THE GRAND SMASH
In the latter part of July the Pages took a small house at Ockham, in
Surrey, and here they spent the fateful week that preceded the outbreak
of war. The Ambassador's emotions on this event are reflected in a
memorandum written on Sunday, August 2nd--a day that was full of
negotiations, ultimatums, and other precursors of the approaching
struggle.
Bachelor's Farm, Ockham, Surrey.
Sunday, August 2, 1914.
The Grand Smash is come. Last night the German Ambassador at St.
Petersburg handed the Russian Government a declaration of war. To-day
the German Government asked the United States to take its diplomatic and
consular business in Russia in hand. Herrick, our Ambassador in Paris,
has already taken the German interests there.
It is reported in London to-day that the Germans have invaded Luxemburg
and France.
Troops were marching through London at one o'clock this morning. Colonel
Squier[61] came out to luncheon. He sees no way for England to keep out
of it. There is no way. If she keep out, Germany will take Belgium and
Holland, France would be betrayed, and England would be accused of
forsaking her friends.
People came to the Embassy all day to-day (Sunday), to learn how they
can get to the United States--a rather hard question to answer. I
thought several times of going in, but Greene and Squier said there was
no need of it. People merely hoped we might tell them what we can't tell
them.
Returned travellers from Paris report indescribable confusion--people
unable to obtain beds and fighting for seats in railway carriages.
It's been a hard day here. I have a lot (not a big lot either) of
routine work on my desk which I meant to do. But it has been impossible
to get my mind off this Great Smash. It holds one in spite of one's
self. I revolve it and revolve it--of course getting nowhere.
It will revive our shipping. In a jiffy, under stress of a general
European war, the United States Senate passed a bill permitting American
registry to ships built abroad. Thus a real emergency knocked the old
Protectionists out, who had held on for fifty years! Correspondingly the
political parties here have agreed to suspend their Home Rule quarrel
till this war is ended. Artificial structures fall when a real wind
blows.
The United States is the only great Power wholly out of it. The United
States, most likely, therefore, will be able to play a helpful and
historic part at its end. It will give President Wilson, no doubt, a
great opportunity. It will probably help us politically and it will
surely help us economically.
The possible consequences stagger the imagination. Germany has staked
everything on her ability to win primacy. England and France (to say
nothing of Russia) really ought to give her a drubbing. If they do not,
this side of the world will henceforth be German. If they do flog
Germany, Germany will for a long time be in discredit.
I walked out in the night a while ago. The stars are bright, the night
is silent, the country quiet--as quiet as peace itself. Millions of men
are in camp and on warships. Will they all have to fight and many of
them die--to untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to blow
off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world may start again?
A hurried picture of the events of the next seven days is given in the
following letter to the President:
_To the President_
London, Sunday, August 9, 1914.
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:
God save us! What a week it has been! Last Sunday I was down here
at the cottage I have taken for the summer--an hour out of
London--uneasy because of the apparent danger and of what Sir
Edward Grey had told me. During the day people began to go to the
Embassy, but not in great numbers--merely to ask what they should
do in case of war. The Secretary whom I had left in charge on
Sunday telephoned me every few hours and laughingly told funny
experiences with nervous women who came in and asked absurd
questions. Of course, we all knew the grave danger that war might
come but nobody could by the wildest imagination guess at what
awaited us. On Monday I was at the Embassy earlier than I think I
had ever been there before and every member of the staff was
already on duty. Before breakfast time the place was
filled-packed--like sardines. This was two days before war was
declared. There was no chance to talk to individuals, such was the
jam. I got on a chair and explained that I had already telegraphed
to Washington--on Saturday--suggesting the sending of money and
ships, and asking them to be patient. I made a speech to them
several times during the day, and kept the Secretaries doing so at
intervals. More than 2,000 Americans crowded into those offices
(which are not large) that day. We were kept there till two o'clock
in the morning. The Embassy has not been closed since.
Mr. Kent of the Bankers Trust Company in New York volunteered to
form an American Citizens' Relief Committee. He and other men of
experience and influence organized themselves at the Savoy Hotel.
