From the New Palace our foreigner will probably drive to the Marble Palace, which (for Baedeker is ever at one's elbow with the facts) he will mark was built in 1796 by Frederick William II, who died here, was completed in 1845 by Frederick William IV, and was the residence of the present Emperor at the time of his accession.
But while our foreigner has been hurrying from one palace to another, with his mind in a fog of historical and topographical confusion—if he is an American, half-hoping, half-expecting to meet the Emperor or Empress and secure a bow from one or other, or—why not?—one of William's well-known vigorous poignées de main, there is always one thought predominant in his mind—Sans Souci. That is the real object of his quest, the main attraction that has brought him, all unconscious of it, to Berlin, and not the laudable, but wholly mistaken efforts of the "Society for the Promotion of Tourist Traffic," which seeks to lure the moneyed and reluctant foreigner to the German capital. Our foreigner enters the Park of Sans Souci and his spirit is at rest. Now he knows where he really is—not in the wonderful new German Empire, not in modern Berlin with its splendid and to him unspeaking streets, its garish "night-life," its faultily-faultless municipal propriety, not in Potsdam, "the true cradle of the Prussian army," as Baedeker, deviating for an instant into metaphor, describes it, but simply in Sans Souci. He is now no longer in the twentieth century, but the eighteenth—one hundred and fifty years ago or more—in Frederick's day, the period of pigtails, of giant grenadiers in the old-time blue and red coats, the high and fantastic shako made of metal and tapering to a point, of three-cornered hats resting on powdered wigs, of yellow top-boots, and exhaling the general air of ruffianly geniality characteristic of the manners and soldiers of the age.
As our foreigner advances through the park, where, as he is told, the Emperor makes a promenade each Christmas Eve distributing ten-mark pieces (spiteful chroniclers make it three marks) to all and sundry poor, he will notice the fountain "the water of which rises to a height of 130 feet," with its twelve figures by French artists of the eighteenth century, and ascend the broad terraced flight of marble steps up which the present Crown Prince is credited with once urging his trembling steed—leading to the Mecca of his imagination, the palace Sans Souci itself. The building is only one story high, not large, reminding one somewhat of the Trianon at Versailles, though lacking the Trianon's finished lightness and elegance, yet with its semicircular colonnade distinctly French, and impressive by its elevated situation. The chief, the enduring, the magical impression, however, begins to form as our foreigner commences his pilgrimage through the rooms in which Frederick passed most of his later years. As he pauses in the Voltaire Chamber he imagines the two great figures, seated in stiff-backed chairs at a little table on which stand, perhaps, a pair of cut Venetian wine-glasses and a tall bottle of old Rheinish—the great man of thought and the great man of action, the two great atheists and freethinkers of Europe, with their earnest, sharply featured faces, and their wigs bobbing at each other, discussing the events and tendencies of their time. And how they must have talked—no wonder Frederick, though the idol of his subjects, withdrew for such discourse from the society of the day, with its twaddle of the tea-cups and its parade-ground platitudes.
As in our own time, there was then no lack of stimulating topics. The influence of the old Catholicism and the old feudalism was rapidly diminishing, the night of superstition was passing, and the age of reason, that was to culminate with such tremendous and horrible force in the French Revolution, was beginning to dawn. The encyclopaedists, with Diderot and d'Alembert in the van, were holding council in France, mobilizing the intellects of the time, and, like Bacon, taking all knowledge for their province, for a fierce attack on the old philosophy, the old statecraft, the old art, and the old religion. Are such topics and such men to deal with them to be found to-day, or have all the great problems of humanity and its intellect been started, studied, and resolved? And are motor-cars, aeroplanes, dances, Dreadnoughts, millinery, rag-time reviews, auction bridge, the rise and fall of stocks, and the last extraordinary round of golf, all that is left for the present generation to discuss?
