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

The first inkling that the secret de Polichinelle was out came from a cable in Le Temps of Paris. Mr. Bapst, the French Minister, who had very unjustly been accused of being against the sale, came to tell me he knew that the Treaty had been signed by Secretary Lansing and Mr. Brun in Washington. I was not at liberty to commit myself yet, so I denied that the Treaty had been signed in Washington. Mr. Bapst sighed; I knew what he thought of me; but I had told the truth; the Treaty had been signed in New York.

Sir Henry Lowther, the British Minister, was frankly delighted that the question of the Islands was about to be opened. Irgens, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs in Norway, and a good friend to the United States, shook his head. 'If Norway owned islands, we would never give them up,' he said; but he was glad that they were going to us. The other colleagues, including Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German Minister, were occupied with other things. Count Rantzau was desirous of keeping peace with the United States. I think that he regarded war with us as so dangerous as to be almost unthinkable. I found Count Rantzau a very clever man; he played his game fairly. It was a game, and he was a colleague worth any man's respect. He is one of the most cynical, brilliant, forcible diplomatists in Europe, with liberal tendencies in politics. If he lives, he ought to go far, as he is plastic and sees the signs of the times. I found him delightful; but he infuriated other people. One day, when he is utterly tired of life, he will consciously exasperate somebody to fury, in order to escape the trouble of committing suicide himself.

The plot thickened. The ideas of the Foreign Office were, as a rule, mine – but here there was sometimes an honest difference. I was willing to work with the Foreign Office, but not under it. De Scavenius never expected this, but I think it was sometimes hard for him to see that I could not, in all details, follow his plans. Nothing is so agreeable as to have men of talent to deal with; and I never came from an interview with de Scavenius or Chamberlain Clan, even when, perhaps, de Scavenius did not see my difficulties clearly, without an added respect for these gentlemen.

The air was full of a rumour that the United States, suspected in Europe, in spite of the fair treatment of Cuba and the Philippines, of imperialism, had made threats against Denmark, involving what was called 'pressure.' Whether it was due to enemy propaganda or not, the insinuation that the Danish West Indies would be taken by force, because Denmark was helpless, underlay many polite conversations.

'The United States would not dare to oblige France or England or a South American Republic to give up an island. She does not attempt to coerce Holland; but in spite of the pretensions to altruism, she threatens Denmark.'

This was an assertion constantly heard. The charges of imperialism made in our newspapers against some of the 'stalwart' politicians who were supposed to have influenced President McKinley in older days, were not forgotten. Letters poured in, asking if it were possible that I had used threats to the Danish Government.

The Danish politicians were turning their ploughshares into swords. On August 4th the Rigstag went into 'executive session.' Chamberlain Hegermann-Lindencrone still heartily approved of the sale. He had, he said, tried to arrange it, under President McKinley's administration, through a hint from Major Cortelyon when he was in Paris. The attitude of the press became more and more evident. Mr. Holger Angelo, one of the best 'interviewers' in the Danish press, and very loyal to his paper, the National News (National Tidende), came to see me. Personally, he was desirous not to wound me or to criticise the conduct of my Government; but he was strongly against the sale, yet he could find no valid arguments against it. He was obliged to admit reluctantly that the only ground on which his paper could make an attack was the denial of the Cabinet Ministers that any negotiations had existed. This was the line all the opposition papers would follow.

Nobody would say that the purchase had been negotiated on any grounds unfavourable to the national sensibilities of the Danes. Even Admiral de Richelieu admitted that neither my Government nor myself had failed to give what help could be given to his plans for improving the economic conditions of the Islands.

On August 10th the debate in the Rigstag showed, as had been expected, that Mr. J. C. Christensen, who held the balance of power, would demand a new election under the New Constitution. A furious attack was made on Messrs. Brandès and de Scavenius for having denied the existence of negotiations. All this was expected. Nobody really wanted a new election. It was too risky under war conditions.

