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The German news vendors alternately praised the Crown Prince and depreciated him. If he were violent, it was against the wishes of his father – he was a second Prince Hal trying on the imperial crown. As a rule, however, he was brought out of the background to show his virtues. On several occasions he had evinced more knowledge of what was going on than his father. This was notable in the Eulenberg scandal, when he fearlessly laid bare a horrible ulcer which was beginning to eat into the heart of the army. On this subject he and Max Harden, of the Zukunft, were in amazing alliance. Whatever may be said of the Crown Prince's political ambitions – and we believed and do believe that they meant world conquest – he is very much of a man. In 1911, it was understood that he would not condescend to wear the peace-mask that seemed to conceal his father's face. Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor, was temporising as usual. The Moroccan affair led to nothing because Germany's financial backers were not ready for war. The Chancellor was attacked by von Heydebrand; the Danish press gave graphic accounts of the scene when the Crown Prince, from the royal box, applauded every insult that the powerful Junker heaped on the Chancellor, who was merely the tool of the Kaiser. It was the time of the Emperor to temporise; the time had not come to strike; Germany was not rich enough. Russia was still doubtful. France, in the imperial opinion, was not sufficiently corrupted, and the dissensions between Ulster and the rest of Ireland had not yet reached that poisonous growth which, in that opinion, would force mutiny and sedition to poison the English. The Crown Prince probably, in his frankness, voiced more than his own inner sentiments. At any rate, to us near the frontier, it seemed so. However, the incident was used to the credit of the Crown Prince. Fair and open dealing for him! England might interfere in Morocco and other places to prevent his country from taking a place 'in the sun'; but let us have it out!

In the secret councils of the Social Democrats was the hope that, if a Hohenzollern must succeed the Kaiser, it would not be the Crown Prince. In spite of his amiabilities and his apparently youthful point of view of life – though there were fewer indiscretions to his credit than are generally attributed to Crown Princes – it was known that he was military to the core, and that in his time the soldier of the world would never lack employment. While the Kaiser was constantly insisting that more soldiers and more sailors and Krupp von Bohlen's newest instruments of destruction were pawns in the game of peace, his son made no pretence of agreeing with him. Clever or not, he had held that a straight line was the shortest way from one given point to another. And the Zabern incident and several others showed that the Crown Prince meant, when his chance came, to make war after the Napoleonic method and to exalt the sword above the pen and the ploughshare.

The Social Democrats in Denmark were not flattered when he said that 'one day the Social Democrats would go to court!' But he was right; they went to court as their old Emperor went to Carrossa, when they accepted the war! The German writers said, too, that in France his admiration for Napoleon endeared him to the French. If he appeared in Paris, he would be as popular as King Edward of England was when he was Prince of Wales! 'Who knows,' one of their writers said, 'he may make the hopes of the Duke de Reichstadt his own, and live to see them fulfilled'? I called the attention of an Austrian friend to this. This gentleman, high in favour in 1909, but somewhat gloomed in 1914, owing to a bon mot, said: 'But the French remember that the heir of Napoleon, who might have completed his father's conquests, was the son of an Austrian mother.' He was gemütlich, like his grandfather, they said, and how sweetly amiable to the American ladies who had married into the superior race! More than one titled American hoped to be saved from the position of morganaticism in the future through the kindness of His Imperial Highness. But the fixity of will has been underrated. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe; his eyes were on the kingdoms of Solomon and of the jewelled monarchs of the East. Why he failed, the Crown Prince believed he had discovered. There was no reason, therefore, why a Prussian Napoleon might not succeed, and no necessity to repeat the defeats of Moscow and Waterloo. The Prince would begin by fighting Waterloo first and then putting Russia out of commission!

In 1913 Mr. Frederick Wile, then correspondent of the London Daily Mail, wrote: 'He is the idol of the German Army almost to a greater degree than his father. His Hunting Diary is amusing. He writes of his sympathy with his 'sainted' ancestor Frederick the Great, in the dictum that everybody should be allowed to pursue happiness and salvation in his own sweet way.' Holy Moses!

