Berlin, September 20 (1919)

Note

(Late in May Colonel Bonsal was sent from Paris to Washington to secure certain information as to the situation there. Early in July he rejoined Colonel House in London and with his chief worked with the commissioners of the powers there assembled to shape, classify, and allocate the mandates over countries that as yet could not stand alone, as had been agreed in general terms, by the Peace Conference.

As the possibility of America failing to accept any of the mandates, in view of the increasing opposition to the step, developing in Congress and elsewhere, Colonel House became reluctant to take part in drafting the terms of the trusteeships, the burden of which America seemed little inclined to share. Consequently, he returned to Paris early in September (1919), and ten days later he sent Colonel Bonsai to report on German conditions, after the whirlwind of war had passed, and to enter into relations with the new German leaders, who, it was hoped, unlike Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, would be disposed to fulfill the conditions of the Treaty that had been accepted in Paris on June 28th.

Excerpts from Colonel Bonsai’s diary, after his arrival in Berlin, follow.)

Another swift change and a new destination. Once again I am in Berlin and at the Adlon. Both are quite shabby, and how natural that is. I cannot say I was surprised when my orders came. For several weeks I had “sensed” (to borrow the language of the successful novelists) that the Colonel (House) was brooding over the unsatisfactory German situation. It was clear to me that he was shooting up antennae or aerials, whatever they may be called, to secure better contact and communication with German people and with the prevailing thought and opinion beyond the Rhine. It was certainly no secret to me that the Colonel had expected the negotiations with the late enemy to follow quite a different course. Sequestered at Versailles, as they were, behind a stockade (not intended as a humiliation but as a greatly needed protection), the exchange of long notes was not the kind of co-operation between the recent antagonists which my Colonel thought at all likely to bring peace to the world. He did not, as many do, hold the chauvinistic French solely responsible for this unhappy state of affairs. He admitted that the new German Republic and its inexperienced leaders were proving most disappointing. Judging by the information that had reached him through many channels, an unhappy spirit was in control of the Imperial Reich so suddenly and by such artificial means converted into a republic, or, as some preferred to call it, a democratic realm. He could not see that a single one of the terms so gladly accepted at the Armistice was being fulfilled. He regarded Brockdorff-Rantzau as the evil genius of a people, the merest tyros in self-government, now suddenly called upon to reach decisions of vital importance to themselves and indeed to the world. My new, by-no-means-an-enviable job, is to make a survey of Germany in convulsions and if possible to find a man who will help the Colonel and the few others who are not still suffering from the war psychosis to save the situation—in a word, to find the “balm in Gilead,” if there be any left.