The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Darwin’s indirect effects reached apotheosis in Captain Mahan. “Honest collision” between nations was “evidently a law of progress,” he wrote in one of a series of articles in 1897–99 in which he tried to instruct Americans in their destiny. This one was called “The Moral Aspect of War.” In another, “A Twentieth Century Outlook,” he wrote that nothing was “more ominous for the future of our race” than the current vociferous tendency “which refuses to recognize in the profession of arms—in war” the source of “heroic ideal.” In a private letter he wrote, “No greater misfortune could well happen than that civilized nations should abandon their preparations for war and take to arbitration.” His thesis was that power, force, and ultimately war were the factors that decide great issues in a nation’s fate and that to depend on anything else, such as arbitration, was an illusion. If arbitration were substituted for armies and navies, European civilization “might not survive, having lost its fighting energy.” Yet Mahan believed the Twentieth Century would reveal that man’s conscience was improving. He could not have preached power so positively if he had not believed equally in progress. His moral rectitude shines in a photograph taken with his wife and two adult daughters. Four pairs of forthright eyes gaze straight at the camera. Four keel-straight noses, four firm mouths, the ladies’ high-necked blouses fastened with bar pin at the throat, the hats perched stiffly on high-piled hair, all express the person “assured of certain certainties,” a species soon to be as extinct as Ribblesdale.

  The necessity of struggle was voiced by many spokesmen in many guises: in Henri Bergson’s élan vital, in Shaw’s Life Force, in the strange magic jumble of Nietzsche which was then spreading its fascination over Europe. Nietzsche recognized the waning of religion as a primary force in people’s lives and flung his challenge in three words: “God is dead.” He would have substituted Superman, but ordinary people substituted patriotism. As faith in God retreated before the advance of science, love of country began to fill the empty spaces in the heart. Nationalism absorbed the strength once belonging to religion. Where people formerly fought for religion now they would presumably do no less for its successor. A sense of gathering conflict filled the air. Yeats, living in Paris in 1895, awoke one morning from a vision of apocalypse:

  … Unknown spears

  Suddenly hurtle before my dream awakened eyes,

  And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries

  Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.

  Quite unconnected, in the same year, the tap of distant drums sounded in the seclusion of A. E. Housman’s rooms:

  On the idle hill of summer

  Sleepy with the flow of streams,

  Far I hear the steady drummer

  Drumming like a noise in dreams.

  Far and near and low and louder

  On the roads of earth go by,

  Dear to friends and food for powder,

  Soldiers marching, all to die.…

  Far the calling bugles hollo,

  High the screaming fife replies,

  Gay the files of scarlet follow:

  Woman bore me, I will rise.

  The Hague, as the capital of a small neutral country, was selected as site of the Conference and May 18, 1899, was fixed as the opening day. Advance arrangements stirred up a number of old animosities and current quarrels. China and Japan, Turkey and Greece, Spain and the United States had just finished wars; Britain and the Transvaal were warming up to one which threatened to break out at any moment. As host nation and ardent supporters of the Boers, the Dutch almost strangled the Conference before it could be born by demanding invitations for the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Turkey objected to the inclusion of Bulgaria, and Italy threatened to bolt if inclusion of the Vatican implied its recognition as a temporal power. Seeing “very sinister import” in this, Germany immediately suspected Italy of planning to secede from the Triple Alliance and herself threatened to withdraw from the Conference if any other major power did. These matters being surmounted, the nations proceeded to the naming of delegates.

  The choices reflected the ambivalance of the agenda, concerned on the one hand with peace by arbitration and on the other with the conduct of war. Although arbitration had not been mentioned in the Czar’s manifesto it had been included in Muraviev’s agenda and since then, in the public mind, had become the major goal. The Boston Peace Crusade held meetings every week through March and April demanding that the United States commit itself to the goal of “a permanent tribunal for the Twentieth Century.” With Congress in crisis over the vote on the Peace Treaty with Spain, McKinley was urged to appoint President Eliot of Harvard in the hope of soothing anti-imperialist sentiment. As Eliot was unlikely to prove a manageable delegate, McKinley preferred a safer selection in Andrew White, former president of Cornell, now Ambassador in Berlin. Rising from Professor of History to civic eminence, White was a hardworking, high-minded man who believed in all the right things. At The Hague he was soon on friendly terms with the Duke of Tetuan, delegate of the late enemy, Spain, who shared with him “a passion for cathedral architecture and organ music.” Alongside White was appointed a delegate certain to act as watchdog of American interests and take a hard-headed view of the proceedings with which by no stretch of anyone’s imagination could he be considered in sympathy—Captain Mahan. His name appearing on the list deepened Germany’s suspicions of the Conference. “Our greatest and most dangerous foe,” noted the Kaiser darkly.