It was not difficult to get near to the characters of the important men in power in Germany. A night's run took one to Berlin, and at Flensberg, a few hours from our Legation, one could see the German war vessels. There were constant visits of Germans of distinction; Prince Eitel Friedrich often came in his yacht, and the Waldhausens – Madame Waldhausen was a Belgian – were constantly entertaining guests of all countries. Princess Harald, the wife of Prince Harold, brother of the King of Denmark, attracted many Germans, with whom she was in sympathy.

At court very few Germans appeared, unless they were of high official rank. Both King Christian X. and the Queen seemed to prefer to speak English, and nothing irritated the King, who speaks English and French and German well, more than any attempt on the part of a diplomatist to speak to him in Danish. It is best, I think, for diplomatists at court to use French. One is always more guarded in speaking a foreign language, but every member of the Danish Court spoke English and seemed to like it. Prince Valdemar and the Princess Marie always spoke English in their family. Prince Valdemar's French was not so good as his English, and, in the beginning, the Princess Marie found the learning of Danish slow work, and she had, during the exile of her family in England, become entirely at home in the English language. Prince Axel, their son, who recently visited America as the guest of the American Navy, spoke English admirably. Like all his family, he is in love with freedom.

Nevertheless, German was much spoken in Denmark, and the intercourse between the two countries close. The point of view of Germany, or, rather, the Germans, was better understood in Denmark than perhaps in any other country, the more so because the Danes, naturally satirical and entirely disillusioned as to the altruism of great European nations, looked with clear eyes at the progress, or, rather, the evolution of Germany. Whatever progress Germany had made, many of them, like the learned Dr. Gudmund Schütte, who reluctantly agreed that the reconquest of Slesvig would be 'to commit suicide in order to escape death,' never seemed to utter a word of German without remembering the loss of their provinces.

The most astonishing things were the intellectual greatness and exact training of the German thinkers and doers, and, at the same time, their lack of independence. With the outside world, as far as one could gather from the press and conversations with the English, French and Americans – though my fellow countrymen, as a rule, showed little interest in foreign affairs – it was plain that the German political parties were supposed to be static: the Conservatives Junkerish, the Centrists intensely Catholic, following the slightest signal of the Pope, the Socialists devoted to the ideas of Bebel, and the Liberal-Nationalists fixed in their opinion that a moderate constitutional monarchy was to be, in Germany, the solution of all problems.

We knew better than that in Denmark. Through the whole Catholic world the German propagandists spread the opinion that the Centre party was strictly 'denominational.' Nothing could be more untrue. The traditions of Windthorst, who had boldly defined to Bismarck the difference between what was due to Christ and what to Cæsar, were rapidly disappearing. The fiction remained that the Centre was constantly opposing the policy of the emperor, when at every session of the Reichstag, the Centre became more and more 'political' and more subservient to the designs of the Government. One could see the changing policy in the pages of the Social Democrat, the Socialist organ in Denmark. The Danish Socialists were always influenced by their German brethren; but destructive Socialism finds, up to the present time, no place in the Social Democratic scheme, and this is due, not only to the Danish temperament, but to the dislike on the part of Social Democrats to the growing power of Syndicalism.

The leaders of the Socialists and of the Centrists are not great men. Of the Centre, which had rightfully boasted of Windthorst and Mallinkrot as the opponents of ultra-Imperialism, Hertling and Erzberger were the most important. All Germany recognised the intellectual ability of Hertling. Baron von Hertling, Professor of the University of Munich, represented apparently everything that the fashionable Prussian philosophical system did not. 'Glory is the only religion of great men' is a doctrine he abhors; philosophically, he is the direct enemy of Kant and Hegel, above all, of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Nobody denies those qualities of mind that had made his name as well known philosophically in learned circles as that of Cardinal Mercier. He had been prime minister of Bavaria, and he, of all men, might have been expected to see the abyss to which Imperialism was tending. It was easy, in Denmark, to perceive that, in the Reichstag, all parties – there were some individual exceptions, like Liebknecht – had begun to be slaves of the emperor as represented by his subservient grand-viziers, the Chancellors. Both the Centre, from which much was expected, and the mixed party, called the Social Democrats, from which stronger resistance to Imperialism had been hoped, gradually became the upholders of the doctrine of conquest.

