THE GRAND SMASH.
MR. PAGE, the American Ambassador in London from 1913 to 1918, had a greater facility for describing moral situations in words than any man we have known. In the selections from his letters, which have been appear- ing month by month in the World's Work, there has been evidence for what we say. In the November number of the World's Work Mr. Page's diaries, letters and memoranda are laid under contribution to give an account of the opening of the war. It was what Mr. Page, in a flash-of- lightning phrase, called the Grand Smash. Never did America in the person of one of her diplomatic represen. tatives come nearer to Great Britain than she came then. The sympathy and appreciation which Mr. Page showed at every step taken by the British leaders in their torment of anxiety, of reluctance, and of sense of obligation to a Treaty were complete. As we all remember, there was much disappointment in Britain when America was not merely slow to come into the war, but when President Wilson thought it right to dispute with us, when we were harassed on every side, about nice questions concerning the rights of neutrals. Englishmen were pained because, although they knew that America was the natural champion of the neutrals, they perceived that Germany was trying to break up the whole basis of international civilization and had thus challenged American ideals every bit as much as she had challenged our own sense of right and honour. That, at all events, was how Englishmen felt about it at the time. But what we want to point out now is that underneath what was apparent there were invisible operations, of which the public knew nothing—beneficent influences, which made it inevitable that if Germany held on her course America must come in on our side in the long run. Among these invisible influences that of Mr. Page was the most important.
Mr. Page's summaries of the situation are amazing in their penetration. He writes in a memorandum, dated August 2nd, 1914, that the American military attaché had told him that he " saw no way for England to keep out of the war." Whereupon Mr. Page adds, " There is no way. If she keeps out Germany will take Belgium and Holland, France would be betrayed, and England would be accuseI of forsaking her friends." The Grand Smash would have kept this humane observer, with all his high power of feeling and of observing, painfully entranced by his subject, even if the incidental worries of a great neutral Ambassador had not beset him with unexpected work. " It holds one," he wrote, " in spite of one's self. I involve it and revolve it—of course getting nowhere." Then he goes on (he is writing at a cottage in the country) :- " 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 hence- forth 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 alliances and to blow off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world may start again I ' In a letter to President Wilson, dated August 9th, 1914, Mr. Page writes " God save us ! What a week it has been I " He describes the incidents of that week. The American Embassy had been stormed by Americans and the nationals of all neutral countries asking what they were to do or how they could get home across the seas. He him- self stood on a chair amid the surging crowd at the Embassy making explanatory speeches, and when he was tired the speech-making was taken up by his staff. A great American Citizens' Relief Committee was formed, manned for the most part by voluntary helpers, and gradually the Embassy's arrears of work were overtaken and matters were straight- ened out. But the confusion was bad while it lasted- " crazy men and weepina° women were imploring and cursing and demanding. God knows it was Bedlam let 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." When Mr. Page called at the Austrian Embassy to take charge of it, he learned from the Austrian Ambassador that he was not leaving the country just yet. " That," remarks Mr. Page, " was a stroke of genius by Sir Edward Grey, who informed him [the Austrian Ambassador] that Austria had not given England cause for war." The declaration of war came " most dramatically." On Tuesday night, five minutes after the ultimatum had expired, the Ad- miralty telegraphed to the Fleet " Go." In a few minutes the answer came back " Off." Both the Austrian and German Ambassadors were broken men. Neither could believe that the Grand Smash which personally they had earnestly tried to avert had really arrived.
" The King declaimed at me for half an hour and threw up his hands and said, ' My God, Mr. Page, what else could we do ' Nor shall I forget the Austrian Ambassador's wringing his hands and weeping and crying out, ' My dear colleague, my dear colleague.' . . . I went to see the German Ambassador at three o'clock in the afternoon. He came down in his pyjamas —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."
