yielding Germany immediate tangible return for trouble and expense. Prince Henry, it is said, though the most genial and democratic of Hohenzollerns, was a little taken back at the American freedom of manners, the wringing of hands, the slapping on the back, and other republican demonstrations of friendship; but he cannot have shown anything of such a feeling, for he was feted on all sides, and soon developed into a popular hero.
One of the incidents of the visit, previously arranged, was the christening of the Emperor’s new American-built yacht, _Meteor III_, by Miss Alice Roosevelt, the President’s daughter. On February 25th the Emperor received a cablegram from Prince Henry: “Fine boat, baptized by the hand of Miss Alice Roosevelt, just launched amid brilliant assembly. Hearty congratulations;” and at the same time one from the President’s daughter: “To his Majesty the Kaiser, Berlin–_Meteor_ successfully launched. I congratulate you, thank you for the kindness shown me, and send you my best wishes. Alice Roosevelt.”
During the visit the Emperor cabled to President Roosevelt his thanks and that of his people for the hospitable reception of his brother by all classes, adding:
“My outstretched hand was grasped by you with a strong, manly, and friendly grip. May Heaven bless the relations of the two nations with peace and goodwill! My best compliments and wishes to Alice Roosevelt.”
Reference to this cordial electric correspondence may close with mention of a telegram sent in reply to a message from Mr. Melville Stone, of the American Associated Press:
“Accept my thanks for your message. I estimate the great and sympathetic reception (it was a banquet) given to my dear brother by the newspaper proprietors of the United States very highly.”
Prince Henry returned to Germany on March 17th, a Doctor of Law of Harvard University.
There have been moments when people in America were influenced by other sentiments than those of entirely respectful admiration for the Emperor. It was with mixed feelings that the American public heard the news of his telegraphed offer to President Roosevelt in May, 1902, when, as the telegram said, the Emperor was “under the deep impression made by the brilliant and cordial reception” given to his brother, Prince Henry, to present to the American nation a statue of–Frederick the Great, and coupled with the offer a proposal that the statue should be erected–of all places–in Washington! No one doubted the Emperor’s sincere desire to pay the highest compliment he could think of to a people to whom he felt grateful for the honour done to Germany in the person of his brother, but nearly every one smiled at the simplicity, or, as some called it, the want of political tact shown by offering the statue of a ruler whose name, to the vast majority of Americans, is synonymous with absolute autocracy, to a republic which prides itself on its civic ways and love of personal freedom. The gift was accepted by the American Government in the spirit in which it was offered, the spirit of goodwill. And why not? To the Emperor his great ancestor’s effigy is no symbol of autocracy, but the contrary, for to the Emperor and his subjects Frederick the Great is as much the Father of Prussia, the man who saved it and made it, as Washington was the Father of America. Besides, the spirit in which a gift is offered, not its value or appropriateness, is the thing to be considered.
Irritation in England was still strong against Germany on account of the latter’s easily understood race-sympathy with the Boers during the war just over, but the fact did not prevent the Emperor from accepting King Edward’s invitation to spend a few days at Sandringham with him in November this year on the occasion of his birthday. The Emperor took the Empress and two of his sons with him. The hostile temper of the time, both in England and Germany, was alluded to in a sermon preached in Sandringham Church by the then Bishop of London. It was notable for its insistence on the necessity of friendlier relations between England, Germany, and America, the three great branches of the Teutonic race. After the service the Emperor is reported to have exclaimed to the Bishop: “What you said was excellent, and is precisely what I try to make my people understand.”
As a proof that this was no merely complimentary utterance, but the expression of a thought which is constantly in the Emperor’s mind, an incident which happened at Kiel regatta in the month of June previously may be recalled. The American squadron, under the late Admiral Cotton, was paying an official visit to the Emperor during the Kiel “week” as a return honour for the visit of the Emperor’s brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, to the United States the year before. There was a constant round of festivities, and among them a lunch to the Emperor on board the Admiral’s flagship, the _Kearsarge_. Lunch over, the Emperor was standing in a group talking with his customary vivacity, but, as customary also, with his eyes taking in his surroundings like a well-trained journalist. Suddenly he noticed a set of flags, those of America, Germany, and England, twined together and mingling their colours in friendly harmony. He walked over, gathered the combined flags in his hand, and turning to the Admiral exclaimed in idiomatic American: “See here, Admiral; that is exactly as it should be, and is what I am trying for all the time.”
While in England the Emperor, in company with Lord Roberts and Sir Evelyn Wood, inspected his English regiment, the 1st Royal Dragoons. A curious and amusing feature of the visit was a lecture before the Royal Family at Sandringham by a German engineer, for whom the Emperor acted as interpreter, on a novel adaptation of spirit for culinary, lighting, and laundry purposes. The Emperor’s practical illustration of the use of the new heating system, as applied to the ordinary household flatiron, is said to have caused great merriment among his audience.
Germany’s home atmosphere about this time was for a moment troubled by an exhibition of the Emperor’s “personal regiment” in the form of a telegram to the Prince Regent of Bavaria, known in Germany as the “Swinemunde Despatch.” The Bavarian Diet, in a fit of economy, had refused its annual grant of L5,000 for art purposes. The Emperor was violently angry, wired to the Prince Regent his indignation with the Diet and offered to pay the L5,000 out of his own pocket. It was not a very tactful offer, to be sure, though well intended; and as his telegram was not an act of State, “covered” by the Chancellor’s signature, while the Bavarians in particular felt hurt at what they considered outside interference, Germans generally blamed it as a new demonstration of autocratic rule.
One or two other art incidents of the period may be noted. A domestic one was the gift to the Emperor by the Empress of a model of her hand in Carrara marble, life-sized, by the German sculptor, Rheinhold Begas. The Emperor, it is well known, has no special liking for the companionship of ladies, but he confesses to an admiration for pretty feminine hands. Another incident was the Emperor’s order to the painter, Professor Rochling, to paint a picture representing the famous episode in the China campaign, when Admiral Seymour gave the order “Germans to the Front.” It is to the present day a popular German engraving. The year was also remarkable for a visit to Berlin of Coquelin _aine_, the great French actor. The Emperor saw him in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” was, like all the rest of the play-going world, delighted with both play and player, and held a long and lively conversation with the artist. Lastly may be mentioned a telegram of the Emperor’s to the once-famed tragic actress, Adelaide Ristori, in Rome, congratulating her on her eightieth birthday and expressing his regret that he had never met her. A basket of flowers simultaneously arrived from the German Embassy.
We are now in 1903. During the preceding years the Emperor’s thoughts, as has been seen, were occupied with art as a means of educating his folk, purifying their sentiments, and, above all, making them faithful lieges of the House of Hohenzollern. By a natural association of ideas we find him this year thinking much and deeply about religion; for, though artists are not a species remarkable for the depth or orthodoxy of their views on religious matters, art and religion are close allies, and probably the greater the artist the more real religion he will be found to have.
In this year, accordingly, the Emperor made his remarkable confession of religious faith to his friend, Admiral Hollmann. He had just heard a lecture by Professor Delitzsch on “Babel und Bibel,” and as he considered the Professor’s views to some extent subversive of orthodox Christian belief, he took the opportunity to tell his people his own sentiments on the whole matter. In writing to Admiral Hollmann he instructed him to make the “confession” as public as possible, and it was published in the October number of the _Grenzboten_, a Saxon monthly, sometimes used for official pronouncements. The Emperor’s letter to Admiral Hollmann contained what follows:–
“I distinguish between two different sorts of Revelation: a current, to a certain extent historical, and a purely religious, which was meant to prepare the way for the appearance of the Messiah. As to the first, I should say that I have not the slightest doubt that God eternally revealed Himself to the race of mankind He created. He breathed into man His breath, that is a portion of Himself, a soul. With fatherly love and interest He followed the development of humanity; in order to lead and encourage it further He ‘revealed’ Himself, now in the person of this, now of that great wise man, priest or king, whether pagan, Jew or Christian. Hammurabi was one of these, Moses, Abraham, Homer, Charlemagne, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant, Kaiser William the Great–these He selected and honoured with His Grace, to achieve for their peoples, according to His will, things noble and imperishable. How often has not my grandfather explicitly declared that he was an instrument in the hand of the Lord! The works of great souls are the gifts of God to the people, that they may be able to build further on them as models, that they may be able to feel further through the confusion of the undiscovered here below. Doubtless God has ‘revealed’ Himself to different peoples in different ways according to their situation and the degree of their civilization. Then just as we are overborne most by the greatness and might of the lovely nature of the Creation when we regard it, and as we look are astonished at the greatness of God there displayed, even so can we of a surety thankfully and admiringly recognize, by whatever truly great or noble thing a man or a people does, the revelation of God. His influence acts on us and among us directly.
“The second sort of Revelation, the more religious sort, is that which led up to the appearance of the Lord. From Abraham onward it was introduced, slowly but foreseeingly, all-wisely and all-knowingly, for otherwise humanity were lost. And now commences the astonishing working of God’s Revelation. The race of Abraham and the peoples that sprang from it regard, with an iron logic, as their holiest possession, the belief in a God. They must worship and cultivate Him. Broken up during the captivity in Egypt, the separated parts were brought together again for the second time by Moses, always striving to cling fast to monotheism. It was the direct intervention of God that caused this people to come to life again. And so it goes on through the centuries till the Messiah, announced and foreshadowed by the prophets and psalmists, at last appears, the greatest Revelation of God to the world. Then he appeared in the Son Himself; Christ is God; God in human form. He redeemed us, He spurs us on, He allures us to follow Him, we feel His fire burn in us, His sympathy strengthens us, His displeasure annihilates us, but also His care saves us. Confident of victory, building only on His word, we pass through labour, scorn, suffering, misery and death, for in His Word we have God’s revealed Word, and He never lies.
“That is my view of the matter. The Word is especially for us evangelicals made the essential thing by Luther, and as good theologian surely Delitzsch must not forget that our great Luther taught us to sing and believe–‘Thou shalt suffer, let the Word stand.’ To me it goes without saying that the Old Testament contains a large number of fragments of a purely human historical kind and not ‘God’s revealed Word.’ They are mere historical descriptions of events of all sorts which occurred in the political, religious, moral, and intellectual life of the people of Israel. For example, the act of legislation on Sinai may be regarded as only symbolically inspired by God, when Moses had recourse to the revival of perhaps some old-time law (possibly the codex, an offshoot of the codex of Hammurabi), to bring together and to bind together institutions of His people which were become shaky and incapable of resistance. Here the historian can, from the spirit or the text, perhaps construct a connexion with the Law of Hammurabi, the friend of Abraham, and perhaps logically enough; but that would no way lessen the importance of the fact that God suggested it to Moses and in so far revealed Himself to the Israelite people.
