Ten Years Near the German Frontier: A Retrospect and a Warning

'Coffee will be served in my study,' I said, not waiting to consult my wife. 'I will see Mr. Washington, at least for a moment, alone.'

The group of guests moved off reluctantly. Mr. Washington waited in the back drawing-room, where both the Kaiser and Colonel Roosevelt had once stood, though at different times. His train would be late; he came in the fulness of his heart, to tell me that King Frederick and Queen Louise had been most sympathetic. He was enthusiastic about the discernment and commonsense of Queen Louise, who had read his book and followed every step of his work with great interest. 'I was glad to have Her Majesty know that the best men of my race are with me, that the opposition to me comes, not from the whites, but from that element in my own race which wants to enjoy the luxuries of life and its leisure without working! I thank you again, Mr. Minister, for arranging this affair in such a way as to preserve my dignity and to prevent me from appearing as if I were vain; yet I am legitimately proud of the great honour I have received. I shall now go to my hotel, and arrange for my departure.'

'I have ordered the carriage,' I said.

Just then, the footman threw the doors open, and in came the two newspaper men, resplendent as a starry night, one wearing a Russian decoration.

'Alone?' he said.

'With Dr. Booker Washington.'

'The reception?'

'Dr. Booker Washington has just come to describe his dinner at the Court. Let me present you two gentlemen. Dr. Washington has little time; if you will accompany him to the hotel, he will, I am sure, give you an interview. Mr. Hartvig of the New York World will be present, too.'

'Stung!' said the younger newspaper man.

'Lunch with me to-morrow,' I said; 'I have some white Bordeaux.'

Dr. Washington gave a prudent interview and the incident was closed. May he rest in peace. He was a great man, a modest, intelligent and humble man, and no calumny can lessen his greatness.

This is a digression to show that the social question in the United States, much as it might have seemed to people who looked on Denmark as entirely out of our orbit, had its importance in the affair of the purchase of the Islands, which then interested me more than anything else in the world.

Pastor Bast was the only Methodist clergyman in Copenhagen. His good works are proverbial and not confined to his own denomination. The Methodists were few; indeed, I think that even Pastor Bast's children were Lutherans. Having recommended one of his charities, I was asked by a very benevolent Dane:

'Are the Methodists really Christians in America?'

'Why do you ask that question?'

'I have read that there is a division in their ranks because most of them refuse to admit black people on equal terms. If that is so, I cannot help Pastor Bast's project, although I can see that it has value.'

It was in vain to explain the difference of opinion on the 'Afro-American question' which separated the Northern and Southern Methodists; he could not understand it. I hope, however, that Pastor Bast received his donation.

In August 1910, the unrest in Europe, reflected in Denmark, was becoming more and more evident. The diplomatic correspondents during the succeeding years – some of it has been made public – showed this.

Japan, it was understood, would, with the Mexican difficulty, keep the United States out of any entanglements in Europe. So sure were some of the distinguished Danes of our neutrality in case of war – a contingency in which nobody in the United States seemed to believe – that I was asked to submit to my Government, not officially, a proposal to Denmark for the surrender of Greenland to us, we to give, in return, the most important island in the Philippines – Mindanao. Denmark was to have the right to transfer to Germany this island for Northern Slesvig. The Danish Government had no knowledge of this plan, which was, however, presented in detail to me.

Against it was urged the necessity of Denmark's remaining on good terms with Germany. 'We could never be on good terms with our Southern Neighbour, if we possessed Slesvig; besides, the younger Danes in Slesvig are so tied up with Germany economically that their position would be more complicated. 'In fact,' this Slesviger said, 'though I hate the Prussian tyranny, I fear that our last state would be worse than our first. Germany might accept the Philippine Island, and retake Slesvig afterwards. Unless we could be protected by the Powers, we should regard the bargain as a bad one. Besides, England would never allow you to take Greenland.' It was an interesting discussion in camera.

These discussions were always informal – generally after luncheon – and very enlightening. Admiral de Richelieu, who will never die content until Slesvig is returned to Denmark, looked on the arrangement as possible.

