My Four Years in Germany Part 21

_Article_9._

This agreement shall apply also to the colonies and other foreign possessions of either party.

Berlin, February, 1917.

I then said, "I shall not cable at all. Why do you come to me with a proposed treaty after we have broken diplomatic relations and ask an Amba.s.sador who is held as a prisoner to sign it? Prisoners do not sign treaties and treaties signed by them would not be worth anything." And I also said, "After your threat to keep Americans here and after reading this doc.u.ment, even if I had authority to sign it I would stay here until h.e.l.l freezes over before I would put my name to such a paper."

Montgelas seemed rather rattled, and in his confusion left the paper with me--something, I am sure, he did not intend to do in case of a refusal. Montgelas was an extremely agreeable man and I think at all times had correctly predicted the att.i.tude of America and had been against acts of frightfulness, such as the torpedoing of the _Lusitania_ and the resumption of ruthless submarine war. I am sure that a gentleman like Montgelas undertook with great reluctance to carry out his orders in the matter of getting me to sign this treaty.

I must cheerfully certify that even the most pro-German American correspondents in Berlin, when I told them of Montgelas' threat, showed the same fine spirit as their colleagues. All begged me not to consider them or their liberty where the interests of America were involved.

As soon as diplomatic relations were broken, and I broke them formally not only in my conversation with Zimmermann of Monday morning but also by sending over a formal written request for my pa.s.sports on the evening of that day, our telegraph privileges were cut off. I was not even allowed to send telegrams to the American consuls throughout Germany giving them their instructions. Mail also was cut off, and the telephone. My servants were not even permitted to go to the nearby hotel to telephone. In the meantime we completed our preparations for departure. We arranged to turn over American interests, and the interests of Roumania and Serbia and j.a.pan, to the Spanish Emba.s.sy; and the interests of Great Britain to the Dutch. I have said already that I believe that Amba.s.sador Polo de Bernabe will faithfully protect the interests of America, and I believe that Baron Gevers will fearlessly fight the cause of the British prisoners.

We sold our automobiles; and two beautiful prize winning saddle horses, one from Kentucky and one from Virginia, which I had brought with me from America, went on the stage, that is, I sold them to the proprietor of the circus in Berlin!

The three tons of food which we had brought with us from America we gave to our colleagues in the diplomatic corps,--the Spaniards, Greeks, Dutch and the Central and South Americans. I had many friends among the diplomats of the two Americas who were all men of great ability and position in their own country. I think that most of them know only too well the designs against Central and South America cherished by the Pan-Germans.

Finally, I think on the morning of Friday, Mr. Oscar King Davis, correspondent of the _New_York_Times_, received a wireless from Mr. Van Anda, editor of the _New_York_Times_, telling him that Bernstorff and his staff were being treated with every courtesy and that the German s.h.i.+ps had not been confiscated. In the evening our telephone was reconnected, and we were allowed to receive some telegrams and to send open telegrams to the consuls, etc. throughout Germany; and we were notified that we would probably be allowed to leave the next day in the evening.

Always followed by spies, I paid as many farewell visits to my diplomatic colleagues as I was able to see; and on Sat.u.r.day I thought that, in spite of the ridiculous treatment accorded us in cutting off the mail and telephone and in holding me for nearly a week, I would leave in a sporting spirit: I therefore, had my servant telephone and ask whether Zimmermann and von Bethmann-Hollweg would receive me. I had a pleasant farewell talk of about half an hour with each of them and I expressly told the Chancellor that I had come to bid him a personal farewell, not to make a record for any White Book, and that anything he said would remain confidential. I also stopped in to thank Dr.

Zahn, of the Foreign Office, who had arranged the details of our departure and gave him a gold cigarette case as a souvenir of the occasion. At the last moment, the Germans allowed a number of the consuls and clerks who had been working in the Emba.s.sy, and the American residents in Berlin, to leave on the train with us; so that we were about one hundred and twenty persons in all on this train, which left the Potsdamer station at eight-ten in the evening. The time of our departure had not been publicly announced, but although the automobiles, etc. in front of the Emba.s.sy might have attracted a crowd, there was no demonstration whatever; and, in fact, during this week that I was detained in Berlin I walked allover the city every afternoon and evening, went into shops, and so on, without encountering any hostile demonstration.

