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1914] M. SVERBEIEFF IN BERLIN
281
Whence came this tranquillity, this confidence in the
immediate future? I have often wondered, but up to
now have never been able to frame a satisfactory
answer. The French representatives in Berlin and
Vienna were very anxious; the Yellow Book exists to
prove this in black and white. They must frequently
have imparted their anxieties to their Russian colleagues.
Why is it then that the latter should have attached
so little importance to the warnings of their allied
colleagues ?
In M. Sverbeieff’s case I am not much surprised.
This most distinguished man was by his very qualities
averse to suspecting dangers, to seeking sinister
intentions. He owed his whole career to his natural tact, to
his knowledge of the world, and to his prudent
self-effacement. He was appointed to Berlin because he
was the intimate friend of the new Foreign Secretary,
who could rest assured that on the one hand Sverbeieff
would not go in for personal politics with the Emperor
William II. (an alluring temptation to many of our
diplomats), and that on the other he would cultivate the
best possible relations with the Court of Berlin, and
would not be the cause of any sort of conflict between
the two Governments ; in short, that the real direction
of Russo-German relations would remain entirely in
the hands of the Foreign Office, of which the new
Ambassador would only be the faithful and obliging
mouthpiece. All this was quite right; but in
appointing his intimate friend to the post of Russian
Ambassador to Berlin, M. Sazonoff had lost sight of the fact
that other qualities were absolutely indispensable to
the diplomat entrusted with such an exceptionally
important post, to wit: the faculty of studying and solving
the political situation of the country in which he finds
himself, ^ flair for people and events, and the authority
of a superior mind capable if necessary of making
himself the centre of a political current—in this case
the centre of the partisans of peace.
M. Sverbeieff only possessed these qualities to a
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