MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON IHAVE been reading this week, and not without pity and terror, the Erinnerungen, or Memoirs, of the late Richard von Kiblmann, which have been published in a single stout German volume. This is not the place to examine what fresh light
these frank revelations throw upon the origins of the First World War. Suffice it to say that they confirm, and in a vivid and astringent manner, the indictments of German foreign policy made by such writers as Erich Brandenburg, Professor Fay, Dr. G. P. Gooch and Theodor Wolff. It was certainly not by intention that William II and Prince Billow landed Germany in a hostile coalition and a war on two fronts. The charge which history makes against them is not that of responsibility for a sequence of terrible misfortunes ; it is a charge of volatile but persistent irresponsibility. The tragic impres- sion of intellectual frivolity which was left upon the mind by Billow's own extraordinary Memoirs is reinforced by reading this calm, serious, saddened and in some ways honourable book. Richard von Kuhlmann completed the draft of his memoirs at a date when the full consequences of Germany's tragedy were already apparent ; he did not live to revise the proofs. Yet he was able to tell in great detail the story of his own attempts to prevent, and thereafter to mitigate, the disaster. He describes his efforts, when Counsellor of the German Embassy in London before the first war, to reach an all- embracing agreement with the British Government. He also describes how, when Secretary of State in 1917, he strove, with the Emperor's knowledge and consent, to secure a negotiated peace with the Western Powers. On each of these occasions his endeavours were complicated by the intervention of the militarists, by Tirpitz in 1913, and by Ludendorff in 1917. Thereafter Kuhlmann was dismissed from office, and in the thirty years of life that remained to him he played no further part in public affairs.
* * * Apart from the great historical importance of these Memoirs, there is the psychological problem which they raise. " How came it," one asks oneself, " that a man of such high intelligence, a man gifted with such clarity of vision and consistency of purpose, should have failed so utterly to achieve his ends ? " " Was it," one asks oneself again, " due to some defect in his own character and mind, or was he the victim of a vicious and artificial system ? " The answer is that it would have required a man of superhuman powers to dominate the many and conflicting vested interests which had established themselves in the post-Bismarck period ; and that Kuhlmann, although perhaps more enlightened than any of his compatriots, possessed certain defects of temperament which prevented him from inspiring loyalty among the few or arousing the confidence of the many. It is interesting to trace the career and to identify the mistakes of this remarkable man, since they illustrate, not merely the inefficacy of intelligence unaccompanied by strength of character, but also the psychological faults to which the Germans in general, and German diplomatists in particular, are specially liable. Kuhlmann was born in Constantinople, where his father was Director of the Anatolian Railways, and he may have absorbed in childhood a certain sympathy for Oriental methods of negotiation. As a young man he acquired a passionate admiration for Goethe and Bismarck. From the former he derived, not it is to be feared any lasting belief in the universality of the moral law, but the illusion that knowledge is the same as wisdom. From the latter he learnt the dangerous doctrine of cool, calm, patient and inexorable realism.
He was a most ambitious man and from the moment of his entry into the German diplomatic service he determined to achieve a rapid, and if possible a dramatic, career. In this ardent, reckless and not too scrupulous young man Freiherr von Holstein, the evil genius of German policy, recognised an instrument perfectly adapted to his own ends. He encouraged Kuhlmann to address private reports to him behind the backs of their respective chiefs. The only consis- tent strand in Holstein's tortuous policy was the recurrent illusion that, whatever happened, there could never be an entente bet-wee-5 England and Russia : fortified by this fallacy, he considered it safi to toy with the agreeable game of separating England from France". With the vague support of Billow, and in spite of the intermittent hesi- tations of the Emperor, he decided to stage a trial of force, oi Kral tprobe, which would demonstrate to the world the inherent weakness of the Anglo-French agreement. The first move in this game (a game which ended in the Anglo-Russian Convention and the stultification of his whole policy) was to induce William II to pay his dramatic visit to Tangier in March, 195o. Young Kuhlmann at the time was first secretary of the German Legation in Morocco ; he ardently furthered this histrionic demonstration ; and in his Memoirs he records, with amused affection, the difficulty hi encountered in inducing his Emperor to enter a surf-boat and to ride through the narrow, anarchist-infested streets of the Moorish town. Kuhlmann, after this resounding episode, became a marked man. He was shortly afterwards transferred to the key post of Counsellor of the Germany Embassy in London.
He realised more clearly than any of his fellows that England, however passive or pacifist she might seem, would never allow Germany to acquire command of the seas, and that without that command Germany could never in the end win a European war. He also realised that he would be unable, by direct peisuasion, to induce either Tirpitz or the Emperor to abandon their naval ambitions ; the only hope was to provide the German people (who had been stirred by the propaganda of the Flottenverein) with an alternative and even more attractive ambition. He thus conceived a most ingenious &Ian. He decided to play upon the natural horror of war by which the Liberal Government were animated, by offering them a compre- hensive and realistic Anglo-German agreement. Under this agree- ment, in return for Germany's " friendship," England was to promise her the reversion of the Portuguese (and by implication the Belgian) colonies in Africa and wide concessions in regard to the Baghdad Railway. Such an agreement, he foresaw, would have a dual advantage. On the one hand it would discredit the British Govern- ment with European opinion, and thereby dislocate their relations with France and Russia ; and on the other hand it would provide German opinion with the dazzling prospect of a great African Empire and thereby induce his countrymen to abandon their fantastic dreams of naval supremacy. He applied himself to this scheme with passionate industry, eliminating his own chief from the discus- sions, and working through those members of the Cabinet, and certain junior officials of our own Foreign Office, whom he regarded as influential and sympathetic to his scheme.
* * The astonishing thing is that this manoeuvre almost succeeded. It may be argued that no firm Anglo-German agreement would ever have been possible, unless we had been prepared, not merely to pay Danegeld with the property of an ally, but also to recognise the permanent cession of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and to guarantee the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kiihlmann was correct in thinking that the British Government would pay almost any price in order to avert a possible war ; where he failed was in not under- standing that no British Government could present so dishonourable and dangerous a transaction for the approval of Parliament. The pattern he devised was ingenious and not illogical ; what he did not see was that, although each part fitted beautifully, the whole was morally impracticable. He over-estimated the influence of those who agreed with him, even as in 1917 he under-estimated the power of those by whom he was opposed. Like so many Germans, he believed that his knowledge of individual trees meant that he under- stood the wood.
Previous page