  American instructions to the delegates began by rejecting the original purpose of the Conference. Arms limitation “could not profitably be discussed” because American arms were below the level of the European powers anyway and the initiative in this matter could be left to them. As to restrictions on the development of new weapons, it was considered “doubtful if an international agreement to this end could prove effective.” The delegates were to support efforts to make the laws of war more humane and they were themselves to propose a specific plan for an arbitration tribunal. They were also instructed to propose the immunity of private property from capture at sea, a seemingly bland suggestion which contained depths of unplumbed trouble.

  France named as her chief delegate a former premier and friend of arbitration, Léon Bourgeois, whose term of office in 1895–96 had been taken up in a stubborn effort to enact the graduated income tax against the violent opposition of the Senate. It had only narrowly been defeated. With the Dreyfus Affair threatening a government crisis at any time which might bring Bourgeois back to office, The Hague offered a happy opportunity to remove him from the scene. “Amiable, elegant and eloquent,” according to a political colleague if not friend, Bourgeois “cultivated a fine ebony beard and expressed commonplace thoughts in a mellow voice.”

  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 th
e 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 world’s first arbitration treaty, the outstanding champion of the idea in official life. A calm, heavy-set, unfussed dignitary who reminded people of a polar bear, he accomplished wonders of diplomacy by acting on the principle: “Never give way and never give offence.” “I never hesitated to open my whole heart to him,” said Secretary Hay, “for he was the soul of honor and of candor.” Accompanying him was the recently retired Speaker of the House, Sir Arthur Peel, whose impressive presence in the Chair had quelled the most troublesome members. “When Peel lost his temper it was like a storm at sea,” said one of them. “He could put up with a bore but he hated a cad, whether well or ill dressed.”

  As military and naval delegates Lord Salisbury’s government selected two exceptional men from the upper ranks of their respective services. Major General Sir John Ardagh, after winning honors in Hebrew and mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, had changed from a clerical to a military career. Subsequently he had been an observer in the Franco-Prussian and Russo-Turkish wars, seen active service in Egypt and the Sudan and was now Director of Military Intelligence.

  His naval colleague was the most unsubdued individualist of his time, possessed of a vigor and impetus remarkable in any time. Admiral Sir John Fisher was a force of nature entirely directed to the renaissance of British sea power through modernization of the Navy. His only other mania was dancing, which he pursued from hornpipe to waltz at every opportunity, with other officers if necessary when there were no ladies present. Whatever he fought for was a struggle against the weight and lethargy of “the way it has always been” and his career was that of a fierce broom sweeping aside obsolescence in men as well as ships. He demanded oil instead of coal twenty years ahead of his time, substituted training in gunnery for cutlasses, training in engines and engineering for rigging and the handling of sails, introduced destroyers, pioneered in ordnance, armor and battleship design. During the bombardment of Alexandria when an armored train was needed to transport a landing force, he invented one. He had been Commandant of the Torpedo School, Director of Naval Ordnance, Superintendent of Dockyards, Third Sea Lord, Controller of the Navy and was currently Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Station.

