Part 29

The chief theme of Lichnowsky's memorandum, the editor of Die Zukunft asserts, was the danger to Germany of a too-close alliance with Vienna and Budapest, of the flirtation with Poland, and his insistence upon the necessity of friendly relations with a strong Russia. The German outcry against Lichnowsky, however, gave foreign countries the impression that the Prince had made fearfully damaging disclosures of Berlin's guilt. The question of blame, he says, "reflected almost an identical interpretation to that of our White Book, and a cool head would not have made a world sensation out of it." Harden concludes by saying that an ostracized Lichnowsky would become a power; but the Prussian Diet has no sense of humor.

In the May CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE an abridged version of the first reply of former Foreign Secretary von Jagow to Prince Lichnowsky was printed, but the document is of such importance that a translation in its entirety is herewith given.[4]

[Footnote 4: The full text of Prince Lichnowsky's memorandum, with the replies of Herr von Jagow, the Mühlon letter, comments of the German press, and other matter, has been published in a separate forty-page pamphlet by The Current History Magazine.]

Von Jagow's Two Replies to Lichnowsky

Practically coincident with the giving out for publication on March 19, through the semi-official Wolff Telegraph Bureau, of an account of a discussion in the Main Committee of the Reichstag of the memorandum of the former Ambassador at London, together with substantial excerpts from the main chapters of his work, the German Government got in touch with Herr von Jagow, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when the war began, and asked him to write an article calculated to counteract the effect of the Lichnowsky revelations. Herr von Jagow hastened to accede to this request, but he merely made matters worse for the German Government by practically admitting the correctness of Prince Lichnowsky's assertion that England did not want war and that Berlin was aware of this.

Copies of German newspapers received here show that, while the journals of all factions were practically of one mind in reproaching the German Foreign Office for its lack of diplomatic ability, the Pan-German and militarist organs laid special stress upon the implication in the von Jagow article that Germany might have been willing to drop its alliance with Austria if it could have been sure of contracting one with England, and the Liberal and Socialist papers declared that it was no use insisting any longer that Great Britain was guilty of the wholesale bloodshed of the world war, and that now nothing really stood in the way of moving for a peace by agreement.

These comments were so sharp on both sides that Herr von Jagow was soon moved to write another article defending his reply to Prince Lichnowsky and arguing that his statements regarding the Triple Alliance could by no means be interpreted as meaning that he would have been willing to abandon Austria-Hungary in favor of Great Britain. In this article, which was first printed in the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, von Jagow says he cannot understand how these statements can be taken to mean that he was an opponent of the alliance with Austria and was considering a choice between Austria and England. He proceeds to defend his own policy by reference to the fact that Bismarck was not content with the Triple Alliance on the one hand, and the famous "Reinsurance Treaty" with Russia on the other hand, but in 1887 deliberately promoted agreements between Austria-Hungary, Italy, and England, with the object of "bringing England into a closer relationship to the Central European league and making her share its burdens." Bismarck's policy relieved Germany of some of her obligations, because "Austria-Hungary, supported by Italy and England, held the balance against Russia."

Then, as The London Times points out, carefully avoiding the history of the present Kaiser's reversal of Bismarck's policy and abandonment of the "Reinsurance Treaty" with Russia, von Jagow defends his attempts to make British policy serve Germany's purposes. It was "because of the isolation of the Triple Alliance, which had come about in the course of years," that von Jagow "pursued a rapprochement with England." He did so, "not with any idea of putting England in the place of Austria-Hungary, but in order, by disposing of the Anglo-German antagonism, to move England to a different orientation of her policy." Germany "could not count upon Italy," and wanted other assistance in upholding Austria-Hungary in the Balkans against Russia. Herr von Jagow proceeds:

"The combination of England would have relieved us of the necessity of taking: our stand alone, when the case arose, for Austria-Hungary against Russia. As was effected by the agreements of 1887, a part of our obligations would have been laid upon other shoulders. It is in this sense that I spoke of the possibility of the loosening and the dissolution of old unions which no longer satisfy all the conditions.

"The alliance with Austria-Hungary was the cornerstone of Bismarckian policy, and that it had to remain. The expansion of the alliance into the Triple Alliance, by taking in Italy, was a means of supplementing the Central European grouping of the powers; it was an 'auxiliary structure,' by means of which Bismarck aimed at a further guarantee of peace, especially as he intended thereby to check Italy's Irredentist policy. Threads then ran to England via Italy. These threads gave way later, and this caused a considerable change in the attitude of Italy.

