12 
Land & Water 
April i8, 1918 
Lichnowsky's Revelations: By Sir M. Durand 
SOME remarkable papers have seen the Hght in 
Germany duri-ng the last few weeks, and the more 
they are studied by the British public the better ; 
for they reveal with striking clearness the real facts 
about the rcsponsibihty for the war, and incidentally 
they bring out the difference between the general attitude of 
Germany and that of Great Britain in matters of foreign 
policy. We English — or nearly all of us — have been satisfied 
from the beginning that we were entirely in the right. Like 
most people, we are apt to take that view of our own pro- 
ceedings. But it is one thing to be absolved by the voice of 
conscience, it is another thing to find ourselves openly and 
formally absolved by an enemy who has hitherto proclaimed 
that England has been the arch-plotter against the peace of 
Europe — the instigator and leader of a wicked conspiracy to 
hem in and destroy the peace-loving German Empire, 
First among these papers is the famous memorandum of 
Prince Lichnowsky, late German Ambassador in England. 
Prince Lichnowsky was representing his country here when 
the war broke out, and he had therefore the fullest knowledge 
of the course of affairs. He has not hesitated to declare in 
his memorandum that the responsibility for "the war rests 
upon Germany — not upon England. "We deliberately de- 
stroyed," he says, "thepossibihty of a peaceful settlement" ; 
and "my London mission . . .- was wrecked not by the 
perfidy of the British, but by the perfidy of our pohcy." 
These assertions he supports by a statement of " indisputable 
facts" drawn from official pubUcations, and not controverted 
by the German White Book. He shows that to the end 
Great Britain made repeated efforts to maintain the peace 
of Europe; and he sums up with the remark, "it is not 
surprising that the whole civilised world outside Germany 
attributes to us the sole guilt for the world war." The 
unfortunate Ambassador, it may be observed, was tricked by 
his own Government as to their intentions ; for under a 
system well known in the German service, the Kaiser kept in 
London two diplomatic instruments, one a representative, 
himself deceived so as better to deceive our people, the other 
a subordinate working in secret over the head of his chief. 
Prince Lichnowsky does not stand alone, for Herr Miihlon, 
an ex-director of the great Krupp firm, almost simultaneously 
declared that the Kaiser himself was personally responsible 
for the war. Then Herr von Jagow, German Foreign Minister 
from 1913 to 1916, Hvas apparently put up to answer Prince 
Lichnowsky's memorandum ; at all events, his observations 
upon it are pubhshed by the German Government. And 
what is his answer ? Anyone who studies it will see that it 
is practically no answer at all, for the main facts brought 
forward in the memorandum are in no way disproved. - As 
to Great Britain, Herr von Jagow makes the following 
remarks : "I am by no means willing to adopt the opinion, 
which is at present widely held in Germany, that England 
laid all the mines which caused the war ; on the contrary, 
1 believe in Sir Edward Grey's love of peace, and in his 
serious wish to reach an agreement with us. . . . Among 
the English people also the war was not popular." It is 
true that Herr von Jagow says Sir Edward Grey "did not 
prevent the world-war, as Ke could have done," but no proof 
of this assertion is brought forward beyond the remark that 
"he had involved himself too deeph' in the net of Franco- 
Russian policy" and "could no longer find the way out." 
Finally, other persons of some note in Germany have 
apparently accepted, and have been permitted to express, 
the view that Great Britain was not the guilty party. For 
example, the naval critic. Captain Persius, has written in 
the Berliner Tageblatt : "An understanding ought to be 
easier now that we have heard from two opposing sources, 
from von Jagow and Lichnowsky, that England was not 
responsible for the war, as hitherto has been believed in wide 
circles in Germany." , 
Now, the first thing that strikes one on reading these 
various pronouncements is the fact that they should have 
been allowed to see 'the light in Germany. It seems evident 
that the pubhcation could not have been made without the 
permission of the German Government. Such a complete 
change of front must have a meaning. 
A friend of mine once told me it was a sajing in his country 
that the best way of coming to terms with an Englishman 
was to knock him down first and then talk nicely to him. 