“Consequently it is my idea that for the future our good Professor would do well to avoid treating of religion as such, on the other hand continue to describe unmolested everything that connects the religion, manners, and custom of the Babylonians with the Old Testament. On the whole, I make the following deductions:–
“1. I believe in One God.
“2. We humans need, in order to teach Him, a Form, especially for our children.
“3. This Form has been to the present time the Old Testament in its existing tradition. This Form will certainly decidedly alter considerably with the discovery of inscriptions and excavations; there is nothing harmful in that, it is even no harm if the nimbus of the Chosen People loses much thereby. The kernel and substance remain always the same–God, namely, and His work.
“Never was religion a result of science, but a gushing out of the heart and being of mankind, springing from its intercourse with God.”
It is anticipating by a few months, but part of a speech the Emperor made in Potsdam at the confirmation of his two sons, August Wilhelm and Oscar–two Hohenzollerns as yet not distinguished for anything in particular–may be quoted in this connexion. Naturally he began by comparing his sons’ spiritual situation with that of a soldier on the day he takes the oath of allegiance: they were _vorgemerkt_, that is, predestined as “fighters for Christ.” “What is demanded of you,” the imperial father went on, “is that you shall be personalities. This is the point which, in my opinion, is the most important for the Christian in daily life. For there can be no doubt that we can say of the person of the Lord, that He is the most ‘personal personality’ who has ever wandered among the sons of men…. You will read of many great men–savants, statesmen, kings and princes, of poets also: but nevertheless no word of man has ever been uttered worthy of comparison with the words of Christ; and I say this to you so that you may be in a position to bear it out when you are in the midst of life’s turmoil and hear people discussing religion, especially the personality of Christ. No word of man has ever succeeded in making people of all races and all people enthusiastic for the same cause, namely, to imitate Him, even to sacrifice their lives for Him. The wonder can only be explained by assuming that what He said were the words of the living God, which are the source of life, and continue to live thousands of years after the words of the wise have been forgotten. That is my personal experience and it will be yours.
“The pivot and turning-point,” he continued,
“of our mortal life, especially of a life full of responsibility and labour–that is clearer and clearer to me every year I live–lies simply and solely in the attitude a man adopts towards his Lord and Saviour;”
and he concludes by exhorting his sons to disregard what people may say about the cult of Christ being irreconcilable with the tasks and responsibilities of “modern” life, but simply to do their best, whatever their occupation, to become a personality after Christ’s example.
This is a sound and just statement of Christian faith, and it is quoted here to justify the view that the Emperor’s soldiers and his Dreadnoughts, his mailed fist and shining armour, are built and put on in the spirit of precaution and defence. The attitude, it cannot of course be denied, is based on the un-Christlike assumption that all men (and particularly all peoples and their governments and diplomatists) are liars; but in his favour it may be urged that for that saying the Emperor could cite Biblical authority. And yet there is an inconsistency; for the saying is that of one of those same wise men whose words, the Emperor admits, are transitory and mortal.
It is possible that the Emperor had a presentiment of some kind that his life was now in danger, and that the presentiment may have attuned his thoughts to meditation on Christ’s life and teaching; for it is a fact, well worthy of remark, that in the fear of death man’s one and only relief and consolation is the knowledge that there was, and is, a mediator for him with his Creator. The address at his sons’ confirmation was delivered on October 17th, and on Sunday morning, November 8th all the world, it is hardly too much to say, was astonished and pained to learn, by a publication in the _Official Gazette_, that the Emperor the day before had had to submit to a serious operation on his throat. The announcement spoke of a polypus, or fungoid growth, which had had to be removed; but all over the world the conclusion was come to that the mortal affliction of the father had fallen on the son and that the Emperor was a doomed man. Most providentially and happily it was nothing of the sort. On the 9th the Emperor was out of bed and signing official papers, on the 15th he was allowed to talk in whispers, and on the 17th it was declared by the physicians that all danger was over and that no more bulletins would be issued. On December 14th the Emperor received a congratulatory visit from the President of the Reichstag, who reported to Parliament his impression that “the Emperor had completely recovered his old vigour (great applause) and that his voice was again clear and strong.”
The Emperor had passed through what one may suppose to have been the darkest hour of his life. He was naturally in high spirits, and a few days after went to Hannover, where he made a martial speech in which he toasted the German Legion for having “by its unforgettable heroism, in conjunction with Bluecher and his Prussians, saved the English army from destruction at Waterloo,” a view, of course, which to an Englishman has all the charm of novelty.
One or two further memorable incidents of 1903 may be recorded. Theodore Mommsen, the now aged historian of Rome, the greatest scholar of his time, died in November. He was in his day a Liberal parliamentarian of no mean ability; but for such men there is no career in Germany. However, as it turned out, the German people’s loss proved to be all the world’s gain. A son of the historian now represents a district of Berlin in the Reichstag. Two years before the historian’s death an exchange of telegrams in Latin took place between him and the Emperor. The occasion was the Emperor’s laying the foundation-stone of a museum on the plateau where the old Roman castle, known as the Saalburg, stands. The Emperor telegraphed:
“Theodoro Mommseno, antiquitatum romanarum investigatori incomparabili, praetorii Saalburgensis fundamenta jaciens salutem dicit et gratias agit Guilelmus Germanorum Imperator.”
To which the historian, with a modesty equal to his courtesy, replied: “Germanorum principi, tam majestate quam humanitate, gratias agit antiquarius Lietzelburgensis.”
Mention may also be made of a very characteristic speech of the Emperor’s this year at Cuestrin, where he was unveiling a monument to a favourite Hohenzollern, the Great Elector. Cuestrin, it will be remembered, is the town where Frederick the Great, another of the Emperor’s favourites, was imprisoned by an angry father, along with his friend Lieutenant Katte, when Frederick was trying to escape the parental cruelty and violence.
Referring to Frederick’s declaration that he was the “first servant of the State,” the Emperor said:–
“He could only learn to be so by subordination, by obedience, in a word by what we Prussians describe as discipline. And this discipline must have its roots in the King’s house as in the house of the citizen, in the army as among the people. Respect for authority, obedience to the Crown, and obedience to parental and paternal influence–that is the lesson the memories of to-day should teach us. From these attributes spring those which we call patriotism, namely the subordination of the individual ego, of the individual subject, to the welfare of all. It is what is particularly needed at the present time.”
The Emperor was, of course, thinking of the Social Democrats. Having finished his speech, he went and for a while stood thoughtfully at the historic window of Cuestrin Castle, from which Frederick watched the execution of his unfortunate companion, Katte.
Only the year 1904 separates us from the Emperor’s Morocco adventure. The economic ideas which have been referred to as the basis of German foreign policy were germinating in his mind, and the plans for at least a partial realization of them were working in his head. Addressing the chief burgomaster of Karlsruhe in April, just a year before he started for Tangier, he spoke of Weltpolitik. “You are right,” he told the burgomaster,
“in saying that the task of the German people is a hard one…. I hope our peace will not be disturbed, and that the events that are now happening will open our eyes, steel our courage, and find us united, if it should be necessary for us to intervene in world-policy.”
The Emperor had, no doubt, specially in mind the birth of the Anglo-French Entente and the war between Russia and Japan, both events forming the dominant factors of the political situation at this time. The Russo-Japanese War arose primarily from the unwillingness of Russia to evacuate Manchuria after the Boxer troubles in China. The incidents of the war are still fresh in public memory.
It need only be recalled here that Germany was neutral throughout the conflict, that both President Roosevelt and the Emperor offered their services as mediators in its course, and that on the capture of Port Arthur by Admiral Nogi, in January, 1905, the Emperor telegraphed his bestowal of the _Ordre pour le Merile_ on General Stoessel, the Russian defender of Port Arthur, and on Admiral Nogi.
In the troubled history of Anglo-German relations is to be recorded the presence, in June of this year, of King Edward VII at Kiel with a squadron of battleships to pay an official visit to his nephew. The two fleets, those sunny days, formed a splendid spectacle–the two mightiest police forces, the Emperor would probably agree in saying, the world could produce. In fact, the Emperor had some such thought in mind, for he addressed King Edward as follows:–
“Your Majesty has been welcomed by the thunder of the guns of the German fleet. It is the youngest navy in the world and an expression of the reviving sea-power of the new German Empire, founded by the late great Emperor, designed for the protection of the Empire’s trade and territory, and intended, equally with the German army, for the preservation of peace.”
One or two other incidents of interest in the Emperor’s life may close the record of this year. One of them was the arrival of the Italian composer, Leoncavallo, in Berlin, to hand the Emperor the text of the opera “Der Roland von Berlin,” Leoncavallo had composed at the Emperor’s express request. Roland was a “strong, valiant and pious” knight of Charlemagne’s time–like the Emperor, let us say–who originally hailed from Brittany–that lone and lovely Cinderella of France–and afterwards, for some unexplained reason, came to be the type of municipal independence in Germany.
During the summer the Emperor and the Empress made an excursion, when on the Saalburg, to the statues of the Roman Emperors Hadrian and Severus. Did the Emperor recall, one wonders, as he stood before the figure of Hadrian, that pagan monarch’s address to his soul:–
“Animula vagula, blandula,
Hospes, comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abibis in loca,
Pallidula, rigida, nudula,
Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos?”
It sounds a little gloomy as a quotation, but, fortunately for Germany and the Emperor, for “nunc” can be put, _pace_ the poet, the indefinite, yet all too definite, “aliquando.”
XII.
MOROCCO
1905
The Emperor started for Tangier towards the end of March, but before that he had got through imperial business of a miscellaneous kind which exemplifies the life he leads practically at all times.
In January he had exchanged telegrams with the Czar and the Mikado concerning his bestowal of the Order of Merit on Generals Stoessel and Nogi, asking permission to bestow the Order and receiving expressions of consent. Another telegram went to the composer Leoncavallo in Naples, congratulating him on the success there of his “Roland von Berlin.” In February, the Emperor opened an international Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, received Prince Charles, Infanta of Spain, and the King of Bulgaria, unveiled a monument to his ancestor, Admiral Coligny, who was killed in the Bartholomew massacre, listened to a naval captain’s lecture on Port Arthur, opened the new Lutheran Cathedral (the “Dom”) in Berlin, telegraphed thanks to the University of Pennsylvania for its doctor’s degree which the Emperor said he was proud to know George Washington once held, attended a lecture by Professor Delitzsch on “Assyria,” and was present at a memorial service for the painter Adolf von Menzel, who died this month. In March he visited Heligoland, inspected the progress of some alterations at the Royal Opera in Berlin, and sent the Gold Medal for Science to Manuel Garcia, on the occasion of the latter’s hundredth birthday, as recognition of his invention of the laryngoscope, or mirror for examining the throat.
