ABUSE AND EXCUSE

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 67, 17 September 1917, Page 6

ABUSE AND EXCUSE

The abuse, of Sweden's diplomatic machinery in Buenos Aires and Stockholm, by the German Charge d'Affaires at the former capital, has given the i,United'' States German-language papers an opportunity to noisily repudiate ■ German diplomacy. It is true that, on occasions, notorious disservice has been rendered to Germany by her diplomatfc agents, and by none more flagrantly than by him who was head of them all, the inglorious ex-Foreign Minister Zimmermann, author' of the intercepted despatch to Mexico urging a. CarranzaMikado alliance against the United States. But the Buenos Aires cypher messages are by no means on-the same 'level of futility as the Zimraermann despatch. Zimmermann planned an impossible' war, but the , German Charge d'Affaires in Buenos Aires (Count Lux-; burg) successfully promoted a piracy campaign that caused substantial dam-' age to Entente and neutral interests, and which carried with it as an incidental necessity the most cold-blooded murder. Germany might cry " Save me from my Zimmermanns " —because they failed. But the Count- Luxburgs, the Yon Papens, the Boy-eds, and other diplomatic promoters of outrage and murder in neutral spheres, are Germany's own pet children, the special product of her own Hunnish system, and they have done their jobs after her own pattern,- and have done them well.

Whatever the degree or nature cf their shortcoming may be, it is Germany's more than theirs. While they were successful—and this success covered, in Count Luxburg's case, a lengthy period—Germany found them capable servants; and, now that she has been j detected with the spoils of their crimes in her possession, she carfnot" repudiate, or find, in such as Luxburg, scapegoats for the warlords. "If," says one of the American German-language papers, " the German army leaders had diaplayed such a lack of intelligence as the German ! diplomats have done," the war would have been lost-'by 'Germany-long ago. It is true that Bethniann-HoUweg rashly ! risked—and incurred—facing overwhelming odds when he started the war in 1914, and that a' couple of years later his submarinism. brought in the United States. But to what extent was his hand forced, in both cases, by the army? This German effort to excuse Prussian by making whippingboys of the diplomatic agents requires watching. Bad as the diplomats have, been, could they reasonably be expected to have done better, considering that they were under the driving impulse, of the war party? An army that was the servant of diplomacy would have every reason to complain'bf the diplomatic odds y which Germany has had to face. But if. German diplomacy has been really the servant of the'army, then the responsibility may well recoil upon the warlords, whose failure cannot be excused by the admitted executive skill of the German leaders in the field.