The hotel gave the use of nearly a whole floor. They organized
themselves quickly and admirably and got information about
steamships and currency, etc. We began to send callers at the
Embassy to this Committee for such information. The banks were all
closed for four days. These men got money enough--put it up
themselves and used their English banking friends for help--to
relieve all cases of actual want of cash that came to them. Tuesday
the crowd at the Embassy was still great but smaller. The big space
at the Savoy Hotel gave them room to talk to one another and to get
relief for immediate needs. By that time I had accepted the
volunteer services of five or six men to help us explain to the
people--and they have all worked manfully day and night. We now
have an orderly organization at four places: The Embassy, the
Consul-General's Office, the Savoy, and the American Society in
London, and everything is going well. Those two first days, there
was, of course, great confusion. Crazy men and weeping women were
imploring and cursing and demanding--God knows it was bedlam
turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest genius for
an emergency by some, by others a damned fool, by others every
epithet between these extremes. Men shook English banknotes in my
face and demanded United States money and swore our Government and
its agents ought all to be shot. Women expected me to hand them
steamship tickets home. When some found out that they could not get
tickets on the transports (which they assumed would sail the next
day) they accused me of favouritism. These absurd experiences will
give you a hint of the panic. But now it has worked out all right,
thanks to the Savoy Committee and other helpers.
Meantime, of course, our telegrams and mail increased almost as
much as our callers. I have filled the place with stenographers, I
have got the Savoy people to answer certain classes of letters, and
we have caught up. My own time and the time of two of the
secretaries has been almost wholly taken with governmental
problems; hundreds of questions have come in from every quarter
that were never asked before. But even with them we have now
practically caught up--it has been a wonderful week!
Then the Austrian Ambassador came to give up his Embassy--to have
me take over his business. Every detail was arranged. The next
morning I called on him to assume charge and to say good-bye, when
he told me that he was not yet going! That was a stroke of genius
by Sir Edward Grey, who informed him that Austria had not given
England cause for war. That _may_ work out, or it may not. Pray
Heaven it may! Poor Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador, does not
know where he is. He is practically shut up in his guarded Embassy,
weeping and waiting the decree of fate.
Then came the declaration of war, most dramatically. Tuesday
night, five minutes after the ultimatum had expired, the Admiralty
telegraphed to the fleet "Go." In a few minutes the answer came
back "Off." Soldiers began to march through the city going to the
railway stations. An indescribable crowd so blocked the streets
about the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Foreign Office, that
at one o'clock in the morning I had to drive in my car by other
streets to get home.
The next day the German Embassy was turned over to me. I went to
see the German Ambassador at three o'clock in the afternoon. He
came down in his pajamas, a crazy man. I feared he might literally
go mad. He is of the anti-war party and he had done his best and
utterly failed. This interview was one of the most pathetic
experiences of my life. The poor man had not slept for several
nights. Then came the crowds of frightened Germans, afraid that
they would be arrested. They besieged the German Embassy and our
Embassy. I put one of our naval officers in the German Embassy, put
the United States seal on the door to protect it, and we began
business there, too. Our naval officer has moved in--sleeps there.
He has an assistant, a stenographer, a messenger: and I gave him
the German automobile and chauffeur and two English servants that
were left there. He has the job well in hand now, under my and
Laughlin's supervision. But this has brought still another new lot
of diplomatic and governmental problems--a lot of them. Three
enormous German banks in London have, of course, been closed. Their
managers pray for my aid. Howling women come and say their innocent
German husbands have been arrested as spies. English, Germans,
Americans--everybody has daughters and wives and invalid
grandmothers alone in Germany. In God's name, they ask, what can I
do for them? Here come stacks of letters sent under the impression
that I can send them to Germany. But the German business is already
well in hand and I think that that will take little of my own time
and will give little trouble. I shall send a report about it in
detail to the Department the very first day I can find time to
write it. In spite of the effort of the English Government to
remain at peace with Austria, I fear I shall yet have the Austrian
Embassy too. But I can attend to it.
Now, however, comes the financial job of wisely using the $300,000
which I shall have to-morrow. I am using Mr. Chandler Anderson as
counsel, of course. I have appointed a Committee--Skinner, the
Consul-General, Lieut.-Commander McCrary of our Navy, Kent of the
Bankers Trust Company, New York, and one other man yet to be
chosen--to advise, after investigation, about every proposed
expenditure. Anderson has been at work all day to-day drawing up
proper forms, etc., to fit the Department's very excellent
instructions. I have the feeling that more of that money may be
wisely spent in helping to get people off the continent (except in
France, where they seem admirably to be managing it, under Herrick)
than is immediately needed in England. All this merely to show you
the diversity and multiplicity of the job.