However, the guardian of the palace has moved on, the other members of the party are getting bored, and our foreigner follows the guardian's lead. Thus conducted, he passes through half a dozen rooms, each a museum of historical associations—the dining-room with its round table made famous by Menzel's picture (now in the Berlin National Gallery) in which Frederick and his guests are seen seated, but in which it is difficult if not impossible to be certain which is the host; the concert-room with the clock which Frederick was in the habit of winding up, and which "is said to have stopped at the precise moment of his death, 2.20 a.m., August 17th, 1786"; the death-chamber with its eloquent and pathetic statue, Magnussen's "Last Moments of Frederick the Great"; the library and picture gallery. Strangely enough, Baedeker has no mention of a female subject portrayed in the concert-room in all sorts of attitudes and in all sorts and no sort of costume. Yet every one has heard of La Barberini, the only woman, the chroniclers (and Voltaire among them) assure us, Frederick ever loved. She was no woman of birth or wit like the Pompadour, Récamier or Staël, but of merely ordinary understanding and the wife of a subordinate official of the Court. She charmed Frederick, however, and may have loved him. If so, let us remember that the morals of those days were not those of ours, and not grudge the lonely King his enjoyment of her beauty and amiability.
One thing only remains for our foreigner to see—the coffin of Frederick in the old Garrison Church. It lies in a small chamber behind the pulpit and looks more like the strong box of a miser than the last resting-place of a great king. For such a man it seems poor and mean, but probably Frederick himself did not wish for better. He must have known that his real monument would be his reputation with posterity. In fact the chroniclers agree, and the noble statue of Magnussen confirms the impression, that at the close of his stormy life he was glad finally to be at rest anywhere. "Quand je serai là," he was wont to say, pointing to where his dogs were buried in the palace park, "je serai sans souci."
In every court there is a disposition on the part of courtiers to agree with everything the monarch says, to flatter him as dexterously as they can, to minister to princely vanity, if vanity there be, to "crawl on their bellies," in the choice language of hostile court critics, or "wag their tails" and double up their bodies at every bow; show, in short, in different ways, often all unconsciously, the presence of a servile and self-interested mind. The disposition is not to be found in courts alone. It is one of the commonest and most malignant qualities of humanity, and can any day and at any hour be observed in action in any Ministry of State, any mercantile office, any great warehouse, any public institution, in every scene, in fact, where one or many men are dependent for their living on the favour or caprice of another. On the other hand, let it not be forgotten that this innate tendency of human nature is at times replaced by another which has frequently the same outward manifestations, but is not the same feeling, the sentiment, namely, of embarrassment arising from the fear of being servile, and the equally frequent embarrassment arising from that principle which is always at work in the mind, the association of ideas, which in the case of a monarch presents him to the ordinary mortal as embodying ideas of grandeur, power, might, and intellect to which the latter is unaccustomed. Education, economic changes, and the art of manners have done much to conceal, if not eradicate, human proneness to servility, and the Byzantinism of the time of Caligula and Nero, of Tiberius, Constantine, or Nikiphoros, of the Stuarts and the Bourbons, has long been modified into respect for oneself as well as for the person one addresses. There are, however, still traces of the old evil in the German atmosphere, and in especial a tendency among officials of all grades to be humble and submissive to those above them and haughty and domineering to those below them. The tendency is perhaps not confined to Germany, but it seems, to the inhabitant of countries where bureaucracy is not a powerful caste, to penetrate German society and ordinary life to a greater degree—yet not to a great degree—than in more democratic societies.
The Emperor naturally knows nothing of such a thing, for there is no one superior to him in the Empire in point of rank, and he is much too modern, too well educated, and of too kindly and liberal a nature to encourage or permit Byzantinism towards him on the part of others. Indeed Byzantinism was never a Hohenzollern failing. In his able work on German civilization Professor Richard tells of some Silesian peasants who knelt down when presenting a petition to Frederick William I, and were promptly told to get up, as "such an attitude was unworthy of a human being." Only on one occasion in the reign has an action of the Emperor's afforded ground for the suspicion that he was for a moment filled with the spirit of the Byzantine emperors—namely, when he demanded the "kotow" from the Chinese Prince Tschun, who led the "mission of atonement" to Germany. This, however, was not really the result of a Byzantine character or spirit, but of the excusable anger of a man whose innocent representative had been treacherously killed.
