control. 
 His blue-grey eyes stared at me and his jaws were biting off the sentences. 
 
 "It is an outrage — this entire business ! We have a right to exist. We 
 don't want anything from anybody! All we want is the integrity of the 
 monarchy. We don't want war indemnities ! We don't want anything from 
 the Italians, and want nothing from the Russians. The sensible man of 
 today must realize that from this war nothing can be gained by anybody — 
 no matter who wins. For the sake of Europe's future it is best that we 
 all go home and think over this foolish undertaking. 
 
 "We have made peace offers. I have told you several times that we do 
 not want any of our enemies' territory. We have never let it be under- 
 stood that we wanted as much as a shovelful of earth that does not belong 
 to us. At the same time, we do not want to lose territory, nor do we want 
 to pay a war indemnity, since this war is not of our making. 
 
 "Our peace offer has been spurned. The food question, as you know, 
 
340 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 is acute. We simply cannot raise the food we need so long as we must keep 
 in the field millions of our farmers. That leaves but one avenue open. 
 Wc must shorten the War. We believe that it will be shortened by the use 
 of the submarine. For that reason we have decided to use that arm for 
 the purpose." 
 
 Count Czernin paused for a moment. He shifted some papers about 
 on his desk in an aimless manner, and then turned to me again. This 
 time he spoke in so calm a tone that a certain amount of indifference or 
 resignation came to the surface. 
 
 "I hope that our calculations are correct. I am no expert in that field. 
 I also realize that a whole flood of declarations of war may follow our step. 
 All that has been considered, however — even the possibility of the United 
 States joining our enemies. At any rate, there was no way out. 
 
 "I feel that I must address myself especially to the American public. 
 The American government has condemned us out of court. I would like 
 to have an American jury hear this case. The American government has 
 denied us the right of self-defense by taking the stand that we must not 
 use the submarine — the only means we have — against the enemy merchant 
 fleet and such neutral shipping as supplies Great Britain and France with 
 food stuffs and war materials." 
 
 (Again Count Czernin grew bitter. Trained diplomatist though he was, 
 he found it hard to master the keen resentment that was surging over 
 him. 
 
 "Mr. Wilson thinks he is right. I do not want to question in the least 
 that there have been times when he was right in specific cases. But how 
 can he say that we are violating International Law, or are the worst of- 
 fenders, when he calmly permitted Great Britain to displace International 
 Law and every convention based on it by the Orders in Council, so that we 
 in self-defense, had to do that also. Self-preservation is a law of nature 
 which even Mr. Wilson has no right to question, which he would not 
 queston for a moment if he were in our position. 
 
 "Mr. Bryan himself, and with him the government of the United 
 States, admitted tacitly that Great Britain was breaking every tenet of 
 Maritime Law when he suggested the regulation of the imports into Ger- 
 many of conditional contraband. Would the American government have 
 done that if it had not then been cognizant of the fact that the Orders 
 in Privy Council contravened ruthlessly the Paris and London declarations ? 
 What has become of the sense of justice which was then in evidence in 
 Washington ? 
 
 "Of course, Mr. Wilson has not gone so far as to protect Allied 
 merchant shipping against the German submarines. But that does not 
 mean anything. The shipping of the neutrals is able to supply the Allies 
 
COUNT CZERNIN BEFORE A GREAT PROBLEM 341 
 
 with all the sinews of war they need, and, if need be, enough British ships 
 could be transferred to neutrals for the duration of the War to keep the 
 British flag from the high seas entirely and out of harm's way. That 
 attitude can only be compared to tying our arms behind our backs, and 
 telling us as a friend, to go ahead now and do what we can do. 
 
 "The time has come when there must be a clear understanding on that 
 subject, and while we have been most respectful of the views of the United 
 States government, we must now respect our own interests at least as much. 
 The United States has become a great arsenal for the Allied armies, and 
 a great granary for their populations. So much American money is invested 
 in the cause of the Allies that the moment may already have passed in which 
 actual participation in the European War will not be more costly than the 
 financial losses that might come to the American investor from a peace 
 without victory and without huge indemnities paid by us. 
 
 "Such is the impasse the situation has reached. We feel that it will 
 make no difference whether we face this today or tomorrow. Face it we 
 must anyway. We may regret that such is the case, and I for one regret 
 it deeply, but what can we do?" 
 
 Such, indeed, was the aspect of the case. I viewed the situation from 
 some of the recesses of the Department of State, and could not but con- 
 clude that Count Czernin had rather correctly calculated. What he said 
 coincided merely with what I knew to be the fact, as this fact was known 
 in the United States embassy at Vienna. Not being able to even intimate 
 that the minister was wrong, I kept my own counsel. 
 
 "I think that is all I can say," said Count Czernin, after a moment's 
 pause. "Use that as you see fit. If reconcilable to your principles, let me 
 see what you write before you telegraph it. Meanwhile, I will instruct 
 the press department and the censors to let your matter pass without ques- 
 tion." 
 
 At five o'clock that afternoon my dispatches were under way, and a 
 copy of them was in the hands of the Korrespondenz Bureau, the Austrian 
 semi-official news agency. 
 
 Not in decades had a newspaper dispatch created such a sensation. 
 All that night and for three days following I had telegrams from all over 
 Austria and Hungary and Switzerland asking me to supply additional data. 
 The dismissal of Count Bernstorff at Washington added to the deep im- 
 pression which the announcements of Berlin and Vienna had made, and 
 for days the Vienna press was in the grip of the wildest emotion. Ulti- 
 mately, I collected a few clippings of my dispatches and found that they 
 had been reproduced in twenty-one languages, ten of them used in the 
 Dual Monarchy. It was recognized everywhere that the world stood before 
 a new phase of the European War — ^the World War phase, in which 
 
342 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 attrition, cruel to the men in the trenches, vicious to the civil populations, 
 and regardless entirely of the rights of neutrals, was to become the only 
 feature. Men gasped and women wept when they came to think of the 
 future, and the cynic alone was henceforth able to view the doings of 
 mankind with equanimity and the hope that soon or late reason would 
 return. 
 
 Germany and Austria-Hungary had officially defined their position 
 in these words: 
 
 "Every day in which the fearful struggle goes on brings new 
 devastation, new misery, new deaths. Every day by which the war 
 is shortened will preserve on both sides the lives of thousands of 
 brave soldiers, and means a blessing for tortured humanity. The 
 Imperial Government, before its own conscience and before his- 
 tory, would be unable to assume the responsibility if it left untried 
 any one means to hasten the end of the war. Together with the 
 President of the United States it had hoped to obtain this aim by 
 negotiations." 
 
 A statement made by Mr. Lansing on February 12th showed that 
 Germany still hoped that an agreement with the United States on the one 
 hand, and with the Allied governments on the other, would be reached. The 
 reply of the United States government to the Swiss minister at Washington, 
 however, demanded the prompt withdrawal of the new policy of submarine 
 warfare, before negotiations could be entered into. 
 
 In Berlin and Vienna it was felt that this would lead to nothing 
 except a repetition of the state of affairs that followed the conditional 
 promises made by the German government in the "Sussex" note. So long 
 as Washington was unwilling to bring the German maritime measures, 
 and its own attitude concerning them, in proper and just relation to the 
 conduct of the London and Paris governments so long was there no 
 prospect that agreements of any kind could be arrived at. 
 
 Thus, the matter was dropped and allowed to drift on. In the Central 
 capitals it was now realized that relief could only come from the United 
 States Congress, more especially from the group of men whom Mr. Wilson 
 had labelled : "Willful." The limiting of debate in the Senate, however, 
 carried through on March 8th, and the calling of Congress for a special 
 session, on the following day, for April 16 — later changed to April 2nd — 
 took from the Berlin and Vienna governments what little hope there was 
 left. 
 
 An American Ambassador and 'Tree Press" 
 
 Mr. Penfield, the American ambassador at Vienna, had meanwhile 
 grown somewhat resentful that I had made the submarine announcement 
 for Count Czernin. It was his attitude that the Austro-Hungarian govern- 
 
AN AMERICAN AMBASSADOR AND "FREE PRESS" 343 
 
 ment could have used its own semi-official agency, the Korrespondenz 
 Bureau, for that purpose, or utilized even its official publication, the Wiener 
 Zeitung. He seemed to totally overlook, as did later the Department of 
 State, that I was a newspaper correspondent and in nowise bound by 
 diplomatic rules and foibles. 
 
 As employe of the Associated Press it was my duty to get first all 
 such news as I could, in fact that was the very purpose of my employment. 
 Knowing how Mr. Penfield felt about it, I took pains to impress that upon 
 one of his secretaries, to which I added that such orders as he might think 
 fit to give me would have to come from the headquarters of the Associated 
 Press in New York, and that State Department channels were open to 
 him for that. 
 
 This somewhat peculiar attitude on the part of the ambassador was in 
 a large measure due to the fact that on several occasions he had caused the 
 Austro-Hungarian government to get its censorship to take from the 
 Vienna newspapers such criticism of the United States government as he 
 thought unjust. That some of the articles and editorials were intemperate, 
 must be conceded, but for all that it was rather odd that the ambassador 
 of a government committed to "free press and free speech" should be- 
 come active in that manner. 
 
 On one occasion Mr. Penfield sent to the Vienna Foreign Office a 
 note in which he demanded that all criticism of the acts of the government 
 of the United States be discouraged, if not entirely forbidden. It seemed 
 to me that this was carrying the functions of an ambassador a little too 
 far — to unwarranted highhandedness — and when I was informed in the 
 Foreign Office that the demand would be complied with, I begged to be 
 excused from being put in the same category with the Austrian editors. 
 
 It developed in connection with this discussion that Mr. Penfield had 
 several times suggested that the United States government was holding the 
 Austro-Hungarian government responsible for what I was sending out. 
 It was being felt in Washington, said Mr. Penfield, that the Vienna foreign 
 office, by instructing its censors, could "keep tabs" on me to such an 
 extent that I would become useless to the service I represented, in which 
 event I would be recalled. 
 
 Just what Mr. Penfield wanted to accomplish with that I do not know, 
 since my dispatches dealt at best only with such criticism as I was obliged 
 to take from the Vienna and Austrian press. This matter was permitted 
 to pass, by the British and French censors, since it could not but further 
 strain the relations between the United States and Austria-Hungary, which 
 was far from being my motive. My position in the matter was not unlike 
 that of a surgeon who has to undertake an operation whether it will hurt 
 the patient or not. If certain chauvinist newspapers in Austria selected 
 
344 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 to criticize Mr. Wilson adversely, it was my plain duty to send that to 
 the United States; the fact is that I would balance such intemperate ex- 
 pressions with the saner views of such men as Mr. Benedikt, of the Vienna 
 Neue Freie Presse, Dr. Henry Lammasch and others. The difficulty again 
 was that the French and British censors would delite the conciliatory part 
 of my dispatches and permit only the hostile expressions to reach New 
 York. ' 
 
 Before long I was to have another example of this. To the announce- 
 ment of the Austro-Hungarian government that it would join Germany in 
 the renewal of submarine warfare, the government of the United States 
 replied by drawing attention to certain assurances given by the Vienna 
 government in the notes dealing with the cases of ships that had been 
 sunk by Austro-Hungarian submarines. I succeeded in getting a resume 
 of the note's contents and several quotations, and forwarded them promptly, 
 as any other correspondent would have done, to New York, finding nothing 
 unusual at all in the step I had taken. 
 
 It would seem, however, that the Department of State wanted to keep 
 the note secret, despite the many assurances of Mr. Wilson that open 
 diplomacy alone could save the world from future calamities. 
 
 One day, then. Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld, chief of Count Czernin's 
 private chancery, asked me to see him as soon as I could. 
 
 He was rather exasperated, I thought. On the desk before him lay 
 a small stack of telegram forms, on which I saw my own handwriting. 
 
 To the question by Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld whether I had written 
 the telegrams in question, I replied in affirmation, of course, and asked 
 why he had withdrawn them from the telegraph office, seeing that they 
 had been filed almost a week ago. 
 
 "Your telegrams went through all right," he said. "That is just 
 the trouble. This time one of your dispatches did get past the censors 
 in Great Britain and France. They have a knack of letting through what 
 they feel will do us harm. I wish our censors were as able. 
 
 "Mr. Penfield has objected to the publication of the contents of the 
 note. We have just received from him a very curt inquiry as to how you 
 came to learn of the bare existence of the communication, let alone its 
 contents. It would seem that the note was to remain secret, at least that 
 is the inference we draw from the ambassador's letter. 
 
 "Inquiry on our part has shown that the ambassador failed to com- 
 municate to us that desire. If the Department of State wanted the note 
 to remain secret and so instructed Mr. Penfield, the embassy here must 
 have failed to inform us of it. We can find nothing in our bureau that 
 instructs us to keep the contents of the note, or the note itself, from the 
 public. It is possible, however, that the embassy relied upon the usual course, 
 
AN AMERICAN AMBASSADOR AND "FREE PRESS" 345 
 
 that of giving the sender of a note the privilege to publish it first. I have 
 learned that this was the intention of Count Czernin. But that does not 
 explain how you came in possession of the contents of the note and these 
 quotations, which are verbatim. I take it for granted that you were not 
 shown the note at the embassy or with the consent of Mr. Penfield." 
 
 All of which was very true, as I stated to the Count. The chief of 
 the private cabinet found that all very mystifying until I told him that 
 I learned of the note and its contents in the regular manner followed by 
 newspaper men. I had looked for a reply to the announcement of sub- 
 marine warfare, and looking for it had found it. 
 
 But where had I found it? was asked. That I could not reveal, of 
 course, I stated. At any rate the person who had shown me the note had 
 been under the impression that no wrong was being done, since the note 
 would be published anyway, as was the assumption in the absence of other 
 instructions. 
 
 Count Colloredo-Mannsf eld was much worried in regard to the incident. 
 He said that the choleric "old man" in the United States embassy would 
 insist that the matter be cleared up, and that the Foreign Office would have 
 to say that it knew nothing of the thing at all. I advised him to do 
 that. ' ' ^';'!^ 
 
 But that would bring the wrath of the ambassador upon me. That was 
 a chance I would take, I said. But the Count thought it best that I state 
 how I had seen the note. If I had seen it in the Foreign Office it might 
 be well to so inform Mr. Penfield, since the thing could be explained as an 
 unofficial trespass. 
 
 To all of which I was obliged to remain obdurate for several reasons. 
 Whoever the person was who had shown me the note, I would have to 
 protect him, since he had acted in good faith, as I had done myself. 
 Neither of us had the slightest doubt that the note would be published, and 
 public interest demanded that it be published, as it was. Whether the 
 protest came from Washington or originated in the embassy I have no 
 means of knowing, nor is that germane here. 
 
 Strained Personal Diplomatic Relations 
 
 The Sunday following this, a rather interesting contretemps took place 
 at the residence of Mr. Penfield, the leased palatial mansion of the Roths- 
 child family in the Alleestrasse. 
 
 Mr. Penfield was completing his toilet for church when one of his 
 servants announced Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld. 
 
 "Send the dirty little cur away," said the ambassador. "I am getting 
 ready to go to church. Ask him whether he hasn't enough common sense 
 
346 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 about him not to disturb a gentleman dressing for church. Tell him to 
 goto . . ." 
 
 The servant interpreted this as best he could, but found Count Col- 
 loredo-Mannsfeld determined to see the august American ambassador. The 
 servant, being an Austrian, requested the caller not to press the matter, since 
 it would be useless. In reply to that, Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld said that 
 he had come to ask Mr. Penfield whether he would not have the kindness 
 to receive Count Czernin, the minister of foreign affairs, some time after 
 lunch, the subject to be considered being a very serious one. 
 
 Again the servant went to Mr. Penfield. His statement of the case was 
 answered with expletives even worse, and finally the servant felt called 
 upon to tell Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld what the state of affairs was. As 
 the caller got into his automobile, Mr. Penfield came down the stairs and 
 was off to church. 
 
 The matter being most pressing, Count Czernin called on Mr. Penfield 
 early on Monday morning, and was admitted into the presence of the 
 ambassador a few minutes before I arrived. I seated myself in the small 
 foyer of the embassy and waited until the caller, whose identity was not 
 then known to me, should depart. The doorman, a person by name of 
 Franz, had told me that there was somebody with the ambassador, but 
 had not told me who it was. 
 
 For a while I engrossed myself in some American newspapers, of 
 which there was always a liberal stack on a table, and then I became 
 attracted by the voice of Mr. Penfield, which was ringing loudly in excite- 
 ment, so loudly that the double-doors of his office could not prevent my 
 hearing what was going on. 
 
 Not wishing to hear more of the altercation between ambassador and 
 minister of foreign affairs, I went upstairs to see a Mr. Harriman, in 
 connection with the case of an American woman whose passport had been 
 refused extension by the embassy. The case had been brought to my atten- 
 tion, and, since I considered it meritorious, I had interested myself in 
 behalf of the woman — an elderly lady in poor circumstances who years 
 ago had decided to give lessons in English in Vienna. She was a native 
 American and now anxious to return to the United States. 
 
 After a while I decided to see Mr. Penfield, and was readily admitted. 
 As usual, he was stabbing the arm-rest of his chair with the aviator's arrow. 
 He was greatly excited, and could hardly wait to tell me what had happened. 
 
 It was not my intention to refer to the call of Count Czernin, and I 
 had put the usual question : Whether or no there was anything new in the 
 relations between the United States and Austria-Hungary. 
 
 The first reply was just as stereotyped, but for reasons best known 
 to Mr, Penfield he began to relate to me that yesterday he had been 
 
STRAINED PERSONAL DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS U7 
 
 importuned by Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld, whom he labelled an "imper- 
 tinent little pup.'^ It seemed that Mr. Penfield had not yet recovered from 
 the shock of being interfered with while making his toilet for church. He 
 wanted to know what my opinion of that sort of conduct was. I replied 
 that there were times when such things were perfectly permissible, so far 
 as I could judge, and that even in the Good Book it was stated that on the 
 Sabbath labors of love and those called for by necessity were permitted. 
 
 "I would do a great deal for these Austrians, if they could make up 
 their mind to quit those beastly Germans. But I know they won't do that. 
 They know that the Germans are going to be the end of them, but they 
 refuse to leave their ally in the lurch — fine ally — fine ally in the lurch. 
 
 "That is what this thing was about. That is why that impertinent 
 little puppy interrupted me in my dressing yesterday. Well, I had Count 
 Czernin at my feet just now — at my feet, I tell you. The groveling, 
 sniveling, yellow cur ! If he thinks that he can get me to do anything for 
 him at Washington, he is mistaken. I'll see them all in first. 
 
 "Right at my feet I had the . I don't care what happens. Unless 
 
 these people here consent to quit the Germans they can expect but one 
 thing. 
 
 "I am fond of these Austrians. Many of them are friends of mine. 
 But there will be nothing doing until they get out of that alliance. 
 
 "Mark my words. I'll show them. I'll show that dirty yellow dog 
 where he comes off. I've shown him before, I have shown him now, I'll 
 show him again — again — again. 
 
 "O, I know that you are a friend of theirs, I know all about that. But 
 if you are a friend of theirs, a real one, you will do them a favor to advise 
 
 them to chuck the Germans, and do it quickly. We'll show those 
 
 where they come off. 
 
 "Wait a few weeks and you'll see. I'll see to it that you get a berth 
 on my special train out, and mark you I'll pay for that train with my own 
 money. No favors to me — not to Penfield — Penfield — ^Penfield !" 
 
 I am not easily impressed, and so it came that the American ambassador 
 talked for the purpose of impressing me. The only sensation I had, how- 
 ever, was that the man was nervously unstrung and not in that moment 
 accountable for his conduct. Only the day before he had referred to a 
 loyal citizen of the United States, resident of Vienna, as an "international 
 crook." 
 
 "Mr. Ambassador," I said, "would it not be better to pour a little oil 
 on these troubled waters? Surely such efforts deserve better than that. 
 You know as well as I do that both. Count Czernin and Count Colloredo- 
 Mannsfeld are gentlemen. What they may have asked you to do was at 
 its worst their duty. Has not this affair gone far enough without dragging 
 
348 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the people of the United States into it? There are two sides to every 
 
 issue 
 
 "O, that is what they all say," broke in Mr. Penfield impatiently. 
 
 "They all say that. I have secretaries in this office, who say that. 
 
 You are pro-German, I have known that all along — " 
 
 "I b^ to differ with you, Mr. Ambassador," I said, interrupting Mr. 
 Penfield. "I am nothing of the sort. If you need classify me let it go 
 with humanitarian — " 
 
 "I suppose that as Boer you are anti-British," remarked Mr. Penfield 
 with a sneer. "Well, there are other Boers who are not. If you had any 
 sense you'd see things the way they do. What's the use of grieving over 
 a lost cause. Let me tell you, my boy, that you are on the wrong track. 
 To be anti-British means to be pro-German. Always remember that — re- 
 member that — ^that." 
 
 I asked the ambassador what his evidence was that I was hostile to 
 the British. He could not say that he had any, he admitted, but took 
 it for granted that just because I had been on the side of the Boer Republics 
 during the South African War, and was not now enthusiastically sympathe- 
 tic for the British, as he knew, I must needs be anti-British and pro- 
 German. 
 
 When I left Mr. Penfield he was still gloating over the insults he had 
 offered Count Czernin, and I was still wondering into what hands the fate 
 of nations, not to mention the lives of thousands may be placed for the 
 sake of a political campaign contribution. Truly, I was disgusted. Govern- 
 ment seemed to me more than ever a thing of hazard. 
 
 What Count Czernin wanted Mr. Penfield to do may just as well 
 remain a state secret,* nor will I dwell upon the efforts, which were even 
 
 • Reconsideration has induced me to say a little more in regard to this matter. 
 
 Through a neutral diplomatic mission in Washington, Count Czernin had finally learned 
 how Count Tarnowski had been sent to the United States as ambassador. Still, not every- 
 thing was clear. I was invited several times to shed light on the affair, but could not do 
 that, owing to the fact that, contrary to the views of the Department of State and its stool- 
 pigeons in Vienna, I was minding well my duties as a citizen of the United States. 
 
 Count Czernin had found it impossible to set his mind on the proper track, because it 
 never occurred to him that Mr. Penfield could have engineered the appointment of Count 
 Tarnowski as a means of self-protection, for which there was not the slightest need. Yet the 
 case continued to puzzle him. To get the information he desired, which in fact he needed, 
 to keep off a further extension of the War, he put the question to Mr. Penfield point-blank. 
 
 The United States ambassador endeavored to evade the answer that was sought, but Count 
 Czernin, being a man of great ability, succeeded before long in enmeshing this diplomatic tyro 
 hopelessly. This done. Count Czernin charged Mr. Penfield with his duplicity. Again Mr. 
 Penfield tried to clear himself, but the more he tried the deeper he floundered. Finally, the 
 Austro-Hunearian minister of the Exterior presented to the United States ambassador the 
 critical situation he had created, and pointed out the injustice of the act. He did that 
 in a manner wnich caused Mr. Penfield to step before the sofa, next to the desk, from where, 
 with his right hand lifted, as in taking a solemni oath, the United States ambassador said: 
 
 "Mr. Minister! I swear before God Almighty that Count Tarnowski will be received by Mr. 
 Wilson. I know that he will be received. That he has not yet been received is due to a slight 
 misunderstanding. I swear that he will be received!" 
 
 Count Czernin did not believe even this and inferred that in a diplomatic manner. Face 
 to face with a man who had come to learn the truth so that he might do what was still 
 possible to save the situation, Mr. Penfield fell to the expedient of losing his temper, the 
 result of which was what I have related in the preceding pages. 
 
 The oath made by Mr, Penfield was a perjurious one, of course, because the ambassador 
 had by that time in his possession evidence from the Department of State, transmitted to him 
 
STRAINED PERSONAL DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS 349 
 
 then made by the State Department, to wean the Austrians and Hungarians 
 away from their aUies, the Germans, Bulgars and Turks. Suffice it to 
 say that the activity of the Germans in the United States was the merest 
 buffonery in comparison with the labors to bring about a division between 
 the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans, and this also long before war was 
 declared or considered imminent. Already in the spring of 1915, a colleague 
 of mine, charity compels me not to give his name, had approached Baron 
 von Montlong along those lines, suggesting that there were prospects of 
 immunity for the Austro-Hungarian government if it broke with the 
 Germans. l . ».v : IS 
 
 Washington Clears Deck for Action 
 
 Count Tarnowski had indeed reached Washington, but Mr. Wilson 
 found it unwise, impolitic and unnecessary to carry out what seemed so 
 very proper to the Austro-Hungarian government, to wit: Receive the 
 ambassador. At the Foreign Office in Vienna they used to ask me why 
 this should be so; the plea of ignorance was my best way of evading 
 the question, when a word could have explained much, and, maybe, changed 
 the situation completely. But it was not for me to say that word, even 
 when one day one of the highest in the land insisted that for the sake 
 of humanity I throw light upon the situation if I could. 
 
 The reception given Count Czernin had, of course, ended the useful- 
 ness of the American ambassador. Meanwhile, it had been harder than 
 ever to get reliable information from the United States. The Austro- 
 Hungarian charge d'aif aires in Washington was of a sudden entirely 
 marooned, it seemed. Yet there was a note from the government of the 
 United States that demanded an explanation of Austria-Hungary's conduct 
 in regard to the renewal of submarine warfare. That note also contained 
 the stated and implied necessity for the promptest and most definite answer. 
 It was courteous enough in terms, but also very ambiguous, which meant 
 more to the Austro-Hungarian government than the terms themselves. 
 
 As already stated I had learned the contents of the note accidentally, 
 as it were. Later I was shown the entire text, and still later it was 
 published in Austria-Hungary. At the Foreign Office they did not know 
 what answer to make. Evasion of any sort seemed out of the question. On 
 the other hand, adhesion to Germany's policy in submarine matters would 
 either have to be confirmed or repudiated. 
 
 in cipher, that Count Tarnowski would not be received by President Wilson — in fact Mr. 
 Lansing was even then of the opinion that it would be best to get the Austro-Hungarian 
 government to recall Count Tarnowski, in the furthering of which the Government of the United 
 States was to secure for Count Tarnowski safe conduct through the Allied naval lines. 
 