I am having a card catalogue, each containing a sort of who's who,
of all Americans in Europe of whom we hear. This will be ready by
the time the _Tennessee_[62] comes. Fifty or more stranded
Americans--men and women--are doing this work free.
I have a member of Congress[63] in the general reception room of
the Embassy answering people's questions--three other volunteers as
well.
We had a world of confusion for two or three days. But all this
work is now well organized and it can be continued without
confusion or cross purposes. I meet committees and lay plans and
read and write telegrams from the time I wake till I go to bed.
But, since it is now all in order, it is easy. Of course I am
running up the expenses of the Embassy--there is no help for that;
but the bill will be really exceedingly small because of the
volunteer work--for awhile. I have not and shall not consider the
expense of whatever it seems absolutely necessary to do--of other
things I shall always consider the expense most critically.
Everybody is working with everybody else in the finest possible
spirit. I have made out a sort of military order to the Embassy
staff, detailing one man with clerks for each night and forbidding
the others to stay there till midnight. None of us slept more than
a few hours last week. It was not the work that kept them after the
first night or two, but the sheer excitement of this awful
cataclysm. All London has been awake for a week. Soldiers are
marching day and night; immense throngs block the streets about the
government offices. But they are all very orderly. Every day
Germans are arrested on suspicion; and several of them have
committed suicide. Yesterday one poor American woman yielded to the
excitement and cut her throat. I find it hard to get about much.
People stop me on the street, follow me to luncheon, grab me as I
come out of any committee meeting--to know my opinion of this or
that--how can they get home? Will such-and-such a boat fly the
American flag? Why did I take the German Embassy? I have to fight
my way about and rush to an automobile. I have had to buy me a
second one to keep up the racket. Buy?--no--only bargain for it,
for I have not any money. But everybody is considerate, and that
makes no matter for the moment. This little cottage in an
out-of-the-way place, twenty-five miles from London, where I am
trying to write and sleep, has been found by people to-day, who
come in automobiles to know how they may reach their sick
kinspeople in Germany. I have not had a bath for three days: as
soon as I got in the tub, the telephone rang an "urgent" call!
[Illustration: No. 6 Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy under
Mr. Page]
[Illustration: Irwin Laughlin, Secretary of the American Embassy at
Longon, 1912-1917, Counsellor 1916-1919].
Upon my word, if one could forget the awful tragedy, all this
experience would be worth a lifetime of commonplace. One surprise
follows another so rapidly that one loses all sense of time: it
seems an age since last Sunday. I shall never forget Sir Edward
Grey's telling me of the ultimatum--while he wept; nor the poor
German Ambassador who has lost in his high game--almost a demented
man; nor the King as he declaimed at me for half-an-hour and threw
up his hands and said, "My God, Mr. Page, what else could we do?"
Nor the Austrian Ambassador's wringing his hands and weeping and
crying out, "My dear Colleague, my dear Colleague."
Along with all this tragedy come two reverend American peace
delegates who got out of Germany by the skin of their teeth and
complain that they lost all the clothes they had except what they
had on. "Don't complain," said I, "but thank God you saved your
skins." Everybody has forgotten what war means--forgotten that
folks get hurt. But they are coming around to it now. A United
States Senator telegraphs me: "Send my wife and daughter home on
the first ship." Ladies and gentlemen filled the steerage of that
ship--not a bunk left; and his wife and daughter are found three
days later sitting in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them
stateroom tickets on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the
Embassy rushes into my office saying that a man from Boston, with
letters of introduction from Senators and Governors and
Secretaries, et al., was demanding tickets of admission to a
picture gallery, and a secretary to escort him there.
"What shall I do with him?"
"Put his proposal to a vote of the 200 Americans in the room and
see them draw and quarter him."
I have not yet heard what happened. A woman writes me four pages to
prove how dearly she loves my sister and invites me to her
hotel--five miles away--"please to tell her about the sailing of
the steamships." Six American preachers pass a resolution
unanimously "urging our Ambassador to telegraph our beloved,
peace-loving President to stop this awful war"; and they come with
simple solemnity to present their resolution. Lord save us, what a
world!