Of affinity with the idea of Byzantinism is that as frequently occurring idea in German court and ordinary life conveyed by the word "reaction." Here again we have one of those qualities to be found among mankind everywhere and always: the instinct opposed to change, even to those changes for the good we call progress, the disposition that made Horace deride the laudator temporis acti se puero of his day, the feeling of the man who laments the passing of the "good old times" and the military veteran who assures us that "the country, sir, is going to the dogs." In political life such men are usually to be found professing conservatism, owners of land, dearer to them often than life itself, which they fear political change will damage or diminish. In Germany the Conservative forces are the old agrarian aristocracy, the military nobility, and the official hierarchy, who make a worship of tradition, hold for the most part the tenets of orthodox Protestantism, dread the growing influence of industrialism, and are members of the Landlords' Association: types of a dying feudalism, disposed to believe nothing advantageous to the community if it conflicts with any privilege of their class. Under the name of Junker, the Conservative landowners of the region of Prussia east of the Elbe, they have become everywhere a byword for pride, selfishness, in a word—reaction. They and men of their kidney are to be distinguished from the German "people" in the English sense, and hold themselves vastly superior to the burghertum, the vast middle class. They dislike the "academic freedom" of the university professor, would limit the liberty of the press and restrain the right of public meeting, and increase rather than curtail the powers of the police. On the other hand, if they are a powerful drag on the Emperor's Liberal tendencies—Liberal, that is, in the Prussian sense—towards a comprehensive and well-organized social policy, they are at least reliable supporters of his Government for the military and naval budgets, since they believe as whole-heartedly in the rule of force as the Emperor himself. The German Conservative would infinitely prefer a return to absolute government to the introduction of parliamentary government. At the same time it should not be supposed that the Emperor or his Chancellor, or even his Court, are reactionary in the sense or measure in which the Socialist papers are wont to assert. It is doubtful if nowadays the Emperor would venture to be reactionary in any despotic way. Given that his monarchy and the spirit that informs it are secure, that Caesar gets all that is due to Caesar, and that he and his Government are left the direction of foreign policy, he is quite willing that the people should legislate for themselves, enjoy all the rights that belong to them under the Rechtsstaat established by Frederick the Great, and, in short, enjoy life as best they can.
VII.
"DROPPING THE PILOT"
Heinrich von Treitschke, the German historian, writing to a friend, speaks of the dismissal of Prince Bismarck as "an indelible stain on Prussian history and a tragic stroke of fate the like of which the world has never seen since the days of Themistocles."
Opinions may differ as to the indelibility of the stain—which must be taken as a reflection on the conduct of the Emperor; and parallels might perhaps be found, at least by students of English history, in the dismissal of Cardinal Wolsey by Henry VIII, or that of the elder Pitt by George III. But there may well be general agreement as to the tragic nature of the fall, for it was a struggle between a strong personality and the unknown, but irresistible, laws of fate.
The historic quarrel between the Emperor and his Chancellor was not merely the inevitable clash between two dispositions fundamentally different, but between—to adapt the expression of a modern poet—"an age that was dying and one that was coming to birth." Old Prussia was giving place to New Germany. The atmosphere of war had changed to an atmosphere of peace. The standards of education and comfort were rising fast. The old German idealism was being pushed aside by materialism and commercialism, and the thoughts of the nation were turning from problems of philosophy and art to problems of practical science and experiment. Thought was to be followed by action. Mankind, after conversing with the ancients for centuries, now began to converse with one another. The desire for national expansion, if it could not be gratified by conquest, was to be satisfied by the spread of German influence, power, activity, and enterprise in all parts of the world. Such a collision of the ages is tragedy on the largest scale, for nothing can be more tragic—more inevitable or inexorable—than the march of Progress.