Just before starting for Morocco the Emperor made the speech in which he claimed that Germans are the “salt of the earth.” In the same speech he had previously declared that as the result of his reading of history he meant never to strive after world-conquest. “For what,” he asked,
“has become of the so-called world-empires? Alexander the Great, Napoleon the First, all the great warrior heroes swam in blood and left behind them subjugated peoples, who at the first opportunity rose and brought their empires to ruin. The world-empire which I dream of will be, above all, the newly established German Empire, enjoying on every side the most absolute confidence as a peaceable, honest, and quiet neighbour, not founded on conquest by the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations, striving for the same objects.”
While on the way to Morocco the Emperor put in at Lisbon to pay a visit to the King of Portugal, and with the latter attended a meeting of the Geographical Society. From Lisbon he went to Gibraltar, and from thence, after a few hours’ stay, he started for Tangier.
The Morocco incident, as it is often too lightly called, should rather be regarded as a phase in the world’s economic history and an occurrence of moment for the future peace of all nations than the mere game on the diplomatic chess-board many writers appear to consider it. According to French critics, and they may be taken as representative of the feeling everywhere prevalent during the seven years the incident lasted, its origin was a matter of alliances and the balance of power. Germany, according to these writers, wanted to preserve the position of hegemony in Europe she had obtained under Bismarck, and consequently felt annoyed by the Triple Entente, which robbed her of her traditional friend Russia and set up an effective counterpoise to the Triple Alliance of which Germany was the leading Power, and on which she could, or believed she could, rely for support in case of war with France. In going, therefore, to Tangier, at the moment when her defeat by Japan rendered Russia for the time being of little or no account in the considerations of diplomacy, the Emperor, according to these writers, in reality was making a determined attempt to break the Entente combination and protect his Empire from political isolation or inferiority.
It is quite possible that such were the motives of the Emperor’s action, but if so he was building better than he knew. The vicissitudes of the Moroccan episode are described briefly below, yet some remarks of a general nature as to the whole episode considered in its historical perspective may be permitted in advance. But first, what is historical perspective? It may perhaps be defined as that view of history which shows in its true proportions the relative importance of an event to other events which strongly and permanently leave their mark on the character and development of the period or generation in which they occur. Regarded from this standpoint the Morocco incident can claim an exceptional position, for it was the first occasion in modern diplomatic history on which a Great Power officially proclaimed _urbi et orbi_ the doctrine of the “open door,” the doctrine of equal economic treatment for all nations for the benefit of all nations, and was willing to go to war in support of it.
It was not, of course, the first time the demand for the open door had been made; loudly and bloodily, too; since most wars from those of Greece and Rome to the war between Russia and Japan of recent years were waged with the intention, or in the hope, of opening, by conquest or contract, territory of the enemy to the mercantile enterprise of the victors. But this was the open door in a very selfish and restricted sense, and though many isolated events had occurred of late years, the international agreements regarding China among them, proving that the idea of the open door was gaining strength as a right common to all nations, it was not until the Emperor went to Tangier that a Great Power risked a great war in order to exemplify and enforce it.
The Emperor and his advisers were probably not moved by any altruistic sentiments in the matter, and their sole reason for action may have been to see that German subjects should not be excluded from Moroccan markets. It may also be that Germany was resolved that if there was to be a seizure of Morocco she should get her share of the territory to be distributed, notwithstanding her refusal, revealed by the late Foreign Secretary, Kiderlen-Waechter, in the Reichstag’s confidential committee, to accede to Mr. Chamberlain’s proposal, made some time before the incident, for a partition of the Shereefian Empire. But the acquisition of territory does not seem to have been the mainspring of her policy, while from the beginning to the end of the incident, however theatrical and questionable her diplomatic conduct may have been at moments during the negotiations, she was throughout consistent and successful in her demand for economic equality all round. This is a great gain for the future, for, with the world nearly all parcelled out, economic considerations, which are almost in all cases adjustable, are now the most weighty factors in international relations.
Apart from this view of the incident, it is clear that Germany was pursuing her claim to a “place in the sun,” and she did so to the unconcealed annoyance of nations which up to then had never thought of her in a role she appeared to be aspiring to, that of a Mediterranean Power. To these nations she seemed an intruder in a sphere to which she neither naturally nor rightfully belonged. Evidently she had no political or historical claims in Morocco, while her commercial interests were less than 10 per cent of Morocco trade.
A narration of the incident may, for the sake of convenience, though involving some anticipation of the future, be dealt with in three sections: from the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, and the Emperor’s visit to Tangier in March, 1905, to the Act of Algeciras a year subsequently; from the Act of Algeciras to the Franco-German Agreement of 1909; and from that to the–let it be hoped–final settlement by the Franco-German Agreement of November 5, 1911.
The Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 gave France a free hand in Morocco in consideration of France giving England a similar position in Egypt and the Nile Valley. The state of things in Morocco at this time was one of discord and rebellion. In the midst of it, the Sultan, El Hassan, died, and was succeeded by Abdul Aziz, a minor. On coming of age Abdul Aziz showed his inability to rule, the country fell again into disorder and Abdul turned for help to France. Meantime England and France had been negotiating without the knowledge of Germany, and in April, 1904, the Anglo-French Agreement was signed. It was accompanied by an official declaration that France had no intention of changing the political status of Morocco, but only contemplated a policy there of “pacific penetration and reforms.” Thereupon Prince von Buelow, the German Chancellor, stated in the Reichstag that the German Government had no reason to assume that the Agreement was directed against any Power and that “it appeared to be an attempt by England and France to come to a friendly understanding respecting their colonial differences.”
“From the standpoint of German interests,” continued the Chancellor, “we have no objections to raise to it.” No parliamentary reference was made to Morocco until March, 1905, when the Chancellor spoke of the approaching visit of the Emperor to Tangier, and it became evident that the Emperor and his advisers had come to the conclusion that, as France seemed about assuming a full protectorate over Morocco, as she had tried to do in Tunis, and that this, in accordance with French policy, would result in the exclusion of other nationals from commerce and the development of the country, Germany must take action. Prince von Buelow explained that “his Majesty had, in the previous year, declared to the King of Spain that Germany pursued no policy of territorial acquisition in Morocco.” He continued:
“Independent of the visit, and independent of the territorial question, is the question whether we have economic interests to protect in Morocco. That we have certainly. We have in Morocco, as in China, a considerable interest in the maintenance of the open door, that is the equal treatment of all trading nations.”
And he concluded by saying:
“So far as an attempt is being made to alter the international status of Morocco, or to control the open door in the economic development of the country, we must see more closely than before that our economical interests are not endangered. Our first step, accordingly, is to put ourselves into communication with the Sultan.”
The visit came off as announced, and the Emperor, on arriving at Tangier, made a speech which caused a sensation in every diplomatic chancellery; indeed, in all parts of the world. The Emperor’s speech, which was addressed to the German colonists on March 31, 1905, was as follows:–
“I rejoice to make acquaintance with the pioneers of Germany in Morocco and to be able to say to them that they have done their duty. Germany has great commercial interests there. I will promote and protect trade, which shows a gratifying development, and make it my care to secure full equality with all nations. This is only possible when the sovereignty of the Sultan and the independence of the country are preserved. Both are for Germany beyond question, and for that I am ready at all times to answer. I think my visit to Tangier announces this clearly and emphatically, and will doubtless produce the conviction that whatever Germany undertakes in Morocco will be negotiated exclusively with the Sultan.”
The result of these unmistakable declarations was that the Sultan rejected proposals made to him by the French, and shortly afterwards, on the advice of Germany, came forward with suggestions for a European conference. M. Delcasse, the French Foreign Minister, opposed the proposal, and for a time war between France and Germany appeared inevitable; but France was not in a military position to ignore Germany’s threatening language, M. Delcasse had to resign, the French Cabinet under M. Rouvier agreed to the conference, and it met at Algeciras in January, 1906. At the conference Great Britain, in consonance with the Entente, supported France; Austria adhered loyally to her Triplice engagements and proved the “brilliant second” to Germany the Emperor subsequently described her; Italy, on the other hand, gave her Teutonic ally only lukewarm support.
In fairness, however, should be quoted here the explanation of Italy’s attitude given by Chancellor von Buelow when discussing the conference in Parliament next year. The impression is general, both in and out of Germany, that Italy is only a half-hearted political ally. It is based on the temperamental difference between the Latin and the Teutonic races, on the popular sympathy between the French and Italian peoples, and to the supposedly reluctant support lent by Italy to Germany during the critical time of the conference, the extra-tour, as Prince Buelow, using a metaphor of the ballroom, termed it, she took with France on that occasion. Prince Buelow now endeavoured to dissipate or correct the impression, at any rate, as regarded Algeciras. “Italy,” he said,
“found herself in a difficult position there. Various agreements between Italy and France regarding Morocco had come into existence anterior to the conference, but Germany was satisfied that they were not inconsistent with Italy’s Triplice engagements; in fact, Germany had, several years ago, officially told Italy she must use her own judgment and act on her own responsibility in dealing with her French neighbour in Africa and the Mediterranean.”
When it was settled that a conference should be held, Italy, the Chancellor continued, “gave Germany timely information as to the extent to which her support of Germany could go, and as a matter of fact she supported Germany’s views in the bank and police questions.” So far the German official explanation, but the impression of Italian lukewarmness as a member of the Triplice has lost none of its universality thereby. How well or ill founded the impression is, it will be for the future to disclose.
The summoning of the conference had been a triumph for German diplomacy, but its results were disappointing to her; for while the proceedings showed that among all nations she could only fully rely on the sympathy and support of Austria, they ended in an acknowledgment by Germany of the special position of France in Morocco. The Act of Algeciras, which was dated April 7, 1906, stated that the signatory Powers recognized that “order, peace, and prosperity” could only be made to reign in Morocco
“by means of the introduction of reforms based upon the triple principle of the sovereignty and independence of his Majesty the Sultan, the integrity of his States, and economic liberty without any inequality.”
Then followed six Declarations regarding the organization of the police, smuggling, the establishment of a State bank, the collection of taxes, and the finding of new sources of revenue, customs, and administrative services and public works. For the organization of the police, French and Spanish officers and non-commissioned officers were to be placed at the disposal of the Sultan by the French and Spanish Governments. Tenders for public works were to be adjudicated on impartially without regard to the nationality of the bidder. The effect of the Act was to give international recognition to the special position of France and Spain in Morocco, while safeguarding the economic interests of other Powers.
The attitude taken up by Germany relative to the conference was set forth in a speech delivered by Prince von Buelow in the Reichstag in December, 1905. It was based, he explained, on the provisions of the Madrid Convention of 1880, in which all the Great Powers and the United States had taken part. The Chancellor claimed that Germany sought no special privileges in Morocco, but favoured a peaceful and independent development of the Shereefian Empire. He denied that German rights could be abrogated by an Anglo-French Agreement, and pointing out that Morocco in 1880 had granted all the signatories to the Madrid Convention most-favoured-nation treatment, claimed that if France desired to make good her demand for special privileges, she ought to have the consent of the special signatories to the Madrid pact. Germany had a right to be heard in any new settlement of Moroccan conditions; she could not allow herself to be treated as a _quantite negligeable_, nor be left out of account when a country lying on two of the world’s greatest commercial highways was being disposed of. She had a commercial treaty with Morocco, conferring most-favoured-nation rights, and it did not accord with her honour to give way.
