8 
Land & Water 
^July I 8, 191 8 
Von Kuhlmann: By J. Coudurier de Chassaigne 
H1:RR von kuhlmann has left the political 
stage of Germany as suddenly as he entered it, 
;i little less than" a vear a^o. His accession to 
power was meteoric, and his fail reminds one 
i.f the extinction of Nova Aquihe, which was 
hailed bv the Germans as the star of their victory, and has 
proved to be the symbol pf their real military and economic 
situation. It vanished into unfathomable space at the very 
time when Kiihlmann's fjlorv was fading away. But are 
we quite as certain of Kiihlmann's definitive fall as the 
astronomers are sure of never seeing again the full effulgence 
of this capricious star ' I do not think so. We have, 1 
believe, every reason to fear the return to office of the ex- 
Foreign Secretary at no very distant date, but this time 
he will not be the mere mouth-piece of the Kaiser, the puppet 
called to life by tlie all-powerful will of his august master. 
If Herr von Kiihlmann comes back to power it will be as the 
representative of public opinion insurgent against the 
defeated but violent minority of the Junkers. He will 
then voice the real feelings of the masses and of the industrial 
and commercial classes who were blindly for war as long as 
there was anv tangible hope of plunder and of victor^-. 
Whatever trust he may have placed at the beginning of 
hostilities in the strength of German arms, Herr von Kiihl- 
mann was never a partisan of the Great War. He realised, 
long before his country c;h,allenged the world, that it had 
little to gain and ever\^thing to lose by such a policy. The 
former councillor of the German Embassy in London belonged 
to the school of pacific conquerors. He belieVed that German 
interests could best be served by the slow but sure peaceful 
penetration of all the civilised and some of the uncivilised 
parts of the globe. When that complex network of com- 
mercial and industrial activities had been woven by emis- 
saries of the Fatherland, humanity would wake up one 
morning to find itself bound hand and foot. If at that 
moment the victim tried to cast ofi German shackles Herr 
von Kiihlmann and his friends would then have been pre- 
pared to use the perfectly organised military machine at 
their disposal. He would not, however, have used it in the 
military manner, but rather as a kind of irresistible black- 
mail to be applied to the unprepared nations who dared to 
dispute German pretensions anywhere. Blackmail was in 
fact a weapon upon which Herr von Kuhlmann relied. He 
remarked one day to a friend of mine liere that, through 
his knowledge of the secrets of their private lives, he held 
most of the prominent politicians in France in the hollow 
of his hand. Those who could not be bribed could, he felt 
sure, be blackmailed. It is probable that four years of war 
Iiave somewhat modified Herr von Kiihlmann's opinion of 
I'Vance and her leaders, but I doubt whether he Jias changed 
his opinion on the folly of military aggression. I liave 
already quoted in L.\xd iS: W.\ter the words he used when 
taking leave of a high official in the Foreign Office, on the 
day after England declared war upon Germany. "I am 
speaking to you to-day," he said, "as one man to another. 
Frankly, I think this war is a criminal blunder on the part 
of Germany, whatever may be its result. With ten more 
years Of peace we should have been the masters of the world 
without having shed one drop of blood." 
To-day, in the light of what has happened during the 
la.st two months, I feel more than ever certain that Herr 
von Kiihlmann remains true to the great ideal of his political 
life, though it is, of course, difficult to appreciate the effect 
on his mind of these four fateful years and of his ten months 
of office. A man changes greatly when he has power and the 
responsibilities it brings. Had he remained Foreign Minister 
of Germany I should have felt it nearly impossible to gauge 
the psychology of a man I had not seen and talked to since 
1914. But his acts, his declarations, speak for themselves, 
especially when you know fairly well his habits of thought, 
and the objectives he fought for during the greater part of 
his career. The laA step he has taken — I do not mean his 
resignation, which had become inevitable, but his historic 
speech in the Reichstag — is to me a proof that the Kuhlmann 
of to-day is the same as the man I used to know in London 
before the war. , 
The first thing one must keep in mind in trying to under- 
stand his character is that, like every one of his compatriots, 
he loves his native land, and his first thought is for her pros- 
perity and aggrandisement. But where he differs from some 
of his pohtical friends and opponents is in the choice of the 
means to promote this end. The mysterious and all power- 
ful laws of heredity, no doubt, influenced his opinions. The 
son of a clever business man, allied through his mother's 
family and his wife's family to the greatest industrial and 
comrnercial magnates of Germany, he has in his blood and 
in the texture of his mind the traditions of those merchant 
princes for whom the pacific tactics of trade constitute the 
best foreign policy of a i^ountry. But these practical business 
men realise better than ordinary citizens that the commercial 
envoys of the nation can only succeed if their plans are 
backed by a powerful government, which, in its turn, relies 
on a powerful army, or better still on a nation armed to the 
teeth. 