There was a large crowd in the station to see us off. All the Spanish Emba.s.sy, Dutch, Greeks and many of our colleagues from Central and South America were there. There were, from the Foreign Office, Montgelas, Dr. Roediger, Prittwitz and Horstmann. As the train pulled out, a number of the Americans left in Berlin who were on the station platform raised quite a vigorous cheer.

Two officers had been sent by the Imperial Government to accompany us on this train; one, a Major von der Hagen, sent by the General Staff and the other, a representative of the Foreign Office, Baron Wernher von Ow-Wachendorf. It was quite thoughtful of the Foreign Office to send this last officer, as it was by our efforts that he had secured his exchange when he was a prisoner in England; and he, therefore, would be supposed to entertain kindly feelings for our Emba.s.sy.

I had ordered plenty of champagne and cigars to be put on the train and we were first invited to drink champagne with the officers in the dining car; then they joined us in the private salon car which we occupied in the end of the train. The journey was uneventful. Outside some of the stations a number of people were drawn up who stared at the train in a bovine way, but who made no demonstration of any kind.

We went through Wurttemburg and entered Switzerland by way of Schaffhausen. The two officers left us at the last stop on the German side. I had taken the precaution before we left Berlin to find out their names, and, as they left us, I gave each of them a gold cigarette case inscribed with his name and the date.

At the first station on the Swiss side a body of Swiss troops were drawn up, presenting arms, and the Colonel commanding the Swiss army (there are no generals in Switzerland), attended by several staff officers, came on the train and travelled with us nearly to Zurich.

I started to speak French to one of these staff officers, but he interrupted me by saying in perfect English, "You do not have to speak French to me. My name is Iselin, many of my relations live in New York and I lived there myself some years."

At Zurich we left the German special train, and were met on the platform by some grateful j.a.panese, the American Consul and a number of French and Swiss newspaper reporters, thus ending our exodus from Germany.

CHAPTER XVIII

LIBERALS AND REASONABLE MEN

I have already expressed a belief that Germany will not be forced to make peace because of a revolution, and that sufficient food will be somehow found to carry the population during at least another year of war.

What then offers a prospect of reasonable peace, supposing, of course, that the Germans fail in the submarine blockade of England and that the crumbling up of Russia does not release from the East frontier soldiers enough to break the lines of the British and French in France?

I think that it is only by an evolution of Germany herself toward liberalism that the world will be given such guarantees of future peace as will justify the termination of this war.

There is, properly speaking, no great liberal party in the political arena in Germany. As I have said, the Reichstag is divided roughly into Conservatives, Roman Catholics, or Centrum, and Social Democrats. The so-called National Liberal party has in this war shown itself a branch of the Conservative party, and on some issues as bitter, as conservative, as the Junkers themselves. Herr Ba.s.sermann and Herr Stresemann have not shown themselves leaders of liberal thought, nor has their leaders.h.i.+p been such as to inspire confidence in their political sagacity.

It was Stresemann who on May thirtieth, 1916, said in the Reichstag referring to President Wilson as a peacemaker, "We thrust the hand of Wilson aside." On the day following, the day on which the President announced to Congress the breaking of diplomatic relations, news of that break had not yet arrived in Berlin and Herr Stresemann on that peaceful Sunday morning was engaged in making a speech to the members of the National Liberal party in which he told them that as a result of his careful study of the American situation, of his careful researches into American character and politics, he could a.s.sure them that America would never break with Germany. As he concluded his speech and sat down amid the applause of his admirers, a German who had been sitting in the back of the room rose and read from the noon paper, the "_B._Z._", a despatch from Holland giving the news that America had broken relations with Germany. The political skill and foresight of Herr Stresemann may be judged from the above incident.