Erzberger, of the Centre, is a later development of the change that took place in the attitude of Hertling. With Lieber and Spahn, veteran politicians, the Centre position became one of compromise.

The Centre had managed to grow stronger and stronger after the Kulturkampf, against which it had started as a party of defence. Matthias Erzberger, who had begun as a school teacher, wisely chose the Centre Party as a road to power. He has gained step by step by his unconquerable audacity. In 1911 even the Chancellor seemed to fear him. He is a bold speculator, and his rivals, even in his own party, predicted that he would come to grief through his Napoleonic idea of finance. From 1911 the parties in the Reichstag became more and more Imperialistic, the Prussian tone more and more insolent as regards foreign countries. The cameraderie of the Kaiser at times, his fits of arrogant indiscretion – checked suddenly after the 'interviews' of 1908 – continued to give us 'lookers-on in Vienna' grave concern. In spite of the encomiums made by nearly all my best European friends – many of them English – and all my compatriots who had been received at court, we in Denmark distrusted the Kaiser. I must say that my Danish friends, except the Chamberlain and Madame de Hegermann-Lindencrone, seldom praised him. To them he had been most courteous. I remembered that the most chivalrous of men, Hegermann-Lindencrone, never would speak ill of a sovereign to whose court he had been accredited. Count Carl Moltke, a good Dane, never, even in confidence, allowed a word of censure to pass his lips when the Kaiser was mentioned by his critics; I often wondered what he thought!

As to the Emperor Francis Joseph, I had reason to have a great respect and affection for him – even of gratitude. It is the fashion to tear his reputation to pieces now, a fashion that will pass.

At any rate, even his detractors will be glad to hear the story that, when the war broke out and he was ill and very drowsy, one of his Chamberlains said, 'Our army is in the field, sire!' 'Fighting those damned Prussians again!' he said, contentedly; and went to sleep again! He liked France, but he disliked the French Government. 'Your President,' he said to a distinguished French sailor, with a touch of contempt, 'is a bourgeois!' He did not mean a 'commoner' – with him 'bourgeois' implied a man who was not a soldier; and the emperor could not understand that a European country should be well ruled by a man who could not himself take the field; at any time, the Emperor would have gladly taken it against these 'Prussian parvenus,' I am sure.

More and more, the representatives of the stolen provinces, like Slesvig and Alsace-Lorraine, became disheartened by their weakness in the Reichstag. The representatives of Poland received no political support from the Centre; yet these Poles were ardent Catholics, and their representative, Prince Radziwell, made eloquent speeches. The delegates from Alsace-Lorraine, the Abbé Wetterlé being the most audacious, were as little regarded as 'Hans Peter,' H. P. Hanssen, the one Danish representative in the Reichstag. If the Centre had not posed as Catholic, which implied, if not an unusual regard for the liberties of the oppressed, at least a certain Christian charity for the persecuted, censure might have been silent. If the Socialists had not been the open and apparently unrelenting opponents of political oppression, the good Samaritan might have tried to succour their victims, while reflecting that the robbers who had inflicted the wound were at least not hypocrites; but here were von Hertling and Martin Spahn and Groeber and the rest of the Centre, who knew what the tyranny of Bismarck had meant; here were the followers of the later Bebel – willing to join the Centrists on many political questions, the friends of the Imperial autocracy! Here were two groups, antagonistic and irreconcilable in principle, but both united when it was expedient to support plans of world conquest!