The natures of the two men were, in important respects, fundamentally different. Bismarck's nature was prosaic, primitive, unscrupulous, domineering: a type which in an English schoolboy would be described as a bully, with the modification that while the bully in an English school is always depicted as a coward at heart (a supposition, however, by no means always borne out in after-life), Bismarck had the courage of a bull-dog. Moreover, Bismarck was a Conservative, a statesman of expediency. The Emperor is a man of principle; and as expediency, in a world of change, is a note of Conservatism, so, in the same world, is principle the leit-motiv of Liberalism. To call the Emperor a man of principle may appear to be at variance with general opinion as founded on exceptional occurrences, but these do not supply sufficient material for a fair judgment, and there are many acts of his reign which show him to be Liberal in disposition.
Not, it need hardly be said, Liberal in the English political sense. Liberalism in England—the two-party country—usually means a strong desire to vote against a Conservative on the assumption that the Conservative is nearly always completely wrong and never completely right. As will be seen later, there is no political Liberalism in the English sense in Germany. The Emperor's Liberalism shows itself in his sympathy with his people in their desire for improvement as a society of which he is the head, selected by God and only restricted by a constitutional compact solemnly sworn to by the contracting parties. Proofs of this sympathy might be adduced—his determination to carry through his grandfather's social policy against Bismarck's wish, however hostile he was and is to Social Democracy; his steadfast peace policy, however nearly he has brought his country to war; his encouragement of the arts among the lower classes, however limited his views on art may be; his friendly intercourse with people of all nationalities and occupations.
The characters also of the two men were different. Bismarck's was the result of civilian training; the Emperor's of military training. Bismarck had small regard for manners, and would have scoffed had anyone told him "manners makyth man"; the Emperor is courtesy itself, as every one who meets him testifies. Bismarck was fond of eating and drinking, with the appetite of a horse and the thirst of a drayman, until he was nearly eighty, and smoked strong cigars from morning to night—a very pleasant thing, of course, if you can stand it. The Emperor has never cared particularly for what are called the pleasures of the table, is fond of apples and one or two simple German dishes, and has never been what in Germany is called a "chain-smoker." Bismarck appears not to have had the faintest interest in art; the Emperor, while of late disclaiming in all art company his lack of expert knowledge, has always found delight in art's most classical forms.
Yet the two men had some deeply marked traits of character in common. The Emperor, as was Bismarck, is Prussian, that is to say mediaeval, to the core, notwithstanding that he had an English mother and lived in early childhood under English influences. He has always exhibited, as Bismarck always did, the genuine qualities of the Prussian—self-confidence, tenacity of purpose, absolute trust in his own ideals and intolerance of those of other people, impatience of rivalry, selfishness for the advantage of Prussia as against other German States, as strong as that for the newly born Empire against other countries. Finally, the Emperor is convinced, as Bismarck was convinced, that in the first and last resort, a society, a people, a nation, is based on force and by force alone can prosper, or even be held together. Neither Bismarck nor the Emperor could ever sympathize with those who look to a time when one strong and sensible policeman will be of more value to a community than a thousand unproductive soldiers.
Long before he became Imperial Chancellor Bismarck had done masterly and important work for the country. In 1862 he began his career by filling the post of interim Minister President of Prussia at a time when the present Emperor was still an infant. It was on taking up the position that he made the celebrated statement that "great questions cannot be decided by speeches and majority-votes, but must be resolved by blood and iron." Born in April, 1815, two months before the battle of Waterloo, at Schoenhausen, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, not far from Magdeburg, he studied at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin and passed two steps of the official ladder—Auscultator and Referendar—which may be translated respectively protocolist and junior counsel. His parliamentary career began in 1846, two years before the second French Revolution. At that time Prussia was an absolute monarchy, without a Constitution or a Parliament. There was no conscription, that foundation-stone of Prussian power and of the modern German Empire. Then came the agitated days of 1848, the sanguinary "March Days" in Berlin. Frederick William IV was on the throne, and in 1847 permitted the calling of a Parliament, the forerunner of the present Reichstag; but only to represent the "rights," not the "opinions," of the people. "No piece of paper," cried the King, "shall come, like a second Providence, between God in heaven and this land!" That, too, was Bismarck's sentiment, courageously expressed by him when the Diet was debating the idea of introducing the English parliamentary system, and proved by him in character and conduct until the day of his death. He would have made a splendid Jacobite!