Suddenly the rumour was revived that the British Fleet would break the neutrality of Denmark by moving through the Great Belt, and that the United States was secretly preparing to send its fleet through the Belt to help the British. The reason of this was apparent: every rumour that corroborated the impression that the United States would become a belligerent injured the chances of the sale. Such delay, to my knowledge, was an evil, since the continued U-boat horror made a war imminent. In spite of all optimism, advice from the American Embassy at Berlin, direct and indirect, pointed that way. The crisis would no doubt be delayed – this was our impression – but it must come. Count Brockdorff-Rantzau hoped to the last that it might be avoided, and Prince Wittgenstein of his Legation, who knew all sides, seemed to believe that a conflict with the United States might yet be avoided. And there was still a dim hope, but it became dimmer every day, so that my desire to expedite matters became an obsession.

On August 12th, J. C. Christensen seemed to hold the Folkerting (the Lower House) in the hollow of his hand. He moved to appeal to the country, and to leave the question of a sale to a new Rigstag. This meant more complications, more delay, and perhaps defeat through the threatening of the war clouds. J. C. Christensen's motion was defeated by eleven votes.

On August 14th it was concluded that the quickest and least dangerous way of securing assent to the sale was by an appeal to the people, not through a general election, but through a plebiscite, in which every man and woman of twenty-nine would vote, under the provisions of the New Constitution.

The Landsting (the Upper House) held a secret meeting. If a coalition ministry should not be arranged and the motion for a plebiscite should fail, there would certainly be a general election. This would, I thought, be fatal, as it would probably mean a postponement of the sale until after the close of the war. In the meantime, we heard the German representatives of the Hamburg-American Line at St. Thomas were carrying on 'some unusual improvements.' These activities, begun without the knowledge of the Governor, who was then in Denmark, were stopped by the Minister of Justice, Mr. Edward Brandès, when the knowledge of them was brought to the Danish Government. On August 15th I was convinced that one of the most important men in Denmark, indeed in Europe, Etatsraad H. N. Andersen, of the East Asiatic Company, approved of the sale. This I had believed, but I was delighted to hear it from his own lips.

Political confusion became worse. In some circumstances the Danes are as excitable as the French used to be. It looked, towards the end of August, as if the project of the sale was to be a means of making of Denmark, then placid and smiling under a summer sun, a veritable seething cauldron. The gentlemen of the press enjoyed themselves. I, who had the reputation of having on all occasions a bonne presse, fell from grace. I had not, it is true, concealed the truth by diplomatic means, as had Mr. Edward Brandès and Mr. Erik de Scavenius, but I had talked 'so much and so ingenuously' to the newspaper men, as one of them angrily remarked, that they were sure a man, hitherto so frank, had nothing to conceal; and yet there had been much concealed.

The Opposition, which would have been pleasantly horrified to discover any evidence of bribery, or, indeed, any evidence of the methods by which our Legation had managed its side of the affair (they hoped for the worst), could discover very little; when they called on de Scavenius to show all the incriminating documents in the case, they found there was nothing incriminating, and the documents were the slightest scraps of paper.

Knowing how far away our Department of State was, how busy and how undermanned, owing to the attitude which Congress has hitherto assumed towards it, I acted as I thought best as each delicate situation arose, always arranging as well as I could not to compromise my Government, and to give it a chance to disavow any action of mine should it be necessary. I had found this a wise course in the Cook affair. I had resolved to take no notice of Dr. Cook, until the Royal Danish Geographical Society determined to recognise him as a scientist of reputation.

When Commander Hovgaard, who had been captain of the king's yacht, asked me to go with the Crown Prince, President of the Geographical Society, to meet the American explorer, I went; but my Government was in no way committed. In fact, President Taft understood the situation well; receiving no approval of Dr. Cook from me, he merely answered Dr. Cook's telegram, congratulating him on 'his statement.' I must say that, when the Royal Geographical Society received Cook, no word of disapproval from any American expert had reached our Legation or the Geographical Society itself. The Society, with no knowledge of the Mount McKinley incident, behaved most courteously to an American citizen who appeared to have accomplished a great thing. The only indication that made me suspect that Dr. Cook was not scientific was that he spoke most kindly of all his – may I say it? – step-brother scientists! But, as I had accompanied the Crown Prince, in gratitude for his kind attention to a compatriot, I felt sure that a wise Department would only, at the most, reprimand me for exceeding the bounds of courtesy.