 It seems superfluous to say more of this. Indeed I cite the case only to show what dangers 
 there came from withdrawing from a government the diplomatic privileges at a time when these 
 very same privileges were enjoyed by the embassy of the United States, whose chief used 
 them for the most astounding diplomatic malfeasance on record. — ^January 20th, 1920. 
 
350 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 On several occasions I had been asked to suggest a course of action. 
 I had declined to g:ive an opinion on that, on the ground that it did not 
 concern me how the note was answered. To express myself one way 
 or another meant to assume a certain amount of responsibility, and I did 
 not want to assume that. 
 
 For over a week the note was in the Vienna Foreign Office and no 
 reply was in sight. Mr. Penfield made inquiry every day, and toward the 
 last became very insistent in the manner of men who know that they 
 have the upper hand. But what the Austro-Hungarian government wanted 
 was anything but war with the United States, nor could it break with 
 Germany, despite the fact that Prince Sixtus of Bourbon, brother of the 
 Empress Zita, was in Vienna incognito, on special mission from the Allied 
 camp. 
 
 Realizing finally that there might yet come a change in the situa- 
 tion, I consented to give advice in the matter, but this I withdrew before 
 the note was finished, on the ground that meanwhile the political aspect 
 had taken a different hue so far as the United States was concerned. 
 
 There arrived one day at the United States embassy a fairly long 
 cypher cable from Mr. Lansing. One part of it was brought to my atten- 
 tion by Mr. Penfield, who did not seem to know what he was to do under 
 the circumstances. The part referred to said that the Department of State 
 deemed it well to have Mr. Penfield return to the United States immediately 
 for the purpose of conferring with the authorities there in connection with 
 affairs in Central Europe. The ambassador would, therefore, arrange his 
 affairs as quickly as possible and come home without delay. 
 
 The other part of the message said that Mr. Wilson had found the 
 presence in the United States of Count Tarnowski very inconvenient, and 
 that the government of the United States would secure safe conduct from 
 the Allied governments for the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, in case 
 the Austro-Hungarian would deem it well to recall Count Tarnowski 
 forthwith. That part, of course, was not for the public, though, of neces- 
 sity it had to be submitted to Count Czernin. For a day or two everything 
 possible was done by all concerned to find a different solution to the 
 matters in hand, but all efforts were vain. 
 
 Count Czernin had left it to Mr. Penfield to acquaint the public with 
 his proposed departure. It was his opinion that if the news came from 
 the Austro-Hungarian government, as was inappropriate anyway, all sorts 
 of interpretations would be given to it by a panicky populace. But the 
 American ambassador also found it difficult to handle the situation. The 
 bubble of the Tarnowski appointment had now burst. The Austro- 
 Hungarian government swallowed the bitter pill, but could not afford to 
 admit that it had been fooled by Mr. Penfield into the belief that it was 
 
WASHINCTON CLEARS DECKS FOR ACTION 351 
 
 the United States government which had suggested the sending of an 
 ambassador to Washington, as had been purposely intimated in the press. 
 
 The situation being a complicated one, Mr. Penfield sent for me and 
 asked that I prepare a statement on his behalf for the Austro-Hungarian 
 press. He had already jotted down, with a thick blue pencil, what his 
 ideas were. I went over them and found that under the circumstances 
 they were complete enough. 
 
 When finally the statement was ready for dissemination, it said that 
 the United States ambassador, Mr. Penfield, would either on April 4th 
 or 5th leave Vienna for a trip to the United States, to consult with the 
 government in regard to the situation in Europe, to rest up a little from 
 the exertions on his post, and attend to private affairs which had been 
 badly neglected. He would return as soon as possible. 
 
 On the day before the submission to Count Czernin by Mr. Penfield 
 of the cablegram from the State Department, it had been learned in Vienna 
 official circles that the United States government had recalled its minister 
 to Belgium, Mr. Brand Whitlock, and the American Relief Commission 
 in Belgium. That was looked upon as a bad sign. The Austro-Hungarian 
 government and such journalists as were in the confidence of the govern- 
 ment felt that the end was not far off. 
 
 The Penfield announcement appeared first in the Vienna and Budapest 
 afternoon papers. All night long I was besieged at my hotel by Vienna 
 newspaper men and correspondents of the papers in Budapest and the 
 provinces, who wanted to get information I could not give them. None 
 would believe that Mr. Penfield was going on a vacation in times as 
 critical as these were. All insisted that war with the United States was 
 on, but that the Austro-Hungarian government was afraid to admit it. 
 That fear of theirs I could allay. There was no war yet. An editor in 
 Budapest called me up over the long distance telephone and offered me 
 five thousand crowns if I would write him so much as a single sentence 
 which really told the truth about conditions. I told him that he would 
 not believe anyway what I could write under the circumstances, and that 
 he would be wasting his money if he expected to get from me news to the 
 effect that war was on or about to ensue. 
 
 For a day or two the excitement was great and then it subsided a 
 little, to give speculation an opportunity. 
 
 I had known for some time what would happen if the government of 
 the United States declared war upon Germany and not on Austria- 
 Hungary, as some believed. Few knew that Mr. Wilson had long ago 
 made up his mind not to declare war upon both countries at the same time. 
 As a matter of fact there were in Vienna but four or five persons who 
 knew that, and one of them was Count Czernin, the minister of the 
 
352 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 exterior. On the other hand, the Austro-Hungarian government had agreed 
 to sever diplomatic relations with the United States on the day on which 
 the government of the latter announced that either a state of war existed, 
 or was about to be entered upon, with Germany. Mr. Penfield had an 
 inkling of this, and sounded me several times, which was useless since 
 I collected information as a newspaper man and not as diplomatist. 
 
 Events were to move rapidly very soon. On April 2nd, Mr. Wilson 
 asked the Congress of the United States to consider that a state of war 
 existed between the United States and Germany and take the necessary 
 steps. As has been the practice in such cases since time immemorial the 
 parliament of a nation was confronted with a fait accompli that left little 
 opportunity for action by the opposition. The gag rule in the Senate had 
 made it extremely difficult for the "willful" ones to prevail, and public 
 emotion was such that the will of the executive was bound to be done. 
 
 A Diplomatist in Sore Predicament 
 
 Mr. Penfield had intended to leave Vienna and Austria-Hungary on 
 April 4th or 5th, but he finally found that this was not to be. He 
 could not leave Austria very well without paying a farewell call at the 
 Court and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which could not be done 
 in time, because Emperor Charles and Count Czernin, spent Sunday, 
 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, going to, staying at, and coming from 
 German great general headquarters in France, where a conference in regard 
 to the new situation was in progress. Mr. Penfield would have to wait 
 until Thursday, before the Emperor could be seen, nor was it feasible 
 to leave Vienna and the country on the same day. The following day 
 again was Good Friday, a day which Mr. Penfield could not very well 
 pick for his departure, since in Austria-Hungary that is one of the great 
 church days, and the American ambassador, as a good Catholic, had to bear 
 that in mind. 
 
 Before proceeding, I will reproduce here, in its original form, the text 
 of a news dispatch I wrote at Berne a little later, in which the last days 
 of diplomatic relations between Washington and Vienna are described in 
 "skeleton" news cablegram form. I will explain also that the copy of this 
 dispatch is one of many I managed to get past the French border authorities 
 at Pontarlier, on the Swiss border, 
 "associated paris 
 
 "berne april sixteenth austrohungarian government up to last 
 minute regretted what it considered necessity severing diplomatic 
 relations with united states stop though austrohungarian embassy 
 in Washington had been instructed demand passports in case 
 congress declared war against germany or decided state war exist- 
 
A DIPIvOMATIST IN SORE PREDICAMENT 353 
 
 ing Vienna foreign office hoped that break could be avoided stop 
 remarkable is that ambassador penfields departure from vienna 
 not in any way directly connected with steps austrohungarian 
 government had taken for breaking relations stop last week am- 
 bassador penfield received from state department cable to effect re- 
 turn Washington consult with president wilson regarding general 
 european situation taking same time longneeded rest stop penfields 
 departure also was eliminate peculiar situation existing since 
 president wilson thought it inopportune accept tarnowskis creden- 
 tials stop state departments intention was leave vienna embassy 
 in charge counselor grew stop when ambassador penfield informed 
 count czernin his intention leaving he was given for first time 
 intimation that austrohungarian government intended breaking 
 relations with Washington in case united states entered war state 
 with germany stop ambassador informed however that nothing 
 would be done pending action by congress stop penfield first 
 planned leaving vienna april fourth or fifth but was informed he 
 would be received by emperor charles on april fifth emperor and 
 count czernin having spent first three days that week at 
 german general headquarters stop on thursday that week penfield 
 was received by emporor but same evening news spread that 
 penfield himself would be given passports stop news appeared 
 authentic to ambassador who unwilling investigate asked associated 
 correspondent ascertain if report true or not stop correspondent 
 learned from highest vienna sources that austrohungarian govern- 
 ment did not intend handing penfield passports despite fact that 
 congress had declared state war existing and president wilson 
 having signed resolution stop in effect relations been severed 
 however so that associated correspondent became virtually inter- 
 mediary between american ambassy and austrohungarian govern- 
 ment stop vienna government made all needed arrangements for 
 ambassadors departure and to last moment treated him as dip- 
 lomatist going on leave stop two representatives vienna foreign 
 office came to station see penfield couple off handing mistress 
 penfield in name austrohungarian government splendid floral gifts 
 stop on Saturday april seventh associated correspondent unofficially 
 authorized presented at vienna foreign office arguments against 
 planned rupture diplomatic relations but was informed that other 
 engagements made any other course impossible stop what these 
 arrangements were associated did not learn but seemingly they 
 were of great binding force stop certain is that austrohungarian 
 government not moved by malice following most likely necessity 
 alleged existing which semiofficial vienna fremdenblatt on april 
 tenth outpointed in leader as being that with diplomatic relations 
 between Washington and vienna intact and intercourse between 
 embassy and statedepartment unchecked certain military informa- 
 tion likely hurt germany might get to american government stop 
 towards very last austrohungarian government was loath exert in 
 any way control over american diplomatic communications stop 
 charge daffaires grew was handed passports eastersunday at two 
 
354 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 fifteen minutes afternoon but news suppressed until following 
 tuesday stop vienna population which had hoped see rupture 
 avoided accepted announcement greatest calm stop no demonstra- 
 tions against americans occured stop to very last authorities 
 treated americans with unusual consideration waiving for their 
 benefit nearly all passport and baggage regulations stop in austro- 
 hungarian government circles rupture not popular but outcarried 
 only for reasons stated stop in hungarian diet government was 
 attacked by opposition for having broken relations but statement 
 from government quieted tisza opponents quickly stop nowhere in 
 monarchy could antagonism toward united states be found which 
 true also in highest military circles and various ministries stop 
 that diplomatic relations had be severed caused in short universal 
 regret stop associated correspondent in position to announce on 
 highest austrohungarian authority that monarchy does not con- 
 template declaring war on united states being willing to leave all 
 further developments in hand american government stop nothing 
 placed in way grew and staffs departure for reason that vienna 
 government felt that no guarantees regarding austrohungarian 
 diplomatists and staff in Washington would be needed stop 
 schreiner." 
 
 The news as it is written is hardly ever complete. Technical limits 
 in news transmission must be considered, and that means brevity. In this 
 case I was not able to tell the whole story, because of its political character. 
 My statement that on Thursday the news was spread that Mr. Penfield 
 would be given his passport, and that this news "appeared authentic" must 
 be explained, as must also the statement that the ambassador "unwilling" 
 to "investigate" asked the Associated Press correspondent, myself, to 
 ascertain if the report was true or not. Elucidation of several other pas- 
 sages in my dispatch will come in connection with this. 
 
 On Thursday morning I made the usual round of the Vienna Foreign 
 Office. At one place I was told that a certain official wanted to see me 
 very urgently. My hotel had been called up several times, but it had been 
 impossible to find me there. The official who delivered this message 
 seemed so much excited that I began to fear for the worst. To live 
 forever with a rupture of diplomatic relations and, possibly, war, over 
 one's head is one of the best means I know for keeping one's mind alert. 
 
 I found the official quickly enough. What was the matter ? Well, the 
 prospect was a very bad one. From reliable quarters — a neutral diplo- 
 matic mission in Washington — ^news had come that a state of war with 
 Germany would be declared as existing by Congress within hours. There 
 was nothing else to do but to prepare Mr. Penfield for the unavoidable. 
 The American ambassador and Mrs. Penfield had done so much for the 
 Austro-Hungarian Red Cross and the poor of Vienna (before the sinking 
 of the Lusitania) that it was felt at the Foreign Office no more than proper 
 
A DIPLOMATIST IN SORE PREDICAMENT 365 
 
 that Mr. Penfield should get an intimation of the impending rupture of 
 diplomatic relations. 
 
 Would I tell Mr. Penfield that it was likely that he would get his 
 passports that evening or the following morning, if news came by that time 
 that the Congress of the United States had complied with the wishes of 
 Mr. Wilson. There seemed to be no way out of it. While, with all his 
 shortcomings, Mr. Penfield had been a very good friend of the Austro- 
 Hungarians, it might become necessary to hand him his papers before he 
 would have had time to leave the country still an accredited ambassador. 
 
 I went immediately to the office quarters of the embassy at No. 9 
 Wohleben Casse, to find that Mr. Penfield would not be in during the 
 day — that he was very busy making his farewell calls. Mr. Joseph C. 
 Grew had already taken over the affairs of the post as charge d'affaires. 
 Since I had most pressing duties of my own to attend to, I left word 
 in a quarter where it would reach Mr. Penfield, if he should drop in 
 meanwhile. 
 
 The Aftermath of a Diplomatic Tea 
 
 I had for that afternoon accepted an invitation to tea at the residence 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Penfield. I had accepted others before, but had always 
 been prevented from going there. The late afternoon was the best hour 
 to see the officials in the Foreign Office. There was no longer any need 
 of seeing them, because I had been informed that I would not be able 
 to use the wires any more. The telegraph system of the country was in 
 the hands of the military, and the gentlemen of that calling do not mince 
 matters when a crisis is near. Moreover, I had to see Mr. Penfield in con- 
 nection with my "diplomatic" mission. 
 
 The tea party was well in progress when I arrived. Those around the 
 huge round table in one of the salons were enjoying themselves. Mrs. 
 Penfield presided in very happy fashion, and a member, by marriage, of the 
 Imperial family, was just recounting how she had succeeded in getting milk 
 for her infant son. I interrupted the interesting story by my entrance but 
 caught the threads of it later on. 
 
 It seems that the princess had some time ago caught the happy idea 
 of keeping somewhere in the country a good cow, the milk of which made 
 up most of the food of her young son. There was no longer any other 
 way of getting milk in Vienna and even this was made impossible. The 
 authorities were now in the habit of seizing for uniform distribution all 
 the milk that was brought into the city, and in this manner the young 
 scion of Parma and Hapsburg had to get along on the same ration as the 
 child of a hodcarrier in the Ottackring District. The ladies and gentlemen 
 at the table found that shocking enough. Why, the idea ! 
 
356 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Well, the enterprising young princess had appealed to her connection, 
 Emperor Charles, but he had told her that there was nothing he could do. 
 As the result of this the princess had now sent her son to where the cow 
 was — quite a distance from Vienna, as I recall it. All that was droll 
 enough, and everybody laughed. The princess had told that story before, 
 I think. At any rate she told it well and with relish. 
 
 Among the others who were present were Mr. Grew, the chargS 
 d'affaires; Mr. Hugh R. Wilson, a second secretary, and Mrs. Wilson; 
 Mr. Allen W. Dulles, also a second secretary, and another attache of the 
 embassy. 
 
 Conversation moved entirely in the sphere of food and nutrition. Mrs. 
 Penfield dwelt with much enthusiasm on the farm she was running for 
 her own household needs and which during her absence would be run by 
 Emin Pasha. Food was high, she said. She found it hard to understand 
 how people lived at all nowadays, and I was asked to explain how it was 
 done. When I told the company that quite recently I had not seen a piece 
 of bread for a week, but had subsisted entirely on potatoes, a small portion 
 of meat and canned vegetables, they found it hard to understand that. 
 
 Uncle Sam was taking good care of his diplomatists abroad. The 
 army quartermaster's department saw to it that the diplomatists and their 
 families were well provided with food, sending to Vienna such things 
 as were needed to make life agreeable — anything from a can of the finest 
 olive oil to a barrel of flour, from juiciest California preserved fruits to 
 a side of bacon or a bag of choicest Mocca ; all of them things which we 
 plain, everyday American civilians could not get, though our work, at 
 least mine, was as important to the public of the United States as that 
 of any member of the embassy staff. 
 
 The conversation was rather animated when suddenly the large double 
 door was flung open, and the tall figure of Mr. Penfield appeared in its 
 frame. He beckoned to me in a somewhat excited manner, and then 
 withdrew again without greeting the ladies. I begged to be excused and 
 followed him, being in my turn followed by Messrs. Grew, Wilson and 
 Dulles. 
 
 When I reached the foyer, a sort of spacious stair landing, Mr. Penfield 
 was sitting on an ottoman, and beside him was standing an attache of the 
 embassy. The ambassador was very much excited. 
 
 "What is that— what is that ? I'm to get my passports in the morning. 
 Is it true — is it true?" he panted. 
 
 "Unfortunately, Mr. Ambassador !" I said. "That is to say, if Congress 
 declares that a state of war exists between the United States and Germany. 
 It has not done that yet." 
 
 "But it will do it— it will do it," said Mr. Penfield, trying hard to 
 
THE AFTERMATH OF A DIPLOMATIC TEA 357 
 
 get his nerves under control. "Well, I won't leave this country in that 
 fashion. I have done too much for these people to deserve such treat- 
 ment. I have fed them, clothed them. Mrs. Penfield had hundreds of 
 thousands of wound dressings made for them in her shop." 
 
 There was nothing I, or any of the others, could say to that. The 
 secretaries — at least two of whom had prayed for this day — were them- 
 selves a little ill at ease before the discomfiture of their chef de mission. 
 I found it hard to understand why Mr. Penfield should tell us all this. 
 
 "Listen, now !" started the ambassador again. "I tell you, I will not 
 leave this country a dismissed ambassador! I want you to go up to the 
 Foreign Office and tell them that they must delay the rupture of diplomatic 
 relations until I am out of the country, which will be Sunday noon. Go 
 up there and tell them, before it is too late." 
 
 "I am afraid that my word won't count with them, Mr. Ambassador !" 
 I said. 
 
 "O, yes, it will. I know it will !" broke in Mr. Penfield. "They think 
 a great deal of you up there. Go and see them. I tell you that can't happen. 
 Tell them to wait until I am gone. Give me my passports — my pass- 
 ports . . ." 
 
 (Mr. Penfield buried his face in his hands and began to stare at the 
 carpet. I was irresolute. What chances had I warding ofiF an action of 
 that nature. 
 
 "I am afraid, Mr. Ambassador, it will be quite useless," I said. 
 
 "No, it won't be. You can do it," insisted Mr. Penfield. "They have 
 a very high opinion of you up there. Go and do it !" 
 
 Mr. Grew also began to urge me, as did several of the others. A little 
 later I was closeted with some of the Foreign Office officials. 
 
 I presented the matter to the best of my ability, pointing out that 
 it would be better to defer the rupture of diplomatic relations long enough 
 to allow Mr. Penfield to get over the border into Switzerland. I finally 
 left with the assurance that Mr. Penfield would be permitted to leave 
 Vienna and Austria an accredited ambassador. 
 
 To the night train for Feldkirch, on the following Saturday, was 
 attached a special car for Ambassador and Mrs. Penfield, who were ac- 
 companied by Mr. Dulles, nephew of Secretary of State Lansing, and 
 a valet and maid. Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld, not especially beloved by 
 Mr. Penfield, and another attache of the Foreign Office, came to the station 
 with floral gifts for Mrs. Penfield, and the official farewell for the 
 ambassador. 
 
 I noticed that everybody present wore a black overcoat and a high 
 silk hat, as they do at high-class funerals. And this, certainly, was one 
 of them. The stafif of the embassy had put in appearance in full force to 
 
358 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 sec off their chief, and there was in evidence a certain amount of hilarity 
 that did not fit into the event. Count Colloredo-Mannsfeld made a few 
 formal remarks to the ambassador, while the other man, Count Forgatch, 
 I believe, presented the floral oflferings to Mrs. Penfield. 
 
 I watched the performance from the philosophical tower I frequent 
 on such occasions and wondered just how much further fiction and simula- 
 tion could get from reality. I must record that it went the whole distance. 
 That somewhere there were young men who would soon bleed on some 
 battlefield and rest in a company grave as the result of diplomacy did not 
 seem to occur to any of those departing, or those seeing the departing 
 off. 
 
 Diplomatic Negotiations Under Difficulties 
 
 On Saturday morning Mr. Grew called me into his office. He 
 also had an errand for me. I was to go to the Foreign Office and argue 
 for an indefinite postponement of the proposed rupture of relations. It 
 was the opinion of the charge d'affaires that everything possible ought to 
 be done to prevent a break. I was of that mind myself — ^had been for 
 weeks before Mr. Grew arrived from Berlin, where he had been the 
 counselor of Mr. James W. Gerard, who was now being interviewed twice 
 a day by the journalists of France, violating thereby every rule of diploma- 
 tic etiquette. 
 
 To present that matter for Mr. Grew was not easy, I concluded. 
 Because the cliarge d'affaires had been in the American embassy at Berlin 
 he was looked upon with suspicion. He was the very man, owing entirely 
 to his former station, who should not have been sent to Vienna, if the 
 State Department hoped to keep up diplomatic relations with Vienna, as 
 it had undoubtedly instructed Mr. Grew, before he came to his new post. 
 
 The conversation with the charge d'affaires established that he had 
 the best of intentions. He felt that the American embassy at Vienna 
 might later on serve as a bridge by which negotiations with the German 
 government might be renewed, if the occasion should come. On that 
 point I was to lay great stress. I suggested to Mr. Grew that he be a 
 little more specific as to his authority in the premises. Was I to make the 
 representations officially, semi-officially or unofficially? But on that point 
 I could not get Mr. Grew to commit himself at first. I told him that 
 unless I could fix my own status I could not very well take the matter 
 up. When finally I saw that Mr. Grew had specific instructions. I de- 
 cided to see what I could do. 
 
 I had two conferences in the Foreign Office that day. One of them 
 led to a conference elsewhere. I argued the case as best I could, but found 
 a great stumbling block in the fact that I was not able to say more than 
 
DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS UNDER DIFFICULTIES 359 
 
 that the charge d'affaires was my authority. If I could point out in what 
 the advantages of the continuation of diplomatic relations lay for Austria- 
 Hungary, aside from the fact that the Vienna embassy of the United States 
 might offer a convenient means for possible negotiations between Washing- 
 ton and Berlin, my case would have a much better standing, I was told. 
 
 But to point out such advantages was not easy, especially since a great 
 number of negatives had to be overcome. I was frankly told that the 
 only reason why diplomatic relations were being severed lay in the con- 
 clusion on the part of the Central Power governments that the American 
 embassy at Vienna had been used by sympathizers of the Allies in the 
 Dual Monarchy, Czechs, Poles, Croats and Italians, as a clearing house 
 for military information going both ways. A former unofficial attache 
 of the embassy and his wife were openly charged with having been 
 the agents of Allied governments, and worse than that was intimated. 
 
 "The difference between the Austro-Hungarian and United States 
 governments is that we do not howl to the four winds in such matters," 
 said an official. "We happen to know that some of the reports of the United 
 States consuls and consular attaches have contained matter of a character 
 detrimental to the public interests of the Monarchy. The reports were 
 forwarded via London and Paris. 
 
 "What assurance have we that this will not be done in the future, if 
 we do not sever diplomatic relations ? The only way to prevent that would 
 be to treat your embassy here as ours was treated in Washington, and 
 that we will not do. We have given the government of the United States 
 the assurance that during this War its diplomatic dispatches and mail 
 pouches will be inviolable. We do not care to go back on our word. If 
 that assurance is cancelled it will be cancelled in the only way hitherto 
 provided for by international usage: A rupture of relations." 
 
 It seemed that there was no way out of this. The embassy could not 
 remain without everything it did being subjected to Austro-Hungarian 
 scrutiny. It would not be able either to receive or send a single dispatch 
 or letter in cypher. Under those circumstances it would be best to have 
 Austro-Hungarian interests in the United States presented by some neutral 
 legation and vice versa. 
 
 Mr. Grew regretted very much that I had not been more successful. 
 On the following day, Easterday in the most Catholic country in Europe, 
 at 2 :15 p. m., when Mr. Penfield was well over the border, representatives 
 of the Foreign Office handed Mr. Grew the passports of the embassy in 
 his private quarters in the new Hotel Bristol. 
 
 On the following Saturday evening, April 14th, the diplomatic and 
 consular staff of the State Department left Vienna on the same train which 
 Mr. Penfield had taken. Such was the end of diplomatic relations between 
 
360 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the United States of America and the oldest empire in Europe— legitimate 
 child of the Caesars of Rome. 
 
 Diplomatists and Plain Citizens 
 
 This account can not very well be closed without some reference to 
 the callous conduct of the United States embassy toward American citizens 
 whom the rupture of relations left stranded in what might at any moment 
 become an enemy country. With the exception of two secretaries, Messrs. 
 Rutherford Bingham and Glenn Stewart, scant consideration was shown 
 American citizens by members of the embassy staff. The few who managed 
 to get on the embassy train, three coaches attached to the regular night 
 train for Feldkirch, got there largely because of their prominence or my 
 friendship. All others were left behind to shift for themselves. While T 
 could mention a good many such cases I will make reference only to one, 
 because it had a peculiar significance under the circumstances. 
 
 There arrived in Vienna a Mrs. Judelsohn, mother of Mr. Montefiore 
 Judelsohn, a student interpreter at the United States embassy at Constan- 
 tinople. Mrs. Judelsohn was not in the best of health and needed the 
 care of an elderly Armenian woman, who was in her service for that 
 purpose. The Armenian woman claimed American citizenship by marriage, 
 I was informed. At any rate on credentials given her in Constantinople 
 she had been able to travel as far as Vienna. Even the Argus-eyed 
 Bulgarian frontier officials had permitted her to pass, and after that she 
 had run the gauntlet of the three military railroad administrations of 
 occupied Serbia. 
 