The three "March Days," the 18th, 19th, and 20th of March, 1848, form one of the few occasions in Prussian or German history on which Crown and people came into direct and serious conflict. According to German accounts of the episode the outbreak of the revolution in France was followed by a large influx into Berlin of Poles and Frenchmen, who instigated the populace to violence. Collisions with the police occurred, and on March 15th barricades began to be erected. Traffic in the streets was only possible with the aid of the military. The King was in despair, not so much, the accounts say, at the danger he was in of losing his throne as at the shedding of the blood of his folk, and issued a proclamation promising to grant all desirable reforms, abolishing the censorship of the press, and summoning the Diet to discuss the terms of a Constitution. The citizens, however, continued to build barricades, made their way into the courtyards of the palace, and demanded the withdrawal of the troops. The King ordered the courtyards to be cleared, the palace guard advanced, and, either by accident or design, the guns of two grenadiers went off. No one was hit, but cries of "Treason!" and "Murder!" were raised. Within an hour a score of barricades were set up in various parts of the town and manned by a medley of workmen, university students, artists, and even men of the Landwehr, or military reserve.
At this time there were about 14,000 troops at the King's disposal, and with these the authorities proceeded against the mob. A series of scattered engagements between mob and military began. They lasted for eight hours, until at midnight General von Prittwitz, who was in command of the troops, was able to report to the King that the revolution was subdued.
Next morning, however, the 19th, numerous deputations of citizens presented themselves at the palace, and assuring the King that it was the only means of preventing the further effusion of blood, renewed the request for the withdrawal of the troops. The King consented, notwithstanding the opposition of Prince, afterwards Emperor, William, and the troops were drawn off to Potsdam. The citizens thereupon appointed a National Guard, which took charge of the palace, and in the evening a vast crowd appeared beneath the King's windows bearing the corpses of those who had fallen at the barricades during the two preceding days. The dead bodies were laid in rows in the palace courtyard, and the King was invited out to see them. He could not but obey, and bowed to the crowd as he stood bareheaded before the bodies.
It is clear from the occurrences in Berlin in 1848 that while the Prussian idea of monarchy is deeply rooted in the German mind, the possibility of a sudden change in public sentiment and a radical alteration of the relations between Crown and people are never at any time to be wholly disregarded. Hence it is that the Emperor and his Government are so insistent on the doctrine of Heaven-granted sovereignty, so ready to support more or less autocratic monarchies in other parts of the world, and so sensitive to popular movements like Anarchism and Nihilism in Russia, or the always-smouldering Polish agitation and the propaganda of the Social Democracy in Germany. When King Frederick William IV said to his assembled generals at Potsdam a week after the "March Days," "Never have I felt more free or more secure than when under the protection of my burghers," his words were drowned in the buzz of murmurs and the angry clanking of swords. The Emperor to-day might, or might not, endorse the words of his ancestor. Most probably he would not; for, judging by his speeches, his care for the army, the military state with which he surrounds himself, and his habitual appearance in uniform, he, though in truth far more a civil monarch than the War Lord foreign writers delight in painting him, is evidently determined to rely only on his soldiers for every eventuality at home as well as abroad.