The Socialists, or Social Democrats, more properly speaking, have shown themselves in opposition to the monarchical form of government in Germany. This has put them politically, militarily and socially beyond the pale.

After a successful French attack in the Champagne, I heard it said of a German woman, whose husband was thought to be killed, that her rage and despair had been so great that she had said she would become a Social Democrat; and her expression was repeated as showing to what lengths grief had driven her. This girl was the wife of an ordinary clerk working in Berlin.

The Social Democrats are not given offices, are not given t.i.tles: they never join the cla.s.s of "_Rat_," and they cannot hope to become officers of the army. Did not Lieutenant Forstner, the notorious centre of the Zabern Affair, promise a reward to the first one of his men who in case of trouble should shoot one "of those d.a.m.n Social Democrats"?

There is, therefore, no refuge at present politically, for the reasonable men of liberal inclinations; and it is these liberal men who must themselves create a liberal party: a party, members.h.i.+p in which will not entail a loss of business, a loss of prospects of promotion and social degradation.

There are many such men in Germany to-day; perhaps some of the conservative Socialists will join such a party, and there are men in the government itself whose habits of mind and thought are not incompatible with members.h.i.+p in a liberal organisation.

The Chancellor himself is, perhaps, at heart a Liberal. He comes of a banking family in Frankfort and while there stands before his name the "von" which means n.o.bility, and while he owns a country estate, the whole turn of his thought is towards a philosophical liberalism. Zimmermann, the Foreign Secretary, although the mental excitement caused by his elevation to the Foreign Office at a time of stress, made him go over to the advocates of ruthless submarine war, lock, stock and barrel, is nevertheless at heart a Liberal and violently opposed to a system which draws the leaders of the country from only one aristocratic cla.s.s.

Dr. Solf, the Imperial Colonial Minister, while devoted to the Emperor and his family is a man so reasonable in his views, so indulgent of the views of others, and indulgent without weakness, that he would make an ideal leader of a liberalised Germany.

The great bankers, merchants and manufacturers, although they appreciate the luscious dividends that they have received during the peaceful years since 1870, nevertheless feel under their skins the ignominy of living in a country where a cla.s.s exists by birth, a cla.s.s not even tactful enough to conceal its ancient contempt for all those who soil their hands business or trade.

In fact such a party is a necessity for Germany as a buffer against the extreme Social Democrats.

At the close of the war the soldiers who have fought in the mud of the trenches for three years will most insistently demand a redistricting of the Reichstag and an abolition of the inadequate circle voting of Prussia. And when manhood suffrage comes in Prussia and when the industrial population of Germany gets that representation in the Reichstag out of which they have been brazenly cheated for so many years, it may well be that a great liberal party will be the only defence of private property against the a.s.sault of an enraged and justly revengeful social democracy.

The workingmen of Germany have been fooled for a long time. They const.i.tute that cla.s.s of which President Lincoln spoke, "You can fool some of the people all of the time"; and the middle cla.s.s of manufacturers, merchants, etc. have acquiesced in the system because of the profits that they have made.

The difficulty of making peace with Germany, as at present const.i.tuted, is that the whole world feels that peace made with its present government would not be lasting; that such a peace would mean the detachment of some of the Allies from the present world alliance against Germany; preparation by Germany, in the light of her needs as disclosed by this war; and the declaration of a new war in which there would be no battle of the Marne to turn back the tide of German world conquest.

For a long time before this war, radicals in Great Britain pinned a great faith to the Socialist party of Germany. How little that faith was justified appeared in July and August of 1914 when the Socialist party tamely voted credits for the war; a war declared by the Emperor on the mere statement that it was a defensive war; declared because it was alleged that certain invasions of German territory, never since substantiated, had taken place.

The Socialist party is divided. It is a great pity that the world cannot deal with men of the type of Scheidemann, who, in other democracies, would appear so conservative as to be almost reactionary. But Scheidemann and his friends, while they have, in their attempted negotiations with the Socialists of other countries, the present protection of the Imperial Government, will have no hand in dictating terms of peace so long as that government is in existence. They are being used in an effort to divide the Allies.

