Some personal impressions

SOME PERSONAL
IMPRESSIONS

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SOME PERSONAL
IMPRESSIONS

BY

TAKE JONESCU

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M.

XonOon
NISBET & CO. LTD.

22 BERNERS STREET, W.I

First published in

CONTENTS

PAOB

INTRODUCTION - - - - vii

I. MONSIEUR POINCARE - 3

II. PRINCE LICHNOWSKY - - - - 11

III. COUNT BERCHTOLD 23

IV. THE MARQUIS PALLAVICINI - - - 31
V. COUNT GOLUCHOWSKY - ... 39

VI. AUGUST 2, 1914 - ' -47

VII. KIDERLEN-WAECHTER - - - 57

VIII. COUNT AEHRENTHAL - 73

IX. COUNT CZERNIN - - 83

X. COUNT MENSDORFF - 95

XI. ENGLAND'S ANTIPATHY TO WAR - - 101

XII. THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR - - 107

XIII. KING CHARLES OF ROUMANIA - 113

XIV. HERR RIEDL - 127
XV. COUNT SZECZEN - 135

XVI. SIR DONALD MACKENZIE WALLACE - - 141

XVII. BARON BANFFY - - 147

XVIII. ROUMANIAN POLICY - 155

XIX. TRAGEDY - - 161

XX. COUNT TISZA • 167

XXI. TALAAT PASHA - - 173

XXII. PRINCE VON BULOW '185

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

XXIII. TATICHEFF

. XXIV. FRANCE AND THE TEUTON • 203

XXV. A COUSIN OF TISZA - • 211

XXVI. NEW ITALY

XXVII. MY FOUR LAST GERMANS -

XXVIII. ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS -

XXIX. THE KAISER - " 255

INTRODUCTION

BY VISCOUNT BRYCE

THIS book should need no introduction, for
all who have tried to follow the course
of events in the Danubian States and
Balkan States during the last few years cannot but
know the name and fame of Mr. Take Jonescu, one
of the most active and gifted, as well as one of
the most highly cultivated statesmen in Eastern
Europe. However, at the request of its author,
whose acquaintance I had the good fortune to
make when travelling in Roumania fourteen
years ago, I willingly write a few sentences of
Preface to this English translation. The French
original (for Mr. Jonescu writes French with
singular facility, clearness, and grace) has already
found many readers, and this version deserves
to win for it a still larger circle here and in
America.

Those of us who in France and the English-
speaking countries have grown familiar with the
names of the more prominent actors in the great
and gloomy drama of the last ten or twelve years,
must have often wished to know something of

Vll

viii INTRODUCTION

the personalities that lay behind the names.
What were their talents, their characters, their
manners? What were the ideas and motives
which prompted either their avowed purposes or
their secret aims ? In some cases these motives
may long remain obscure, but in others the
recorded words and acts are sufficient to enable
those who were in close touch with them to form a
just estimate and present to us true portraits,
provided always that such observers bring dis-
cernment and impartiality to the task. The
book is modestly entitled " Some Personal
Impressions " ; and the descriptions it contains
are for the most part vigorous sketches rather
than portraits. Some, however, may be called
vignettes, more or less finished drawings, each
consisting of few lines, but those lines sharply
and firmly drawn. Intermingled with this score
of personal sketches there are also a few brief
essays or articles which set before us particular
scenes, little fragments of history in which the
author bore a part, all relating to the persons
who either figured in the war, or were concerned
with the intrigues from which it sprang. Among
these we find several German statesmen — Kiderlin
Waechter, Prince Billow, Prince Lichnowsky and a
large number of Austrians, among whom Counts
Berchtold, Aehrenthal, Goluchowsky, Czernin and
Mensdorff, are the best known ; the late King

INTRODUCTION ix

Charles of Roumania, the German Emperor,
Eleutherios Venizelos, and, lastly, the most ruth-
less and unscrupulous ruffian (with the possible
exception of Trotsky) whom the war has brought
to light, the Turkish Talaat Pasha.

These, with some minor personages, make an
interesting gallery, for though most of them
are dealt with very briefly — sometimes merely
by telling an anecdote or reporting a single
conversation — still in every case a distinct im-
pression is conveyed. We feel that the man
described is no longer a name but a creature of
flesh and blood, with something by which we can
recognise him and remember him for future use.
National characteristics are lightly but brightly
touched. Among the Germans, Kiderlin Waechter
stands out as in Mr. Jonescu's judgment the
ablest, and Biilow the cleverest. If the Austrian
statesmen are, or were, what he paints them (and
there seems no reason to doubt the general justice
of his observations), the hideous failure of their
diplomacy becomes comprehensible. A dynasty
guided by such servants was fated to perish in
the storm its folly had raised. Aehrenthal and
Tisza were at least men of force and ability,
but an ability which did not exclude bad prin-
ciples and rash unwisdom. The rest were mostly
ciphers ; while of Count Berchtold, the descrip-
tion given by Mr. Jonescu successfully conveys

x INTRODUCTION

to the reader that there was nothing to describe,
at least on the intellectual side. One may pity
the people which was guided by such statesmen,
for they were not its choice, but one cannot pity
the dynasty which did choose them. It well
deserved to perish, after three centuries of
pernicious power.

Besides the illuminative glimpses of curious
scenes, and the vivacious sketches of notable
personages, which these pages contain, the reader
will find in them some contributions to history
of permanent interest. We are helped to appre-
hend the views, and comprehend what is now called
the " mentality " with which the ruling caste in
Germany entered the war. It has been often
said of late that the men in whose hands great
decisions lay were not great enough for the
fateful issues they had to decide. Quantula
sapientia regitur mundus seems even truer now
than it did in the days of Oxenstierna. Among
all the " Impressions " this book records, that
is the one which stands out conspicuous.

Monsieur Poincare

J.I.

MONSIEUR POINCARE

ON New Year's Eve, 1913, I arrived in Paris.
I was on my way to London, where
the Balkan Conference was then sitting.
Negotiations between the Turks and the Balkan
States had come to a deadlock, and I hoped to
profit by this to the extent of coming to some
pacific settlement of our territorial differences
with Bulgaria. It was my intention to offer the
support of Roumania to Bulgaria, which at that
date meant the Balkan league, and if necessary
to promise military assistance in order to force
the Turk to give up Adrianople.

The Powers had no notion what to do. It
was felt that there was little chance of mere
collective notes having any success, and as for
a naval demonstration, which alone could have
saved the face of Kiamil's government, the
Powers were too jealous and distrustful of each
other to act together in this way. On the other
hand it was certain that the armed resistance of
Turkey was shattered and that to force her hand
would really be doing her a kindness. If only
it had been done then, Turkey would have
escaped Enver and her present misfortunes. •

4 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

It is useless to repeat what I have so often
said that the idea of a war with Bulgaria, and
possibly with all the Balkan States — our tradi-
tional friends — was utterly repugnant to me. It
was even possible that such a war might
bring about the expected European conflagra-
tion, in which we should find ourselves on the
side of Austria-Hungary, a prospect that was
altogether odious to me, for in it I saw the grave
of our future and of our national ideal.

I hoped the Bulgars would appreciate the
situation and would hasten to accept my sug-
gestions. If only they had done so, peace with
Turkey would have been signed in the first week
of January, 1913, the second Balkan war would
probably not have taken place, and the European
war would have been averted for an indefinite
number of years.

Although my hopes of arriving at an under-
standing with Bulgaria were high, I took the
possibility of failure into consideration and real-
ised that I might want the friendly support of
the Great Powers. This was why, before leaving
Bucharest, I intimated to Monsieur Poincare,
then Prime Minister of France, that I was about
to visit him.

II

M. Poincare received me on the 1st of January,
1913, at half-past eight in the morning, an hour
that in Paris is certainly an absurd time for
an appointment, but I had to go to London in
the afternoon, and on account of its being New

MONSIEUR POINCARE 5

Year's Day, Monsieur Poincare was due at the
Elysee at ten o'clock for the official ceremonies.

I asked Monsieur Poincare for the support of
France in our difficulties with Bulgaria. He
made the warmest declarations of friendship for
Roumania ; promised me his own personal co-
operation, but said, " My action is naturally
limited by the fact that relations with our ally
are most cordial while, owing to your military
convention with Austria and Germany, you will
be in the enemy's camp if war breaks out. You
know well," and he could not have spoken with
greater sincerity, " that we do not want war,
and are doing everything to avoid it. But if
our adversaries force us to go to war the fact
that your 300,000 rifles are on their side cannot
be a matter of indifference to us."

As the Treaty between Roumania and the
Triple Alliance was supposed to be kept secret
I had to pretend that I knew nothing about the
obligation he was alluding to.

The French Prime Minister, who knew the
situation precisely, then asked me if I could
assure him that in the event of war — a war that
France would never provoke — he could hope
that France and her allies would not find the
Roumanian army against them.

Personally I had not believed for many years
that the Roumanians and Magyars would ever
fight side by side, but on the 1st of January,
1913, it was impossible for me to make any valid
promise in Roumania's name.

I could only tell Monsieur Poincare that I

6 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

could not give him an answer, but that if I were
in his place I should grant Roumania as much
help as was compatible with my alliances and
my obligations, and leave it to the future to
show whether I had acted wisely or not.

Ill

The events of 1913 confirmed my beliefs. With
great clearness I saw that the idea of shedding
Roumanian blood to glorify Magyarism was such
an absurdity that no one on earth could give
effect to it.

On the 9th of September, 1913, I paid Monsieur
Poincare another visit. He was then President
of the Republic. He congratulated me on the
success of Roumania, and I took occasion to
say, "On New Year's Day you asked me a question
which I could not then answer ; I will give you
your answer to-day. If war does break out—
and I devoutly hope humanity may be spared such
a calamity — you will not find the Roumanian
army in your enemies' camp."

" Have you cancelled the treaty of alliance ? "
he asked.

" I know nothing about any treaty. All I
know is that the Roumanian army will not be in
your enemies' camp. I am quite certain about it,
and if I did not know that we are both believers
in peace and are doing all we can to preserve it,
I should say that events will prove me right.
Let us hope that they may never have occasion
to do so."

MONSIEUR POINCARE 7

" But are you sure to remain long in power? "
he asked.

" Far from it, I shall be out of office in two
months, but that doesn't matter. What I am
telling you is true, irrespective of what ministers
compose the government. After what has hap-
pened this summer no one will be able to make
Roumanians fight against their will or against
the dictates of national honour and interest."

Prince Lichnowsky

II

PRINCE LICHNOWSKY

TWENTY years ago Prince Lichnowsky was
Secretary to the German Legation in
Bucharest.

I knew him in those days as an intelligent
young man, gay, witty and a real grand seigneur.
Though a German Diplomat he was Polish by
origin and had all the adaptability, vivacity and
brilliance of his race. We got on admirably.

I did not see him again until early in January,
1913, when I went to London to try and come to
an understanding with Monsieur Daneff over
Bulgar-Roumanian difficulties.

Prince Lichnowsky had come back into the
Diplomatic Service after a very long absence.
He had only done so at the reiterated request of
the Kaiser, who believed him to be the only man
capable of succeeding Baron Marschall in London,
Baron Marschall at that time having the reputa-
tion of being the ablest diplomat in the German
service. I may as well say here that in spite of
his ability Marschall had not been much of a
success in England. He had lived too long in
Constantinople to make a good Ambassador at

St. James's.

11

12 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Prince Lichnowsky took his task seriously.
He spared himself no trouble to win people's
confidence, and in a short time had accomplished
marvels in this direction. He was extremely
frank, and his clear picturesque way of talking
impressed people. It was he who, in speaking
to me of the two little bits of Bulgar territory
that jutted out into our Dobrudja, which Daneff
was at the time offering me as a complete satis-
faction for our claims, contemptuously described
them as " the two dugs of the bitch."

I will not now describe my interviews with
Lichnowsky in 1913. I must admit, however, he
was more than friendly and kind, and did me
real services. He went so far even without
waiting for the sanction of his Government as to
make a proposal favourable to us at the Balkan
Conference then sitting in London. I shall have
something to say about all this another time.

I must, however, mention two points relating
to that moment. One day Lichnowsky assured
me that the relations between England and
Germany were excellent. The next day Sir E.
Grey said to me, " If Prince Lichnowsky makes
the proposal you speak of I shall receive it most
favourably, as I do everything that comes from the
German Ambassador. We are on excellent terms . ' '

This was really remarkable when one thinks
of the then recent Agadir crisis. I came to the
conclusion that there was no danger of European
war, and on the 7th of January. 1913. I wrote
to King Charles that I was positive the great
war would not break out yet awhile.

PRINCE LICHNOWSKY 13

At that same time Lichnowsky said to me, " We
will do what we can for you, but our means are
limited. You should really apply to Vienna, as
Austria can do a good deal at Sofia if she
wishes to. I am sure there is something brewing
between Austria and Bulgaria. I don't know
exactly what it is, but something is going on."

In the spring of 1914 I was again in London
for six days. Prince Lichnowsky gave a luncheon
in my honour. All the Embassy staff were there,
including the notorious Kuhlman, then Councillor
of the Embassy, now Minister at the Hague, who
at that time was unfortunately corresponding
with the Kaiser over the head of Lichnowsky
and was giving false information to Berlin as
to the state of affairs in England.

I asked Lichnowsky how matters stood between
England and Germany, and if he was as pleased
with things as he had been in January, 1913.
He replied that he had succeeded in his efforts,
and that Germany and Great Britain were on
the best of terms.

" I told the Kaiser," he said, " that nothing
could be easier for us than to keep up good re-
lations with England — because England genuinely
cares for peace. But in order to do this we
should never attack or annoy France, because in
that case England would back her to the last man
and the last shilling, and, as it is not to our interest
to irritate France, you see that our relations with
England will remain of the best."

My impressions accorded with those of the
German Ambassador. I felt that England would

14 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

not tolerate an attack on France, but putting
that aside it was certain that in London the
desire was to be on good terms with Germany.
In that one saw the guarantee of peace.

On July the 12th, 1914, I again arrived in
London. I saw Lichnowsky and discussed the
Albanian question with him, which had by then
become disquieting, and also the silence of Austria
as to what line she was going to take over the
Serajevo drama. Lichnowsky felt that Austria
had something up her sleeve. His Austrian col-
league Count Mensdorff was uncommunicative.
Lichnowsky had been in Berlin since the Serajevo
assassination, and he was not pleased with what
he had seen in the Wilhelmstrasse. " They
are giving Austria a free hand," he said, " with-
out thinking where it may lead us. I warned
them, but I am not happy about it, and am
beginning to regret that I did not stay in Berlin."
Lichnowsky did not conceal the fact that Tchirsky,
the German Ambassador at Vienna, was en-
couraging the bellicose tendency of Austria.

Lichnowsky's apprehensions were well grounded.
The German Chancellor, Bethman Hollweg, had
never been well up in questions of foreign politics
— far from it. As for Von Jagow, I knew that
at the time he was in Rome he had told one of
his colleagues that in the Balkan incidents he
saw the proof of the approaching disintegration
of Austria-Hungary, and that it was a disturbing
problem. With a fixed idea like that in his head
it would be easy to make mistakes.

On Wednesday. July the 22nd, I dined with

PRINCE LICHNOWSKY 15

Baroness Deichman, sister of Sir Maurice de
Bunsen, British Ambassador in Vienna. The
house was one of the social centres of London
and lent itself most favourably to an Anglo-
German understanding. I knew that I was to
meet Lichnowsky, who had expressed a wish to
talk to me that very day.

After dinner I went with Lichnowsky into a
sitting-room in which there hung a fine portrait
of Sir Maurice de Bunsen, painted, if I am not
mistaken, by the great English artist, Herkomer.

Lichnowsky was in Court dress ; he was to
see the King that evening. I do not know what
the occasion was. He told me he had not yet
succeeded in finding out the text of the demands
Austria was making of Serbia, but that he had
learnt enough to know that they would be very
very harsh. He knew that amongst other things
Austria had asked for the suppression of a
nationalist society in Serbia, and that alone
seemed to him to be going pretty far. He
earnestly begged me to suggest to the Roumanian
Government that they should use any influence
they had at Belgrade to get the Austrian note,
no matter what it was, accepted by Serbia. " I
promise you," he said, " that in the carrying of
it out, the Serbs can whittle it down or evade
the conditions, and we can see to it that nothing
is said. I take that on myself. We must get
round this crisis somehow. For instance, the
order to suppress a patriotic society need not
really mean anything. In a few months they
could resurrect it under another name."

16 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

I promised him to do what I could. That
very night I telegraphed what the German
Ambassador had communicated to me to Monsieur
Bratiano, the then President of the Roumanian
Council.

II

On Friday, July the 24th, the Austrian Ulti-
matum was published. In reading the Times
I said to my wife, " This means European war ;
we must get back to Roumania."

I went to see Lichnowsky in the morning. He
was at the Foreign Office. I went to his house
later and found him very much upset. Obviously
the Austrian note had exceeded his expectations.
He was, however, firmly convinced that there was
no danger of war. He was sure that some way
of preserving peace would be found. He told
me with an ironic smile that he had been in-
structed to advocate to the English Cabinet the
" localisation " of the question at issue between
Serbia and Austria. He did not express his
opinion of this folly, but it was evident that he
thought it ridiculous. He was so certain of
peace that he asked me if I were going direct to
Aix-les-Bains from Brighton or whether I should
return to London for one night. When I an-
swered that it would depend on the political
situation he said good-bye, being certain that I
should go straight on to Aix from Brighton.
He was so assured in bearing that I telegraphed
to Paris and Aix to announce my arrival.

At Brighton in the afternoon of Saturday

PRINCE LICHNOWSKY 17

and again on Sunday I received communications
from London that shewed me that Lichnowsky
was deceiving himself and that Tchirsky, the
German Ambassador at Vienna, was pushing
Austria on to take up an overbearing attitude.
I telegraphed to my friend Mishu, Roumanian
Minister in London, asking him to book places
for me in the Ostend Express for Tuesday morn-
ing the 28th of July, and I informed my brother
at Aix-les-Bains that I had given up my journey
thither.

I returned to London on Monday morning
the 27th July. From the station where my
friend Mishu met me I went straight to Prince
Lichnowsky and told him of my agitation and
of my decision to go back to Roumania. He
told me I was wrong, that there was no possibility
of war, not a hundred to one chance of it ; that
in my place he would stay on in London because
it would be so tiresome to go from London to
Aix-les-Bains via Bucharest. Insisting on the
danger of war, I said, " It is all the more serious —
because we must not delude ourselves as to the
attitude of England. In spite of the pacifism
of its Government, England will certainly come

in."

Lichnowsky, forgetting what he had said to
me in the spring, said, " Of that I am not so sure
as you are." " You are wrong," I said. " I know
the English. No-one in the world will be able to
prevent them mixing themselves up in a war
provoked with so much injustice. If you believe
the contrary you are profoundly mistaken."

18 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

He went on repeating that it might be possible,
but that he was not so sure of England's coming
in as I was. That is the one weakness that I
found in Lichnowsky's judgment at that time.
Of course like a great many other people he had
been blinded by the Irish question.

I followed Lichnowsky's advice. I gave up
my tickets for Tuesday the 28th, but being more
distrustful than the German Ambassador I took
places on the express for the following day,
Wednesday the 29th. It turned out to be the
last through train.

On the morning of Tuesday the 28th, when I
saw Lichnowsky, he was a changed man. He
had begun to lose confidence. He only saw a
seven to three chance of peace, and although he
assured me of his hope that humanity would
be spared such a nameless folly, he said, " Go
back to Roumania. There are none too many
good brains about; don't deprive your country
of yours. I hope you will soon come back, but
I understand your going."

I saw him for the last time in the afternoon of
Tuesday the 28th. He was pale — a man undone.
He told me the peace of the world hung by a
thread. I have seldom seen anyone so overcome.

I had a profound conviction that this man
was sincere, that he had genuinely worked for
peace, that he had served his country with all
his strength, and that for all the calamities
unchained by the black executioner of Buda-
pesth and the criminals of Berlin he deserves
no blame.

PRINCE LICHNOWSKY 19

I hope Prince Lichnowsky, for whose confidence
and friendship I am grateful, will forgive me for
witnessing to history in such detail. The day
will come when the German people — once more
sober — will remember that their true servants
are those who did their best to save their country
from the torrent of universal hate unloosed
against it by this war — a war naked of all excuse.

Count Berchtold

Ill

COUNT BERCHTOLD

1HAVE only had two political conversations
with Count Berchtold during my life, but
they were enough to enable me to take the
measure of the man. After each of them I
wondered to myself how it was possible that
such a person could be Minister of Foreign
Affairs to a Great Power. The phenomenon was
explained to me by a Viennese journalist. " In
our country it is necessary for a Count to succeed
a Count." I state this for what it is worth, but
I have never succeeded in finding a better reason.

Count Berchtold is a fine-looking man, if one
admires that type of person. Gentlemanly, ex-
tremely gentlemanly, with good manners — and
that is all there is to him. I should have nothing
to add if I wanted to paint his portrait.

I was motoring in Northern Italy when Count
Berchtold went to Sinaia in September, 1912, to
pay a visit to King Charles. A telegram from
Sinaia caught me at Venice. In it a friend
informed me that it was considered advisable
that I should stop at Vienna on my way home
and see Count Berchtold. I understood this to
mean that King Charles thought a change in the

23

24 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Austrian Government imminent and that he
wished me to be in personal touch with the new
director of Austrian policy. I acquainted Count
Berchtold with my wish to visit him, and he came
in from the country to Vienna in order to re-
ceive me.

We chatted for an hour. He tried to explain
to me his notorious circular on the decentralis-
ation of the Ottoman Empire — the circular that
precipitated the outbreak of the Balkan War.
I could make nothing of it. He complained
that his intentions had been misunderstood every-
where. He laid himself out to reveal them to
me, but again I did not understand him any the
better. Was the business too intricate, or was
I too limited ? I don't really know.

Speaking to him of the ticklish condition of
Balkan Affairs, I said, " If you can keep the
peace for another couple of months the situation
will be saved. Mountain wars are not under-
taken after November." " Why should the
peace be kept for two months only ? I am sure
that peace is in no way threatened in the Balkans.
You can be certain of that," he replied con-
fidently. Did he want to mystify me or did he
not know the real situation ?

In the course of conversation I spoke of the
folly of competitive naval armaments and asked
why Austria too should be travelling down the
same road. " Why," I asked, " do you want a
big fleet ? You have no Colonies ; you never
will have any Colonies, and your oversea trade
will never be of much importance. What good

COUNT BERCHTOLD 25

is a fleet to you ? If you are seeking security
against Italy you are committing a fundamental
error. You will never be able to fight Italy on
the sea, not only because she will always be your
superior, but also because, in the event of such
a conflict, she would be the ally of France and
England, and your Dreadnoughts would never
even put to sea. If, on the other hand, you expect
to be on Italy's side she will not need your fleet.
She would prefer to increase her own. Besides,"
I added, ;t I don't understand what Germany
is up to either," and thereupon I repeated to
him what I had said to Kiderlen-Waechter in
Berlin some ten months previously.

In reply Count Berchtold explained to me
what I had already suspected, — that the increase
of the Austrian Navy had been demanded by
Germany, and that the day was coming when
the Austro-German Fleets would have a real
superiority over the English Fleet. He recog-
nised that England could always build more
ships than the two Teutonic Empires, but he
was sure that she would soon be short of crews.
66 With their system of voluntary enlistment the
supply of recruits will soon fail, whereas we with
our compulsory service can always get as- many
men as we want. Then we could attack and
destroy England."

I listened with amazement to this Minister of
a Great Power. He did not seem to realise that
the day England found she could not get enough
volunteers for her Navy, that day she would
introduce compulsory service, but that she never

26 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

could allow herself to be outclassed by Germany
at sea.

II

The second time I saw Count Berchtold was
on the llth or 12th of September, 1913. I am
not quite sure of the day. I rather think, how-
ever, it was the llth. He began by making
most ample apologies both on his own account
and on that of Count Tisza for an incident that
had recently occurred at Deva, when the small
Roumanian flags on my wife's motor had been
torn off by Hungarian police. We then spoke
of the great political crisis we had just been
through. He told me he had been much criti-
cised and had been accused of not having pro-
tected the rights and position of Austria-Hungary.
I replied — in accordance with my genuine con-
viction— that even if it were really true that the
designs on Salonika attributed to Austria were
but a calumny, Austria had lost nothing through
the Balkan crisis, that even her caprices had
been satisfied, and that therefore she had
absolutely no cause for grievance. I added that
he could, if he would, establish good relations
with Serbia, more especially as for at least
fifteen or twenty years to come the Serbians
would be more than busy with their newly
acquired territory. I assured him that this
was the genuine belief of Monsieur Pasitch, and
that if Austria would but show herself a little
less hostile everything would once more go
smoothly.

COUNT BERCHTOLD 27

We talked, too, of Albania, which he looked upon
as his own creation, and seemed surprised that I
knew the Albanians and Albanian affairs as well
as I did. I must own that on this subject he
was very well informed, but all the same he
seemed to me completely deluded. For example,
he told me that at that moment law and order
in Albania was better assured than in any other
country in Europe !

This second conversation did not make me
change my opinion of Count Berchtold. I am
quite persuaded that from the death of Francis-
Ferdinand it was Tisza and not Berchtold who
directed Austrian policy. He has been the
plaything of the really strong man. Far from
this being an excuse for him. it means that he
is doubly guilty, for no one has the right to
accept a position that is above his capacity.

I am sure we shall never hear of Count
Berchtold in European politics again. That
episode is ended.

