Then, on the 29th, Sir Edward decided upon his well-known warning. I
told him I had always reported (to Berlin) that we should have to reckon
with English opposition if it came to a war with France. Time and again
the Minister said to me, "If war breaks out it will be the greatest
catastrophe the world has ever seen." And now events moved rapidly.
Count Berchtold at last decided to come around, having up to that point
played the role of "Strong man" under guidance of Berlin. Thereupon we
(in answer to Russia's mobilization) sent our ultimatum and declaration
of war--after Russia had spent a whole week in fruitless negotiation and
waiting.
Thus ended my mission in London. It had suffered shipwreck, not on the
wiles of the Briton but on the wiles of our own policy. Were not those
right who saw that the German people was pervaded with the spirit of
Treitschke and Bernhardi, which glorifies war as an end instead of
holding it in abhorrence as an evil thing? Properly speaking militarism
is a school for the people and an instrument to further political ends.
But in the patriarchal absolutism of a military monarchy, militarism
exploits politics to further its own ends, and can create a situation
which a democracy freed from junkerdom would not tolerate.
That is what our enemies think; that is what they are bound to think
when they see that in spite of capitalistic industrialism, and in spite
of socialistic organizations, the living, as Nietzsche said, are still
ruled by the dead.
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