ere the qualities most valuable to the
diplomatist, Viscount Grey and Mr. Balfour would be more than a match
for Prince von Buelow; but if an intimate knowledge of the European
chess-board and of the psychology of European politics, if infinite
wit, if nimbleness and ingenuity, are the qualities which are likely
to decide the issue, Prince von Buelow will prove indeed a formidable
opponent. It is almost inevitable that the European Powers shall enter
the future Congress with different aims and with divergent policies.
And one needs be no prophet to predict that it will be Buelow's object
to play off one Power against another; even as for twenty years he
played off one party against another in the Reichstag, so he will play
off Serbia against Italy, and Italy against France, and Russia against
England. In those unavoidable conflicting interests of the belligerent
Powers Buelow will seek his opportunity. It will be for the Allies to
foresee and to forestall the danger. Let the Allies enter the Congress
with a clearly defined and settled policy. Let them compose their
differences before they meet their opponents. Then, but only then,
will there be no scope for the uncanny virtuosity of Prince von Buelow.
Only on those terms will Viscount Grey and Jules Cambon and Sasonov
defeat the manoeuvres of the Italianized Prussian Machiavelli and
frustrate the hopes of "Bernhard the Lucky."

CHAPTER XVI

THE SILENCE OF HERR VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG

I.

Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg is to-day the most tragic figure amongst the
statesmen of Europe. For three years he has borne a crushing burden, a
burden which even Bismarck, the man of blood, was unable to bear in
the piping days of peace; a burden from which the Iron Chancellor had
to seek periodical liberation amidst the heather and the pine-forests
of his native Brandenburg. As Prime Minister of Prussia, as Chancellor
of the German Empire, as Foreign Secretary of the Teutonic Alliance,
he has to keep a firm grip of all the threads, both of internal and of
external policy. Distracted between Catholics and Protestants, between
agrarians and industrials, between Germany and Austria, he has been
made responsible for all the blunders of his subordinates. A rich man,
and the scion of an historic house, he has led the life of a
galley-slave; an honest man, he has been doomed to perpetual
prevarication; a humane man, he has had to condone every atrocity; an
independent man, he must cr