The Centre still used religion as a tool to uphold the Government. The Pope and the Kaiser were as antagonistic on many questions as Popes and Kaisers have ever been since Christianity was imperfectly accepted by the Teutons. Windthorst, a great man of the type of O'Connell, but greater, had forced Bismarck to revoke some of the infamous May laws in 1888. Still, certain German citizens, the members of the congregation of the Redemptionists, were exiled. The Centre protested – for effect. The Jesuits were at last admitted on condition that they were not allowed to speak in the churches, and that under no circumstances should they be permitted to speak in public on religious subjects. Prince von Bülow publicly admitted that there was a lack of toleration shown to Catholics, and there were certain parts of Germany in which professors of the Catholic faith were still under disabilities. The question of the admission of the Jesuits and the other religious congregations ought to have been considered as justly as it would have been in the United States. The Centrists' representatives gave the impression of being violently interested in the preservation of the rights of German citizens to preach and teach any doctrines that were not immoral or seditious, and then, at a breath from the Government, allowed these priests to be treated as the Danish Lutheran pastors were treated in Slesvig.¹³

I am not writing from the point of view of any creed at this moment, but only from that of a democracy which encourages reasonable freedom of speech, the use of equal opportunities, and preserves to everybody alike the free exercise of his religion. The Centre has shown as little sympathy with democracy of this kind as the Socialists. The latter party deserve no sympathy from any class of Americans. Their methods are, as worked out in Denmark and Germany, admirable. Religious bodies, interested in actively loving their neighbours as themselves, have much to learn from them, but the German Socialists played a worse part during the war than Benedict Arnold in our Revolution. They did not act the part of Judas only because they never acknowledged Christ.

The bane of every civilised country seems to be party politics. After theological hatreds, the ordinary variety of political hatreds and compromises is the worst. The Centre has become corrupt and time-serving, the Socialists expedient and slavish, all because the Imperial Head, the Chancellor, could scatter the spoils!

CHAPTER X
A PORTENT IN THE AIR

'This is the first page of my diary and the last,' wrote William H. Seward. 'One day's record satisfies me that, if I should every day set down my hasty impressions, based on half information, I should do injustice to everybody around me and to none more than my intimate friends.'

This is true; and, when suspicion seemed to reign everywhere, after August 1914, and one's private papers were never safe, in spite of the fidelity of our servants – and no strangers were ever blessed with better servants than my wife and I – it became all the more necessary not to put down explicitly the day's talk. And the colleagues were very frank – except when their Foreign Officers instructed them to say something for export. If we were at the end of the world, I might give daily conversations that would have a certain interest, but probably some persons whom I have the honour to call friends, and even intimate friends, might be misunderstood. A diplomatic corps in a city like Copenhagen is one large family, and in Copenhagen the court treats its members, who are sympathetic, with unusual courtesy, and, at every fitting opportunity, makes them of the royal circle, which is a very cosy and cheerful one.

The years 1910, 1911, and 1912 were eventful ones, not because things happened, but because things were about to happen. It was a period of unrest. The diplomatic conversations at this time occupied themselves with the position of Germany.

Henckel-Donnersmarck had gone to Weimar, much to my regret. He was supposed to have retired to private life because the Kaiser did not find his reports minute enough, but, knowing him, it seemed to me that he was glad to be out of a position which bored him thoroughly, and which exacted of him duties that he did not care to fulfil. Denmark was becoming more and more Socialistic, and even the Conservatives were so extremely 'advanced,' that Count Henckel found himself rather out of place. He made no country-house visits in the summer, and gave dinners in the winter only when he could not help it. Beyond certain conversations with me on political subjects already mentioned, he did not go. Literature and the simpler aspects of life interested him – children especially. We amused ourselves by mapping out the career of his son, Leo, a very young person of marked individualistic qualities.

For impressions of Germany and Austria, one had to go to other sources. The upheaval in Germany caused by the Kaiser's disregard of public opinion in 1908 had caused most of my colleagues some concern. Nobody wanted war. The Austrians and the Russians alike were horrified at the thought of it.

In 1909 there had been rumours of grave events; Count Ehrenthal had announced privately to some bankers that 'war was evitable.' Count Szechenyi, the Austrian-Hungarian, a lover of peace, if there ever was one, met me one day on the steps of the Foreign Office, in a state of trepidation. Mr. Michel Bibikoff, of the Russian Legation, had seen me several times on the subject of the possible conflict, academically and personally, of course, as our Government was supposed to have no great interest in war in Europe. A speech made by Mr. Alexander Konta, whose son, Geoffrey, was one of the best private secretaries I ever had, put me on the track (Mr. Konta, an American of Hungarian birth, had been conducting some financial affairs in his native country). I suspected there would be no war since Count Ehrenthal had announced to the financiers that there would be war. In my opinion, it was a question of the fall or rise of stocks. Count de Beaucaire, the French Minister, was intensely interested; a flame lit in the Balkans might involve France. The English Minister, Sir Alan Johnstone, seemed to take matters more calmly; we all expected his Foreign Office to send him to Vienna, and his calmness was a sedative. He, a prospective ambassador, was supposed to know something of conditions, but Count Szechenyi discovered that he was nervous, too. It struck me that it was rather absurd for me not to know something definite.