 All had gone well until the two women reached the American embassy 
 at Vienna. Here a vise was refused the Armenian. In some manner 
 Mrs. Judelsohn heard of me, called and spoke of her plight. Though 
 she was the mother of a member of the service, she was unable to get her 
 nurse through. She could not travel without the woman, and would 
 not leave her behind if she could. I was to help her. At the American 
 embassy I was refused. 
 
 A request at the Foreign Office and the War Department finally secured 
 for the woman permission to leave Austria-Hungary without the vise. 
 I came home that night and found in my room a little round package. It 
 contained nine crackers, which the Armenian woman sent me to show 
 her appreciation. Nine crackers were not to be valued lowly in those days. 
 
 But the best example of how a solicitous United States Department 
 
 of State will protect United States citizens, I had in France. At Pontarlier, 
 
 'the kind border officials marched a party of American citizens, among them 
 
 . six women and a young girl, from one place of inspection to another for 
 
DIPLOMATISTS AND PLAIN CITIZEN 361 
 
 the greater part of a day, through streets that were covered with thawing 
 snow to the depth of six inches. At the office of the military frontier 
 surrveyor these women, two of them American Red Cross nurses from 
 Sofia, and two others, wife and daughter of an American missionary 
 stationed at Prague, were Hned up for a cross-examination in regard to 
 conditions in Bulgaria and Austria that was not the nicest thing to behold. 
 When it came to be my turn, the French captain, not a bad sort, by the 
 way, thought a prize had been captured. 
 
 — Bh, bien, vous etes correspondent . . . vous aves visitt le 
 front d'Isonzo recemment, il parrait, — he said. 
 
 Well versed in his business, the man had, after looking pensively at 
 the legend "Vient d'Autriche," written with red ink and large lettering 
 across the vise on my passport of the French consulate general at Berne, 
 found quickly a number of Austrian military visees done at Tolmein, 
 Laibach, Adelsberg and Triest. 
 
 I admitted that I had been on the Julian front quite recently. As the 
 result of that I was invited to be seated. The officer armed himself with 
 a shorthand pad and began to scribble in stenography. This done he began 
 to ply me with questions of a character intended to bring out what military 
 information I might have. He wanted to know what the morale of the 
 Austro-Hungarian troops was. I said that I was no psychologist. What 
 was the number of the new big Skoda howitzers from the Hermada to the 
 Stol Mountain ? I did not know. Had I seen any of them ? I had. How 
 far were these guns behind the infantry position on an average? I had 
 not measured the distance. 
 
 "It would seem to me that you are averse to giving me the information 
 I desire," said the man finally. 
 
 "I am averse to that," I remarked frankly. 
 
 "But why should you be? You are now one of our allies." 
 
 "Not yet against the Austrians!" I ventured to remark. 
 
 "What difference is there — Boche and Austrian are the same!" 
 
 "Not to me, monsieur!" 
 
 "Voyons! — What is the use of splitting hairs?" 
 
 "I hope that the French general staff does not place too great a weight 
 on military information collected in this manner. I have had a little 
 military experience and know enough of the business to answer your 
 questions in such a manner that the result might be injurious to your 
 cause, as you put it. I can state numbers, calibers and distances. But 
 what assurance have you that I have given you the correct data?" 
 
 A frown went over the officer's face. 
 
 "We could hold you responsible in that event," he said tersely 
 
 "For what?" 
 
362 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 "For giving us false information." 
 
 "That is very ingenious, monsieur T I said. "Do you not think that 
 the government of the United States might have something to say in 
 that?" 
 
 The officer laughed. 
 
 "So far as the United States government is concerned we have a 
 free hand. On that you need not count." 
 
 **That means that the United States government will do nothing for 
 its citizens when under such conditions they might get into trouble in this 
 country ?" 
 
 "If you want to put it that way," remarked the officer, pleasantly. 
 "You have said enough even now to warrant your arrest and detention." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "It is plainly to be seen that you are a sympathizer at least of the 
 Austrians," was the reply. 
 
 "There is nothing to be seen, monsieur, except that I am a person who 
 does not violate hospitality. I have been the guest of the several Central 
 Powers countries for three years and feel that I must be fair to them. 
 How would you like it if a war correspondent, who had been in your 
 country and with your armies, went over into Germany and peddled his 
 stock of information?" 
 
 Monsieur thought it over for a while. 
 
 "I think I understand you. I beg your pardon!" 
 
 That afternoon he came to the train to see the party off. He was 
 especially cordial to me. 
 
 "Such matters, unfortunately, are one of the unpleasant side issues 
 of war. I hope that you will overlook the incident. Au revoirf" 
 
 At the prefecture in Paris an official nearly lost his mind when I 
 presented my passport with the legend "Vient d'Autriche" and a German 
 name. Jamais — jamais de la vie — was I to get a permit de sejour, not 
 even for a day. I would have to leave France that evening or land 
 in trouble. That I had not been able to make in four or five hours 
 arrangements for sailing did not concern French securite puhlique. I went 
 to the American embassy, where a suave and gentle-spoken secretary looked 
 at my passport a long time and then regretted that he could do nothing. 
 The best thing to do would be to take a train for Spain and hope to get 
 a steamer from there. 
 
 "You come from Austria, I notice," said the man with a voice as soft 
 as the beat of an owl's wings. "That is bad ! We can't do anything for 
 you. Better take my advice and get out of Paris and France. You have 
 a German name — that is always dangerous. And then you were not even 
 born in the United States. You have quite an accent, I notice. Too bad ! 
 
DIPLOMATISTS AND PLAIN CITIZEN 363 
 
 But there is nothing we can do for you. May be that your bureau here 
 would fix up the matter. If you should get into trouble let us know." 
 
 They were prepared for my coming at Hendaye, on the Spanish border. 
 A large tome was produced, and in it two French frontier officials read 
 a long time. On this occasion I did not know any French. It would be 
 interesting to hear what they had to say, I thought. But their remarks 
 were only professionally interesting. He is a newspaper correspondent, 
 connected with the somewhat official Associated Press of America. The 
 censorship has found it necessary to suppress a great deal of his matter, 
 it would seem — ^there are several entries of that type. It is strange that 
 there is not yet a report from the point of his entry into France, though 
 it seems that he made application in Paris for permission to stay longer 
 than is allowed travellers in transit. He looks to me a man of unfriendly 
 allure — what shall we do? I am not fond of detaining journalists. 
 Generally, they have friends somewhere. At any rate he can't get back. 
 Has his baggage been thoroughly examined? He may have papers with 
 him. 
 
 One of the officers left the shed in which the passengers were 
 examined. The other continued to go over the two books — the tome in 
 question, and a smaller book of "Journal" size. An index card also figured 
 in the scheme. I noticed that its edges were slightly torn and badly 
 soiled. It had been fingered over for years, it would seem. 
 
 Presently, the man returned. The baggage of the travellers had 
 already been put on the shuttle train for Irun, across the Spanish border. 
 But so and so had given the assurance that all baggage had been properly 
 inspected. 
 
 With a surly look the passport was handed me, and I was glad when 
 the train was in motion. I may mention though that I had no papers of 
 any sort among my belongings. They were then already on the wide 
 Atlantic as part of a diplomatist's inviolable baggage. 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 
 
 THE fortunes of war and the laws of life have already overtaken 
 many of the principal actors of the Great War. The story is 
 that Czar Nicholas and his entire family have been done to death 
 in the foulest manner — fallen prey to the monster which Sir George 
 Buchanan and his able fellow diplomatists unchained, when, for the pur- 
 pose of eradicating the possibility of an understanding between Germany 
 and Russia, they promoted what may be called the Kerenski Revolution. 
 The snow ball at the top of the mountain becomes an avalanche when started 
 rolling. There was great discontent in Russia. To remove it was one of 
 the purposes of the War so long as autocracy was in charge of the situa- 
 tion. To use that discontent was made the plan of those who looked upon 
 the Russians as still a military and political asset. Bolshevism resulted. 
 
 Emperor William II is an exile, after making none too glorious 
 an exit — not even from Germany, but from Belgium. The authority that 
 was to find him guilty of something or other seems to have found that 
 he was not guilty to the extent of permitting prosecution. Probably, the 
 evidence could not be presented without inculpating others. With the 
 emperor went his son and heir — quite an innocuous young man of but 
 the fraction of the ability which it was necessary to credit him with so 
 that the slander heaped upon him might seem to have a solid foundation. 
 
 With the two was swept from its high seat the German rule-by-divine- 
 right principle, and the aristocracy and bureaucracy that were its mainstay. 
 The bubble of German governmental efficiency held well enough, but when 
 it was finally pricked by the Allies, with the help of the United States, 
 it was shown to be no better than other inflations. The mask of govern- 
 ment snatched off, the German people were shown to be an aggregate with 
 all the faults and virtues of others — to those who were not blinded by the 
 loathsome prejudices that lead to war. 
 
 Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary, last of the monarchs par excel- 
 lence, was laid away in the crypt of the Capuzine Church in Vienna, among 
 his forbears, before the monarchy crumbled and fell. For the greater part 
 of a century had he been emperor and king. For all that his coffin looked 
 remarkably small under the black pall with its huge white cross, before 
 the high altar of St. Stephen's Cathedral. In all that pomp of state and 
 
 364 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 365 
 
 show of royal prerogative the catafalque of the dead sovereign seemed to 
 me the smallest thing. It was another case of : 
 
 "The king is dead, long live the king!" 
 
 A few weeks later I saw his successor crowned in the Coronation 
 Church of Ofen. A noteworthy thing happened. Count Tisza as paladin 
 of Hungary, and the officiating cardinal, had just placed the crown of St. 
 Stephen on the head of the young man — state and church had together 
 endowed him with the right to be the future King of Hungary. But 
 the crown had not been well placed. When the king moved his head a 
 little it would have fallen off had he not put his hands up in time and 
 caught it. Perhaps, that was an omen. Monarchy is not dead in Europe — 
 the cycle of man has merely reached the point where for a time it will 
 be not as popular as it has been. 
 
 Count Tisza was assassinated at the instigation of a demagogue — a 
 lickspittle Sylla of the Magyars. Count Stuergkh was shot dead by one 
 of the Megali-Idealists ,who would make mankind happy by doing without 
 the elimination of the unfit, who, nevertheless, have their uses. The arch- 
 dukes of Austria and the haughty nobles of Hungary have been snowed 
 under for the time being, and the rapacious gang of bankers in Vienna 
 and Budapest is no longer selling food to the starving masses at profits 
 that would have made a Roman taxes farmer envious. 
 
 Of such men as Count Czernin one hears seldom now. Count Berchtold, 
 dubbed the Minister of the handsome Exterior, when he was Minister of 
 the Exterior, has no longer any call for advice from Charles. With the 
 names of Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Mackensen, Falkenhayn, von Below, 
 have disappeared those of Hotzendorff, Boreovic, von Arz, Pflanzer- 
 Baltin. Of Nicholai-Nicholaievich and Broussiloff and all the others one 
 hears no more. Even Cadorna and Diaz are out of the press. Hence- 
 forth it will have to rain in the Julian Alps without the world learning of 
 this in an official communique. 
 
 King Ferdinand finally met the doom Stambulowski had promised 
 him. But he lost only his official head. When a part of the Bulgarian 
 army in Macedonia had been bought by the Allies, the Prince of Coburg 
 decided that his estate in Hungary would be a better place than Sofia. 
 With him fell Dr. Radoslavoff, a man, who, when I saw him last in 
 Vienna, just before the rupture of relations, had become the very per- 
 sonification of care and worry, quite a shocking contrast to Halil Bey, the 
 Ottoman minister of foreign affairs at that time, who still found occasion 
 for optimism. Generals Jekoff and Todoroff are no longer heard from. 
 
 Sultan Mohammed Rechid Khan V, Ghazi, etc., Caliph of the Faith- 
 ful, etc., was gathered to his fathers. Prince Yussuf Issedin committed 
 suicide in his hareem by opening the arteries in his wrist. Prince Said 
 
366 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Halim Pasha, grand vizier, disappeared before the war was lost, and his 
 place was taken by Talaat Pasha, who started in life as a telegraph 
 operator. Enver Pasha, the young minister of war, has not even taken 
 the world into his confidence as to his present whereabouts, and on the 
 Bosphorus rule now men who will have to handle the future of their race 
 with different means. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey is totally blind, and in his night eternal he will have 
 time to inspect his own share in the great calamity. Sazonoff was a sort 
 of hanger-on at the Paris peace conversations. Asquith sees his sun setting. 
 Lord Kitchener rests somewhere at the bottom of the North Sea. It is 
 said that he still lives in English folklore of today. Generals French, Haig 
 and Byng are out of print. Sir Ian Hamilton is no longer faced with the 
 situation of having to reconcile a military operation with a purely diploma- 
 tic purpose, and his able opponent Liman von Sanders Pasha is no longer 
 obliged to endeavor holding his command while holding back the Allied 
 troops at the same time. If Baron Wangenheim's spirit has the faculty of 
 perceiving things mundane it must wonder at the mental spirals some 
 men employ in blackening the memory of the dead. 
 
 Very soon the galaxy of Great War leaders will have faded into 
 oblivion in corpus mundi. Their names will remain, of course, for the 
 tragedy of the craft sinister was too great to be forgotten in a hurry. 
 Thousands of years from now somebody will refer to the event as we 
 do to the Peloponnesian War or the Persian invasion of Hellas, and still 
 a little later — long hence as we see it — in a second as the Nilometer of the 
 flood of time records it — the fall of Germany may be another fall of Troy — 
 with Priams and Agamemnons, and possibly a Helen — with a Helen in fact, 
 for all such things reduce themselves in the course of time to first principles, 
 those of biology. 
 
 Products of the Diplomatic Laboratory 
 
 Meanwhile, we of today would do well to take a rational attitude 
 toward such things. Selfishness, like every other excess in nature, comes 
 home to roost. The good people who saw the European War in the light 
 of exports and imports, industry, commerce and profits — large profits — 
 are today face to face with a condition that may take from their coffers 
 the very thing, which to keep, the War was entered upon, driven to such 
 extremes and terminated in the manner known. The last of Bolshevism 
 has not yet been heard, and the best we may hope is that Bolshevism 
 will leave mankind no worse off than the War already has done. 
 
 It was greed of various sorts that brought on the Great War, the 
 contentions of the Neo-Idealists in statecraft and the Megali-Idealists 
 
PRODUCTS OF THE DIPLOMATIC LABORATORY 367 
 
 in "Pans" and self-determination, notwithstanding. What particular form 
 that greed took does not matter. So far as Great Britain was concerned 
 it had the character of a national policy designed to perpetuate the empire 
 in face of a rapidly growing nation that sought room for expansion — 
 Germany. That the conflict in this quarter was launched by a disagreement 
 over the Two-Power Standard, or by the hatred of one another of an 
 Emperor and a King, nephew and uncle, or by the fear that German com- 
 merce would soon or late displace the British foreign trade, is something 
 over which biased writers may quibble. 
 
 No doubt there will be found those who can defend Sazonoflf's methods 
 for the "realization" of Russian "desires" on the Bosphorus, despite the 
 fact that historically the Russian had as much right to Constantinople as 
 the Yankee. If that city was to be transferred on strictly ethical grounds 
 — so much mentioned in connection with the case; then it was the Greeks 
 who should have gotten it — not the Greeks of the peninsula, but 
 the Greeks of Pera, the descendants of the people, the Byzantians, from 
 whom the city and its territories was taken by the Osmanli, after the 
 good Crusaders had left it in such poor shape to defend itself. If we are 
 going to unscramble the omelette of events and succession, let us at least 
 be logical enough to do it right. Done properly that process of correcting 
 injustice might have renewed in Constantinople the war of the Blues and 
 the Greens. No doubt partisans of the Angelos, Palaeologus, Macedonian, 
 and Armenian dysnasties would have been found in the old families on 
 the Golden Horn, provided some Roman, Athenian, Spartan or Dorian 
 pretender had not put in appearance. 
 
 In all such matters the starting point is the thing. To find that point 
 is about as easy as reaching a conclusion where a circle starts. 
 
 It was so everywhere. There are a number of territories claimed by 
 many at the same time. 
 
 There is the Dalmation coast and that of Istria. The Austro-Hungarians 
 held it. The Italians want it, and the Jugo-Slavs, the inhabitants of the 
 hinterland, do not want to surrender it. True enough there are some 
 Italians on the coasts in question. But how did they get there? So far 
 as modern history is concerned they settled there when Venice was the 
 power of the Adriatic and Mediterranean. But many of the Venitians 
 were driven off when the Serbian emperors began to feel their oats. Other 
 Italians came to the coast as immigrants within our own period. They 
 came there, because the fishing on their own shores was not very profitable, 
 while on the island-studded eastern expanses of the Adria it was. If we 
 admit that principle, we will not be far off from having such claims be 
 the cause of war in other parts. 
 
 There is the Banat. Everybody wanted the Banat. It was in turn 
 
568 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 promised by the Allied governments to the Serbs and the Rumanians ; to 
 the Rumanians last, because it was a bit of bait needed to catch an ally. 
 The fact that this promise had been used before, and was likely to have 
 a mortgage on it, did not seem to bother so great a statesman as Bratianu. 
 In the Banat live together four races: Croats, Germans, Magyars, 
 Rumanians and a few Serbs, to name them alphabetically. 
 
 To what extent did self-determination worry the Allied governments 
 when they promised Rumania this choice morsel of Europe? To what 
 extent, indeed, did any such deals worry their minds? Quite calmly 
 territories were signed away, just as that had been done in the treaties of 
 San Stefano, Paris, Berlin, Bucharest, Vienna, Versailles, Utrecht, Ports- 
 mouth, and Osnabrueck, locale of the closing scene of another "World 
 War." 
 
 And as General Palivanoff expressed it in his report concerning the 
 situation in Rumania in November, 1916, the failure on the battlefield of 
 the would-be beneficiary of the treaty could always be construed into a 
 gain for those who had promised to give what they had not in hand. 
 
 Self-determination must come from within, as it has come since time 
 immemorial. When its benefits are bestowed by the edict of another, un- 
 satisfactory conditions to all concerned came of it. 
 
 On November 19th, 1918, M. Leon Mirman, French commissioner at 
 Metz, Alsace-Lorraine, addressed a proclamation to "the remaining Ger- 
 mans," which reads in part as follows : 
 
 "France accepts homage only from those who love her. 
 
 "I am sure that you will love France as soon as, morally re- 
 generated by a long and wholesome exercise of liberty, you will 
 have become capable of knowing it and worthy of understanding 
 her. 
 
 "But, today, I reject in her name your hypocritical acclama- 
 tions. I would respect you more if you were silent and sad, 
 wearing with dignity the mourning of your monstrous phantasies. 
 
 "I demand, I exact of you, only one thing — respect for France 
 and her laws. Whosoever attempts to disturb order will be 
 punished. Those among you who conduct themselves in a proper 
 manner will not be molesl^ed, and, should such a thing occur, 
 they will receive protection from me against any one whomsoever, 
 in the name of the Republic. 
 
 "None of you need be troubled at having shown publicly in 
 the past your joy in the temporary successes, and, more recently, 
 your sorrow at the final disaster of your country. 
 
 "But if France, in the noble pride of her victory, remains 
 the servant of justice, she does not forget — and justice makes it a 
 duty not to forget — the crimes of which her children were the 
 victims. 
 
PRODUCTS OF THE DIPLOMATIC LABORATORY 369 
 
 "Those among you who approved these crimes will not be 
 prosecuted. If you perceive today the moral aberration in which 
 you allowed the guardians of your conscience to involve you, 
 France abandons you with pity to your remorse; if you do not 
 yet understand, she leaves you with disdain in your abject con- 
 dition. ... 
 
 "I have spoken. 
 
 "In the name of the Republic, in the name of France, one 
 and indivisible." 
 
 Vae victis! 
 
 On January 13, 1919, or about two months later a protest was sent 
 to President Wilson, of which this is a part : 
 
 "Those who up to the present time have been full citizens 
 of Alsace-Lorraine — native residents of German origin to whom 
 this land unquestionably owes a great deal of its fruitfulness — 
 turn in deep distress to the leader of the free American people, 
 pleading for protection against the oppressive rule of the French 
 despotism under which more than 400,000 people are suffer- 
 ing." . . . 
 
 The petition was made by refugees from Alsace-Lorraine at Freiburg 
 in Baden. The population of the two provinces was in 1910, 1,874,014. 
 Alsace and Lorraine were wrenched from the old German, or Holy Roman 
 Empire, in the Seventeenth Century, by Louis XIV, and Louis XV. In 
 1871 Alsace and Lorraine were re-annexed to the German Empire as 
 a Reichsland or federal district, and for many years thereafter had a 
 notoriously shortsighted government of the Prussian type, the governors 
 being mostly selected for their expertness in discipline of the barracks. 
 
 Let us contrast with that the so-called Declaration of Corfu, of July 
 20th, 1917. 
 
 "The authorized representatives of the Serbs, Croats and 
 Slovenes, recognizing that the desire of our people is to free it- 
 self from any foreign yoke and to constitute itself an independent 
 national state, agree in declaring that this state must be founded 
 on the following principles : 
 
 "The State of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, who are also 
 known as Southern Slavs, or Jugoslavs, will be a free and inde- 
 pendent kingdom with indivisible territory and unity of allegiance. 
 It will be a constitutional, democratic and parliamentary monarchy, 
 under the Karageorgevitch dynasty. 
 
 "The special Serb, Croat and Slovene flags and coats of arms 
 may be freely hoisted and used. 
 
 "The three national denominations will be equal before the 
 law, and may be freely used in public. 
 
 "The two alphabets, Cyrillic and Latin, will also rank equally 
 throughout the kingdom. 
 
370 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 "All recognized religions shall be exercised freely and pub- 
 licly ; and in particular the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Mus- 
 sulman creeds, which are chiefly professed by our people, will be 
 equal and have the same rights in regard to the state. 
 
 "The territory of the kingdom will include all territory com- 
 pactly inhabited by our people, and cannot be divided without 
 injury to the vital interests of the community. Our nation de- 
 mands nothing that belongs to others, but only what is its own. 
 
 "In the interests of freedom and of the equal rights of all the 
 Adriatic Sea shall be free and open to all. 
 
 "All citizens shall be equal and enjoy the same rights toward 
 the state and before the law. 
 
 "Deputies to the national parliament shall be elected by uni- 
 versal suffrage, with equal, direct and secret ballot." . 
 
 The lesson to be gathered from these three excerpts is simple. The 
 last of them has self-determination as its object, the other two deal with a 
 case of annexation, or re-annexation. In the one case irredenta will be 
 obviated, in the other it will be made a certainty. 
 
 Such are the varying ideals of statecraft, and the contradictory in- 
 terpretations that may be given the war slogan : "Liberty for small peoples." 
 France did not even think it worth while to take a plebiscite in Alsace- 
 Lorraine, as at one time some of her leaders promised. In overlooking that, 
 French statesmen of today can not have considered seriously the future. 
 It is the "noble pride of victory" which has bred more wars that were un- 
 necessary than anything else. 
 
 I have at the beginning of the book made some reference to leagues 
 of nations, citing two instances which resemble in the main the present 
 effort. The first of these is known as the League of Peace, of 1518,* and 
 the second as the Holy Alliance. Due to the fact that King Charles of 
 Spain and Pope Leo X were not keen supporters of the league, though 
 they became signatories to it, the agreement, directed this time against the 
 Turks, did not last very long. Two years after its ratification it was 
 dead, and nothing came of the fine promises made to one another. The 
 Holy Alliance has been gone into already. It was directed against the 
 French and Napoleon, and expired similarly of inanition. For many years 
 Czar Nicholas of Russia occupied himself with the same ideals, and then 
 ended up by losing all in the Great War. 
 
 Leagues of nations are as old and common as hills in Attica. It would 
 be denying that causes have effects, to say that they have done no good. 
 But the good they have done has always been far from their purpose. 
 They have not prevented wars for the very simple reason that war has 
 always, soon or late, broken out among the members of such leagues. 
 
 See Appendix. 
 
PRODUCTS OF THE DIPLOMATIC LABORATORY 371 
 
 The peoples of the signatories of the Treaty of 1518, began exactly one 
 hundred years later to devastate all of Central Europe in one of the 
 bloodiest of wars of our era, the Thirty Years' War. Prussia and Austria, 
 signatories of the Holy Alliance, went to war fifty years later, and the 
 same two countries in 1914 made common cause against the third of the 
 signatories, Russia, and the object of the alliance, France, though by that 
 time the Holy Alliance had long been forgotten and was no longer the 
 chemical trace of a political fact. 
 
 Modern enthusiasts and Neo-Idealists claim that with this League of 
 Nations it will be different. One would say: Let us hope so, if to say 
 that would not involve the complete negation of all history. 
 
 As to Open Covenants and Open Diplomacy 
 
 The reader may well have passed under the impression that the old 
 system of diplomatic relations is dangerous and that to continue it would 
 be to invite more disasters. All of that is very true. It may seem also 
 that improvement does not lie in the direction of continuation of the 
 present methods of international intercourse. That also is true, only too 
 true, as Mr. Wilson must have realized when he set up the First of his 
 Fourteen Points: 
 
 "Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which 
 there shall be no private international understandings of any 
 kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly in the public 
 view." 
 
 The main purpose of this labor of mine was to show how difficult, 
 nay impossible, it is to have our present system of "diplomacy . 
 proceed always frankly in the public view." So long as there is a 
 diplomacy that resembles in any respect the practice as we have had it, 
 "private international understandings" will be made, even if, as some have 
 suggested, there be no longer such a thing as "diplomatic privileges," that 
 is: The granted and reciprocally accepted "right," as governments and 
 their own agents view it, of sending secret communications to one another. 
 The elimination of such things as telegrams in code, and inviolable mail 
 pouches, would mean nothing at all, would, on the other hand, tend merely 
 to once more lead the world public into a false sense of security. 
 
 The remedy, then, does not lie in that direction. 
 
 It has been maintained that diplomatic services are necessary in the 
 expedition of inter-governmental affairs of a routine character. Such is 
 hardly the case. In times of peace and in the absence of intrigue the 
 ambassador and minister of the government that has no designs upon its 
 neighbor is little more than a drone — a sort of superior messenger boy, as 
 
372 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 has been said. The comunications he has to transmit to the Foreign Office 
 of his post could be transmitted in the regular international mail and over 
 the wires and cables in plain text or a cypher that is not secret in the sense 
 in which government codes are this. If that were not desirable in some 
 cases, the consul could attend to the matter, if such a consul, or consul- 
 general, were given no other function than that which is his at present when 
 no diplomatic standing is given him. Nothing would be gained, of course, 
 if consular officers were allowed to dabble in diplomacy. 
 