'Germany wants peace with you; she could help you to police the Philippines; Greenland would be more valuable to you than to us, – and Slesvig would be again Danish.'

'But suppose we should propose to take the Danish Antilles for Mindanao?' I asked.

'Out of the question,' he said, firmly. 'You will never induce us to part with the West Indies. We can make them an honourable appendage to our nation; but Greenland, with your resources, might become another Alaska.'

De Richelieu is one of the best friends I have in the world; but, when it came to the sale of the Islands, he saw, not only red, but scarlet, vermilion, crimson and all the tints and shades of red!

In 1915, it seemed to me that my time had come to make an attempt to do what nearly every American statesman of discernment had, since Seward's time, wanted done. It must be remembered that, if I seem egoistical, I am telling the story from the point of view of a minister who had no arbitrary instructions from his Government, and very little information as to what was going on in the minds of his countrymen as to the expediency of the purchase. It is seldom possible to explain exactly the daily varying aspect of foreign politics in a European country to the State Department; if one keeps one's ear to the ground, one often discovers the beginning of social and political vibrations in the evening which have quite vanished when one makes a report to one's Government in the morning. Again, mails are slow; we had no pouch; any document, even when closed by the august seal of the United States might be opened 'by mistake.' Long cables, filled with minutiæ, were too expensive to be encouraged. Besides, they might be deciphered and filed by under-clerks, who probably thought that 'Dr. Cook had put Denmark on the Map,' – only that, and nothing more! I knew one thing – that my colleague, Constantin Brun, was for the sale; another, that Erik de Scavenius, the youngest Minister of Foreign Affairs in Europe, was as clever as he was patriotic and honourable, and as resourceful as audacious. He had an Irish grandfather. That explained much. Another thing I assumed – that my Government trusted me, and had given me, without explicitly stating the fact, carte blanche. However, I prepared myself to be disavowed by the State Department if I went too far. I knew that, provided I was strictly honourable, such a disavowal would mean a promotion on the part of the President. I had done my best to accentuate the good reasons given by my predecessors, especially Carr and Risley, for they were beyond denial, for our buying the Islands. One despatch I had sent off in May or June 1915, almost in despair, a despatch in which I repeated the fear of German aggression and quoted Heligoland, which had become as much a part of my thoughts and talk in private as the appearance of the head of Charles I. in that of Dickens's eccentric character.

In June 1915, no nation had the time or the leisure or the means of interfering with the project, for war means concentration, and I had found means of knowing that Germany would not coerce Denmark in the matter. I hoped and prayed that our Government would take action. I knew, not directly, but through trusted friends like Robert Underwood Johnson, lately Editor of The Century Magazine, what point of view nearly every important journal in the United States would take. Senator Lodge's views were well known; in fact, he had first inflamed my zeal. President Wilson had put himself on record in this momentous matter. Unless public opinion should balk at the price – $50,000,000 would not have been too much – the purchase would be approved of by the Senate and the House. This seemed sure.

Against these arguments was the insinuation made and widely but insidiously spread, that Germany approved the sale because she expected to borrow the amount of money paid! In June 1915, it was plain to all who read the signs of the times, that we could not long keep out of the war. 'I did not raise my boy to be a soldier' was neither really popular in the United States nor convincing, for, sad as it may seem, disheartening as it is to those who believe in that universal peace which Christ never promised, the American of the United States is a born fighter!

If the Islands were to be ours, now was the acceptable time. In Denmark, the prospect looked like a landscape set for a forlorn hope. Erik de Scavenius, democrat, even radical, though of one of the most aristocratic families in Denmark, would consider only the good of his own country. He was neither pro-German, pro-English nor pro-American. Young as he was, his diplomatic experience had led him to look with a certain cynicism on the altruistic professions of any great European nation. He relied, I think, as little as I did on the academic results of the Hague conferences.