Suddenly a crashing blow struck us; Edward Brandès, in the midst of a hot debate, in which he and de Scavenius were fiercely attacked, announced that the United States was prepared to exert 'friendly pressure.' Brandès is too clever a man to be driven into such a statement through inadvertence; he must have had some object in making it. What the object was I did not know – nobody seemed to know. Even de Scavenius seemed to think he had gone too far, for whatever were the contents of Minister Brun's despatches, it was quite certain that neither he nor our Government would have allowed a threat made to Denmark involving the possession of her legitimately held territory to become public.

Something had to be done to avoid the assumption that we were no more democratic than Germany. 'We wanted the territory from a weaker nation; we were prepared to seize it, if we could not buy it! We Americans were all talking of the rights of the little nations. Germany wanted to bleed France, and she took Belgium after having insolently demanded that she should give up her freedom. We, the most democratic of nations, prepared to pay for certain Islands; but if it was not convenient for a friendly power to sell her territory, we would take it.' This was the inference drawn from Mr. Edward Brandès' words in Parliament. I could not contradict a member of the Government, and yet I was called on, especially by Danes who had lived in the United States, to explain what this 'pressure' meant.

Many Danish women who approved of the social freedom of American women, but mistrusted our Government's refusing them the suffrage, took the question up with me. 'Pressure et tu Brute!' The women were to vote in the plebiscite. Some of their leaders balked at the word 'pressure,' but a country which had hitherto refused the suffrage to American women was capable of anything. Mr. Edward Brandès had performed a great service to his country in letting out some of the horrors of our secret diplomacy. Mr. Constantin Brun, whose loyalty to his own country I invoked in these interviews, was, they said, 'corrupted' in the United States; he was more American than the Americans! I should have much preferred to be put in the 'Ananias Society' so suddenly formed of Mr. Brandès and Mr. de Scavenius than to have myself set down as an imperialist of a country as arrogant as it was grasping, which not only threatened to seize Danish territory, but which, while pretending to hold the banner of democracy in the war of nations, deprived the best educated women in the world (Mrs. Chapman Catt had said so) of their inalienable right to vote!

Fortunately, I had once lectured at the request of some of the leading suffragists. Bread cast upon the waters is often returned, toasted and buttered, by grateful hands. Madame de Münter – wife of the Chamberlain – and Madame Gad, wife of the Admiral, were great lights in the Feminist movement.

Madame Gad is a most active, distinguished and benevolent woman of letters. There were others, too, who felt that there must be some redeeming features in a condition of society which produced a Minister who was so devoted to woman suffrage as I was (as my wife gave some of the best dinners in Denmark, nobody expected her to go beyond that!). To Madame de Münter I owed much good counsel and a circle of defenders; to Madame Gad (if we had an Order of Valiant Women, I should ask that she be decorated), I am told I owe the chance that helped to turn the women's vote in our favour, and induced many ladies, who were patriotic traditionalists, to abstain from voting. The general opinion, as far as I could gauge it – and I tried to get expert testimony – was that the women's vote would be against us.

The National News (National Tidende) had never been favourable to the United States, though personally I had no reason to complain of it. It was moderate in politics, not brilliant, but very well written. The virtue of its editor was outraged by the denial of the two Ministers that negotiations for the sale of the Islands had been in process. This position in defence of the truth edified the community. 'Truth, though the heavens fall!' was his motto; he kept up a fusillade against the sale. Except that one of my interviews had been unintentionally misquoted, I had hitherto been out of the newspapers – though I was no longer, in the opinion of the whole press, the sweet and promising young poet of sixty-five who had written sonnets – now I was forced in.