The Marquis Pallavicini

IV

THE MARQUIS PALLAVICINI

A PURE Magyar answers to this Italian name.
In his youth the Marquis Pallavicini must
have been an Imperialist, like so many
other Hungarian aristocrats, but ?t the time I knew
him he was already a Magyar in the full accept-
ance of the word. This is all the more remark-
able as it seems the Marquis speaks pretty
indifferent Magyar. He has made up for this by
bringing up his sons, the children of a charming
Englishwoman, to be such chauvinists that they
would never even learn their mother's tongue.

Like all good Hungarians, the Marquis Pallavi-
cini has always been an ultra-Serbophobe. It
gave him great pleasure to describe to me how,
when he was Minister at Belgrade, whenever
the poor Serbian Government resisted any demand
of Austria, he would discover that all the Serbian
pigs were stricken with sudden illness, and how
directly the Serbian Government gave in, the
pigs were instantly and miraculously cured, so
that their export might be resumed.

No mere words can do justice to the physiog-
nomy of the Marquis Pallavicini, when he was
explaining these incidents in Austro-Serbian

31

32 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

relations or rather in the martyrdom of Serbia.
A smile which was almost a grin pervaded his
face, his short-sighted eyes closed till they
became invisible, and his piping voice took on a
Mephistophelian tone. The very wagging of his
head, his short awkward gestures, all seemed to
diffuse a smell of sulphur !

The Marquis Pallavicini is the antithesis of
the traditional Austrian diplomat. Usually such
people are good to look at, they have a presence
which impresses the unwary, and one must see
a good deal of them to understand their remark-
able emptiness. To put it shortly, they look more
intelligent than they really are.

In the case of Pallavicini it is just the opposite.
His face is not his fortune. He looks rather a
simpleton, and yet one would be wrong to trust
in his case to appearances. Pallavicini may not
be a great mind, but at any rate he is a very
observing, very well-informed, and a very subtle
person. In a word, the Austro-Hungarian Am-
bassador to Constantinople is a much abler man
than he looks, and one would make a blunder if
in dealing with him one judged by appearances.

II

I have had relations with the Marquis Pallavicini
for years. We have talked together for hours.
Of all these conversations three only present
themselves to my mind when I recall the past.

The first concerned the domestic politics of
Hungary. It was a few weeks prior to the well-

THE MARQUIS PALLAVICINI 33

remembered general election when the Tisza
Government was beaten by the coalition. We
were both lunching with Count Larisch at Bucha-
rest. Pallavicini believed that Tisza would be suc-
cessful. I made a bet with him that the coali-
tion would triumph and win easily, and he
never understood how it was that I guessed
correctly. Pallavicini was completely unable to
understand the compelling force of parliamentary
freedom for which the coalition fought, and that
is why he was at that time an Imperialist.

Our second talk took place at Constantinople
on my return from Athens in November, 1913.
The occasion was a reception at the Roumanian
Legation. Pallavicini wanted a Ute-b-ttte with
me which I could not refuse him. In this inter-
view, which followed one that I had had with
Monsieur de Giers, the Russian representative,
the Austro - Hungarian Ambassador to Turkey
strongly advised me to try and improve our
relations with Bulgaria. I replied that I asked
nothing better, but that as the Bulgarians were
discontented and we were satisfied an understand-
ing between us was unthinkable, unless it were
motived by an attack on some third party ; and
I concluded by saying, " An understanding with
Bulgaria is all very well, but at whose expense
is it to be ? " "At that of Serbia, of course,"
he replied. This was early in November, 1913 !

At the third and last conversation I had with
the Marquis Pallavicini — which will without doubt
for ever be the last — I spoke so much that I
feel awkward about referring to it.

J.I. C

34 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

It was the spring of 1914. Ever since our
military promenade into Bulgaria the Austro-
Hungarian press had been irrepressible. At
Budapesth two things had been noted, both equally
disagreeable to the Magyar oligarchy. One was
that the Roumanian expedition across the Danube
indicated the first step in our emancipation from
the Austro-Hungarian yoke ; the other that
nothing had done more for the greater Roumania
idea than the new prestige which free Roumania
had just acquired. Our soldiers' phrase in the
summer of 1913 was, " We pass through Bulgaria
in order to get to Transylvania." This phrase
expressed a profound truth which even Budapesth
could not but realise. The Austrian press opened
a most comic compaign on the question of Austro-
Roumanian relations. Were they the same ?
And if they were chilled how far would the con-
gealing process go ? And what ought to be done
to make relations once more idyllic ? An enormous
amount of ink was wasted in Vienna and Buda-
pesth. At Bucharest they were regarded as un-
wholesome, people had had enough of these false
declarations of love, which after all were none
too decent, as they presupposed an unnatural
attachment on our part.

The Austrians decided to send Pallavicini to
Bucharest. He had once lived five years amongst
us, and had the reputation of being a convinced
anti-Roumanian. They said we could not de-
ceive a man like him as they alleged we had done
in the case of so many others.

Pallavicini arrived at Bucharest in the spring

THE MARQUIS PALLAVICINI 85

of 1914. He stayed there three days ; visited
King Charles and our politicians, and went away
annoyed. Naturally he came to see me. He
stayed more than an hour, and frankly told me
that he wanted to know whether our alliance
with Austria still held good, because if not the
Austrians would have to apply elsewhere — to
Bulgaria, in short. He told me he had not
taken this step yet, which was a lie, but that he
would be obliged to do it if he could not count
on us. I answered him with diplomatic polite-
ness, which meant nothing. When he returned
to the charge I said nothing was more intolerable
than to be asked every moment, " Do you love
me ? '' and that that was what the Austrian
Press was doing all the time. I did not conceal
from him that this error in taste had ended by
really annoying us.

" You have seen the King," I said, " and you
know what his power is. You must at any rate
be pleased with the King." He said " No," that
the King had declared to him that Roumania
would range herself against those who provoked
war and that that was not good enough for him.

And when I put it to him that I no longer
understood the hang of things, as for thirty
years it had been dinned into us that it was
Russia who wished to provoke war and Austria-
Hungary that desired nothing but peace, he dished
up to me the old theme of preventive war. He
explained to me that it was impossible for
Austria-Hungary to remain in the position in
which Balkan events had placed her, that Serbia

36 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

was a menace to her, and that sooner or later
war must break out. Austria might soon be led
to provoke it herself.

It was all very well for me to marshal my
arguments against the folly of preventive war
and to try and prove the absurdity of talking of
the Serbian danger to the Dual Empire ; nothing
was of any avail. The Marquis insisted at
length that it was necessary for Austria to bring
about a European war. I have already said
that he repeated the word " war " five times
during our interview. I made a pencil mark
each time he said it.

This conversation with the Marquis Pallavicini
was one of the gleams that lit up my mind on
the European situation. Throughout the Balkan
crisis I had many proofs that Austria-Hungary
was trying to provoke war at any cost, but
since the treaty of Bucharest I had hoped that
the storm was overpast. The Marquis made me
realise, however, that I was mistaken.

Magyar policy was so well served by the
assassin Princip that if I had the same mentality
as the politicians of Budapesth I should say that
they had suggested to him his useless crime.

It would be an exaggeration to suggest that
the Marquis Pallavicini was one of the authors
of the world war, but he was one of the most
active and adroit of the auxiliaries. On this
account he may find a place in history.

Count Goluchowsky

COUNT GOLUCHOWSKY

I HAVE very agreeable memories of my inter-
course with Count Goluchowsky. He is a
great gentleman and his manners are perfect.
Moreover, during his long stay in Roumania he
did his best to minimise the painful side of the
inevitable clash between Roumanian and Magyar
interests. I only had one discussion with him
that was really disagreeable, and then he forgot
himself so far as to tell me straight out that the
capitulations were still in force in Roumania.
The discussion became so desperately animated
that I thought personal intercourse would be
impossible in the future. Count Goluchowsky
quite understood the mistake he had made, just
as on another occasion he understood a still even
greater blunder he made in the case of the late
Alexander Lahovary. The papers dealing with
this incident should be in the possession of
Madame Lahovary.

Everyone was grateful to Count Goluchowsky
for the really pacific orientation he had given
to Austrian policy during his long tenure of
office. He pushed his pacifism to the point
of inventing a kind of entente of European

39

40 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Powers to resist the American danger, a clumsy
scheme that made people laugh at his expense,
but which at any rate showed that he wished
to preserve peace amongst the nations of
Europe.

It is true that the Emperor Francis Joseph,
who was then full of vigour, had made the appoint-
ment of Count Goluchowsky to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs conditional on his not making
trouble for him, and allowing him to finish his
long reign in peace.

The only weakness Count Goluchowsky gave
way to at the Ballplatz was his exaggerated
hatred of Serbia. He utterly despised the Serbs.
His aristocratic prejudices had something to
say to this ; the Serbs were after all to him a
nation of uncouth peasants. Many times did
King Charles point out to Count Goluchowsky
that he was making a great mistake in refusing
consideration to the Serbs, and many times did
the Count say that it would only require two
monitors at Belgrade to bring " the worthy
Serbs " to reason.

In spite of this it would be extremely unjust
not to recognise that Count Goluchowsky. who
had never posed as a star of the first magnitude,
filled his post of Foreign Minister with distinc-
tion. He was not as provocative as Count
Aehrenthal, who, though a man of clearly
superior capacity, was also liable to make big
mistakes.

Count Goluchowsky inspired me with the sort
of esteem that one has for a man who has played

COUNT GOLUCHOWSKY 41

an important role well and who can bear dis-
grace with dignity.

II

I had not seen Count Goluchowsky for many
years when I ran into him in the dining-room of
the Hotel Bristol at Vienna at eight o'clock on
Thursday, the 30th of July, 1914. I was on my
way from London to Bucharest, and was agonised
by the thought of the great disaster which might
at any moment overwhelm humanity.

Count Goluchowsky was sitting with a young
Austrian whom I had met before. He wore a
miniature of the Order of the Golden Fleece in
the button-hole of his short dinner jacket ; this
was a characteristic detail. If one happens to
be one of the twenty or thirty persons who have
been honoured with this decoration, it would
seem to me a dreadful error in taste to wear it
in miniature on a dinner jacket, and it surprised
me that a man who represented the last word in
breeding could do such a thing.

I went up to the Count, and we naturally
talked of the great evil that was menacing the
world. He answered with a smile that was
almost jovial that the worthy Serbs would now
be brought to their senses and that this affair
concerned Austria and nobody else. When I
told him that it was no longer a Serbian question
and that if Austria did not act reasonably Russia
and France would be forced to intervene, and
that that would mean a European war, he re-
plied with the same smile, the same gay .light-

42 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

heartedness — and his gaiety was of a kind I had
seldom seen in him — " So much the worse for
the worthy Russians and the worthy French."
I went on to say that that was not all ; that I
had just come from London, and could assure
him that, although the English Government was
the most pacific in history, the logic of events
would prove stronger than the will of Govern-
ments, and that if Austria persisted in its over-
bearing attitude, England would fight to her last
man and her last shilling.

The smile on Count Goluchowsky's face ex-
panded, and he said, " So much the worse for
the worthy English."

At that moment my last meeting with Sir
Edward Grey on July 21, 1914, passed like a
vision before my eyes. On that occasion he had
spoken to me with austere gravity, saying that
the situation gave cause for deep anxiety, but
that in spite of it he hoped for peace ; because
for his part he could not imagine that the man
existed who could shoulder the responsibility of
provoking a calamity which would spell the
bankruptcy of civilisation, and of which no one
in the world could foresee the consequences.
There came another vision — that of Monsieur
Poincare, who on the 1st of January, 1913,
spoke to me with most poignant emotion of the
terrible eventuality of a European war, a war in
which he refused to believe and against which
he was working with all his strength.

In memory I re-read Kiderlen-Waechter's last
letter to me, written in November, 1912, a few

COUNT GOLUCHOWSKY 43

months before his death, the letter of a man
who, most unfortunately for Germany and for
the world, was no longer with UF 3 a letter which
stated that he was convinced that peace would be
maintained because at the last moment the whole
world would hesitate to embark on a venture
which this time was a question of life or death
for all.

With the eyes of my soul I saw Grey, Poincare*,
Kiderlen ; with my physical eyes I saw the
broad smile and the indescribable levity of Count
Goluchowsky. And I became more than ever
confirmed in my belief that Vienna, now a mere
suburb of Budapesth, was the criminal, the great
criminal, in that it was ready to plunge humanity
at any moment into the unspeakable horror of
war.

August 2, 1914

VI

AUGUST 2, 1914

1 ARRIVED back at Sinaia from London at
11.30 a.m. on Sunday, the 2nd of August.
Germany had declared war on Russia the
previous evening, so the horrible slaughter was
about to begin. On the Saturday evening in
Bucharest I had already heard (in a way that I
shall divulge one day) that a Privy Council was to
be held at Sinaia on Monday, the 3rd of August,
that this Privy Council had been postponed for
forty- eight hours in order that I might be present
at it, and that King Charles was insisting that
Roumania should go into the war on the side
of Austria and Germany.

I am keeping back for a future occasion my
account of the conversations I had on the evening
of Saturday, the 1st of August, at Bucharest, on
Sunday, the 2nd of August, at the Sinaia station
on my arrival, and still more important those of
Sunday afternoon. As I was leaving the station
an invitation reached me to go and lunch at the
Royal Palace at one o'clock. There was barely
time to go to my villa and dress, my poor villa
that no longer exists.

I realised that in order to convert me to his

48 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

ideas the King was about to make an onslaught
on me. Less than a month ago in that same
Palace the King had confided to me the great
secret — to wit. that the Emperor William had
decided to bring about a European war, which
would not take place, however, for three or
four years. On that occasion the King had gone
so far as to explain to me that this breathing
space of three years would suffice to complete
both our constitutional reforms and our military
preparations.

As I had made up my mind to face him with
an absolutely non possumus attitude at the Privy
Council the following day, I was anxious to
avoid argument, which must always be a painful
business with an elderly Monarch, and I made
up my mind that during luncheon I would give
the talk a turn that would leave him no ray of
hope.

Hardly had I sat down next to Queen Elizabeth
at the luncheon table than I found I was in a
house divided against itself. It was obvious that
the King was more than worried, that the Queen
was more bellicose than the King, and that the
Crown Princess, now the reigning Queen Marie,
was dead against the policy of her uncle and
aunt, and did not conceal it from them. It even
seemed to me that tears had recently been shed
in that Royal Palace.

It was the Queen who first began to speak
on the burning question of war. I told her that
I was sure that war had been inevitable since
the day Austria had addressed her infamous

AUGUST 2, 1914 49

ultimatum to Serbia, and that I knew the ulti-
matum was the work of the Magyars, of Tisza,
Forgasch, Berchtold, who had the support and
collaboration of Tchirsky, the German Ambas-
sador at Vienna. I added as a self-evident truth
that a German victory meant a Hungarian
victory, and therefore was not compatible with
maintaining the independence of the Kingdom
of Roumania. The King, who sat opposite, and
was listening with fixed attention, understood
me, and that is why, as I shall explain presently,
he spared me from the onslaught I wished to
avoid.

Intelligent as she was and though really a woman
above the average, the Queen was not sufficiently
versed in politics to understand a word of this.
She was all for explaining that a Magyar victory
would mean nothing for a very long time to
come, etc. . . . When I told her again of my
extreme anxiety, in view of the fact that Germany
had such a formidable force at her disposal and
that if she were successful it would be the end
of Roumania, she passed on to another subject.

She asked me what I thought would be the
probable consequences of such a war. I answered
— with all eyes upon me — that no human being
would be presumptuous enough to say he knew
or could even guess what all the consequences
of such a war might be. " I know, however,"
I added, " what four of them will be, and these
four I will explain to you in a few words. The
first consequence will be a revival of international
hatreds on such a scale as Europe has not seen

J.I. »

50 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

for centuries. This is as sure as the night follows
the day.

" The second consequence will be a sudden
veering of opinion towards the ideas of the
Extreme Left, what we call socialist ideas.

" Of course in the long run nothing that is
inherently absurd can triumph, but there is
bound in all countries to be a trend to the Ex-
treme Left, once the unloosing of this appalling
catastrophe has made the governing classes
appear more incapable in the eyes of the
masses than they have hitherto believed them
to be.

" In the third place, Madam, there will be
what I can only describe as a cataract of crowns.
Your Majesty has so often told me you are a
Republican that you will hardly be surprised at
this prophecy. Only those Monarchies which
are in truth hereditary presidencies of Republics,
like the British Royal House, have any chance
of escaping this dreadful flood, the flood that
must inevitably rise out of a war engineered by
absolute Monarchs."

I also explained to the Queen that as yet
another result of the war, the Revolutionary
movement, which for several decades had ceased
to be political and had become economic, would
inevitably become political once more.

" And lastly," I added, " this war will precipitate
by at least half-a-century the establishment of
America in the moral hegemony of the white
race, an achievement inevitable in any case, but
which the war will hasten."

AUGUST 2, 1914 51

My fourth statement provoked animated dis-
cussion. I said I saw nothing in this event to
object to, as the most interesting experience
humanity had as yet seriously embarked on was
this new effort in civilisation on the part of the
United States ; since it would mean a civilisation
without prejudices, without castes, without mon-
archical or aristocratic institutions, and without
historic quarrels.

A few days later I published four articles
developing these ideas with the titles " The
Hatreds," " The Movement to the Left," " The
Cataract of Crowns," and " The Coming of
America."

When I think of this date, the 2nd of August,
1914, already so remote, I wonder how it is that
these conclusions, which at the time appeared
to me self-evident, were not so to the world in
general, and I reflect once again how tenacious
on most of us is the grip of the ideas of the past.

After luncheon we took coffee in the great hall,
and I noticed that the King was hesitating
between his wish to talk to me and his fear of
hearing too soon the refusal for which my animated
and provocative conversation at luncheon had
prepared him.

Before the King spoke to me the Crown Prin-
cess, now the reigning Queen, came up to me
with Queen Elizabeth and asked me whether or
no England would remain neutral in the war. It
should not be forgotten that this was Sunday,
and that it was on the previous Wednesday I
had left London. As the Princess spoke to me

52 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

in English I replied in English, saying that her
question surprised me, as she must know as well
as I did that England, as in Napoleon's day,
would go into the war with her last man and her
last shilling. In a nervous voice she then said,
" You hear what he says, aunt," and turning to
me, " That is what I tell them all the time, and
they refuse to understand it. They understand
nothing in this house." She then went away
with the Queen.

A few minutes later the King addressed me :
" You know you must bring two of your friends
to the Privy Council to-morrow. Whom have
you selected ? ':

" I have asked several to come to Sinaia,
Sir," I replied, "and I will make my choice to-
morrow morning."

"Oh well," said the King, "the selection
doesn't really matter, for your party at any rate
is disciplined." As I still did not appear to
understand, the King added, " You have always
said that if ever we went to war we should have
to begin by publishing all our treaties of alliance."
" Yes, Sir," I replied, " and if because of a treaty
honestly interpreted we were genuinely forced to
go to war, they must be published, because
before everything a nation must honour its
own signature."

This time the King understood, and resigned
himself to the inevitable. He knew that as
Germany had provoked war we were bound
neither by the letter nor the spirit of the
treaties.

AUGUST 2, 1914 53

The next day at the Crown Council he tried
to put another interpretation on the text of the
treaties, but on this Sunday, the 2nd of August,
he attempted nothing of the kind.

Many of my recollections of the four terrible
years are as sharp and clear as at the moment
the events happened. There are few that have
remained in my memory so distinctly as this
luncheon of the 2nd of August, 1914, in the Royal
Palace at Sinaia.

Kiderlen- Waeckter

VII
KIDERLEN-WAECHTER

I

FOR more than ten years I was very intimate
with the late Kiderlen-Waechter. That is
to say, I had opportunities of seeing him
exactly as he was and to know both his good and
his bad qualities. Above all Kiderlen was a great
intellectual force. There was no doubt about it.
One could not be often in his company without
realising that one had to do with the kind of
mind which is an ornament to the human race.
Kiderlen was nearly all mind. Not that he was
lacking in heart, for during his life he gave un-
doubted proofs of deep and unchanging attach-
ment towards certain people. He loved quietude
and adored animals. But taking him all in all,
one can without doing him an injustice say that
Kiderlen was neither a sentimentalist nor an
idealist — but that he was in the last resort a sound
working mind, though naturally a mind which
was representative of his country and his time.
He had been under the influence of Bismarck
as well as under that of Holstein, who, like Riche-
lieu's Pere Joseph, played a part behind the

57

58 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

scenes out of all proportion to his nominal posi-
tion. From those early associates Kiderlen
derived a certain vein of brutality, the mention
of which cannot be omitted. Moreover, he lent
himself readily to advertisement, because he
believed it to be the indispensable adjunct of
all political action. It was he and he alone who
framed the famous ultimatum to Russia during
the Bosnian crisis, although he was at the time
only Minister at Bucharest on leave at Berlin.
" I knew the Russians were not ready for war,
that they could not go to war in any case, and
I wanted to make what capital I could out of
this knowledge. I wished to show them that
Germany, which had been in Russian leading
strings since 1815, was now free of them. Never
would Schoen and Co. have ventured to do what
I did on my own responsibility." It was in
this way that he explained to me his over-
emphasis of Germany's action in this case, an
emphasis that contributed appreciably to the
unrest in Europe.

Kiderlen never wanted to go to the Foreign
Office. " The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
our Government," he said, " is the worst of all
posts. If a thing succeeds the Chancellor takes
the credit, if it fails the blame lies on the Secretary
of State.'* What he would have really liked
was the Embassy at Constantinople. By a
whim of the Emperor it was snatched from
under his nose and given to Wangenheim, whom
the Kaiser often met at Corfu.

Few people know of the way in which Kiderlen

KIDERLEN-WAECHTER 59

was appointed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The story is worth telling. When Bethmann-
Hollweg by the pure caprice of the Kaiser, was
appointed Chancellor of the Empire he knew
nothing at all about foreign politics. Naturally
he looked out for someone who did, and hoping
to find the right man in Kiderlen he asked him
for a report on the political world situation.
Kiderlen at the time was Minister at Bucharest,
but doing duty at Berlin. I never saw the
report he produced at that time, though I knew
of its existence. Since then I have been told
that it was copied by Herr von Busche, who
was at the time German Minister in Roumania.
Bethmann-Hollweg read the report, and promptly
told the Emperor that he would only consent to
remain Chancellor if Kiderlen was appointed
Foreign Minister.

The Emperor had to give in. I say " give in,"
because it was some years since Kiderlen had
been in the Kaiser's good graces. Once he had
been greatly appreciated in that quarter on
account of his clear thinking and vivacity. No
one knew better than he how to tell spicy stories,
and the Emperor, who is very fond of them, never
got tired of listening to them. But one day the
Kaiser chaffed Kiderlen on some private matter.
Kiderlen showed himself offended, and his reply
was such that he at once fell from royal favour.

One must remember that Kiderlen was exceed-
ingly free in manner with the Kaiser. He was
no courtier and never flattered anyone, and to him
the appreciation and friendship of his Sovereign

60 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

seemed to be essentially the same as the friend-
ship of other people. Kiderlen was perfectly
direct with the Kaiser, so direct that he flatly
refused to submit to certain conditions that the
Kaiser wished to impose on him at the time of
his appointment to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. " I shall go to the Foreign Office to do
as I think right in that post or I shall not go
there at all," was his proud reply, and he had
his way.

In the course of a conversation in 1911, which
I will speak of again later on, he said to me,
" If I am alive and in office there will be no war
between us and England. If ever he decides
differently he will have to find another man.
I allow no one to domineer over my conscience."

This sense of dignity was one of the finest
traits in Kiderlen's nature. The former presi-
dent of the Roumanian Council, Monsieur
Maioresco, knows something about it, for during
the summer of 1912 he thought he understood
that Kiderlen had expressed a wish to be asked
to stay with the King at Sinaia, and he made the
mistake of asking the German Minister whether
Kiderlen's position with the Emperor was suffi-
ciently good to warrant such an invitation.

Kiderlen heard about it, was furiously angry,
and wrote a crushing letter saying he should
like it known that he never had asked and never
would ask for an invitation from anyone, no
matter whom.

And yet he had a great admiration for King
Charles, and kept him informed of everything

KIDERLEN-WAECHTER 61

from Berlin. In the Spring of 1912, he told
him for his private information only the great
news of the Balkan alliance. He added that he
had learned it from a most exceptional source,
which would dry up for ever if the King was in
the least indiscreet with the news. I was never
able to discover who this mysterious informant
was.

Another of Kiderlen's characteristics was his
wit. For example, one day the Roumanian
Minister for Foreign Affairs, General Lahovary,
said to him at a diplomatic reception, " I do not
understand what you are after in Morocco.
France alone has rights in Morocco." Kiderlen
replied, " I don't know either. You see my
Government only keeps me informed of questions
that are supposed to affect Roumania. They did
not look upon Morocco in this light ; but since
you have pointed out to me that they are wrong,
I will ask Berlin for a special explanation for
your Excellency."

I don't pretend here to draw Kiderlen's por-
trait. I shall try to do so one day. These few
words of introduction are, however, indispen-
sable to the story which follows of the statements
made to me by Kiderlen at the time of the
Morocco crisis.

II

When Kiderlen was made Minister of Foreign
Affairs he had to leave Roumania. A few days
before his departure we were out walking, as
was our habit, and he began to sketch out his

62 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

programme in so far as it concerned German
relations with France.