 This would mean, of course, that there would be no diplomatists, and 
 that inter-governmental affairs would be limited to matters concerning 
 entirely the maintenance of existing relations. Alliances and understandings 
 of any sort could not be taken care of in that manner, and not to have 
 alliances and such was recognized as best by the immortal George Washing- 
 ton in his farewell address when he warned the people of the United States 
 against the making of "entangling alliances" and gave as his reason : 
 "Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive 
 dislike of another cause those by whom they are actuated to 
 look for danger only from one side, and thus serve to veil and 
 even to second the arts of influence of the other. Real patriots 
 who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to be- 
 come suspected and even odious, while its dupes and tools 
 usurp the applause and the confidence of the people to sur- 
 render their interests." 
 
 The best sort of international relations are those devoid of all alliances 
 and understandings, save the one understanding which alone can preserve 
 peace — a mutual desire to live in harmony with the national neighbor. If 
 each people and government will do that alliances will not be necessary. 
 
 But there will always be the bully, and the ambitious governments, who 
 will not want to join sincerely such a scheme. Unfortunately, this half- 
 finished world of ours is not yet ready to be run on ideals, even if in the 
 course of time we have come a little nearer to that. Nor will it be possible 
 for ages to come to control those desires in nations which become articulate 
 in chauvinism and jingoism, interpreting one as the element that promotes 
 in times of deepest peace the cause of war by fostering prejudices, and the 
 other as the agency which promotes hatred when war is imminent or is 
 come. 
 
 These are things to which to be blind would defeat every effort to 
 spare mankind the visitations it has recently groaned under. It is best 
 to look at the individual and the groups he forms as biological phenomena, 
 the defects of which can not be explained away, though amenable to 
 abatement they be. Quite the most dangerous foe of mankind is he who 
 looks upon mankind as being better than it is. In the life of men 
 as in that of nations, the primitive passion is "to have and to hold." 
 
AS TO OPEN COVENANTS AND OPEN DIPLOMACY 373 
 
 To restrict that passion so that it will not come in hostile conflict 
 with another instance of it has been the purpose of the legislator and 
 moralist ever since organized society has existed, and that goes far beyond 
 known history. But in this the law-givers have had the advantage of 
 being also the punishers. A law that is not enforced, or can not be en- 
 forced, is not a law at all, of course. It is mere verbiage. Law in order to 
 be enforceable must have authority behind it. Law, to be just, must 
 have the consent of those that are subject to it, for otherwise it becomes 
 nothing, and, indeed, never is more in such instances, but the edict of 
 some absolutism, be this autocracy or democracy applied in extremes. 
 
 It has been shown here that International Law has none of the 
 characteristics, though some of the qualities, of Municipal Law, the form 
 of legislation I have just mentioned. International Law lacks a sanction- 
 ing authority — the means to punish those who break it. 
 
 Though International Law was ruled by the British Government to 
 be a dead letter in all respects not promotive of British public interest, 
 during the Great War, we will be obliged to make use of it again in the 
 future. International regulation there must be, and no matter what style 
 this may be given for the immediate future, the fact is that International 
 Law, as it was, will again become the fact in international relations, for 
 the very good reason that International Law is not in principle an artificial 
 structure, but entirely a code of conduct, based upon the exigencies of inter- 
 communion and the lessons they have taught. It is entirely of an advisory 
 nature. International Law does not set penalties, but merely points to 
 correct conduct. No matter what efforts may be made to improve upon 
 that condition, nothing better than what we have now will ever be evolved, 
 because conditions will not be other than what they are, so long as states 
 will continue to apply the principle of sovereignty and look upon each 
 other as equals within their own boundaries and rights. 
 
 To set up International Courts of Justice is not feasible, because such 
 sovereign states as would be brought before them can not accept others as 
 their peers without violating their sovereignty themselves. The entire 
 category of cases involving national honor, of which so much was heard 
 in the peace movement which immediately preceded the Great War, belongs 
 to the subject of sovereignty. To enforce the degrees of such courts — in 
 other words, to give International Law the power to punish — is out of the 
 question, therefore. A state or government that may be punished has 
 ceased to be sovereign, if it submits; it ceases to be independent, if it is 
 forced to submit, and it is no longer a member of a league when, in defense 
 of what it conceives to be its honor, it revolts against the decree pro- 
 nounced and goes to war. 
 
 This, then, is the insuperable difficulty — has been the difficulty ever 
 
374 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 since within the realm of history nations have tried to preserve the peace 
 by similar measures and methods. 
 
 The application of penalties being out of the question, we must needs 
 look for a remedy in another direction, and must find it in suasion. 
 
 A Better Base for International Relations 
 
 There are not many who will remember that there was such a thing 
 as an Interparliamentary Union. The body was in session a little before 
 the European War broke out. It has not been heard of since, because the 
 rational in all things has had a hard time of it recently. Yet to the 
 Interparliamentary Union we will have to look for the preservation of 
 peace; to it we will have to turn when the moment comes in which the 
 paper houses of the Neo-Idealists and Megalo-Idealists will fall together. 
 
 Expanding the principles of the Interparliamentary Union as it was 
 into a system such as it should be, we would find that its general character 
 ought to be more or less this : 
 
 ( 1 ) Complete independence of the executive branch of the government 
 for each national delegation. 
 
 (2) Full mandatory powers for each delegation from the national 
 parliamentary body of which it is and remains a part; the several man- 
 datory powers to be uniform in all respects, and so conferred upon each 
 national delegation that the several mandates would confer full mandatory 
 powers upon the Interparliamentary Union. 
 
 (3) All governments to guarantee, by special acts of the several parlia- 
 ments, if necessary, that at all times, war included, the delegates of the 
 union would enjoy inviolability and complete immunity, whether they 
 belonged to a belligerent state or a neutral one ; full inviolability to be given 
 also to the dispatches and mail of the delegates at all times, war included, as 
 well as free transit to and from the seat of the Interparliamentary Union, 
 regardless of war measures aflFecting other travel. 
 
 (4) Immunity from war legislation of any kind passed by the parlia- 
 ment to which the delegation belongs. 
 
 (5) Parliaments to be represented, on a census per capita basjs, by 
 not less than three nor more than nine delegates, with no delegations from 
 colonial parliaments accepted in cases where the same national element or 
 race is already represented in the Union by the parliament exercising 
 suzerainty in any degree over the colony in question, through the executive 
 branch of the government. 
 
 (6) The Interparliamentary Union to be a body of one chamber. 
 
 (7) No members of the national parliament to be eligible for service 
 on the interparliamentary delegation if within ten years connected with the 
 
A BETTER BASE FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 375 
 
 executive branch of their government in any capacity, or known to be 
 personally or through affiliation connected with great financial interests 
 anywhere, the body of the Interparliamentary Union reserving the right 
 to pass upon these requirements. 
 
 (8) The Interparliamentary Union to meet once every year in times 
 of peace and to go into session immediately following a declaration of 
 war, and to continue therein until the conclusion of the war. 
 
 (9) All participating national parliaments to agree not to ratify peace 
 treaties before these have been reviewed by the Interparliamentary Union ; 
 no agreement between belligerents involving in any way the territory of a 
 neutral, or his rights whatsoever, to be considered legal until it has the 
 approval of the Parliamentary Union. 
 
 (10) Subject races and racial aggregates under suzerainty of another 
 to have the right to submit to the Interparliamentary Union their grievances, 
 without any obligation upon the Union to act in the premises if it should 
 not deem that necessary. 
 
 (11) Duties of the Parliamentary Union: 
 
 (a); To reduce International Law to easily recognizable and 
 definitely delimited propositions and terms, so that none of them 
 could be evaded or in spirit violated by an interpretory decree of 
 a belligerent government or governments, leaving it free, how- 
 ever, for belligerent governments to engage in reprisal, within the 
 limits of International Law as then constituted, provided that no 
 neutral interest of any kind is thereby endangered or actually 
 injured. No distinction to be made as to the means of warfare 
 on land and sea, provided they do not affect the welfare of non- 
 combatants who do not venture into a zone of war on land or sea 
 which has been established by the belligerent powers in accord 
 with International Law. 
 
 (b) To work for the elimination of situations that might 
 lead to war, by approaching upon this subject the national parlia- 
 ments concerned, without putting forth coercion in any form. 
 
 (c) To discourage armament by approaching the national 
 parliaments. 
 
 (d) To promote economic equity through the same channel. 
 
 (e) To assist through the same channel in the facilitation 
 of international intercourse, and to see that no discrimination in 
 trade is practiced by the stronger state upon the weaker. 
 
 (f) To discourage the conducting of propaganda in favor 
 of war, through the national parliament of the delegation in whose 
 countries that propaganda may be conducted. To encourage by 
 legislation the maintenance abroad of proper and responsible news- 
 paper representation, which in times of war should be so extended 
 by the national parliament that the belligerent, establishing a 
 censorship or interfering otherwise, in any manner, with the flow 
 
376 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 of news communication, over telegraph, telephone, radio, cable or 
 mail system, be refused access to the press of the country, no 
 matter what his arguments for the departure from normal condi- 
 tions might be. No belligerent to be obliged, however, to admit 
 war correspondents or other civilians to his fronts ; refusal to ad- 
 mit authorized persons to be followed by the proscription of pub- 
 lishing the official military communiques of the government con- 
 cerned. 
 
 (12) The Interparliamentary Union not to occupy itself with strictly 
 internal affairs of any of the countries represented or not represented, be 
 these social, economic, political or questions of conscience; no distinctions 
 to be drawn between forms of governments, race or color, or the interests 
 of maritime nations against those of continental nations. 
 
 (13) Delegations or delegates to the Interparliamentary Union to 
 enjoy full immunity, but to be subject to the Municipal Laws of the country 
 in which the Union may have its seat, within those guarantees already 
 stated. 
 
 (14) Violations of International Law shall, after having been brought 
 to the attention of the oflfending government for the purpose of securing 
 full adherence to the rules broken, be brought to the attention of each 
 parliament represented in the Union, with such recommendations as the 
 Interparliamentary Union may deem fit to make. 
 
 (15) The Interparliamentary Union shall in like manner proceed in 
 case a belligerent changes in any respect the list of Contraband and 
 Non-Contraband the Union has set up, or departs from the rule that "free 
 ships make free goods." Non-Contraband shall in no case be added to 
 Contraband, and Conditional contraband shall be abolished. The furnish- 
 ing of war material by neutrals to belligerents shall be limited to the normal 
 output of existing plants, and for the supervision of that traffic a neutral 
 commission shall be named. The export of Non-'Contraband to belligerents 
 shall also be limited to the normal volume, and shall be supervised in like 
 manner, and war loans made by a neutral shall in no case exceed one-half 
 of the purchase price of the merchandise named. 
 
 (16) The care of the citizens and property of one belligerent in the 
 country of another belligerent shall be placed in the hands of a neutral 
 commission to be named by the Interparliamentary Union, as shall be the 
 wounded and prisoners of war, and civilian interned, taken by a belligerent 
 government. The Interparliamentary Union is to supervise the trials of the 
 nationals of a belligerent state in the courts, military and civil, of the 
 enemy. 
 
 (17) Sanction of practices contrary to International Law by national 
 parliaments, by refusing to co-operate with the Interparliamentary Union, 
 in the endeavor to effect correction, shall by majority vote lead to the 
 
A BETTER BASE FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Vll 
 
 dismissal from the Interparliamentary Union of the national delegation 
 concerned, the national delegation of the other belligerent, or belligerents, 
 shall not participate either in debate upon the subject or in voting. 
 
 (18) The Interparliamentary Union shall have no other punitive 
 power than that which it can exert morally, or that upon which the national 
 parliaments may decide in its support. Before military measures are em- 
 ployed against a state or government for infraction or disregard of the 
 rules of International Law, notice of short duration is to be given. The 
 rights under International Law of a state against whom the Interparlia- 
 mentary Union shall have invoked military action shall thereby not be 
 invalidated, nor shall the belligerent in whose favor such military action 
 may operate enjoy any other but only the military advantages accruing 
 from the step. No war indemnities of any sort may be collected in such 
 a case without the consent of the Interparliamentary Union. 
 
 While the outline here given speaks for itself, it will be necessary 
 to explain why the executive branches of governments are not in any 
 manner represented in the scheme. The purpose of this is to remove from 
 the Interparliamentary Union all show of force and coercion and to place 
 all action which may become necessary in the safeguarding of the law 
 of nations in the hands of the parliaments, and with that so much closer 
 to the people who will have to stand the cost of such action. 
 
 The plan also has the advantage of limiting the powers of war of 
 the chief executive, since in the majority of cases then, if not in all, it 
 would be the parliament which would decide whether a casus belli had 
 arisen or not, something which the present methods do not permit in any 
 case. Another feature would be that the executive branch of the govern- 
 ment would be the servant of the parliament in time of war, instead of 
 being, as now, its master. In times of peace the executive branch of a 
 government remains subject to any national assembly worthy of the name; 
 to bring about a condition in which the same institution would remain 
 amenable to the parliament also in war seems highly desirable in the light 
 of the long siege of parrot-parliamentism the world has just had. Parlia- 
 ments having to face the possibility of being denied representations in the 
 Interparliamentary Union, seeing, moreover, the possibility of concerted 
 military action against their country, would be loath to sanction in their 
 government the violation of International Law, to guard which is, indeed, 
 the only object of this scheme, though in itself it would be a deterrent 
 to the promoters of war. 
 
 The operation of the plan outlined would be such that the sovereignty 
 of the several states would be respected until that moment when it should 
 have been proven that the state concerned did not respect it itself, by 
 
37S THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 breaking the first rule of the law of nations, that which declares all states 
 wholly independent are sovereign. The scope and modus operandi of this 
 plan is siich that states backward internally would in affairs of an interna- 
 tional character be elevated to the plane of the more progressive nations. 
 
 The provisions I have mentioned in regard to the press are very 
 necessary. To exclude from the press all news from a country at war, as 
 soon as a censorship has been established, or other methods of force em- 
 ployed to promote the interest of one belligerent against that of another, 
 becomes not an unfriendly act, as in the past it would have been looked 
 upon, but merely an act of self-preservation so necessary that one must 
 wonder why parliaments have in the past ignored it. News restrictions 
 as practised in times of war are the sine qua non of propaganda. To let 
 out only news that is favorable to oneself, and therefore unfavorable to 
 the other belligerent, may in itself be justified, but is subversive of neutral 
 interests. 
 
 The neutral has as much a right to self-preservation as the belligerent, 
 and the line of demarkation becomes even clearer when two states have 
 gone to war. In fact, belligerent states should in all cases be put in 
 absolute quarantine and abandoned to themselves, so long as International 
 Law is not broken by them. To have war as terrible as possible, with the 
 noncombatants and neutrals well protected, must be looked upon as the ideal. 
 To the neutral it can make no difference how men kill one another, so 
 long as they confine their efforts to combatants. It being useless to appeal 
 to the sanity of governments at war, their insanity ought to be given the 
 widest field. 
 
 The proposition should be fostered that in times of war the rights of 
 the neutral are always greater than the rights of belligerents, as in logic 
 they are. If one' state selects to pass under the handicaps imposed by 
 declaring war, that is an act of volition of which it must bear the con- 
 sequences. If another state be unjustly placed under the same disadvantages, 
 that is one of the incidents of national biology which we may regret but 
 can not obviate. Moreover, the cases are rare in which two states went 
 to war with one entirely innocent of wrongdoing. The chances of war will 
 be greatly diminished when once it is understood that the rights of the 
 neutral are and remain greater than those of the belligerent. 
 
 There is no moral reason that could prevent a state from placing under 
 the ban all news coming from a country having in operation a censorship 
 or interfering with the news channels in any manner whatsoever. Ipso facto 
 such interference is an attempt to further the interests of the belligerent 
 concerned in the country of a neutral. There being no reason why a 
 neutral should permit this, the suppression of such news is not an un- 
 friendly act, but one of self-preservation. Belligerent governments have 
 
A BETTER BASH FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 3?9 
 
 no right to make propaganda among neutral peoples, and it can make 
 no difference whether that propaganda is direct or indirect. The publication 
 of official military communiques should be forbidden, when it is shown 
 that the belligerent is averse to having war correspondents at his fronts. 
 This for the reason that military communiques present only one side of the 
 case, are not in the least frank or informative, extremely partial, therefore, 
 and, having no news value, must be put in the domain of propaganda. 
 Since the presence of neutral war correspondents could have a salutary 
 effect upon the forces of the belligerents, this measure ought to be 
 enforced from that angle also, provided care was taken to send only men 
 of character and ability on such missions, and not as was the case so 
 often during the Great War, baseball reporters and police court scribes. 
 
 The Field of the Interparliamentary Union 
 
 The general purpose of the Interparliamentary Union would be to 
 discourage not only the making of war, but to curb the preliminary efforts 
 and cure anterior conditions. For that the executive branch of 
 any government is wholly unsuited. The legislator has usually in mind 
 the blessings of peace, while the government official, no matter how 
 conscientious, is bound to occupy himself a great deal with the alternative 
 of peace — war. The government official at present approaches all inter- 
 national problems from the standpoint that in the end military means will 
 have to be used to settle the issue, while the parliamentarian, knowing that 
 he cannot present a fait accompli to the national assembly, would do his 
 best to bring about a settlement on the basis of mutual understanding. In 
 other words the Interparliamentary Union, and such was its original 
 intent, would act upon the executive branches of governments as a check. 
 
 The questions that come up between states are far better disposed of 
 in free and open discussion by parliamentary delegates than in the secrecy 
 of Foreign Offices and diplomatic posts. The use of force begets force, 
 and among equals a threat is generally met by a suitable countermeasure, 
 for otherwise they would not remain equals. The equality of states being 
 a fiction — a very necessary hypothesis — which for millenniums man has 
 employed, because nothing better could be found, it will always be necessary 
 to meet it in kind. As abstracts of any sort will do, this one gives ex- 
 cellent results so long as it is not subjected to the test of actuality, as is 
 the case when friendly relations exist between states and when this fiction 
 is respected by the stronger, or at least not openly questioned. 
 
 When war comes, the sovereignty of one belligerent is denied by the 
 conduct of the other, while the neutral must continue to recognize the 
 sovereignty of both. But a point may be reached in which the neutral can 
 
380 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 no longer do this, and since in such cases the error of the offending state 
 may be based on the natural desire to defend itself with any means, even 
 at the expense of a neutral, a precipitate attack upon the offender would 
 hardly serve the purposes of justice and future peace. 
 
 So far as possible this contingency could be cared for in International 
 Law, and the Interparliamentary Union, as guardian of International Law, 
 would be in a position to review such situations, correct the condition, and 
 if necessary apply the preventive measures outlined. There is only one 
 force that can rein governments at war, and that is world public opinion. 
 Only an Interparliamentary Union with the mandate and duties outlined 
 here can make world public opinion articulate, and the press measures to 
 which I referred would serve to make world public opinion much more 
 unbiased than it has been in the past, especially during the Great War. 
 
 The opinion of the world public is useless so long as it is not based 
 on knowledge of the actual facts, and is not contaminated by propaganda 
 of the belligerents, or corrupted by the direct and indirect control of the 
 press by its government. It becomes then a thing which is an emotion 
 rather than an opinion, and in emotion the end justifies the means always 
 without exceptions. 
 
 As the great Disraeli once put it, there are lies and lies and statistics; 
 in times of war governments peddle, as I have shown in sufficiency, I 
 think, lies and lies and facts. The entire gamut of atrocities is a tissue of 
 falsehood with a few facts to substantiate the sorry mess of the prop- 
 aganda writers. I have yet to meet the propagandist who would not 
 admit privately that the excesses on any front were due to the fact that in 
 such large levies of men as were made during the Great War, the criminal 
 and potential criminal would get into the army together with the men 
 for whom governments do not have to maintain in peace: Police forces, 
 jails, courts, penitentiaries, gallows, reformatories and asylums for the 
 insane. 
 
 Governments, being the very incarnation of inconsistency, at any 
 time, will plead that point when charges are made against their forces, 
 but will totally overlook it when making such charges against the adversary. 
 The "Captain Fryatt" and "Edith Cavell" cases on the debit side of the 
 Allies' ledger did not come to the notice of the public of the United States 
 because Great Britain and France controlled the cables. Such cases as the 
 "Baralong" affair and the execution of alleged spies by the British and 
 French military authorities, balance, if not outbalance, the murder of 
 Captain Fryatt and Miss Cavell. In the department of humanities, the 
 Interparliamentary Union could become a veritable savior of mankind, and 
 in becoming that it would delete whole chapters of propaganda — make 
 propaganda in times of war impossible in fact, by taking from it the 
 
FIELD OF THE INTERPARLIAMENTARY UNION 381 
 
 means that serve to inflame a neutral public whose interest lies never 
 in participating in a war but in keeping out of it, no matter what arguments 
 the Neo-Idealist and Megalo-Idealist may put up. 
 The man who goes to war is always wrong. 
 
 Why Diplomacy Should Get Its Passport 
 
 I cannot well close this book without saying something more of diplo- 
 macy and those who practice it. "Open covenant, openly arrived at" is, 
 indeed, a happy prospect. But how will such covenants remain open, so 
 long as there is nobody that will take them into keeping and see to it 
 that the selfsame covenant remains confined to its original objectives. 
 When governments are, permitted to define their treaties and such, all 
 things are possible, so long as words have synonyms, and ideas are ca- 
 pable of being sub-divided. So long as there is diplomacy of the brand I 
 have described with all fairness and with all accuracy, so long will "open 
 covenants, openly arrived at" be subject to modification by diplomacy. 
 The art of negotiation is the exercise of minds striving for something of 
 an advantageous nature. 
 
 Trickery and deception are incident to all bargaining, taking the least 
 \ objectionable form in the feigned indifference of the would-be buyer and 
 the simulated unconcern of the would-be seller. It is so in diplomacy, 
 with the result that many of the bargains made, treaties and conventions, 
 are later regretted by one of the contracting parties. There either was 
 no meeting of the minds, or none was sought, or, again, in the course 
 of a few years the complexion of things may have changed so that to live 
 up to the bargain comes to be thought an injustice. Life is a thing in flux 
 with the individual and groups, and for that reason no treaty looks the 
 morning after as good as it did on the day on which it was made. 
 
 The present modus of international diplomatic relations is unsuited 
 enough when considered merely from that angle — the angle of honesty let 
 us call it. When to these natural limitations there is added ulterior mo- 
 tive and designs arising from the dictates of the hour, when thereto is 
 joined the factor of human error, and the noxious elements of personal 
 ambition by the diplomatic arriviste, the incomptency of "occasional'' dip- 
 lomatists, the idiosyncrasies of ambassadors and ministers plenipoteniary 
 whose nerves have been wrecked, the foibles of the Neo-Idealist, and the 
 grandiose plans of Megalo-Idealists, then mankind, indeed, is in a bad 
 way. The establishment of such an institution as I have referred to 
 I above, an Interparliamentary Union, composed of men bent upon peace 
 by the very nature of their duties, becomes the paramount obligation of 
 
382 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 all those who sec the future of man in terms of evolution rather than 
 revolution. 
 
 The spectacle of seeing diplomatists and governments trifle with such 
 things as Bolshevism in order that their military plans may be successful 
 is nauseating, to say the least. Yet that was done. What the quality of 
 government may be is best adjudged by the fact that governments at war 
 use machine guns on their own unruly elements, while in the country of the 
 opponent they foster that very thing by "literature" delivered from aero- 
 planes. In Turkey a whole race was driven to the brink of oblivion by 
 the agents of governments who thought it a great military advantage to 
 have the Armenians rise in rebellion at a time when the Ottoman army 
 was engaged otherwise. That this was not to the interest of the Armen- 
 ians was known in London and Paris, but it was to the "public interest" 
 of the Entente governments. 
 
 Such are the forms diplomacy may assume. The public learns of 
 them when it is too late, and when in the current of life it has drifted 
 to other matters. 
 
 I have dealt very charitably with diplomatists, leaving the list of 
 their failings and crimes incomplete, because I felt that the very pur- 
 pose of this book might be defeated if I overcrowded it with evidence 
 that man has been living in a fool's paradise, with statesmen and diplo- 
 matists as gatekeepers, and censorship and the like an insurmountable 
 stockade. 
 
 I could picture, for instance, how one diplomatist succeeded his pred- 
 ecessor to the extent that even the mattresse was taken over. There was 
 a diplomatist who supplied the ambassador of his government's enemy 
 with important military information, in order that the latter might not 
 lose the War. In another case it was proven that members of a diplo- 
 matic post fostered white slave traffic. Another diplomatist was the 
 paramour of a red-headed Polish countess of most pleasing appearance, and, 
 in addition to the confidences of love, exchanged those of the state. Still 
 another made himself the laughing stock in a maison de plaisir. There was a 
 minister who used to shock certain circles by preaching prohibition with a 
 breath that reeked of alcohol, and there was another diplomatist who one day 
 informed a citizen at his post that he would set his house afire in case he 
 did not stop criticizing His High-Mightiness, the same ambassador. The 
 citizen went and filed a complaint in court, and the government concerned 
 thought it proper to inform the diplomatist that arson was a crime even 
 in Berlin, and that it was not included regularly under the caption: Dip- 
 lomatic inviolability and privileges. 
 
 There is one more episode I must place on record. 
 
 A certain diplomatist was known as a man fond of distinctions and 
 
WHY DIPLOMACY SHOULD GET ITS PASSPORT 383 
 
 decorations. There was one (I refrain from giving the name of the order, 
 lest it lead to the identification of the man) he wanted particularly. 
 It was a so-called ''grand etoile" of a little kingdom, and quite a pretty 
 bauble. Hints that the order be conferred upon the diplomatist had never 
 brought the decoration nearer. 
 
 So the man decided to get it through the next diplomatic courier 
 bound for a certain well-known large capital. The courier did as directed. 
 He called on the prominent jeweler, but was told that right now this deco- 
 ration was not in stock, the last specimen having been sold to the Khedive 
 of Egypt, upon whom the government of the small kingdom had con- 
 ferred the order without putting real diamonds into it. Would the 
 courier place an order? The man did not know what to do and decided 
 to consult his chef de mission again before buying the thing for him. 
 
