Even more tragical than the fate of the Austrian Ambassador was that of his colleague, the representative of the German Emperor.  It was more tragical because Prince Lichnowsky represented the power that was primarily responsible, and because he had himself been an unwilling tool in bringing on the cataclysm.  It was more profound because Lichnowsky was a man of deeper feeling and greater moral purpose than his Austrian colleague, and because for two years he had been devoting his strongest energies to preventing the very calamity which had now become a fact.  As the war went on Lichnowsky gradually emerged as one of its finest figures; the pamphlet which he wrote, at a time when Germany’s military fortunes were still high, boldly placing the responsibility upon his own country and his own Kaiser, was one of the bravest acts which history records.  Through all his brief Ambassadorship Lichnowsky had shown these same friendly traits.  The mere fact that he had been selected as Ambassador at this time was little less than a personal calamity.  His appointment gives a fair measure of the depths of duplicity to which the Prussian system could descend.  For more than fourteen years Lichnowsky had led the quiet life of a Polish country gentleman; he had never enjoyed the favour of the Kaiser; in his own mind and in that of his friends his career had long since been finished; yet from this retirement he had been suddenly called upon to represent the Fatherland at the greatest of European capitals.  The motive for this elevation, which was unfathomable then, is evident enough now.  Prince Lichnowsky was known to be an Anglophile; everything English—­English literature, English country life, English public men—­had for him an irresistible charm; and his greatest ambition as a diplomat had been to maintain the most cordial relations between his own country and Great Britain.  This was precisely the type of Ambassador that fitted into the Imperial purpose at that crisis.  Germany was preparing energetically but quietly for war; it was highly essential that its most formidable potential foe, Great Britain, should be deceived as to the Imperial plans and lulled into a sense of security.  The diabolical character of Prince Lichnowsky’s selection for this purpose was that, though his mission was one of deception, he was not himself a party to it and did not realize until it was too late that he had been used merely as a tool.  Prince Lichnowsky was not called upon to assume a mask; all that was necessary was that he should simply be himself.  And he acquitted himself with great success.  He soon became a favourite in London society; the Foreign Office found him always ready to cooeperate in any plan that tended to improve relations between the two countries.  It will be remembered that, when Colonel House returned to London from his interview with the Kaiser in June, 1914, he found British statesmen incredulous about any trouble with Germany.  This attitude was the consequence of Lichnowsky’s