And this awful tragedy moves on to--what? We do not know what is
really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it seems
inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the horrid
period of alliances and armaments will not come again, that England
will gain even more of the earth's surface, that Russia may next
play the menace; that all Europe (as much as survives) will be
bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely stronger
financially and politically--there must surely come many great
changes--very many, yet undreamed of. Be ready; for you will be
called on to compose this huge quarrel. I thank Heaven for many
things--first, the Atlantic Ocean; second, that you refrained from
war in Mexico; third, that we kept our treaty--the canal tolls
victory, I mean. Now, when all this half of the world will suffer
the unspeakable brutalization of war, we shall preserve our moral
strength, our political powers, and our ideals.
God save us!
W.H.P.
Vivid as is the above letter, it lacks several impressive details.
Probably the one event that afterward stood out most conspicuously in
Page's mind was his interview with Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign
Secretary. Sir Edward asked the American Ambassador to call Tuesday
afternoon; his purpose was to inform him that Great Britain had sent an
ultimatum to Germany. By this time Page and the Foreign Secretary had
established not only cordial official relations but a warm friendship.
The two men had many things in common; they had the same general outlook
on world affairs, the same ideas of justice and fair dealing, the same
belief that other motives than greed and aggrandizement should control
the attitude of one nation to another. The political tendencies of both
men were idealistic; both placed character above everything else as the
first requisite of a statesman; both hated war, and looked forward to
the time when more rational methods of conducting international
relations would prevail. Moreover, their purely personal qualities had
drawn Sir Edward and Page closely together. A common love of nature and
of out-of-door life had made them akin; both loved trees, birds,
flowers, and hedgerows; the same intellectual diversions and similar
tastes in reading had strengthened the tie. "I could never mention a
book I liked that Mr. Page had not read and liked too," Sir Edward Grey
once remarked to the present writer, and the enthusiasm that both men
felt for Wordsworth's poetry in itself formed a strong bond of union.
The part that the American Ambassador had played in the repeal of the
Panama discrimination had also made a great impression upon this British
statesman--a man to whom honour means more in international dealings
than any other consideration. "Mr. Page is one of the finest
illustrations I have ever known," Grey once said, "of the value of
character in a public man." In their intercourse for the past year the
two men had grown accustomed to disregard all pretense of diplomatic
technique; their discussions had been straightforward man-to-man talks;
there had been nothing suggestive of pose or finesse, and no attempts at
cleverness--merely an effort to get to the bottom of things and to
discover a common meeting ground. The Ambassador, moreover, represented
a nation for which the Foreign Secretary had always entertained the
highest respect and even affection, and he and Page could find no
happier common meeting-ground than an effort to bring about the closest
coöperation between the two countries. Sir Edward, far-seeing statesman
that he was, had already appreciated, even amid the exciting and
engrossing experiences through which he was then passing, the critical
and almost determining part which the United States was destined to play
in the war, and he had now sent for the American Ambassador because he
believed that the President was entitled to a complete explanation of
the momentous decision which Great Britain had just made.
The meeting took place at three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, August
4th--a fateful date in modern history. The time represented the interval
which elapsed between the transmission of the British ultimatum to
Germany and the hour set for the German reply. The place was that same
historic room in the Foreign Office where so many interviews had already
taken place and where so many were to take place in the next four years.
As Page came in, Sir Edward, a tall and worn and rather pallid figure,
was standing against the mantelpiece; he greeted the Ambassador with a
grave handshake and the two men sat down. Overwrought the Foreign
Secretary may have been, after the racking week which had just passed,
but there was nothing flurried or excited in his manner; his whole
bearing was calm and dignified, his speech was quiet and restrained, he
uttered not one bitter word against Germany, but his measured accents
had a sureness, a conviction of the justice of his course, that went
home in almost deadly fashion. He sat in a characteristic pose, his
elbows resting on the sides of his chair, his hands folded and placed
beneath his chin, the whole body leaning forward eagerly and his eyes
searching those of his American friend. The British Foreign Secretary
was a handsome and an inspiring figure. He was a man of large, but of
well knit, robust, and slender frame, wiry and even athletic; he had a
large head, surmounted with dark brown hair, slightly touched with gray;
a finely cut, somewhat rugged and bronzed face, suggestive of that
out-of-door life in which he had always found his greatest pleasure;
light blue eyes that shone with straightforwardness and that on this
occasion were somewhat pensive with anxiety; thin, ascetic lips that
could smile in the most confidential manner or close tightly with
grimness and fixed purpose. He was a man who was at the same time shy
and determined, elusive and definite, but if there was one note in his
bearing that predominated all others, it was a solemn and quiet
sincerity. He seemed utterly without guile and magnificently simple.