" I have told them," he said, " that every
effort at an alliance with France is doomed to
failure. It is simply impossible for us to win
her friendship. I know better than anyone that
France wants peace and that she will never
attack us. I am perfectly sure about this, but
I also know that if we were attacked by any
other Power no Government would be strong
enough to prevent France attacking us at the
same time. Therefore all we can do is to main-
tain good peaceable relations with France and
not try for anything more ambitious. For this
reason I advised them " (and by them he meant
the Kaiser) " to give up all designs on Morocco,
and I explained to them that so long as the
Morocco question was open England would side
with France all over the world and on all questions
at issue between us. Now that would not suit
us one little bit. England, of course, cannot
abandon France on the Morocco question. She
knows well enough that in exchange for some-
thing she did not possess in Morocco she received
from the French their positive rights in Egypt.
England owes a debt of honour to France. If
we want to get rid of all the disadvantages which
Anglo-French diplomatic co-operation connotes
for us we must give the French a free hand in
Morocco and so help England to pay her debt to
France. And we shall be sacrificing nothing, for
we cannot set ourselves down in Morocco in face
of English opposition. Then why maintain this

KIDERLEN-WAECHTER 63

useless tension ? If we can get something for
ourselves on this occasion so much the better,
but we must not make that a condition of the
settlement."

" And do you believe that this policy will be
adopted ? " I asked.

" Of course, as they have appointed me to the
Foreign Office, for you know perfectly well that
I am not the kind of man who carries out any
policy but my own."

" Then," I said, " we need not worry ourselves
over the Morocco question. Peace will not be
threatened in that quarter."

" Certainly not, and besides you know how
truly I long for peace. We have nothing to
gain from victory, and in the case of defeat we
have only too much to lose. Time is in our
favour. Every decade we become stronger than
our enemies. You have no conception of the
prodigious strides made in our national economy.
And what good would a war be ? Admitting
that we are victorious ; if we take new territory
we only increase our difficulties. Then there is
another thing you may not have considered.
Every big victory is the work of the people, and
the people have to be paid for it. We had to
pay for the victory of 1870 with that pestilential
thing, universal suffrage. After another victory
we should have the parliamentary system — and
you know what I think about that for \is Germans.
It would be an irreparable evil. No German
would ever submit to party discipline. Every
German, every German deputy wants to form

64 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

his own party, or at least his own group. We
have no need of war. If we don't bring it on,
nobody will. The Republican regime in France
is essentially pacific. The English don't want
war, and will never provoke it in spite of what
the newspapers say. As for Russia, she knows
that she cannot make war on us with any chance
of success. Of course there will always be
delicate questions, and of course there will be
anxious moments, but war will not come. You
may make your mind easy about Morocco."

Kiderlen went on in this strain. He explained
his whole policy to me, and I believed his declar-
ations to be sincere, for he had never given me
any reason to doubt him; but after this talk
I was naturally astonished when the Agadir
incident occurred.

At the time of the incident I was in London,
and on the evening Lloyd George made his
famous speech at the Mansion House I had some
people dining with me at the Carlton. After
dinner a friend who had heard the speech came
in and repeated the gist of it, and when he told
me that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who
was well known to be most peacefully inclined,
had read the passage relating to Foreign Affairs
from a slip of paper, I realised how grave the
situation was, and shivered at the idea of Euro-
pean war.

Calm soon reigned again, for Germany wisely
withdrew. I breathed freely, but from that
moment German policy became for me an
enigma.

KIDERLEN-WAECHTER 65

III

In the Autumn of 1911 I went to Brussels
for a family gathering. On my way home I
stopped at Berlin to pay my friend Kiderlen a
long promised visit. I stayed three days and
met him continually, but the conversation on
the first day was the most interesting. Kiderlen
had invited me to lunch with him alone. He was
late in arriving, because he had been detained at
the Reichstag, where he had been heckled over
what was called his Moroccan defeat. There was
one man in particular, the socialist deputy Lede-
bour, who was a perfect nightmare to Kiderlen.

Before he arrived I looked round his study,
which was littered with papers and maps. There
were a few photographs, of course — mostly of
kings. As for photographs of ordinary human
beings I only saw three, that of an Austrian
whose name I forget, that of Monsieur Cambon,
with an autograph and dedication, and my own.
Cambon and I were often said by Kiderlen to
be alike, and he used to say that we were the
only foreigners he talked frankly to, because
we had never told him anything but the truth.

Kiderlen was very tired, and we sat down to
luncheon at once. The wonderful Sevres given
him by the President of the French Republic,
in memory of the agreement of 1909, was on
the table. " That is the price of treason," he
said jokingly.

During luncheon and afterwards until four
o'clock we had leisure to discuss every question

J.I. E

66 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

that interested us. Of course I did not conceal
my astonishment over his Moroccan policy, which
had nearly brought on a war with England, a
war which he had always characterised as absurd.
He explained that he never meant actually to
go to war, but that his only object was that of
settling the Morocco question once and for all.

He alleged that France was not carrying out
the agreement reached in 1909, and that he had
to deal her a blow to make her see that things
were serious. He maintained that the blow had
done its work, because they had subsequently
arrived at an understanding, and that in future
relations with France would be normal and
relations with England might become friendly.
He did not admit to me what I well knew to be
his real object — namely, to test the solidity of
the Anglo-French understanding and if possible
to smash it. He complained that he was grow-
ing more and more unpopular owing to his wish
to avoid war, and he assured me in the most
categorical manner that the Emperor was at
one with him in keeping the peace, and this in
spite of the frankly bellicose attitude of the
whole Imperial Family, including those who had
never before mixed themselves up in politics. He
told me at some length of a conversation he had
had with the Crown Prince in that same room
in the chair I was then occupying, a conversation
which was entirely to Kiderlen's credit. He
told me that the Crown Prince was worse than a
ninny, and that he had said to him that it was
not in the society of little officer boys that

KIDERLEN-WAECHTER 67

politics could be learnt, and that he ought not
to meddle with matters which he did not under-
stand.

Referring once more to Anglo-German relations,
he again told me of his wish to reach an under-
standing with England. He did not conceal
from me what I already knew so well that, like
Bismarck, he detested England principally on
account of her parliamentary institutions, but
he told me that he believed what Bismarck had
once written to Holstein was true, that England
was one of the great conservative factors of the
world, and it was not in anyone's interest to
destroy it. In this letter Bismarck added that
the day England became revolutionary the whole
world would become revolutionary too.

" But if you are so anxious to come to an
understanding with England," I said, " why
don't you do the one thing to ensure it ? Why
do you refuse to compromise on the question of
naval armament ? What is your object in push-
ing to its limit the competitive policy ? I
understood your attitude when it was still a
question of your becoming the second great sea-
power of the world. That you already are, and
what more do you want ? Do you aspire
to be not only the greatest military power in
the world, but also the greatest naval power ?
That would mean universal domination, and it
is not realisable. Others have tried it, Spain
and France, for example, but they went under.
You are too intelligent not to understand that
until she has been utterly crushed it is impossible

68 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

for England to let herself be outbuilt on the sea.
You may build five Dreadnoughts, she will build
thirteen. Where are you going to stop ? You
are heading straight for a war with England,
and that, you know, will be no joke. Admitting
for a moment that you gain the victory. How
long will that last ? You would raise against
yourself a world coalition. So hated would
you be that the very rabbits would enrol them-
selves against you. Don't follow dreams — and
what you are after now is a dream."

Kiderlen replied rather bitterly, " I wanted
to have an understanding over the limitation
of armaments, but I couldn't manage it. I
have said everything you have said to me, though
perhaps I have not put it so well. I have said
it to Tirpitz, who was sitting in this armchair of
mine. I was sitting in yours."

" And ? "

" I did not succeed in convincing him," he
answered.

" But the Emperor ? " I asked.

" He sided with Tirpitz."

And then he went on to asseverate that in
spite of this he would do all he possibly could
to come to an agreement with England. He
suggested even that I should tell my friends in
London to send him as Ambassador someone
who had a great position in England, so that
the work would not have to be done twice over,
in London and Berlin. We then went on to
talk about the agreement he had just concluded
with France. He assured me that if by accident

KIDERLEN-WAECHTER 69

the French Parliament rejected the agreement
it would mean war. The agreement represented
the maximum concession that the people of
Germany would stand.

That very day I took pains to write my im-
pressions to a friend in Paris. My friend showed
my letter to M. Caillaux, then Prime Minister,
who read it to the Foreign Affairs Committee
of the Senate.

This was thr last occasion on which I had any
prolonged talk with Kiderlen. From this time
on we simply wrote to each other.

On the evening of the 30th of December, 1912,
I was due to meet him at Stuttgart, where he
had been spending the Christmas holidays, and
where he remained. At the railway station at
Salzburg I heard of his most unexpected death,
and the next day at Stuttgart they told me that
my name was one of the last words he had spoken.

Perhaps it was only an illusion of friendship,
but I cannot help believing that in Kiderlen we
lost one of the mainstays of peace. Not that
my friend was a sentimentalist, far from it ; but he
was a man of genuinely well-set mind, and his real
intellect kept him to the last of the opinion
that a war of Germany against the world was
altogether a bad business.

Count Aehrenthal

VIII
COUNT AEHRENTHAL

I

COUNT AEHRENTHAL was the most
brilliant Austrian Foreign Minister since
the days of Beust. His capacity is the
measure of his blunders. Without exaggerating,
one may say that he was to a great extent the
author of the war. As a matter of fact, from 1866
down to this day the Hapsburgs have maintained
a prudent political reserve, and though Count
Andrassy gave himself airs at the time of the
Berlin Congress everyone knew that it was nothing
but showing off. Aehrenthal alone took the idea
seriously that Austria-Hungary was still a great
power and destined to act an important part in
the world's affairs. On several occasions he tried
to play first fiddle in the European orchestra, to
the great disgust of Berlin, which could not bear
that Austria should even pretend to emancipate
herself from its yoke.

The key to Count Aehrenthal's active and
dangerous policy must be sought in a personal
matter. He was extraordinarily intelligent for

an Austrian, and his quickness of understanding,

* 73

74 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

his faculty for adaptation, his charming vivacity
can only be explained by the drop of Jewish
blood that ran in his veins.

Count Aehrenthal knew his own value, especi-
ally when he compared himself with other
Austrian diplomats. He was very ambitious
and believed he was destined for great things,
and he intended to use the power of the monarchy
for his own aggrandisement and personal fame.

He was a Bohemian and detested Slavs. I
remember a day when he received news of anti-
German excesses in Prague. " Czechs," he said,
" have such hard heads that they have to be
broken in order to make them understand any-
thing."

He had been in Russia for a long time, and
knew all the weaknesses of that colossus. In
his thirst for success he exaggerated them and
under-estimated the infinite resources of her
clumsy organism.

I saw a great deal of Count Aehrenthal during
his long stay in Roumania, and have many
letters from him. One day he tried to do me an
irreparable injury in making use of some infor-
mation he had dragged out of me at my own
luncheon table. I naturally resented this very
much, and though, luckily for me, I was able to
counter his manoeuvre in time, our relations
after this became purely official.

On the eve of his final departure from
Roumania, he let me know that he wished to do
more than leave a p.p.c. card on me, and that
he would like to see me. In this last interview

COUNT AEHRENTHAL 75

he told me that we should probably both serve
our countries for some time to come, that we
should therefore have to meet each other, and
that it would be better to forget the past. I
told him that as he had not succeeded in injuring
me and as he believed he was serving his country
in trying to do so, I was quite willing to resume
our old footing.

Later on when he was transferred from the
Embassy at Petrograd to the Foreign Office I
used to go and see him. I am now going to tell
of two of those interviews.

The first took place on a September day in
1909 or 1910. I don't know which, I only know
that it was after Tangier and before Agadir.

He asked me what impressions I brought
back from my three months' tour in France and
England.

" I brought back two impressions," I said.
" The first is that the alliance between England
and France cannot be broken — at any rate in
this generation. It is firmer even than your
alliance with Germany."

" But," he objected, " there is no treaty of
alliance."

" Of course there is no treaty, but there is
something better. Don?t forget that those two
nations are free nations governing themselves.
Well, they are firmly convinced that their inte-
rests are the same, and they have decided to act
together. No Government could break such an
agreement which springs from the mind of the
two peoples."

76 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

" But such an alliance is ridiculous ! " he
exclaimed. " France stands to gain nothing from
England, whereas from Germany she could have
anything she wanted."

" France realises," I answered, " that in ally-
ing herself with Germany she would be allying
herself against England. If England were over-
come France would be nothing but the vassal
of Germany. That is a position you have
accepted for yourselves. France has too glorious
a history behind her to accept a similar position
without being crushed first."

" What ! " said he briskly. " Austria is Ger-
many's vassal ? J:

" Yes, just as Roumania is the vassal of
Austria." I said this to coat the bitter pill.

" And what was your second impression ? '

" I will tell you in a few words. France is no
longer afraid. She desires peace passionately ;
she will never provoke war, but she is no longer
afraid. Henceforth if you bully her realise that
it means war. The time for bluffing is gone by.
If you want war that is another thing, but
intimidation and bluff will no longer work."

"But it is mad," he said. "The French
army, far from being stronger than it was a few
years ago, is much weaker."

" Fear," I said, " is a physical question.
One may be weak and yet not be afraid. For
one reason and another, because perhaps she has
been too much bullied in the past, France, who
was afraid at the Tangier crisis, is now no longer
afraid ; of that I am profoundly convinced."

COUNT AERHENTHAL 77

'It is very odd," said Aehrenthal in ending
the conversation ; " our ambassadors have not
formed the same conclusions as you have."

' I can only give you my own," I replied, and
we passed on to talk of other things.

II

THE last time I saw Count Aehrenthal was during
the Autumn of 1911, a few months before his
death.

His illness had marked him heavily. He had
been spending a few weeks in the beautiful
surroundings of Mendel — henceforward, I hope, to
be Mendola — but he was not much better for it.
There was something very peculiar about his
condition, something I had never seen before.
He had kept his clearness of mind intact, but
he found great difficulty in expressing himself
—he stammered. He only did this for the
first few words of a sentence. Once he had got
a phrase out the rest went easily. And this
took place each time that he began to speak.
I must leave the explanation of this symptom
to the doctors.

Count Aehrenthal was embittered, very much
embittered, by his struggles with the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand and his protege, Conrad von
Hoetzendorf, whom he had just triumphed over.
He did not explain things straight out to me, but
he let me understand.

" There are people who think I was wrong in
preventing war with Italy," he said. " They

78 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

say that Italy would never in any case fight on
our side and that it would have been better to
square accounts now. But I think I was right.
Even if Italy never fights on our side we should
be quite wrong to attack an ally when she was
engaged elsewhere."

Naturally I agreed with him.

And then forthwith we returned to the subject
that we had so often discussed at Bucharest.

I had always maintained that monarchies
were doomed and that only those monarchies
which were literally and really constitutional
had any chance of surviving ; the rest seemed to
me to be nearer their end than anyone believed.
Aehrenthal, absolutist and reactionary as he
always was, fought this opinion of mine bitterly.
Imagine my surprise at finding Count Aehrenthal
almost converted to Republicanism.

He told me that on reflection he had changed
his mind, and was no longer prejudiced against
the Republican system. He also explained that
it was chiefly on account of foreign policy that
he had once believed so firmly in the monarchical
system.

" But now, " he said, " France gives the lie to
all my theories. The foreign policy of the French
Republic is skilfully conducted and undoubtedly
successful. Although France, thanks to her
political institutions, uses up more men than
any other country, she has a constant supply of
first-rate men at her helm. Look at her diplo-
macy. The whole German and Austrian
Diplomatic Corps together are not worth the

COUNT AEHRENTHAL 79

brothers Cambon and Barrere, only to mention
these three."

" What," I said laughingly, " and it is you,
Count Aehrenthal — here in the Ballplatz, facing
the portraits of Metternich and Kaunitz — who
tell me that ! "

' Yes, I do. Life teaches us many things,"
he replied.

I understood more clearly than ever how
greatly Aehrenthal must have suffered recently
from the interference of Francis Ferdinand in
his policy. He who had been so sure of his
mastery over the world of archdukes had himself
experienced the bitterness, the indignity of
despotic government. And before his death he
had a revulsion of feeling that gave him a vision
of certain truths, a vision that men who pass
their lives as slaves never attain to. Once
again I recognised the signs of Jewish blood ;
without it no Austrian Count and Foreign Minister
of his Apostolic Majesty could have spoken in
such a fashion.

None the less, Aehrenthal bears his share of
the responsibility for the war. He wished to
live in history, he seriously wished to expand
Austria-Hungary. But all the same in pressing
this policy he had his tongue in his cheek. The
Magyar party adopted his policy as its own, and
the result is that Austria-Hungary has perished.

It is the strongest men who are liable to commit
the worst mistakes.

Count Czernin

IX
COUNT CZERNIN

THE last time I talked politics with Count
Czernin, a conversation to which I shall
have occasion to refer again, the Austrian
minister began by saying that he had a great
favour to ask me.

It was a few days after the fall of Lemberg
in 1914. " We shall soon be at war with each
other," he said, "but after -the war we shall
have peace. Promise me that, when once the
war is over and I have the pleasure of meeting
you again, we shall be the same friends as ever."
He punctuated his request with compliments
which it is not for me to repeat.

As he was in my house I had to make a civil
answer. I hunted about for something to say,
and then with a certain measure of embarrass-
ment I said something of this kind : "I don't
know whether we are going to be at war or not.
But if we were it would only be because our
respective nations believed that it was their
interest or their duty to fight one another.
We are both of us civilised men. There is no
earthly reason why after the war we should not
in our individual capacity be friends again."

83

84 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

At that time I did not believe Count Czernin
was capable of doing what he did later on,
when he cancelled my Austrian decoration
and, denying his own words, deliberately lied
to me.

If I had known him better my answer would
have been quite different, but Count Czernin is
really a most accomplished type of Austrian.

We all know, and we all say, that there is no
such thing as an Austrian nation. It is true in
the real sense of the word. An Austrian people
in the sense of a collection of men having a
collective conscience does not exist and could
not exist. But Austrians do exist. They are
members of a clique recruited from among the
nations of the earth, serving the Hapsburgs from
father to son, living on the Imperial favour and
forming a sort of civilian general staff to that
family — which is the only link existing amongst
the nations composing the Empire.1 Amongst
themselves these people talk German, but intel-
lectually they are not Germans. Though by
origin they may be Czech, Polish, Italian, Croatian,
German, yet they are not Czechs or Poles or
Italians or Croats or Germans. Until quite
recently they could even be of Magyar origin
without, however, being really Magyars. All these
people, all the members of this little clique, are
Austrians. They are, in fact, the only Austrians
in the world. Their essential characteristic is
the absence of real intelligence, yet they are not
quite as innocent as they look, for they have

1 This was written before the flight of the Austrian Emperor.

COUNT CZERNIN 85

bureaucratic traditions and a guile that stands
them in lieu of intelligence.

When one first sees them one is charmed by
their beautiful manners and what I can only
describe as their encyclopaedic polish. This pre-
vents one realising their hopeless nonentity.
Then one is liable to err in the other direction.
From astonishment at their ignorance and want
of brain one comes to believe them to be harm-
less. It is only after a time that one learns the
real truth. Then one perceives that at bottom
these people are rogues, and that one should
not reckon too much on their intellectual
nonentity.

Count Czernin is a most typical Austrian, and
intercourse with him is most agreeable, as his
manners, at any rate in appearance, are perfectly
charming. He has a rudimentary intelligence,
but it is amply supplemented by guile. He has,
too, a fund of humour which sometimes might
almost be regarded as wit. Thus one day he
said to Radeff, a former Bulgarian comitadji,
" Neither you nor I will ever make good diplo-
mats, because I never lie and you never speak
the truth." And again, to his colleague Busche,
who was always boasting about the superiority
of Germany to poor Austria, he said, "But at
least there is one point on which you will have to
admit that Austria is superior to Germany."
And when Busche, who was intelligent but
rather uncouth, persisted that this was impossible,
Czernin said slily, " We have a better ally than
Germany has ! "

86 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Count Czernin was in retirement in 1913 when
Vienna thought fit to replace Count Fiirstenberg,
the then minister to Roumania, because he had
failed to prevent Roumania making war on
Bulgaria, with the Peace of Bucharest as the
consequence.

The Archduke Francis Ferdinand picked out
Czernin for the post. He had always intended
one day to make him Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In the meantime he sent him to Bucharest with
the definite mission of patching up Austro-
Roumanian relations at the price of serious
concessions in Transylvania which he meant the
Magyars to make to the Roumanians. I met
Count Czernin for the first time immediately
after his arrival at the opening of an industrial
museum.

In spite of the crowd all round us Count
Czernin took me into a corner and explained
that he had only come to Bucharest with a
view to consolidating our relations by con-
cessions which the Magyars were to make to
us. He assured me that these concessions would
be made whether Budapest liked it or not. In
the long run it was certain that Budapest would
see reason, because not only was it a matter of
justice, but it was absolutely necessary. And
in conclusion he said, " Unless the Magyars make
large concessions the Austro-Roumanian alliance
cannot go on."

In speaking like this he showed true courage,
and I have no doubt that he was himself deluded
as to the possibility of serious concessions. It

COUNT CZERNIN 87

was distinctly honourable on the part of an
Austro-Hungarian Minister to admit that he
regarded them as absolutely necessary. At the
same time for him to tell me so bluntly in
the middle of a crowd at our first meeting
seemed to me a very singular proceeding, but
it only strengthened my opinion of Austrian
diplomats.

Later on it became evident even to Count
Czernin that the tale of Magyar concessions to
Roumania was nothing but an Arabian Nights'
romance, and each time I saw him he referred to
it less explicitly. It was easy to see that he felt
awkward and knew that he had gone too far, and
that he was looking out for an honourable way of
retreat.

At the beginning of the world war our relations
were most correct, but our political conversations
were confined to the ordinary gossip of society.

When I returned from England in the early
days of the war on the eve of the Privy Council
of August the 3rd at Sinaia I often met Count
Czernin, who like me had his headquarters at
Sinaia. He was trying like so many others to
defend Austria against the accusation of having
unchained the war. I protested vigorously, and
he thereupon asked me to explain to him un-
reservedly what made me affirm the contrary.
At that time Waldhausen, the German Minister,
Czernin and I had a talk at the Palace Hotel at
Sinaia which lasted nearly three hours. Having
obtained permission to speak freely, and taking
no notice of their nationality, I made out a regular

88 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

indictment of Germany and of Austria in par-
ticular. I produced so many proofs, quoted so
many facts of which the public was still ignorant,
and used such crude language that of necessity
my relations with Count Czernin were affected.
He naturally pretended that I was mistaken, but
congratulated me on my frankness and courage,
at the same time stating that he should look upon
me as one of the most implacable enemies of his
country.

If I repeated this conversation it would consist
chiefly in a monologue, and it would only mean
reiterating all I have said and written on the
origin of the war, and just a few other things
that I have not yet made public. It would have
little or nothing to do with Count Czernin.

From that day we ceased to call on each other,
but this did not prevent our talking if we happened
to meet. It was not till some weeks later, when
I had proof of his having taken part in the
hateful work of political corruption, that we
ceased to bow to each other.

One day on the boulevard at Sinaia he stopped
and asked me if it were true that Talaat and
Zaimis were coming to Roumania in order to
try and come to an arrangement over the Turco-
Greek difficulty about the Islands.

When I answered that it was true, he asked
me with a malicious smile if I believed Talaat
was really coming for that purpose.

I straightway said " No," and added that
Talaat had stayed at Sofia on his way and that
it was obvious that he was coming to Roumania

COUNT CZERNIN 8&

to try and arrange a Turco-Bulgar-Roumanian
alliance against Russia.

" Well," said Czernin, " and if they make a
proposition of the kind what are you going to
say ? "

6 1 am not the Government," I said, " but if
I were and a proposition of this kind were put
forward, I should tell them quite straight out
that if I wanted to go hand in hand with Austria
I should discuss the matter with her and not
with her household servants."

Czernin thought my language rather pictur-
esque and dropped the subject.

A few days after Lemberg had fallen Count
Czernin telephoned to know whether I could see
him. He said he wanted to bring me back some
books I had lent him. I naturally said " Yes,"
all the more willingly as it was several weeks since
he had been to see me. I was curious to know
why he was coming; the books were too trans-
parent an excuse. I received him in my study ;
it was our last conversation, and it is so strange
as to be worth recording.

Count Czernin began by referring to a matter
I have already mentioned, the question of our
private friendship after the war. Just as I was
saying that neither war nor peace depended on
me, he said, " You are going to make war on us.
That is self-evident. It is your interest and
your duty to do so. If I were a Roumanian I
would attack Austria, and I cannot see why you
should not do what I should do in your place.
Of course it is not very pretty to go for an ally,

90 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

but history is made up of such rascalities, Austrian
history as much as that of any other state, and
I don't see why Roumania should be the only
exception " ; and then, as I told him he was
making me feel perfectly at home, he went on,
" all the same I must ask one thing of you.
Just wait for a fortnight. In a fortnight the
whole military situation will have changed in
our favour, and whatever your present interest
may be in making war on us you will then see
that it would be a mistake." I smiled, and
Czernin went on, " No, not a fortnight, let us
say three weeks ; that is all I ask of you. If
the situation has not changed in three weeks,
attack us. I should do so in your place. I
insist, however, on the three weeks, for mark you,
this will be a war of extermination. If we are
victorious we shall suppress Roumania. If we
are beaten Austria-Hungary will cease to exist."
I again said that the war did not depend on me,
and that judging from what I saw he might count,
not on three weeks, but a far longer time, even
if war were eventually to break out between us.
I added that it seemed an exaggeration to talk
of extermination, and went on to say, "Our
circumstances are in no way parallel. For
example, if Roumania were suppressed I should
lose everything, and should be but a pariah
wandering through the world, while you, who
are by way of being a good German, stand
to lose nothing when Austria disappears. You
may even be a gainer by it, as Germany can
never be suppressed."

COUNT CZERNIN 91

On this we parted. It was in the afternoon,
and in the evening I heard from Filipesco that
Czernin had that very day said precisely the
same things to him.

This last talk with Count Czernin is perhaps the
strangest I ever had with any diplomat. For
the representative of Austria-Hungary to say
that if he were a Roumanian he would make war
on Austria because it was the interest and duty
of Roumania so to do would have been extra-
ordinary and utterly incredible if I had not my-
self heard it.

