Tidal Effects (Gray Tide In The East Book 2) Page 4

  “Remind me again why I gave Jagow the Colonial Office,” he said. “I know why I sacked him when he was in the Foreign Office: he was a miserable excuse for a Foreign Secretary. So why did I bring him back into the government again?”

  “I seem to recall that the appointment was made as a sop to certain obstreperous colonial interests who were demanding a more aggressive policy in the overseas Empire,” the Chancellor said. “After some debate, it was agreed…” (by which he meant that the Kaiser had decided to make the appointment against the Chancellor’s advice) “…that it would be easier to give them a Colonial Secretary of their choice than to actually make any concessions on policy.”

  “Idiots!” Wilhelm grated. He slammed his open hand on the table. “These little islands in the middle of the ocean and trackless tropical jungles are useless, worse than useless, as they constantly threaten to drag us into wars with other Powers. Are these people too blind or too stupid to understand that the truly valuable land is all here in Europe, in our new acquisitions in Poland, the Ukraine, Belorussia and on the Baltic. That is where Germany’s future lies, and that is where we should be investing our time and money, integrating our conquests in Mitteleuropa to forge a new Greater Germany, not in East Africa, Samoa and Martinique!”

  Both the Chancellor and the Minister of War were so familiar with the Kaiser’s oft-expressed views on this topic that they did not bother to respond. In any case, they were both in complete agreement with him concerning both the importance of new Central European acquisitions and the pointlessness of the overseas colonial empire.

  “In my estimation, Jagow is merely a tool in this conspiracy,” Prince Rupprecht said. “He would never have come up with such a complicated and risky scheme on his own. Tirpitz is the one I fear. The man is dangerous. He is afraid of nothing and will dare anything. Worse still, he is a hyper-patriot who truly believes that everything he does is, by definition, in the best interests of Germany.”

  “And that who anyone who opposes him is against Germany’s interests, I agree,” the Chancellor added. “What did the American, Pierce or Bierce, say? ‘Patriotism is not the last refuge of the scoundrel, it is the first.’ I might also point out that he is a very popular figure with the press, has a network of powerful friends in the naval lobby and a number of politically connected supporters both in and out of the Reichstag. Allowing him to retain the Naval Ministry after this Martinique business would obviously be dangerous, Your Majesty. On the other hand, dismissing him could touch off a firestorm of protest in the press and the Reichstag.”

  “As soon as this crisis that Tirpitz has manufactured is behind us,” Wilhelm said slowly, “The Admiral will begin his long-delayed retirement.” He paused. “I am still leaving the firing-squad option open.”

  The two Ministers began to smile. Then, seeing the Kaiser’s expression, they became serious again. Nothing about the Emperor’s tone or demeanor suggested that his final words had been a jest.

  Kaiser Wilhelm II

  Chapter Five

  Washington, D.C., May 1, 1923

  “So much for keeping the story out of the papers,” President Lowden said ruefully. On his desk lay copies of the Washington Herald, the Washington Daily News, the New York American and the previous day’s edition of the Chicago Tribune. “Have you found the source of the leak yet?”

  “We just began the investigation, sir,” answered Secretary of State Wood, who sat on the other side of the President’s massive walnut desk. “We’re not even positive that the story came from the State Department: it might have come from Navy, or even, dare I suggest it, from right here.”

  The President frowned. “I’d like to think I could rely on every employee in the White House who had access to the Navy Department report, General Wood.” He turned to the third man in the Oval Office, his private secretary and political manager, who was seated to his left. “If I didn’t trust you absolutely, Joseph, I might suspected that you gave the story to your little brother in Chicago.” He picked up the Chicago Tribune to display the headline “War Clouds!”, and smiled to indicate that he was joking.

  The secretary, Joseph Medill McCormick, did not smile in return. “In that case,” he said seriously, “I would have expected the Tribune to have broken the story first, rather than the Hearst papers.”

  He reached over to select the New York American from the pile, eyeing the copy of the Hearst newspaper syndicate newspaper dispassionately, like an entomologist examining a not particularly interesting insect specimen. The headline was thick, black and filled the entire news space in upper half of the front page: “Huns Threaten U.S.!” Below the fold, in smaller type, the subheading was: “Fleet Mobilized, Marines To Invade Martinique”.

  “Odd,” President Lowden remarked. “I don’t remember authorizing any such orders to the Navy Department? Did I send orders to the fleet, and simply forget, Joseph?”“

  “No, sir,” McCormick replied. “That particular story may not be strictly based on reality. As we know, Mr. Hearst has never allowed the facts to limit his pursuit of a good story.”

  “His pursuit of greater circulation, you mean,” Wood amplified. “Do you remember the reply he sent to Frederick Remington’s telegram reporting that there was no war in Cuba? ‘You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.’ He hasn’t changed his methods since the Spanish-American War.”

  “On the positive side,” the Secretary of State continued, “Scripps hasn’t started beating the war drums, yet.” The front page of the tabloid Washington Daily News, the outlet for the E.W. Scripps chain in the capital was comparatively undramatic: “Crisis In Caribbean”, with a sub-heading “Secret German Naval Base In Martinique.”