There was an old friend, deep in the diplomatic secrets of the Vatican, who knew the Balkans well, who disliked Russia as much as he suspected Germany. It was easy to get an opinion from him because he knew I would use it with discretion. There was a clever old Hanoverian noble, much in the secrets of the court at Berlin, and there was Frederick Wile in Berlin, who knew many things. When Count Szechenyi, rather pale, came up the stairs of the Foreign Office, and said, 'My God! There will be war!'

'No,' I answered, 'it is settled – there will be no war. I give you my word of honour.'

'You are sure?'

'I have just told Bibikoff, and he is delighted.'

I have been grateful many times to Frederick Wile, who was once a student of mine, but that day I was more grateful than ever, for war is hell and I was glad to relieve my friends' minds.

That night there was a cercle at court. King Frederick VIII., the most affable of kings, greatly interested in the Danes in America, had been praising Count Carl Moltke, who had shown a great interest in the Americans of Danish blood; it was an interesting subject. To speak well of Count Moltke, who had the good taste to marry an American, is always a genuine pleasure, though, I believe, he would have left Washington if the sale of the Danish West Indies had been mooted in his time. Then the king said, 'Your country is fortunate not to be entangled in European affairs. There is talk of war. As the American Minister, you have no interest, except a humanitarian one, in a European war; you do not trouble yourself about the question seriously.' I bowed, being discreet, I hope. Suddenly a deep voice, audible everywhere, called out: 'But Egan told Szechenyi that the propositions had been accepted, and there will be no war.' The king turned to me; I was not especially desirous of admitting that I had been making investigations, and still less desirous of revealing my sources of information.

Before the king could ask a question, Sir Alan Johnstone cut in, just behind me, 'From whom did you hear it?'

'From a journalist,' I answered, remembering Frederick Wile.

'It will be in the papers to-morrow, then,' said the king.

I was relieved. I should have hesitated to appear to have shown such interest to the king as my mention of the other authorities might have revealed.

It was announced later, but not in the next day's papers. However, the apprehension still remained. The Kaiser was for peace – yes! – but on his own terms.

The one objection to Mr. Seward's dictum on the exact keeping of journals is that the writer, after the facts – unrelated and distorted as they are each day – are seen in the light of experience, the diarist finds it only too easy to prophesy for the public, because now he knows. This is a temptation; but, as I look back, I must confess that in 1910, in spite of the anxiety of my colleagues, Germany seemed mainly important as regards her attitude to the sale of the Danish East Indies to us. Lord Salisbury's trade of Zanzibar for Heligoland was always in my mind. The correspondence of Mr. John Hay and other investigations had led me to believe that the failure of the proposed sale in 1901-1902 had been caused by German opposition. I was, I must confess, glad to see the friendliness between Germany and the United States. I knew rather well that it could never grow very deep; the German point of view of the Monroe Doctrine was too fixed for that. I knew, too, that if the very Radical and Socialistic parties in Denmark continued to grow, the island must be sold, and likewise that, if the United States and Germany were unfriendly, the Social Democrats, who were too near their German brethren not to be in sympathy with their brethren, might turn the scale in favour of retaining the Islands. The eyes of my colleagues were on Germany; mine were also, but for different reasons. While they feared that Germany might want some of their territory – we knew that, in spite of the Triple Alliance Germany and Austria were one, Italy always being an 'outsider' – I was anxious to save from Germany islands that might be hers if she should absorb Denmark. I confess, with repentant tears, if you will, I had not the slightest belief in the disinterestedness, when it came to a question of territory, of any nation, except our own – and that might have its limitations!

