Current History, Vol. VIII, No. 3, June 1918: A Monthly Magazine of the New York TimesVarious
History
Current History, Vol. VIII, No. 3, June 1918: A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times
Various
World War, 1914-1918
The chief theme of Lichnowsky's memorandum, the editor of Die Zukunft
asserts, was the danger to Germany of a too-close alliance with Vienna
and Budapest, of the flirtation with Poland, and his insistence upon the
necessity of friendly relations with a strong Russia. The German outcry
against Lichnowsky, however, gave foreign countries the impression that
the Prince had made fearfully damaging disclosures of Berlin's guilt.
The question of blame, he says, "reflected almost an identical
interpretation to that of our White Book, and a cool head would not have
made a world sensation out of it." Harden concludes by saying that an
ostracized Lichnowsky would become a power; but the Prussian Diet has no
sense of humor.
In the May CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE an abridged version of the first
reply of former Foreign Secretary von Jagow to Prince Lichnowsky was
printed, but the document is of such importance that a translation in
its entirety is herewith given.[4]
[Footnote 4: The full text of Prince Lichnowsky's memorandum, with the
replies of Herr von Jagow, the Mühlon letter, comments of the German
press, and other matter, has been published in a separate forty-page
pamphlet by The Current History Magazine.]
Von Jagow's Two Replies to Lichnowsky
Practically coincident with the giving out for publication on March 19,
through the semi-official Wolff Telegraph Bureau, of an account of a
discussion in the Main Committee of the Reichstag of the memorandum of
the former Ambassador at London, together with substantial excerpts from
the main chapters of his work, the German Government got in touch with
Herr von Jagow, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when the war
began, and asked him to write an article calculated to counteract the
effect of the Lichnowsky revelations. Herr von Jagow hastened to accede
to this request, but he merely made matters worse for the German
Government by practically admitting the correctness of Prince
Lichnowsky's assertion that England did not want war and that Berlin was
aware of this.
Copies of German newspapers received here show that, while the journals
of all factions were practically of one mind in reproaching the German
Foreign Office for its lack of diplomatic ability, the Pan-German and
militarist organs laid special stress upon the implication in the von
Jagow article that Germany might have been willing to drop its alliance
with Austria if it could have been sure of contracting one with England,
and the Liberal and Socialist papers declared that it was no use
insisting any longer that Great Britain was guilty of the wholesale
bloodshed of the world war, and that now nothing really stood in the way
of moving for a peace by agreement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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