As President Wilson said in his message to Russia of May twenty-sixth, 1917: "The war has begun to go against Germany, and, in their desperate desire to escape the inevitable ultimate defeat, those who are in authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are making use even of the influence of the groups and parties among their own subjects to whom they have never been just or fair or even tolerant to promote a propaganda on both sides of the sea which will preserve for them their influence at home and their power abroad, to the undoing of the very men they are using."

There is an impression abroad that the Social Democratic party of Germany, usually known abroad as the Socialist party, partakes of at least some of the characteristics of a great liberal party.

This is far from being the case. By their acts, if not by their express declarations, they have shown themselves as opposed to the monarchical form of government and their leaders are charged with having declared themselves openly in favour of free love and against religion. The Roman Catholic Church recognises in Social Democracy its greatest enemy, and has made great efforts to counteract its advance by fostering a sort of Roman Catholic trades-union for a religious body of Socialists. The Social Democrat in Germany is almost an outcast. Although one third of the members of the Reichstag belong to this party, its members are never called to hold office in the government; and the att.i.tude of the whole of the governing cla.s.s, of all the professors, school-teachers, priests of both Protestant and Roman Catholic religions of the prosperous middle cla.s.ses, is that of violent opposition to the doctrines of Social Democracy. The world must entertain no illusion that the Social Democratic leaders speak for Germany.

If the industrial populations had their fair share of representation in the Reichstag they might perhaps even control that body. But, as I have time and again reiterated, the Reichstag has only the power of public opinion; and the Germany of to-day is ruled by officials appointed from above downwards. All of these officials in Germany must be added to the other cla.s.ses that I have mentioned.

There are more officials there than in any other country in the world. As they owe their very existence to the government, they must not only serve that government, but also make the enemies of that government their own. Therefore, they and the circle of their connections are opponents of the Social Democrats.

All this shows how difficult it is at present for the men of reasonable and liberal views, who do not wish to declare themselves against both religion and morality, to find a political refuge.

The Chancellor, himself a liberal at heart, as I have said, has declared that there must be changes in Germany. It is perhaps within the bounds of probability that a great new liberal party will be formed to which I have referred, composed of the more conservative Social Democrats, of the remains of the National Liberal and Progressive parties and of the more liberal of the Conservatives. The important question is then whether the Roman Catholic party or Centrum will voluntarily dissolve and its members cease to seek election merely as representatives of the Roman Catholic Church.

It is perhaps too much to expect that the Centrum party, as a whole and as at present const.i.tuted, will declare for liberalism and parliamentary government and for a fair redistricting of the divisions in Germany which elect members to the Reichstag, but there are many wise and fa.r.s.eeing men in this party; and its leaders, Dr. Spahn and Erzberger, are fearless and able men.

For some years a movement has been going on in the Centrum party looking to this end. Many members believed that the time had come when it was no longer necessary that the Roman Catholics in order to safeguard their religious liberties continue the political existence of the Centrum, and attempts were made to bring about this change. It was decided adversely, however, by the Roman Catholics. But the question is not dead. Voluntary dissolution of the Centrum as a Roman Catholic party would immediately bring about a creation of a true liberal party to which all Germans could belong without a loss of social prestige, without becoming declared enemies of the monarchy and without declaring themselves against religion and morality.

At the Congress which will meet after the war it will be easy for the nations of the world to deal with the representatives of a liberal Germany, with representatives of a government still monarchical in form, but possessed of either a const.i.tution like that of the United States or ruled by a parliamentary government.

I believe that the tendency of German liberalism is towards the easiest transition, that of making the Chancellor and his ministers responsible to the Reichstag and bound to resign after a vote of want of confidence by that body.

At the time of the Zabern Affair, Scheidemann claimed that the resignation of the Chancellor must logically follow a vote of want of confidence; and it was von Bethmann-Hollweg who refused to resign, saying that he was responsible to the Emperor alone.