Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [162]
Already aroused by the Affair to a mood of super-patriotism, insulted by Russia’s failure to consult her in advance, determined to accept no fixing of the status quo, France welcomed the Conference no more than any other nation. “To renounce war is in a sense to renounce one’s country,” was the comment of a French officer on the Czar’s manifesto. Mme Adam, Gambetta’s friend and priestess of revanche, when invited to hear a lecture by Bertha von Suttner, replied, “I? To a lecture on peace? Certainly not. I am for war.” France nevertheless sent to The Hague, as second to Bourgeois, a dedicated apostle of peace, Baron d’Estournelles de Constant. A professional diplomat until the age of forty-three, he had become increasingly disturbed at the trend of international affairs until one day in 1895, shocked by a frivolous threat of war in a minor dispute, he resigned from diplomacy to enter politics and the Chamber in the cause of peace. A handsome man of polished manners he brought to the Conference as an official delegate the fervor and voice of the peace movement.
As initiators, the Russians provided the president of the Conference in the person of their Ambassador to London, Baron de Staal, a nice old gentleman with long white side whiskers and a square-crowned derby. He was described by the Prince of Wales as “one of the best men that ever lived,… who never said anything that was not true,” which was useful if not adequate equipment for his task. The real head of the Russian delegation was Feodor de Martens, Professor Emeritus of International Law at the University of St. Petersburg, who allowed no one to forget that he enjoyed a reputation as Europe’s leading jurist in his field. He was “a man of great knowledge,” said Witte, “but by no means broad-minded.” A future Chief of Staff, Colonel Jilinsky was the military delegate.
Count Münster, German Ambassador to Paris, in the wastebasket of whose Embassy the Dreyfus Affair began, looked forward with little pleasure to being his country’s chief delegate. “Beating empty air is always a tiresome job,” he wrote to a friend. Arms limitation was ausgeschlossen (“out of the question”), the favorite German word. Arbitration was important but agreement probably hopeless. To save Russia’s face the Conference could not be allowed to end in fiasco and its work must be covered with a “cloak of peace.” A courtly white-haired gentleman whom Andrew White regarded as a “splendid specimen” of an old-fashioned German nobleman, Münster had once been stationed in England, had married an English wife and was pleased by nothing so much as being taken for an English gentleman. Besides the military and naval delegates, he had two legal associates, Professor Zorn of the University of Königsberg and Professor Baron von Stengel of the University of Munich, whose chief qualification was a pamphlet he had just published entitled Eternal Peace which ridiculed the forthcoming Conference and extolled the virtues of war. Although Stengel said nothing abnormally different from what many in other countries believed, he said it after the German fashion rudely and loudly and the Kaiser’s prompt gesture in naming him a delegate needed no thumb to his nose to make the point. Stead, then in Berlin, protested, Bülow oozed explanations and the German comic papers caricatured Stengel as a bull introduced into a bed of tulips.
A kind of magic in the Conference had brought it to reality despite general contempt, and drew from Britain the compliment of a strong delegation. Its chief, Sir Julian Pauncefote, Ambassador to Washington, was, as the negotiator of the