Diplomacy's Backing 
The diplomacy of a State is only worth what its army and 
navy are worth. To a man like Herr von Kiihlmann, the 
military machinery does not, however, exist for the satis- 
faction of its own aims. It must always be subdued to the 
intellectual forces which ought to inspire and direct the policy 
of the whole State. Thus Kiihlmann could not hide his 
consternation when the military party, impatient for rapid 
and brilliant conquests, destroyed in a few hours the care- 
fully laid plans of pacific pan-Germans in every quarter of 
the globe. He was, of course, convinced that the Prussian 
military system would very soon crush France, which country 
he cordially despised, though he hid his contempt under 
cover of compliments addressed to the artistic genius, the 
wit, the talent, tiie literary qualities, the dramatic gifts, etc., 
of that decadent and frivolous race, wliich, in his estimation, 
had been and was no more. Once France had been settled 
Germany would, he calculated, have done with Russia very 
quickly, for he knew better than anybody — and even 
said so to a French diplomatic friend of mine — that Russia 
had neither guns, nor rifles, far less ammunition. He hoped 
, that England would remain neutral, and up to the last 
minute he had every reason to believe that his friends who 
advised the British Government to remain outside the fight 
so as to reap the practical benefits of their treason to Europe 
— and that at the' very time when the honour of England 
still hung in the balance — would j^rove good prophets. 
Obviously, Kuhlmann had not foreseen the coalition of 
European nations, nor the eventuality of America joining the 
defenders of Hberty. But even though he judged the situa- 
tion most favourable to an all-conquering Germany, he 
admitted that victory by force of arms could be too dearly 
bought. 
What must be now the secret feelings of this man who 
knows that the Prussian machine has failed to crush its 
enemies, who realises not only that victory, in a military 
sense, is impossible, but that the Allies are organising them- 
selves in order to wage after the war a struggle, offensive 
and defensive, in that economic domain which was so dear 
to Herr von Kiihlmann before 1914. 
I must own, that when I glanced through his great speech 
in the Reichstag, my first impression was one of admiration 
for his courage. I felt somehow that hd was speaking his 
mind in his frank and rather brutal way, ' in spite oi the 
polite reservations which did not disguise his real sentiments, 
just as he used to discourse, when discussing with friends 
or acquaintances before the war, on the great problems 
of diplomatic relations between countries. As far as I 
know he never lied to me or to any 'of his colleagues 
when he would discuss with us at length in the in- 
timacy of the 'St. James's Club or in a friend's house, 
after dinner, the topics of the day. One could bear him no 
grudge for his freedom of .speech, and one e\'en rather liked 
him for his open mind, his contempt of empty formulas, and 
his lack of all affectation. He always seemed to throw his 
cards on the table and to inform you calmly beforehand 
what the moves of his game were going to be. He was so 
sure of liimself, so confident in the sound common sense of his 
judgment, that it mattered little to him whether you agreed 
with his views or not. All these traits of his chafacter were 
present to my memory when I read his now historical declara- 
tion that peace could not be achieved bv military victories 
alone but that the only possible peace would come through 
negotiation. So, as I say, I admired his courage. Here was 
a German statesman speaking aloud what a good many 
Germans must have been silently thinking for some time 
Herr von Kiihlmann did not, of course, ignore the actual 
successes of the German army, which none can deny But 
he saw they were totally in.sufficient to realise the ideal of 
worid domination by means of brute strength which has been 
