Sazonoff, in resisting it so far as to shew Sir Edward Grey frankly the
only chance of preventing it, proved himself the most genuine
humanitarian in the diplomatic world.


*Number 123.*

The decisive communication between Sir Edward Grey and Prince Lichnowsky
is recorded in the famous No. 123. With the rather childish subsequent
attempt to minimize No. 123 on the ground that the Prince was merely an
amiable nincompoop who did not really represent his fiendish sovereign,
neither I nor any other serious person need be concerned. What is beyond
all controversy is that after that conversation Prince Lichnowsky could
do nothing but tell the Kaiser that the _Entente_, having at last got
his imperial head in chancery, was not going to let him off on any
terms, and that it was now a fight to a finish between the British and
German empires. Then the Kaiser said: "We are Germans. God help us!"
When a crowd of foolish students came cheering for the war under his
windows, he bade them go to the churches and pray. His telegrams to the
Tsar (the omission of which from the penny bluebook is, to say the
least, not chivalrous) were dignified and pathetic. And when the
Germans, taking a line from the poet they call "unser Shakespeare,"
said: "Come the four quarters of the world in arms and we shall shock
them," it was, from the romantic militarist point of view, fine. What
Junker-led men could do they have since done to make that thrasonical
brag good. But there is no getting over the fact that, in Tommy Atkins's
phrase, they had asked for it. Their Junkers, like ours, had drunk to
The Day; and they should not have let us choose it after riling us for
so many years. And that is why Sir Edward had a great surprise when he
at last owned up in Parliament.