Perhaps the best German authorities on Bismarck's falling-out with the young Emperor are the statements regarding it to be found in the memoranda supplied at the time by Prince Bismarck himself to Dr. Moritz Busch; the Memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, subsequently Imperial Chancellor; and the monograph on Bismarck by Dr. Hans Blum, one of the Chancellor's confidants. The memoranda supplied to Busch make regrettably few references to the subject, beyond giving the terms of the official resignation and some scanty addenda thereto; but enough is said generally by Busch concerning Bismarck's conversations to show that the Chancellor was deeply mortified by his dismissal. Bismarck indeed expressly denies this in a conversational statement quoted by an able Bismarckian writer of our own time, Dr. Paul Liman; but in view of subsequent events and statements the denial can hardly be taken as sincere. The passage referred to is as follows:—
"I bear no grudge against my young master, who is fiery and lively. He wishes to make all men happy, and that is very natural at his age. I, for my part, believe perhaps less in this possibility, and have told him so too. It is very natural that a mentor like myself does not please him, and that he therefore rejects my advice. An old carthorse and a young courser go ill in harness together. Only politics are not so easy as a chemical combination: they deal with human beings. I wish certainly that his experiments may succeed, and am not in the least angry with him. I stand towards him like a father whom a son has grieved; the father may suffer thereby, but all the same he says to himself, 'He is a fine young fellow.' When I was young I followed my King everywhere: now that I am old I can no longer accompany my master when he travels so far. Accordingly it is unavoidable that counsellors who remained closer to him should win his confidence at my expense. He is very easily influenced when one puts before him ideas which he supposes will happily affect the condition of the people, and he can hardly wait to put them into operation. The Kaiser will achieve reputation at once: I have my own to watch over, to defend. I have sacrificed myself for renown and will not place it in jeopardy."
Prince Hohenlohe's Memoirs are much more valuable in respect of positive information, and especially in supplying an account of the incident taken from the lips of the Emperor himself. The Prince was without his great predecessor's ability, but was much more amiable and sincere. He was, moreover, a friend of both the parties concerned, and he impartially jotted down events at the time they occurred. Lastly, if he was a courtier at heart, he was that not wholly unknown thing, an honest one. Dr. Hans Blum is obviously a partisan of the great Chancellor's, but he may also be referred to for a fairly connected account of the fall and the events that succeeded it up to the time of Bismarck's death on July 30, 1898.
Apart from the differences in the ages and temperaments of the Emperor and the Chancellor, there were differences in their views as to certain measures of policy. There was a difference of opinion as to German policy regarding Russia. Friendship with that country had been the policy of both Emperor William I and Bismarck, and the latter had effected a reinsurance treaty with Russia, stipulating for Russian neutrality in case of a war between Germany and France, notwithstanding the subsistence of the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria, and Italy. The reinsurance treaty, which had been made for a period of three years, was now about to expire, and while Bismarck desired its renewal, the Emperor, in a spirit of loyalty to Austria, was against the renewal, and the treaty was not renewed. This was the "new course" as it regarded Russia. The difference with regard to the anti-Socialist Laws has been referred to in our chapter on the accession.
The Royal Order of September, 1852, which has been mentioned as leading immediately to the resignation, regulated intercourse between the Prussian Ministers and the Crown, its chief provision being that only the Minister President, and not individual Ministers, should have audience of the Emperor regarding matters of home and foreign policy. The Emperor desired the abrogation of the Order, for he wished to consult with the Ministers individually. The text of Bismarck's official resignation, after describing the origin of the Order, continues:
"If each individual Minister can receive commands from his Sovereign without previous arrangement with his colleagues, a coherent policy, for which some one is to be responsible, is an impossibility. It would be impossible for any of the Ministers, and especially for the Minister President, to bear the constitutional responsibility for the Cabinet as a whole. Such a provision as that contained in the Order of 1852 could be dispensed with under the absolute monarchy and could also be dispensed with to-day if we returned to absolutism without ministerial responsibility. But according to the constitutional arrangements now legally in force the control of the Cabinet by a President under the Order of 1852 is indispensable."
