Books: Diplomat’s Documents

MEMOIRS OF COUNT BERNSTORFF—J. Bernstorff—Random House ($3).

Two weeks ago the memoirs of two U. S. women of affairs painted dark portraits of Count Johann von Bernstorff, pre-War German Ambassador to the U. S. Countess de Chambrun in Shadows Like Myself (TIME, Sept. 28), included the Ambassador among the powerful, devious, tenacious conspirators of the German Embassy who influenced local elections, created social difficulties for the French Embassy. Mary Doyle in Life Was Like That described how she had been sent by the New York World to spy on Bernstorff during his absence from Washington in the hope of uncovering a journalistic sensation. Last week Bernstorff himself offered his memoirs, gave a much simpler account of his conduct than the lady who saw evidence of his wire-pulling every where, or the lady who hoped to catch him pulling wires.

The typically detached, impersonal book of a professional diplomat, weighed down with heavily documented defenses of his policy, Memoirs of Count Bernstorff is of most interest to U. S. readers in its account of the months before relations be tween the U. S. and Germany were broken. Up to that time Bernstorff’s career was unexciting. Born of an old diplomatic family in 1862, Bernstorff had been an in different student, apparently without goading ambitions, when a feud between his family and the Bismarcks seemingly put an end to any diplomatic aspirations he might have held. Bernstorff’s older brother had been recalled from Washington be cause he “showed more interest in the Y. M. C. A. than in politics.” Johann Bernstorff spent eight years in the army before he got into the foreign service in Cairo, London, Belgrade, St. Petersburg. Giving few palpable pictures of his activity, Bernstorff expresses broad liberal views, sharply criticizes German foreign policy after Bismarck, tells a few conventional anecdotes to illustrate the aloofness of the Russian court from Russian life, details the ceaseless efforts of diplomats in & out of Wartime to influence the press of the U. S. and Europe.

Holding that the “War would be decided in Washington,” Bernstorff vainly tried to. influence his government to concede to U. S. public opinion against unrestricted submarine warfare. After the battle of the Marne he held that Germany could not win a military victory by force of arms, consequently wanted U. S. mediation for peace. Blocked by German internal politics, by the pressure of military authorities who believed in the possibility of victory until 1918, by von Tirpitz, who spread exaggerated reports of the effectiveness of submarine warfare, Bernstorff was compelled to improvise in delaying U. S. entry into the War. With the sinking of the Lusitania, his mission lost ground steadily. After the U. S. broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, he became Ambassador to Turkey, returned home when the German armies collapsed, later represented Germany at the League of Nations, retired in 1931 after 50 years of diplomatic service. Opposed to the present German Government, he considers anti-Semitism a blot on the national honor, reprints a strange letter from Ernst Hanfstäengl, now Hitler’s Chief of Press Relations, in which the Harvard-educated Nazi expresses great admiration for Bernstorff and very liberal views.

Although he gives only limited sketches of individuals, Bernstorff mentions in passing that the Archduchess Luisa was “more of a case for Sigmund Freud than for the historian,” that Prince Max could only sleep with the assistance of powerful narcotics. His best portrait is of his friend Talaat Pasha, Grand Vizier of Turkey, a gentle cynic who, when pressed about the Armenian question, would suggest that it was solved since there were no Armenians left. Anxious to have Turkey represented at an international Socialist Congress, Talaat was embarrassed to find that there were no Turkish Socialists either. He appointed three members of parliament as Socialists ad hoc, teased them thereafter about their synthetic extremism.