In August 1910, I was very glad to go to visit the Raben-Levitzaus. One reason was that the Count and Countess Raben-Levitzau are among the most cosmopolitan and interesting people in Europe; another was, that Chamberlain and Madame Hegermann-Lindencrone were to be at the castle of Aalholm. Raben-Levitzau had been Minister of Foreign Affairs. He had married Miss Moulton, one of the most beautiful ladies in Europe and the daughter of Madame Hegermann-Lindencrone by her first marriage. Hegermann-Lindencrone had been minister to Washington when I was at Georgetown College doing some philosophical work under Father Guida and Father Carroll; but I had been permitted to go into society occasionally and the fame of Hegermann-Lindencrone was just beginning. Mutual acquaintances and memories established a friendship, and I came to know him as one of the cleverest, most farseeing and kind of diplomatists. If he has an enemy in the world, that enemy must be one of the few human beings worthy of eternal damnation!

The conversation is always good at Aalholm. Raben-Levitzau was rather depressed; he was out of public life, which he loved. He had gone out in 1908 with the J. C. Christensen ministry, owing to the fact that Alberti, the Minister of Justice, had been found guilty of some inexcusable manipulation of the public money. Alberti, with the rest of the reigning ministry had been invited to the wedding of my daughter Patricia, in September 1908. He very courteously declined, giving as a reason that he was 'engaged'; he went to jail on that day. He was a polite man. Raben-Levitzau resigned through the most delicate sentiment of honour, in spite of the remonstrances of his friends.

I found him not against the sale, though he seemed to regards it as very improbable. He felt that the Danes had ceased to practise the art – if they ever had it – of ruling colonies, and, I think, that the tremendous expenses of the Socialistic régime in Denmark, where the poor are practically supported in all difficulties by State funds, would render improvements in distant possessions almost impossible. Sentimentally he would hate to see the red and the white of the Donnebrog cease to fly amid the flags of Holland, of England, of France, on the other side of the Atlantic. Hegermann-Lindencrone was frankly for the sale, though it was not then in question. I asked about Germany's design on Denmark, rumours of which were in everybody's mouth. He – he was still Danish Minister in Berlin – said that, since the completion of the Kiel Canal, Germany had no reason for assuming Denmark. This was reassuring.

Nevertheless, when one caught the reflections of German opinion in Denmark, one became surer than ever that the new Empire was not inclined to accept the isolation which European politicians were apparently forcing on her. Hegermann-Lindencrone and his wife were favourites at the German Court; the Kaiser made a point of signalising his regard for them. Madame Hegermann was by birth an American, a Greenough of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and never for a moment does she forget it, though she has borrowed from the best European society all the cultivation it could give her, in addition to her natural talent and charm. The Kaiser showed his best side to the Hegermann-Lindencrones, and they believed that personally he had no evil designs on the peace of the world.

As a Dane, Hegermann-Lindencrone's task at Berlin had not been easy, with discontent in Slesvig always threatening to break out, although for a time he had, as secretary of Legation, Eric de Scavenius, who knew Germany as well as Denmark, who was as patriotically firm as he was humanly genial. He seemed to think that the sale of the Islands in 1902 had failed because the sum offered was comparatively small, others because of the governmental scandals, and of the opposition of the Princess Marie and the East Asiatic Company.

This was interesting; he did not believe that either the German Government of that time or the industrials, like Herr Ballin, were against it – in fact, German interests on the Islands, especially those of the Hamburg-American Line, were deemed as safe in the hands of the Americans as those of the Danes. The time was, however, not ripe for taking up the question; national opinion was against it, and the great Danish industrials, like Etatsraad Andersen, Admiral de Richelieu, Commander Cold, Holger Petersen and others had not yet had their opportunity of testing the national feeling. As far as I could see in 1910, England and France gave the matter no consideration, though, to his horror, I occasionally informed the Count de Beaucaire that an attempt on our part might be made to buy Martinique and Jamaica and Curaçoa, unless the Danish Islands could be linked into our belt. 'If I thought you were serious, I should oppose you with all my might!' he said.