Sir Edward at once referred to the German invasion of Belgium.
"The neutrality of Belgium," he said, and there was the touch of
finality in his voice, "is assured by treaty. Germany is a signatory
power to that treaty. It is upon such solemn compacts as this that
civilization rests. If we give them up, or permit them to be violated,
what becomes of civilization? Ordered society differs from mere force
only by such solemn agreements or compacts. But Germany has violated the
neutrality of Belgium. That means bad faith. It means also the end of
Belgium's independence. And it will not end with Belgium. Next will come
Holland, and, after Holland, Denmark. This very morning the Swedish
Minister informed me that Germany had made overtures to Sweden to come
in on Germany's side. The whole plan is thus clear. This one great
military power means to annex Belgium, Holland, and the Scandinavian
states and to subjugate France."
Sir Edward energetically rose; he again stood near the mantelpiece, his
figure straightened, his eyes were fairly flashing--it was a picture,
Page once told me, that was afterward indelibly fixed in his mind.
"England would be forever contemptible," Sir Edward said, "if it should
sit by and see this treaty violated. Its position would be gone if
Germany were thus permitted to dominate Europe. I have therefore asked
you to come to tell you that this morning we sent an ultimatum to
Germany. We have told Germany that, if this assault on Belgium's
neutrality is not reversed, England will declare war."
"Do you expect Germany to accept it?" asked the Ambassador.
Sir Edward shook his head.
"No. Of course everybody knows that there will be war."
There was a moment's pause and then the Foreign Secretary spoke again:
"Yet we must remember that there are two Germanys. There is the Germany
of men like ourselves--of men like Lichnowsky and Jagow. Then there is
the Germany of men of the war party. The war party has got the upper
hand."
At this point Sir Edward's eyes filled with tears.
"Thus the efforts of a lifetime go for nothing. I feel like a man who
has wasted his life."
"This scene was most affecting," Page said afterward. "Sir Edward not
only realized what the whole thing meant, but he showed that he realized
the awful responsibility for it."
Sir Edward then asked the Ambassador to explain the situation to
President Wilson; he expressed the hope that the United States would
take an attitude of neutrality and that Great Britain might look for
"the courtesies of neutrality" from this country. Page tried to tell him
of the sincere pain that such a war would cause the President and the
American people.
"I came away," the Ambassador afterward said, "with a sort of stunned
sense of the impending ruin of half the world[64]."
The significant fact in this interview is that the British Foreign
Secretary justified the attitude of his country exclusively on the
ground of the violation of a treaty. This is something that is not yet
completely understood in the United States. The participation of Great
Britain in this great continental struggle is usually regarded as having
been inevitable, irrespective of the German invasion of Belgium; yet the
fact is that, had Germany not invaded Belgium, Great Britain would not
have declared war, at least at this critical time. Sir Edward came to
Page after a week's experience with a wavering cabinet. Upon the general
question of Britain's participation in a European war the Asquith
Ministry had been by no means unanimous. Probably Mr. Asquith himself
and Mr. Lloyd George would have voted against taking such a step. It is
quite unlikely that the cabinet could have carried a majority of the
House of Commons on this issue. But the violation of the Belgian treaty
changed the situation in a twinkling. The House of Commons at once took
its stand in favour of intervention. All members of the cabinet,
excepting John Morley and John Burns, who resigned, immediately aligned
themselves on the side of war. In the minds of British statesmen the
violation of this treaty gave Britain no choice. Germany thus forced
Great Britain into the war, just as, two and a half years afterward, the
Prussian war lords compelled the United States to take up arms. Sir
Edward Grey's interview with the American Ambassador thus had great
historic importance, for it makes this point clear. The two men had
recently had many discussions on another subject in which the violation
of a treaty was the great consideration--that of Panama tolls--and there
was a certain appropriateness in this explanation of the British Foreign
Secretary that precisely the same point had determined Great Britain's
participation in the greatest struggle that has ever devastated Europe.