It seems to me that after this talk it was not
becoming in Count Czernin to bring himself to
treat the King of Roumania and our statesmen
in the way he did. He had no right to ask us to
be blinder than he was himself to the interest
and duty of Roumania.

Count Mensdorff

X

COUNT MENSDORFF

I ARRIVED in London on the 12th of July,
1914, in the evening. I was much worried,
although on the 9th of July, only three days
earlier, King Charles had positively assured me that
peace would be preserved for at least three years
longer. It was quite impossible for me to forget
the horrible way in which the Marquis Pallavicini
had spoken to me in the Spring of 1914, and
from my own observation during the whole of
the Balkan crisis I knew that Austria really
wanted war.

So when the Serajevo outrage occurred it was
easy for me to appraise the full gravity of the
situation. And when I saw Austria — in other
words, Count Tisza, who since the death of Francis
Ferdinand was virtually dictator of the Empire
— preserve an inscrutable attitude while pre-
paring a so-called case but giving no indication
of her intentions, my anxiety deepened still
further.

It was in this state of mind that I arrived in
London.

There I found a very strange situation. A
large section of the Press was in all good faith

95

96 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

friendly to Austria. In England the old notion
of a pacific Austria necessary to the balance of
power in Europe still obtained. I must admit
that the Austrian Ambassador, Count Mensdorff,
and his friends had done their work well. It is
well known that the English Press is immune
against any form of corruption, but on the other
hand personal relations and friendships play a
great part in this journalistic world, where people
are inclined to be over-confiding because they
are fundamentally honest. The soil, too, was
favourable. England had not yet forgotten the
horror felt over the assassination of King Alex-
ander and Queen Draga.

Count Mensdorff was the embodiment of the
best type of Austrian diplomat. He was a
true aristocrat and a fine-looking man, but he
was not well educated and not at all intelligent,
though perhaps on this account all the more
plausible and untrustworthy.

During the preceding weeks he had been
assiduously making up to journalists. As Prince
Lichnowsky said to me at the time, " He is concoct-
ing something or other." This " something " obvi-
ously was to launch English public opinion on the
wrong scent — in other words, to spread the sus-
picion that Serbia was particularly responsible
for the assassination of the Archduke, j-ince she
had been over-tolerant of revolutionary move-
ments. Count Mensdorffs agents had had re-
course to an old device of Austrian diplomacy,
a forgery. Some rascal had given John Bull
a document purporting to have emanated from

COUNT MENSDORFF 97

the Serbian Legation in London which proved
that the assassination of the Archduke was the
work of the Government of Belgrade. When
I met the Serbian Minister, M. Boscovitch, at
St. Ann's Hill, the house of my friend Sir Albert
Rollit, he asked me as to the propriety of bring-
ing a libel action against John Bull. The
document seemed to me such an obvious fabrica-
tion that I said it was unnecessary. War settled
the question of this new Austrian forgery.

The English Press was on the wrong tack.
It honestly believed that Austria was out for
the punishment of the assassins, and never for a
moment suspected the criminal designs of the
Hapsburgs.

I realised at once that this attitude of the
English Press might well constitute a real danger
to the peace of Europe. I was positive that the
Government of Vienna, which was totally incap-
able of believing in disinterested motives or in
frank dealing, would read heaven knows what
ultra - pacific tendencies into the English
papers and that it would encourage them to make
most unreasonable demands on Serbia. And I
feared this all the more as I found out that Sir
Edward Grey had completely failed in obtaining
any light as to the intended demands of Austria.

I made up my mind to do the best I could
in my own modest capacity, and in the afternoon
in my own room at the Ritz I saw Mr. Steed,
then foreign editor of the Times, and author of
the well-known book on the Hapsburg Monarchy ;
Mr. Gwynne, editor of the Morning Post, a friend

J.I. G

98 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

of twenty-five years' standing ; and Professor
Gerothwohl, who wrote for the Standard.

My friends knew Vienna too well to be taken
in, but all round them were the many victims of
Count Mensdorff's honeyed tongue.

I explained to them that, knowing as I did the
bellicose disposition of Austria, they were endan-
gering the peace of Europe in encouraging her.
I begged them in the interests of peace to warn
Austria, and to do it in a pretty stiff tone, the only
tone understood in Vienna and Budapesth. I
added that I took upon myself full responsibility
for this Press campaign, which I believed to be
useful not only in the interests of peace but of
the wretched Hapsburg Monarchy itself.

On the following morning, both the Times
and the Morning Post published vehement leaders
denouncing the Austrian plot and giving the
Hapsburgs a warning which should have prevented
them taking the plunge if the Tisza-Forgasch-
Berchtold trio had not been completely demented.
At any rate English public opinion was awakened.
Most of the Press followed the example given by
the Times and Morning Post. The alarm signal
had been given.

When, a few days later, on the morning of
the 24th, Austria's monstrous ultimatum ap-
peared, everything was made clear even to the
most unbelieving. At any rate in England pre-
judice in favour of Austria was dead for ever.

We who had given the alarm signal were right.
How happy we should have been to have been
wrong !

England's Antipathy to

XI

ENGLAND'S ANTIPATHY TO WAR

DURING my long official life I have made and
received too many confidences not to know
the obligations attaching to my position.
It is only the insistence with which Germany dis-
seminates the false legend that the war is the work
of the British Empire that forces me to depart
from my usual discretion, which I believe up till
now has been unchallenged.

I am going to tell of two personal matters,
the first of which dates from January, 1913.

I was then in London, and through conversation
with the British Foreign Minister and other
authoritative representatives of English thought
I had acquired a deep conviction that England
passionately longed for peace. For this reason
I believed her relations with Germany — who at
the moment was usefully employed in muzzling the
warlike proclivities of her ally Austria-Hungary
—were becoming closer and more cordial. Thus
on the 7th of January, 1913, I allowed myself to
write to the late King Charles telling him that,
given the unshakable determination of England

and Germany to prevent European war, I was

101

102 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

certain it would never break out. But that,
as people will say, is ancient history.

Well, on Tuesday, the 21st of July, 1914, two
days before the Austrian ultimatum was pre-
sented to Serbia, I had the honour of being
received in a long audience by Sir Edward Grey,1
Minister of Foreign Affairs to the British Empire.

I wanted to get him to assist the State of
Albania to get out of the impasse it was in.
And I tried to convince him of the necessity of
sending an international contingent to Albania
and of putting a little more money at the disposal
of the Prince of Wied.

After explaining to him the European aspect
of Albanian difficulties, I pointed out that Albania
was liable to reduce Austria to the state of
nerves she had been in during the Balkan war.
This is literally what I said : "I know that there
are people who imagine that a war between
Austria and Italy may be the result of tolerating
the present mix-up in Albania and that it is a
way of detaching Italy from the Triple Alliance,
but this would be a short-sighted dangerous
policy."

Sir Edward Grey, in a tone of real sincerity
— that particular sincerity of English statesmen
which imposes respect and confidence on the
world — interrupted me with a display of emotion
rare in such a collected person, saying, " But I
do not want to detach Italy from the Triple
Alliance and I have never tried to do so. I have
always realised that if Italy left the Triple

1 Now Viscount Grey.

ENGLAND'S ANTIPATHY TO WAR 103

Alliance and joined France and Russia the
combination against Germany and Austria would
become so powerful that the peace of Europe,
which rests on the balance of power, would be
endangered. I want nothing but peace, I work
for nothing but peace." And in order that we may
fully realise the importance of this communication,
I must add that a few minutes later Sir Edward
Grey spoke to me of the extreme gravity of the
political situation owing to the Austro-Serbian
quarrel. He was fully aware of the possibilities
inherent in the situation, and was all the more
acutely anxious as it had been impossible for
him to discover what Austria's terms to Serbia
were.

This happened forty-eight hours before the
fatal ultimatum which was, and will remain, one
of the most tragic blots on the escutcheon of
European history. The ultimatum will also be
remembered as the most formidable blow ever
delivered at small nations whose existence, com-
pared with that of the large nations, is so difficult,
so anxious, and so painful.

The Responsibility for the War

XII

THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR

THE true history of the responsibility for the
war may be summed up as follows : —

Austria, who had never given up the
idea of obtaining compensation in the Balkan
Peninsula for her losses in Italy, allowed the Turco-
Balkan war of 1912 to take place, because she, like
Germany, was convinced that the Turks would
win. Was there not in Turkey a Military Mission,
and was it possible to think that the pupils of
the Germans could be beaten ? Was it thinkable
that wretched serfs could be of serious military
value ?

The defeat of the Turks falsified all the calcu-
lations of Austria, and from that moment she
lost her head and conceived the project of plung-
ing Europe into blood and fire in order to regain
for herself the prestige which she thought had
passed away from her.

I repeat the charge that during the whole
period between the battle of Lule-Burgas until
the Peace of London, Austria wished to provoke
a European war.

The Anglo-German entente for preserving the
benefits of peace for Europe, an entente that at

107

108 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

the time was genuine, proved an insuperable
barrier to the prospects of Austria. Nevertheless
she did not give up her intentions. With re-
markable intuition as to human weakness she
scented the possibility of war amongst the
victors, and she encouraged Bulgaria to commit
the fatal act which brought it about.

When she found herself once more mistaken
in her calculations and Bulgaria beaten by
the hated Serbs, Austria decided herself to fall
upon Serbia — M. Giolitti has given us irrefutable
proofs of this. And now we are going to allow
ourselves to imitate M. Giolitti and produce
another proof which hitherto has remained un-
known.

1 In May, 1913, Count Berchtold charged the
Austro-Hungarian Minister in Bucharest to make
a communication to the Roumanian Government
(to which both the Serbs and the Greeks had
appealed in view of the possibility of attack by
Bulgaria), and the communication was this :
" Austria will defend Bulgaria by force of arms."
In other words, Roumania, although the ally of
Austria, would be attacked by Austria if she
opposed the crushing of Serbia !

Count Andrassy can put his hands on this
document in the Ballplatz, but our Minister of
Foreign Affairs will find no copy of it in our
archives, because Count Berchtold's note was
only read to a single minister — myself. Though
I was not the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Prince Fiirstenberg read it aloud to me, and
my reply was such that he refrained from

THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR 109

delivering it to the person for whom it was really
intended.

Events gradually became as clear as the day.
On two different occasions in 1913, Austria-
Hungary tried to make war on Serbia. She
was prevented from doing so by Germany,
Italy and Roumania, but she did not give up the
idea.

In April, 1914, at Bucharest she put forward
the idea of a preventive war very seriously.
When the crime of Serajevo took place she was
on the alert, we know with what result.

It is now quite certain that the tragedy of
Serajevo was a pretext and not a cause of the
war. It is known that the person guilty of
provoking this monstrous conflict was Count
Tisza, who because of his great ability was in
charge of Austrian policy during the months that
led up to the war.

It is no use to argue that, in the days im-
mediately preceding the declaration of war,
Count Tisza and Berchtold, realising that their
game was turning into a tragedy, took fright
and wished to retreat, but were prevented
from doing so by the impatience of the German
Emperor.

Count Tisza, who had been miraculously de-
livered from the Archduke Francis Ferdinand—
whose anti-Magyarism was an open secret — saw
in this very incident an unique opportunity of
consolidating the dominion of the Magyars in
Hungary and the dominion of Hungary in the
Empire. He hurled himself into the adventure

110 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

with his overbearing energy, that brutal energy
which had so often been exercised in the Parlia-
ment at Budapesth.

Tisza took the risk of Europe being drenched
in blood in order that Magyarism might triumph.
He succeeded, but it is only just that, among
those things which have been struck down by
the eternal Nemesis, the crime of Magyarism
should be the most heavily punished.

King Charles of Roumania

XIII
KING CHARLES OF ROUMANIA

I DO not propose here to draw a portrait or even
a sketch of King Charles. One day it is my
intention to outline in detail the features of
this King I knew so well, who without being a
great man was undeniably a personality. I will
do it with complete impartiality, for I have never
been — and it is not in me to be — a courtier, but
at the same time with the sympathy I naturally
feel for a sovereign whose adviser I was during
so many years. For the moment I only wish
to say enough to render intelligible his attitude
during the war.

King Charles was one of those spirits, cast in
a narrow, circumscribed mould, which are just
as incapable of a folly as of action on a great
scale. He had impeccable tact, a marvellous
capacity for seeing both sides of every question,
tireless industry, a sound sense which could easily
be mistaken for genuine intelligence, a deep
sense of duty, cultivation unusual in a monarch,
perfect manners, a patience which sometimes
seemed, quite wrongly, like indifference, and
with all this a great and quite legitimate regard
for what history would say of him in the

J.I. H

114 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

future. For normal times, therefore, he was
remarkably well equipped. But for moments
of crisis the characteristics I have enumerated
are inadequate and almost tiresome. With all
his powers, King Charles, whose physical courage
was assuredly beyond question, was lacking in
moral courage, and the very idea of initiative
was foreign to him. It is this combination of
qualities and defects, emphasised by age, which
explains the part played by the King during the
world-war. So far as it specially relates to
Roumanian policy I do not propose to describe
his attitude. The whole situation will be dealt
with fully in my coming Memoirs on the origin
of the war and the share taken in it by Roumania.

To tell all I know about those who have played
any part in these unprecedented circumstances
is a debt I owe to history, and perhaps, when
everything that took place behind the scenes
is known, some moments of deplorable hesitation
and moral weakness, otherwise inexplicable, will
be understood. Inevitably I shall have to con-
cern myself from the outset with the position
of King Charles, not only for what he did himself
but above all for what others did in their eager-
ness to anticipate his thoughts and his wishes.
I only desire now to relate his opinions on the
world war and its consequences.

King Charles, it is fair to say, was no
admirer of the Emperor William. The Kaiser's
stormy and ill-regulated activity was utterly
distasteful to him; and besides he cherished a
genuine love of peace. He had too much sense

KING CHARLES OF ROUMANIA 115

to overlook the peril and misery involved in a
general war or to face it with a light heart.
Again, in justice to the King, let me add that
within his limits he really worked for peace.
I shall never forget that in February and March,
1913, King Charles was the one convinced cham-
pion of my policy, the object of which was to
prevent a sanguinary conflict between Bulgaria
and ourselves, a conflict which would at that
time inevitably have resulted in universal war.
It is true that at a certain moment he deserted
me, but, when I none the less maintained an
absolute non possumus, the King frankly con-
fessed to me that he would never have given
way to the war party if he had not been certain
that I would stand my ground. Monarchs some-
times make us unexpected confidences. King
Charles once spent a full half-hour in explaining
to me why he was fundamentally incapable of
gratitude !

Until 1912 the King had lived in the conviction
that the general war would not break out during
his lifetime. In the Autumn of 1912 he sent his
nephew — now King Ferdinand of Roumania —
to Berlin to learn the intentions of the Emperor
William. The Crown Prince brought back the
answer that the Emperor believed a conflict
between pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism to be
inevitable, but that he hoped it would not take
place while he lived. King Charles for his part
was so convinced of the stability of peace that he
ventured in the Spring of 1914 to receive a visit
from the Czar at Constanza. which he would

116 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

never have done had he thought that a few months
afterwards he might have to consider the possi-
bility of declaring war on him. Even on July
9th, 1914, when King Charles confided to me at
Sinaia the Kaiser's great secret — namely, that he
had decided to bring about the European war — he
added that this would not take place for three or
four years. That the old King was quite honest
in saying so I am absolutely convinced for a
thousand reasons, the strongest of which, based
on his own temperament, is that had King
Charles imagined that the world-war on which
the Kaiser had determined would break out
twenty-two days later, he would have begun at
once to take steps to ensure that his personal
policy should at least have every possible chance
of success. In point of fact, he took no such
step until the days just preceding the declaration
of war. Now during the whole of his reign he
had subordinated everything to the single idea of
making himself the autocrat of Roumania's
foreign policy. He would not have left himself
completely unarmed on the day of the crisis
had he known beforehand the date on which that
crisis would occur.

Before the meeting of the Crown Council on
August 3rd, 1914, King Charles had confined
any action on his own part solely to conversations
with his Ministers. Of these conversations
history will have more to say. The cardinal
point, which is within my personal knowledge,
is that the King always contended that England
would remain neutral. Like nearly all Germans,

KING CHARLES OF ROUMANIA 117

King Charles was not merely ignorant of England,
but totally incapable of understanding her. The
Anglo-Saxon world is always surprised that
Germans are as blind as they are where England
is concerned : the truth is that, apart from very
rare and partial exceptions, the German is
organically unable to appreciate the English
spirit. England was simply excluded from the
old King's calculations, and with the tone of
authority which monarchs are accustomed to
use, especially on subjects which they know
nothing about, he pronounced his opinion as if
it were gospel.

King Charles was equally ignorant of the
workings of the Italian mind. He could not
believe that Italy would dare to detach herself
from Germany, and the attitude she actually
adopted disconcerted no less than it surprised
him. So convinced was he that Italy would not
venture to separate herself from her all-powerful
allies, that when the Italian Minister came to
inform him confidentially of the intentions of
his Government, in the event of war resulting from
the ultimatum to Serbia, and emphasised the
fact that he was only authorised to communicate
this to the King on the understanding that
his Majesty pledged himself to repeat no word of
it to anyone, King Charles naively asked him if
he must keep it a secret even from Berlin. The
Minister's answer was that this went without
saying, since when the Italian Government
wished to make a communication to the German
Government, it would take particular care to do

118 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

so at Berlin and not at Sinai a. It should be
added that there was no love lost between these
two. The King disliked the Italian Minister
and the latter reciprocated his sentiments with
interest.

Given these views on England and Italy,
together with his profound admiration for
Germany's military organisation and the opinions
which were so widely entertained in half-informed
circles on the military deficiencies of France,
it is far from surprising that King Charles allowed
himself to be convinced, not only that Germany
would win, but that she would do so very rapidly.
When one considers his conduct during the sum-
mer and autumn of 1914, which accorded so
ill with the higher interests of the country he
had made his own, one must take into account
the extenuating circumstance that, with the
best will in the world, a Roumanian by adoption
could not be conscious of the problem of our
national unity in the same sense as a Roumanian
by birth, and that the King was more than
sincere in his belief that Germany could not be
beaten.

When at the Crown Council of August 3rd,
1914, the King told us that by our refusal to
allow him to enter the war at the side of the
Central Empires we had destroyed the whole
great work of the Roumanian renaissance, that
we had ruined our country for ever, and that the
immediate future would show us how right he
was, he was perfectly sincere. He was sure
of a German victory, and King Charles was never

KING CHARJLES OF ROUMANIA 119

one of those who can rise to the level of under-
standing that it is better to be beaten in the
defence of right than to follow the call of trium-
phant wrong.

So little did King Charles believe in the possi-
bility of resisting Germany, that some days after
the famous Crown Council he was at pains to
inform me exactly how the war would develop.
According to him, it was to last, at the most,
until December, and in January, if not sooner,
the Peace Conference, which would change the
organisation of the world from top to bottom,
would be called together. Before the 15th of
September the Emperor William was to be in
Paris. Immediately afterwards a revolution
woujd break out in France, and Germany would
grant her defeated enemy a peace, generous
beyond all expectation, only depriving her of her
colonies and a mere trifle of territory. Germany,
added the King, would never repeat the error of
maintaining the Republic in France. On the
contrary, she would help in the restoration of
the monarchy, in the person of Prince Victor
Napoleon. Once peace was signed in France,
the Emperor would turn with all his force against
Russia, and before December would achieve
the task, which had been too much for Napoleon,
of occupying Moscow and Petrograd. This would
be the end of the war, to be followed by the
dismemberment of Russia on the lines of the
famous scheme dating from Bismarck's time,
which, however, it must be remembered, the
great Chancellor insisted should only be carried

120 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

out in concert with England. It is needless to
dwell on what I said in reply to this fantastic
dream, which from the lips of a man ordinarily
so full of common-sense as King Charles, im-
pressed me very strangely. Quite vainly I tried
to make him understand that there would be no
revolution in France, that there would be no
restitution of the monarchy, and that it was
incomprehensible that the Napoleons, children
of victory, should ever owe the recovery of their
throne to a defeat. The King seemed to have
been hypnotised. The more he spoke to me
the more conscious I became of that terribly
intoxicating quality in the idea of German
omnipotence, which could at so great a distance
enchain the mind of an old man whose deliberate
judgment had always been his master quality.

King Charles was so wholly and utterly
convinced that Germany must win that he
quite openly criticised his nephew, King Albert,
of whom he was really fond, for what he called
his fatal error in opposing the march of the
German troops through Belgium. There was
something very painful to me in the King's
insistence on this subject, and one August day,
when he happened to say that the war had not
brought to the front a single great man, I replied
that he was mistaken, for there was already one
name inscribed on the page of immortality —
that of his nephew, King Albert, of whom he
had full cause to be proud. And since the King
maintained his point of view that another policy
would have been more to Belgium's advantage,

KING CHARLES OF ROUMANIA 121

I repeated to him the answer I had given the even-
ing before to the German Minister, when he,
too, had said the same thing. I had asked the
German Minister if he had never sacrificed his
interest to his honour. When he assured me that
he would never do anything else, I replied in my
turn that nations had the right to consider
their personal honour as well as individuals.

On the anniversary of Sedan, or the day
before, the Emperor William telegraphed from
Rheims to King Charles that he could assure
him, after having consulted his military chiefs,
that at length France lay at his feet. The King
enjoyed that day the last genuine gratification
of his life. Not that he hated France, far from
it ; nothing would have pleased him better
than an understanding between France and
Germany, but he thought he saw his forecast
justified. The Sovereign, who had been touched
to his innermost being by discovering his in-
ability to impose his will on Roumania, as he
had hitherto done throughout his reign, cherished
a last hope of at least being able to say to us one
da> : " You see, I was right." Further, it is by
no means certain that he did not hope to revive
his policy and see Roumania, after all, at Ger-
many's side when the German victory was estab-
lished beyond dispute. That this was his hope
I myself believe.

Cruel awakening as the battle of the Marne
was for King Charles, he tried to deceive himself
on the consequences of that critical event. I
saw him a few days after this marvellous victory,

122 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

which will remain one of the happiest and most
significant dates in the annals of mankind.
The King told me that what had happened was
nothing but a strategic retreat ; as always, he
clung to the idea that the German army could not
be beaten. I could not control myself and, for-
getting the respect due to his position and his
years, I explained to him, in unrestrained terms,
the absurdity of the idea that an army, which
had sacrificed everything for the sake of advanc-
ing at headlong speed, had determined to lose
all the benefit of this forward movement without
having been defeated. King Charles — the words
dropping slowly from his lips in a fashion which
told plainly how his spirit had been overwhelmed
by a reality he had never dared to suspect-
said to me very gently, " Perhaps, then, I am
mistaken ; perhaps you are right ; perhaps
they have been beaten." The more I think of
this conversation the more I am conscious of
King Charles' moral distress during this last
period of his life. I often saw him then, although
I never asked for an audience. It was always
the King, deeply pained as he was by the cam-
paign I was conducting against Germany, who
sent for me.

At one of these interviews our talk touched
on the name of his sister, the Countess of Flanders,
mother of King Albert. In a tone of deep
despair the old King said to me : " God has
been good to her, he has taken her before this
terrible day. Up to now the Almighty has been
good to me also, but he has deserted me at last.

KING CHARLES OF ROUMANIA 123

How much better it would have been for me to
die before this war." I was deeply touched,
and answered him that I perfectly understood,
and that for him indeed it would have been
better had he died before war broke out. It
was with these melancholy reflections that my
last serious interview with King Charles came to an
end, and I am convinced that it was the spectacle
of the collapse of his fondest beliefs that hastened
his death.

He was one more victim of the belief which,
for every German had become a maxim of life,
that Germany was so strong that she was in-
vincible. Before the battle of the Marne he
expressed it by saying, " For a century pan-
Germanism will be supreme : then will come the
era of the Slav." King Charles believed the day
of the Latin world was done, and as for the
Anglo-Saxon world, he never even began to
understand it.

Herr Riedl

XIV

HERR RIEDL

DURING the Balkan crisis Roumania found
herself in a most painful position. She had
let the opportune moment pass for dis-
cussing with Bulgaria the pushing of her frontier
beyond the Danube. The best moment was before
Bulgaria mobilised, or at any rate the few days
between the calling-up order and the beginning of
the campaign. It was not till after the battle of
Lule Burgas, when a new Government, in which
my party held half the portfolios, came into
office, that overtures with Bulgaria were begun.
We know how difficult they were.

Russia did not conceal her intention of help-
ing Bulgaria, if it so happened that we attacked
her.

The eventuality of Roumania asking for
Austrian aid also came into the category of
possibilities.

It was at that moment Austria thought fit to
hand us the note prepared in anticipation of
her eventual assistance. She sent a M. Riedl to
Bucharest, a gentleman I prefer calling Herr
Riedl, for rarely have I seen so representative
a type of a man replete with that particular

127

128 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

form of bookish, undigested information which
is almost a monopoly of the German race.

He filled some very high position in the Vien-
nese bureaucracy, and was the confidential agent
of Francis Ferdinand, some said his future
Finance Minister. His mind was most dogmatic.
It is hardly worth while to add that he knew
nothing about human psychology. Germans find
it an inaccessible realm.

Herr Riedl's first business was with our Minister
of Finance and our Minister of Commerce. I
don't know whether our Finance Minister saw
through him, but our Minister of Commerce
did, and rang me up to tell me Riedl had asked
him to conclude a Customs Union with Austria-
Hungary, neither more nor less. He added that
Herr Riedl was coming on to see me.