Friendly to England

"A friendly attitude on the part of England toward the Triple Alliance--what Professor Hermann Oncken calls the moral extension of the Triple Alliance over the Channel--was the aim of our policy, and in this we were sure of the complete accord of our allies. I never thought that the agreements about Bagdad and the colonies would mean an immediate alteration of England's course in European policy. These agreements were to prepare the way for this change of course. I was under no illusions about the difficulties which would still have to be overcome. But difficulties, and even resistance on the part of public opinion in one's own country, cannot prevent us from following a road that is seen to be right. The league between Germany and Austria-Hungary, supported by friendship with England, would have created a peace bloc of unassailable strength. The increasing Irredentism of Italy, her friction with Austria on the Adriatic, and the Russophile and also Irredentist tendencies of Rumania, would have lost their importance. Then, in given circumstances, the Triple Alliance treaty might have been modified. The union with England would also have secured us against Russian aggression, and the obligations imposed upon us by our alliance would thereby have been diminished.

"The road to this goal was long. The calm development was crossed by the Serajevo murders, and in the fateful hour of August, 1914, the English Government--instead of keeping peace--preferred to join in the war against us. The English Government has probably since then been assailed by serious doubts as to whether its choice was right. In any case, it assumed a considerable share of the guilt for the bloodshed in Europe."

Herr von Jagow then denies that his scheme was inevitably doomed to failure, saying that the policy of England is more liable to adaptation and alteration than the policy of any other country, and that "more far-seeing statesmen than those who were intrusted with the fortunes of the Island Empire in 1914--think only of the Pitts, Disraelis, and Salisburys--held other views about the orientation of England toward Germany and Russia."

"As matters stand today, attempts to arrive at clearness about the respective parts played by our enemies at the outbreak of the war, and about the greater or less degrees of guilt belonging to each of them, can have only a historical value. England has made the cause of our enemies her own, and so she also shall be made to feel how Germany defends herself against her enemies."

Full Text of von Jagow's First Reply

[Copyrighted]

_Herr von Jagow's first reply to Prince Lichnowsky, which was printed in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung March 23, 1918, follows:_

"So far as it is possible, in general, I shall refrain from taking up the statements concerning the policy obtaining before my administration of the Foreign Office.

"I should like to make the following remarks about the individual points in the article:

"When I was named State Secretary in January, 1913, I regarded a German-English rapprochement as desirable and also believed an agreement attainable on the points where our interests touched or crossed each other. At all events, I wanted to try to work in this sense. A principal point for us was the Mesopotamia-Asia Minor question--the so-called Bagdad policy--as this had become for us a question of prestige. If England wanted to force us out there it certainly appeared to me that a conflict could hardly be avoided. In Berlin I began, as soon as it was possible to do so, to negotiate over the Bagdad Railroad. We found a favorable disposition on the part of the English Government, and the result was the agreement that was almost complete when the world war broke out.

Colonial Questions

"At the same time the negotiations over the Portuguese colonies that had been begun by Count Metternich, (as German Ambassador at London,) continued by Baron Marschall, and reopened by Prince Lichnowsky were under way. I intended to carve the way later for further negotiations regarding other--for example, East Asiatic--problems, when what was in my opinion the most important problem, that of the Bagdad Railroad, should be settled, and an atmosphere of more confidence thus created. I also left the naval problem aside, as it would have been difficult to reach an early agreement over that matter, after past experiences.

"I can pass over the development of the Albanian problem, as it occurred before my term of office began. In general, however, I would like to remark that such far-reaching disinterestedness in Balkan questions as Prince Lichnowsky proposes does not seem possible to me. It would have contradicted the essential part of the alliance if we had completely ignored really vital interests of our ally. We, too, had demanded that Austria stand by us at Algeciras, and at that time Italy's attitude had caused serious resentment among us. Russia, although she had no interest at all in Morocco, also stood by France. Finally, it was our task, as the third member of the alliance, to support such measures as would render possible a settlement of the divergent interests of our allies and avoid a conflict between them.

"It further appeared impossible to me not to pursue a 'triple alliance policy' in matters where the interests of the allied powers touched each other. Then Italy would have been driven entirely into line with the Entente in questions of the Orient, and Austria handed over to the mercy of Russia, and the Triple Alliance would thus have really gone to pieces. And we, too, would not have been able to look after our interests in the Orient, if we did not have some support. And even Prince Lichnowsky does not deny that we had to represent great economic interests right there. But today economic interests are no longer to be separated from political interests.

"That the people 'in Petrograd wanted to see the Sultan independent' is an assertion that Prince Lichnowsky will hardly be able to prove; it would contradict every tradition of Russian policy. If we, furthermore, had not had at our command the influence at Constantinople founded by Baron Marschall, it would hardly have been possible for us to defend our economic interests in Turkey in the desired way.