The words of Captain Persius quoted above, and other 
expressions used by German newspapers, would seem to 
show that the German Government has resolved to try this 
method. It looks as if they hoped that by dealing a great 
blow at our Army in France, and then proclaiming the 
innocence of Great Britain, thcj- might induce us to conclude 
a separate peace, inducing their own people at the same time 
to regard such, a settlement with favour. It is a grotesque 
idea ; but any other explanation of the German action is 
difficult to imagine. 
This, however, is a point of minor importance. Whatever 
may be the intention of the German Government, the imme- 
diate effect of their action is clear. The veil has been torn 
from the face of the Kaiser, and the responsibility of Germany 
for the war is definitely estal)lished. It will be observed, 
incidentally, that no German except Lichnowsky seems in 
the least ashamed either of the villainous aggression by which 
the war was brought about or of the long-continued campaign 
of falsehood by which the German Government sought to 
throw the blame on England. 
Some hard things have been said of late in England about 
the British Foreign Office and the methods of British diplo- 
macy. I hold no brief for the P'oreign Office, and fully believe 
that some of its proceedings in the past have been open to 
attack. Granted that the Foreign Office is full of sin, this is 
not because its proceedings have been false and aggressive 
like those of the Germans ; it is for the precisely 
opposite reason, that they have been simple and conciliatory 
to the verge, and at times beyond the verge, of feebleness. 
Partly from that timidity in matters of policy which is as 
marked a characteristic of our people as courage in the field, 
partly from an honest desire for peace and goodwill among 
men, we have not always "held up our end," as we might 
have done ; and we have suffered in consequence. 
Our Policy Towards Russia 
An excellent example of this is the course of our pohcy 
towards Russia, especially since the Crimean War, when she 
began to push out seriously along her natural "slope" to the 
eastward, and in the opinion of our statesmen to threaten 
India closely. We allowed the Russians, when they were 
much weaker than we were in Asia to "draw" us to an 
extent which would have been reaUy comic if it had not been 
so dangerous. By an attitude of perpetual apprehension 
— not to say alarm — at their smallest movement in Central 
Asia, we impressed them and unluckily impressed all Asiatics, 
including the natives of India, with the idea that we were 
afraid of Russia and dared not stand up to her. This attitude 
did great harm. 
{3i,Writing as late as 1897, I urged that Russia was 
not strong enough to attack us, and that we should do 
well to show more confidence in our own strength, which, as 
long as the people of India trusted us, was immense. I 
urged also that we should do well to show less distnist of the 
good faith of the Russians, who had not for seventy years 
made any serious encroachment on the treaty frontiers of 
Persia, and were pledged by a formal agreement, not hitherto 
broken, to respect the frontiers of Afghanistan. But this 
was not the view generally taken, and the old pohcy of alarm 
continued to hoM the field. Then in 1907 came indeed a 
new pohcy, one of rapprochement towards Russia, prompted 
in great measure by our growing sense of the aggressive 
spirit of Germany ; but there remained witli the new policy 
the old exaggerated estimate of Russian strength, and the 
old distrust of our own. The result was the Anglo-Russian 
Convention, by which we hoped to put an end to .Anglo- 
Russian rivalry in Asia. 
I am not now discussing the general merits and effect of 
that agreement. I wish only, to bring out the particular 
point that our policy towards Russia was concihatory in the 
extreme. When the matter came up in the House of Lords, 
Lord Lansdowne and Lord Sanderson pointed out that in 
the past we had been ready to come to an understanding 
with Russia, but that she had been unwiUing to meet us. 
And the critics of the Convention had no difficulty in showing 
that, now she had met us, we had in the interests of concilia- 
tion made a very bad bargain with her. 
Wc undoubtedly had a bargain so bad that it was regarded 
throughout Asia as a discreditable surrender to superior force. 
For example, in Afghanistan the Russians were to have any 
trade facilities the Afghans might give us, but there was no 
clause securing to us any facilities they might give the 
Russians. Also, though we promised the Russians equal 
commercial opportunities in that country, where our influence 
predominated, they did not promise us equal opportunities 
in regions where they were predominant. As Lord Lansdowne 
