Evening Post. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1917. THE EUROPEAN PLOTTER

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 58, 6 September 1917, Page 6

Evening Post. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1917. THE EUROPEAN PLOTTER

""If any further evidence were needed to prove that Germany has been the restless plotter of Europe, that evidence is abundantly supplied by the cabled details —published on the authority of the New York Herald—of the 1904-05 correspondence of the Kaiser and the Tsar In the pre-war period Germans Tepeatedly complained, that other Powers endeavoured to isolate them; but these telegrams (reviewed in detail elsewhere in this issue) all point to an effort of the Kaiser to isolate Britain by arraying the whole Continent against her. Again, Germans have denied tha,t it was ever part of their policy to infringe the neutrality of small States—Belgium being apparently a sort of accident!—yet the Kaiser's message to the Tsar concerning Denmark indicates plainly, and bluntly an intention to occupy the Danish Peninsula should a "Western Sea-Power attempt to enter the Straits. The Danes, His Majesty informed the Tsar, were " becoming resigned to the necessity of allowing Germany and Russia to occupy the conntry if an attack was made on the Baltic. The best policy would be to let this idea sink into the minds of the Danes." If this correspondence is genuine—and there is no reason, on the face of it, to doubt its genuineness—it reveals in a remarkable light the German method and the working of the Kaiserian mind. Yet there is nothing in it more extravagant than what is already known. Consider, for instance, the Kaiser's admission, in his notorious " interview " published in the Daily Telegraph, that he sent London a battle-plan for use against the Boers — the Boers whom he had encouraged to enter the fight. If it is competent for a ruler to confess, and\ boast, that he ran with the South African hare and hunted with the British hound, what other diplomatic eccentricity or duplicity may be denied to him? In such a one there is no inconsistency between the Jameson telegram and Ahe Black Week message to Windsor; or between Bjorko in 1905, Bosnia in 1908, and the Potsdam meeting just prior to the war, when another attempt was made to reconcile the Tsar by some such deal as the Herald publica-

tion exposes. The year 1890 was a transition period in German policy. The reins of power passed from a veteran diplomatist who had shrunk from the idea of a war even with two Great Powers (Russia and France) to a young autocrat who in the end managed to steer his country into war with four Great Powers, and ultimately with six. Bismarckian caution was, in the period after 1890, gradually lost sight of, and only the " blood and iron" elements remained in recollection. Prussian aggression showed its teeth as early as the South African War, but the British Navy in that crisis kept it in its place, and incidentally gave the Kaiser his first practical lesson in sea power. By the time that the Russo-Japanese War had depressed the scale of the Russo-French Alliance by weakening Russia, Germany was ripe for a policy of adventure,' and already apprehensive of the possibility of a Triple Entente. How an aggressive ruler might act in such circumstances is a master of no ordinary interest, and it is in this connection that the 1904-05 correspondence is both pertinent and piquant. It shows —taken with- other evidence—that the Kaiser was full of ingenious expedients; but that herein Hes his weakness. He sampled too many devices, too many combinations and . counter-combinations and cross-currents, rinding permanence in none, and eventually exciting the suspicion and resentment of the whole' of Europe. He tried to isolate Britain; he ended by almost) isolating himself. The correspondence shows that for Bismarck's delicate (treatment of the Romanoffs was substituted a policy of violent love-mak-ing, punctuated with blows between the eyes, such as the Bosnian seizure.^ If the meeting at Bjorko .disarmed the Tsav, the visit to Windsor did not deceive King Edward VII. ; and everywhere, outside. Austria-Hungary and Turkey, the "^brilliant" diplomacy of Wilhelm piled up obstacles in his own road. In the policy of the French, a truly diplomatic nation, the same vacillation is not perceptible. A steady pursuit of the Russian Alliance, long foiled by Bismarck, resulted at last in the termination of French isolation in 1895. About a decade latov t,h« weakening n( Russia whs .miwJe .good ''>x_tfe«(-»p£WifiA«neat witlj_

Britain. It was sane diplomacy to forget Fashoda, and to give Britain freedom of action in Egypt in return for French freedom in Morocco, rather than to grasp the hand that still held the stolen provinces beside the Rhine. If to forget Egypt was hard, to be reconciled with the ravisher of Alsace and Lorraine was intolerable; and French singleness of purpose in that matter bids fair to win through in a way that the bargaining and hectoring German cannot understand. To the credit of the Kaiser be it said that he early recognised the danger of the Triple Entente, and by his war upon M. Delcasse and his wheedling of. the Tsar did his best, for the time being, to counter the danger. But his policy was without permanence, it -was interrupted by Balkan adventures, and the clash of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism was ultimately inevitable. Persuaded at last to go for a big thing or nothing, the Kaiser has proved not big enough for the job; and he will go down to history as a melancholy imitation of Frederick the Great and a weak echo of MachiavellL JjAs an antidote to the exaggerated Prussian notion of Frederician king-craft and of its adaptability to the Europe of to-day, the life of Wilhelm 11. may be useful; perhaps herein lies its greatest use. Hereafter, thanks to the Wilhelm precedent, Germans may decide that Frederick properly belongs to the times in which he lived, and they may take democratic precautions against ever again being misled by the false thunder of a mediaeval survival.