  Born in Malaya, Fisher had a strange flat smooth-shaven face which inspired his enemies, who were innumerable, to hint broadly at Oriental ancestry. On his flagship when he “prowled around with the steady rhythmical tread of a panther, the quarter deck shook and all hands shook with it. When the word was passed, ‘Look out, here comes Jack!’ everyone stood terribly to attention while the great one passed on and away.” Upon the orthodox his flow of ideas had an effect either paralyzing or maddening. When he talked of some new scheme or program he held his companion fixed with a glittering eye and emphasized every sentence with a blow of his fist on his palm. When he wrote letters his emphasis took the form of two, three or four lines under a word and he closed, not “in haste,” but “in violent haste!” or with the warning: “Burn this!” He liked to quote Napoleon’s maxim, J’ordonne ou je me tais (“I command or I keep quiet”), but he was incapable of practicing the second half.

  At the moment, in case of war with France over Fashoda, he had conceived a plan to execute a naval raid on Devil’s Island and kidnap Dreyfus in order to land him on the coast of France to embarrass the Army and sow dissension. For the motto of one of his destroyers he chose Ut Veniant Omnes (Let them all come). His pretended principles of battle were “Give No Quarter, Take No Prisoners, Sink Everything, No Time for Mercy, Frappez vite et frappez fort, l’Audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace,” but this was intended more for moral effect than as serious tactics. When Lord Salisbury appointed him naval delegate to The Hague he remarked that there was no doubt Jacky Fisher would fight at the Peace Conference. “So I did,” wrote Fisher afterwards, “though it was not for peace.”

  The Hague proved an inspired choice. The charm of the Huis ten Bosch (House in the Woods), summer palace of the House of Orange, where the Conference met, the pleasant half-hour’s drive from the seashore at Scheveningen, where many of the delegates stayed, the hospitality of the Netherlands Government and smiling welcome of its people, the summer weather and flowered countryside, could not fail to refresh the most cynical spirits. Black-and-white cows grazed peaceably along the roadside, canals reflected the radiant sky, the docile wings of windmills turned and sailboats moved seemingly over meadows, on waterways hidden by the tall grass. The once quiet town, a “gracious anachronism” of brick houses and cobblestone streets, bustled with welcome. Flags of all the nations decorated the staid hotels, windows were polished, doorsteps scrubbed, public buildings burnished and refurbished. Brought to animated life by its visitors, The Hague seemed to wake like a Sleeping Beauty from its Seventeenth Century slumbers.

  The Huis ten Bosch was a royal château of red brick with white window frames set in a park on the outskirts of the town. Its windows opened on lawns and rose gardens, fountains and marble nymphs. In the woods which gave the place its name delegates could walk and talk between sessions along avenues of magnificent beeches where birds sang and the sun glinted through the leaves.

  Plenary sessions were held in the central hall three stories high, hung with golden damask and frescoed with the triumphs of past Prince Stadtholders on throne and horseback. From the ceiling painted cupids, naked Venuses, and Death as a leering skeleton looked down upon the newly installed rows of green-baize desks seating 108 delegates from 26 countries. Black coats predominated, varied by military uniforms, by the Turks’ red fezzes and the blue silk gown of the Chinese delegate. The real work of the Conference took place in the subcommittees which met in the many small salons rich in Delft and Meissen, Chinese wallpaper and pale Persian carpets. Every day the Dutch hosts served a bountiful luncheon with fine wine and cigars under the crystal chandeliers of the White Dining Room, where the delegates could meet and talk informally. The taste and d
ignity of all the arrangements, the choice liqueurs, the beauty of the surroundings, the evening balls and receptions gradually began to mellow the mood of disdain in which the Conference began.

  No such body had ever assembled “in a spirit of more hopeless skepticism as to any good result,” Andrew White believed when he arrived. The great Professor Mommsen of Germany, most admired historian of his time, predicted the Conference would be remembered as “a printer’s error in the history of the world.” Even some of Baroness von Suttner’s friends were less than hopeful. Prince Scipio Borghese, whom she invited to be present as an observer, replied that nothing would be more charming than to spend time with “un groupe du high-life pacifique,” but unfortunately in May he would have to attend his sister’s wedding in the depths of Hungary. During De Staal’s opening address, spoken in a voice alternately quavering and firm, the president dropped his wooden gavel, which was immediately, almost eagerly, seized upon as an ill omen. De Staal’s “deplorable” Russian ignorance of parliamentary procedure and his happy-go-lucky way of adopting rules and motions seemed to White to presage “hopeless chaos.”