Germany’s Ambassador in London

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3, 17 July 1912, Page 2

Germany’s Ambassador in London

Baron Marschall Von Bieberstein —A Great Diplomatist

IT is hoped and believed by the reasonable men of both England and Germany that the new Ambassador's tact will preserve the peace of the world and eventually make for a British entente with Germany. It used to be the tradition of the British diplomatic service to send to the Embassy in Constantinople a man who was a personality and an intellectual force (s.iys Mr. H. N. Brailsford in the "Daily News"). If Germany has obtained an ascendancy at the Porte it is largely because she found what of late our Foreign Office did not so much as seek—a representative who was himself a will and a mind. These words in this connection are apt to suggest a misleading portrait. The strong men of our own Oriental school have generally got their way by bullying. There was always something in their shadow when they entered an audience-room, which looked like an ironclad on the horizon. The success of Baron Marschall von

Bieberstein lay in a certain directness and concentration which have nothing whatever in common with the cruder methods of handling Orientals. The physical impression of the man is one of massiveness and power. The features seem heavy and a little forbidding until he begins to talk. I do not" know whether he has Hapsburg Wood in his veins, but if for a moment the alert and genial play of feature were to cease lie would resemble the Velasquez portrait of Philip V. Never was a physical resemblance more delightfully misleading. One cannot have with Herr Marschall even the briefest of business conversation* without realising the rare eharm of his directness, without submitting to the force and impetus of his mind, and understanding the fame of the geniality and courtesy whi.-h made him for so many years the most popular European in Turkey. The success of some Eastern diplomatists has rested on a certain allurement and grace of mind, which gave their victim an aesthetic pleasure even

when he knew that he was l'e:*lg ’“done"—•done” with incomparable chaim. The success of Herr Marschall is due to more virile qualities. I have never in listening to any man expounding a policy at his desk been conscious of so much concentrated reason, so masterly a power of stating a case none too strong in itself, a habit of speech which conveyed in a fashion sot magnetic the impression that the speaker himself was convjnced ami meant to convince. For the moment he was thinking of nothing else, and he took pains to summon all the powers of a very capable mind to drive his thesis home. It is the secret of the success of the orator and the pleader. But few men of affairs can command it in the routine of their official business. Herr Marschall belongs to the modern, school of diplomacy which understands the use of the newspaper. A philosophic journalist experience* no undue resentment when an old-fashioned Am-

bassador seeks refuge in a professional reticence- One merely reflects that the poor man is evidently too maladroit t« trust himself to speak. I recollect with some amusement the reply of our envoy, at the last Hague Conference to a collective approach from the representatives of three of the most important English newspaper*. He curtly told US that “he had nothing to say to repoiters.” A note dispatched thereafter at a venture to Herr Marschall brought me back a prompt invitation to < all upon him. Hi* one desire seemed to be that the English public should know exactly what <!• rmany. wa* doing—why she advanced this proposal. why she objected to that. No question which I put to him was and with a good nature and a courtesy as rare a* they were welcome he told me the main facts of public interest regarding the proceeding*. He made sure that I should visit him again, ami invariably his manner was designed to

show that he thought it part of his duty as a diplomatist to put the ease of his Government before the public opinion of its neighbours, lie put it, I do not doubt, as adroitly as he could, stressing what was behind it, passing rapidly over what was open to criticism. What he did in this way at the Hague was an ordinary incident of his routine at Constantinople. While our Ambassador was commonly inaccessible even to an influential deputation from the Young Turk leaders, Herr Marsclrall was already ready, with none of the fencing and the mystery of the conventional diplomatist, to state his own case, to hear every intelligent view, to live not merely at Court and in the Embassies, but also among the Turkish people themselves as the official spokesman of the German nation. The record of his long tenure of the German Embassy includes its triumphs of personal skill. Through the greater part of the period it wanted, I think, no exceptional genius in a German Ambassador to succeed. Abdul Hamid, for different reasons and in varying degrees, had his reasons for fearing and detesting the Liberal Powers on the one hand, and the Austrian and Russian rivals on the other- Germany alone gave him no trouble, and she received her natural reward in a series of economic concessions. I once tried to “draw” Herr Marschall into a discussion of the Macedonian question. He answered with a brevity and an honesty which typified the concentration of German policy during this period: “Our interests lie rather in Asia Minor.” The laconic answer meant, what is plain for everyone to read, that German policy pursues in Turkey economic ends, and closes her eyes to every other consideration.

The testing time for Herr Marschall’s diplomatic skill came after the fall ot Abdul Hamid, when all the Ministers and courtiers with whom he had dealt were in exile or disgrace., and the new men looked on him and on his Government as the friends of the despotism which had fallen. Had there been a capable man at the 'British or French Embassy his task must have been hopeless. He used the sympathy which Germany still possessed among the officers of the army. He spared no pains to influence the Turkish press. He profited by 'the lethargy, the inaccessibility, and the aristocratic aloofness of our Embassy, and before two years had passed he had become once more under the new regime what he had been under the old —the dominant European influence nt Constantinople.

Baron Marschall von Bieberstein will bring to his great task in London a reputation which will shrink from any anti-climax of a half-success. He ean crown a great career only by the achievement of a complete reconciliation. It will be, if this exponent of Real Politik can manage it, a settlement decidedly favourable to his own country. But in the inevitable struggle of wits there will certainly be on Ills side directness with courtesy, and that cold temper of reason which declines to import sentimentality into the adjustment of material interests.