An interview appeared triumphantly in the National News. It was attributed to one of the most discreet officials of the State Department. It denied 'pressure,' which would have pleased me, if it had not also contradicted my repeated statement that the Senate of the United States would not adjourn without ratifying the treaty. It was a blow. I questioned at once the authenticity of the interview. The Senate, I had said, would ratify the treaty before the end of the session. The Danish Foreign Office and the public took my word for it. Unless I could get a disavowal of the interview by cable, it would seem that the Department of State was not supporting me. The Foreign Office itself, with the problem of our entering the war before it, was beginning to be disheartened. The authenticity of the interview meant failure, the triumph of the enemies of the sale! After a brief interval, a denial of the interview, which had been fabricated in London, came to our Legation. There was joy in Nazareth, but it did not last long.

With the permission of the Foreign Office, I prepared to give this very definite denial from our State Department to the press. It was a busy evening. The staff of the Legation was small, and the necessity of sending men to the Rigstag to watch the debate in the Landsting, where the treaty was being considered, of gathering information, and of translating and copying important documents relating to the Islands for transmission to the United States, strained our energies. Moreover, the Secretary of Legation, Mr. Alexander Richardson Magruder, had just been transferred to Stockholm. Mr. Joseph G. Groeninger, the Clerk, who knew all the details relating to the affair of the Islands, was up to his eyes in work. Mr. Cleveland Perkins, the honorary attaché, was struggling heroically with Danish reports, and I was at the telephone receiving information, seeing people, and endeavouring to discover just where we stood. A most trustworthy – but inexperienced – young man was in charge of the downstairs office, where Mr. Groeninger, the omniscient, usually reigned. I telephoned to him a memorandum on the subject of 'pressure' which the bogus interview had denied. It was a quotation from the 'interview,' to be made the subject of comment, and then the denial. Both of these were sent up on the same piece of typewritten paper, and O.K.ed by me, as a matter of routine. It was not until late in the night that the young man discovered that a mistake had been made. He was most contrite, though the mistake was my fault and due to thoughtlessly following the usual routine. He telephoned at once to the National News and to the other newspapers explaining that he had made a mistake. The National News preferred to ignore his explanation. The opportunity of accusing the Ministry of further duplicity was too tempting. De Scavenius had lied again, and I had connived at it. The denial of the Washington telegram was 'faked' by the American Minister in collusion with the Minister of Foreign Affairs! It must be admitted that Politiken, edited by the terribly clever Cavling, had driven the slower-witted National Tidende to desperation. I had a bad morning; then I resolved to draw the full fire of the National News on myself. I owed it to de Scavenius, who had become rather tired of being called a liar in all the varieties of rhetoric of which Copenhagen slang is capable. From the American point of view, after I had made my plan, it was amusing – all the more amusing, since, after the first regret that I had unwittingly added to the opera bouffe colour of the occasion, I saw that the National Tidende would become so abusive against me, that I should soon be an interesting victim of vituperative persecution. I repeated calmly the truth that the 'interview' was a fabrication, adding that I had no intention to attack the honour of the National Tidende; it had been deceived; I merely wanted it understood that my Government was not in the habit of contradicting its responsible representatives (Politiken kindly added that the National Tidende had received its information from the 'coloured door-keeper at the White House'). More fire and fury signifying nothing! The most elaborate frightfulness in print missed its mark, as nobody at the Legation had time to translate the rhetoric of the Furies, and besides, the National Tidende had no case. As I hoped, the diplomatic sins of the Foreign Office in keeping the secret were forgotten in the flood of invective directed against me. The result was expressed in my diary: – 'The row has proved a help to the treaty; I did not know I had so many friends in Denmark. My hour of desolation was when I feared that somebody in the State Department had permitted himself to be interviewed. It was a dark hour!' After this tempest in a tea-pot, all talk about 'pressure' ceased; the air was, at least, clear of that – and I thanked heaven.