Denmark needed money; the Government, pledged to the betterment of the poor, to the advancement of funds to small farmers, to the support of a co-operative banking system in the interest of the agriculturists, to old-age pensions, to the insurance of the working man and his support when involuntarily idle, to all those Socialistic plans that aim at the material benefit of the proletariat,14 and in addition to this, to the keeping up of a standing army as large as our regular army before the war, now 'quasi-mobilised,' – could ill afford to sink the State's income in making up the deficit caused by the expenses of the Islands.

The Radicals, like Edward Brandès, despaired of righteously ruling their Islands on the broad, humanitarian principles they had established in Denmark. The position of the Government was so precarious that to raise the question might have serious consequences. This we all knew, and none better than Erik de Scavenius. It will be seen that the difficulties on the Danish side were greater than on ours. The price, which, reasonably enough, would be greater than that offered in previous times, would hardly be a very grave objection from the American point of view, since the war had made us more clear-minded, for our people are most generous in spending money when they see good reasons for it.

It would take much time to unravel the intricacies of Danish politics. 'Happy,' said my friend, Mr. Thomas P. Gill,15 visiting Denmark in 1908, 'is that land which is ruled by farmers!' I have sometimes doubted this. The Conservatives naturally hated the Social Democrats, and the Government was kept in power by the help of the Social Democrats. The Conservatives would have gladly pitched the Government to Hades, if they had not had a great fear that Erik de Scavenius and perhaps Edward Brandès, the Minister of Justice, were too useful to lose during the war when the position of Denmark was so delicate. The recent elections have shown how weak the present Government is.

The Danes, as I have said, are probably the most civilised people in Europe, but an average American high school boy thinks more logically on political questions. A union of such intellectual clearness with such a paralysis of the logical, political qualities of the mind as one finds in Denmark, is almost incredible. They seem to feel in matters of politics but not to think. After a large acquaintance among the best of the young minds in Denmark, I could only conclude that this was the result of unhappy circumstances: the pessimism engendered by the nearness to Germany, the fact that the Dane was not allowed to vote until he became almost middle-aged, and the absence, in the higher schools, of any education that would cultivate self-analysis, and which would force the production of mental initiative. Sentiment was against the sale of the Islands, – therefore, the cause already seemed lost!

The press, as a rule, would be against it, but the press in Denmark, though everybody reads, has not a very potent influence. I was sure of Politiken, a journal which most persons said was 'yellow,' but which appealed to people who liked cleverness. The press, I was sure, would be against the sale largely for reasons of internal politics. The farmers would not oppose the sale as a sale – in itself – the possession of a great sum of money, even while it remained in the United States, meant increased facilities for the import of fodder, etc., but J. C. Christensen, their leader, must be reckoned with. There were local questions. Politics is everywhere a slippery game, but in Denmark it is more slippery than anywhere else in the world, not even excepting in, let us say, Kansas.

J. C. Christensen had stubbed his toe over Alberti, who had, until 1908, been a power in Denmark, and who, in 1915, was still in the Copenhagen jail. He had been prime minister from 1905 until Alberti's manipulation of funds had been discovered in 1908. Under the short administration of Holstein-Ledreborg, he had been Minister of Worship, but he smarted over the accident which had driven him undeservedly out of office. Socialism, curious as it may seem to Americans, is not confined to the cities in Denmark. It thrives in the farmlands. In the country, the Socialists are more moderate than in the cities. In the country, Socialism is a method of securing to the peasant population the privileges which it thinks it ought to have. It is a pale pink compared with the intense red of the extreme urban Internationalists. J. C. Christensen represented the Moderates as against the various shades of Left, Radical and Socialistic opinions. Besides J. C. Christensen, though his reputation was beyond reproach, needed, perhaps, a certain rehabilitation, and he had a great following. A further complication was the sudden rise of violent opposition to the Government because of the decision made by the secular authorities in favour of retaining in his pulpit Arboe Rasmussen, a clergyman who had gone even further towards Modernism in his preaching than Harnack. However, as the Bishops of the Danish Lutheran Church had accepted this decision, it seemed remarkable that an opposition of this kind should have developed so unexpectedly.