 A little later the same diplomatist called into his sanctuary one of 
 his men servants, giving him instructions to go to a jeweler dealing in 
 decorations and such, and buy a certain order — one of the highest class — 
 which nobody had conferred upon him. 
 
 The servant did as directed, and very soon returned with the "great 
 cross." 
 
 Quite satisfied with the thing, the diplomatist asked the servant to 
 pin the decoration where usually it was worn. The two men stepped before 
 a mirror, and within a few moments the diplomatist had the great satis- 
 faction of being actually decorated, though by the servant, albeit. 
 
 Servant and master were on close terms, though not of the same 
 nationality, and for the space of minutes the diplomatist thought nothing 
 of preening himself before the mirror and the servant in joyful antici- 
 pation of what friends would say when he appeared before them with 
 this mark of great distinction. 
 
 If the public is willing to rest in the hands of such men its weal in 
 peace and war, then, I have nothing more to say, except that it does seem 
 foolish to expect the services of a surgeon from a butcher. 
 
 The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them 
 
 I have hewn straight to the line and have gone to the core of things, 
 influenced by neither the views nor wishes of the few remaining frenzied 
 patriots. The result has been a fairly complete political history of the 
 Great War — a true history for the reason that it does not confound 
 ^v^ causes with pretexts, or judge men by their own words or those of their 
 friends. 
 
 In an event as great as this it is not always easy to remain the calm 
 referee. In the first place the governments are against anybody remaining 
 
384 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 calm and thus find the opportunity to smile now and then at the man who 
 transiently in power deports himself as though he were Caesar not only 
 of his own for all time, but of the Universe forever, or at the man who, 
 mistaking his own brain as the seat of all causa movens, will later emerge 
 from the passion-begotten and emotion-fostered bedlam of war as the 
 weak tool in the hands of others — at best a sort of master puppet. 
 
 What has been gained by this war? Let us, for a moment, look at 
 the thing from the angle of the Fourteen Points, a sort of vague platform 
 upon which Mr. Wilson entered the Great Adventure. To say that none 
 of the Fourteen Points was carried through is not correct. In fact several 
 of the points were applied. But they would have been applied even if 
 Mr. Wilson had not come out for them. Point VI will ultimately find such 
 application as the Russians can give it. That Belgium ought to be restored 
 went without saying long before Mr. Wilson in the fall of 1914 refused 
 to receive a delegation of Belgians that was to interest him in the fate 
 of their country. Point VII was superfluous, therefore. It would seem 
 that the question of Alsace-Lorraine did not concern the President of the 
 United States except as a pretext for war, and it would seem further 
 that the people of Alsace-Lorraine do not look upon the occupation of 
 their country by France as an unmixed blessing — at least the Germanic 
 element in the country is not satisfied with the conduct of the French. 
 They now want autonomy. That much for Point VIII. 
 
 Concerning Point IX it must be said that there is now more irredenta 
 in Italy than there was ever in Austria-Hungary. Hundreds of thousands 
 of Germans and Slavs have been handed over to the Italians, and these 
 people will in the future do what the Italians in the former Danube 
 Monarchy have done in the past — work for their liberation. Point X 
 was another paragraph Mr. Wilson could have left out of his list of 
 pretexts, and Point XI is excellent reading and nothing more. If Mr. 
 Wilson thinks that a platitude such as this would settle anything in the 
 Balkans, he knows of the Balkans just as much as would any spectator 
 to "The Chocolate Soldier." It is evident that Mr. Wilson is not qualified 
 to speak of the Ottoman empire — that he was not qualified is shown by 
 the fact that the British have taken this matter out of his hands, and so 
 Point XII vanishes. What good Point XIII has done the Poles is hard 
 to see, since their independence was decided upon long before Mr. Wilson 
 was heard on the subject. As to Point XIV — it would seem that even 
 the Senate of the United States does not want "a general association of 
 nations . . . under specific covenants for the purpose of affording 
 mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to 
 great and small States alike." 
 
 Points VI to XIV were either buncombe or when not that, the mere 
 
THE 14 POINTS AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM 385 
 
 reverberation of some Entente policy. The true Wilsonian points are Points 
 I to V. We know what has become of open covenants of peace, openly 
 arrived at; we know all about absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas; 
 we know about the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and 
 the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations 
 consenting to the peace; we know further how adequate guarantees (were) 
 given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point 
 consistent with domestic safety; and finally we know very well there was 
 a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial 
 claims — to Great Britain. To that country, having already too many 
 colonies, were given the German colonies, the colonies of a people that 
 needed room more than any other. But, then, do not let us forget that 
 this war came to be in the end a measure for the artificial and forced limita- 
 tion of German growth in everything, population included. 
 
 So much for the Fourteen Points. They fared at the hands of the 
 British and French as did the Alexandrian library at the hands of the 
 Saracenes. The invaders burned that most wonderful collection of wisdom 
 on the principle that whatever there was good in it was already in the 
 Koran, and whatever there was in it that was not in the Koran ought to 
 be destroyed anyway. 
 
 Of course, the Fourteen Points had their uses, and having them they 
 were tolerated, and even used, by the Allies for a time. It was upon the 
 Fourteen Points and its promises that the German people finally turned 
 against its government, and went to Mr. Wilson like a new Messiah. Mr. 
 Wilson had said that he had no grudge against the German people. He 
 was against the Kaiser. Mr. Wilson had let it be understood that he would 
 allow none to be hard on the German people. But the Kaiser would have 
 to go. The Kaiser went in a manner that will do him no credit with the 
 historian. And when the Kaiser was gone, Germany collapsed in the 
 manner of the Inca State. The parallel is striking. Two manarchic 
 absolutisms resting upon state socialism come to end by the single blow 
 of ruthless adventurers — two conquistadores, the one using the sword and 
 deception, as was opportune among a people like the Peruvians, the other 
 using deception and the sword, as conditions in Germany required. In all 
 faith, only a person of the lowest scrupulosity would have promised so 
 much and given as little as did the author of the Fourteen Points. 
 
 The Hohenzollern made his exit as ingloriously as the last of the Incas 
 — in fact the Son of the Sun did much better. And after that the German 
 people was to discover that the promises of the Fourteen Points were 
 chaff and not the grain they had looked for, especially after a gang of 
 political opportunists of the Erzberger and Bauer types had shown its 
 readiness to sign anything that was put before them. 
 
386 THE CRAF^T SINISTER 
 
 The Peace negotiations being entirely under the influence of the 
 British and French, results could not be other than they are. The British 
 added to their holdings every German colony of importance, made sure 
 of their grip upon Egypt, gained control of most of Southwest Asia and 
 sat themselves more securely than ever on the shores of the Dardanelles 
 and Bosphorus. Quite incidentally, of course, their peculiar brand of 
 Maritime Law was humbly acknowledged to be the proper one by the 
 Paris Peace Conference, Today, more than ever before, Britannia rules 
 the waves — her rule on land and sea, in fact, is absolute. 
 
 Of course, the French gained something also. Alsace-Lorraine, for 
 example, and the prospect of a large indemnity, with all sorts of domestic 
 animals and implements, and such, thrown in. At no Peace Conference was 
 business instinct so displayed and exercised. And there was occasion for 
 this. The French felt that this might be their last opportunity to impose 
 upon the Germans their will. 
 
 It is as hard to say what will be tomorrow in the life of nations as 
 it is to predict an)rthing for the individual, especially if both are not in 
 the best of health. And France is not in the best of health. Though the 
 Great War has shown that her men are still able to fight as valiantly as 
 of yore, the fact is that they and their women have lost interest in 
 propagation. It is d la mode in France to have one or two children so 
 that it or they may not have the hard struggle the parents had. The 
 sensible human being can not but sympathize with such a policy, and in 
 ages to come that policy will be generally adopted. But right now it is 
 a case of France with her declining birth rate, and Germany with a most 
 prolific population, trying to get along with one another. 
 
 Such being the case, M. Clemenceau and his associates tried to give 
 France a sort of life insurance by hamstringing the Germans for decades. 
 It remains to be seen whether so artificial a means can influence for long 
 so natural a force. In 1870 there was between the two peoples a numerical 
 difference of only three millions. Since then the 39 million Germans have 
 increased to about 69 millions in Germany, while the French number not 
 quite 40 millions. In addition to that about 12 million Germans emigrated, 
 so that with their oflFspring the Germans since 1870 have increased to about 
 90 millions, while the French within the same period grew in number to 
 about 45 millions, emigration to the French colonies and elsewhere included. 
 It is hard to see how a population like the French, given to love of 
 comfort and great providence can in the end exist beside a nation like the 
 German, ready to get along with what it has, but not averse to taking what 
 it needs. Of course, it can be done. But needless to say, if it is done, the 
 chauvinist and jingo will not be responsible for a change in that policy 
 which for centuries has led to wars between the two peoples. It would 
 
THE 14 POINTS AND WHAT BECAME OE THEM 387 
 
 be well for some to remember that a swash-buckling Frenchman is no more 
 lovely a spectacle than a sabre-rattling Prussian, and that much which is 
 said concerning la gr-r-r-rande nation is gasconnade pure and simple. It 
 should be borne in mind by all concerned that the next time it may be 
 different, and that it is best not to have a next time. 
 
 The Great War has shown in every quarter how absolute a master 
 government may become. Parliaments everywhere became phonographic 
 records of the Master's voice sort; every executive an autocrat. And 
 it will take some time before the effect of this is totally eliminated. 
 
 Uappetit vient en mangeant. 
 
 It is time that the several publics leading the human procession returned 
 to a more decent conception of government — the principle that government 
 does not exist for the sake of those who form it — the politician unable 
 or unwilling to make a living in some other way. Government has in all 
 of the warring countries doubled and trebled, and the sooner a general 
 lopping off of these parasites sets in the better it will be. The public 
 everywhere should come to realize that government in a free community 
 can never be more than the means of administering those affairs of the body 
 politic which it cannot manage itself. 
 
 The ideal state is the one in which no government is needed. Let 
 us get as close to the ideal state as possible by putting our affairs in such 
 shape, and conducting ourselves so well, that we can get along with the 
 very minimum in government. Unfortunate indeed is the people whose 
 public administration intrudes as much into private life as government has 
 done everywhere in the last five years — even in these supposedly free 
 United States. Government by inspection and coercion has been the rule 
 everywhere, while the blatant heads thereof announced that they intended 
 making this world safe for democracy. A return to common sense on the 
 part of everybody is the only thing that will save mankind from becoming 
 as erratic as some of its leaders have become. It were well for all to 
 remember that civilization is a matter of restraint and not an orgy in hold- 
 ^ ing much and wanting more. 
 
 The End. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Treaty of Alliance of 1279 B. C. 
 
 I APPEND here the text of the oldest treaty extant in toto to afford such com- 
 parisons as the reader may wish to make. 
 
 The date of the treaty is Tybi, 21, xxi, in the reign of Rameses II, Pharaoh of 
 Egypt, or November 28th, 1279 B. C. Rameses II is one of the high-contracting 
 parties, and Kheta-sar, king of the Hittites, represented by ambassadors Tarte-sebu 
 and Rames, is the other. The "anu" or treaty was engraved upon tablets of silver 
 and in this manner exchange of the copies was effected. 
 
 "In the city of Pa-Ramessu-mery-Amen, Tybi 21, xxi. 
 
 "The ordinance made by the great chief of Kheta, Kheta-sar the mighty; the 
 son of Marsar, the great chief of the Kheta, the mighty; the son of Saparuru, the 
 great chief of the Kheta, the mighty; on a declaration tablet of silver, to Ra-user- 
 maat, the great prince of Egypt, the mighty; the son of Ra-men-maat, the great 
 prince of Egypt, the mighty; the son of the son of Ra-men-peh, the great prince 
 ol Egypt, the mighty. 
 
 "The good ordinances of peace and of the brotherhood, giving peace . 
 (are to last) eternally, even from the beginning to the end eternally, even the 
 agreement of the great prince of Egypt with the great prince of Kheta; may God 
 grant that there shall never come enmity between them, according to the ordinances. 
 
 "Now, in times past Mauthnuro, my brother, fought with (Rameses II) great 
 prince of Egypt. But now and hereafter, beginning from this day, behold Kheta-sar, 
 the great chief of the Kheta, ordains to affirm the decree made by Ra and made 
 by Sutekh, of the land of Egypt, and the land of Kheta [the supreme deities] to 
 prevent the coming of enmities forever. 
 
 "Kheta-sar agrees with Ramessu that there shall be good peace and brotherhood 
 between them forever. He shall fraternize with me and be at peace, and I shall 
 fraternize with him and be at peace, forever. 
 
 "After the time of Mauthnuro, after he was killed, Kheta-sar sat himself, as 
 the great prince of the Kheta, on the throne of his father. Behold after it there 
 is peace and brotherhood, better than the peace and the brotherhood that was before 
 in the land. 
 
 "The chief of the Kheta will be with Ramessu in good peace and in good 
 fellowship. The children of the children of the chief shall fraternize peacefully with 
 the sons of the sons of Ramessu. 
 
 "By our brotherhood and agreement . . . (the land of Egypt shall be) 
 with the land of Kheta in peace and brotherhood altogether forever. Never shall 
 enmity come to separate them, forever. 
 
 "Never shall the chief of the Kheta make an invasion of the land of Egypt, 
 forever, to carry off anything from it. 
 
 "Never shall Ramessu make an invasion of the land of the Kheta to carry off 
 anything from it, forever. 
 
 "Now the equitable treaty which remained from the time of Saparuru, likewise 
 the equitable treaty which remained from the time of Mauthnuro . . . (Massar?) 
 my father, I will fulfill it. Behold Ramessu will fulfill . . . (it, and we agree) 
 with one another together, beginning in this day, we will fulfill it, performing it 
 in an equitable manner. 
 
 "Now, if an enemy shall come to the land of Ramessu, let him send a message 
 to the chief of the Kheta to say : 'Come to me with forces against him,' and 
 the chief of the Kheta shall come to smite his enemies. But if the chief has 
 never a heart to march, he shall send his soldiers and his chariots to smite the 
 enemy or Ramessu will be angry. Or if the servants of the gates (the frontier 
 
 389 
 
390 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 tribes) shall make a raid on him, and he shall go to smite them, the chief of the 
 Kheta shall act with the prince of Egypt" 
 
 Here follows a reciprocal clause obliging the prince of Egypt to do the same if 
 the chief of the Kheta sends a call for help. 
 
 "If there be one from the city, if there be one from the pastures, if there 
 be one from the . . . (desert?) of the land of Ramessu, and they shall come 
 to the chief of the Kheta, never shall the chief receive them, but shall give them 
 back to Ramessu; if there be one of the people, or if there be two of the people 
 who. unknown, shall come to the land of the Kheta to do service for another, never 
 shall they be allowed to stay in the land of the Kheta, but shall be returned to 
 Ramessu, or if there be one great man coming to the land of the Kheta, he shall 
 be returned to Ramessu." 
 
 This earliest known instance of preventing transfer of allegiance is -reciprocal 
 in the same terms. 
 
 "These words which are upon the declaration tablet of silver of the land of the 
 Kheta and of the land of Egypt, whoever shall not keep them may the thousand 
 gods of the Kheta, along with the thousand gods of Egypt, bring to ruin his house. 
 his lands, and his servants. But whoever shall keep these words, may the thousand 
 gods of the Kheta, along with the thousand gods of the land of Egypt, give health 
 to him. give life to him, with his house, with his lands and with his servants. 
 
 "If there shall flee one of the people of the land of Egypt, if there be two. 
 if there be three, and come to the chief of the Kheta, he shall take them and send 
 them back to Ramessu. And any of the people who are taken and sent back to 
 Ramessu. let it not be that his criminal action is raised against him, in giving to 
 destruction his house, his wives, or his children, on in slaying him, or in removing 
 his eyes, or his ears, or his mouth [tongue] or his feet, and he shall not have any 
 criminal action raised against him." 
 
 This agreement of extradition, for the times unusually high-minded, is recipro- 
 cally stated also, in minute similarity of terms. 
 
 "That which is on this tablet of silver, on the front side, is the engraved imapre 
 of Sutekh, embracing the great chief of the Kheta, around it are the words, saying: 
 The seal of Sutekh, the prince of heaven, the seal of ordinance by Kheta-sar. the 
 great chief of the Kheta, the mighty; the son of Marsar, the great chief of the 
 Kheta. the mighty.' 
 
 "That which is within the surrounding engraving is the seal of Sutekh, the prince 
 of heaven. 
 
 "That which on this side is engraved, is the image of the god of the Kheta, 
 embracing the figure of the great queen of the Kheta ; around it are the words, saying : 
 The seal of the sun of the city of Aranna, the lord of the land, the seal of Puukhipa, 
 the great queen of the land of the Kheta, the daughter of the land of Quiza . 
 (Nadanna, queen of) Aranna, the mistress of the land, the servant of the goddess.' 
 
 "That which is within the surrounding engraving is the seal of the sun of 
 Aranna, the lord of all the land." 
 
 The texts of the older treaties referred to are unknown. The agreements, 
 however, seem to have been made between Marsar of Kheta and Sety I of Egypt, 
 and Saparuru of Kheta and Horemheb of Egypt. To make this treaty all the more 
 binding. Kheta-sar seems to have given in marriage to Rameses II a daughter, 
 named Neferu-ra. according to a stele found at Abu-Simbel. The lady was the 
 favorite wife of Rameses and appears with him on all his monuments. 
 
 The manv "forevers" of the treaty became no forever, of course. An inscription 
 at Medinet Habu, shows Rameses III (1202-1170^ receiving the hands of slain 
 Hittites, and the text claims that the chief of the Kheta had formed a coalition of 
 the people of Northern Syria against the Egyptians. In the course of time the 
 international policies of Kheta and Egypt had undergone changes, and so it came 
 that the terms of the Treaty of Pa-Ramessu-mery-Amen, November 28th, 1279 B. C. 
 had lost their value and binding force. 
 
 Centuries later the wrath of the thousand gods of the Kheta and the thousand 
 gods of the Egyptians did indeed descend upon both peoples, but it would not 
 seem reasonable to assume that the invocation of the "anu" had anything to do with 
 that, or that the Persians had been selected as the means of punishment by the princes 
 of heaven. 
 
B 
 
 The Battle of Kadesh 
 
 (After M. ChampolHon's Translation of the Original Hieroglyphic Text.) 
 
 BY way of introducing this very interesting but hardly known document 
 from Old Egypt, I wish to say that I have been unable to establish 
 beyond all cavil whether the Battle of Kadesh preceded the peace treaty 
 just given and discussed, or terminated it, in which event we must take it for 
 granted that Rameses II did not have enough time, before his death, to change 
 the inscriptions and reliefs that dealt with things related to the land and the 
 princes of the Kheta- One thing alone is certain, the Rameses of the 
 Peace Treaty is the Rameses of the account of the Battle of Kadesh, and 
 when I take pains to refer to it, I do so with regret, since in treating "The 
 Battle of Kadesh" I will have to seem disrespectful to one of the great figures 
 in the story of mankind, for such Rameses II undoubtedly is. But I would 
 warn the reader not to forget that of yore, as today, even the honest and 
 righteous among the great were often obliged to take recourse to trickery and 
 charlatanisms in order to secure their positions for the very benefit of those 
 against whose will and for whose good the position had to be held. The 
 phrase is a little involved, to be sure, but nothing will be lost by thinking 
 it over. 
 
 The old papyrus reads as follows: 
 
 The ninth day of the third month of the season shemu* in the fifth 
 year of the reign of Horus-Ra, THE MIGHTY BULL, BELOVED OF 
 MAAT, the king of the North and South, USER-MAAT-RA-SETEP-EN-RA, 
 the son of the Sun, RAMESES BELOVED OF AMEN, the giver of life 
 forever. 
 
 Behold now, his Majesty was in the country of Tchah on his second 
 expedition of victory. A good look-out [was kept]** in life, strength and 
 health, in the camp of his Majesty on the southern side of the city of Kadesh. 
 His Majesty rose up like Ra and put on the ornaments of the god Menthu, and 
 the lord continued on his journey and arrived at the southern border of the 
 city of Shabtun. And two members of the Shasu people came and spoke to 
 his Majesty, saying: 
 
 "Our brethren, who are among the chiefs of the tribes who are in league 
 with the abominable prince of the Kheta, have made us come to his Majesty 
 to say: *We are [ready] to render service to Pharaoh (life, health and 
 strength!) and they have broken with the abominable prince of the Kheta. 
 Now the abominable prince of the Kheta is encamped in the land of Aleppo, 
 to the north of the country of Tunep, and he is afraid to advance, because 
 of Pharaoh (life, health and strength 1).'" 
 
 In this wise did the Shasu speak, but they spoke to his Majesty lying 
 words, for the abominable prince of the Kheta had made them come to spy 
 out the place where his Majesty was, so that he might not be able to arrange 
 his forces in a proper way to do battle with the abominable prince of the 
 Kheta.t 
 
 And behold, the abominable chief of the Kheta had come together with 
 
 * Which is summer. 
 
 ** Matter in brackets shows where original text imperfect or damaged, necessitating an inter- 
 polation to connect or complete contents. Matter in parentheses was so treated in original text. 
 
 t A very fine piece of after-the-fact writing, but a little too obvious since the spying out 
 of the_ place could not in any manner interfere with the arranging of troops by the Pharaoh. 
 Still, in our own days, the propagandists of governments have expected no less of the guUiMe 
 public. 
 
 391 
 
392 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 the chiefs of every district, and with the footmen, and with the cavalry whom 
 he had brought with him in mighty numbers, and they stood ready to fight, 
 drawn up in ambush behind the abominable city of Kadesh, his Majesty having 
 no knowledge whatsoever of these plans.* 
 
 So his Majesty marched on and arrived at the north-east side of the 
 abominable city of Kadesh, and then he and his troops encamped. Now his 
 Majesty was sitting on his smu metal throne when two of the spies who were 
 in the service of his Majesty brought in two spies of the abominable chief of 
 the Kheta, and when they had been led into his presence his Majesty said to 
 them: 
 
 "Who and what are ye?" 
 
 And they replied: 
 
 "We belong to the abominable prince of the Kheta, who made us come to 
 see where his Majesty was!" 
 
 His Majesty said to them: 
 
 "Where is the abominable chief of the Kheta? Verily, I have heard that 
 he is in the country of Aleppo!" 
 
 They replied: 
 
 "Behold, the abominable chief of the Kheta standeth [ready] and multi- 
 tudes [of the peoples] of the district are with him; he has brought them with 
 him in vast numbers from all the provinces of the country of the Kheta, and 
 from the country of Mesopotamia, and from the whole country of Qetti. 
 They are provided with footmen and with cavalry fully equipped, and they 
 are like the sand of the sea shore for multitude;** and behold, they are drawn 
 up in fighting order but are concealed behind the abominable city of Kadesh." 
 
 Then his Majesty caused his chief officers to be called into his presence 
 that he might make them know every matter which the two spies of the 
 abominable prince of the Kheta who had been before him had spoken. And 
 his Majesty spake unto them, saying: 
 
 "Enquire into the actions of the officers of the peoples and of the chiefs 
 of the districts where Pharaoh (life, health and strength!) is [encamped]." t 
 
 They did so and reported to Pharaoh, (life, health and strength!) that the 
 abominable chief of the Kheta was in the land of Aleppo, whither he had to 
 flee before his Majesty as soon as he had heard the report of him, and that, 
 indeed, [the officers and chiefs] should have reported these things correctly 
 to his Majesty, [and his Majesty replied:] 
 
 "See now what I have made you to know at this time through the two 
 spies of the country of the Kheta, namely that the abominable chief of the 
 Kheta hath come together with [the peoples of] a multitude of countries, and 
 with men and with horses, like the sand for multitude, and that they are 
 standing behind the abominable city of Kadesh; is it possible that the officers 
 of the districts and the princes of the country wherein Pharaoh (life, health 
 and strength!) now is — under whose direction the district is — did not know 
 this?"t -T-.!-^ 
 
 Now when these things had been said to them, the officers who were in 
 the presence of his Majesty admitted that the officers of the country and the 
 princes of Pharaoh (life, health and strength!) had committed a gross breach 
 
 Rather naive, to be sure! Though Rameses II is the invader it is abominable on the part 
 of the prince of Kheta to take the necessary military measures without taking the Pharaoh into 
 his confidence. And still, quite recently we have seen the same views expressed, with the 
 difference that we did not stop with the use of the word abominable, but went much further, 
 which may be due to the fact that in our days writing and printing is so much easier, 
 and the violation of all rules of decency so much facilitated thereby. 
 
 •• The words are laid in the mouth of the two spies by either a propagandist of the Royal 
 Egyptian Government, or by the press agent of His Majesty, Rameses II. 
 
 t Reminds somewhat of the proposed trial of former Emperor William II and many of his 
 officers and subjects. 
 
 t Rameses II must have been a very patient man, if he clothed his opinion in such temperate 
 words. It would seem that we deal instead with a convenient method of reminding the reader 
 that his Majesty had a poor general staff and was opposed by an army as multitudinous as the 
 sands of the sea shore. Accomplishing so much with so little would leave to Rameses II so 
 much more glory. It's an old ruse! 
 