The Act of Algeciras, however, proved to have brought only temporary relief to European tension. Disturbances continued in Morocco, French subjects were murdered at Marakesch in 1907, and France occupied the province of Udja with troops until satisfaction should be given. Owing to riots at Casablanca in 1908, in which French as well as Spanish and Italian labourers were killed, she decided to occupy the place, and sent a strong military and naval force thither. A French warship bombarded the town, and by June, 1908, the French army of occupation numbered 15,000 men. Meanwhile internal commotions and intrigues had led to the deposition of Abdul Aziz and his replacement on the throne by his brother, Muley Hafid, with the support of Germany. France and Spain refused to recognize the new ruler unless he gave guarantees that he would respect the Act of Algeciras. Muley gave the required guarantees, and in March, 1909, France “declared herself wholly attached to the integrity and independence of the Shereefian Empire and decided to safeguard economic equality in Morocco.” Germany on her side declared she was pursuing in Morocco only economic interests and, “recognizing that the special political interests of France in Morocco are closely bound up in that country with the consolidation of order and of internal peace,” was “resolved not to impede those interests.”
The German idea of not impeding French special political interests in Morocco was disclosed little more than two years later by the dispatch of the German gunboat _Panther_ (of “Well done, _Panther_!” fame) on July 3, 1911, to the “closed” port of Agadir on the south Moroccan coast.
It was as dramatic a coup as the Emperor’s visit to Tangier and caused as much alarm. The fact is that the march of French troops to Fez, which had taken place a few months before, convinced the Emperor and his Government that France, relying on the support of her Entente friend England, was bent on the Tunisification of Morocco. The Emperor, Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, and Foreign Secretary Kiderlen-Waechter met at the Foreign Office on May 21st, and it was decided to send a ship of war, as at once a hint and a demonstration, to Agadir or other Moroccan port. Germany, of course, in accordance with diplomatic strategy, did not disclose the real springs of her action, though they must have been patent to all the world. She notified the Powers of the dispatch of her warship, explaining that the sending of the _Panther_, which “happened to be in the neighbourhood,” was owing to the representations of German firms, as a temporary measure for the protection of German proteges in that region, and taken “in view of the possible spread of disorders prevailing in other parts of Morocco.”
In France, on the other hand, it was asserted that the step was not in conformity with the spirit of the Franco-German Agreement of 1909, in which Germany resolved not to impede French special interests, that there were no Germans at Agadir, and that only nine months previously Germany had angrily protested at the calling of a French cruiser at the same port. The reference was to the visit of the French cruiser _Du Chaylu_ in November, 1910, when the captain paid a visit to the local pasha. The German Foreign Secretary eventually said Germany had no objection to France using her police rights even in a closed port, and the admission was taken as a fresh renunciation on the part of Germany of any right to interference. Feeling ran high for a time both in France and Germany, while the German action added to the sentiment of hostility to Germany in England, and English political circles perceived in it a design on Germany’s part of acquiring a port on the Moroccan coast. The word “compensation,” which afterwards was to prove the solution of Franco-German differences was now first mentioned by Germany.
After England’s determination to support France had been made plain by ministerial statements, the entire Morocco episode was closed by the Franco-German Agreement signed on November 5, 1911, as “explanatory and supplementary” to the Franco-German Agreement of 1909. The effect of the new Agreement was practically to give France as free a hand in Morocco as England has in Egypt, with the reservation that “the proceedings of France in Morocco leave untouched the economic equality of all nations.” The Agreement further gives France “entire freedom of action” in Morocco, including measures of police. The rights and working area of the Morocco State bank were left as they stood under the Act of Algeciras. The sovereignty of the Sultan is assumed, but not explicitly declared. The compensation to Germany for her agreement to “put no hindrances in the way of French administration” and for the “protective rights” she recognizes as “belonging to France in the Shereefian Empire” was the cession by France to Germany of a large portion of her Congo territory in mid-Africa, with access to the Congo and its tributaries, the Sanga and Ubangi.
While the ground-idea of Germany’s policy of economic expansion, and the source of all her trouble with England, is her insistence on her “place in the sun,” the difficulty attending it for other nations is to determine the place’s nature and extent, so that every one shall be comfortable and prosperous all round.
The alterations in conditions among civilized nations during the last half-century, more especially in all that relates to international intercourse–political, financial, commercial, social–makes it reasonable to suppose that changes must follow in the conduct of their foreign policies. The fact also, recognized by no country more clearly than by Germany, that the profitable regions of the earth are already appropriated makes an economic policy for her all the more advisable. An economic policy, moreover, is, notwithstanding her apparent militarism, most in harmony with the peaceful and industrious character of her people. Unfortunately, the stage in progress where the political and commercial interests of all nations have become defined and adjusted has not yet been reached, though the numerous agreements between the Great Powers of recent years go far towards clearing the way for so desirable a consummation. Unfortunately, too, it is in the very process of finding bases for such agreements that international jealousies and misunderstandings arise; and hence in securing peace, governments and peoples are at all times nowadays most in jeopardy of war. This consideration alone might very well be used to justify nations in keeping their military and naval forces strong and ready. Perhaps some day such forms of force will not be wanted, though admittedly the great majority of people still refuse to believe that the changes which have occurred have altered the fundamental attitude of countries to each other, and remain firmly convinced that to-day, as yesterday and the day before, great nations are moved by an irresistible desire to add to their territories and in every way aggrandize themselves, by diplomacy if possible, and if diplomacy fails, by force.
It is, of course, impossible to say with certainty what the real designs of the Emperor and his Government in this regard were during the Morocco episode, or are now. Some believe that their designs have always aimed, and still aim, at depriving Great Britain of her position of superiority in respect of territory, maritime dominion, and trade. Others hold that they seek and will have, _coute que coute_, new territory for Germany’s increasing population, and look with greedy eyes towards South America and even Holland. Others yet again represent them as incessantly on the watch to seize a harbour here or there as a coaling station for warships and a basis of attack. But an unbiased survey of the annals of the Emperor’s reign hitherto does not bear out any of these assertions. A policy of territorial expansion as such, mere earth-hunger, cannot be proved against him. Prince Bismarck was no colonial enthusiast, though he passes for being the founder of Germany’s present colonial policy; and even to-day the colonial party in Germany, though a very noisy, is not a very large or influential one. Samoa–East Africa–Kiao-tschau–the Carolines–Heligoland–the Cameroons: how can the acquisition of comparatively insignificant and unprofitable places like these be used for proving that the might of Germany is or has been directed towards territorial conquest?
What, it may however be asked, of the Morocco adventure? Of the speech at Tangier? Of the sending of the _Panther_ to Agadir? Of the demand for compensation in Central Africa? Until the Morocco question arose, all the quarrels amongst the Powers regarding territory were caused by the territorial ambition of France, or Russia, or Italy–not of Germany; and it was not until France showed openly, by sending her troops to Fez, and thus ignoring the Act of Algeciras, that Germany put forward claims for territorial compensation in connection with Morocco. The visit of the Emperor to Tangier in 1905, a year after the Anglo-French Agreement, was doubtless an unpleasant surprise for both England and France. And not without good cause; for England and France are naturally and historically Mediterranean Powers–the one as guardian of the route to her Eastern possessions, the other as the owners of a large extent of Mediterranean coast; while England, in addition, was justified in seeing with uneasiness the possibility of a German settlement at Tangier or elsewhere on the Morocco seaboard. But the Tangier visit and all that followed it was the consequence, not of an adventurous policy of territorial conquest, but of a legitimate, and not wholly selfish, desire for economic expansion.
Taken, then, as a whole, the Emperor’s foreign policy has been, as it is to-day, almost entirely economic and commercial. The same might, no doubt, be said in a general way of all civilized Occidental governments, but there never has yet been a country of which the foreign policy was so completely directed by the economic and mercantile spirit as modern Germany. The foreign policy of England has also been commercial, but it has been influenced at times by noble sentiment and splendid imagination as well. The first question the German statesman, in whose vocabulary of state-craft the word imagination does not occur, asks himself and other nations when any event happens abroad to demand imperial attention is–how does it affect Germany’s economic and commercial interests, future as well as present? What is Germany going to get out of it? The manner in which on various occasions during the reign the question has been propounded has excited criticism bordering on indignation abroad, but it should be recognized that it has invariably been answered in the long run by Germany in the spirit of compromise and conciliation.
However, all civilized nations nowadays see that war is the least satisfactory method of adjusting national quarrels, and the tendency is happily growing among them to pursue a commercial, an economic policy, a policy of peace. This is true Weltpolitik, true world-policy. Time was when wars were the unavoidable result of conditions then prevailing; but conditions have greatly altered, and war, as there is abundant evidence to show, is to-day, in almost every case, avoidable by all civilized peoples. Formerly war deranged and disturbed at any rate for the time being, the commerce and industries of the countries engaged in it; to-day, as Mr. Norman Angell demonstrates, it deranges and disturbs commerce and industry all over the world. The derangement and disturbance may, it is true, be only temporary; but there is, as always, the loss of life among the youth of the countries engaged in war to be remembered. Granted that it is pleasant and honourable to die for one’s country. Let us hope the time is coming when it will be equally pleasant and honourable to live for it.
We have done with Morocco, but to round off the record for 1905 mention should be made of an incident in the Emperor’s life which was a source of great pleasure to him after his return from his journey thither. The marriage of his eldest son, the Crown Prince, took place in the Chapel Royal of the Berlin palace on June 15, 1905, to the young Duchess Cecile of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, whose character has been alluded to elsewhere and whom all Germans look forward with pleasure to seeing one day their Empress. The marriage naturally was attended by rejoicings in Berlin similar to those shown when the Emperor was married in 1881. Their chief popular feature, now as then, was the formal entry into the capital, and its chief domestic feature a grand wedding breakfast at the Emperor’s palace. On the occasion of the latter, the Emperor, rising from his seat and using the familiar _Du_ and _Dich_ (thou and thee), addressed his newly-made daughter-in-law as follows:–
“My dear daughter Cecilie,–Let me, on behalf of my wife and my whole House, heartily welcome you as a member of my House and my family circle. You have come to us like a Queen of Spring amid roses and garlands, and under endless acclamations of the people such as my Residence city has not known for long. A circle of noble guests has assembled to celebrate this high and joyful festival with us, but not only those present, but also those who are, alas, no more, are with us in spirit: your illustrious father and my parents.
“A hundred thousand beaming faces have enthusiastically greeted you; they have, however, not merely shone with pleasure, but whoever can look deeper into the heart of man could have seen in their eyes the question–a question which can only be answered by your whole life and conduct, the question, How will it turn out?
