The True Story of a Scrap of Paper
Philadelphia: Barrie, 1915. 19 pp. self wraps, good with light wear and soil. Probably a pre-publication form of this important artifact: the published version by Barrie, which had a cover, frontispiece and title page, did NOT have "From copy furnished by the British Ambassador at Washington" printed in red atop the first page. Thus, we think this might have preceeded the published version and been sent out to either various reviewers or various government agencies. Or it could be that it was typeset sometime in 1914 and Barrie printed it from the plates in 1915 when it was no longer so diplomatically sensitive. In it, Goschen, the British ambassador at Berlin, describes the rupture in Anglo-German relations in great detail: his conversations with Herr von Jagow, the German representative, are related with candor. Von Jagow laid all responsibility for whatever consequences there were on the British and talked dismissively of the "scrap of paper" that the British were holding up as a broken treaty, the 1839 Treaty formalizing the borders of Holland and Belgium, and establishing conditions of neutrality, which the Germans were on the precipice of violating in using Belgium as a shortcut to France. Goschen and von Jagow refused to back down, Goschen went back to Britain, and the war began. Good. Item #H13062
Price: $150.00