THE BATTLE OF KADESH 393 
 
 of duty in not reporting to them the various places to which the abominable 
 chief of the Kheta had marched. * 
 
 And it came to pass that when they had spoken, his Majesty issued an 
 order for the officers who were in charge of the troops that were marching to 
 the south of Shabtun to bring their troops as rapidly as possible to the place 
 where his Majesty was. Now whilst his sacred Majesty was sitting and talking 
 with his officers, the abominable prince of the Kheta came together with his 
 footmen and cavalry, and the multitudes of peoples who were with him, and 
 they crossed over the canal at the south of Kadesh and came upon the soldiers 
 of his Majesty who were marching along in ignorance of what was happening, t 
 
 Then the footmen and cavalry of his Majesty lost their courage and rushed 
 on headlong to where his Majesty was, and the troops of the abominable 
 prince of the Kheta surrounded the servants who were around his Majesty. 
 When his Majesty saw them he raged at them like his father Menthu, the 
 lord of Thebes, and, putting on his armor and seizing a spear, like the god 
 Baru in his moment, he mounted his horse and dashed forward alone among 
 the troops of the abominable prince of the Kheta and among the multitudes 
 which he had with him.** His Majesty, like the most mighty god Sutekh, made 
 slaughter among them, and he cut them down dead into the waters of the 
 Orontes.ft 
 
 [He saith:] 
 
 "I conquered all countries. I was quite alone, my footmen and cavalry 
 had forsaken me, and no man among them dared to come back [to save] my 
 life. But Ra loved me, and my father Tmu had a favor for me, and everything 
 which my Majesty hath said I performed in very truth before my footmen 
 and my cavalry." $ 
 
 * We may easily agree with this. The intelligence service of Rameses II was not the best, 
 evidently. But it would seem that the writer dwells too purposely on this, in order to prepare 
 us for the great heroics that are to come. 
 
 t It is hardly true that these troops were in ignorance of what was happening, even if they 
 are not the force which Rameses II had ordered to come to his headquarters. It is well- 
 known that the Egyptian military system of that period was a very good one, and the great 
 value of flankers, vanguard and rearguard was even then very generally understood. We deal 
 here entirely with a very tendencious account of something which may or which may not have 
 taken place. 
 
 ** The royal press agents of Old all had the fine habit of having their masters sit at leisure, 
 with their wives and concubines, when not with their general staff members, as the hostile army 
 swoops down upon the camp. Naturally, the king, thus taken advantage of, had to lose more time 
 putting on his armor — which, by the way, was usually a matter of at least two minutes. 
 
 tt A very fishy account, begging the pardon of the reader for this use of slang. His Majesty 
 alone does all these things. No doubt, the Hittite troops allowed him to cut them down without 
 lifting even a little finger in self-defense. 
 
 t An account of what actually took place is not to be had, of course. Be that as it may, 
 his Majesty did draw the long bow — and usually he is pictured that way, standing in his chariot 
 and pointing the arrow_ over the heads of his prancing horses. I am sure, the shades of 
 Rameses II, together with the Kha of his soul, will forgive me, if I say that this may be 
 literature, but is not Ristory. But it was ever thus. One does not have to be omniscient to 
 feel that usually there is too much literature in what purports to be history, especially such 
 history as was peddled by George Creel, the Pelmanite, formerly in charge of the United States 
 Bureau of "Information." And who, RAMESES BELOVED OF AMEN, doubted all this so 
 that thou hadst to call upon thine footmen and cavalry to vouch for thee? Was it thine own guilty 
 Kha? At that we sympathize with thee, as we should, seeing that we have come to pass judgment 
 upon the words of a mighty king, son of the Sun, in an age in which the office is one thing and 
 the man another. Incidentally, some credit had to be given the Gods. 
 
'^League of Peace" of 1518-19 A. D. 
 
 FOR the purpose of combating the Turk it was decided in 1518, at the conclusion 
 of the Franco-British wars of the period, to form what we in our days 
 would style a "League of Nations." The contracting parties were the Pope, 
 the Emperor Elect of the Holy Roman Empire (Germany and Austria), the King 
 of France, the King of Spain and the King of England. Before the treaty was 
 ratified, Pope Leo X, and King Charles of Spain, were grown lukewarm toward it, 
 the former because he was "deeply mortified that the office of mediator and peace 
 maker had thus passed from the Holy See to the chancellor of England," Lord 
 Thomas Wolsey. 
 
 Of the treaty, which was a dead letter within two years, only the relevant 
 parts are here given: 
 
 "2. As far as the defense of the Christian Church and the Pope, or of the 
 states and possessions of any one of the contracting princes is concerned, all the 
 members of the league are to be "friends of the friends and foes of the foes" of 
 any one of them. 
 
 "H any one of the contracting parties or of those who are included in this 
 treaty attacks, invades or does any other injury to the states, dominions, towns, 
 castles, etc. of any other member of this league, or any prince who is included in 
 this treaty, the injured party is at liberty to require by letters patent the aid of 
 ■all the other contracting parties. Those who are thus requested are bound, together 
 with the injured party, to send letters and ambassadors to the aggressor or aggressors, 
 asking him or them to desist from further hostilities, and to make full reparation. 
 
 "If the aggressor or aggressors continue§/ or continue his or their hostilities 
 in spite of this exhortation to maintain peace, or if he or they refuses or refuse to 
 make full reparation, all the other confederates are bound to declare war with the 
 aggressor or the aggressors within one month after being summoned to do so. 
 Within two months after the declaration of war, they are to begin actual hostilities 
 by attacking or invading the dominions of the aggressor or aggressors with an army 
 strong enough to conquer the enemy. Every one of the contracting parties is bound 
 to pay his own expenses." 
 
 It seems proper to draw attention here to the fact that the "one month" and 
 "two months" terms were necessitated by the absence in those days of rapid com- 
 munication and transportation. 
 
 The treaty continues: 
 
 "12. All former treaties remain in full force, except in so far as they are 
 in contradiction to this treaty. 
 
 "13. All Christian princes are at liberty to declare, within the space of eight 
 months, their intention to become members of this league, in which case the principal 
 contracting parties are bound to accept them and to defend them, at the expense, 
 however, of the party asking to be assisted. 
 
 "14. The Kings of France and of England, who are the originators of this 
 league, bind themselves toward one another that, if either of them be invaded or 
 attacked by any Prince or Power, the other will lead in person the army which 
 is to assist the attacked prince. Even if none of the other Christian princes should 
 become members of the league, it is to remain in full force so far as England and 
 France are concerned." 
 
 Article one of the treaty is the preamble, declaring that the league, which is 
 referred to as "holy," is to combat the "tyrant of the Turk," and that the immediate 
 aim of the treaty^ is the establishment of a general peace in the Christian world, 
 and that good will is to be maintained among the members of the league. The 
 other articles of the treaty apportion the military and naval obligations of the 
 several contracting parties, deal with the conduct to be observed in case of rebellion 
 by subjects against their governments, fix the status of troops marching through the 
 territory of a confederate, and are generally uninteresting. 
 
 394 
 
The Entento-Italian Agreement of 1915 
 
 S an instance of what "secret treaties" of the annexation type are, I will 
 k reproduce here the agreement made between the British, French and Russian 
 *" governments, on the one hand, and the Italian government, on the other. 
 
 "The Italian ambassador, Marquis Imperial!, under instructions of his 
 government, has the honor to deliver to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
 Sr. E. Grey, the French ambassador and the Russian ambassador. 
 Count Benckendorf, the following memorandum: 
 
 2. On her side Italy obligates herself, with all the forces at her command, 
 to enter into the campaign in combination with France, Russia and 
 Great Britain, against all of the governments at war with them. 
 
 4. Under the imminent treaty of peace Italy must receive: The District 
 of Trentino ; the entire Southern Tyrol to her natural geographic 
 boundary, the River Brenner; the city and suburbs of Trieste, Goritzia, 
 and Gradisca, all of Istria to Quarnero, including Volosca, and the 
 Istrian islands of Cherso and Lussino, and also the smaller islands of 
 Plavnik, Unia, Canidole, Palazzuolo, San Pietro dei Nembi, Azinelli, 
 Grutzo, together with the neighboring islands. 
 
 5. In the same manner Italy is to receive the province of Dalmatia in its 
 present form, with the inclusion within its limits on the north of 
 Lissariki and Trebino, and on the south of all lands to a line drawn 
 at Cape Planca to the east along the water-shed in such a manner that 
 in the Italian domains shall be included all the valleys along the rivers 
 flowing into Sebiniko, such as Chicolo, Kerka, and Butisnitza, with all 
 their tributaries. In the same way Italy is to receive all the islands 
 located to the north and west of the shores of Dalmatia, beginning 
 with the islands Premua, Selva, Ulbo, Skerd, Maon, Pago, and Punta- 
 dura, and further to the north, and to Meled on the south, with inclusion 
 therein of the islands of St. Andrew, Buzzi, Lissa, Lessino, Tercola, 
 Curzola, Kaisa, and Lagosta, with all the islands and bluffs belonging 
 to them, but without the islands of Zirona, Bua, Satti and Brazza. 
 
 6. Italy shall receive in full right Vallona, the islands of Sasseno, and a 
 territory sufficiently extensive to safeguard them in a military way, 
 approximately between the river Voyuss on the north and the east, and 
 to the boundaries of the Schimar district to the south. 
 
 7. On receiving Trentino and Istria in accordance with Article 4, of 
 Dalmatia and the Adriatic Islands in accordance with Article 5, and 
 the Bay of Vallona, Italy is obligated in the event of the formation of 
 Albania of a small autonomous neutralized state, not to oppose the 
 possible desire of France, Great Britain and Russia to redistribute among 
 Montenegro, Serbia and Greece of the northern and southern districts 
 of Albania. The southern shore of Albania from the boundary of the 
 Italian district of Vallona to the Cape of Stilos is subject to neutraliza- 
 tion. Italy shall have the right to conduct the foreign relations of 
 Albania. In any event Italy obligates herself to leave certain territory 
 sufficiently extensive for Albania, in order that the boundaries of the 
 latter are contiguous from Lake Ochrida, to the boundaries of Greece 
 and Serbia. 
 
 8. Italy is to receive in full right all the islands now occupied by her at 
 Dodekez. 
 
 9. France, Great Britain and Russia in principle recognize the interests of 
 Italy, in preserving the political balance in the Mediterranean Sea, and her 
 
 395 
 
396 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 right to receive on the division of Turkey an equal share with them in 
 the basin of the Mediterranean, and more specifically in that part of 
 it contiguous to the province of Adalia, where Italy has already obtained 
 special rights and has developed certain interests vouchsafed to her by 
 the Italo-British agreement. The zone subject to transfer to the 
 sovereignty of Italy will be more specifically defined in due time and in 
 correspondence with the vital interests of France and Great Britain. 
 Likewise, the interests of Italy must be taken into consideration, even 
 in the event that the territorial inviolability of Asiatic Turkey shall be 
 sustained by the Powers for a further period of time, and if only 
 redistribution of spheres of influence is to take place. Should France, 
 Great Britain and Russia, in the course of the present war occupy certain 
 districts of Asiatic Turkey, the entire district adjacent to Adalia and 
 herewith more specifically defined, shall remain with Italy, which reserves 
 for itself the right to occupy the same. 
 
 10. In Lybia all the rights and privileges which prior to this date have been 
 acquired by the Sultan on the basis of the Treaty of Lazansk are 
 recognized as belonging to Italy. 
 
 11. Italy shall receive such share of the military contribution as shall 
 correspond to the measure of sacrifice and effort made by her. 
 
 12. Italy joins in a declaration made by France, England and Russia as to 
 leaving Arabia and sacred Mohammedan places in control of an independ- 
 ent Mohammedan Power. 
 
 13. In the event of expansion of French and English colonial domains in 
 Africa at the expense of Germany, France and Great Britain recognize 
 in principle the Italian right to demand for herself certain compensations 
 in the sense of expansions of her lands in Erithria, Somaliland, in Lybia, 
 and colonial districts lying on the boundary, with the colonies of France 
 and England. 
 
 14. England obligates herself to assist Italy immediately to negotiate on the 
 London market, on advantageous terms, a loan in a sum of 50,000,000 
 pounds sterling. 
 
 15. France, England and Russia obligate themselves to support Italy in her 
 desire for non-admittance of the Holy See to any kind of diplomatic 
 steps for the purpose of the conclusion of peace or the regulation of 
 questions arising from the present war. 
 
 16. This treaty must be kept secret. As to Italy joining in the declaration 
 of September 5, 1914, only said declaration shall be made public im- 
 mediately after the declaration of the war by or against Italy, (sic). 
 
 Taking into consideration the present memorandum, the representa- 
 tives of France, Great Britain, and Russia, having been duly empowered 
 for this purpose, agreed with the representative of Italy, who in his 
 turn was duly empowered by his government, in the premises as follows : 
 
 France, Great Britain, and Russia expressed their complete agree- 
 ment with the present memorandum presented to them by the Italian 
 government. With regard to Articles I, II, and III of this memorandum 
 relating to the co-operation of the military and naval operations of all 
 four Powers, Italy declares that she will enter actively at the very 
 earliest opportunity, and at all events not later than one month after 
 the signing of the present document by the contracting parties. The 
 undersigned have set their hands and seals at London in four copies the 
 27th day of April, 1915. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey, 
 Cam BON, 
 
 Marquis Imperiali, 
 Count Benckendorf. 
 
 As an example of what international morality should not be, the above memoran- 
 dum-treaty deserves its own niche in the chamber of horrors of the Great War. 
 
Censorship Regulations of Bulgaria, 1915 
 
 THE publication here of the "Regulations regarding the Military Censorship 
 and the Manner of Its Application" of the Bulgarian government is not to 
 leave it inferred that I have selected this document on account of its severe stric- 
 tures. I publish the document because no other quite as frank and straightforward in 
 its terms has come into my hands. Governments do not generally allow such manifests 
 to fall into the hands of the public, issuing them "confidentially" for the guidance 
 of their censorship officials. When such regulations are laid before editors they are 
 generally not in a position to publish them. The censorship regulations of the 
 Entente and Central governments were in all particulars the same, and the proscrip- 
 tions pronounced by Postmaster Burleson, under penalty that offending newspapers 
 would be excluded from the mails, had the same purpose in mind. These, then, 
 are the reasons why I append here the censorship rules of the Bulgarian government, 
 a copy of which I secured at the time for this purpose : 
 
 1. In times of war, or in case of danger therefrom, a military censorship is 
 to be established. Subject to this are: 
 
 (a) All printed editions of newspapers, periodicals, separate compositions, 
 notices, maps, pictures, manuscripts, and lithographic productions, ill- 
 ustrated cards, moving picture films, photographic productions of all 
 kinds. 
 
 (b) All private telegraphic and letter correspondence. 
 
 2. The introduction of the Military Censorship, as well as its removal, is 
 announced by Royal Edict, in accordance with the order of the Minis- 
 terial Council. During the term of the Military Censorship, all writers, 
 editors, printers, sellers and distributors of newspapers, periodicals, 
 separate compositions, notices, maps, pictures and all sort of printed 
 matter must adhere to the following rules : 
 
 (a) Such reports only shall be sent out on the military operations as are 
 issued officially by the chief of staff. 
 
 (b) It is not permitted to distort the reports officially given out by the 
 general headquarters or to write articles and pamphlets whereby a 
 negative influence can be exerted upon the spirit of the army and 
 the nation. 
 
 (c) It is not permitted to publish reports relating to the mobilization move- 
 ments or transportation of troops on the railways, or to write and 
 publish information regarding the organization, armament, clothing, 
 numerical strength, rationing, sanitation of the troops and different ap- 
 pointments in the army. 
 
 (d) It is not permitted to report the arrival of military materials, or to 
 announce the orders given and purchases effected in foreign countries. 
 
 (e) It is not permitted to give information regarding the numerical strength 
 or the composition of the army, its sub-divisions and detachments. 
 
 (f) It is forbidden to publish information regarding the number of killed 
 and wounded, as well as the names of the killed and wounded, if there 
 is no official permission therefor. 
 
 (g) It is not permitted to criticize the operations of the commanders or 
 the troops, as well as everything whereby the prestige of the commanders 
 and the army is affected. 
 
 (h) No articles and pamphlets are permitted which demand the stopping 
 of the war or indulge in commentaries upon the benefits and injuries 
 therefrom. 
 
 (i) It is not permitted to print pictures of any kind of portraits or draw- 
 
 397 
 
398 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 ings, having for their purpose the caricaturing of the troops and their 
 
 commanders, 
 (j) It is not permitted to report anything upon defeats and retreats of our 
 
 troops, the loss of positions, fortifications, colors, guns, etc., if such 
 
 information is not issued officially, 
 (k) It is not permitted to report any catastrophe in the rear of the army 
 
 or in the interior of the state, as, for instance, railroad accidents, great 
 
 fires, the explosion of military arsenals, etc. 
 (1 ) It is not permitted to report the appearance in the army of epidemic 
 
 diseases, or if they occur in the country, 
 (m) It is not permitted to report imminent, planned, or effected revolts 
 
 and disorders, whether in the rear of the army or in the interior of 
 
 the country, 
 (n) It is not permitted to print appeals and invitations for meetings, which 
 
 are opposed to the authorities or the army, or which may demand the 
 
 cessation of the war. 
 (o) It is not permitted to bring in from abroad and to distribute news- 
 papers, pictures, and other printed or lithographed productions, which 
 
 are likely to exert a negative influence upon the spirit of the army and 
 
 the nation, or insult the authorities. 
 
 4. Those found guilty of violating the above regulations will be punished 
 in accordance with the Law of Treason and Spying, while such matter 
 as was used in the commission of the offense will be confiscated and 
 destroyed. 
 
 5. The activity in respect to the application of the Rules reg^arding 
 Military Censorship is concentrated in the Censorship Section of the 
 Staff of the Army of Operations. 
 
 6. The appointment of the Censorship Section in times of war is: 
 
 (a) To trace everything which is being written in the Bulgarian and 
 foreign press upon the organization of the Bulgarian army as well 
 as upon that of the enemy and upon their respective operations. 
 
 (b) To subject to the censorship all telegrams and other communications 
 of the war correspondents and military attaches who may be admitted 
 to the theater of war, or be sojourning within the country. 
 
 (c) To trace the conduct of the war correspondents and military attaches 
 and to take the necessary steps for the elimination of illegal and disloyal 
 relationship of the same in regard to the transmission of their cor- 
 respondence from the theater of war to foreign countries. 
 
 (d) To take all needed measures for the control of letters and other 
 communications, which soldiers, officers, and military officials at the 
 front may address to foreign countries. 
 
 (e) To take the necessary measures for tracing all private correspondence 
 in the theater of war destined for a foreign country. 
 
 7. The Censorship Division in times of mobilization is divided into two 
 sections : The first section follows the staff of the Army of Operations ; 
 the second section remains in Sofia. 
 
 8. On the First Section devolve the following functions : 
 
 (a) Accompanying the military correspondents to the theater of operations. 
 
 (b) Subjecting to censorship all telegrams and letters from the theater of 
 war to foreign countries or for the interior of Bulgaria, 
 
 (c) To conduct censorship in the theater of war itself. 
 
 (d) The general management of censorship within the country and occupied 
 territories. 
 
 9. On the Second Section devolve the following duties: 
 
 (a) Accompanying all correspondents who have remained in the capital 
 and Bulgaria. 
 
CENSORSHIP REGULATIONS OF BULGARIA, 1915 399 
 
 (b) Censoring all telegrams and letters sent from the non-war zones of the 
 country to foreign countries. 
 
 (c) Censoring all printed and lithographic productions, newspapers, periodi- 
 cals, etc., which may appear within the country. 
 
 (d) The functions imposed by the Censorship Section at the General Head- 
 quarters of the army. 
 
 iO. To secure closer control over the telegrams sent abroad, as well as 
 
 over letter mail, censorship committees are organized within the king- 
 dom in the larger centers and at points where these originate or pass 
 in transit. The committees are charged with the survey of the press 
 and all printed matter agreeable to the foregoing regulations. 
 
 11. In order to effect efficient censoring all printed productions must be 
 presented by the editorial departments in proof form, in duplicate, of 
 which one copy after passing the censors will be confirmed by the seal 
 of the censor and returned to the submitter, while the other, cor- 
 respondingly corrected, if necessary, and attested by the same seal shall 
 remain in the Censorship Section. The same applies to all lithographic 
 productions. 
 
 12. Telegrams submitted from the theater of war, by war correspondents or 
 others, and intended for foreign countries, or the interior, are subject 
 to censoring in either sections of the Censorship division. Such tele- 
 grams must be signed by the corresponding chief of the Censorship 
 Division and must bear the seal of the General Staff. No telegraph or 
 postal station within the kingdom, in occupied territories or in the 
 theater of war may accept and transmit communications not showing 
 this signature and seal. 
 
 13. (Deals with the censoring of the letters and telegrams of officers, 
 soldiers and persons connected with the military service.) 
 
 14. (Deals with the letters and telegrams of the population.) 
 
 15. Correspondence destined for foreign countries or the theater of opera- 
 tions should consist of postal cards and letters in open envelopes. 
 Letters in sealed envelopes will not be examined and will be destroyed. 
 Telegrams for foreign countries may be sent only by persons who have 
 secured a special permit therefor. Correspondence with persons in 
 enemy countries is prohibited. 
 
 16. (Deals with the censoring of letters, telegrams and newspapers from 
 foreign countries addressed to officers in the Bulgarian army, as does 
 paragraph 
 
 17 which says by whom the mail of soldiers is to be examined.) 
 
 18. (Designates the officials in charge of censoring civilian mails and 
 telegrams within the country.) 
 
 19. The telegraph or postal official who has accepted or delivered a tele- 
 gram or letter not duly examined, signed and attested by seal is 
 liable to condemnation for Treason and Espionage, Chapter II and 
 Article 163 of Chapter VI of the Penal Laws. An officer or ftmctionary, 
 who, owing to negligence, permits a letter, telegram or printed produc- 
 tion to pass without sufficient censoring is subject to severe punish- 
 ment; if such negligence have injurious consequences for the army or 
 the military operations, the guilty person is liable to criminal prosecu- 
 tion. 
 
 The Minister of War, 
 
 Major-General Jekoff. 
 
Societe Anonyme et S. E. le Cardinal Mercier 
 
 The Joint Case of an Ecclesiastical and a Journalistic Diplomatist 
 (Part of an address delivered by the author at the Hotel Astor, New York City, 
 
 on March 8th, 1920.) 
 
 **T SUPPOSE some of you can recall that the life of Cardinal Mercier, primate of 
 X Belgium, was saved in a very peculiar manner. The story first made the rounds 
 
 of the world's press in January and February of 1915, was revived now and then 
 as the war went on, was heard from a thousand pulpits and platforms, in millions of 
 newspaper editions and when the four-minute men in this country and elsewhere 
 wanted to lash the Roman Catholics into high fury, the sad, sad tale concerning 
 Cardinal Mercier was retailed. 
 
 "Well, in all the versions you may have heard of it, there was an unknown hero. 
 Who had saved the cardinal's life? Who had warned the Germans not to shoot him 
 out of hand? Who had later secured his release from prison? Who had made it 
 possible for the prince of the church to go out once a day? Who had done these 
 and other things? Why, the same person who had first given the world a picture of 
 the terrible suffering of the civilian population in Belgium? Did it not seem strange 
 to you that the name of the person was never known? 
 
 "However, on September 3rd, of last year, the world was finally taken into the 
 confidence of those who knew who this mysterious hero — this lady bountiful and 
 lifesaver was, to wit: The Associated Press of America. 
 
 "I will read to you a dispatch which the Associated Press caused to be dis- 
 seminated on September 3rd of last year. 
 
 " 'Paris, Sept. 2. — Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, left Paris this 
 morning for Brest, whence he will sail for the United States. 
 
 " 'Cardinal Mercier told the Associated Press that he was visiting 
 America because, having been in contact with the great work of the Ameri- 
 cans for relief of the Belgians during the great war, he wanted to thank 
 them on their own soil, and because he was glad to accept invitations from 
 virtually all the universities of America. 
 
 " The cardinal added that the name of the Associated Press recalled to 
 him one of the dramatic incidents of his experiences during the war. The 
 Germans had threatened to arrest him and policemen were even at the door 
 ready to take him into custody when the German commander intercepted a 
 dispatch from the Associated Press to the cardinal, asking him if the 
 Germans were arresting him on account of his public utterances. 
 
 " 'That telegram,' said Cardinal Mercier, 'made the commander hesitate 
 long enough for Berlin to reflect and think better of it.' 
 
 "It seems that the New York office of the Associated Press was not yet 
 satisfied with the heroic color of this dispatch, and so it added the following: 
 
 " 'Following the ruthless invasion of Belgium by the Germans, Cardinal 
 Mercier at the close of the year of 1914 issued his famous Christmas pastoral, 
 in which he said Belgium was bound in honor to defend her independence. 
 She had kept her word, he said. Germany had broken her oath. Great 
 Britain had been faithful to hers. Toward the invaders the Belgians owed 
 no obedience. 
 
 " 'On the appearance of this pastoral the German military authorities 
 took great offense and practically placed the* Cardinal in durance at his palace 
 at Malines. An effort was made to obtain a statement from him for the 
 Associated Press and the message was transmitted to an Associated Press 
 correspondent in Belgium. In response the following message was received : 
 
 400 
 
SOCIBTB ANONYMB BT S. B. LB CARDINAL MBRCIBR 401 
 
 " ' "January 10, 1915. 
 " * "Von Bissing wires has delivered to Cardinal Mercier Associated 
 Press request for statement. Am pressing for reply." 
 " *No further response was received.' 
 
 "So much for the heroic concoction that appeared in the papers of September 
 3rd and 4th, of last year. Just think of it: Here is the Associated Press, a cor- 
 poration chartered under the laws of the State of New York, along co-operative 
 lines, for the purpose of gathering and distributing news, engaging as a sort of side 
 line in saving cardinals and other chance persons from dire fates. But so far you 
 know but half the story. 
 
 "You know that the Associated Press as a corporation has saved the cardinal 
 from a horrible fate. How did it come about? 
 
 "There appeared in the TYD, a Dutch Catholic clerical paper that was extremely 
 anti-German from the very start of the war, a long and circumstantial story, on 
 January Sth, that Cardinal Mercier, the primate of Belgium, was in sore trouble 
 because he had caused to be published, and had otherwise disseminated, a Christmas 
 pastoral to this flock. The innuendoes were many, and since the Associated Press 
 had to be protected the The Hague correspondent of the service wired what seemed 
 to be the essentials of the story, with due credit and caution. That story was the 
 first intimation the United States public had that something was happening in Malines. 
 
 "The story of the Associated Press was hardly off the press in the United States 
 when every London and Paris journalist cut-throat was at it painting the heavens 
 red with the blood of the primate of Belgium. It seems that the Associated Press 
 correspondent at The Hague woud not grow excited enough for the men in New 
 York, and so it came that the general manager of the Associated Press instructed 
 him by cable just what he would have to do in order to develop this story. The 
 correspondent knew by then that the cardinal was in no danger whatever and had 
 wired a story to that effect, which the British censors suppressed. To put an end 
 to the demand for more copy on the subject he forwarded to Cardinal Mercier, 
 through General Von Bissing, and the military headquarters, the Platzkommando, at 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, a dispatch which makes its appearance among the cardinal's official 
 correspondence, recently published here and abroad, as follows : 
 
 " 'Office of the Kreischef of Malines, January 9th, 1915. 
 "'The Cardinal Archbishop of Malines. 
 