  “Unfortunately, nobody much reads the Daily News, or the other Scripps papers, for that matter,” McCormick observed gloomily. This was true. Of four newspapers in Washington, the Daily News had the lowest circulation, and this pattern was repeated over most of the big cities. The majority of the Scripps readers lived in rural areas and smaller cities in the Midwest, the South and the Southwest, and newspapers like the Birmingham Post-Herald did not have political influence to match the mighty Chicago Tribune or the big Hearst papers. “The question is, with the story in the newspapers is it too late to cheat Hearst’s readers out of exciting articles about big ships, big guns and big battles in the Atlantic for their entertainment over breakfast?” He looked expectantly at the Secretary of State, as did the President.

  Wood pursed his lips. “As it happens, the leak to the press was irrelevant, since the German Naval Ministry released the story two days ago. I strongly suspect that release was a reaction to the Navy Department report on Martinique, which means that the Germans had a source inside our government.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” the President protested. “Why would the German government want to torpedo the chance for some kind of face-saving way out? Does the Kaiser want a war?”

  “No, probably not, but perhaps someone else does,” Wood answered. “Our embassy in Berlin keeps hearing unconfirmed rumors that this new base was not approved by Wilhelm and that a group in their Cabinet, possibly including the Naval Minister, Admiral Tirpitz, put this project together on their own initiative.”

  “That’s incredible, if it’s true,” Lowden said. “But if it is true, why doesn’t Wilhelm fire Tirpitz and his fellow plotters, and disavow this whole Martinique business?”

  McCormick shook his head. “He can’t without appearing to be incompetent. He would have to admit that his government was out of control. He’d look like a complete fool.”

  “Clearly the prospects for reaching a settlement with Germany have not been improved by the press coverage,” Wood said. “And not just in this country. A large segment of the German press is behaving just as irresponsibly as our native warmongers, demanding that the Kaiser put down the pipsqueak democracy across the Atlantic. I think that we must prepare for the possibility of war, Mr. President, but I believe it is too soon
to abandon hope of a peaceful resolution. I would prefer to keep direction of the nation’s foreign policy in the hands of the United States government, instead of surrendering it to the likes of William Randolph Hearst.”

  “As far as your first suggestion goes, I have already ordered the Navy bring our fleet up to full operational status, and to concentrate the major units at San Juan, Puerto Rice, fueled, armed and prepared for combat,” the President said. “Perhaps a show of force will help to persuade Wilhelm that we mean business. I agree with you about the second part as well, General. This is not the time to abandon our efforts to avoid an international conflagration: it is the time redouble our efforts to find a way to steer clear of the shoals of war. As you may have guessed, my office has been besieged with requests from members of Congress for a briefing on the Martinique situation. I have therefore requested that the two houses of Congress assemble in a joint session on Friday, May 4 at one o’clock when I will make a speech explaining the history of the crisis and the steps that are being taken by this government to meet it. I hope that by then I will have some favorable developments to report to them.”

  As Wood rose to depart, he silently reviewed the language of the German answer to his initial Note. “Under no circumstances will the Imperial Government engage in negotiations on the basis set forth [the sale of the colony to the United States]…” It was not the kind of response that seemed to offer much room for compromise. Rather than dampening the President’s optimism by offering this gloomy appraisal to him, Wood simply said, “I sincerely share that hope, Mr. President,” he said.

  After Wood departed, President Lowden turned to his private secretary. “What do you think, Joseph? Do you think he can find a way out of this business without involving us in a war?”

  When the two men were alone, McCormick dispensed with formalities. “I don’t know about that, boss,” he said, “but I can’t believe that a war with Germany is going to make you more popular with the voters in the long run, in spite of all the patriotic fever Hearst, my brother and the rest the newspaper ghouls can stir up. How many Americans do you think are willing to risk their lives or the lives of their sons over a naval base in Martinique? How many do you think even know where Martinique is?”

  “I would be willing to bet you twenty bucks that if you polled the average man on the street, eight out of ten of them would never have even heard of the place,” the President said.

  “No bet,” McCormick said.

  Lowden eyed him thoughtfully. “So what are you suggesting, Joseph? That it wouldn’t be the end of the world if we let Wilhelm have his naval base in the Caribbean? What kind of political hay do you figure the Democrats could make out of that? They could claim that the German base fatally compromises the country’s security. Would that hurt us very badly at the polls?”

  “Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn’t,” McCormick said judiciously. “Wilson went around telling everybody about his Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end to the war in 1915, and it seemed to go down well enough to get him a second term,” he said, reminding the President of his predecessor’s successful campaign in 1916.

  “Look, boss,” McCormick said, leaning closer and lowering his voice conspiratorially. “I’m not saying Martinique isn’t important enough to risk a war over it, and I’m not saying it is. What I am saying is that you should at least consider all the alternatives and the political implications before you go down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to ask for a declaration of war.”

