The New York Times/1916/11/22/Von Jagow Gives Up His Portfolio
VON JAGOW GIVES UP HIS PORTFOLIO
Kaiser's Foreign Minister Resigns, Giving Continued Illness as the Reason.
POST FOR ZIMMERMANN
Under Secretary Likely to Succeed His Former Chief—Advocate of War on Armed Ships.
AMSTERDAM, Nov. 21, (via London.)—Gottlieb von Jagow, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, has resigned, according to a Berlin dispatch. The condition of his health is given as the cause of his resignation.
Dr. Alfred Zimmermann, Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs, the dispatch adds, probably will succeed Herr von Jagow.
The Tageblatt prints a rumor that Herr von Jagow will become Ambassador at Vienna.
Herr von Jagow, the retiring Imperial Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and Herr Zimmermann, the Under Secretary of State, who may succeed him, figured large in the British and German White Papers, published for the first time by The New York Times in the Fall of 1914. Since then the former has signed most of the notes sent to Washington in regard to the U-boat controversy.
It also fell to his lot to conduct the negotiations with Sir Edward Goschen, the British Ambassador, which terminated in Great Britain’s declaration of war. Von Jagow was known to have worked hard for a British-German alliance.
Although von Jagow bears no title his family has been noble since the eleventh century. He was Ambassador at Rome when he was made Secretary of State in January, 1914.
Herr Zimmermann saw Sir Edward Goschen after the memorable interview with the Imperial Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg, in which the latter had characterized the Belgian neutrality treaty as “a scrap of paper,” and it was he who said that Germany’s failure to reply to the British ultimatum was, “in fact, a declaration of war.”
Herr Zimmermann, aside from explaining to American interviewers many times that Germany's U-boat campaign was conducted within the law, has been chiefly occupied with the cases of Sweden and Norway—particularly with the latter, which forbade U-boats to provision at her ports so long as her ships were sunk. Zimmermann, however, has always contended that armed merchant vessels should be treated as warships.