He came, and stayed with me for over an hour.
The talk consisted, for the most part, of a mono-
logue. His French was bad, but it did not
prevent him from saying what he thought. He
became quite lost among his own theories and
statements. He arranged facts to suit himself,
instead of basing his theories on existing facts.
His dogmatism in no wise precluded his having
recourse to cunning. Herr Riedl, in fact, would
have made an excellent diplomatist to deal with
imbeciles. He would have impressed them by
his scientific jargon and he would have taken
them in by his appearance of candour.

Herr Riedl began by laying down that Turkey
in Europe must be divided amongst the Balkan
nations. Therefore Austria, who stood to lose

HERE RIEDL 129

the Turkish Market, had a claim to economic
compensation, and in dealing with this question
of compensation she was anxious to arrive first
at an understanding with Roumania. If we
made difficulties she would begin with Bulgaria.
The blackmail was obvious.

Herr Riedl, who was out to ask for a Customs
Union, was careful not to mention these words.
He preferred a Preferential Tariff.

He explained to me at some length that the
system known as the most-favoured nation treat-
ment had had its day, and that in future the world
would advance to the tune of the preferential
tariff. Austria wished to inaugurate the system,
and it consisted in this. Austria, in return for
a certain limited quantity of our food products —
the quantity necessary for her own consumption —
would allow us a preference, and we were to do the
same for certain industrial products from Austria,
but we were not to be allowed to grant a similar
preference to other nations. The system was
to be carried into effect when our existing com-
mercial treaties expired, but we were to conclude
the agreement immediately.

When I objected that we should thus run the
risk of having no other state to trade with us,
he recognised that this was quite possible.
Austria and Roumania would then have a tariff
war with all the rest of the world. And when
I said that all it meant was our entry into a
Customs Union with Austria, he was obliged to
admit that I was right.

I pointed out to him that his system had not
j.i. i

130 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

been tried anywhere, and he instanced the
preferential tariffs of Canada and South Africa
in favour of England. " But they are parts of
the British Empire," I said, " and Roumania
is a state independent of Austria." He pre-
tended not to understand my objection. At
bottom he knew well enough that for us to enter a
Customs Union with Austria would mean the
loss of our independence. Probably he thought
that we should be flattered by this prospect.

I proved to him at length why we never could
accept his system, and I explained to him that
we meant to develop our industries. I told
him we wished to control our own tariff system,
and that, as for our cereals, our wood and our
petrol, we could export them everywhere, especi-
ally to the west and to Germany, without any
preference in the Austrian market. I added
that we clung too tightly to our political and
economic independence to be tempted by the
dole of a little extra profit on our cereals.

Then he let his imagination loose. He told
me that the world could no longer continue
as it was, that Europe must organise herself
against the tyranny of pirate powers and of
America.

He divided old Europe into three groups.
The first, composed of England and France,
were pirate states, which lived not by their own
production but by exploiting colonies. He de-
veloped this nonsense with so much gravity and
emphasis that I had great difficulty in preventing
myself from laughing. The two pirate states

HERR RIEDL 181

ought to be hunted out of the European market
and isolated and left to pine alone.

The second group consisted of Russia, who had
no right to remain in Europe. She ought to
be hunted into Asia, or at any rate banished
beyond Moscow. Russia ought to be cut off
from the Baltic and from the Black Sea, and, thus
reduced, should be left to her proper economic
fate.

The rest of Europe was to be organised into a
great Tariff Union, of which the Austro-Rouman-
ian agreement was to be the corner stone. He
said that Austria would take upon herself to get
the consent of Germany to his scheme. Once
this was done, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and
Holland, the states of the north and the states
cut away from Russia would be compelled to
enter this Union, and the world would be trans-
formed.

When I objected that Germany had much to
lose in such an arrangement, as she risked for-
feiting that oversea commerce which played so
great a part in her national economy, he replied
that it was precisely in order to fight the United
States that the new organisation of Europe had
become necessary. And he let himself go about
the American invasion, the American danger
and so on.

He was immensely astonished when I told
him that I saw nothing to worry about in the
development of America, that it was perfectly
natural, and that the hegemony of the white
races would pass to the other side of the Atlantic.

132 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

" Just think," I said. " The nations over there
are not hampered by our military slavery, our
prejudices, our monarchies, our aristocracies.
For this reason they are greatly superior to us,
and it is impossible that they should not get
the upper hand."

At that moment I was not able to add the
strongest argument of all — the madness of a
universal war, which has brought the transfer
of this hegemony nearer by half a century.

I think this was the climax for Herr Riedl.
He realised that there was nothing to be done
with me, and though he still paid calls and pre-
tended to take quite seriously the promises
made to him of examining his system carefully,
he was under no illusions, and went back to
Vienna.

I have never heard of him since.

Count Szeczen

XV

COUNT SZECZEN

COUNT SZECZEN was the last Austro-
Hungarian ambassador in Paris, and we
must hope he will remain the last. What-
ever survives of the Hapsburg monarchy, if by ill
fortune anything does survive, it will never be able
to afford the luxury of having an ambassador.

There is nothing either good or bad about
Count Szeczen which makes him stand out. He
is just one of those many Counts out of which the
Dual Empire manufactured diplomatists. If he
takes the trouble to look at my souvenirs he would
find out that he was the first Hapsburg diplomat
to appear to me under a new and purely Magyar
form. Since then I have seen many more of
them. But before I met Count Szeczen I had
only met what are called " Kaiserlicks " even
among the Magyars. My memory of Szeczen
is distinct because of that. Even twenty years
ago, though he represented the Dual Monarchy
and received his instructions from Vienna, he was
Magyar, very Magyar and nothing but Magyar.
At the time of which I am speaking he was
first Secretary of Legation at Bucharest, under
Count Goluchowsky. There was an agitation

135

136 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

at the time in our country over the Roumanians
in Hungary. The Magyars had made the rule
to which they subjected non-Magyar national-
ities in their midst harsher, and naturally we
were not able to hide the sense of bitterness
which Magyar injustice left in our souls. The
press was violent and all sorts of demonstrations
took place.

Similarly the Austro-Hungarian Government
began to take umbrage, and the Roumanian
Government, of which I was a member, did not
know which way to turn.

I was very intimate with Count Szeczen. We
saw each other constantly, and tacitly agreed
never to touch on the question of the Roumanians
in Hungary. This was often awkward, but we
pretended not to be aware of it. Our intimacy
was only possible on these terms.

One day Count Szeczen broke the silence.
An incident had occurred which was of no par-
ticular gravity, but it was something Count
Szeczen could not swallow. I think a Hungarian
flag had been torn up. He had just had lun-
cheon with me, and he made up his mind to speak
to me as soon as we were alone together in my
study. He began bitterly by imputing motives
of tolerance or complicity to our Government
as we had not taken action against the demon-
strators, and, warming up, he said word for word
almost as follows : — " You are now playing a
dangerous game. You accept the axiom that we
can never come to an understanding with Russia
and you count on a future war between us and

COUNT SZECZEN 137

the Russians. Well, you are mistaken. If the
time ever comes that we are convinced that we
cannot count on you as the loyal ally of the
Magyar Union, the only state which concerns us
and one which we would defend with the last
drop of our blood, we shall come to an under-
standing with Russia. After all, the Carpathians
make a first rate frontier, and Galicia, Roumania,
Constantinople even, are as nothing when it is a
question of preserving to Hungary its character
a? a Magyar Union. Believe me, nothing is more
possible than a definite and permanent under-
standing between Magyars and Russians. We
shall be on one slope of the Carpathians, looking
towards the Adriatic, they will be on the other
slope, facing towards the Black Sea. And that
will be the end for ever of the Roumanian question,
not only in Hungary but everywhere."

I let Count Szeczen unfold his scheme. He was
furious, and paid no heed to the fact that it was
very strange that an Austro - Hungarian diplo-
mat should speak in this way to a Roumanian
Minister.

When I replied that I had never had any
doubt about the hostility of Magyar feeling
towards us, but that all the same his threats had
no effect on me, as I did not believe in the possi-
bility of a Russo-Magyar alliance, he saw his
mistake and stammered out an excuse that was
no excuse. As we neither of us had any wish
to quarrel we let the discussion drop.

That day Szeczen had revealed to me the
depths of his Magyar soul. This proud predatory

138 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

people will never become resigned to live its own
life as a national state like England, France,
Spain or Italy. They mean to dominate other
nationalities or perish. Any other solution is
impossible.

Count Karolyi's policy cannot be explained in
any other way. It is identical with that with
which Count Szeczen in an angry moment threat-
ened me more than twenty years ago. Often
what appears to be new is really old.

Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace

XVI

SIR DONALD MACKENZIE WALLACE

MANY, many years ago, during the last
period of the reign of the great Queen
Victoria, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace
was my guest at Sinaia. Sir Donald was very well
known in England. He began life in diplomacy,
directed the foreign policy of the Times for a very
long period, was Lord Dufferin's right hand man
in India, and was extremely intimate up till the
day of his death with King Edward, then Prince
of Wales. Sir Donald wrote a classic on Russia,
a book which has been translated into all languages.
He was chosen by King Edward to accompany
King George, when Prince of Wales, in his tour
round the Empire, and he wrote an account of the
trip. He attended the peace conferences of Ports-
mouth and Algeciras ; and he was the guest of Sir
Arthur Nicholson at Petrograd when the Anglo-
Russian alliance was concluded.

I have had many interesting interviews with
Sir Donald during my life. The one I am about
to relate is of extraordinary importance.

We were both walking in a splendid forest,
and our conversation had turned to world
politics. Sir Donald said :

" The present policy of the European Powers

141

142 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

is absurd. We are all victims of the prejudices
of the elder statesmen who perpetuate the truths
of their youth which no longer correspond with
actuality. For example, in England we are
dominated by two so-called axioms, both equally
out of date. We live in dread of the bogey of a
Russia wishing to chase us out of India, and we
believe ourselves the eternal rival of France.
Now all that is untrue — utterly untrue. There
is enough room in Asia for England as well as
Russia ; perhaps we already take up more room
there than the Asiatics approve of. Anglo-
French rivalry is a prehistoric peep dating from
the epoch when there were only two great powers
in the world, France and England. To-day it
means nothing whatever. England always has
been and always must be an essentially pacific
power, essentially conservative so far as inter-
national politics are concerned. France, for a
thousand reasons, is now an equally pacific
and conservative power. The only revolutionary
power in international politics is Germany. It
is Germany who keeps the world on the alert,
it is Germany alone who threatens its peace.
You may expect to see great changes when the
elder statesmen have given way to another gen-
eration. You will see England become France's
greatest friend, and the famous antagonism be-
between England and Russia relegated to a
museum of antiquities."

When Sir Donald predicted this, speaking so
succinctly and frankly, it was a new point of
view. But since then it has all happened

SIR DONALD MACKENZIE WALLACE 143

That evening we spoke of Roumania, of her
people, of her future. Sir Donald had studied
the question of the Roumanians in Hungary
in detail. He had even been to Brashov, Sibiu
and Blaj, the districts chiefly concerned, and
had talked to the representative Roumanians
living there.

Suddenly he asked me the great question :

" You have a treaty of alliance with Austria—
you needn't deny it, I know it. But do you
think that when the moment comes for you to
put it into effect you will be able to do it ? Per-
sonally I cannot see how you can."

" I do not know whether we have a treaty of
alliance with Austria or not," I replied, for I
was bound to absolute secrecy. " If it exists
I agree with you no one in the world could carry
it into effect."

Sir Donald must have made a mental note of
my statement, which was as clear as his own.

Circumstances have shown that I, in my turn,
was a true prophet.

Baron Banffy

XVII
BARON BANFFY

1SAW Baron Banffy, the most overbearing of
all Hungarian ministers (and that is saying a
good deal), but once. It was in the first days
of January, 1896. Banffy was a big cheery fellow
with pointed moustaches, who looked like a
Magyarised edition of a typical French official.

He was a second-rate man, but in spite of this
his extreme energy imposed on people even
when he was expressing himself in a language
he spoke badly. Banffy came from Transyl-
vania, and could speak Roumanian. As a prefet,
for he had begun by being a prefet, he had served
a good apprenticeship in working the political
oracle among the electorate. He did the same
thing later on as Prime Minister of Hungary.

When I was in Vienna in January, 1896, he
intimated his wish to make my acquaintance
through a Hungarian deputy of the Independent
Party. The reason that the Hungarian Premier
wanted to see me was not far to seek. It was
merely curiosity. It was because I was the first
Roumanian Minister to give subsidies, secret
subsidies, not only to the Roumanian schools
and churches of Transylvania, but also to

147

148 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

newspapers and political committees. In order
to subsidise the papers I commissioned journalists
to write class books ostensibly for use in the
Roumanian schools of Macedonia, and I paid
for the work right royally. I need hardly explain
that the class books were not always written.

Banffy after a while had scented something of
this political activity, of which, as a matter of
fact, my colleagues in the Cabinet were unaware,
with the exception of the Prime Minister,
Lascar Catgari — and I only told him after having
done it for two and a half years. He did not
blame me, but my political opponents in Rou-
mania denounced my activities, and it was in this
way that Banffy came to be certain of what I
was up to. As I had been turned out of office
in October, 1895, Banffy was anxious to see the
enemy of his people at close quarters.

After leaving Vienna I stayed at Budapesth,
and asked for an audience from the Hungarian
Prime Minister. He received me in the wonder-
ful Royal Palace of Bude, from which one gets
such a glorious view over the Danube and over
Pesth. Banffy quite naturally spoke to me on
the subject of the Roumanians in Hungary.

He began rather brusquely by saying. ** I hope
you are not going to tell me that you don't want
to annex Transylvania." " No," I replied, " I
shall not tell you that ; if I did you would not
believe it, and would only think that you were
dealing with a liar or with a man who does not
love his country. I want to annex Transylvania,
but I can't do it."

BARON BANFFY 149

And then in my turn I said to him, " I hope
you are not going to tell me that you don't wish
to move the frontiers of the Magyar state to the
Black Sea." With real good temper Banffy
replied, " No, I won't tell you that. I do want
to move Hungary's frontier to the Black Sea,
but I can't do it."

Then I said, " As the historical case between
us cannot be settled either in your favour or in
mine, and since we are neighbours, is it not
possible for us to find a modus vivendi ? You
have made the conditions for Roumanians in
Hungary intolerable, why don't you change
them ? "

Banffy began a series of explanations, one
falser than the other, in order to prove that there
had been no oppression. And by way of some-
thing final he asked me why Roumanians in
Hungary would not take part in elections and
would not come to the Parliament at Budapesth
to put forward their grievances ? " I must
explain that at this period the Roumanians
of Hungary had adopted the policy of passive
resistance, which included abstention from the
farce known in Hungary as elections. I looked
Baron Banffy straight between the eyes, knowing
that I was dealing with a vain man from whom
one might obtain anything by flattering his
vanity. " Look here, Baron Banffy," I said,
" we both know what elections are in our re-
spective countries. Can you tell me perfectly
truthfully that if Roumanians were to offer
themselves for election and you did not wish

150 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

them to be elected there would be a single one
who could be returned against your will ? "
Banffy answered, " Not a single one if I did not
wish it." Thus I got him to discard his little
joke about Roumanians participating in elections,
a proceeding devoid of all sense unless Rouman-
ians and Magyars were to come to a mutual
understanding. Then going back to the idea of
a modus vivendi, I said, "I have no mandate
for the Roumanians of Hungary, I am not
speaking in their name, but would it be impossible
for you to come to an agreement similar to that
you have made with the Saxons in Transylvania
and in this way protect their churches, their
schools and certain electoral divisions ? '

Banffy answered with the most brutal frank-
ness. " As for that, never. The Saxons in
Transylvania are but 230,000 in number and
they are more than 700 miles from the Germans
of Germany, whereas the Roumanians in Hungary
are three and a half millions strong and are
geographically contiguous to the Roumanians
of Roumania. It can never be."

We continued to discuss the matter. I asked
him whether it would not at least be possible to
give Transylvania the same electoral franchise
as Hungary and the secret ballot.

" Never," answered Banffy once again.

He rang and ordered the electoral map of the
Kingdom of Hungary to be brought in.

" Look at this map," he said, the purely
Magyar areas of Hungary return ' Kossuthist '
deputies, that is to say partisans of a rupture

BARON BANFFY 151

with Austria, which would be the end of Magyar
domination. My Government, like the Govern-
ments that have gone before and those which
will follow after, only exists because of the
division amongst nationalities. With the secret
ballot we should lose this advantage — in short,
we could no longer govern."

After an hour of useless talk Banffy asked me
if there was a single point on which we agreed.
6 Yes," I said, " we are agreed that we never
can agree on any point."

When I rose to bid him farewell we walked
past the window with the view over the Danube
and over Pesth. " What a magnificent capital
you have there," I remarked. " Well, come and
take it," gaily answered Banffy.

" Even if I could, I never would take it, but
its occupation is quite another matter," said I.

Most of this conversation with Baron Banffy has
already appeared in the pages of Sir Mount
Stuart Grant Duff's diary. I had told him
about it in London some years after it happened.

Never have I had so clear and categorical an
explanation from any Hungarian statesman of
the irremediable antagonism of our two points
of view.

Roumanian Policy

XVIII
ROUMANIAN POLICY

IN 1908 I was dining at the house of a great
friend in Paris. There were a number of
people there, amongst them two former
French Foreign Ministers. If they read this
they will remember the conversation I am about
to relate.

One of them, whom we will call X, was a
widely erudite man and a writer of great talent,
but the sort of nature which does not retain its
impressions. The other, Y, was concentrated
by nature and spoke little and seldom.

After dinner, when most of the guests had gone
off to listen to music, we three found ourselves
alone in the study.

We talked of Roumania, which had just
made an act of unnecessary submission to
Austria, and X suddenly exclaimed :

" The more I think about it, the less I under-
stand the policy of Roumania. You have no
chance of becoming a great nation except at
Hungary's expense. Yet you are the allies of
Hungary, for make no mistake, Austria no
longer exists. In reality you are in the first
place allies of Hungary, and in the second place

155

156 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

allies of Germany. It is impossible for me to
understand your policy."

"Do you understand the policy of Italy?"
I asked.

"Of course," X replied, "it is the policy of
fear."

" And why do you think that Italy is the
only country that is afraid ? "

Y, who had said nothing, began to speak. He
recognised that the policy of Roumania was to be
explained by fear, and the conversation turned
on the profound difference between the Triple
Alliance and the Triple Entente. In the Triple
Alliance, or rather the Austro- German alliance,
there was complete unity of control, as Berlin
alone was in command ; in the Triple Entente
the bonds were so intangible that it was difficult
at the moment to rely on them.

" What can we do," asked X, "in order to
show you the great interest we take in your
happenings and in your future ? "

Y then said, " All we can do for Roumania is
to help her to become strong, so that when the
day of the great catastrophe arrives and she has
to make her choice, she may choose with perfect
freedom."

I thanked these two ex-ministers, and told
them that in spite of the apparent political
slavery of Roumania and in spite of the diplo-
matic folly she had just perpetrated, a folly
that consisted in informing Sofia that she would
be obliged to intervene if Bulgaria took advan-
tage of troubles in Constantinople to attack

ROUMANIAN POLICY 157

Turkey — in spite of these things I promised that
Roumania's choice would be made in perfect
freedom.

My friends must now see I was right, and they
cannot regret the support given us by France
in 1913.

^Tragedy

XIX

TRAGEDY

THE scene was London, on the 27th of July,
1914.

In spite of the pacific assurances which
had in all good faith been given me that morning
by Prince Lichnowsky, who had been studiously
kept in ignorance of the warlike designs of the
Emperor, I saw the world war approaching and
I was gripped by the horror of it. The last
chance of salvation lay in adopting the English
proposal for a conference of the four Great Powers,
but that had come to nothing owing to Germany's
refusal to take any part in it.

Although I was convinced that no one would
ever make the Roumanian army fight side by
side with Hungarian troops, yet I was anxious,
for I could not foresee how the war would open,
or be certain that Germany and Austria would
not, by some diabolical stroke of ingenuity,
arrange things in such a way as to force Russia to
declare war herself.

Not having the text of our treaty of alliance
under my eyes, I could not be sure that we could
escape its entanglements without appearing to
violate the letter of our engagement. In par-
ticular I could not recall exactly how the key

j.i.

162 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

phrase, " without provocation on her part,'
was worded.

In the afternoon I asked my old friend, the
Italian Ambassador in London, the Marquis
Imperiali, to come and see me. Having played
an important part in affairs in his own country,
I felt sure he would know the text of the Italian
treaty, the provisions of which were identical
with those of the Roumanian treaty which I had
read through in June, 1908.

We talked together for a long while over the
grave peril that threatened European civilisation.
We hoped against all hope. We even imagined
we had discovered catchwords which would
make the war impossible, so monstrous did it all
seem to us.

But we did more than this, for we also discussed
the war as a real possibility. It did not take us
long to find out, firstly, that we were completely
agreed that if war did break out the blame would
be entirely with Germany and the Magyars, and
secondly, that the fate of the world for generations
to come must depend on the result of the war.

We both were clearly of opinion that in the
event of a German victory the future of Roumania
as well as Italy would be seriously compromised,
if not destroyed. Supposing Germany and
Austria to be the victors, all the risorgimento,
all the battles and sacrifices of the Italian people
would be in vain. For Roumania a German
victory meant even more than this, it meant
sudden death, while Italy at the worst might
accustom herself to slow strangulation.

TRAGEDY 163

We believed in the wisdom of our respective
Governments, and we also felt certain that if
our rulers attempted to force our people to fight
side by side with the enemies of all liberal civilis-
ation, our people would resist. All the same
we asked ourselves, in our wretchedness, whether
by the literal interpretation of treaties we were
obliged to acquiesce in race-suicide.

The Marquis Imperiali had read the treaty —
as a matter of fact he had done so before I did —
and we tried together to reconstitute the text,
but we could not do it. I shall never forget
our despair, our misery, at not being able to say
with certainty what the exact wording of the
treaty really was. Yet on the letter of the
treaty — for, remember, we had not yet become
acquainted with the " scrap of paper " doctrine
—depended our honour and our future.

" What a tragedy ! " we said to each other.

We both felt tears trickling down our faces,
and we were not ashamed of them ; but our talk
came to an end ; and with a prolonged hand-grip
we said farewell.

I have never seen the Marquis Imperiali since
that day, but when he reads this he will fqrgive
me for having preserved the memory of his
tears. We wept together.

Count Tisza

XX

COUNT TISZA

IN the great war Count Tisza was the strongest
statesman the Central Powers had. He was
the prime mover in unchaining the conflict.
Tisza provoked the universal carnage, but without
the backing of Berlin he would not have dared
to do it, and therefore the real criminal must be
looked for in Berlin. He ran the war with an energy
worthy of a better cause, and paid for his crime
with his life. The punishment has been carried
out, so the case for the prosecution is closed.

I only met Tisza once, twenty years ago. He
was then chairman of the board of a Budapesth
bank which did business with an industrial
company in Roumania of which I was chairman.
We talked business and travel, not a word of
politics. But this short conversation sufficed
to give me an idea of his personality. He was
strong in every sense of the word. Cold as the
blade of a knife ; with a will of extreme brutality,
and a demeanour as serious as an English non-
conformist minister's.

Though he was a strong man he could never
be a popular one. He had no magnetism, no
emotional quality, no outward sign of the divine

167

168 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

fire, none of the things that enable a public man
to influence a crowd.

I have often wondered how it was possible
for so strong a man to blunder so badly. He
committed the unspeakable crime of provoking
a war that would end Magyar domination, which,
in Tisza's eyes, was synonymous with Magyar
patriotism. There evidently must have been
several reasons why Tisza made such a mistake,
but Magyar megalomania is not the least of
them.

The recollection of my solitary conversation
with Tisza helps me, however, to understand
this psychological problem.

The intellectual isolation in which Tisza lived
may have had something to say to it, too, for it
prevented him from realising what was happen-
ing in other countries. In talking with him I
asked him whether it was long since he had
visited the west of Europe. He answered me
that it was seven years since he had left Austro-
Hungary and that he felt no need ever to leave
it again.

" I should die if I went in for the same regime,"
I said. " I leave Roumania three times a year
and pass four months in Western Europe, and
look upon these journeys as a necessity — a sort
of intellectual hygiene.

" If we stay at home too long our horizon
contracts. Little local questions assume an im-
portance which they do not really possess ; one
must treat events in the political world as one
does Mont Blanc ; if one wishes to appreciate

COUNT TISZA 169

its size, one must go away from it. I have to
cross the frontier in order to understand how
small are the questions which at Bucharest seem
to me of the first magnitude."

Tisza listened to me, but did not understand.
He was satisfied with knowing the Austro-
Hungarian Monarchy, and more especially the
Kingdom of Hungary, and from that standpoint
to judge the course of human events.

This political myopia must have blinded the
strongest man the Central Empires possessed
and led him to unloose a war in which were to
founder the hegemony of his race, the interests
of his caste and his own historical reputation.

One must at any rate do this much justice to
Tisza. He made his exit from the scene better
than the two Emperors who had banded them-
selves together against the liberty of the world.

Talaat Pasha

XXI

TALAAT PASHA

TALAAT PASHA was the strongest man of
the Young Turk Party. Djavid was better
informed, Djemal more cultured, Enver
made more show, but Talaat, without doubt, had
more strength of character. He was a Turk, but
a Turk trying to be a modern man without, how-
ever, imitating the externals of an European. He
was uneducated ; had read hardly anything, had
travelled very little, and knew none of those
things which are a common bond among public
men in Western countries. Talaat made up
for all these deficiencies by a will of iron, in-
domitable courage, and by a quality which is
unusual among Turks, a quickness of decision
and a firmness in execution which had nothing
Oriental about them.