Russia and Germany

"When Prince Lichnowsky further asserts that we only 'drove Russia, our natural friend and best neighbor, into the arms of France and England through our Oriental and Balkan policy' he is in conflict with the historical facts. Only because Prince Gortschakoff [Russian Premier] was guiding Russian policy toward a rapprochement with a France lusting for revenge was Prince Bismarck induced to enter into the alliance with Austria-Hungary; through the alliance with Rumania he barred an advance of Russia toward the south. Prince Lichnowsky condemns the basic principles of Bismarck's policy. Our attempts to draw closer to Russia went to pieces--Björki proves it--or remained ineffective, like the so-called Potsdam agreement. Also, Russia was not always our 'best neighbor.' Under Queen Elizabeth, as at present, she strove for possession of East Prussia to extend her Baltic coasts and to insure her domination of the Baltic. The Petrograd 'window' has gradually widened, so as to take in Esthonia, Livonia, Courland, and Finland and reach after Aland. Poland was arranged to be a field over which to send troops against us. Pan-Slavism, which was dominating the Russian policy to an ever greater degree, had positive anti-German tendencies.

"And we did not force Russia to drop 'her policy of Asiatic expansion,' but only tried to defend ourselves against her encroachments in European policy and her encircling of our Austro-Hungarian ally.

Grey Conciliatory

"Just as little as Sir Edward Grey [British Foreign Secretary] did we want war to come over Albania. Therefore, in spite of our unhappy experience at Algeciras, we agreed to a conference. The credit of an 'attitude of mediation' at the conference should not be denied Sir Edward Grey; but that he 'by no means placed himself on the side of the Entente' is, however, surely saying rather too much. Certainly he often advised yielding in Petrograd (as we did in Vienna) and found 'formulas of agreement,' but in dealing with the other side he represented the Entente, because he, no less than ourselves, neither would, nor could, abandon his associates. That we, on the other hand, 'without exception, represented the standpoint dictated to us from Vienna' is absolutely false. We, like England, played a mediatory rôle, and also in Vienna counseled far more yielding and moderation than Prince Lichnowsky appears to know about, or even to suggest. And then Vienna made several far-reaching concessions, (Dibra, Djakowa.) If Prince Lichnowsky, who always wanted to be wiser than the Foreign Office, and who apparently allowed himself to be strongly influenced by the Entente statesmen, did not know this, he surely ought not to make any false assertions now! If, to be sure, the degree of yielding that was necessary was reached in Vienna, we also naturally had to represent the Austrian standpoint at the conference. Ambassador Szögyeni himself was not one of the extremists; in Vienna they were by no means always satisfied with his attitude. That the Ambassador, with whom I was negotiating almost every day, constantly sounded the refrain of casus foederis is entirely unknown to me. It certainly is true that Prince Lichnowsky for some time past had not been counted as a friend of Austria in Vienna. Still complaints about him came to my ears oftener from the side of Marquis San Giuliano [Italian Foreign Minister] than from the side of Count Berchtold, [Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister.]

"King Nicholas's seizure of Scutari constituted a mockery of the entire conference and a snub to all the powers taking part in it.

"Russia was by no means obliged 'to give way to us all along the line'; on the contrary, she 'advanced the wishes of Serbia' in several ways, Serbia even receiving some cities and strips of territory that could have been regarded as purely Albanian or preponderatingly so. Prince Lichnowsky says that 'the course of the conference was a fresh humiliation for the self-consciousness of Russia' and that there was a feeling of resentment in Russia on that account. It cannot be the task of our policy to satisfy all the unjustified demands of the exaggerated self-consciousness of a power by no means friendly to us, at the cost of our ally. Russia has no vital interests on the Adriatic, but our ally certainly has. If we, as Prince Lichnowsky seems to wish, had flatly taken the same stand as Russia, the result would have been a humiliation for Austria-Hungary and thus a weakening of our group. Prince Lichnowsky seems only anxious that Russia be not humiliated; a humiliation of Austria is apparently a matter of indifference to him.

The "Wily" Venizelos

"When Prince Lichnowsky says that our 'Austrophilie' was not adapted to 'promote Russia's interests in Asia,' I don't exactly understand what this means. Following a disastrous diversion toward East Asia--in the Japanese war we had favored Russia without even being thanked for it!--Russia again took up her policy directed toward the European Orient (the Balkans and Constantinople) with renewed impulse, (the Balkan Alliance, Buchlau, Iswolsky, &c.) [Iswolsky retired as Russian Foreign Minister after Germany forced the Czar to repudiate his Serbian policy in 1909.]

"Venizelos, the cunning Cretan with the 'Ribbon of the Order of the Red Eagle,' evidently knew how to throw a little sand into the eyes of our Ambassador. He, in contrast to King Constantine and Theototy, always was pro-Entente. His present attitude reveals his feelings as clearly as can be. Herr Danef, however, was entirely inclined toward Petrograd.