September came in; the debates in the Rigstag continued. Various papers were accused of having prematurely divulged the secret – especially Copenhagen. It was amusing – the secret among business men had long before the revelation of Copenhagen become an open secret. In fact, one of these gentlemen had come to me and informed me of the various attitudes of people on the Bourse; at the Legation, we never lacked secret information. The debate, as everybody knew, and the threat of an investigation of the responsibility for letting out the secret was a bit of comedy, probably invented for the provinces, for a Copenhagener is about as easily fooled as a Parisian.

On September 9th, I had one of the greatest pleasures I have ever experienced. I announced to the Foreign Office that the treaty had been ratified, without change, by the Senate. Still the Opposition made delays. The Foreign Minister did all in his power to expedite matters. It was hoped that charges of 'graft' could be developed against the Ministers. 'If you had had a bonne presse, as usual,' a candid friend said to me, 'you might have been accused of bribing. As it is, the National Tidende attitude showed that you never offered that paper any money!'

'As much as I regret the attitude of the National Tidende,' I said, 'I could as soon imagine myself taking a bribe as of the editor's accepting one. The attack was a great advantage to me.'

'You Yankees turn everything to your advantage,' the candid friend said.

On September 27th, Ambassador and Mrs. Gerard arrived. It was a red letter day. Mr. Gerard showed the strain of his work, but, like all good New Yorkers, was disposed 'to take the goods the gods provided' him – one of them was a dinner at the Legation of which he approved. Praise from Brillat-Savarin would not have delighted us more than this. The Legation, to use the diplomatic phrase, threw themselves at the feet of Mrs. Gerard. Gerard deserved the title, given him by the Germans, of 'the most American of American Ambassadors.' Mrs. Gerard was cosmopolitan, with an American charm, but also with a touch of the older world that always adds to the social value of an ambassadress. I had arranged, in advance of Judge Gerard's coming, a luncheon with my colleague across the street, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau. It was interesting. Mr. and Mrs. Swope were present, Their Serene Highnesses the Prince and Princess Sayn Wittgenstein-Sayn, Count Wedel, and, I think, Dr. Toepffer. Judge Gerard told me that he spoke little French, but he got on immensely well with Count Rantzau, who spoke no English. Count Wedel, with his love for Old Germany, of the Weimar of Goethe, of the best in literature, will, I trust, live to see a happier new order of things in his native country. The Wittgensteins were charming young people. The Prince was connected with almost every great Russian, French and Italian family. If ambassadors are not put out of fashion by the new order of things, the Princess, closely connected with important families of England, would be a fortunate ambassadress to an English-speaking country. Peace ought to come to men of good-will, and I am persuaded that there are men of good-will in Germany.

September, October, even December came in, and the political factions still fought, ostensibly about the sale, but really for control, Copenhageners said, of the $25,000,000! Every chance was taken to delay the matter until after the war. German propaganda and bribing was talked of, but there was no evidence of it. In my opinion, it was largely a question as to who should spend the $25,000,000. In a Monarchy such a horror was to be expected naturally! In a Republic like ours, the patriotic Republicans would cheerfully see the equally patriotic Democrats control the funds, but, then, Republics are all Utopias, the lands of the Hope fulfilled! All this was amusing to many observers – embarrassing and humiliating to Danes who respected reasonable public opinion and the dignity of their country. It was terrible to me who saw the war coming, for Mr. Gerard and my private informants in Germany left me in no doubt about that. Even Count Szchenyi, always for peace, and with us in sympathy, declared that 'the U-boat war would go on, not to crush England, but as part of the Germanic League to enforce Peace.' And the use of the U-boat meant war for us!

On all sides, I was told that the women's votes would be against the sale. It was not unreasonable to believe that ladies, just emancipated, would vote against their late lords and masters, at least for the first time. Besides, as Mrs. Chapman Catt had made very clear during her fateful visit to Denmark, the liveliest, the most reasonable, the most intellectual women in the world were deprived by the unjust laws of the country that wanted the Islands of the right to vote. Even the fact that Mr. Edward Brandès, a noted ladies' man, was on the side of the angels, might have no effect. He began to be tired of the whole thing. He hoped, I really believe, that the Islands would settle the question and sink into the sea! We must have the women's vote. Madame Gad helped to save the day.