|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 8
When I think of this most amiable and cultivated person, and compare his
way of looking at the evolution of human life with Mr. Lloyd George's
way of reading the political heavens, a sentence in Bagehot's essay on
Charles Dickens comes into my mind: "There is nothing less like the
great lawyer, acquainted with broad principles and applying them with
distinct deduction, than the attorney's clerk who catches at small
points like a dog biting at flies."
No one could be less like the popular politician of our very noisy days
than this slight and gentle person whose refinement of mind reveals
itself in a face almost ascetic, whose intelligence is of a wide,
comprehensive, and reflecting order, and whose manner is certainly the
last thing in the world that would recommend itself to the mind of an
advertising agent. But there is no living politician who watched so
intelligently the long beginnings of the war or knew so certainly in the
days of tension that war had come, as this modest and gracious gentleman
whose devotion to principle and whose quiet faith in the power of simple
honour had outwitted the chaotic policy and the makeshift diplomacy of
the German long before the autumn of 1914.
This may be said without revealing any State secret or breaking any
private confidence:
As Sir Arthur Nicolson, our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Lord Carnock
won for England, as no other man had done before him, the love of
Russia. The rulers of Russia trusted him. He was their friend in a
darkness which had begun to alarm them, a darkness which made them
conscious of their country's weakness, and which brought to their ears
again and again the rumbles of approaching storm. Lord Carnock,
sincerely loving these people, received their confidence as one friend
receives the confidence of another. His advice was honourable advice. He
counselled these friends to set their house in order and to stand firm
in the conviction of their strength. Their finances were a chaos, their
army was disorganized; let them begin in those quarters; let them bring
order into their finances and let them reorganize their army.
While he was at St. Petersburg, after a wide experience in other
countries, he twice saw Russia humiliated by Germany. Twice he witnessed
the agony of his Russian friends in having to bow before the threats of
Prussia. Remember that the rulers of Russia in those days were the most
charming and cultivated people in the world, whereas the Prussian as a
diplomatist was the same Prussian whom, even as an ally of ours in 1815,
Croker found "very insolent, and hardly less offensive to the English
than to the French."[1] The Russians felt those humiliations as a
gentleman would feel the bullying of an upstart.
Lord Carnock was at the Foreign Office in July, 1914. He alone knew that
Russia would fight. For the rest of mankind, certainly for the German
Kaiser, it was to be another bloodless humiliation of the Russian Bear.
Admiral von Tirpitz wanted war: Bethmann-Hollweg did not. The great
majority of the German people, in whom a genuine fear of Russia had
increased under the astute propaganda of the War Party, hoped that the
sword had only to be flashed in Russia's face for that vast barbarian to
cower once again. Few statesmen in Europe thought otherwise. Sir Edward
Grey, I have good reason to think, did not consider that Russia would
fight. He erred with that great number of educated Germans who thought
the sword had only to be rattled a little more loudly in the scabbard
for Russia to weaken, and for Germany to gain, without cost, the supreme
object of her policy--_an increasing ascendancy in the Balkans_. But
this time Russia was ready, and this time Lord Carnock knew Russia would
fight. I am not sure that Lord Carnock was not the only statesman in
Europe who possessed this knowledge--the knowledge on which everything
hung.
It is easy for thoughtless people, either in their hatred or love of
Bolshevism, to forget that the old Russia saved France from destruction
and made a greater sacrifice of her noblest life than any other nation
in the great struggle. The first Russian armies, composed of the very
flower of her manhood, fought with a matchless heroism, and, so
fighting, delivered France from an instant defeat.
Lord Carnock may justly be said to have prepared Russia for this
ordeal--for a true friend helps as well as gives good advice. But it
would be a total misjudgment of his character which saw in this great
work a clever stroke of diplomatic skill.
Lord Carnock was inspired by a moral principle. He saw that Russia was
tempting the worst passions of Germany by her weakness. He felt this
weakness to be unworthy of a country whose intellectual achievements
were so great as Russia's. He had no enmity at all against the Germans.
He saw their difficulties, but regretted the spirit in which they were
attempting to deal with those difficulties--a spirit hateful to a nature
so gentle and a mind so honourable.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|