In June 1915, my wife and I were at Aalholm, the principal castle of Count Raben-Levitzau. I was hoping for a favourable answer to my latest despatch as to the purchase of the Islands. A visit to Aalholm was an event. The Count and Countess Raben-Levitzau know how to make their house thoroughly agreeable. Talleyrand said that 'no one knew the real delights of social intercourse who had not lived before the French Revolution.' One might easily imitate this, and say, that if one has never paid a visit to Aalholm, one knows little of the delights of good conversation. Count Raben's guests were always chosen for their special qualities. With Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hagerup, Señor and Señora de Riaño, Count and Countess Szchenyi,16 Chamberlain and Madame Hegermann-Lindencrone, Mrs. Ripka, and the necessary additional element of young folk, one must forget the cares of life. During this visit, there was one care that rode behind me in all the pleasant exclusions about the estate. It constantly asked me: What is your Government thinking about? Will the President's preoccupations prevent him from considering the question of the purchase? Does Mr. Brun, the Danish Minister, fear a political crisis in his own country? It is difficult to an American at home to realise how much in the dark a man feels away from the centre of diplomacy, Washington, especially when he has once lived there for years and been in touch with all the tremulous movements of the wires.

One day at Aalholm, the telephone rang; it was a message from the Clerk of the Legation, Mr. Joseph G. Groeninger of Baltimore. I put Clerk with a capital letter because Mr. Groeninger deserved diplomatically a much higher title. During all my anxieties on the question of the purchase, he had been my confidant and encourager; the secretaries had other things to do. The message, discreetly voiced in symbols we had agreed upon, told me that the way was clear. Our Government was willing, – secrecy and discretion were paramount necessities in the transaction.

Returning to Copenhagen, I saw the Foreign Minister. The most direct way was the best. I said, 'Excellency, will you sell your West Indian Islands?'

'You know I am for the sale, Mr. Minister,' he said, 'but – ' he paused, 'it will require some courage.'

'Nobody doubts your courage.'

'The susceptibilities of our neighbour to the South – '

'Let us risk offending any susceptibilities. France had rights.'

'France gave up her rights in Santa Cruz long ago; but I was not thinking of France. Besides the price would have to be dazzling. Otherwise the project could never be carried.'

'Not only dazzling,' I said, 'but you should have more than money – our rights in Greenland; His Majesty might hesitate if it were made a mere question of money. He is like his grandfather, Christian IX. You know how he hated, crippled as Denmark was in 1864, to sell the Islands.'

'You would never pay the price.'

'Excellency,' I said, 'this is not a commercial transaction. If it were a commercial transaction, a matter of material profit, my Government would not have entrusted the matter to me, nor would I have accepted the task, without the counsel of men of business. Besides, commercially, at present, the Islands are of comparatively small value. I know that my country is as rich as it is generous. It is dealing with a small nation of similar principles to its own, and with an equal pride. Unless the price is preposterous, as there is no ordinary way of gauging the military value of these Islands to us, I shall not object. My Government does not wish me to haggle. And I am sure that you will not force me to do so by demanding an absurd price. You would not wish to shock a people prepared to be generous.'

He will ask $50,000,000, I thought; he knows better than anybody that we shall be at war with Germany in less than a year. I felt dizzy at the thought of losing the Gibraltar of the Caribbean! However, I consoled myself, while Mr. de Scavenius looked thoughtfully, pencil in hand, at a slip of paper. After all, I thought, the President, knowing what the Islands mean to us, will not balk at even $50,000,000. While Mr. de Scavenius wrote, I tried to feel like a man to whom a billion was of no importance.

He pushed the slip towards me, and I read:

'$30,000,000 dollars, expressed in Danish crowns.'

The crown was then equal to about twenty-six cents.

I said, 'There will be little difficulty about that; I consider it not unreasonable; but naturally, it may frighten some of my compatriots, who have not felt the necessity of considering international questions. You will give me a day or two?'

'The price is dazzling, I know,' he said.

'My country is more generous even than she is rich. The transaction must be completed before – '

Mr. de Scavenius understood. My country was neutral then; it was never necessary to over-explain to him; he knew that I understood the difficulties in the way.