Inevitably the question of American mediation had come to the surface in
this trying time. Several days before Page's interview with Grey, the
American Ambassador, acting in response to a cablegram from Washington,
had asked if the good offices of the United States could be used in any
way. "Sir Edward is very appreciative of our mood and willingness," Page
wrote in reference to this visit. "But they don't want peace on the
continent--the ruling classes do not. But they will want it presently
and then our opportunity will come. Ours is the only great government in
the world that is not in some way entangled. Of course I'll keep in
daily touch with Sir Edward and with everybody who can and will keep me
informed."
This was written about July 27th; at that time Austria had sent her
ultimatum to Serbia but there was no certainty that Europe would become
involved in war. A demand for American mediation soon became widespread
in the United States; the Senate passed a resolution requesting the
President to proffer his good offices to that end. On this subject the
following communications were exchanged between President Wilson and his
chief adviser, then sojourning at his summer home in Massachusetts. Like
Mr. Tumulty, the President's Secretary, Colonel House usually addressed
the President in terms reminiscent of the days when Mr. Wilson was
Governor of New Jersey. Especially interesting also are Colonel House's
references to his own trip to Berlin and the joint efforts made by the
President and himself in the preceding June to forestall the war which
had now broken out.
_Edward M. House to the President_
Pride's Crossing (Mass.),
August 3, 1914. [Monday.]
The President,
The White House, Washington, D.C.
Dear Governor:
Our people are deeply shocked at the enormity of this general
European war, and I see here and there regret that you did not use
your good offices in behalf of peace.
If this grows into criticism so as to become noticeable I believe
everyone would be pleased and proud that you had anticipated this
world-wide horror and had done all that was humanly possible to
avert it.
The more terrible the war becomes, the greater credit it will be
that you saw the trend of events long before it was seen by other
statesmen of the world.
Your very faithful,
E.M. House.
P.S. The question might be asked why negotiations were only with
Germany and England and not with France and Russia. This, of
course, was because it was thought that Germany would act for the
Triple Alliance and England for the Triple Entente[65].
_The President to Edward M. House_
The White House,
Washington, D.C.
August 4th, 1914. [Tuesday.]
Edward M. House,
Pride's Crossing, Mass.
Letter of third received. Do you think I could and should act now and if
so how?
Woodrow Wilson.
_Edward M. House to the President_
[Telegram]
Pride's Crossing, Mass.
August 5th, 1914. [Wednesday.]
The President,
The White House, Washington, D.C.
Olney[66] and I agree that in response to the Senate resolution it
would be unwise to tender your good offices at this time. We
believe it would lessen your influence when the proper moment
arrives. He thinks it advisable that you make a direct or indirect
statement to the effect that you have done what was humanly
possible to compose the situation before this crisis had been
reached. He thinks this would satisfy the Senate and the public in
view of your disinclination to act now upon the Senate resolution.
The story might be told to the correspondents at Washington and
they might use the expression "we have it from high authority."
He agrees to my suggestion that nothing further should be done now
than to instruct our different ambassadors to inform the respective
governments to whom they are accredited, that you stand ready to
tender your good offices whenever such an offer is desired.
Olney agrees with me that the shipping bill[67] is full of lurking
dangers.
E.M. House.
For some reason, however, the suggested statement was not made. The fact
that Colonel House had visited London, Paris, and Berlin six weeks
before the outbreak of war, in an effort to bring about a plan for
disarmament, was not permitted to reach the public ear. Probably the
real reason why this fact was concealed was that its publication at that
time would have reflected so seriously upon Germany that it would have
been regarded as "un-neutral." Colonel House, as already described, had
found Germany in a most belligerent frame of mind, its army "ready," to
use the Kaiser's own word, for an immediate spring at France; on the
other hand he had found Great Britain in a most pacific frame of mind,
entirely unsuspicious of Germany, and confident that the European
situation was daily improving. It is interesting now to speculate on the
public sensation that would have been caused had Colonel House's account
of his visit to Berlin been published at that exciting time.
Page's telegrams and letters show that any suggestion at mediation would
have been a waste of effort. The President seriously forebore, but the
desire to mediate was constantly in his mind for the next few months,
and he now interested himself in laying the foundations of future
action. Page was instructed to ask for an audience with King George and
to present the following document:
_From the President of the United States
to His Majesty the King_
SIR:
As official head of one of the Powers signatory to the Hague
Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty under Article
3 of that Convention to say to your Majesty, in a spirit of most
earnest friendship, that I should welcome an opportunity to act in
the interest of European peace either now or at any time that might
be thought more suitable as an occasion, to serve your Majesty and
all concerned in a way that would afford me lasting cause for
gratitude and happiness.