“You and your husband are about to found a home together. The people has its examples in the past to live up to. The examples which have preceded you, dear Cecilie, have been already eloquently mentioned–Queen Louise and other Princesses who have sat on the Prussian throne. They are the standards according to which the people will judge your life, while you, my dear son, will be judged according to the standard Providence set up in your illustrious great-grandfather.
“You, my daughter, have been received by us with open arms and will be honoured and cherished. To both of you I wish from my heart God’s richest blessings. Let your home be founded on God and our Saviour. As He is the most impressive personality which has left its illuminating traces on the earth up to the present time, which finds an echo in the hearts of mankind and impels them to imitate it, so may your career imitate His, and thus will you also fulfil the laws and follow the traditions of our House.
“May your home be a happy one and an example for the younger generation, in accordance with the fine sentence which William the Great once wrote down as his confession of faith; ‘My powers belong to the world and my country.’ Accept my blessing for your lives. I drink to the health of the young married couple.”
The record of this memorable year may be closed with mention of an institution which is not only a special care of the Emperor’s, but is also a landmark in the relation of Germany and America which may prove to be the forerunner, if it has not already done so, of similar interchange of ideas and information between nations which only require mutually to understand each other in order to be the best of friends.
The system of an annual exchange of professors between America and Germany was suggested, it is believed, to the Emperor in this year by Herr Althoff, the Prussian Minister of Education. The Emperor took up the idea with enthusiasm, and after discussing it with Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, who was invited to Wilhelmshohe for the purpose, had it finally elaborated by the Prussian Ministry of Education which now superintends its working.
The original idea of an exchange only between Harvard and Berlin University professors was, thanks to the liberality of an American citizen, Mr. Speyer, extended almost simultaneously by the establishment of what are known as “Roosevelt” professorships. The holders of these positions, unlike the original “exchange” professors between Harvard and Berlin only, may be chosen by the trustees of Columbia University from any American university and can exchange duties for two terms, instead of one in the place of the exchange professors, with the professors of any German University. Harvard professors have been succesively: Francis G. Peabody, Theodore W. Richards, William H. Scofield, William M. Davis, George F. Moore, H. Munsterberg, Theobald Smith, Charles S. Minog; and Roosevelt professors: J.W. Burgess, Arthur T. Hadley, Felix Adler, Benj. Ide Wheeler, C. Alphonso Smith, Paul S. Reinsch, and William H. Sloane.
Writing to the German Ambassador in Washington, Baron Speck von Sternburg, in November, 1905, the Emperor said:
“Express my fullest sympathy with the movement regarding the exchange of professors. We are very well satisfied with Professor Peabody, the first exchange professor, and thankful to have him. He comes to me in my house, an honourable and welcome guest. My hearty thanks also to Mr. Speyer, for his fine gift for the erection of a professorship in Berlin. The exchange of the learned is the best means for both nations to know the inner nature of each other, and from thence spring mutual respect and love, which are securities for peace.”
The idea of the exchange, as described by Professor John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, the first Roosevelt professor to Germany, is
“an exchange of educators which has for its purpose the bringing of the men of learning of one country into other countries and by a comparison of fundamental ideas to arrive at a world-philosophy and a world-morality upon which the world’s peace and the world’s civilization may finally and firmly rest.”
The conception of a world-philosophy and a world-morality upon which the world’s peace and civilization may rest is not new, being now a little over 1900 years old, and, moreover, educators and men of science in all countries are constantly exchanging ideas by personal visits, correspondence, and publications; but in any case, the Emperor’s exchange system has the advantage that it brings the educators into touch with large numbers of the rising generation in America and Germany and undoubtedly helps towards a better mutual understanding of the relations, and in especial the economic relations, of the two countries.
It has worked well, and the Emperor has encouraged it by showing constant hospitality to the American professors who have come to Berlin since the system was instituted. One or two episodes have given rise to a diplomatic question as to whether or not exchange professors and their wives have the privilege of being presented at Court. The question has practically been decided in the negative. This, however, does not prevent the Emperor entertaining the professors at his palace, or making the acquaintance of the professors’ wives on other than Court ceremonious occasions.
XIII.
BEFORE THE “NOVEMBER STORM”
1906-1907
In the domestic life of the Emperor during these years fall two or three events of more than ordinary interest. From the dynastic point of view was of importance the birth of a son and heir to the Crown Prince in the Marble Palace at Potsdam.
The Emperor was at sea, on his annual northern trip, when the birth occurred. As the ship approached Bergen the town was seen to be gaily decorated with flags. As it happened, everybody on board knew of the birth except the Emperor, but none of the officers round him ventured to congratulate him, because they supposed he knew of it already and were waiting for him to refer to it. At Bergen the German Minister, Stuebel, and German Consul, Mohr, came on board. The Minister, being a diplomatist, said nothing, but the Consul, as Consuls will, spoke his mind and ventured his congratulations. “What? I am a grandfather!” exclaimed the Emperor. “Why, that’s splendid! and I knew nothing about it!” The captain of the ship then asked should he fire the salute of twenty-one guns usual on such occasions. “No,” said the Emperor, “that won’t do. Mohr is a great talker. Let us first see the official despatches from Berlin.” The party, including the Emperor, went down into the cabin to await the despatches, which were being brought from Bergen.
On their arrival a basketful of State papers was placed before the Emperor. The first one he took out was a telegram from the Sultan of Turkey with congratulations (great merriment); the second from an unknown lady in Berlin, with a name corresponding to the English “Brown,” with four lines of congratulatory poetry; and it was not until more than a hundred despatches had been opened that they came to one from the Minister of the Interior and another from the Empress announcing the birth. Popular reports at the time represented the Emperor as boiling over with anger at his being kept or left in ignorance of the happy event. As a matter of fact, he was in high good-humour, and himself mentioned a similar occurrence at Metz in 1870, when an important movement of the French army was not reported because it was assumed that it was already known to the Intelligence Department. As a public sign of his satisfaction he amnestied the half-dozen of his subjects who happened to be in gaol as punishment for _lese majeste_.
Another domestic event at this time was the celebration by the Emperor and Empress of their silver wedding. Berlin, of course, was illuminated and beflagged. There was a great gathering of royal relatives, a State banquet, and a special parade of troops. At the latter were remarkable for their huge proportions two former grenadiers of the regiment of Guards the Emperor commanded in his youth. They were now settled in America, but came over to Germany on the Emperor’s particular invitation and, of course, at his private expense.
The last item of domestic interest this year (1906) worth record was the marriage of Prince Eitel Frederick, the Emperor’s second son, with Princess Sophie Charlotte of Oldenburg. In his speech to the bridal pair on their wedding-day the Emperor referred to the personal likeness the young Prince bore to his great-grandfather, Emperor William, and expressed the hope that the Prince might grow more like him in character from year to year.
Meantime the Emperor had to pass through a season of great annoyance owing to the scandal which arose in connection with the so-called “Camarilla.” The existence of a small and secret group of viciously minded men among the Emperor’s entourage was disclosed to the public by the well-known pamphleteer, Maximilian Harden, a Jew by birth named Witowski, who as a younger man had been on semi-confidential terms with Prince Bismarck and subsequently with Foreign Secretary von Holstein. As a result of Harden’s disclosures some highly placed friends of the Emperor were compromised and had ultimately to disappear from public life as well as from the Court. It was perfectly evident throughout that the Emperor had been totally ignorant of the private character of the men forming the “Camarilla,” and nothing was proved to show that the group which formed it had ever unduly, or indeed in any fashion, influenced him.
An allusion made to the scandal by a deputy in the Reichstag brought the Chancellor, Prince von Buelow, to his feet in defence of the monarch. “The view,” he said,
“that the monarch in Germany should not have his own opinions as to State and Government, and should only think what his Ministers desire him to think, is contrary to German State law and contrary to the will of the German people”
(“Quite right,” on the Right). “The German people,” continued the Chancellor,
“want no shadow-king, but an Emperor of flesh and blood. The conduct and statements of a strong personality like the Emperor’s are not tantamount to a breach of the Constitution. Can you tell me a single case in which the Emperor has acted contrary to the Constitution?”
The Chancellor concluded:
“As to a Camarilla–Camarilla is no German word. It is a hateful, foreign, poisonous plant which no one has ever tried to introduce into Germany without doing great injury to the people and to the Prince. Our Emperor is a man of far too upright a character and much too clear-headed to seek counsel in political things from any other quarter than his appointed advisers and his own sense of duty.”
The Camarilla scandal was all the more painful as it was made a ground for insinuations disgraceful to German officers as a body. Such insinuations were, as they would be to-day, entirely unfounded.
Another thing that annoyed the Emperor this year was the publication of ex-Chancellor Prince Hohenlohe’s Memoirs. The publication drew from him a telegram to a son of the ex-Chancellor in which he expressed his “astonishment and indignation” at the publication of confidential private conversations between him and Prince Hohenlohe regarding Prince Bismarck’s dismissal. “I must stigmatize,” the Emperor telegraphed,
“such conduct as in the last degree tactless, indiscreet, and entirely inopportune. It is a thing unheard-of that occurrences relating to a sovereign reigning at the time should be published without his permission.”
Germans as a people are passionately fond of dancing, and though everybody knows that the people of Vienna bear away the palm in this respect, claim to be the best waltzers in the world. The Emperor, accordingly, won great popularity among the dancers of his realm this year by lending a favourable ear to the sighing of the young ladies of the provincial town of Crefeld for a regiment which would provide them with a supply of dancing partners. The Emperor took occasion to visit the town, and brought with him a regiment of the Guards from Duesseldorf to form part of the new garrison. He was received by the city authorities, and was at the same time, doubtless, greeted from balcony and window by multitudes of fair-haired Crefeld maidens, who looked with delightful anticipations on the gallant soldiers, who were to relieve the tedium of their evenings, riding by. “To-day,” the Emperor told the assembled city fathers, “I have kept my word to the town of Crefeld, and when I make a promise I keep it too (stormy applause). I have brought the town its garrison and the young ladies their dancers.” The “stormy applause” was again renewed–amid, one may imagine, the enthusiastic waving of pocket-handkerchiefs from the windows and the balconies.
The salient feature of foreign politics just now was, naturally, the close on March 31st of the Conference of Algeciras. Its results have been referred to in the chapter on Morocco, and mention need only be made here of the famous telegram regarding it sent by the Emperor on April 12th of this year (1906) to the Foreign Minister of Austria, Count Goluchowski. “A capital example of good faith among allies!” he telegraphed to the Count, meaning Austria’s support of Germany at Algeciras. “You showed yourself a brilliant second in the tourney, and can reckon on the like service from me on a similar occasion.”