It was agreed that there should be no intermediaries; Denmark had learned the necessity of dealing without them by the experience in 1902. I was doubtful as to the possibility of complete secrecy. What the newspapers cannot find out does not exist. 'There are very many persons connected with the Foreign Office,' he said thoughtfully.

'I may say a similar thing of our State Department. I wish the necessity for complete secrecy did not exist,' I said. 'The press will have news.'

A short time after this I was empowered to offer $25,000,000 with our rights in Greenland. As far as the Foreign Office and our Legation were concerned, the utmost secrecy was preserved. There were no formal calls; after dinners, a word or two, an apparently chance meeting on the promenade (the Long Line) by the Sound. Rumours, however, leaked out on the Bourse. The newspapers became alert. Politiken, the Government organ, was bound to be discreet, even if its editor had his suspicions. There were no evidences from the United States that the secret was out. In fact, the growing war excitement left what in ordinary times would have been an event for the 'spot' light in a secondary place.

In Denmark, as the whispers of a possible 'deal' increased in number, the opponents of the Government were principally occupied in thinking out a way by which it could be used for the extinction of the Council – President (Prime Minister) Zahle, the utter crushing of the Minister of War, Peter Munch, who hated war and looked on the army as an unnecessary excrescence, and the driving out of the whole ministry, with the exception of Erik de Scavenius and, perhaps, Edward Brandès, the Minister of Finance, into a sea worthy to engulf the devil-possessed swine of the New Testament. There are, by the way, two Zahles – one the Minister, Theodore, a bluff and robust man of the people, and Herluf Zahle, of the Foreign Office, chamberlain, and a diplomatist of great tact, polish and experience.

Mr. Edward Brandès and Mr. Erik de Scavenius, interviewed, denied that there was any question of the sale. 'Had I ever spoken to Edward Brandès on the subject of the sale?' I was asked point-blank. As I had while in Copenhagen, only formal relations with the members of the Government, except those connected with the Foreign Office, I was enabled to say No quite honestly. It was unnecessary for me to deny the possession of a secret not my own, too, because, when asked if I had spoken to the Foreign Minister on the subject of the sale, I always said that I was always hoping for such an event, I had spoken on the subject to Count Raben-Levitzau, Count Ahlefeldt-Laurvig and Erik de Scavenius whenever I had a chance. I felt like the boy who avoided Sunday School because his father was a Presbyterian and his mother a Jewess; this left me out. I trembled for the fate of Mr. de Scavenius and Mr. Edward Brandès when their political opponents (some of them the most imaginative folk in Denmark) should learn the facts. A lie, in my opinion, is the denying of the truth to those who have a moral right to know it. The press had no right whatever to know the truth, but even the direct diplomatic denial of a fact to persons who have no right to know it is bound to be – uncomfortable! I was astonished that both Mr. Brandès and Mr. Scavenius had been so direct; political opponents are so easily shocked and so loud in their pious appeals to Providence! For myself, I was sorry that I could not give Mr. Albert Thorup, of the Associated Press, a 'tip.' He is such a decent man, and I shall always be grateful to him, but I was forced to connive at his losing a great 'scoop.'

The breakers began to roar; anybody but the Foreign Minister would have lost his nerve. Two visiting American journalists, who had an inkling of possibilities of the truth, behaved like gentlemen and patriots, as they are, and agreed to keep silent until the State Department should give them permission to release it. These were Mr. William C. Bullitt, of the Philadelphia Ledger, and Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, of the New York Times. The newspaper, Copenhagen, was the first to hint at the secret, which, by this time, had become a secret de Polichinelle. Various persons were blamed; the Parliament afterwards appointed a committee of examination. On August 1st, 1916, I find in my diary, – 'Thank heaven! the secret is out in the United States, but not through us.' 'Secret diplomacy' is difficult in this era of newspapers. If we are to have a Secretary of Education in the cabinet of the future, why not a Secretary of the Press?

A happy interlude in the summer of 1916 was the visit of Henry Van Dyke and his wife and daughter. It was a red letter night when he came to dinner. We forgot politics, and talked of Stedman, Gilder and the elder days.