Like all the Young Turks, Talaat was a Jingo.
When I saw him for the second time on my
return from Athens in November, 1913, where I
had assisted in the conclusion of peace between
Turkey and Greece. Talaat explained to me how
he had plotted and brought about the recapture
of Adrianople in 1913. It was a wonderful
example of rashness and of resolution. In

173

174 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

twenty-four hours he had forced his will upon
the Cabinet, the Generals and the Great Powers,
in order to procure the necessary money to
carry out an expedition which the Bulgarians
could easily have turned into a disaster for the
Turks had they wished to do so. On the eve
of this coup Talaat had found few people to
approve of it, on the morrow everyone was his
accomplice. " As to the Great Powers," said he
to me, " I knew that they would not move, and
that the very audacity of the thing would force
it on them. I shall soon do the same thing when
I suppress the capitulations. We do not mean
to have those capitulations any more. I know
quite well that Europe will protest, but she will
not act." He showed the same determination in
discussing the Sultan. I had asked him if the
Sultan or the heir-apparent might not wish to
recover the powers of former sovereigns. " We
will never allow him to," replied Talaat. " We
are the masters, and if a Sultan thinks he is
going to run things as he pleases we shall simply
depose him."

These qualities of Talaat's were spoilt by a
spirit of party prejudice, which we in the west
find some difficulty in realising. For example,
when after my return from Athens I was dis-
cussing with Talaat a proposal for an under-
standing between Turkey and Greece about
which Venizelos had charged me to sound the
Turks, I felt that party interests more than
anything else lay behind the arguments which
Talaat used to me in countering my proposal.

TALAAT PASHA 175

Talaat would have liked to raise the popularity
of the Young Turk Party by striking at a neigh-
bour, and his Greek neighbour seemed to him
the easiest to hit without incurring too big a
risk.

When I saw Talaat for the first time he im-
pressed me by his thoroughly un-Turkish char-
acteristics. Early in November, 1913, I went
from Sinaia to Athens under a pretext of a
pleasure trip, but in reality to try and induce
Turkey to make peace with Greece. Turkey
was being encouraged in her attitude by Bulgaria,
and thought of nothing less than restarting the
Balkan war. My friend Venizelos was of opinion
that my going there might perhaps cause the
Turks to pause in their insane project.

I said nothing about my intentions to anyone
in Roumania except King Charles, with whom
I arranged that if I succeeded the credit of it
should go to Roumania, but that if I failed the
blame should be mine for having undertaken a
mission which no one had charged me with.

I asked an old friend, a Roumanian of Mace-
donia, formerly in the Young Turk Government,
Batzaria by name, to meet me at Constantinople,
where I only intended stopping a couple of
hours. I wanted him to tell his friend Talaat,
whom I did not at that time know, what a
dangerous game the Turks and Bulgarians were
playing, and how determined Roumania was not
to tolerate a new conflagration in the Balkans.
To my great surprise Talaat himself turned -up.
He made a good impression on me. We talked

176 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

for more than an hour. He complained that
my going to Athens at such a moment looked
like a demonstration against Turkey. I replied
that I certainly intended to demonstrate in
favour of peace and against Turkey if she allowed
herself to be worked up by Bulgar intrigues,
and added that Roumania was determined to
strike at anybody, no matter whom, who disturbed
the peace of Bucharest, and that she was quite
in a position to do so.

Talaat was much moved, and we at length
reached a point at which he requested me to act
as arbitrator between the Turks and the Greeks
on all the questions which divided them — and
they were very numerous — questions which had
brought about a complete deadlock in the
negotiations at Athens. I accepted the mission,
and, as is well known, I succeeded. But at this
interview I said to Talaat that he must prove to
me that he represented something different to
the old Turkey, and must do so by undertaking to
push the affair through in three days. He
agreed to this stipulation, an almost unheard-of
proceeding for a Turk, and as a matter of fact
everything was put through in Athens in six
days, though not without difficulties and worries,
which need not be detailed now.

Talaat promised to return the visit which I
had paid to him on my way back from Athens,
and came to Bucharest in the Spring of 1914,
when I was no longer a member of the Govern-
ment. He made the same impression on me,
of being a determined man, energetic and brave,

TALAAT PASHA 177

but completely ignorant of European men and
affairs.

The last time I saw him was at Sinaia, and I
then realised that his blindness must in the
long run prove fatal to Turkey.

It is well known that in spite of the peace
which I had succeeded in negotiating at Athens
the question of the islands remained to be settled
between Turkey and Greece. This matter was
not by its nature a question for Roumanian
arbitration, but for settlement by the Great
Powers.

In the early days of the great European war,
when I was still at my villa in Sinaia, I learned
that Talaat, accompanied by Hakki, then pre-
sident of the Turkish Chamber of Deputies,
had arranged a meeting in Roumania with the
Greek delegates, Messrs. Zaimis and Politis, to
discuss the question of the islands.

On the way the Turkish delegates stopped
two or three days at Sofia, which was a clear
indication of their intentions ; the so-called
negotiations being but a trap laid by Austria
and Germany. The discussions were carried
on at Bucharest, but the Turkish delegates,
under pretext of seeking country air, established
themselves at Sinaia. The truth is that they
wished to be in close touch with the German,
Bulgarian and Austrian Ministers who were
then at Sinaia.

The negotiations did not progress ; they were
not meant to. The only thing the Turks wanted
was to find a casus belli against Greece the sooner

178 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

to bring about the conflagration in the whole
Balkan Peninsula.

Talaat naively believed that King Charles,
who against his will had acquiesced in the
neutrality of Roumania, might still drag the
country into a war against Russia by allying
himself with Bulgaria and Turkey. It was
ridiculous, but although Talaat had plenty of
determination he was quite ignorant of men and
things.

One incident in these precious negotiations is
worthy of being noted. It is, moreover, the first
and last occasion on which I had a really serious
talk with Talaat.

One evening I was in the Casino at Sinaia,
having a talk with the Russian and Italian
Ministers. It was about ten o'clock at night,
when one of my journalist friends came to warn
me that the next day the Turkish delegates
intended to present an ultimatum to the Greek
delegates at Bucharest, and finish off the
proceedings by a declaration of war.

The very idea that the Turks, egged on by
the Central Powers and by the Bulgarians,
were about to let loose a fresh Balkan war from
Bucharest on the hospitable soil of Roumania
was hateful to me. At once I cast about for
means to prevent such a calamity happening.
I knew that Talaat and his colleagues were certain
to come into the gambling room, as they were
not due to go to Bucharest until next morning
at eight o'clock, and as a matter of fact they
turned up soon after eleven o'clock. I at once

TALAAT PASHA 179

spoke to Talaat, and told him that I must have a
word with him. He tried to put me off by
making an appointment for the following evening,
after his return from Bucharest, to which I
replied that that would be too late, that I must
speak to him immediately ; that the business
was one of extreme urgency, and that the least
he could do was to accede to my request.

Much against his will Talaat consented, and
asked me whether Hakki could also take part
in our conversation. Firmly I replied " No,"
but said that if he wished to communicate what
I said to Hakki that was his own business, but
that so far as I was concerned I meant to speak to
him alone.

Leading Talaat off into a corner, I made him
sit down facing me, and the following strange
conversation began.

The general public which crowded round the
baccarat tables paid no attention to us, but the
Russian and Italian Ministers, who knew what I
was about, kept their eyes fixed on our little
group.

In a sharp voice I told Talaat that I knew of
his plan for the morrow, and that I asked him,
in the name of the respect which he owed to
Roumanian hospitality, to give it up.

Talaat tried to stammer out that I was mistaken
as to his intentions and so on.

I replied that he was wrong to deny it, as I
knew everything, whereupon Talaat acknow-
ledged his scheme, and added, " That he was con-
vinced that sooner or later Roumania would go

180 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

to war against Russia side by side with Turkey
and Bulgaria."

Thoroughly angry, I asked him whether he had
warned the King of his scheme to provoke war
while a guest on Roumanian soil. He admitted
that he had not done so, but stated that he knew
that the King remained favourable to the policy
of war in alliance with the Austro-Germans.
I then pressed Talaat as hard as I could. Carried
away by my feelings, I gesticulated in a way
I never do, and so completely forgot the con-
sideration due to a guest that I told him that
Roumania would never forget the insult which
the Turkish delegates were about to offer her by
thus abusing Roumanian hospitality.

" You shall not do it in Roumania. I give
you a fair warning, and believe me that in doing
so I speak for all Roumania. If you do it you
will repent of it."

I pressed Talaat so hard that he ended by
giving me his word of honour that he would not
present an ultimatum to Greece next day at
Bucharest. I suggested to him to propose an
adjournment of the question sine die.

" All right," said he, " provided the Greeks
don't provoke me to-morrow."

Once I got Talaat's promise to give up his
plan I added, " I have given you a warning and
you have frankly heeded me. Now I wish to
give you a piece of information and a piece of
advice. The piece of information is this ; owing
to the ambiguous language of certain personages
you may perhaps have deluded yourself into

TALAAT PASHA 181

thinking that circumstances might arise in which
Roumania may find herself at war against the
Powers of the Entente. Well, believe me, that
will never happen, and nobody in the world —
understand me clearly, nobody in the world — is
strong enough to drag Roumania into a war
against the Powers of the Entente. The exact
opposite is not only possible but is more than
probable. I give you this piece of information
so that you may not deceive yourself in weighing
the probabilities which will decide the policy
of your country."

As Talaat still seemed to doubt whether I
was speaking from facts, and as he still questioned
me as to the will of the King, I reiterated my point
again, and said to him, " ATo one, absolutely no one,
is strong enough to prevent Roumania following
the policy dictated by her national instinct."

" And now for the piece of advice," I said to
him. " Providence has not entrusted me with
the task of looking after the fate of Turkey ; it
is quite enough for me to worry about that of
my own country ; but I will give you one piece
of advice as a true friend. Remain neutral.
Never has Turkey had a better chance of living,
if she has any vitality in her, than by remaining
neutral in this war. In return for your neutrality
demand of the Entente the guarantee of your
independence, demand the abolition of the
capitulations. You will get everything, but war
can bring you nothing. If you are beaten, and
you will be beaten, you disappear. If you are
victorious you will get nothing. A victorious

182 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Germany, even if such a thing is possible, will
never commit the folly you dream of, of giving
you the Caucasus or Egypt. She would take
them for herself if she could ; but once more
this is merely advice, and the day will come when
you will see whether it came from a friend or
not."

The next day at Bucharest Talaat kept his
word.

I warned the Greeks by a letter sent to them
that very night by special messenger, and the
conference was adjourned for good.

Since those days I have never seen Talaat.
At the time of the English expedition to Gallipoli
I wrote to him and asked him to make peace with
the Entente, telling him that it was the last
chance of salvation for Turkey. Talaat sent me a
verbal reply to this letter in the Spring of 1916
by the Roumanian Minister at Constantinople,
saying that events had proved that he was right
and that I was wrong.

But how do things stand to-day ?

Prince J^on BuloW

XXII
PRINCE VON BULOW

I HAVE known many of the men who have
played an important part in German policy.
Only three of them gave me the impression
that I had to do with really strong men. Two
are dead, Kiderlen-Waechter and Baron Marschall.
The third was Prince von Billow.1

So far from being a man of the past, like the
Goluchowskys and the Berchtolds, Prince von
Billow is at this moment a man of to-day. Every-
thing about him is therefore of interest. He has
a remarkable mind, one of those minds which
bring a man to the front in all countries and in
all ages. Of course he thinks like a German,
like a reactionary, and like a country gentleman ;
but in spite of these drawbacks his mind is of the
most brilliant quality. He possesses remarkable
clearness of vision, ability to appreciate situa-
tions, adroitness and understanding. It is im-
possible to be in his company without feeling
that he is a man whose family position has

1 If the Germans had been wise they would have made Prince von
Billow their representative at the Peace Congress. He was the only
man fit to have been entrusted with the part of representing his
country in defeat, which Talleyrand played so well a century ago, and
which M. Thiers sustained in 1871.

185

186 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

merely been an accessory to a distinguished
career.

To say that Prince von Biilow is a great man
would be an exaggeration, and I believe that he
has sufficient sense not to claim anything of the
kind. He is even below the level of Kiderlen,
merely to instance another German, but he is a
strong man, thoroughly able to understand things
and to find the best solution of a given problem.
In the intellectual desert of German public life
that alone is a great quality.

Prince von Biilow is also a man of great personal
charm, which is always to the good, and his
conversation is most entertaining. Although one
must not expect Bismarckian aphorisms to fall
from his lips, yet his conversation is not tainted
by any touch of brutality, roughness or arrogance.

At first sight one can almost believe oneself
to be dealing with a Latin, so flexible, so in-
sinuatingly frank and almost caressing is his
manner of talking, and though it would be
wrong to be taken in by an appearance, the charm
is undeniable.

The first time I had a serious political talk
with Prince von Biilow was towards the end of the
year 1888. In April he had been appointed
Minister at Bucharest, and was to have remained
there until December, 1893. He came from
Petrograd, and was seemingly thoroughly con-
versant with Russian affairs, and he told me
that he had spent the last few weeks in the
Russian capital studying the Roumanian question
in the archives of the German Embassy. His

PRINCE VON BULOW 187

studies had given him, he said, great confidence
in the virtues and ability of the Roumanian
people, for whom he foresaw a great future.

No doubt this was a very good way of beginning
a conversation with me on the problems of
European policy, in so far as they affected Rou-
mania and the Roumanian people, for, unlike the
late Kiderlen, Prince von Biilow recognised the
existence of the nationality question.

In this long conversation, which touched on all
subjects and consequently on our own public
men, we came to talk about Cogalniceano,
who was not only one of our most shining lights,
but what is more important, a really great
man.

Biilow did not understand why Cogalniceano
was inimical to the policy of an Austro-German
alliance. He was too intelligent to attribute
mean motives to Cogalniceano, for he knew his
patriotism, his great soul, and his high capacity.
He was astonished, however, that he seemed
to take no account of the Russian danger for
Roumania or see that our salvation lay in an
alliance with Germany, who could protect us.
I answered Prince von Biilow by repeating to him
as well as I could all the arguments which Cogal-
niceano had used so many times to me against
the policy of an alliance with Austria and Ger-
many, and this in spite of the genuine admiration
which he had at that time for Germany.

After I had repeated these arguments to
Prince von Biilow he made a statement which I
now record.

188 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Amongst other things, Cogalniceano had said
to me, "This Austro-German policy is perfectly
absurd, because it is based on the idea of a war
between Russia and Germany. Now, such a war
will never take place, it would be too much
against the traditions of the House of Prussia
and too much against the interests of Germany."
In 1888 this reasoning seemed faultless. " He is
wrong," interrupted Prince von Biilow. ic Under
the last reign M. Cogalniceano would have been
right, out I am anxious to make you realise that
the new reign will show a complete change of
front. It will be one of the cardinal points of
the policy of the new reign " (William II. had
been on the throne since June, 1888) " to be on
guard against Russia. You will soon see that
our policy will not leave room for doubt as to
this question."

Then the talk switched off on to other subjects,
as invariably happens in the case of conversation
without any definite objective.

Later on, when I saw the new Emperor go in
for a pro- Polish policy, I understood that Prince
von Biilow had not been mistaken. It did not
last long, but what could last long in the case of
an absolute Monarch who was strong enough to
wish to guide everything and not strong enough
to be able to do so ? Anyway the fact stands
that this first talk of mine with Prince von Biilow
(and I have had many others since then) remains
deeply engraved in my memory. It explained
to me many things which have happened during
the last twenty-eight years.

PRINCE VON BULOW 189

Dr. Dillon, that very distinguished writer, has
lately published in an English review a most
interesting account of Prince von Billow's intrigues
for the entanglement of Italy, contrary to the
dictates of her honour and her national will, in
the war.

This article has been republished in the
Roumanian papers, and has given its readers a
welcome opportunity of getting a good idea of
German methods in neutral countries. It is the
first instance in modern history in which a foreign
power has mixed itself up in the internal
affairs of another country on so great a scale ;
has bought political honour like merchandise
in the market place, and has framed real plots
against a foreign state and its sovereign will.

When one reads it all one shivers at the idea
of what the fate of Europe, the fate of humanity
would have been if the Nero of Berlin had been the
conqueror in this war. Fortunately it is now no
more than a bad dream.

One regrets that Prince von Billow ever thought
it his duty to be mixed up in so unsavoury a
business. Even patriotism cannot excuse every-
thing. Civilisation also has its rights, though
modern Germany repudiates this idea ; for her
doctrine is that German interests are superior
to right, honour, decency and humanity. But if
we held the same ideas on these questions as
Germany, how could we justify the sacred
indignation which burns in every breast ?

Von Biilow deserved a better fate. He had
shown himself one of the most brilliant men of

190 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

present-day Germany, and, in spite of his book,
remained in comparison with his contemporaries
on a pedestal.

Prince von Billow had one great merit in the
eyes of those who think, for he was the first
German Minister who dared to put the Kaiser
in his place. In an autocratic country where
Parliament is nothing, where the First Minister
of the Crown is chosen by the Sovereign, and is
responsible only to the Sovereign and can be
dismissed by the Sovereign without it being
possible for the nation — as in the case of Veni-
zelos — to compel his return ; in a country whose
political organisation was out of date by several
centuries, the courage of this act was astonishing.
Prince von Billow's celebrated speech was received
with a general paean of admiration. In the
course of that oration, with masterly skill he
taunted his Sovereign with useless speechifying,
and undertook in the presence of a phantom
parliament that the Monarch should not repeat
his mistake. It was a first step, a modest step,
it is true, but the first step towards popular
government in Germany. This criticism of the
Emperor in the Reichstag was the dawn of a
revolution, a revolution designed to save Ger-
many and the world from the absurd regime which
could only result in the horrors of the great war.

And why was the attempt not followed up ?
Why did it fail ?

Perhaps Prince von Billow never formed a clear
estimate of the enormity of his daring. Who
knows whether he was not even alarmed by it

PRINCE VON BULOW 191

himself ? It is difficult for the soul of the free
man to emerge from generations who have
indulged in the fetish worship of monarchy.

What is certain is that the Kaiser watched
von Billow like a cat on the pounce to take his
revenge. The day the Chancellor committed
the mistake of making up to our Nero in the
hope that he would forget this salutary though
distasteful reprimand, William realised that von
Billow was no Cromwell, not even a Bismarck,
and he decided to make him undergo the fate of
Seneca, though in a modern fashion. In the
same Reichstag in which von Biilow had allowed
himself to speak on one occasion as if to an
assembly of free men, the Emperor raised against
him a reactionary intrigue, and he fell. The rest
of the story is well known. Prince von Biilow
retired with a great deal of dignity and without
sulking.

He divided his time between Norderney and
Rome. From the Eternal City he watched with
a fine sense of irony the performances of his
former master, whose inevitable collapse he fore-
saw might take place any day.

When the collapse came Nero recalled Seneca
and demanded of him the supreme sacrifice,
a harikari, not of his body, but of his reputation
and of his name in history.

Prince von Biilow must be congratulated that
his patriotism got the better of a very proper feel-
ing of resentment. He was bound to know that
he was going to certain defeat, and he knew
Italy too well to deceive himself either as to her

192 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

intelligence or her sense of honour. For that he
deserves the commiseration of all mankind. But
he lost his head. He was not made of fine enough
stuff for the sacrifice, and he ended by believing
success to be possible and then stooped to the
task which Dr. Dillon has described, a task which
has robbed our modern Seneca of all claim to a
martyr's halo.

What a pity for him, and what a triumph for
Nero !

'Taticheff

J.I.

XXIII
TATICHEFF

TATTCHEFF is no longer a well-known name
in the world of European politics, and yet
he was one of the most genuinely intelli-
gent people it has ever been my lot to meet. I
had a talk with him twice, both times in London.

The first time was at a dinner at the St. James
Club. Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, then
foreign editor of the Times, and Lord Reay, a
former governor of Bombay, a man well known
in the world of international jurisprudence, were
also present.

The second time was at Taticheff's house, and
I talked for a few minutes to Stead, the well-
known publicist, who was to lose his life later
on in the Titanic disaster. At the moment
Taticheff was the late Witte's agent in England.
Everyone will remember Witte, the great Finance
Minister of the Russian Empire, who as an
adjunct to his dictatorship had financial repre-
sentatives in all the capitals in Europe, which in
reality formed a second diplomatic body, con-
trolled by himself alone.

Taticheff had a very singular history. He had
begun life brilliantly in diplomacy. Appointed

195

196 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

to the Embassy at Vienna, he began to work
in an anti-German sense, or to say the least
of it, not in a pro-German sense. At that time
it was a most dangerous game to play, and
Bismarck, who never overlooked anything and
whose influence in governing circles in Petrograd
is well known, determined to destroy him. An
incident in the sentimental side of Taticheff's
life gave the Iron Chancellor the opportunity
he sought. The Petrograd Cabinet broke Tati-
cheff, who at once began to avenge himself after
the fashion of a strong man. He devoted him-
self to the study of history, and produced books
that gave him a great reputation. During the
war of 1877 he served as a volunteer, and behaved
in such a way as to win the Cross of St. George.
Then he went on with his literary career, until
Witte took him back to the service of the state,
in the capacity of financial agent. Death over-
took him before he had attained the summit of
his powers.

Like all intelligent Russians, Taticheff was a
most attractive talker. He had subtlety, im-
agination, wit and charm, and beyond this a sort
of courage which enabled him to touch on
delicate matters with perfect tact.

Naturally we discussed Russo-Roumanian
relations. They were in a very bad way. Being
afraid of Russia, we were plunged into a sea of
Germanism, and Taticheff was well informed
on this point. He explained to me the plain
truth of the matter, which was that the interests
of Roumanian national unity were absolutely

TATICHEFF 197

opposed to a Russophobe policy, and that conse-
quently we were travelling on a wrong road, since
any day we might find the interest of self-
preservation driving us inevitably to reverse our
existing programme.

It is easy to imagine Taticheff's line of argu-
ment; there is no need for me to dwell on it.
To-day the arguments used by the Russian
writer are established in the head and heart of
every Roumanian.

Taticheff came, of course, to the question of
Bessarabia. He recognised that the Russian
Government had been wrong to insist on our
exchanging the three districts of Bessarabia for
the Dobrudja. He was of opinion that Russia
ought merely to have offered us this exchange
and to have abstained from it if we refused to
accept it.

" But," he said, " you would have been very
wrong to refuse it. I quite understand Rou-
manian sentiment about Bessarabia, but this senti-
ment is not bound up only with the three southern
districts, the least Roumanian of all, but with the
entire province, the entire territory between the
Pruth and the Dniester lost in 1812. I .under-
stand this feeling of sad regret and also your
keen aspirations in the matter. It is too human
and natural for a friend of truth to be able to
deny it. But what I do not understand is why
the preservation of these three districts, separated
from Russian Bessarabia by the most conventional
of frontiers, could satisfy the Roumanian instinct
towards national unity or augment the chances

198 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

of the future acquisition of the whole of Bessar-
abia. Danubian Bessarabia, except for the
district of Cahul, is the least Roumanian corner
of the Roumanian state, and although the posses-
sion of Kilia has played a great part in Roumanian
history we should recognise the fact that
Moldavian rule has never been more intermittent
in any other province of the former state of
Moldavia. To envisage the marshes of southern
Bessarabia as a strategic point from which to
advance on the Dniester is simply childish.
The delta of the Danube is of course very valuable.
But a Roumania, mistress of the left bank of the
Kilia branch, with Bulgaria on the opposite side
of the stream, would have been far less mistress
of the Danube delta than she would be in the
situation created by her annexation of the
Dobrudja. As for access to the sea, one cannot
compare the two solutions. The Bessarabian
coast even with the proposed bridge at Jibriani
would never really have given Roumania proper
access to the sea, whereas with Sulina, Constantza
and Mangalia it is quite another matter. And
it was up to you to add Varna, the best port on
the Black Sea — Varna, which in 1878 might have
been anything you liked to make it, except a
Bulgarian town."

And as I tried to interrupt him, Taticheff added,
" I say once more that we were wrong to force
your hand and you were still more wrong in
refusing an exchange so favourable to yourself.
If it had been a question of obtaining possession
of the whole of Bessarabia I should have under-

TATICHEFF 199

stood your policy, but it was not a question of
that or anything approaching to it. In 1878
you had a rare opportunity of making capital
out of your alliance with Russia, especially after
the glorious days of Plevna. You lost the
opportunity and what did you gain in exchange ?
Sooner or later the nemesis of history which has
placed the greater number of your nationals
in Austria-Hungary, that is to say among the
Germans, will oblige you to draw near to us, will
make you our ally in war, if you do not your-
selves intend to seal the destruction of your
race and of your independence. And then,"
said Taticheff, " in spite of these treaties of
yours, treaties you pretend not to know the
existence of, but which I know to be real enough,
I am counting on you as allies when the great
day of reckoning comes. I cannot admit that
nations can ever commit suicide. They may
delude themselves for a time, but they are
obliged to come back to the truth in the end. I
hope the great day will find you strong and
ready."

Taticheff was right. In the end truth pre-
vailed.

France and the teuton

XXIV

FRANCE AND THE TEUTON

EVERYONE in Roumania knew the late
Coutouly, formerly French Minister in
Bucharest, and everyone appreciated his
gentle character and his real friendliness towards
our country.

Gustave de Coutouly had served in the garde
mobile in 1870 and also had assisted in sup-
pressing the Commune. It was quite natural
that he should cherish an unfading memory of
that dreadful year, and that in his heart there
should ever burn the passionate feelings of the
vanquished.

The last time I saw him in Paris was at the time
of the Tangier difficulty : it will be remembered
that the incident which accelerated the first
Morocco crisis and almost set Europe ablaze
was the famous landing of the Emperor at Tangier.
It was like a thunderclap in Paris. People had
become accustomed to the idea of peace, and it
was believed that France was safe from any
new sort of aggression on the part of Germany.
This thunderclap out of a blue sky was in truth
the beginning of a new era in the psychology of the
people of France.