Internal affairs, and particularly the parliamentary situation in Germany, had during the three or four years before that of the “November Storm” demanded a good deal of the Emperor’s attention. The everlasting fight with the rebel angels of the Hohenzollern heaven, the Social Democracy, had been going on all through the reign. Now the Emperor would fulminate against it, now his Chancellor, Prince von Buelow, would attack it with brilliant ability and sarcasm in Parliament. Still the Social Democratic movement grew, still the _Vorwaerts_, the party organ, continued to rail at industrial capitalists and the large landowners alike, still Herr Lucifer-Bebel bitterly assailed every measure of the Government. The fact seems to be that the people were getting restive under the imperial burdens the Emperor’s world-policy entailed. The cost of living, partly as a result of the new German tariff, with maximum and minimum duties, which now replaced the Caprivi commercial treaties, was steadily rising. The Morocco episode had ended without territorial gain, if with no loss of national honour or prestige. The Poles were antagonized afresh by a stricter application of the Settlement Law for Germanizing Prussian Poland. Colonial troubles in South-west Africa with Herero and other recalcitrant tribes were making heavy demands on the Treasury.
The parliamentary situation was, as usual, at the mercy of the Centrum party, which, with its hundred or more members, can always make a majority by combining with Liberal parties of the Left (including the Socialists) or Conservative parties of the Right. In December, 1906, when the Budget was laid before Parliament, it was found to contain a demand for about L1,500,000 for the troops in South-west Africa. The Centrum refused to grant more than L1,000,000, and required, moreover, an undertaking that the number of troops in the colony should be reduced. The Social Democrats, with a number of Progressives and other Left parties sufficient to form a majority, joined the Centrum, and the Government demand was rejected by 177 to 168 votes. On the result of the voting being declared, Chancellor von Buelow solemnly rose and drew a paper from his pocket. It was an order from the Emperor dissolving Parliament.
The general elections were to be held in January following, and great efforts were made by the Emperor and Chancellor to secure a Government majority against the combined Centrists and Socialists. The country was appealed to to say whether Germany should lose her African colonies or not; a patriotic response was made, and, though the Centrum, as always, came back to Parliament in undiminished strength, the Socialists lost one-half of their eighty seats.
The Emperor, needless to say, was tremendously gratified. On the night the final results were announced he gave a large dinner-party at the Palace, and read out to the Royal Family and his guests the bulletins as they came in. Towards one o’clock in the morning the official totals were known. The streets were knee-deep in snow, but the people were not deterred from making a demonstration in their thousands before the palace. By and by lights were seen moving hurriedly to and fro along the first floor containing the Emperor’s apartments. A general illumination of the suite of rooms followed, a window was thrown up, and the Emperor, bare-headed, was seen in the opening. Instantly complete stillness fell on the vast square, and the Emperor, leaning far out over the balcony, and evidently much excited, spoke in stentorian tones and with a dramatic waving of his right arm as follows: “Gentlemen!”–the “gentlemen” included half the hooligans of Berlin, but such are the accidents of political life–
“Gentlemen! This fine ovation springs from the feeling that you are proud of having done your duty by your country. In the words of our great Chancellor (Bismarck), who said that if the Germans were once put in the saddle they would soon learn to ride, you can ride and you will ride, and ride down, any one who opposes us, especially when all classes and creeds stand fast together. Do not let this hour of triumph pass as a moment of patriotic enthusiasm, but keep to the road on which you have started.”
The speech closed with a verse from Kleist’s “Prince von Homburg,” a favourite monarchist drama of the Emperor’s, conveying the idea that good Hohenzollern rule had knocked bad Social-Democratic agitation into a cocked hat.
The result of the elections enabled the Chancellor to form a new “bloc” party in Parliament, consisting of conservatives and Liberals, on whose united aid he could rely in promoting national measures. As the Chancellor said, he did not expect Conservatives to turn into Liberals and Liberals into Conservatives overnight nor did he expect the two parties to vote solid on matters of secondary interest and importance; but he expected them to support the Government on questions that concerned the welfare of the whole Empire.
Before 1907, the year we have now reached, Franco-German and Anglo-German relations had long varied from cool to stormy. They had not for many years been at “set-fair,” nor have they apparently reached that halcyon stage as yet. During the Moroccan troubles it was generally believed that on two or three occasions war was imminent either between France and Germany or between Germany and England. That there was such a danger at the time of M. Delcasse’s retirement from the conduct of French foreign affairs just previous to the Algeciras Conference is a matter of general conviction in all countries; but there is no publicly known evidence that danger of war between England and Germany has been acute at any time of recent years. Nor at any time of recent years has the bulk of the people in either country really desired or intended war. There has been international exasperation, sometimes amounting to hostility, continuously; but it was largely due to Chauvinism on both sides, and was in great measure counteracted by the efforts of public-spirited bodies and men in both countries, by international visits of amity and goodwill, and by the determination of both the English and German Governments not to go to war without good and sufficient cause.
Among the most striking testimonies to this determination was the visit of the Emperor to England in November, 1907.
The visit was made expressly an affair of State. The Emperor was accompanied by the Empress, and the visit became a pageant and a demonstration–a pageant in respect of the national honours paid to the imperial guests and a demonstration of national regard and respect for them as friends of England. Nothing could have been simpler, or more tactful or more sincere than the utterances, private as well as public, of the Emperor throughout his stay. His very first speech, the few words he addressed to the Mayor of Windsor, displayed all three qualities. “It seems to me,” he said, “like a home-coming when I enter Windsor. I am always pleased to be here.” At the Guildhall subsequently, referring to the two nations, he used, and not for the first time, the phrase “Blood is thicker than water.”
At the Guildhall, on this occasion, the Emperor reminded his hearers that he was a freeman of the City of London, having been the recipient of that honour from the hands of Lord Mayor Sir Joseph Savory on his accession visit to London in 1891. He then referred to the visit of the Lord Mayor, Sir William Treloar, to Berlin the year previous, and promised a similar hearty welcome to any deputation from the City of London to his capital. “In this place sixteen years ago,” continued the Emperor,
“I said that all my efforts would be directed to the preservation of peace. History will do me the justice of recognizing that I have unfalteringly pursued this aim. The main support, however, and the foundation of the world’s peace is the maintenance of good relations between our two countries. I will, in future also, do all I can to strengthen them, and the wishes of my people are at one with my own in this.”
The procession that followed upon the visit to the Guildhall made a special impression on the Emperor. “I was so close to the people,” he said afterwards,
“who were assembled in hundreds of thousands, that I could look straight into their eyes, and from the expression on their faces I could see that their reception of the Empress and myself was no artificial welcome but an out-and-out sincere one. That stirred us deeply and gave us great satisfaction. The Empress and I will take back with us recollections of London and England we shall never forget.”
While at Windsor the Emperor received a deputation of sixteen members of Oxford University, headed by Lord Curzon, who came to present him with the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws voted him by the University while he was still on his way to England. It was a picturesque scene: the members of the University in their academic robes were surrounded by a brilliant company representing the intellect of the country; and the Emperor, with the doctor’s hood over his field-marshal’s uniform, was the cynosure of all eyes.
The Emperor’s reply to Lord Curzon’s address, highly complimentary to the University though it was, was perhaps chiefly remarkable for the expression of his expectations from the Rhodes’ Scholarship foundation. “The gift of your great fellow-countryman, Cecil Rhodes,” he said,
“affords an opportunity to students, not only from the British colonies, but also from Germany and the United States, to obtain the benefits of an Oxford education. The opportunity afforded to young Germans during their period of study to mix with young Englishmen is one of the most satisfactory results of Rhodes’s far-seeing mind. Under the auspices of the Oxford _alma mater_, the young students will have an opportunity of studying the character and qualities of the respective nations, of fostering by this means the spirit of good comradeship, and creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and friendship between the two countries.”
The Emperor had always admired the Colossus of South Africa, discerning in him no doubt many of those attributes which he felt existed in himself or which he would like to think existed; and the admiration stood the test of personal acquaintance when Cecil Rhodes visited Berlin in March, 1899, in connexion with his scheme for the Cape to Cairo railway. It does not sound very complimentary to his own subjects, the “salt of the earth,” but it is on record that the Emperor then said to Rhodes that he wished “he had more men like him.” At the close of the visit the Empress returned to Germany, while the Emperor took a much needed rest-cure for three weeks at Highcliffe Castle, a country mansion in Hampshire he rented for the purpose from its owner, Colonel Stuart-Wortley.
In the course of this work, it may have been noticed, no particular attention has been devoted to the Emperor in his military capacity. The reason is, because it is taken for granted that all the world knows the Emperor in his character as War Lord, that he is practically never out of uniform, and that his care for the army is only second–if it is second–to that for the stability and power of his monarchy. The two things in fact are closely identified, and, from the Emperor’s standpoint, on both together depend the security, and to a large extent the prosperity, of the Empire. He knows or believes that Germany is surrounded by hordes of potential enemies, as a lighthouse is often surrounded by an ocean that, while treacherously calm, may at any time rage about the edifice; that round the lighthouse are gathered his folk, who look to it for safety; and that the monarchy is the lighthouse itself, a _rocher de bronze_, towering above all.
In this connexion it may be noted that the army in Germany is not a mercenary body like the English army, but is simply and solely a certain portion of the people, naturally the younger men, passing for two or three years, according as they serve in the infantry or cavalry, through the ranks. The system of recruiting, as everybody knows, is called conscription; it ought rather to be described as a system of national education, whereby the rude and raw youth of the country is converted into an admirable class of well-disciplined, self-respecting and healthy, as well as patriotic, citizens. The Emperor believes, contrary to the opinion of many English army officers, that a man to be a good soldier must also be a good Christian, and thus we find him enforcing, or trying to enforce, among his officers the moral qualities which Christianity is meant to foster.
Among these qualities is simplicity of life, and as a result of simplicity of life, contentment with simple and not too costly pleasures. We saw the Emperor as a young colonel forbidding his officers to join a Berlin club where gambling was prevalent. This year, after a luxurious lunch at one of the regimental messes, he issues an order, or rather an edict, expressing his wish that officers in their messes should content themselves with simpler food and wines, and in particular that when he himself is a guest, the meal should consist only of soup, fish, vegetables, a roast and cheese. Ordinary red or white table-wine, a glass of “bowl” (“cup”), or German champagne should be handed round. Liqueurs, or other forms of what the French know as “chasse-cafe,” after dinner were best avoided. The edict of course caused amusement as well as a certain amount of discontent with what was felt to be a kind of objectionable paternal interference, and it is doubtful whether it has had much lasting effect. Even now, the German officer laughingly tells one that when the Emperor dines at an officers’ mess either French champagne (which is infinitely superior to German) is poured into German champagne bottles, or else the French label is carefully shrouded in a napkin that swathes the bottle up to the neck. Apropos of German champagne, a story is current that Bismarck, one day dining at the palace, refused the German champagne being handed round. The Emperor noticed the refusal and said pointedly to Bismarck: “I always drink German champagne, because I think it right to encourage our national industries. Every patriot should do so.” “Your Majesty,” replied the grim old Chancellor, “my patriotism does not extend to my stomach.”