Mr. Page's confidence about the outcome of the war never wavered. " It seems inevitable to me," he says, " that Germany will be beaten . . . that all Europe (as much as survives) will be bankrupt. That relatively we [the United States) 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." That was surely a far-seeing forecast. At the end of the same letter Mr. Page records his great gratification that America had kept her Treaty with Great Britain. He was referring to the long and doubtful debate in the Senate which had resulted in what Mr. Page regarded as a great victory for right—the decision not to discriminate in favour of American shipping in levying Panama Canal tolls, but to act on the very letter of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. Again and again Mr. Page returns to this subject of treaty- keeping, as we saw in previous letters. His idea was that as between America and Britain diplomacy should be stripped of all its traditional technical phrases and technical methods, which covered self-seeking in some cases and dark intrigue in others. He tried—and was admirably successful in his attempt—to deal with Sir Edward Grey as though they were two business representatives who never doubted one another's good intentions and who strove always to express their meaning with perfect plainness. There were to be no formulas between them which might be referred to afterwards as meaning something quite different from the thing verbally implied. There is nothing to be sur- prised at in the fact that Mr. Page and Sir Edward Grey hit it off so well. Not in any narrow racial sense, but in the line of a great tradition, basing themselves on English law. and English literature, they came together naturally and gladly as English-speaking, English-thinking and English-living men. They had in common a great love of nature and of outdoor life ; both curiously and intimately loved trees and flowers and hedgerows and watched the ways of birds and animals. Sir Edward Grey remarked that he could never mention a book he liked without finding that Mr. Page liked it too. Again, Sir Edward Grey once said, " Mr. Page is one of the finest illustrations I have ever known of the value of character in a public man." Mr. Page writes that the aspect of Sir Edward Grey as he announced that an ultimatum had been sent to Germany was afterwards indelibly fixed in his mind. " England would be for ever contemptible," Sir Edward Grey said, " if it should sit by and see this Treaty violated." " Do you expect Germany to accept it ? ' Mr. Page asked. Sir Edward Grey shook his head : " No. Of course every- body knows 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 Ger- many's. There is the Germany of anon 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.' " At the end of the present collection we are taken back to the Austrian and German Ambassadors. After some delay Count Mensdorff was directed to leave the country and Mr. Page had a final interview with him at the Austrian Embassy. Count Mensdorff gave way to a paroxysm of grief and " denounced Germany and all its works." He paraded up and down the room wringing his hands. But Mr. Page regarded the fate of Prince Lich- nowsky as even more tragic than that of the Austrian, because he was an abler man and a man of stronger moral purpose, and because he had made peace between Britain and Germany the chief aim of his career. The very fact that Prince Lichnowsky wanted peace and believed it possible was the reason why he had been chosen as Ambassador here. For years before he came to London he had lived the quiet and remote life of a Polish country gentleman, and he had never enjoyed the personal favour of the Kaiser. He was known to be a strong Anglophile, loving English literature, English country life and English people. Obviously, such an Ambassador fitted in exactly with the scheme of the war-makers. Britain was to be lulled into a sense of security by this charming and accom- plished man who would, with perfect sincerity, tell her that all was well—while the war was hitched in Berlin. As the editor of Mr. Page's letters says," Prince Lichnowsky was not called upon to assume a mask ; all that was neces- sary was that he should simply be himself." The plan worked splendidly from the German point of view. When Colonel House came to London after his barren interview with the Kaiser in June, 1914, about reducing armaments, he found British statesmen quite incredulous as to any trouble with Germany. Readers of this memorable account of the coming of the Grand Smash will perhaps receive the impression that all London was in a state of confusion, different, indeed, in degree from the incoherence of the Austrian and German Ambassadors, but not different in kind. That impression, however, would be unfair to the Unionist leaders, who undoubtedly were steady, clear-minded, and helpful throughout the crisis. They saw from the first that duty and safety pointed in one direction ; but it required the actual invasion of Belgium to dot the i's and cross the t's for some members of the Liberal Cabinet.
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