MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON T is evident from the reports which trickle through from neutral countries, as well as from sinister statements published from
time to time in the German newspapers, that it has for years been the deliberate policy of the Nazi Party to remove from active life, not merely all rivals, but also those who were in any way identified with the pre-Nazi period. By eliminating all possible alternatives to himself Herr Himmler wishes no doubt to create a situation of such abject hopelessness that the German people will become one vast suicide-squad. If, as is not impossible, it really is the ultimate intention of -the Nazi leaders to retire gradually to the inner fortress of the Bavarian highlands and there to immolate themselves in a gigantic, and thereafter legendary, festival of no-surrender, then it may in .fact be useful to liquidate all those elder statesmen who might persuade people that survival is, after all, a preferable alternative. Gradually they have disposed of all those public men and civil servants who might have acquired some element of public respect, if not by their independent attitude, then at least from their associa- tion with a less lunatic past. It is doubtful indeed whether any of those who played even a subordinate part in public life before 1933 are still in positions of responsibility or even of liberty, and the traditional type of German civil servant has in almost every case been replaced by some Nazi fanatic whose corruption is excelled only by his ignorance. Some have been assassinated, others have been placed in concentration camps, others have managed to escape to neutral countries, whereas those fortunate ones who were posted abroad realise that it is wiser for them not to return home on leave. The latest victim, if we are to credit neutral reports, is Richard von Kiihlmann, now almost seventy-two years of age.
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Herr 'von Kuhlmann was typical of German diplomacy as it developed from the cautious blood-and-iron system of Bismarck into the reckless improvisations of William II and Billow. On the one hand he seemed a man of- the world, a man who combined a somewhat tasteless elegance, a rather voracious enjoyment of the pleasures of life, a very thorough knowledge of European language and culture, with a very German passion for useless information. He felt that it was important and impressive to retain in memory, and to display in public, a wide and ready acquaintance with detailed facts which any reqsonable man could obtain more rapidly by consulting some standard work of reference. He would discourse glibly, and at times inaccurately, upon such diverse subjects as Arabic weights and measures, the three-field system, the comparative coal output of Silesia and South Wales, and primary education in the Dutch East Indies or Malaya. He suffered at times from the German inability to realise that the understanding of facts is more important than the accumulation of facts, and his judgement was frequently
perverted by his failure to distinguish between background and fore- ground. On the other hand, while striving to appear a cosmopolitan, he was in fact an ardent, and sometimes an enlightened, German nationalist. His personal ambition, his somewhat reckless insensi- tiveness, led him at times to venture upon experiments and to adopt attitudes which his intelligence, which was great, must have warned him were dangerous to his country and the world. He was too gifted a man to have believed, in his mind, that the self-dramatisation of William II or the histrionic methods of Billow's diplomacy were really in the interests of the German Empire. There were moments when he sought to check the exuberance of his volatile masters ; there were other moments when he pandered to it with an ingenuity which • diminished confidence in his character. * * * *
In 1905, at the age of thirty-two, Richard von Kiilihnann plunged into high politics with a splash which sent ripples across the Seven Seas. He staged a Kraftprobe, or trial of strength, more dramatic than anything which even Billow had conceived. Under the Franco- British treaty of April, oai, we had recognised France's special position in Morocco in return for a recognition of our own special position in Egypt. Kuhlmann was at the time in charge of the
German Consulate General at Tangier. He decided to upset the apple cart, and thereby to gain personal prestige, by inducing his
Emperor to pay a state visit to Moorish territory. William H was not at all attracted by the stratagem which the young Consul and Billow had prepared for him ; he contended that Tangier was a "nest of Spanish anarchists" and that his life would be endangered ; he even hinted that such a Kraftprobe might in the end lead to a strengthening, rather than to a weakening, of the newly- formed Franco-British understanding. He was persuaded none the less to make his demonstration: rrayed in a white cloak and sur- rounded by detectives he rode gingerly up the_main street of Tangier and received the tepresentatives of Abd-ul-Aziz in Herr von. Kiihl- mann's house. Foi the moment this sabre-rattling achieved its objective ; Monsieur Delcassi was forced to resign ; British opinion became flustered ; and it appeared that Herr von Killihnann had driven a sharp and very pointed wedge into the structure of the Entente. But at the Algeciras Conference, which followed a firm front was re-established between France and Great Britain, and in the end Germany was exposed to a resounding and most public diplomatic defeat. The Kraftprobe, as so often happens when diplomacy becomes dramatic, had failed completely. And William II thereafter regarded his impetuous young Consul with anxiety and dislike.
* * * * Three years later Herr von Kiihlmann was appointed Counsellor
of the German Embassy in London, where he remained until the outbreak of war in 1914. His activities in- this post were perfectly legitimate ; he devoted his great energies to detaching Great Britain Rom France and Russia under the guise of creating "good relations" betweeen London and Berlin. He was personally instrumental in negotiating with us an agreement regarding the Baghdad Railway, which at the time was the source of increasing friction and alarm.
His mistake was that, like Herr von Ribbentrop after him, he was unable to disentangle the foreground from the background. Associating as he did mainly with those Cabinet Ministers, poli- ticians, city magnates and society leaders who were in favour of appeasing Germany at almost any cost, he acquired a false impression of the real state of British opinion. Thus whereas his chief warned the German Government repeatedly that if they went too far they would find Great Britain against them, Herr von Kiihlinann assured them that" in no circumstances would the Cabinet join with France. and Russia and that Germany had only to show a "firm face" in order to split for ever the coalition that had been formed against her. I am not blaming Herr von Kuhlmann for this misinterpretation ;he made the perfectly sincere mistake of imagining that his personal friends were more influential than in fact they were ; and I have never seen a man so crushed and miserable as was Kuhlmann on August and, 1914. Since.by noon on that day he knew for certain that his second attempt to smash the Entente had failed as wretchedly as his fist.
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In 1917 he became German Foreign Secretary, and it was he who in the following year signed the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. Yet it was also he who, to his great credit, sought to make peace in July, 1918. He had the courage on that occasion to face the Reichstag and to tell them the "peace could not now be secured by military means alone." He was greeted with a volley of inkpots hurled at him by the enraged deputies and retired to his house in the Wilhelm- strasse, only to be summarily dismissed by William II. It is to his credit also that in after years he urged upon- his countrymen the need of "extreme caution in international relations" and warned them that if ever Germany adopted a totalitarian system her "troubles would become unmanageable, her economic position truly desperate, and ultimately German blood would have to be sacrificed for purposes that are not hers." That was a brave thing to say even in r-932. It is not for this, however, that he has earned the enmity of Himmler ; it is because the latter is determined to remove all sensible
Men.
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