In the domain of aesthetics this year the Emperor had some pleasant and some painful experiences. Joachim, the great violinist, and a great favourite of his, died in August, and his death was followed next month, September, by that of the composer Grieg, the “Chopin of the North,” as the Emperor called him, whose friendship the Emperor had acquired on one of his Norwegian trips. Quite at the end of the year his early tutor, Dr. Hinzpeter, for whom he always had a semi-filial regard, passed away.
On the other hand, among the Emperor’s pleasant experiences may be reckoned the visit of Mr. Beerbohm Tree and his English company to the German capital. Their repertory of Shakespearean drama greatly delighted the Emperor, who expressed his pleasure to Mr. Tree and his fellow-players personally, and did not dismiss them without substantial tokens of his appreciation.
Earlier in the year the French actress, Suzanne Depres, visited Berlin and appealed strongly to the Emperor’s taste for the “classical” in music and drama. Inviting the actress to the royal box, he said to her:
“You have shown us such a natural, living Phaedra that we were all strongly moved. How fine a part it is! As a youngster I used to learn verses from ‘Phaedra’ by heart. I am told that in France devotion to classical tradition is growing weaker, and that Moliere and Racine are more and more seldom played. What a pity! Our people, on the contrary, remain faithful to their great poets and enjoy their works. After school comes college, and after college–the theatre. It should elevate and expand the soul. The people do not need any representation of reality–they are well acquainted with that in their daily lives. One must put something greater and nobler before them, something superior to ‘La Dame aux Camelias.'”
A month later, however, he made one of his extremely rare visits to an ordinary Berlin theatre to see–“The Hound of the Baskervilles”!
Meanwhile in domestic politics Chancellor von Buelow’s famous “bloc” continued to work satisfactorily, notwithstanding difficulties arising from the conflicting interests of industry and agriculture, Free Trade and Protection and differences of creed and race. At the end of this year it was near falling asunder in connection with the question of judicial reform, but Prince von Buelow kept it together for a while by an impassioned appeal to the patriotism of both parties. In the course of the speech he told the House how, when he was standing at Bismarck’s death-bed, he noticed on the wall the portrait of a man, Ludwig Uhland, who had said “no head could rule over Germany that was not well anointed with democratic oil,” and drew the conclusion from the contrast between the dying man of action and the poet that only the union of old Prussian conservative energy and discipline with German broad-hearted, liberal spirit could secure a happy future for the nation. The “bloc,” as we shall see, broke up in 1909 and Prince von Buelow resigned. The Chancellor afterwards attributed his fall entirely to the Conservatives, but it is possible, even probable, that it was in at least some measure due to the events of the _annus mirabilis_, 1908, which now opened.
XIV
THE NOVEMBER STORM
1908
The “November Storm” was a collision between the Emperor and his folk, a result of his so-called “personal regiment.”
In a general way the latter phrase is intended to describe and characterize the method of rule adopted by the Emperor from the very beginning of his reign, especially as exhibited in his semi-official utterances, public and private, in his correspondence, private conversation, and public and private conduct generally. According to the popular interpretation of the Imperial Constitution–the nearest thing to a Magna Charta in Germany–the Emperor should observe, in his words and acts, a reserve which would prevent all chance of creating dissension among the federated States and in particular would secure the avoidance of anything which might disturb Germany’s relations to foreign countries or interfere with the course of Germany’s foreign policy as carried on through the regular official channel, the Foreign Office. The ground for this popular interpretation is a constitutional device which to an Englishman, if it be not offensive to say so, can only recall the well-known definition of a metaphysician as “a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat, _which is not there_.”
The device is known as the Chancellor’s “responsibility,” which was regarded, and is still regarded in Germany, as at once “covering” the Emperor and offering to his folk a safeguard against unwisdom or caprice on his part. The nature of this responsibility which is evidenced by the Chancellor signing the Emperor’s edicts and other official statements, is so frequently discussed by German politicians, the position of the Chancellor–the Grand Vizier of Germany he has been picturesquely called–is so influential, and the intercourse between the Emperor and the Chancellor is so close, exclusive, and confidential, that an examination of the meaning of the term “responsibility” in this connexion is desirable.
Whenever the Emperor does anything important or surprising, especially in foreign policy, the first question asked by his subjects is, has he taken the step with the knowledge, and therefore with the joint responsibility, of the Chancellor? If the answer is in the negative, it is the “personal regiment” again, and people are angry: if the latter, they may disapprove of the step and grumble at it, but it is covered by the Chancellor’s signature and they can raise no constitutional objection. Hence the demand usually made on such occasions for an Act of Parliament once for all defining fully and clearly the Chancellor’s responsibilities. According to Prince von Buelow, and it is doubtless the Emperor’s own view, the responsibility mentioned in the Constitution is a “moral responsibility,” and only refers to such acts and orders of the Emperor as immediately arise out of the governing rights vested in him, not to personal expressions of opinion, even though these may be made on formal occasions; and the Prince goes on to say that if a Chancellor cannot prevent what he honestly thinks would permanently and in an important respect be injurious to the Empire, he is bound to resign.
The Chancellor, then, takes responsibility of some kind. But responsibility to whom? To the Emperor? To the Parliament? To the people? The answer is, solely to the Emperor, for it is the Emperor who appoints and dismisses him as well as every other Minister, imperial or Prussian, and the Emperor is only responsible to his conscience. In parliamentarily ruled countries like England Ministers are responsible to Parliament, which expresses its disapproval by the vote of a hostile majority, or in certain circumstances by a vote of censure or even impeachment. In Germany, where the parliamentary system of government does not exist, and where there is no upsetting Ministries by a hostile majority, and no parliamentary vote of censure or impeachment, no Minister, including the Chancellor, is responsible, in the English sense of the word, to Parliament; accordingly, a German Chancellor may continue in office in spite of Parliament, provided of course the Emperor supports him. At the same time the Chancellor to-day is to some indefinable extent responsible to Parliament, and therefore to the people, in so far as they are represented by it, for he must keep on tolerable terms with Parliament as well as with the Emperor, or he will have to give up office. How he is to keep on terms with a Parliament consisting of half a dozen powerful parties and as many more smaller fractions and factions is probably the part of his duties that gives him most trouble and at times, doubtless, very disagreeably interferes with the placidity of his slumbers.
There is no struggle for government in Germany between the Crown and the people: Germans have no ancient Magna Charta, no Habeas Corpus, no Declaration of Rights to look back to on the long road to liberty. In the protracted struggle for government between the English people and their rulers, the people’s victory took the form of parliamentary control while retaining the monarch as their highest and most honoured representative. Socially he is their master, politically their servant, the “first servant of the State.” In Germany there has never, save for a few months in 1848, been any struggle of a similar political extent or kind. German monarchs including the Emperor, have applied the expression “first servant of the State” to themselves, but they did not apply it in the English sense. They applied it more accurately. In Germany the State means the system, the mechanism of government, inclusive of the monarch’s office: in England the word “State” is more nearly equivalent to the word “people.” To serve the system, the government machinery, is the first duty of the monarch, and government is not a changing reflection of the people’s will, but a permanent apparatus for maintaining the power of the Crown, harmonizing and reconciling the sentiments and interests of all parts of the Empire, and for conducting foreign policy.
It may be objected that legislation is made by the Reichstag, that the Reichstag has the power of the purse, and that it is elected by universal suffrage; but in Germany the Government is above and independent of the Reichstag; legislation is not made by the Reichstag alone, since it requires the agreement of the Federal Council and of the Emperor, and–what is of great practical importance–Government issues directions as to how legislation shall be carried into effect. The law of 1872 passed against the Jesuits forbade the “activity” of the Order, but the interpretation of the word “activity,” and with it the effects of the law, were left to the Government.
Kings of Prussia and German Emperors have never shown much affection for their Parliaments: Parliaments are apt to act as a check upon monarchy, and in Prussia in particular to interfere with the carrying out of the divinely imposed mission. This is not said sarcastically; and the Emperor, like some of his ancestors, has more than once expressed the same thought. Parliaments in Germany only date from after the French Revolution. After that event there came into existence in Germany the Frankfurt Parliament (1848), the Erfurt Parliament (1850), and the Parliament of the German Customs Union (1867). These, however, were not popularly elected Parliaments like those of the present day, but gatherings of class delegates from the various Kingdoms and States composing the Germany and Austria of the time. Since the Middle Ages there had always been quasi-popular assemblies in Prussia, but they too were not elected, and only represented classes, not constituencies. The present Parliaments in Prussia and the Empire are Constitutional Parliaments in the English sense, elected by universal suffrage, the one indirectly, the other directly.
The present Prussian Diet dates from the “First Unified Diet,” summoned by Frederick William IV in 1847, which was transformed next year under pressure of the revolutionists into a “national assembly.” This was treated a year after by General Wrangel almost exactly as Cromwell treated the Rump. The General entered Berlin with the troops which a few weeks before had fought against the revolutionists of the “March days.” He passed along the Linden to the royal theatre, where the “national assembly” was in session, and was met at the door by the leader of the citizens’ guard with the proud words, “The guard is resolved to protect the honour of the National Assembly and the freedom of the people, and will only yield to force.”
Wrangel took out his watch–one can imagine the old silver “turnip”–and with his thumb on the dial replied:
“Tell your city guard that the force is here. I will be responsible for the maintenance of order. The National Assembly has fifteen minutes in which to leave the building and the city guard in which to withdraw.”
In a quarter of an hour the building was empty, and next day the city guard was dissolved. A month later the King, Frederick William IV, granted his _octroyierte_ Constitution–that is, a concession of his own royal personal will–which established the Diet as it is to-day.
Emperor William I, as King of Prussia, had a good deal of trouble with his Parliament, and in 1852 wanted to abdicate rather than rule in obedience to a parliamentary majority–it was the “conflict time” about funds for army reorganization. Bismarck dissuaded him from doing so by promising to become Minister and carry on the government, if need were, without a parliament and without a budget. He actually did so for some years, but there was no change in the Constitution as a result.
Nor has there been any constitutional change in the relations of Crown to Parliament during the present reign. As a young man, the Emperor had of course nothing to do with Parliament, Prussian or Imperial, and since his accession, though there is always latent antagonism and has been even friction at times, he has, generally speaking, lived on “correct,” if not friendly terms with it. There is little, if any, of the devoted affection one finds for the monarch in the English Parliament.