 " 'By order of the Governor General I have the honor to forward to your 
 Eminence the following telegram which was received by the Governor 
 General with the request to communicate it to you. 
 " ' "To his Eminence Cardinal Mercier : 
 
 " ' "It has been rumored that your Eminence has been arrested, together 
 with certain other persons who have co-operated in the dissemination of 
 the pastoral letter. This report has produced a deep impression throughout 
 America. For this reason I have been charged by the managers of the 
 Associated Press to get into personal communication with your Eminence 
 and to receive from you details of the alleged bad treatment to which you 
 have been subjected. If your Eminence be agreeable, I beg you to inform 
 me at the American Legation at The Hague what can be published of your 
 present position. 
 
 " ' "With kindest regards, 
 
 (Signed) ' "George A. Schreiner 
 " ' "Correspondent of the Associated Press." 
 " 'In case your Eminence deems it expedient to reply to this telegram, I 
 place myself at your disposal to transmit your reply. 
 
 '"The Kreischef 
 (Signed) " 'G. von Wengersky, 
 
 " 'Colonel.' 
 "The corrections which I will make at this point, on behalf of truth, are the 
 following : 
 
 "Cardinal Mercier was not in detention and policemen were not waiting to take 
 him into custody, as the Associated Press would have it, in order to seem greater 
 than it actually is. In fact the only thing that had been done to the cardinal was 
 
402 THE CRAI^T SINISTER 
 
 that he had been refused permission to go to Antwerp to preach to a congregation 
 there. That was the sum total of the durance in which the Associated Press, for 
 purposes of its own, as late as September 3rd, last, places the cardinal. 
 
 "And there was nothing dramatic about the entire incident. Nor did the 
 Governor of Belgium intercept my dispatch, as is stated in the recent tale from 
 Paris. Nothing of the sort is true. I addressed my telegram for the cardinal to 
 General von Bissing direct, and did that through the military authorities of the 
 Germans at Aix-la-Chapelle, to make sure that the telegram got to the addressee. 
 So it came about that the Governor General of Belgium, General von Bissing, ac- 
 cording to the admission contained in Cardinal Mercier's official correspondence, 
 charged the Kreischef of Malines to transmit through his office to Cardinal Mercier 
 my telegram. 
 
 "Somebody was careless with the truth in this instance. I take it for granted 
 that the cardinal-archbishop of Malines, the primate of all Belgium, would not do 
 that and still the Associated Press report implies that he did do such a thing. Who 
 is right here, and who wrong? On the other hand, the Associated Press claims for 
 itself so high a degree for accuracy that, taking this claim for what it seems worth, 
 it is hard to believe that the Associated Press made a mistake. In fact, I know that 
 the Associated Press is infallible. 
 
 "The Cardinal further is quoted as saying: 
 
 " That telegram made the commander hesitate long enough for Berlin to 
 reflect and think better of it.' 
 
 "To which I will take the liberty of saying: Piffle! The prince of the church 
 knows as well as I do that the German official dementi, relayed by me on January 7th, 
 at ten o'clock in the morning, to be exact, contained every word needed to describe 
 the situation in Malines, and that was two days before I got in touch with the 
 cardinal in the manner described. Again I hope, that it was not the cardinal-arch- 
 bishop who trifled with the truth. That His Eminence was among the foremost of 
 ecclesiastical diplomatists I know, but I would hate to think that he would be so 
 crude in his methods as here indicated. 
 
 "Now then, let us see what the cardinal himself said in his dispatch that was 
 to reply to mine, a dispatch which never reached me, but which I find in the cardinal's 
 collection of official documents: 
 
 " 'Cardinal Mercier presents to the Count Wengerski the expression of 
 his high esteem and begs him to be good enough to forward the enclosed 
 answer to the correspondent of the Associated Press of America. 
 
 " 'George Schreiner, 
 
 " 'Correspondent of the Associated Press of America, 
 
 " 'American Legation, The Hague. 
 
 " 'In reply to your telegram I regret to have to declare that a number of 
 priests have had to submit to the violations of their homes, threats of fines 
 and imprisonment and arrest. The printer of the pastoral letter was con- 
 demned to a fine of 500 marks. Myself received January 2nd, six o'clock 
 morning, three officers who brought me an order to remain at the disposal 
 of Governor General ; Sunday, January 3rd, received by telegram Governor 
 General's prohibition to go to Antwerp to preside at religious ceremony. 
 
 "Shall be obliged to you for acknowledging receipt of my wire. 
 
 (Signed) "'Cardinal Mercier, 
 
 "'Archbishop of Malines.' 
 
 "Cardinal Mercier tells us that the Governor-General of Belgium refused to 
 have this telegram reach me, and that he, the cardinal, then sent me the following : 
 
 " 'George A. Schreiner, etc. 
 
 " 'I quite understand the sympathy you wish to manifest toward me and 
 I thank you for it ; but I prefer for the present not to dwell on the vexatious 
 proceedings to which you refer and to continue to confine myself to my 
 duties as a bishop. 
 
 " 'I repeat, however, that I have withdrawn and shall withdraw nothing 
 of my pastoral letter. 
 
 (Signed) "'Cardinal Mercier, 
 
 "'Archbishop of Malines.' 
 
SOCIBTB ANONYMB S. B. LB CARDINAL MBRCIBR 403 
 
 "May I not draw attention to the highly diplomatic character of this second 
 dispatch of the cardinal's. My telegram to him had portrayed no sympathy in the 
 least degree, since I had carefully confined myself to the matter-of-fact aspect of the 
 thing. In fact, I had no reason at all to feel any special brand or degree of sympathy 
 for His Eminence, knowing very well that the cock-and-bull stories concerning his 
 sad fate were untrue. Again, we newspapermen are not generally given to maudliness 
 of any sort, and I am sure that not one of the journalists who wept over His 
 Eminence at so much per line or column cared a rap whether or no his freedom had 
 in any way been curtailed by von Bissing. When war is rampant it is best not to 
 be too particular in your expectations. 
 
 "But to come back to the Associated Press for a brief moment. This corporation 
 says that it saved the cardinal from all sorts of dire things, and for the purpose 
 of getting what credit there can be in this for a chartered company it fails to 
 mention the name of its correspondent, which correspondent later, that is now, dis- 
 claims all credit as a lifesaver, and announces that there was no occasion whatsoever 
 for heroics, the whole bussiness being just a plain incident to war and news -gathering, 
 and nothing more. 
 
 "I would go on record to the effect that His Eminence owes me no thanks 
 whatsoever, and, owing me no thanks, owes none to the Associated Press. The fact 
 is that the entire business is an accident — an accident based on the frightfully exag- 
 gerated reports published in the Amsterdam TYD, which I peddled, entirely because 
 I did not want another correspondent to scoop me, as the saying goes, though know- 
 ing full well at the time, that the thing could not be what it was said to be, an 
 opinion shared with me by most of the responsible journalists in Holland who 
 ignored the story. If there is going to be a general issuing of decorations on account 
 of the Cardinal Mercier story, by all means let such medals go to the editor of the 
 TYD, one of the bravest mental contortionists of the Great War, which is saying a 
 great deal, considering the Ochses, Pulitzers, Noyeses and Stones." 
 
I 
 
 N 
 
 *The Pitfalls of Diplomacy" 
 
 (Excerpts from an Address made by the Author at the Hotel Astor, New York, 
 
 March 8th, 1920.) 
 
 MEET a good many people who regret that things are not different as the result 
 
 of this war. Everybody, it seems, thought there would be a new era when the 
 
 gentlemen of the Paris Conference were through idealising and democratising. 
 There was to be this and that. This world was to be such a happy place to live 
 in — really. Well, look at it. If ever a crowd of politicians made a poor job of a thing 
 this is it. So far as I can see, we have nothing today but debts ; to the sum total 
 of things upon which the happiness of mankind depends we have added nothing, on 
 the contrary we have wasted our substance in the most prodigal manner. 
 
 "Nothing at all is to be gained by looking upon the results of war from the 
 angle of regret. It is futile to do that. The end of all wars is similar to but one 
 thing — that which the French call : une omelette. I might have said : Scrambled eggs. 
 But French has been so very popular recently, vous saves, though most of you do 
 not know it. Look at our beautiful perfume-ad English, for instance. I do love the 
 idiot who has to mix two or more languages to make himself understood. But that 
 is no reason why Sauerkraut should not continue to be known as Liberty Cabbage. 
 Why not? The conception of liberty of some people is indeed that of a cabbage, 
 with the difference that the cabbage does much better, so long as it stands out on 
 the field in the sun and rain and wind and does so splendidly as a good cabbage will 
 do with the least encouragement. . 
 
 "I said : une omelette also, because French is the language of the peculiar business 
 I am to speak of tonight. Now why is French the diplomatic language? The fact 
 is that diplomatists could never trust one another. A document drawn up in one 
 language today and translated into another tomorrow by a diplomatist always does 
 have a different meaning than what it had to one of the parties signatory to it. 
 No doubt, there had been a meeting of minds when the thing decided upon was 
 placed on record, but since then conditions have changed and to meet that change the 
 terms of the document, be it a treaty or anything else, are interpreted to suit one's 
 own interest. To end that practice it was decided to draw up such papers in 
 French. . 
 
 "Well, even with that precaution it is not always possible to get a fair deal. In 
 diplomacy, ladies and gentlemen, it is not the original intent and purpose that counts, 
 but the thing you want, or want to do, at your convenience or when the question 
 comes up. Let me remaind you that in diplomacy there is no such thing as honesty. 
 In diplomacy you can find no such thing as truth. On the other hand, diplomacy 
 . hardly ever lies entirely. I mean that the diplomatic lie is usually five per cent truth. 
 \ The diplomatic truth, on the other hand, is generally ninty-five per cent lies. Diplo- 
 macy is invertebrate and polite. It is a Latin art, and Machiavel is one of its fathers, 
 though that could be taken as being a slander upon Machiavel when we look at the 
 Wilsonian brand. 
 
 "I passed the official ash-can of the Paris Peace Conference the other day, and 
 found in it the version of a very old creed. I think it was King Nebuchadnezzar of 
 Babylon — he who made a lawnmower of his august person — who first proclaimed the 
 principle of the Fourteen Points and then failed to live up to it. But I am sure 
 that even he is merely the first on record in that respect. These things have all 
 been done before, ladies and gentlemen, though in a country like ours, in which they 
 discover the obvious every day, that may not seem apparent. There is really nothing 
 • new under the sun, and, as Koheleth expressed it: Neither is there anything true 
 under the sun. 
 
 "I was struck by the message contained in the first of the Fourteen Points : 
 Open covenants, openly arrived at. How wonderful ! How very touching ! Open 
 covenants 1 What a beautiful sound that word has. It is so Cromwellian, don't you 
 
 404 
 
"THE PITFALLS OF DIPLOMACY" 405 
 
 know I Just think of it — open covenants. How sublime, supreme, superlative, superb. 
 How similar to the French pomade advertisements ! 
 
 "What I have to say here tonight has a great deal to do with the first of the 
 Fourteen Points. There were to be open covenants, openly arrived at. Well, if there 
 is one thing this world really needs, it is open diplomacy — if that is what Mr. 
 Wilson meant. Had there been open diplomacy, or better yet, no diplomacy at all, 
 the Great War would have been avoided, and mankind spared one of the worst 
 trials it ever went through. I am sure that Mr. Wilson felt that. . . . I at 
 least prefer to look upon that aspect of the Great War from that angle, for not to 
 do that obliges us to think of the famous Fourteen Points as the most colossal, most 
 monumental, most Machiavellian frauds of all history. 
 
 "But there is nothing to be regretted when war is over. The eggs have been 
 broken and the milk has been spilled. The plaint that this or that injustice was 
 done is like the cackling of the hen that sees her eggs broken on the rim of the 
 skillet by a cook who is not interested at all in the primary purpose of the egg in 
 nature, but wants just an omelet. When you want an omelet you must break eggs. 
 In Paris they broke their promises together with the eggs, which is nothing unusual 
 W since Paris is the home of the proverb: To make colonies one must break heads. 
 
 "There was held out to us the hope that self-determination was to wipe out all 
 of the irredentas in Europe. That alone would have been worth the price paid for 
 the great adventure. The author of the Fourteen Points was very emphatic on that 
 particular point. Well, what happened? The Big Four applied instead the fine 
 principle of imperialistic Rome : Divide et impera, which now reads : Enslave by 
 division. ?^««iW^ 
 
 "Of course, there were to be no more subject peoples. They all were to be 
 free. Well, in some parts that was carried out — at the expense of enemy states: But 
 we are still looking for self-determination for the several groups of mankind, 
 large and small, high and low, that make up the British and French empires. I am 
 not going to give you a list of them here. It is hardly necessary. Nor do I advise 
 self-determination as a cure-all, as does the diplomatist with an axe to grind. Con- 
 trary to what has been said, the Balance of Power is the only feasible means of 
 sane international relations, and into that scheme the small state does not fit very 
 well. The World Power unchecked by opposition has a most ungodly appetite. Its 
 government and people will gobble up one small state after another. To prevent that 
 small peoples are obliged to combine into large states. It is unfortunate that they 
 cannot do that without acquiring afterwards themselves all the vices of the mam- 
 moth against whom they combined. But that is one of the things that show how 
 far off the millennium really is. . . . 
 
 "But right now we are looking at these things in the light of the most recent 
 pronunciamentos. There was to be happiness ever afterwards. The peoples of this 
 earth were to dwell under their own figtrees. I can still see the Pharisees standing 
 about with eyes upcast to heaven while giving mankind these assurances. It is 
 to laugh — pardon me: Cest a rire! 
 
 "The easiest way of running the affairs of this world and getting the cream of 
 its labor is to keep mankind divided in small groups and then set these groups at 
 one another's throats. While the small fellows are so engaged, you, quite naturally, 
 step in and help yourself. . . . 
 
 "But these are things which this world does not care to look at. I have 
 had, recently, many an occasion to remind people of the killing off, by the late 
 lamented Lord Kitchener, the butcher of Omdurman and Khartoum, in his con- 
 centration camps of over 26,000 Boer women and children. That was about the 
 eleventh part of the Boer population of the South African Republic and Orange 
 I'ree State. When I mention that little matter I usually get nothing more than a 
 bland smile, back of which I can read the exclamation : What a liar that man is ! 
 Mankind has ever found it hard to believe the thing which is not in accord with 
 ^ its hopes and desires. In fact, most people will believe only which serves some 
 \purpose of theirs, and with that class all things beyond this very limited sphere 
 are simply denied. One of the greatest adherents of the ostrich philosophy is the 
 American public. 
 
406 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 "We hear now and then of the thing called justice. And there are not a few 
 who hoped that justice would come of this war. Such simplemindedness is pathetic 
 and a waste of other people's time. When a government goes to war it does so 
 for the purpose of getting something by main force which by another method it 
 could not get. The other government then goes to war to prevent the robbery, for 
 such the high motive shows itself to be, when the fine verbal draperies are pulled 
 aside. There may have been a war that was started to get justice, but I have 
 no knowledge of it, and when I say started I do not mean the firing of the first 
 shot or the sending of the ultimatum, but the long list of diplomatic malfeasances 
 that go before and smile at us later as the alleged causes of the war, when in reality 
 they are nothing but its pretexts. 
 
 "The aggressor in a war has never laid bare his actual motives. What he 
 places before the neutral public, and his own people, is never more than the pretext. 
 Some lofty principle in his reasons, we are told, and generally that lofty principle 
 is one which will benefit all mankind — will save civilization, progress and what not. 
 So we are told, and so most of us believe. . . . 
 
 "But of such contradictions is made up history, and of such inconsistencies is 
 later pieced together the judgment of mankind. As we all know, there are two sides 
 to every quarrel. The greater the quarrel, the" greater the difference of opinion 
 as to who was right and who was wrong. Though I was three years in Europe, 
 at the fronts and in the capitals, I am not yet prepared to say just who was entirely 
 right and who was entirely wrong, and I am sure that I will never encompass 
 the whole of the evidence sufficiently well to allow me to arrive at a final conclusion. 
 All I can say now is that none of them was an angel. To inquire into the culpability 
 of those held responsible for a war is like taking a sail upon the ocean : There is 
 one more billow, and after bobbing up and down a great deal you find, taking 
 your bearings by the sun, that after all you have not gotten very far — not as far 
 as you thought. That seems to have been the experience of Mr. Wilson, when in 
 » his political campaign in 1916 he averred loudly and often that he had not yet de- 
 cided who was responsible for the European War. 
 
 "A great deal was being said, just before the Great War broke out, of universal 
 peace, disarmament, the force of International Law, arbitration treaties and what 
 not. How much is there left of these things today? Precious little! Of Inter- 
 national Law is left the few paragraphs which the British government incorporated, 
 for purposes of its own, in its Declaration of London Orders in Privy Council, 
 No. 2, or whatever the number of the most famous of these was. The remainder 
 of International Law was dumped overboard, but is now being salvaged to once 
 once more lull mankind into a false security. 
 
 "Just what is International Law? . . . 
 
 "When you come to examine it you will find it of as much substance as the 
 soap bubble, of as much weight as the British government may deign to give it. 
 Today, at any rate, there is no such thing as the jus gentium. There is today only a 
 jus Britannica. and a fool is he who thinks otherwise. 
 
 "We must bear in mind that only the envoy extraordinary and ambassador 
 plenipotentiary of the World Power can do his best in the art of negotiations, 
 to give you the dictionary definition of diplomacy. He can do his best for the reason 
 that whatever mistake he may make, and no matter how and when, and by whom, 
 he is found out, he can finally cause his dear government to call out the army, 
 and the navy, and the pulpit, the press, the literary cutthroat, the harlotting peda- 
 gogue and all the other flunkies of authority. 
 
 "There is no such thing as an able or an unable diplomatist, as the general 
 public views it. By that I mean that ability along the lines of honesty has nothing 
 to do with diplomacy. Able is that diplomatist whose armed forces can in the 
 end prove him right; unable is that diplomatist whose armies and navy go down 
 in defeat. In the one case all intrigue and conspiracy against the peace of 
 the world is wiped out — and all mistakes along with it — and in the other the per- 
 fectly legitimate methods of the diplomatist are paraded before the war-frenzied 
 public. Before an ambassador can be successful he must have behind him great 
 prestige — prestige not of fine attributes, but of the brutal force of arms, and if 
 
"THE PITFALLS OF DIPLOMACY" 407 
 
 ^ not of the brutal force of arms, then of the cruel will of international capitalism. 
 Such an ambassador is bound to be successful. He could not fail, because the 
 weaker stand in awe of him. The diplomatist who does not have these means in 
 his hands, who does not wield these dire forces, will always be a failure, because 
 in diplomacy it is not sterling worth that counts, nor is mental superiority so great 
 an asset: The factor that determines all in the end is force — the size of the armies, 
 the number of guns, the efficacy of blockade, the size of the fleet, and all the other 
 
 \ things they use in war — not to mention the capacity for prevarication of that grand, 
 old moulder of public opinion — the press. 
 
 "Nevertheless, the poor, deluded public everywhere prefers to stand in awe 
 of the diplomatist, realizing little how very ordinary this envoy extraordinary may 
 be, how weak in mind, will and morals this ambassador plenipotentiary wp" 
 fashioned. Contrary to the opinions of their admiring friends and the general 
 public, diplomatists are nothing more than human beings, and not always very good 
 ones either. While the granting of all sorts of silly privileges to diplomatists has 
 in the minds of many elevated the ilk into a class related to the gods, these men, 
 and their women also, are still subjects to all the laws of nature, as presently I 
 will show you. 
 
 "Bookwriting ambassadors are omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. T say 
 bookwriting ambassadors are that, because when interviewed thev are protected against 
 their own assininity by the interviewing and snivelline scribe who weighs everv 
 word the great man utters. But in writing a book the ambassador can p'ive his fancv 
 free rein and woe betide the poor devil that happens across the track of his pen. 
 According to ambassadorial war books, the government of the U. S. had in Europe 
 bv far the best diplomatists, especially ambassadors. There is no doubt about t^at. 
 -' One of them has been knighted and is now Sir James of the Black Wallet. Sir James 
 is one of the most heroic figures of the Great War, and if I make bold to mention 
 him here at all, it is with the wish that his shadow mav never grow less. I 
 honestly believe that some of the things he did, and his books are not tV«e least of 
 these, will ultimately do much to improve the diplomatice serviVp of the United 
 States. At any rate, improved will be that service to the extent of Sir James having 
 made it impossible to again serve himself his country. 
 
 ^ "The main purpose of censorship then is to influence world public opinion. To 
 
 what extent it is necessary to control that opinion was shown again a few weeks 
 ago when Great Britain decided that it would not be well to let the American public 
 get news from Germany and Central Europe over the wireless. The British govern- 
 ment quite calmly informed the world that until further notice all news dispatches 
 would have to be sent by cable — that meant they would have to get in and out of 
 the British cable offices. Did you hear an objection on the part of the administration 
 in Washington? You did not. Now as then whatever the British government does 
 is okeh. London has but to think in order to get action on the part of a govern- 
 ment that is said to be autonomous and independent. It is a fine state of affairs, 
 to be sure. ^ ~^ 
 
 "Now, I am one of those who object to an alliance between this country and 
 Great Britain, but, conditions being what they were, it would have been the nart 
 of honorable men to admit that there was an understanding between Great Britain 
 and the United States. That applies still today. To either admit that there is such 
 an alliance — a gentlemen's understanding of long standing, as it were, or to out-and- 
 out make such an alliance, would be a good thing for this world. It would be an 
 honorable thing, because then the remainder of this world could shane its acts 
 accordingly. Do you think that the German government would have been able to 
 make some of its mistakes if it had been known in 1915 or 1916. or whenever it 
 was, that Mr, Wilson had agreed with his friends in the old country that the 
 Entente should never lose this war no matter who was right and who was wrong? 
 Do you think that the Central European publics, sheeplike and complacent as thev 
 were, would have allowed their governments to bring them so close to the brink 
 of extermination? I can say that the people would have seen to it that peace would 
 have been made in time— soon enough to leave at least a little of the substance 
 
408 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 needed in daily life. The fact is that Mr. Wilson duped these people, as later he 
 duped them in his Fourteen Points. While this gay deceiver made it appear that he 
 was acting from the position of an American, he was creating a situation which 
 in the end would not keep us out of the war. And all of this at a time when he 
 was running for re-election on the slogan : He kept us out of the war. 
 
 "By all means let us have an alliance with Great Britain, if we intend doing in 
 the future what we have done in the past. Let us be honest about this thing, so 
 that men everywhere will know exactly what they are to expect of us. That is quite 
 the least we can do. It is the very minimum required of him who wants to seem a 
 decent member in the family of nations. 
 
 "Of course, it might even be necessary to force Great Britain into an alliance 
 with us. I hope you do not think that we have no alliance today because the men 
 in Washington did not want such an alliance. I have a better opinion of your intelli- 
 gence. That there is today no written alliance between London and Washington is 
 due entirely to the fact that John Bull finds its more convenient not to have such 
 an alliance. There is no doubt that the deepest pitfall of international machination 
 in recent years was the gentlemen's agreement Wilson had with his cousins, once 
 removed, in London. When the Thunderer referred to Wilson as the best English- 
 man living, Lord NorthcliflFe knew exactly what he was saying. 
 
 "Don't think that in Europe there were no men at all who did not understand 
 this. There was Count Tisza, for instance. Many a time have I discussed with 
 him the question whether or no Wilson would go to war on the side of the Entente. 
 . . . It is very unfortunate for the whole world that in Berlin they were 
 stupid enough to believe Mr. Wilson and his ambassadors, Sir James and Colonel 
 House. Had they taken the advice of Count Tisza the war would have ended 
 sooner, I think, and this world would have been better off by far. I will say that 
 the greatest of all the blunders made by the men in Berlin is that they for a moment 
 thought that they could win the war without having to measure issues on the field of 
 battle with the United States. But thev had learned little even from that. When Mr. 
 Wilson came out with his Fourteen Points Central Europe fell to its knees before 
 him as it might before another Messiah. He was looked upon as the third in a 
 splendid constellation : Washington, Lincoln and Wilson. Well, we know what be- 
 came of all that. It all ended up in the rare screed known as the League of Nations 
 covenant — a sort of butcher's scrap barrel into which the Big Four dumped all of 
 their hatred, avarice and foibles, not forgetting a few troubles of their own, as shown 
 by the ridiculous phrases concerning labor problems. 
 
 "By all means let us come in the open with an alliance with Great Britain if 
 in the future, as in the past, we are to trot in the dust of her chariot. Our fellow- 
 men everywhere will then be able to conduct themselves accordingly. For instance, 
 they will never go to war, hoping that we might or would remain neutral, as the 
 surface of things would indicate. We will lose nothing by dropping our mask, and 
 we will gain a great deal by serving notice upon the world that with such an 
 alliance we cease to be a snare to the unsuspecting, a pitfall to the honest. Such 
 an open alliance would remove from the present-day diplomacy one of its most 
 unlovely aspects." 
 
INDEX OF PERSONNEL 
 
 ABDUL Hamid, Sultan, 121, 144, 267. 
 CKERMAN, Charles, 252, 255, 256. 
 Aehrenthal, Count, 54, 72, 162, 268, 297. 
 Alexander I, Czar, 27, 83. 
 Alexander II, Czar, 28, 54, 117, 161, 167, 169. 
 Alexander III, Czar, 29, 31, 34, 54, 144, 161, 170. 
 Alexander of Battenberg, 161. 
 Alexander, King of Serbia, 162, 296. 
 Alice, Princess of Hes'se-Darmstadt, 34, 35, 328. 
 Antonian (Mr. Morgenthau's Secretary), 127, 133. 
 Asquith, 43. 
 
 Archbald (Newspaper Correspondent), 304. 
 Arz, General von, 365. 
 Averescu, General, 220. 
 
 BARCLAY, Sir H., 201, 220. 
 ARRfiRE (Rome), 49, 264, 266. 
 Barthou, 83. 
 