Some precautions against the possibility of a

203

204 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

sudden and absolutely unjustified attack had
been taken. The eastern garrisons had been
strengthened and frontier regiments were kept
always on the alert.

Monsieur de Coutouly's only son was serving
in one of these regiments. He was killed in the
war, fighting gallantly, two days after his
marriage.

I was discussing the gravity of the time with
my friend de Coutouly, when he began to read
me a letter which his son had sent from the
frontier. The young soldier expressed himself
in this letter with the magnificent courage, the
gaiety, the humour which is characteristic of
the Frenchman. He told his father he had
nothing to fear, that the new generation, in spite
of its apparent softness and indifference, would do
its duty as Frenchmen, would prove worthy of
their ancestors, and that if war broke out the
heroes who were the glory of French history
would have reason to be proud of the exploits
of the French of to-day . " But," he added, " it is
impossible for us to hate. You who were beaten
in 1870 cherish a natural and legitimate hatred
for Germany, and you must not mind if we do not
share it. France has after all fought in turns
with so many nations. She has been beaten and
she has been victorious. Must we hate the
English because of Waterloo, when we have a
Crimea in common ? Undoubtedly Alsace and
Lorraine are very dear to us and we will shed our
blood willingly to get them back, but hate the
Germans because of Sedan we can't."

FRANCE AND THE TEUTON 205

Together my friend and I plumbed the depths
of the Latin soul, which is just and generous
even to the enemy who had injured us.

' The new generation," said my friend, " will
astonish you by its heroism and it will be all the
more beautiful because hatred has no place in
its heart."

And as the soul of the conquered was purged
of all evil passions, the victor's hatred of France
and the French increased daily, for in Germany
they resented the fact that France had not died
after 1870. They regretted not having bled
her white, not having seized more territory and
more money, and they watched for the moment
when they could once more hurl themselves upon
her, this time to destroy her for ever.

When war broke out, a great friend of mine,
Titulesco, was in Stockholm. In order to get
home he had to go through Berlin, and he stopped
there ten days or more. From Berlin he wrote
me a letter, which I have kept, as it does great
honour to Titulesco's spirit of observation and the
depth of his judgment. He showed himself
dumbfounded by what he saw, but the number
of guns and the wonderful organisation of material
was not what interested him ; the important factor
to him was the German soul. That soul
astonished and appalled him at the same time.
He witnessed its manifestations. He saw the
happy expression with which parents and friends
read the names of their dearest in the lists of
killed, and he wrote : " It is perfectly clear to me
that these people have been waiting for forty

206 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

years with intense impatience for this day. To
this people the war has brought positive happiness ;
this people desired war with all its strength,
they look upon it as Christians look upon the
advent of the Messiah, and in the joy of striking
France even natural feelings disappear."

I pondered over the two mentalities, the sons
of the conquered Latins who are unable to hate
their conquerors, and the sons of the German
conquerors who could not forego their hatred
of their former victims.

II

Yesterday evening in my little country library
I took down L'Annee Terrible from the poet's
shelf. I had not read it for a long while. The
great poet, the greatest lyric poet of modern
times, speaks of the choice between the two
nations.

He begins with Germany, to whom he devotes
three pages, opening with this verse :

" Aucune nation n'est plus grande que toi,"
and which ends :

" L'Allemagne est puissante et superbe,"
and for France he adds only three words :
" O ma mere ! "

It was in September, 1870, that Victor Hugo
wrote like this, the September in which Germany,
having finished her war with the Austrian Empire,
began her war against France.

FRANCE AND THE TEUTON 207

How can Germans ever understand the French
soul?

How can they fail to be mistaken as to the
power and decision of France ?

A Cousin of Tisza

XXV

A COUSIN OF TISZA

I WAS talking in Vienna on the evening of the
30th of July, 1914, to a friend — an intimate
of Count Berchtold's. This friend happened
to be an Englishman who did not believe that
England would fight.

" They are keenly anxious for war here," he
said, " and to this end they drafted the ulti-
matum to Serbia in such a way that it could not
possibly be accepted. They were greatly dis-
appointed when the report — which, by the way,
turned out to be false — got about that the Serbs
had accepted it without modification, for they
are so well prepared as to be confident of victory.
The present Roumanian Government does not
count for much here, as it does not appear fully
to realise the situation. They tell me if only
you were in power a good deal could be done with
Roumania. Not only could the whole of Bess-
arabia lost in 1812 be regained, but Odessa also,
and . . ."

I listened to my friend's words : he was quite
an intelligent person, and I said to myself, " People
in Vienna are up to the neck in ignorance and
folly."

211

212 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

II

On the morning of the 3rd of August, 1914,
I called a party meeting at my house at Sinaia.
It was attended by MM. Dissesco, Istrati, Canta-
cuzene-Pashcano, Badarau and Cinco.

To them I explained the situation and the
matters to be discussed and settled at the Privy
Council that afternoon.

I asked each person for his opinion before
giving my own. Then I put forward my own
views, and added that I was happy to think
nearly all were of the same opinion as I was as
to the effect on our country of a German victory.
It would be the death of Roumania, and it was
morally impossible that we should assist at our
own funeral.

I said that if they had not been of my opinion
I should have retired from the leadership of the
Conservative Democratic Party. And even then
I should not have lost faith in my country's
destiny, but should have worked on as a private
individual in complete freedom and with re-
doubled energy.

Ill

I was still at my little villa at Sinaia in Sep-
tember, 1914, just before the fall of Lemberg,
when a Hungarian friend, a cousin of Count
Tisza, came to see me. He was a charming man,
and as a rule did not mix himself up in politics.

He spoke of my own attitude in the great Euro-

A COUSIN OF TISZA 213

pean crisis, an attitude which, he said, might prove
fatal to me. He gave me to understand what I
already knew well, that Tisza was the real pilot
of the Dual Empire, and that after the Peace he
intended to become Minister of Foreign Affairs,
a post he could keep for life, if it pleased him to
do so. With the utmost civility he pointed out
to me the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of
my ever coming back to power in Roumania,
as I could never have any decent relations with
Count Tisza's Government because of the attitude
I was taking up. He insinuated that there was
still time for me to retreat, and that the Central
Powers were confident of victory.

I told him that every man was bound to obey
the call of duty without heeding risk or danger,
and that I was quite well aware that in the event
of the Germans being victorious it would be my
patriotic duty not to embarrass the policy of
my country by remaining in public life, and that
when countless human lives were being sacrificed
on countless battlefields it was ridiculous to stop
at the sacrifice of a man's political career, no
matter who the man was.

My visitor took the hint, and by way of excus-
ing himself, assured me that his advice had been
inspired only by his feelings of friendship. It
is, however, the same advice which, since then,
has been offered me on several occasions, and
by quite different people.

New Italy

XXVI

NEW ITALY

A FORTNIGHT before the outbreak of the
Russo-Japanese war I was discussing the
chances of peace with King Charles, who
was not only a statesman but a great soldier.
Both of us thought war certain, in spite of the
peaceful assurances of the Embassies. I told him
of my profound conviction that the Japanese
would be victorious all along the line. He
answered me with the usual objections, saying
that there would be ninety Russian divisions
against thirteen Japanese divisions, and so on.

When we had finished arguing he asked me
on what I based my conviction. " I believe,"
I said, " in the moral factor. History teaches
that it is this moral factor rather than the mere
number of battalions which gives victory. For
the Russians this war is an absurd colonial
affair, which they do not understand, but for the
Japanese victory is a vital necessity. They
know quite well that until they have beaten a
white race they will continue to be despised.

" Now for the Japanese honour is the supreme
good, and it is necessary for them to win in .order
to make themselves our equal."

217

218 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

My questioner persisted in his view. " Look
here," I said, " you have often told me that the
Austrian army was first rate, that its infantry
was better than the German infantry, and that
the higher command, since they had admitted
to it people who were not noble by birth, had
made astonishing progress ; well, I am perfectly
certain that, given equal numbers or thereabouts,
the Austrian army could be beaten by any other
army in the world. It has not, and never can
have, the moral factor." He appeared to find
me rather ridiculous, and so I added, " I know
that you have a pretty moderate opinion of the
Italian army, but I am quite certain that, given
equal numbers, the Italian army could beat the
Austrian army into a cocked hat."

After a few other remarks I added, " You do
not know new Italy ; our misfortune is that we
preserve the opinions of our first youth and we
do not adapt ourselves quickly enough to the
new facts round us. Italy, for example, is pass-
ing through a moral revolution of which people
in general have no idea. The new generation
which has grown up in a free Italy is filled with
patriotism, I might say pride, which the extreme
politeness of Italians does not make apparent.
Italy will no longer stand taking the part of
Cinderella among the Great Powers. A working
democracy like Italy will never trouble the peace
of the world, but if it is forced to go to war it will
astonish everyone by the decision of its action
and by its heroism."

I realised that I had not convinced King

NEW ITALY 219

Charles as to the certainty of a Japanese victory,
nor as to the superiority of the Italian army
over the Austrian army. Perhaps he realised
later that I had observed and understood cor-
rectly.

Now that the Italians have astonished the
world by the valour of their troops, I call to
mind this conversation which took place in 1904,
and I feel very pleased with myself at having
foreseen that which all the world now realises.

In the month of August, 1901, 1 climbed Mount
Tabor, which is celebrated for the fine panorama
one sees from the summit. The ascent is easy,
but as it is a question of climbing 10,000 feet it
is a lengthy and fatiguing business. I chatted
with my guide, a good chamois hunter, and
pointing out to him a steep precipice, which
appeared to me quite unclimbable, I asked him
if it were possible to get up it. He answered it
was very difficult, and he advised me not to try,
and then added, " A month ago some Italian
Alpini were here. The commandant of the
battalion was a little fat man, who was not much
to look at. He asked me to help him get up the
precipice which you are now pointing out to me.
I told him that only chamois could pass that
way. He answered, ' Take me all the same ;
where the chamois can go man can go, and where
men can go my battalion can go.' I obeyed
him, and the battalion went that way just as the
commandant had said."

The Italian Alpini have since won for them-
selves immortal fame.

My Four Last Germans

XXVII

MY FOUR LAST GERMANS

BEFORE the world war I knew plenty of
Germans ; I even counted some of them
among my friends. In August, 1914, my
relations with Austrians and Germans became
cooler and cooler, and some weeks later they
almost ceased to exist. Later on, however, cir-
cumstances resulted in my meeting at least four
Germans, and I am going to record the impres-
sions they made on me.

One is of a conversation with Herr von Busche,
the German Minister to Roumania.

Herr von Busche belongs to the new diplomacy.
He is a man of education and brains, but abso-
lutely without personality. His darling ambition
— and the one he will never realise — is to be taken
for a grand seigneur. I have only had one
conversation with him, and I recognised him at
once as base metal. Herr von Busche is like
a piece of cheap furniture — on the surface a
thin veneer of oak or walnut, but the substance
is common deal.

Herr von Busche was sent to Roumania just

223

224 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

after the beginning of the war, when Berlin had
made the discovery that its Minister at Bucharest,
quite an excellent man and one of prodigious
wealth, was altogether inadequate. He had
hardly arrived at Sinaia when, before being
presented either to the Premier or the Foreign
Minister, he had a secret interview with King
Charles. Thanks to a private police of my own,
which has always done me good service, prob-
ably because I have never paid for it, I knew
of this visit the same day. After his visit to
the King, Herr von Busche proceeded to Buchar-
est to introduce himself officially to the Govern-
ment. Returning to Sinaia, he sent his Coun-
cillor of Legation to ask for an appointment with
me, which I fixed for the same day (this, as
I say, was at the beginning of the war), and
I waited for him in my drawing-room, where
there happened to be a portrait of Kiderlen-
Waechter with a very cordial inscription. At
exactly six o'clock Herr von Busche came in,
buttoned tightly up in a frock coat which was
plainly intended to suggest London, but as
evidently hailed from Berlin — one of those almost
invisible distinctions which make a world of
difference.

Herr Busche, who had been apprised how
completely I was convinced of Germany's
criminal culpability, affected to know nothing
of this, and began by informing me that he could
claim a double introduction to me : one was
from Prince Billow, who had begged him to give
me his most friendly remembrances ; the other

MY FOUR LAST GERMANS 225

was the memory of the late Kiderlen-Waechter,
whose pupil he had been in diplomacy. I
replied that Prince Billow had often shown me
his friendly feelings, and that to know the terms
on which I had been with Kiderlen he had only
to look at his photograph — " the photograph,"
I added, " of a man who would never have allowed
himself to be associated with Germany's recent
actions."

Having come expressly to plead Germany's
innocence, Herr von Busche endeavoured to con-
vince me that Kiderlen's successors had been as
much in favour of peace as himself, and that
Germany was fighting a defensive war. I opposed
this view energetically, and in the course of our
conversation I made Herr von Busche under-
stand that I was well acquainted with what had
happened at Berlin, since I knew the circum-
stances under which Kiderlen-Waechter had
become Foreign Minister, and in particular I
referred to the famous memorandum on the world
situation which he had presented to Bethmann-
Hollweg. after reading which the Chancellor
had told the Emperor that he would not consent
to stay in office unless Kiderlen had charge of
foreign affairs. Herr von Busche showed con-
siderable astonishment at my knowledge of so
intimate an incident of German diplomacy, and
he took the trouble to let me know that he had
made the copy of Kiderlen- Waechter's memoran-
dum with his own hand.

" Well," I said, " you see I know more than
you expected of your country's policy," and I

j.i.

226 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

related to him how Kiderlen had failed to obtain
the Emperor's consent to the limitation of
naval armaments, which would have secured
peace, because von Tirpitz had opposed it. I
added that Kiderlen had made no secret of his
absolute conviction that France would never
provoke war. " Any attempt," I added, " on
your part to argue that France is morally the
author of this catastrophe is, so far as I am
concerned, pure waste of energy."

Von Busche accordingly shifted the ground
from France and fell back upon England,
repeating like a gramophone all the German
absurdities about England's bellicose intentions
and intrigues. I cut short this piece of mala-
droit special pleading by a simple statement
which completely upset my visitor. " You are
giving yourself perfectly useless trouble," I told
him. " I know England too well for that. It is
Hungary and Germany who have started uni-
versal war." And I argued this so vigorously
that von Busche persisted no further and changed
the subject. But before doing so he was at
pains to repeat once again that Germany was
waging a defensive war, and that the German
people were convinced of it.

"There you are right," I replied. "What
astonishes me most in your country is neither
its military power, formidable as it is, nor its
remarkable organisation, but your success in
having so disciplined your people that you can
control their convictions, as if by police regulation,
however contrary they are to the facts. This

MY FOUR LAST GERMANS 227

is indeed a unique and unprecedented achieve-
ment."

From this stage the conversation began to
languish. The German Minister was obviously
looking for an opportunity to escape, but the
Councillor of Legation, for whom he was waiting,
had not yet arrived. When at length he came in
Herr von Busche — the base metal again revealing
itself — felt it necessary to excuse himself for
leaving so soon. " But," he said, " I have an
audience with the King at a quarter past seven."

"I congratulate you," I said, "on seeing His
Majesty twice in three days. It is a good augury
for your mission." Von Busche turned pale and
said that he did not understand me, as in a
few minutes he was going to see the King for the
first time. He added that it would have been
impossible for him to see the King before he had
been officially presented to his Ministers.

" Oh," said I, "in that case it is, of course,
my mistake." And these were the last words
exchanged between Germany's last Minister to
Roumania and myself.

This attempt, doomed in advance to failure,
to prove that the author of the world war was
England, and the lie with regard to his having
met the King may be fairly regarded as an
epitome of the whole German diplomatic method.

II

A few days after the battle of the Marne I
was on my way from my villa at Sinaia to the

228 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Palace Hotel when a motor car stopped in front
of me. A man, smothered in dust, got out of
it and addressed me. As he said he had come
from Berlin on behalf of Herr Zimmermann
solely in order to speak to me, I arranged to
see him at once. In my house a few minutes
later he withdrew this, and explained that
Zimmermann had not really sent him.

My visitor from Berlin was, in fact, a German
engineer who had lived many years in Roumania,
married a Roumanian lady, been appointed a
teacher in one of our higher-grade schools, and,
in fact, had become so completely one of ourselves
that I firmly believed he had been naturalised
as a Roumanian. At the outbreak of war Mr.
S. happened to be in Berlin, and before Roumania
had definitely declined to enter the war at the
side of Germany, he had made it his business
to assist in inducing her to do so. With this
object he used to send us from Berlin immense
telegrams, sometimes two or three a day, con-
taining remarkably biassed information on the
progress of the war, evidently designed to work
upon our fears. This reckless outlay made it
clear to me that Mr. S. was doing his work at
Germany's expense, which, on the part of a
naturalised Roumanian, made me very angry.
Immediately on meeting him I had reproached
him vehemently for thus allowing himself to
forget that he had become a Roumanian citizen,
and my indignation fairly carried me away.
Its object excused himself to me on the ground
that he had not, in fact, ever been naturalised,

MY FOUR LAST GERMANS 229

but the violence with which I had spoken to
him had made its impression, and when he
came to my house all his earlier audacity had
disappeared.

Mr. S.'s proposal was really paralysing. He
began by admitting that my attitude towards
Germany was quite naturally explained by my
affection for France ; " but," he added, " we
Germans are also very fond of France and have no
complaint to make of her. On the contrary,
the idea of being at war with France is exceed-
ingly painful to us. These being Germany's
feelings for France, I have come to you, for I
have long considered you as one of the clearest-
sighted men in Europe — an opinion which is
also shared by the political world of Berlin —
to give you the opportunity of rendering, to
Roumania, France and humanity alike, a service
which will ensure your name being for ever
enshrined in history.

"Go to Paris, where everyone — very rightly
—trusts you. Propose to France a separate
peace. We will offer her terms of peace, magnifi-
cent terms, beyond her utmost hopes : and,
after that, we will punish, as they deserve, the
Russians, and above all the English, the real
criminals who have provoked the war and are
responsible for this catastrophe. You have more
chance than anyone else in the world of being
listened to."

I answered my German as any other man in
my place must have answered : I told him that
he had no shred of reason to believe it possible

230 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

that I could listen to such a suggestion. What
he was proposing to me was an infamy of which
he should have known I was incapable. If
France ever wished to be guilty of such abomin-
able treachery she would not require any inter-
vention on my part, and to suppose anything
else was not only to lose all sense of proportion,
but to be quite abnormally stupid. I then
dismissed S. as he deserved, but not without
first telling him how little I thought of Germany
for her ignorance of the spirit of France and of
her other adversaries.

That Berlin should have thought me so foolish
as to suppose myself able to play such a part, and
base enough to wish to play it, is nothing : it
is merely a mistaken estimate of an individual.
But that Berlin could imagine that France would
betray England, who had come to her help
without any obligation, made it perfectly clear
to me that people at Berlin had completely
lost, not only all sense of right, but what is
sometimes more dangerous, all intelligence as
well.

I have not seen Mr. S. again.

Ill

In November, 1914, at Bucharest, I received
the last visit of a German friend with whom my
relations had been very close.

Mr. X. is a man of business ; he is also a man
of ability, one of those singularly clear intellects
which impress one from the first and in the

MY FOUR LAST GERMANS 231

presence of which one feels that here is an in-
dividual who would have been a success at any
period, in any country and in any career. Mr. X.
is also one of the most international of Germans ;
his mother was a Russian, his wife is English,
he has one sister married in Russia and another
in the United States. He has passed a great part
of his life in Russia, in England and in Roumania.
With all this he is highly educated, astute and
witty. I dwell on this, because in November,
1914, X. gave me an unexpected opportunity of
seeing how the German war could pervert even
so cultivated an intelligence as his. When I
record what X. said to me my astonishment
will be intelligible. It will be understood also,
why, when after three hours' conversation he
left me, I said to some friends who were waiting
for me to dine with them, " I have just been
spending three hours in a lunatic asylum."

X. had always been genuinely well-disposed
to me, and had come in reality to see whether
he could do nothing to make me less Germano-
phobe. Too well brought up to reveal his plans
openly, he began by offering me Herr von Busche's
excuses for no longer visiting me. " If it was
only Germany you attacked," he said, " it
would always be a pleasure to Herr Busche to
call upon you, but you attack the Kaiser, and that
he cannot overlook."

I replied that Herr von Busche was perfectly
right not to call on me, because in no case should
I return his visit. I added that if ever Herr von
Busche met me I begged that he would not bow

232 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

his salutation to me, since I had quite made up
my mind not to return it.

In terms most nicely calculated not to offend
me, X. then said how profoundly he regretted, not
only on my account but on that of Roumania,
to see me afloat in a vessel which was bound to
founder, and very delicately he alluded to certain
strokes of the oar which, taken at the right mo-
ment, might effect a complete change of course.
As I did not wish to bandy words with him, I
pretended not to understand, and replied that I
had not, indeed, any boat beneath me, but that I
was a lonely swimmer in an ocean full of danger,
obeying simply the imperative behests of my
conscience, and without ever asking myself
whether or not I had any prospect of reaching
land. And as X. insisted on Roumania's mis-
fortune in losing the only politician who, accord-
ing to him, was of real worth, I cut him short
with the words, which I have so often repeated,
" How can one concern one's self with the situa-
tion of an individual when the fate of the world
is at stake ? ?: Accordingly X.v abandoning all
hope of convincing me, left the personal question
and began a monologue, like a man thinking
aloud. For more than two hours he explained
to me why Germany must be victorious, why it
was impossible that she should be otherwise,
and why all those who placed themselves across
the German path would be crushed to the earth
without any advantage to themselves or to the
cause which they wished to serve. According
to him, Germany was at least half a century in

MY FOUR LAST GERMANS 233

advance of the rest of the world, because she
understood what organisation meant, while all
other countries were still relying on the futilities
of individual initiative. " For that reason more
than any other," he said, " Germany's victory,
which is just as much beyond dispute as the
sun in the sky, will be an advantage to the whole
human race, since even the nations she conquers
will feel the benefit of her supremacy.

" Of all our enemies France is the only one
with whom we need reckon. Her soldiers, her
officers, her General Staff, are just as good as ours,
but thirty-eight millions of men can do nothing
against seventy millions. France will be ground
to powder, and we Germans shall regret it.

" Russia gives us no anxiety. Number? are
not the main factor in war. Russia, believe me,
will go from collapse to collapse. Each time
that you fancy that Russia is on the point of an
achievement you will have a repetition of the
Mazurian lakes. Thanks to Russia's disorder,
Russia's indifference, her absolute lack of organ-
isation and her fundamental inability to create it,
the famous steam-roller is a perilous illusion.
Believe me, the Russians will be beaten' at just
that moment when their allies will have special
need of them, and they will be first to quit the
field.

6 There remains England. Obviously she
might have been formidable. If England had
begun to arm herself ten years ago we should
never have dared to venture on war: But
England wishes to do in a few months what has

234 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

taken Russia a hundred years. That is asking
too much of human capacity, and it will never
come to pass. You will see what the course of
events will be. The war will last a few months
more, at the very most a year. Then the Kaiser,
at the head of his troops, will enter Paris, Moscow
and London." I smiled at this, and X. replied :
" Yes, London. It is there, at Westminster,
that the Emperor will dictate the world's peace
and the reorganisation of the human race."

Nothing was further from X.'s mind than
bluff. He was profoundly convinced of his own
prophecy, which, indeed, in his view, amounted
to evidence. Yet I repeat that X. is a man of
education and brains, who has travelled, who is
at home all the world over, and having lived all
his life among foreigners might well have a
more open mind.

He gave me the solution himself when he said
that since the war no peasant among his country-
men could feel himself more of the German
Michael } than he did.

IV

In the Spring of 1915 a friend came to tell me
that a German diplomatist with whom I had been
very friendly, but to whom I had not bowed for
some months, was begging to meet me at any
cost. It was suggested to me that we should
come across each other, as if by chance, at my
friend's house. After much persuasion I agreed,
on the express condition that no word of politics

1 The German equivalent of " John Bull."

MY FOUR LAST GERMANS 235

should be mentioned. I knew perfectly well
that the German in question would not respect
this undertaking, but the agreement to exclude
politics was indispensable if I were to be able,
without rudeness, to bring our conversation to an
end at the moment of my choice.

Next afternoon, at half-past five, I was duly
calling on my friend when the German diplo-
matist came in. He told me that he realised that
Roumania would soon be at war with Germany,
that consequently he would have to leave Buchar-
est, and that he had come to beg me, when the
occasion arose, to take charge of the keys of his
flat, feeling sure that he could count upon me
to see that his property was respected. It is
quite needless to say that he had no intention of
doing anything of the kind, and that when
Roumania declared war on Germany in August,
1916, he never even thought of it. It is, however,
a pleasure to me to recall that a German diplomat
reckoned on me for the preservation of his house
and furniture, when I remember that in December,
1916, when the German armies occupied Buchar-
est, Field Marshal von Mackensen not only gave
orders for my house to be sacked, with the most
complete and what I may be forgiven for calling
the most Hunnish particularity, but came in
person a few days afterwards, accompanied by
his Staff, to admire the way in which his instruc-
tions had been carried out. There are things that
the Germans do differently from other people.

My German diplomatist asked me with irresis-
tible frankness on what my conviction that

236 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Germany would be defeated was based. I
answered him without any reserve. I explained
to him my reasons, which were those of ordinary
common sense, and we passed, step by step, from
one point to another, until at length he reached
that of making the following remarkable admis-
sion : " All you say is perfectly true. The
militarism of Prussia, the martinet spirit of
Prussia, is the most abominable thing on the face
of the earth. But it happens to be invincible.
And there is nothing for us — for any of us —
to do but bow before it as to fate."

My only reply was to tell my German diplo-
matist, who happened to be a Saxon by birth,
that I would see him again at the end of the war.