  The President sat alone for a long time after McCormick left him, watching the afternoon turn to night and the streetlights on B Street flicker to life through the windows of the Oval Office. He trusted McCormick’s political instincts, which was why he had chosen the man to run his campaign in 1920 and had made him his political alter ego after the election.

  Certainly, his advice made sound political sense. There was a general election coming in eighteen months, and Lowden had every intention of winning a second term. If avoiding an unpopular war by conceding Martinique to the Kaiser would help him to retain the Presidency in 1924, should he not at least consider it? Any long-term evils the decision might lead to could be left for his successors to deal with.

  On the other hand, he knew it would be irresponsible to kick the issue down the road, with the risk that the comparatively minor threat the German base would constitute right now might in a few years mushroom into a real danger to the country. No one was in a better position to appreciate this truth than he. Wilson had passed the Martinique mess along to him, and he resented it. He could not in good conscience do the same thing to whoever followed him in office.

  More than his political future was at stake here. The long-term safety of the country might be imperiled if he chose to follow the easier course. If he allowed a potentially hostile foreign power to establish a permanent base in what had long been recognized as the United States’ sphere of influence, what was to prevent Germany or others (Japan, for example) from doing the same thing again in the future? His choice, whatever it turned out to be, had major implications for the future of the country.

  In the end, he made a characteristic decision. He would wait and see.

  Office of The President of The United States, c 1920

  Leonard Wood 1903, an oil painting by John Singer Sargent

  Chapter Six

  London, May 2, 1923

  Sir Edward Grey was a careful writer. He invariably prepared a fairly detailed rough draft to begin, and then refined the draft, often several times. His “drafts” could easily be mistaken for some other, less precise Foreign Secretary’s final product.

  For the present assignment, however, Grey thought that one draft, or two at the most, would suffice. He had been asked to ready an appreciation of the current crisis in the Caribbean for Prime Minister Churchill, as preparation for the discussion by the full Cabinet the next morning and for Question Time in the House of Commons in the afternoon.

  The first section of the appreciation, a review of how the former French colony was acquired by Germany at the Bryn Mawr Peace Conference of 1915 that ended the Great European War, and the subsequent discovery that Germany was discovered to be building a major air and naval base in what had long been considered the exclusive preserve of the United States, was straightforward enough. In any case, the Prime Minister hardly needed Grey to remind him about it. At the time of the peace conference, when he was the First Lord of the Admiralty and before he had reached his position as the head of the government, Winston Churchill had gone about warning anyone who would stay in one place long enough to listen that the transfer of the island to Germany would lead to nothing but trouble.

  The second section was Grey’s summary of the possible outcomes of the crisis, including his guesses on the likelihood of each one occurring. Since there were not so very many possibilities (the Americans accepting the base, Germany withdrawing it, war), this section was comparatively easy to complete.

  Characteristically, Grey declined to offer his estimation of the probabilities of the various resolutions of the crisis; long experience had taught him to be wary of making predictions on the record, and did so as infrequently as possible. He suspected that the longevity of his career as Foreign Secretary, now in its 18th year, was in part at least due to his discretion in making political predictions, or rather, in not making them.

  It was the final section of the briefing that gave Grey reason to hesitate. This portion was intended for the Prime Minister’s eyes only, and was not for consumption by rest of the Cabinet, let alone the House or the public. Mr. Churchill had asked for his Foreign Secretary’s views on whether it would be in the interest of Great Britain to become involved in the crisis, and if so, what form that involvement should take.

  This was a task that Grey would have gladly declined to undertake if he could have done so. The Prime Minister was a man who did not shy away from the prospect of war. Indeed, he sometimes seemed to relish it. He was reluctant
to encourage his leader’s belligerent instincts by offering advice that might encourage him to lead His Majesty’s Government into a war that might be avoided. Grey hated war, considering it the greatest of all social ills.

  On the other hand, as the Foreign Secretary, Grey’s job was to guide the foreign policy of the British Empire down a path that served both its long- and short-term interests, and if that sometimes included the risk of war, then he was prepared to take that risk. In the years leading up to the Great War of 1914-1915, he had been one of the leaders of a small group in the Asquith Government who had worked to build stronger ties to France. In those years he had attempted, without success, to persuade His Majesty’s Government to join a military alliance with Russia and France, in order to forestall German domination of the continent. Now, eight years later, looking at a Europe under the shadow of a victorious, arrogant German Empire, swollen with thousands of square miles of new territory and millions of new subjects, he saw his worst fears confirmed.

  Should the British Empire take a hand in the crisis now shaping on the far side of the Atlantic? Realistically, if the Americans stood up to them, the Germans were in no position to do very much about it. It would be a naval war, with the High Seas Fleet thousands of miles from its bases, in an impossible logistical situation.

  But suppose the American government, under a Progressive Republican President who had to date shown neither interest in nor knowledge of anything beyond the borders of his country, decided to back down and allow Germany to establish a naval and military presence only 1500 miles from Key West, and even closer than that to the vital Panama Canal? In Grey’s view, such an outcome would pose almost as many dangers to British interests as to American ones.