 Battenberg, Prince Alexander of, 161. 
 Bax-Ironside, Sir Henry G. O., 170. 
 Bell (Chicago Daily News), 135. 
 Below- Saleske, Baron von, 75. 
 Benckendorf, Count, 71, 266, 302. 
 Benedikt, Dr. (Neue Freie Presse, Vienna), 325. 
 Benedikt, Moritz (Neue Freie Presse, Vienna), 319, 324, 325, 326, 344. 
 Bennet, James O'Donnell, 103, 252, 254, 256. 
 Berchtold, Count, 54, 56, 67, 72, 162, 297, 298, 308, 365. 
 Berry (Associated Press), 106, 239. 
 Bernstorfif, Count, 257, 288, 341. 
 Bert, Paul, 29. 
 Bertie, Sir Francis, 72, 82. 
 
 Bethmann-Hollweg, IZ, 75, 78, 196, 227, 273, 286, 298, 330, 335. 
 Bieberstein, Baron von, 2i^. 
 
 409 
 
410 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Bienaime, Admiral, 264. 
 
 Bingham,, Rutherford, 360. 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, 29, 31, 34, 44, 73, 78, 79, 273. 
 
 Bissing, General von, 107. 
 
 Black George, 59. 
 
 Blondel (Bucharest), 201, 220. 
 
 Bompard (Constantinople), 119, 144. 
 
 Boreovic, General, 365. 
 
 Boris, Crownprince, 161, 173. 
 
 Bosniakoff (Sofia), 184. 
 
 Bourchier, J. D., 238. 
 
 Bouton, Miles S., 251. 
 
 Brandl, Dr., (Vienna), 323. 
 
 Branisteanu (Bucharest), 204. 
 
 Bratianu, Premier, 178, 200, 206, 209, 215, 219, 220, 223, 226. 
 
 Braun (Berlin), 49. 
 
 Briand, Aristide, 83. 
 
 BrousiloflF, General, 225, 227, 229, 327, 365. 
 
 Brown, Cyril, 252. 
 
 Bryan, William J., 98, 100, 241, 276, 284, 286, 289, 311, 340. 
 
 Buchanan, Sir George, 71, 72, 148, 300, 364. 
 
 Buelow, Prince, 36, 266, 267. 
 
 Buelow, Princess Maria, 266, 267. 
 
 Burian, Count, 190, 308, 311, 312. 
 
 Bussche-Haddenhausen, Baron von den, 201, 217, 219, 222. 
 
 Buxton Brothers, 168. 
 
 Byng, General, 366. 
 
 /^ ADORN A, General, 266, 27, 365. 
 
 AILLAUX, 83. 
 Campbell-Bannerman, 51. 
 Cantacuzene, Michael, 200. 
 Caprivi, Count, 36. 
 
 Carp, Peter, 144, 200, 201, 203, 209, 215, 216, 220. 
 Carson, Sir Edward, 83. 
 Cavell, Edith, 380. 
 Charles, Emperor-King, 227, 324, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 352, 353, 
 
 ^ 356, 365. 
 Charles, King of Rumania, 200, 206, 215. 
 Churchill, Winston, 50. 
 Clemenceau, 83, 386. 
 Cleveland, President, 37. 
 
INDEX OF PERSONNEL 411 
 
 Cobb, Irvin, 103. 
 
 Collins, Robert M., 102, 234, 236. 
 
 Colloredo-Mannsfeld, Count von, 333, 344, 345, 346, 347, 357, 358. 
 
 Conger, Seymor B., 102, 104, 106, 107, 235, 251, 253. 
 
 Constantin, King of Greece, 246, 267. 
 
 Couche, Frank A., 188. 
 
 C, S. L. (Vienna), 305. 
 
 Crispi, Premier, 264. 
 
 Cucchi-Boasso, Signor, 179. 
 
 Czernin, Count, 201, 220, 222, 227, 308, 324, 330, 333, 335, 336, 337, 
 
 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 
 
 351, 352, 353, 365. 
 
 DAMON, THERON, 133, 239, 240. 
 ANEFF, Dr. (Sofia), 165, 168, 180. 
 d'Annunzio, 266, 267. 
 David (Berlin), 49. 
 de Giers, 31, 34, 46. 
 de Giers, N. M., 72, 119, 144. 
 de Hansen (Paris), 46. 
 Delcasse, M., 47. 
 de Panafieu, M. M. A., 170, 179. 
 Derocco, D. J., 157, 158. 
 Derussi (Sofia), 179. 
 Diaz, General, 365. 
 Diaz, Porfirio, 199. 
 Disraeli, 380. 
 
 Dobrovitch, Dr. (Sofia), 173. 
 Draga, Queen of Serbia, 162, 296. 
 Duckworth, Admiral, 114. 
 Dulles, Allen W., 356, 357. 
 Dumba, Dr. Alexander, 288, 304, 305, 306. 
 Dyke, Dr. Henry van, 22, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100. 
 
 EINSTEIN, Lewis, 132 ,133, 134, 135, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 
 DWARD VII, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49. 
 187, 188, 248. 
 Elizabeth, Queen of Rumania, 206, 215. 
 Elst, Baron van der, 75. 
 Emin Pasha, 356. 
 Endress, Guido, 252, 254. 
 Enver Pasha, 111, 115, 121, 124, 126, 129, 130, 131, 146, 195, 196, 366. 
 
412 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 FALKENHAYN, General von, 224, 225, 320, 327, 365. 
 ERDINAND of Bulgaria, 161, 162, 166, 173, 174, 180, 365. 
 Ferdinand of Rumania, 206, 219, 220. 
 Filipescu (Rumania), 200, 202, 209. 
 Fischer, Major (Constantinople), 130, 239. 
 Flotow, von, 266. 
 Flourens, Gustave, 46. 
 Forgatch, Count, 358. 
 Fortesque, Capt. Stanley, 136. 
 Francis I, of Austria, 27. 
 Francis Joseph, Emperor, 29, 34, 35, 54, 61, 67, 196, 268, 304, 313, 314, 
 
 331, 364. 
 Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, 56, 57, 298. 
 Frederici, Major, 250. 
 Frederick, Emperor, 44. 
 Frederick William III, 27. 
 French, General, 366. 
 Fryatt, Captain, 380. 
 
 GAUNTLETT, Fred. J., 115. 
 
 EORGE, David Lloyd, 51. 
 George, Jr., Henry, 101. 
 George, King of England, 61, 64, 65, 67, 142. 
 Georgieff (Sofia), 175, 184, 189, 248, 249, 250. 
 
 Gerard, James W., 22, 100, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 358. 
 Ghenadieff (Sofia), 172. 
 Ghiloni, Frank, 318. 
 Gieslingen, Baron Giesl von, 61. 
 Giskra, Baron von, 67, 96. 
 Gogo, Octavian, 201. 
 Goltz Pasha, von der, 36, 123, 195. 
 Goschen, Sir Edward, 72, 73, 286. 
 Grant-Smith, U., 190, 191, 192. 
 Grew, Joseph C, 353, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359. 
 Grey, Sir Edward, 43, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 82, 83, 84, 
 
 120, 242, 243, 266, 280, 282, 299, 300, 302, 366, 
 Guechoff, M. I. M., 116, 117, 153, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 173, 180. 
 
 HAASE (Berlin), 49. 
 AIG, General, 366. 
 Haldane, Viscount, 42, 43, 50, 51, 62. 
 Hale, William Bayard, 252. 
 
INDEX OB^ PERSONNEL 413 
 
 Halil Bey, 365. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir Ian, 137, 140, 141, 147, 148, 152, 366. 
 
 Hansen, Harry, 103. 
 
 Harriman (Diplomatic Secretary), 346. 
 
 Hartwig (Belgrade), 159, 162. 
 
 Hay, John, 37. 
 
 Helfferich, Dr. Carl, 319. 
 
 Herbst, Joseph, 248. 
 
 Hersing, Captain, 192. 
 
 Hibbon, Paxton, 245, 246. 
 
 Hindenburg, Field Marshal, von, 329, 330, 365. 
 
 Hirst (Sofia), 184, 185, 186, 187, 188. 
 
 Hotzendorff, Field Marshal, von, 225, 365. 
 
 Hoifman, President Swiss Confederation, 243. 
 
 Hohenlohe, Prince, 36. 
 
 House, Colonel, 22, 23, 307. 
 
 Humann, Capt., 130, 131, 194, 195, 197. 
 
 ILIESCU, General (Rumania), 220. 
 MPERIALI, Marquis, 266. 
 Isvolski (Paris), 23, 54, 71, 72, 144, 146, 162. 
 
 JAGOW, Herr von, 30, 72, 73. 
 ANSEN, Colonel von (Constantinople), 131. 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 86, 96, 98, 283, 289, 293. 
 Jekoff, General (Bulgaria), 172, 248. 
 Joffre, Marshall, 266. 
 
 Jonescu, Take (Bucharest), 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 209. 
 Jonescu, Toma (Bucharest), 200. 
 Jorga, Nicolai (Rumania), 201. 
 Judelsohn, Montefiore, 360. 
 Judelsohn, Mrs. (Vienna), 360. 
 Jusserand (Washington), 133, 184. 
 
 KERMECKTCHIEFF. Dr. Acene C. 166, 182. 
 EYNES, John Maynard, 312. 
 Kiamil Bey, Major, 130. 
 Kiderlen-Wachter, 30. 
 Kitchener, Lord, 294, 328, 366. 
 Kloeber, Chas. E., 103, 105. 
 Koulocheff (Constantinople), 72^ 153, 169. 
 Kozeff (Sofia), 179, 181, 250. 
 
414 ' " tHE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Kruger, Oom Paul, 32, 45, 170. 
 
 Kiihlmann, Dr. Richard von, 65, 66, 67, 123, 197. 
 
 LAMMASCH, Dr. Henry, 324, 344. 
 AMSDORFF, Count, 45. 
 Langhorne, Marshall, 98. 
 Unsing, Robert, 93, 188, 242, 276, 280, 312, 316, 318, 319, 321. 329, 
 
 342, 350. 
 Latinovitch (Budapest), 229. 
 Ledebour (Berlin), 49. 
 Ledlie, J. C, 278. 
 Lee, Arthur, 42. 
 Lewis, .Roger, 103. 
 
 Lichnowski, Prince, 64, 65, 66, 67, 74, 75, 262. 
 Liebknecht (Berlin), 49. 
 
 Limpus, Admiral (Dardanelles), 118, 139, 212. 
 Lippe, Dr. (Vienna), 325. 
 Listoe, Soren, 96, 97. 
 Lobanoff, Prince, 35, 46. 
 Loudon, John, 97. 
 Lucacin, Pater D., 201. 
 Ludendorff, General, 365. 
 
 li/i ACH, Edmund von, 64. 
 
 ACKENSEN, Fieldmarshal von, 173, 175, 225, 365. 
 Malinoff, Alexander, 165, 173, 180. 
 Majorescu (Bucharest), 201. 
 Mallet, Sir Louis, 119, 125, 143. 
 Marghiloman, Alexander, 60, 144, 200, 201, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 
 
 215, 216, 220, 223, 224, 226. 
 Marie, Queen of Rumania, 206. 
 
 Martin, Frederick Roy, 102, 104, 105, 234, 235, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241, 246. 
 Massow, Colonel von, 173. 
 McCumber, Senator, 109. 
 McCutcheon, John T., 103. 
 Mercier, Cardinal, 106, 107. 
 Mertens Pasha, 134. 
 Metternich, Prince, 28, 335. 
 Michaelis (Sofia), 167, 176. 
 Milan, King of Serbia, 162, 296. 
 Mille, Constantin, 201, 203, 204, 205. 
 Milner, Lord, 170. '] 
 
INDEX OF PERSONNEL 415 
 
 Mirman, M. Leon, 368. 
 
 Mohammed Rechid Khan V, 136, 142, 267, 365. 
 
 Mohrenheim, Baron von, 46. 
 
 Molkte, Count von, 79. 
 
 Momtchiloff, Ivan, 165. 
 
 Monroe, President, 86. 
 
 Montlong, Oscar von, 323, 331, 332, 349. 
 
 Morgenthau, St., Henry, 116, 118, 119, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 
 
 132, 133, 134, 136. 
 Morley, Lord, 51. 
 
 Morton, Capt. J. P., 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135. 
 Miiller, Captain von, 65, 66, 67, 74. 
 Miiller, Herr von, 96. 
 Muravieff, Count, 45. 
 Murphy, Dominic L, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186. 
 
 NAHOUM, Haim, 126. 
 1 
 
 APOLEON Bonaparte, 27, 227. 
 Napoleon III, 29. 
 
 Nicholaievitch, Grand Duke, 70, 71, 78, 209, 300, 328, 365. 
 Nicholas II, Czar, 31, 34, 35, 46, 60, 61, 63, 67, 70, 71, 161, 162, 167, 
 
 170, 181, 328, 364. 
 Northcliffe, Lord, 177. 
 Noske (Berlin), 49. 
 
 O^BEIRNE (Sofia), 170, 179, 180. 
 BERNDORFF, Count Alfred, 176. 
 Oppenheimer, Sir Francis, 95. 
 
 pAGE, W. H., 242, 243. 
 
 ALIVANOFF, General, 225, 226, 227, 368. 
 Paleologue (Petrograd), 71, 300. 
 Pallavicini, Marquis, 126. 
 Panaretoff, Stephen, 166. 
 Pashitch, Premier, 61, 158, 162. 
 Patterson (Chicago Tribune), 105. 
 Penfield, Frederic C, 23, 190, 305, 318, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 342, 343, 
 
 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 
 
 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360. 
 Penfield, Mrs. F. C, 355, 357, 358. 
 Pesheflf (Sofia), 172. 
 Peter, King of Serbia, 162, 196, 296, 299. 
 
416 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Pflanzer-Baltin, General, 365. 
 Pichon (Paris), 83. 
 Pinckney, Mr., 96. 
 
 Piper, Captain (Con.stantinople), 210. 
 Poklewski-Koziel, M., 201, 205. 
 Potiorek, General, 178, 237. 
 Pouncefote, Lord, 37. 
 Pourtales, Count, 70. 
 Protogeroff, Colonel, 160. 
 
 RADOSLAVOFF, Dr., 152, 153, 164, 166, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 
 174, 175, 176, 179, 180, 246, 250, 365. 
 Rappart, Chevalier van, 97. 
 Ratschkowski (Paris), 46. 
 Reinach, Joseph, 309. 
 Rennenkampf, General, 167. 
 Reventlow, Count zu, 254. 
 Rheinbaben, W. von, 201, 217. 
 Roberts, Elmer, 240. 
 Rodd, Rennel, 265, 266. 
 Rogers, Lindsay, XXI. 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 309. 
 
 SAIID Halim Pasha, 110, 115, 120, 121, 146, 365. 
 ALIH Pasha, 136. 
 Salisbury, Lord, 281. 
 
 Sanders Pasha, Liman von, 118, 124, 140, 195, 366. 
 Sarrail, General, 219, 225. 
 Savinski (Sofia), 179. 
 Savoff, General, 164. 
 
 Sazonoff, M., 60, 70, 71, 78, 116, 120, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 
 151, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 174, 175, 181, 207, 208, 209, 
 228, 265, 268, 269, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 328, S66, 367. 
 Scheidemann (Berlin) 49. 
 Schelking, de, 23. 
 
 Schellendorflf, Col. Bronsart von, 130. 
 Schon, Baron von, 23, 74, 75, 79. 
 Schuette, Oswald, 252, 254. 
 Scolik, Charles, 59. 
 Sefid Bey, 130. 
 
 Shamavonian (Dragoman), 133, 134. 
 Shaw, George Bernard, 61, 64, 321. 
 
INDEX OF PERSONNEL 417 
 
 Sixtus, Prince, 350. 
 
 Slavitchi (Bucharest), 205. 
 
 Souchon, Admiral, 118, 119, 130. 
 
 Soukhomlinoff, General, 63, 70, 71, 78. 
 
 Stamboulowski (Sofia), 165, 173, 180, 365. 
 
 Stancieff, Dimiter, 183, 249. 
 
 Stanoeivitch, Dr. St., 157, 158, 181. 
 
 Stere, Rector (Jassy), 201. 
 
 Stoeger-Steiner, General, 266, 267. 
 
 Stone, Melville E., 101, 104, 105, 232, 233, 236, 237, 240, 241, 245, 247, 256. 
 
 Stone, Senator Wm. J., 289, 316. 
 
 Stewart, Glenn, 360. 
 
 Stuergkh, Count, 313, 365. 
 
 Swing, Raymond E., 129, 135, 136, 252. 
 
 TALAAT Bey (Pasha), 111, 115, 120, 121, 122, 123, 126, 146, 196, 
 241, 366. 
 Talleyrand, 28. 
 Tarler, G. Cornell, 129. 
 
 Tarnowski, Count, 167, 168, 175, 332, 333, 334, 34«, 349, 350. 
 Tatarinoff, Colonel, 201. 
 Tcholak-Antitch ( Sofia ) , 182. 
 Tirpitz, Great Admiral, 190, 230, 287. 
 Tisza, Count Stephen, 222, 224, 229, 232, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 
 
 314, 316, 328, 354, 365. 
 Theodoroff, Theodor, 165. 
 Todoroff, General, 219, 365. 
 Tontcheff (Sofia), 172. 
 Toretta, Marquis de la, 266. 
 Trevelyan (England), 51. 
 Tzigara-Samurcas (Bucharest), 201. 
 
 UsEDOM Pasha, Admiral von, 134. 
 
 VENIZELOS. 
 ESSELKINE, Admiral, 210. 
 Victoria, Princess Royal, 44. 
 • Victoria, Queen, 34, 35, 44, 45, 206, 302. 
 Vivian (England), 51. 
 
 Viviani, Rene, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 82, 83, 84, 120, 300. 
 Vopicka, Chas. J., 166, 183, 205, 247. 
 
418 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 WALDEMAR of Denmark, Prince, 161. 
 ALDERSEE, Count, 36. 
 Wangenheim, Baron von, 115, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 151, 193, 194, 366. 
 Washington, George, 86, 372. 
 Weitz, Paul, 197. 
 Weyler, General, 294. 
 Whitlock, Brand, 351. 
 Wied, Prince William of, 296. 
 Wiegand, Carl H. von, 252. 
 William I, Emperor, 29, 31. 
 
 William II, Emperor, 31, 34, 35, 36, 39, 42, 44, 45, 61, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 
 75, 78, 79, 163, 194, 195, 196, 228, 300, 303, 327, 
 364, 385. 
 Williams, Captain R. H., 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135. 
 Wilson, Hugh R., 356. 
 
 Wilson, Woodrow, 85, 86, 87, 97, 98, 109, 125, 198, 230, 232, 290, 294, 
 295, 309, 310, 312, 316, 317, 319, 324, 325, 331, 333, 
 334, 338, 340, 342, 344, 349, 350, 351, 352, 355, 369, 
 371, 384, 385. 
 Wolf-Metternich, Prince, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197. 
 
 TT^ANUSHKEVITCH, General, 69, 70, 71. 
 
 USSUF Izzedin, Prince, 365. 
 
 ITA, Empress, 350. 
 
 WIEDENIK, Baron, 305, 321, 335, 349. 
 
LIST OF DOCUMENTS QUOTED 
 
 Lichnowski to Bethmann-Hollweg, August 1st, 1914 64 
 
 King George to Emperor William, August 1st, 1914 ^ 64 
 
 Lichnowski to Bethmann-Hollweg, August 2nd, 1914 65 
 
 Wilson's Appeal for Neutrality, August 19th, 1914 85 
 
 Order in Privy Council (The Declaration of London Order in 
 
 Council, No. 2, 1914), October 29, 1914 88 
 
 Articles 35 and 36 of The Declaration of London, 1909 89 
 
 United States Government to British Government (General Protest 
 
 Against Blockade Policy of the latter), October 21st, 1915 93 
 
 See also 276 
 
 Thomas Jefferson to British Government (Mr. Jefferson's view on 
 
 Neutrality), September 7th, 1793 96 
 
 See also 283 
 
 Henry van Dyke to the Press, October 8th, 1914 99 
 
 Henry van Dyke to E. F. B., Esq., October 8th, 1914 99 
 
 Robert M. Collins to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), 
 
 September 8th, 1914 102 
 
 Frederick Roy Martin to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), 
 
 September 16th, 1914 102 
 
 Charles E. Kloeber to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), 
 
 September 19th, 1914 103 
 
 Melville E. Stone to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), 
 
 September 21st, 1914 104 
 
 See also 233 
 
 Melville E. Stone to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), October 5th, 1914 104 
 G. A. Schreiner to Fred. R. Martin (Censorship), 
 
 September 21st, 1914 104 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Chas. E. Kloeber (Censorship), October 3rd, 1914 105 
 G. A. Schreiner to Fred. R. Martin (Censorship), January 11th, 1915. 106 
 Captain Humann to G. A. Schreiner (Getting Capts. Morton and 
 Williams to front), April 18th, 1915 131 
 
 419 
 
420 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 SazonofF to Buchanan and Paleologue (Division of Turkey), 
 
 March 4th, 1915 144 
 
 See also 151 
 
 Sazonoff to Isvolski (Russian Desires), March 18th, 1915 146 
 
 Russian Government to Bulgarian Government (Demanding break 
 
 with Central Powers), October, 1915 174 
 
 General Palivanoff to Russian Government (Sees advantages in Ru- 
 mania's defeat), November 20th, 1916 225 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Robert M. Collins (Censorship), 
 
 September 3rd, 1914 234 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Fred. R. Martin (Censorship), 
 
 September 15th, 1914 234 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Fred. R. Martin (Censorship), 
 
 September 18th, 1914 235 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Fred. R. Martin (Censorship), 
 
 September 20th, 1914 236 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Melville E. Stone (Censorship) , 
 
 September 24th, 1914 236 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Melville E. Stone (Censorship), 
 
 December 12th, 1914 237 
 
 Fred. R. Martin to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), date missing 238 
 
 Theron Damon to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), March 26th, 1915. . 239 
 Seymor B. Conger to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), April 2nd, 1915 239 
 Melville E. Stone to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), date missing. . . . 240 
 Fred. R. Martin to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), March 14th, 1915 240 
 
 Theron Damon to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship) 240 
 
 Melville E. Stone to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), March 22nd, 1915 241 
 State Department Circular to U. S. Diplomatic Posts, 
 
 November 25th, 1914 242 
 
 British Foreign Office to W. H. Page (Censorship) 242 
 
 Lansing to Page (London), September 26th, 1914 (Censorship) 242 
 
 Statement by British Postmaster General (Censorship), 
 
 November 2nd, 1914 243 
 
 W. H. Page to State Department (Censorship), December 2nd, 1914 243 
 Direction Generale des Postes, Telegraphes et Telephones Ottomans 
 
 to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship) , May 31st, 1915 244 
 
 Paxton Hibbon to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), 
 
 September 25th, 1915 245 
 
LIST OF DOCUMENTS QUOTED 421 
 
 Fred. R. Martin to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), October 9th, 1915' 246 
 
 William Dreher to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), October 8th, 1915. 246 
 
 Fred. R. Martin to G. A. Schreiner (Censorship), 
 
 October 10th, 1915 247 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Melville E. Stone (Censorship), October 3rd, 1915 247 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Charles J. Vopicka (Censorship), 
 
 October 11th, 1915 247 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Dimiter Stancieff, April 14th, 1916 249 
 
 Articles 2, 3, and 4 of the Declaration of Paris 276 
 
 United States Government to British Government (Protest against 
 restrictions upon U. S. commerce), March 30th, 1915 276 
 
 British Government to United States Government ( Enemy destination 
 of cargoes is assumed), March 1st, 1915 277 
 
 Text of Order in Council of October 20th, 1914 278 
 
 Text of Order in Council of March 30th, 1916 279 
 
 United States Government to British Government (re Transatlantic 
 Co. vessels), May 10th, 1916 280 
 
 United States Government to British Government (Protest against 
 British blacklist), January 25th, 1915 280 
 
 United States Government to British 'Government ( Salisbury on food- 
 stuffs), December 26th, 1914 281 
 
 British Government to United States Government (Reply to above) 282 
 
 United States Government to German Government (Warns against 
 destroying U. S. ships), February 10th, 1915 282 
 
 United States Government to British Government (Warns against 
 deceptive use of flags), February 10th, 1915 282 
 
 United States Government to British and German Governments 
 (Submarines, mines and food compromise), February 20th, 1915. . 283 
 
 British Government to United States Government (Reply to above) 284 
 
 United States Government to Austro-Hungarian Government (Con- 
 traband export to South Africa), August, 1915 303 
 
 German Government to United States Government ( Promises warning 
 to ships), September 1st, 1915 288 
 
 William J. Bryan to Senator William J. Stone (Explains why and how 
 the Wilson administration is neutral) 289 
 
 German Government to United States Government (Reply to 
 
 "Sussex" note). May 4th, 1916 314 
 
 United States Government to German Government (Reply to above), 
 May 8th, 1916 316 
 
422 THE CRAFT SINISTER 
 
 Lansing to Ambassador Penfield ( Ghiloni case) 318 
 
 Lansing to Ambassador Penfield, May 8th, 1916 (Ghiloni case) 318 
 
 Excerpt from Joint Note of Germany and Austria-Hungary announc- 
 ing resumption of submarine warfare on more rigorous lines in 
 
 extended spheres 342 
 
 Dispatch to Associated Press by G. A. Schreiner (Concerning rupture 
 
 diplomatic relations), April 16th, 1917 352 
 
 Proclamation by M. Leon Mirman (to ''Germanic" Alsatians), 
 
 November 19, 1918 368 
 
 Appeal to Mr. Wilson by Alsace-Lorrainers, January 13th, 1919. . . . 369 
 
 The Declaration of Corfu, July 20th, 1917 369 
 
 Excerpt from Farewell Address of George Washington 372 
 
 Memorandum on Treaty between Entente and Italy, May 9th, 1915. . 395 
 
 Treaty between Rameses II and Kheta-sar 389 
 
 "League of Peace," 1518-19 394 
 
 Censorship Regulations of Bulgaria, 1915 397 
 
 Associated Press dispatch from Paris, September 2nd, 1919 401 
 
 G. A. Schreiner to Cardinal Mercier, January 9th, 1915 402 
 
 Cardinal Mercier to G. A. Schreiner (2) 403 
 
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