Eleutberios Veriizelos

XXVIII
ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS

ALL greatness is rare, and human greatness
is the rarest of all. By human greatness
I mean an harmonious personality made
up of high intelligence, moral beauty and inflexi-
bility of will. Great minds are not so scarce as
men think; moral beauty is fortunately fairly
common, especially amongst humble folk. Tenacity
of will is often combined with moral perversity.
But the combination of these qualities in a
whole, which, according to my own idea, alone
constitutes true human greatness, is so rare that
one may go through life without meeting it.

Venizelos * is a true example of human greatness,
and of a greatness such that one may unre-
servedly admire it. It should not be forgotten
that in sincere profound admiration we may
find one of those rare springs of joy which from
time to time illusion us as to the value of life.

Shakespeare, the greatest poet humanity has
ever produced, presents this remarkable and

This appreciation was written in 1915, before M. Venizelos' recall
to power.

239

240 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

almost singular characteristic — that we know
nothing of his life. Venizelos is rather like him.
Until recent years his life was so devoid of inci-
dent that it leaves a vast field to be occupied by
legend. The only thing known about his early
career is the time he spent in the mountains
with other Cretans fighting for his country's
independence. This was a moral education.
People do not know, however, that this Cretan
carried books about with him in the bush, in order
to perfect himself in the study of French.

II

Before the time of Venizelos, Greece had
fallen low, as we know only too well. If she had
not since then risen again so marvellously, I,
who owe an eternal debt to the Hellenic people,
should not dare to speak of their past. During
the war of independence Greece had accom-
plished marvels of heroism and moral beauty,
which in the end drew to it the protection of the
three Great Powers, France, England and Russia
—the three Powers that are always associated in
history with noble action, whether they act inde-
pendently or together. But this same Greece
had started down a real incline almost immedi-
ately after her emancipation. She made an
unhappy choice in her first king. How could any
rigid Bavarian understand the Greek soul ? Her
second king made a rule of leaving the Greeks
entirely free, he did not so much as guide them
through difficult moments, and there resulted

ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS 241

a period of unchecked quarrelling between politi-
cal parties, the system of dividing the spoil
pushed to its utmost limits, and in spite of the
efforts of another great man, Tricoupis, the Greek
people, one of the most gifted on the earth,
knew all the misery of defeat and bankruptcy.

As ever, the nation was saved on the edge of
the abyss by the only means of salvation that
history knows — revolution. And by the most
dangerous form of revolution, that known as the
military coup d'etat. King George, who had done
nothing to deserve it, drank the full cup of
humiliation to the dregs. With his own hand he
signed the order cashiering his own sons from the
army, including the Crown Prince, whose name
was for the Greeks for ever associated with their
defeat at Domokos in 1897. Whatever his
faults may have been, a martyrdom like his
should have expiated them. After having de-
stroyed, it was necessary to rebuild. But military
revolution, unless it throws up a Napoleon,
though very effective in clearing the ground,
finds reconstruction beyond its powers.

Greece was in a state of absolute chaos. The
new Chamber not only wanted to set about
revising the fundamental laws of the state, but
it also wanted to proclaim its own supremacy,
though the exercise of such supremacy was
something quite beyond its powers, as they had
then developed.

It was at this moment that the Cretan
arrived.

He came alone ; without clansmen, or family

J,I. Q

242 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

or fortune ; without past or party or supporters.
He stood, as, I say, alone.

He was received like a god — crowds are occa-
sionally endowed with divine intuition of this
kind. Received as a god, he acted from the
first moment as a man.

There are few finer pages in history than the
account of how the Cretan faced the people of
Athens. They were shouting with all their
might, " Long live Venizelos ! Long live the
Constitutional Assembly ! " and he forced upon
them the alternative cry, " Long live the revision
of the Constitution."

This man was right when the world was wrong.
Like all creators, he began by smashing everything.
He crushed the parties, or rather the old cliques
which had brought Greece to destruction. He
made another nation. Amongst an excitable
people he dared to insist on the permanent
status of the civil servant, his selection by com-
petitive examination, and his promotion on the
recommendation of his colleagues.

He cleaned the stable out better even than the
Hercules of legend. An astonished Europe could
indulge itself in the spectacle of a great man come
to light.

Ill

After having remade Greece himself, he turned
to the fate of Hellenism in the world at large.

During the whole Balkan crisis — and one can
say this quite truthfully — it was Greece that,
thanks to the genius of Venizelos, with the

ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS 243

smallest army of all at her disposal, controlled
events.

With the insight of a great man, Venizelos
realised the true value of Serbia. He attached
Serbia to Greece, and at all times and in all
circumstances dominated M. Pasitch by the power
of his personal attraction. When it was found
impossible to arrive at an understanding with
Turkey on the subject of Crete, owing to the
hopeless incapacity of the Turks, Venizelos ac-
complished the miracle of concluding an alliance
with the Bulgarians, a race that the Greek people
traditionally regarded in the light of an heredi-
tary and uncompromising enemy. In concluding
this alliance he saw clearly how necessary it was
to keep out of the treaty all reference to the
division of territories that might be conquered
in the future. King George and the Crown Prince
(afterwards King Const antine) opposed Veni-
zelos bitterly, but the Cretan once more gained
his point, and the treaty was silent as to the
division of the spoils. Because of his prevision,
Greece escaped the imputations and difficulties
in which Serbia is still involved.

In London Venizelos imposed his personality
on all political and diplomatic circles, and this
in spite of his reserve and modesty, which was such
a contrast to the foolish arrogance of Daneff.

It was just at that time that I had the happiness
of getting to know him, and of forming one of
those friendships, based on confidence and sym-
pathy, which death alone can break.

I only saw Venizelos twice at that time, but it

244 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

sufficed for me to know that I had before me
not only a great man but a gentleman, a man
in whom one might repose unlimited confidence
without running the risk of being deceived. I
knew he was in profound disagreement with the
Bulgarians at the Balkan Conference which was
then sitting, but he had too much delicacy to
say a word to me about difficulties between
him and his allies.

The first time I saw him I asked him the secret
of his extraordinary success. He replied that
he had arrived at the right moment, and that he
had adopted two rules of conduct : to tell his
people the whole truth in all circumstances and
to be ready to leave office at any moment without
regret.

I had a very animated conversation with him
at Bucharest. He became very angry when I
told him it was a mistake to insist upon getting
Kavalla.

From his anger I could see — what later on I
found to be true — that he was not the only
director of his country's policy. At the time
I was dreaming of completing the Treaty of
Bucharest by a treaty of alliance between the
four kingdoms of Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and
Roumania.

When all the secrets of the Balkan crisis are
revealed, when men know all that Venizelos
did, our admiration for him as a great man will
be enhanced. Here, at least, we have an indi-
vidual who need not fear that all his actions and
even his secret thoughts should be revealed.

ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS 245

After the Treaty of Bucharest, Venizelos found
he had to fight Austrian intrigues at Constanti-
nople. I do not want to tell the history of the
Treaty of Athens now nor to insist on the fact
that on several occasions a new war between
Turkey and Greece was on the point of breaking
out and that Venizelos was prepared for all
eventualities. All I want to do at the moment
is to render public homage to the moral beauty
of Venizelos, who, far from wishing to ignore the
services I was able at that time to do Greece and
the cause of peace, insisted on giving them the
widest publicity.

At the end of October, 1913, he wrote me a
letter of generous appreciation, in which he said :
" Our recent friendship has been rich in practical
results for my country, and I rejoice that Rou-
mania has again so well played the part of arbiter
in the conclusion of peace in the Balkans. It is
a new bond between our two nations ; we who are
already bound by the same interests are destined
to advance together on the path of civilisation."
Magnanimity is always the mark of greatness.

Venizelos had the question of Epirus on his
hands at the time. He knew quite well that it
was impossible for Greece to oppose the unani-
mous wish of the Great Powers, and that it would
be unworthy of him to be the cause of a general
war. He sacrificed himself to his duty, knowing
well that the day would come when he would be
able to obtain Epirus without provoking Europe.
But in making good this policy he spent himself,
just as he spent himself at Bucharest when he

246 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

failed in obtaining for the Greeks the sun, the
moon and the constellations. His actions were
closely watched at Athens. Every concession
this great man made to the peace of Europe and
the security of his country was made the occa-
sion of attacking him as a coward soul who,
having no faith in the force of Hellenism, did
not dare show himself implacable.

Nothing is easier than to obtain vulgar popu-
larity by siding with those who shout loudest at
a time when, at the risk of unpopularity, another
man takes upon himself to defend his country.

It is to this incident that Venizelos owes the
enmity of M. Zographos, just as later on, as a
reward for his efforts over the Islands, he had to
submit to all the epithets coined by the envious
and the disappointed.

IV

Everyone who has studied history sufficiently
to know that great men are sometimes rather
a burden on their country, will understand that
Venizelos could not remain long in power.

After the Treaty of Bucharest had been signed
M. Pasitch invited us all to luncheon at the
Palace Hotel. Speaking to my right-hand neigh-
bour, I told him of a wish I had cherished for
many years of visiting Japan in the summer of
1914. Venizelos heard me, and asked me if I
would take him as a travelling companion.
Then he went on to ask with a smile whether I
was sure I should be free in the first half of the
year 1914. He was alluding to the opinion

ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS 247

generally held that the men who had accom-
plished the work of 1913 would be retained in
office by their peoples. I told him, and the other
guests were greatly surprised at it, that I was
sure of this freedom, not only for myself, but
also for him. As far as Venizelos was concerned,
I was wrong by a year. But without the Island
question and the surprise of the European war,
he would have been out of office at the period
I predicted. His greatness offended people in a
way one could hardly imagine. The man who
created modern Greece had at all costs to dis-
appear from the scene in order that certain
personages might emerge from their obscurity.
I felt it first in July, 1913, and I became firmly
convinced of it in the months that followed.

When European war broke out I had no doubts
as to Venizelos' thoughts. I knew that he
wanted a serious and lasting alliance amongst the
little nations, and I could not believe that such
a genius would not realise that the independence,
the liberty, the very existence of Greece were
indissolubly bound up, as indeed were the inde-
pendence and liberty of Roumania, with the
defeat of Austria and Germany. I have 'learnt
since that he thought as I did, and as a conse-
quence that he realised from the beginning that
our highest moral duty, not only to civilisation,
but also in respect of our interests as nations,
was to do all in our power to bring about the
victory of the Triple Entente.

With the fixed idea in my head of bringing
over all the Balkan nations to the side of the

248 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Triple Entente, and in spite of Austro-German
affirmations concerning their hold on Bulgaria,
I allowed myself to telegraph and write to
Venizelos, begging him to help us to show, in
this European crisis, that we were wide-minded
Europeans. I said it would be the worse for us
if we showed ourselves petty and provincial.
A victorious Germany would spell moral and
material death. A Triple Entente victorious
without our help would spell our moral undoing.
I told him that, just as I was advising my
country to make territorial concessions to the
Bulgarians, and advising the Serbs to do the
same thing on a substantial scale, as the war
would give them a magnificent territory extend-
ing up to the frontiers of Italy, so Greece, in a
lesser degree, should also set an example, more
especially as splendid compensation awaited her
in Asia Minor. It was in August and September,
1914, that I ventured to write in this strain to
my friend at Athens. I will come back to it
later. For the sake of truth I ought to say that
Venizelos replied to me in the autumn that
Greece could not make any territorial concessions,
and I felt rather bitter about it. Bitter because,
although I did not think that I could influence
the decisions of a Venizelos, I saw that Venizelos
was even more than I had guessed the victim of
difficulties originating in people without fore-
sight, and who, therefore, cannot understand
those who have this divine gift. The revelations
Venizelos has recently made have completely
cleared this matter up.

ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS 249

Never did he appear to me greater than after
I had read the two memoranda he addressed to
King Constantine.

I am one of those who have read and re-read
Bismarck's Memoirs. There. is nothing in them
which approaches the greatness of soul revealed
in the two documents penned by Venizelos.
How could a man like myself fail to resent
the ironic fate of these two papers, addressed as
they were to people incapable of appreciating
them.

The publication of the documents not only
exalts Venizelos higher than ever, but is an
inestimable service to Greece.

To prove to the Bulgarians that a Greek existed,
the greatest Greek of all, who conceived the
possibility of sacrifice in order to secure peace
with his neighbours, that is a finer work than
striking medals with the effigy of King Con-
stantine on them, entitled the " Slayer of Bulgars."

And now we come to Venizelos' last act.
At fifty he retired from political life, announcing
that if ever his country found herself faced
with a great foreign crisis he would return to the
fray, as would be his right and his duty. And
after having affirmed with all his strength his
right as a free man to fight no matter whom,
he retires as a free man, announcing to his
people that it is the last service he can render the
Crown.

250 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

This resignation of Venizelos, however dis-
tracting for all the friends of Greece, presents
one with the spectacle of almost superhuman
greatness. This man would only have to march
straight ahead and everything would go down
before him. But afraid of wounding Greece, he
performed an act of sacrifice that was harder
than dying itself, and exiled himself from the
company of the living.

Compare the fall of Venizelos with that of
Bismarck, and the superiority of our Graeco-
Latin race over the Germans will stand out in
all its sublimity. Dismissed by a young Emperor,
Bismarck knows neither how to fight as a man or
be silent as a man. He scolds like a discharged
cook. Why this difference ? Was Bismarck of
inferior metal to Venizelos ? It was not this,
but that Bismarck belonged to a nation which
for centuries has held the notion that the states-
man is not the servant of his country but the
servant of his king, and that the king himself is
not the highest expression of the national will,
but another will superimposed on that of the
nation.

Bismarck was heavily weighted by mediaeval
institutions and a life of obedience, and,
when dismissed like a servant, like a servant he
cried aloud. The Greek, true son of the French
revolution, knows that he is the servant of the
people, and when he surrenders everything it
is to the people that he makes his sacrifice.
He withdraws as a free man without recrimina-
tion.

ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS 251

VI

And now for a final recollection !

The last time Venizelos came to Roumania
I had a talk with him in the embrasure of one of
the windows of the Palace. We spoke of that
political philosophy to which men concerned
with the business of Government always hark
back. Amongst other things, we spoke of the
relations between the statesman and his Sovereign
in countries where monarchy is still an institu-
tion. And the Cretan said to me : " It is our
duty to devote our heart, our brain, our life to
strengthening and supporting our Sovereigns.
We know well enough that, in their turn, they
will only dismiss us if they cannot destroy us.
All the same, we must do our duty, because it is
our duty."

Venizelos has done his.

The Kaiser

XXIX

THE KAISER

I HAVE only seen the Kaiser once. To speak
of him after a single interview would be rash,
if the Kaiser were not one of those figures
which are always posing for the camera and whose
characteristics can be almost instantaneously
caught. Pope Leo XIII. who also had only seen
him once, at the beginning of his reign, said of
him, " This man will end in a catastrophe."

It was in January, 1907, at Berlin, that I was
received in audience by the Kaiser. There was
luncheon afterwards, to which, apart from the
Court, no one else was asked except Herr Tchir-
sky, then Foreign Minister, and the Roumanian
Minister to Germany, on whose unfortunate be-
haviour during our war it is beyond me to express
an opinion. I was waiting and chatting with the
Empress in a little room opening into the dining-
room, when the Kaiser came in. I was at once
struck by his machine-made stride, and when he
planted himself less than two paces in front of
me, his steely eyes looking straight into mine,
the impression of something mechanical became
still stronger. The Kaiser's stare is like nothing
I have ever seen before, quite abnormal in its

255

256 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

intensity, and distinctly suggestive of madness.
For perhaps ten minutes he talked to me in the
ante-room. Question followed question breath-
lessly, giving me scarcely time to frame an
answer to one before it was followed by
another.

It was clear that the Emperor meant to make
himself pleasant. The evening before he had
taken the trouble to enquire whether I would
rather he talked to me in French or English. I
had said I would prefer French. Needless to
say, I was surprised at so obvious an intention
to ingratiate himself : a Roumanian Minister
of Finance was hardly so important that the
Emperor of all-powerful Germany should be at
such pains to please him. I naturally concluded
that the Kaiser was a master of the art of
seduction, and later on my impression of this
resemblance to Nero was confirmed.

The Kaiser started by telling me that he knew
me very well already from the reports of Kiderlen-
Waechter, his Minister in Roumania, who had
told him all about me. " I don't know," he said,
" if your brothers are fond of you, but my
Minister's appreciation and affection for you were
more than brotherly." He went on to talk to
me of the difficulties of a Minister of Finance
in our time ; then leading the conversation —
if an avalanche of interjections can be called a
conversation — to the question of petroleum in
Roumania, he said to me in a cutting tone that
he did not propose to have any interference
from America in European affairs, and that he

THE KAISER 257

looked upon the full exploitation of our petro-
leum as one of the bulwarks against her
encroachments .

Of this preliminary conversation this was the
one point clearly impressed on me. It was
plain that the Kaiser, as the world has since had
ample reason to know, detested America.

During lunch — I was seated on the Emperor's
left, his daughter being on his right hand — and
afterwards for more than an hour in the smoking-
room, William II. talked to me without ceasing,
skipping from one subject to another with an
inconsequence and a feverish impatience which I
had never previously encountered. He was bent
on showing me that he was little short of om-
niscient ; he even talked to me of the Roumanian
monument in the Dobrudja — the so-called
Tropeum by Adam Ceissi — and he was evidently
pleased and surprised when I told him that
Moltke had spoken of it in his book on his early
travels.

Among a thousand other things, the Kaiser
asked me how King Charles had always managed
to get his own way, in spite of our parliamentary
system. I told him in reply that the King had
always had the wisdom to let matters take their
course, except in special questions which he
thought of particular importance, and that in
these his influence was consequently decisive.
The Emperor then asked me why his brother-in-
law, King George of Greece, was not similarly
successful, and I gave him my explanation.
During this part of the conversation I realised

j.i.

258 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

again how profound was the Kaiser's contempt
for liberal ideas and the constitutional system.
It was plain that he was sincere when he declared
that Providence had chosen him as its instrument
to insure the happiness of this poor world, just
as Nero was sincere when he believed himself a
great artist.

After that we were talking of sport, especially
in Roumania, when the Kaiser brusquely asked
me if King Charles was popular. I said that
popularity was hardly the word, but that the
King enjoyed something better, since he was
much esteemed. " That does not surprise me,"
said the Kaiser ; " it is thanks to his reserved
temperament." Unfortunately it was in reserve
that the Kaiser was deficient . . .

Here I had had this man, master of the most
formidable organisation in the world, talking to
me for three hours with the obvious desire of
pleasing me and of overwhelming me with his
omniscience and his genius, and yet when I left
the Palace I felt like an escaped prisoner. Next
day Prince Billow asked me how I had been
impressed. I told him that the Kaiser was an
extraordinary man, but that I would not be his
Minister for anything in the world. Prince
Billow smiled — a rather bitter smile, which showed
clearly that he knew exactly what I meant.

The Kaiser, I repeat, had been more than
kind. He even had the delicacy not to give me
my cordon of the Red Eagle — a decoration which
I was destined to return to him in the Spring of
1916 — on the occasion of our lunch, but to

THE KAISER 259

send it to me three days later by Herr Tchirsky,
as " a souvenir of my visit to Berlin."

I have never seen the Kaiser since, but some
years later, in conversation at Potsdam with a
Roumanian lady, a musician, married to a
German, the Emperor asked her if she was German
by birth, and when she answered that she was a
Roumanian the Kaiser said in reply : " Well,
and how is our good Take Jonescu ? " My
musical friend, who was temperamentally a
courtier, told me of this Imperial apostrophe
as if it were almost a divine honour.

Of my single interview with the German
autocrat I retain a disquieting recollection. It
was plain to me that he was a man out of the
ordinary run, and yet there was something
abnormal, almost unhealthy, about him which
kept me perpetually asking myself what he
would ultimately do. The contemplation of real
greatness provokes a serene sense of admiration.
That was not the impression left on me by the
Kaiser. On the other hand, he did not strike
me as a man of commonplace qualities, whom the
accident of birth had placed in a situation out
of all proportion to his natural capacity. Rather,
there was something exceptional about him, but
it was something incalculable and alarming.

From Kiderlen-Waechter I knew already the
Kaiser's methods of work, which were at once
comic and full of danger. Every morning he
went to the Foreign Ministry, where he had all
the telegrams read to him and insisted on im-
mediate decisions. Then he drank a glass of port,

260 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

ate two biscuits and departed. To prevent his
monarch's impulsiveness resulting in complica-
tions, Kiderlen had recourse to a plan of his
own. He only showed the Kaiser such telegrams
as had been received up to one o'clock in the
morning, those, that is, which he had himself
had time to consider, so that he was in a
position, if necessary, to withstand the Emperor's
impetuosity.

The great question which rernains, and will
always remain, to be answered is how the Kaiser,
whom a German once described to me as a lath
painted to look like steel, brought himself to the
point of launching universal war, and when he
actually chose the date of August, 1914. The
oftener I recall the impressions left on me
by my interview, the more firmly I believe
that the war had long been part of his deliberate
policy, but that the choice of the moment and the
form of its declaration were due to impulse. It
would otherwise be incomprehensible that the
Kaiser, who certainly did not lack brains (like
his son, whom Kiderlen- Waechter frankly treated
as deficient), should have risked all the hopes of
his country and his house at that particular
moment, and for the sake of a question which
exclusively concerned Austria-Hungary. For in
the future of Austria-Hungary William II. had
no confidence. So long ago as the autumn of
1912 Herr von Jagow, a favourite of the Kaiser,
and then German Ambassador at Rome, said to
the Roumanian Minister that the great question
of the hour was to discover how the inevitable

THE KAISER 261

dissolution of Austria-Hungary could take place
without the destruction of the European fabric.
Again, in the early days of November, 1913, on
my way back from Athens, where I had suc-
ceeded in making peace between Turkey and
Greece, I was dining with the Russian Ambassador
at Constantinople. During the evening the Ger-
man Ambassador, von Wangenheim, now dead,
who was also a favourite of the Kaiser, and whom
I then met for the first time, carried me off into
the bay of a window, and after first congratulat-
ing me on what I had done at Athens, said to me,
in so many words, " You will see that the sick
man of Europe, the Turk, will still be here when
Austria-Hungary is no more than a historical
recollection." So the Kaiser could have been
under no illusion as to the possibility of giving the
Hapsburg Empire a new lease of life.

How then can we explain his policy ? Per-
haps the key can be found in a confidential state-
ment he made at Potsdam in the early days of
August, 1914, to the Crown Prince of Roumania.
The Emperor told him that it was in the interest
of Roumania to place herself at the side of
Germany, whose victory was beyond question,
because Austria-Hungary could not last for more
than twenty years, and Germany would then
give Transylvania to Roumania. The Kaiser's
crime against the peace of the world is therefore
all the more unpardonable, because in his inmost
heart he could not believe that it would bring
the era of great European upheavals to a close.
He drew the sword, not to preserve Austria, but

262 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

in order to dispose of her ultimately in his own
fashion and at his own time.

It must not be supposed, because I have only
spoken to the Kaiser once, that this conversation
is my only material for the estimate I have
framed of him. An essential timorousness is the
explanation of his character, and, like all men
who are not really courageous, when the Kaiser
decided to make daring the key-note of his policy,
he overdid it. An incident of the early years of
his reign with which I am acquainted reveals
him precisely. Bismarck had no love for him,
and lost no occasion to make the Kaiser under-
stand that he was a figurehead, and that the real
authority rested with his Chancellor. He went
so far in this that one day, when the Emperor
asked him to promote a diplomatist of minor
rank for whom he had a liking, Bismarck curtly
refused. In spite of this the Emperor stuck to
his point and returned to it several times. Bis-
marck remained immovable. Faced with this
situation, the Emperor had not the strength of
mind either to abandon his demand or to give
his instructions as an order. The tension became
so great that someone in the Kaiser's immediate
circle went to Holstein and asked him to use his
well-known influence with Bismarck to bring an
impossible situation to an end. Bismarck would
not hear a word of it. Holstein at length de-
cided to make a fresh attempt the day before the
Kaiser was starting on a cruise in the North Sea.
Just as he was embarking he was told that there
were indications of Bismarck giving way. During

THE KAISER 263

the whole voyage the Emperor was restless,
nervous, and irritable, and yet never dared to
say a word against his Chancellor. At the first
point at which he touched in Norway he learnt
the news that Bismarck had at last yielded.
His delight was overwhelming. He was as ex-
travagantly pleased as a child. Kiderlen-Waech-
ter, who accompanied him, and had told
Holstein how necessary it was that this small
satisfaction should be given to the Emperor, was
more than astonished at the spectacle of the
master of all Germany literally jumping with
joy at having been able to promote a civil servant.
This is the same man who, when the day came on
which he decided to destroy the builder of modern
Germany, acted with reckless audacity and an
absolute want of proportion or delicacy — once
again the weak man overdoing it ! It was
probably in the same fashion that he brought
about the world-war. For years he had wished
for it, but the risk involved frightened him. As
soon as he had made a step forward he recoiled
from the decisive measure, — again the essentially
timorous man willing to wound but yet afraid to
strike.

But on the day when he had screwed his courage
to the sticking point his impetuosity became
nearly insane, for it was insanity on the part of
the Kaiser to declare war himself in place of
provoking his adversaries and forcing them to
declare it on him.

The complex personality of the Emperor
William and the dreadful penalty which humanity

264 SOME PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

has paid because the last Hohenzollern, instead
of being the traditional Prussian sovereign,
not too intellectual but full of common-sense,
was half a madman and half a genius, must
confirm us all in the profound conviction that
the well-being of a country and of the world is
a charge too serious to depend on the accidents
of absolutism.

Printed in Great Britain by Robert MacLehose and Co. Ltd., at the University Press, Glasgow.

D Jonescu, Take

507 Some personal impressic

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