WOODROW WILSON.
This, of course, was not mediation, but a mere expression of the
President's willingness to mediate at any time that such a tender from
him, in the opinion of the warring Powers, would serve the cause of
peace. Identically the same message was sent to the American
Ambassadors at the capitals of all the belligerent Powers for
presentation to the heads of state. Page's letter of August 9th, printed
above, refers to the earnestness and cordiality with which King George
received him and to the freedom with which His Majesty discussed the
situation.
In this exciting week Page was thrown into intimate contact with the two
most pathetic figures in the diplomatic circle of London--the Austrian
and the German Ambassadors. To both of these men the war was more than a
great personal sorrow: it was a tragedy. Mensdorff, the Austrian
Ambassador, had long enjoyed an intimacy with the British royal family.
Indeed he was a distant relative of King George, for he was a member of
the family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a fact which was emphasized by his
physical resemblance to Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria.
Mensdorff was not a robust man, physically or mentally, and he showed
his consternation at the impending war in most unrestrained and even
unmanly fashion. As his government directed him to turn the Austrian
Embassy over to the American Ambassador, it was necessary for Page to
call and arrange the details. The interview, as Page's letter indicates,
was little less than a paroxysm of grief on the Austrian's part. He
denounced Germany and the Kaiser; he paraded up and down the room
wringing his hands; he could be pacified only by suggestions from the
American that perhaps something might happen to keep Austria out of the
war. The whole atmosphere of the Austrian Embassy radiated this same
feeling. "Austria has no quarrel with England," remarked one of
Mensdorff's assistants to one of the ladies of the American Embassy; and
this sentiment was the general one in Austrian diplomatic circles. The
disinclination of both Great Britain and Austria to war was so great
that, as Page relates, for several days there was no official
declaration.
Even more tragical than the fate of the Austrian Ambassador was that of
his colleague, the representative of the German Emperor. It was more
tragical because Prince Lichnowsky represented the power that was
primarily responsible, and because he had himself been an unwilling tool
in bringing on the cataclysm. It was more profound because Lichnowsky
was a man of deeper feeling and greater moral purpose than his Austrian
colleague, and because for two years he had been devoting his strongest
energies to preventing the very calamity which had now become a fact. As
the war went on Lichnowsky gradually emerged as one of its finest
figures; the pamphlet which he wrote, at a time when Germany's military
fortunes were still high, boldly placing the responsibility upon his own
country and his own Kaiser, was one of the bravest acts which history
records. Through all his brief Ambassadorship Lichnowsky had shown these
same friendly traits. The mere fact that he had been selected as
Ambassador at this time was little less than a personal calamity. His
appointment gives a fair measure of the depths of duplicity to which the
Prussian system could descend. For more than fourteen years Lichnowsky
had led the quiet life of a Polish country gentleman; he had never
enjoyed the favour of the Kaiser; in his own mind and in that of his
friends his career had long since been finished; yet from this
retirement he had been suddenly called upon to represent the Fatherland
at the greatest of European capitals. The motive for this elevation,
which was unfathomable then, is evident enough now. Prince Lichnowsky
was known to be an Anglophile; everything English--English literature,
English country life, English public men--had for him an irresistible
charm; and his greatest ambition as a diplomat had been to maintain the
most cordial relations between his own country and Great Britain. This
was precisely the type of Ambassador that fitted into the Imperial
purpose at that crisis. Germany was preparing energetically but quietly
for war; it was highly essential that its most formidable potential foe,
Great Britain, should be deceived as to the Imperial plans and lulled
into a sense of security. The diabolical character of Prince
Lichnowsky's selection for this purpose was that, though his mission was
one of deception, he was not himself a party to it and did not realize
until it was too late that he had been used merely as a tool. Prince
Lichnowsky was not called upon to assume a mask; all that was necessary
was that he should simply be himself. And he acquitted himself with
great success. He soon became a favourite in London society; the Foreign
Office found him always ready to coöperate in any plan that tended to
improve relations between the two countries. It will be remembered that,
when Colonel House returned to London from his interview with the Kaiser
in June, 1914, he found British statesmen incredulous about any trouble
with Germany. This attitude was the consequence of Lichnowsky's work.