"That Count Berchtold displayed certain inclinations toward Bulgaria also in its differences with Rumania is true; that we 'naturally went with him' is, however, entirely false. With our support, King Carol had the satisfaction of the Bucharest peace. [Ended second Balkan war.] If, therefore, in the case of the Bucharest peace, in which we favored the wishes and interests of Rumania, which was allied to us, our policy deviated somewhat from that of Vienna, the Austro-Hungarian Cabinet certainly did not believe--as Prince Lichnowsky asserts--that it 'could count upon our support in case of its revision.' That Marquis San Giuliano 'is said to have warned us already in the Summer of 1913 from becoming involved in a world war,' because at that time in Austria 'the thought of a campaign against Serbia' had found entrance, is entirely unknown to me. Just as little do I know that Herr von Tschirschky--who certainly was rather pessimistic by nature--is said to have declared in the Spring of 1914 that there soon would be war. Therefore, I was just as ignorant of the 'important happenings' that Prince Lichnowsky here suspects as he was himself! Such events as the English visit to Paris--Sir Edward Grey's first to the Continent--surely must have been known to the Ambassador, and we informed him about the secret Anglo-Russian naval agreement; to be sure, he did not want to believe it!

"In the matter of Liman von Sander, [German reorganizer of the Turkish Army,] we made a far-reaching concession to Russia by renouncing the General's power of command over Constantinople. I will admit that this point of the agreement over the military mission was not opportune politically.

"When Prince Lichnowsky boasts of having succeeded in giving the treaty a form corresponding to our wishes, this credit must not be denied him, although it certainly required strong pressure on several occasions to induce him to represent some of our desires with more emphasis.

"When Prince Lichnowsky says that he received the authorization definitely to conclude the treaty, after he previously asserts that 'the treaty was consequently dropped,' this contains a contradiction which we may let the Prince straighten out. Lichnowsky's assertion, however, that we delayed publication because the treaty would have been 'a public success' for him that we begrudged him, is an unheard-of insinuation that can only be explained through his self-centred conception of things. The treaty would have lost its practical and moral effect--one of its main objects was to create a good atmosphere between us and England--if its publication had been greeted with violent attacks upon 'perfidious Albion' in our Anglophobe press and in our Parliament. And there is no doubt that, in view of our internal position at that time, this is what the simultaneous publication of the so-called Windsor Treaty would have caused. And the howl about English perfidy that the internal contradiction between the text of the Windsor Treaty and our treaty would doubtless have called forth would hardly have been stilled in the minds of our public through the assurance of English bona fides.

"With justified precaution, we intended to allow the publication to be made only at the proper moment, when the danger of disapproving criticism was no longer so acute, if possible simultaneously with the announcement of the Bagdad Treaty, which also was on the point of being concluded. The fact that two great agreements had been concluded between us and England would doubtless have materially favored their reception and made it easier to overlook the aesthetic defects of the Portuguese agreement. It was consideration for the effect of the agreement--with which we wanted to improve our relations with England, not to generate more trouble--that caused our hesitation.

"It is correct that--although in a secondary degree--consideration was also taken of the efforts just then being made to obtain economic interests in the Portuguese colonies, which the publication of the agreement would naturally have made more difficult to realize. These conditions Prince Lichnowsky may not have been able to perceive fully from London, but he should have trusted in our objective judgment and acquiesced in it, instead of replacing his lack of understanding with suspicions and the interjection of personal motives. He certainly would have found our arguments understood by the English statesmen themselves.

"The Ambassador's speeches aroused considerable adverse sentiment in this country. It was necessary for the creation of a better atmosphere, in which alone the rapprochement being worked for could flourish, that confidence in our English policy and in our London Ambassador be spread also among our people at home. Prince Lichnowsky, otherwise so susceptible to public opinion, did not take this motive sufficiently into account, for he saw everything only through his London spectacles. The charges against the attitude of the Foreign Office are too untenable to be bothered with. I would only like to point out that Prince Lichnowsky was not left in ignorance regarding the 'most important things,' in so far as they were of value to his mission. On the contrary, I gave the Ambassador much more general information than used to be the custom. My own experiences as Ambassador induced me to do so. But with Lichnowsky there was the inclination to rely more upon his own impressions and judgment than upon the information and advice of the Central Office. To be sure, I did not always have either the motive or the authority to impart the sources of our news. Here there were quite definite considerations, particularly anxiety regarding the compromising of our sources. The Prince's memorandum furnishes the best justification for the caution exercised in this regard.

Defense of Archduke

"It is not true that in the Foreign Office the reports that England would protect France under all circumstances were not believed.

"At Knopischt, on the occasion of the visit of his Majesty the Kaiser to the Archduke heir apparent, no plan of an active policy against Serbia was laid down. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not at all the champion of a policy leading to war for which he has often been taken. During the London conference he advised moderation and the avoidance of war.