PRINCE LICHNOWSKY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 80, 14 January 1928, Page 8

PRINCE LICHNOWSKY.

MAN WHO WARNED GERMANY. AN AMBASSADOR'S "TRAGEDY." Prince Liehnowsky, German Ambassador to the Court of St. James at the outbreak of the Great War, has nerformed the useful part of collecting! his liondon reports and other writings in volumes which are published in Dresden. The Prince reiterates bis well-known view that Germany's alliance with Aus-tria-Hungary was fatal to her interests, and that the policy she should hava pursued' was friendship with Russia. None of his reports is so striking as the celebrated one made in 1916, which hy an indiscretion became known abroad and was published in England and America, to the dismay of the German authorities, and which is included in the first of these volumes.

In his , preface Prince Liehnowsky speaks of the opposition of the Emperor William I. to Bismarck's plan for an alliance with Austria-Hungary, and cries:

"Had lie only remaned firm, had he only let him (Bismarck) go, then the greatest catastrophe in the world's history would have been impossible, and the German people would to-day be the first in Europe.

Bismarck's Blindness. He denounces the blindness of Bismarck, and points out that the noisy renewal of the Triple Alliance was the cause of the Franco-Russian Treaty of 1892. "We threw Russia into the arms of France v and then England," he says. He sums up Germany's folly in the foblowing passage:—■ "We were by far the strongest in •Europe, and disquieted the world 'by «ver-increasing armaments on land and :sea, by refusing any limitation of arrmaments at peace conferences, by ehalienging orations about he 'mailed ffist,'' and by similar fanfares and rhodo•montade, and by repeated senseless <crises which left the others only the choice between humiliation and war, and which created the impression that a new passage of arms would not be unwelcome to us.

"This attitude brought about the rapprochement of other Powers, who buried their differences and came to an understanding for their mutual protection. Then people called it the 'encirclement.' '' The Prince recalls the fact that it was Herr Von Holstein who caused the Morocco crisis, and that, when M. Delcasse expressed the willingness of France to enter into negotiations, the German diplomat no more desired an understanding with France than his successor wanted one with England ten years later. Father of the War. He denounces Von Holstein as "a national misfortune'—the real father of the World War." He is, however, careful to state he never said German statesmen in July, 1914, -wanted the war so far as they actually knew what they wanted. He had tried to show that the World War was the result of a fool's policy. Prince -.Lichnowsky once more summarises his well-known view of British policy: "I always insisted that, however much the British Government, especially Sir Edward Grey, strove to acquiesce in our wishes and come to an understanding with us to bridge over all difficulties and find a solution satisfactory to both sides no British Government would again take up an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards us, as in 1870-71, in the event of a FrancoGerman war." And again he writes: "With Sir Edward Grey we could geh practically everything. He was ready to meet us on every question: only there waa one thing I could not get; to deter him from entry into the World War when, we declared war on France and on top of that infringed Belgian neutrailty. Tins is the tragedy of my mission." •