The fact is that relations between the two countries had not been so
harmonious in twenty years. All causes of possible friction had been
adjusted. The treaty regulating the future of the Bagdad Railroad, the
only problem that clouded the future, had been initialled by both the
British and the German Foreign Offices and was about to be signed at the
moment when the ultimatums began to fly through the air. Prince
Lichnowsky was thus entitled to look upon his ambassadorship as one of
the most successful in modern history, for it had removed all possible
cause of war.
And then suddenly came the stunning blow. For several days Lichnowsky's
behaviour was that of an irresponsible person. Those who came into
contact with him found his mind wandering and incoherent. Page describes
the German Ambassador as coming down and receiving him in his pajamas;
he was not the only one who had that experience, for members of the
British Foreign Office transacted business with this most punctilious of
diplomats in a similar condition of personal disarray. And the
dishabille extended to his mental operations as well.
But Lichnowsky's and Mensdorff's behaviour merely portrayed the general
atmosphere that prevailed in London during that week. This atmosphere
was simply hysterical. Among all the intimate participants, however,
there was one man who kept his poise and who saw things clearly. That
was the American Ambassador. It was certainly a strange trick which
fortune had played upon Page. He had come to London with no experience
in diplomacy. Though the possibility of such an outbreak as this war had
been in every man's consciousness for a generation, it had always been
as something certain yet remote; most men thought of it as most men
think of death--as a fatality which is inevitable, but which is so
distant that it never becomes a reality. Thus Page, when he arrived in
London, did not have the faintest idea of the experience that awaited
him. Most people would have thought that his quiet and studious and
unworldly life had hardly prepared him to become the representative of
the most powerful neutral power at the world's capital during the
greatest crisis of modern history. To what an extent that impression was
justified the happenings of the next four years will disclose; it is
enough to point out in this place that in one respect at least the war
found the American Ambassador well prepared. From the instant
hostilities began his mind seized the significance of it all. "Mr. Page
had one fine qualification for his post," a great British statesman once
remarked to the present writer. "From the beginning he saw that there
was a right and a wrong to the matter. He did not believe that Great
Britain and Germany were equally to blame. He believed that Great
Britain was right and that Germany was wrong. I regard it as one of the
greatest blessings of modern times that the United States had an
ambassador in London in August, 1914, who had grasped this overwhelming
fact. It seems almost like a dispensation of Providence."
It is important to insist on this point now, for it explains Page's
entire course as Ambassador. The confidential telegram which Page sent
directly to President Wilson in early September, 1914, furnishes the
standpoint from which his career as war Ambassador can be understood:
_Confidential to the President_
September 11, 3 A.M.
No. 645.
Accounts of atrocities are so inevitably a part of every war that
for some time I did not believe the unbelievable reports that were
sent from Europe, and there are many that I find incredible even
now. But American and other neutral observers who have seen these
things in France and especially in Belgium now convince me that the
Germans have perpetrated some of the most barbarous deeds in
history. Apparently credible persons relate such things without
end.
Those who have violated the Belgian treaty, those who have sown
torpedoes in the open sea, those who have dropped bombs on Antwerp
and Paris indiscriminately with the idea of killing whom they may
strike, have taken to heart Bernhardi's doctrine that war is a
glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve the completely
barbarous behaviour of the Prussians?
PAGE.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 61: At this time American military attaché.]
[Footnote 62: The American Government, on the outbreak of war, sent the
U.S.S. _Tennessee_ to Europe, with large supplies of gold for the relief
of stranded Americans.]
[Footnote 63: The late Augustus P. Gardner, of Massachusetts.]
[Footnote 64: The materials on which this account is based are a
memorandum of the interview made by Sir Edward Grey, now in the archives
of the British Foreign Office, a similar memorandum made by Page, and a
detailed description given verbally by Page to the writer.]
[Footnote 65: Colonel House, of course, is again referring to his
experience in Berlin and London, described in the preceding chapter.]
[Footnote 66: Richard Olney, Secretary of State in the Cabinet of
President Cleveland, who was a neighbour of Colonel House at his summer
home, and with whom the latter apparently consulted.]
[Footnote 67: This is the bill passed soon after the outbreak of war
admitting foreign built ships to American registry. Subsequent events
showed that it was "full of lurking dangers."]