And not unnaturally. Early in his reign, in 1891, he made a reference to Parliament little calculated to evoke affection. “The soldier and the army,” he said to his generals at a banquet in the palace, “not parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded together the German Empire. My confidence is in the army–as my grandfather said at Coblenz: ‘These are the gentlemen on whom I can rely.'” Again, a year or two afterwards he dissolved the Reichstag for refusing to accept a military bill and did not conceal his anger with the recalcitrant majority. In 1895 he telegraphed to Bismarck his indignation with the Reichstag for refusing to vote its congratulations on the old statesman’s eightieth birthday. In 1897, speaking of the kingship “von Gottes Gnaden” he took occasion to quote his grandfather’s declaration that “it was a kingship with onerous duties from which no man, no Minister, no Parliament, no people” could release the Prince. In 1903 his Chancellor, Prince Buelow, had to defend in Parliament his action in the case of the Swinemunde despatch already mentioned. Attention was called to the telegram in the Reichstag and the Chancellor defended the Emperor. He denied that the telegram was an act of State–it was a personal matter between two sovereigns, the statement of a friend to a friend. “The idea,” said the Chancellor, who contended that the Emperor had a right to express his opinions like any citizen,
“that the monarch’s expression of opinion is to be limited by a stipulation that every such expression must be endorsed with the signature of the Chancellor is wholly foreign to the Constitution.”
Next day the Chancellor had again occasion to defend his imperial master against a charge of being “anti-social,” brought by the Socialist von Vollmar, who coupled the charge with insinuations of absolutism and Caesarism. Prince Buelow said:
“Absolutism is not a German word, and is not a German institution. It is an Asiatic plant, and one cannot talk of absolutism in Germany so long as our circumstances develop in an organic and legal manner, respecting the rights of the Crown, which are just as sacred as the rights of the burgher; respecting also law and order, which are not disregarded ‘from above,’ and will not be disregarded. If ever our circumstances take on an absolute, a Caesarian, form, it will be as the consequence of revolution, of convulsion. For on revolution follows Caesarism as W follows U–that is the rule in the A B C of the world’s history.”
There is no harm in reminding Prince Buelow that the letter V–which may be a very important link in the chain of events–comes between U and W. It is clear also that the Chancellor must have forgotten his English history for the moment, for though Cromwell’s rule may be called Caesarism of a kind, the reign of William III, of “glorious, pious, and immortal memory,” which followed the revolution of 1688, could not fairly be so named.
Three years later, in 1906, Prince Buelow found it necessary to defend the Emperor on the score of the “personal regiment.” “The view,” Prince Buelow said,
“that the monarch should have no individual thoughts of his own about State and government, but should only think with the heads of his Ministers and only say what they tell him to say, is fundamentally wrong–is inconsistent with State rights and with the wish of the German people”;
and he concluded by challenging the House to mention a single case in which the Emperor had acted unconstitutionally. None of these bickerings between Crown and Parliament went to the root of the constitutional relations between them, but they betrayed the existence of popular dissatisfaction with the Emperor, which in a couple of years was to culminate in an outbreak of national anger.
An occurrence calls for mention here, not only as a kind of harbinger of the “storm,” but as one of the chief incidents which in the course of recent years have troubled Anglo-German relations. The incident referred to is that of the so-called “Tweedmouth Letter,” which was an autograph letter from the Emperor to Lord Tweedmouth, First Lord of the British Admiralty at the time, dated February 17, 1908, and containing among other matters a lengthy disquisition on naval construction, with reference to the excited state of feeling in England caused by Germany’s warship-building policy. The letter has never been published, but it is supposed to have been prompted by a statement made publicly by Lord Esher, Warden of Windsor Castle, in the London _Observer_, to the effect that nothing would more please the German Emperor than the retirement of Sir John Fisher, the originator of the Dreadnought policy, who was at the time First Lord of the Admiralty; and to have contained the remark that “Lord Esher had better attend to the drains at Windsor and leave alone matters which he did not understand.” The Emperor was apparently unaware that Lord Esher was one of the foremost military authorities in England.
The sending of the letter became known through the appearance of a communication in the London _Times_ of March 6th, with the caption “Under which King?”–an allusion to Shakespeare’s “Under which king, Bezonian, speak or die”–and signed “Your Military Correspondent.” The writer announced that it had come to his knowledge that the German Emperor had recently addressed a letter to Lord Tweedmouth on the subject of British and German naval policy, and that it was supposed that the letter amounted to an attempt to influence, in German interests, the Minister’s responsibility for the British Naval Estimates. The correspondent concluded by demanding that the letter should be laid before Parliament without delay. The _Times_, in a leading article, prognosticated the “painful surprise and just indignation” which must be felt by the people of Great Britain on learning of such “secret appeals to the head of a department on which the nation’s safety depends,” and argued that there could be no question of privacy in a matter of the kind. The article concluded with the assertion that the letter was obviously an attempt to “make it more easy for German preparations to overtake our own.” The incident was immediately discussed in all countries, publicly and privately.
Everywhere opinion was divided as to the defensibility of the Emperor’s action; in France the division was reported by the _Times_ correspondent to be “bewildering.” All the evidence available to prove the Emperor’s impulsiveness was recalled–the Kruger telegram, the telegram to Count Goluchowski, the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, after the Morocco Conference, characterizing him as a “brilliant second (to Germany) in the bout at Algeciras,” the premature telegram conferring the Order of Merit on General Stoessel after the fall of Port Arthur, and other evidence, relevant and irrelevant. Reuter’s agent in Berlin telegraphed on official authority that the Emperor “had written as a naval expert.”
On the whole, continental opinion may be said to have leaned in favour of the Emperor. Mr. Asquith, the English Prime Minister, at once made the statement that the letter was a “purely private communication, couched in an entirely friendly spirit,” that it had not been laid before the Cabinet, and that the latter had come to a decision about the Estimates before the letter arrived.
All eyes and ears were now turned to Lord Tweedmouth, and on March 10th he briefly referred to the matter in the House of Lords. He received the letter, he said, in the ordinary postal way; it was “very friendly in tone and quite informal”; he showed it to Sir Edward Grey, who agreed with him that it should be treated as a private letter, not as an official one; and he replied to it on February 20th, “also in an informal and friendly manner.” A discussion, in which Lord Lansdowne and Lord Rosebery took part, followed, the former–to give the tone, not the words of his speech–handing in a verdict of “Not guilty, but don’t do it again,” against the Emperor, and laying down the principle that “such a communication as that in question must not be allowed to create a diplomatic situation different from that which has been established through official channels and documents”; and Lord Rosebery, while he recognized the importance of the incident, seeking to minimize its effects by an attitude of banter. The treatment of the incident by the House of Commons as a whole gave considerable satisfaction in Germany, where all efforts were directed to showing malevolent hostility to Germany on the part of the _Times_.
Prince von Buelow dealt with the letter in a speech on the second reading of the Budget on March 24, 1908. After referring to the Union Internationale Interparlementaire, which was to meet in a few months in Berlin, and to the “very unsatisfactory situation in Morocco,” he said:–
“From various remarks which have been dropped in the course of the debate I gather that this honourable House desires me to make a statement as to the letter which his Majesty the Kaiser last month wrote to Lord Tweedmouth. On grounds of discretion, to the observance of which both the sender and receiver of a private letter are equally entitled, I am not in a position to lay the text of the letter before you, and I add that I regret exceedingly that I cannot do so. The letter could be signed by any one of us, by any sincere friend of good relations between Germany and England (hear, hear). The letter, gentlemen, was in form and substance a private one, and at the same time its contents were of a political nature. The one fact does not exclude the other; and the letter of a sovereign, an imperial letter, does not, from the fact that it deals with political questions, become an act of State (‘Very true,’ on the Right).
“This is not–and deputy Count Kanitz yesterday gave appropriate instances in support–the first political letter a sovereign has written, and our Kaiser is not the first sovereign who has addressed to foreign statesmen letters of a political character which are not subject to control. The matter here concerns a right of action which all sovereigns claim and which, in the case of our Kaiser also, no one has a right to limit. How his Majesty proposes to make use of this right we can confidently leave to the imperial sense of duty. It is a gross, in no way justifiable misrepresentation, to assert that his Majesty’s letter to Lord Tweedmouth amounts to an attempt to influence the Minister responsible for the naval budget in the interests of Germany, or that it denotes a secret interference in the internal affairs of the British Empire. Our Kaiser is the last person to believe that the patriotism of an English Minister would suffer him to accept advice from a foreign country as to the drawing up of the English naval budget (‘Quite right,’ hear, hear). What is true of English statesmen is true also of the leading statesmen of every country which lays claim to respect for its independence (‘Very true’). In questions of defence of one’s own country every people rejects foreign interference and is guided only by considerations bearing on its own security and its own needs (‘Quite right’). Of this right to self-judgment and self-defence Germany also makes use when she builds a fleet to secure the necessary protection for her coasts and her commerce (‘Bravo!’). This defensive, this purely defensive character of our naval programme cannot, in view of the incessant attempts to attribute to us aggressive views with regard to England, be too often or too sharply brought forward (‘Bravo!’). We desire to live in peace and quietness with England, and therefore it is embittering to find a portion of the English Press ever speaking of the ‘German danger,’ although the English fleet is many times stronger than our own, although other lands have stronger fleets than us and are working no less zealously at their development. Nevertheless it is Germany, ever Germany, and only Germany, against which public opinion on the other side of the Channel is excited by an utterly valueless polemic (‘Quite right’).
“It would be, gentlemen,”
the Chancellor continued,
“in the interests of appeasement between both countries, it would be in the interest of the general peace of the world, that this polemic should cease. As little as we challenge England’s right to set up the naval standard her responsible statesmen consider necessary for the maintenance of British power in the world without our seeing therein a threat against ourselves, so little can she take it ill of us if we do not wish our naval construction to be wrongly represented as a challenge against England (hear, hear, on the Right and Left). Gentlemen, these are the thoughts, as I judge from your assent, which we all entertain, which find expression in the statements of all speakers, and which are in harmony with all our views. Accept my additional statement that in the letter of his Majesty to Lord Tweedmouth one gentleman, one seaman, talks frankly to another, that our Kaiser highly appreciates the honour of being an admiral of the British navy, and that he is a great admirer of the political education of the British people and of their fleet, and you will have a just view of the tendency, tone, and contents of the imperial letter to Lord Tweedmouth. His Majesty consequently finds himself in this letter not only in full agreement with the Chancellor–I may mention this specially for the benefit of Herr Bebel–but, as I am convinced, in agreement with the entire nation. It would be deeply regrettable if the honourable opinions by which our Kaiser was moved in writing this letter should be misconstrued in England. With satisfaction I note that the attempts at such misconstruction have been almost unanimously rejected in England (‘Bravo!’ on the Right and Left). Above all, gentlemen, I believe that the admirable way in which the English Parliament has exemplarily treated the question will have the best effect in preventing a disturbance of the friendly relations between Germany and England and in removing all hostile intention from the discussions over the matter (agreement, Right and Left).
“Gentlemen, one more observation of a general nature. Deputies von Hertling and Bassermann have recommended us, in view of the suspicions spread about us abroad, a calm and watchful attitude of reserve, and for the treatment of the country’s foreign affairs consistency, union, and firmness. I believe that the foreign policy we must follow cannot be