The Emperor replied to Prince Bismarck's resignation in a communication which the reader, according to his disposition, will regard as an effusion of the heart, immensely creditable to its composer, a model of an official reply as demanded by circumstances, a striking example of the art of throwing dust in the public eye, or an equally striking contribution to the literature of excusable hypocrisy. It was as follows:—
"MY DEAR PRINCE,—With deep emotion I learn from your request of the 18th instant that you have decided to retire from the offices which you have filled for long years with incomparable success. I had hoped not to have been compelled to entertain the thought of separation during our lives. While, however, in full consciousness of the important consequences of your retirement, I am forced to accustom myself to the thought. I do so, it is true, with a heavy heart, but in the strong confidence that the grant of your request will contribute as much as possible to the protection and preservation for as long as possible of a life and strength of unreplaceable value to the Fatherland.
"The grounds you offer for your resignation convince me that any further attempt to induce you to reconsider your determination would have no prospect of success. I acquiesce, therefore, in your wish by hereby graciously releasing you from your offices as Imperial Chancellor, President of my State Ministry, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and trust that your counsels and energy, your loyalty and devotion, will not be wanting to me and the country in the future also.
"I have considered it as one of the most valued privileges in my life that at the commencement of my reign I had you at my side as my first counsellor. What you have done and achieved for Prussia and Germany, what you have done for my House, my ancestors, and me, will remain to me and the German people in grateful and imperishable memory. But also in foreign countries your wise and energetic peace policy, which I, too, in the future also, as a result of sincere conviction, decide to take as the guiding line of my conduct, will be always gloriously recognized. It is not in my power to requite your services as they deserve. I must rest satisfied with assuring you of my own and the country's ineffaceable thanks. As a sign of this thanks I confer on you the rank of a Duke of Lauenburg. I will also send you a life-sized picture of myself.
"God bless you, my dear Prince, and grant you still many years of an old age undisturbed and blessed with the consciousness of duty faithfully done.
"In this disposition I remain to you and yours in the future also your sincere, obliged, and grateful Emperor and King,
"WILLIAM I.R."
The Emperor has never, so far as is publicly known, issued, or caused to be issued, an official account of the episode and its péripéties, but the story he poured, evidently out of a full heart, into the ears of Prince Hohenlohe, then Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine, during a midnight drive from the railway station at Hagenau to the hunting lodge at Sufflenheim, is an historical document of practically official authenticity. It appears as follows in the Prince's Memoirs:—
"STRASBURG, 26 April, 1890.
"On the evening of the 23rd, nine o'clock, I drove with Thaden and Moritz to Hagenau, there to await the arrival of the Emperor. We spent the evening with circle-officer Klemm. I went to bed at eleven o'clock in the guest-room, and slept until half-past twelve. Moritz and Thaden drove to the station with a view to changing their clothes in the train. At one o'clock I was again at the station, when the Emperor punctually arrived. I presented the gentlemen to him, and turned over General Hahnke to Baron Charpentier and Lieutenant Cramer, for them to conduct him to the hunting ground. Our journey lasted about an hour, during which the Emperor related without a pause the whole story of his quarrel with Bismarck. According to this the coolness had already begun in December. The Emperor then demanded that something should be done about the Working Class Question. The Chancellor was against doing anything. The Emperor held the view that if the Government did not take the initiative, the Reichstag, i.e. the Socialists, Centre and Progressives, would take the matter in hand, and then the Government would lag behind. The Chancellor wanted to lay the anti-Socialist Bill with the expulsion paragraph again before the Reichstag, dissolving the chamber if it did not accept the Bill, and then, if it came to disturbances, to take energetic measures. The Emperor objected, saying that if his grandfather, after a long and glorious reign, were forced to repress disturbances no one would think ill of him. It was different in his case, who had as yet accomplished nothing. People would reproach him with beginning his reign by shooting down his subjects. He was ready to act, but he wished to do it with a good conscience after endeavouring to redress the well-founded grievances of the workmen, or at least after doing everything to meet their justifiable claims.
"The Emperor therefore demanded at a ministerial conference the submission of ministerial edicts which should contain what subsequently they in fact did contain. Bismarck would not hear of it. The Emperor then laid the question before the Council of State, and eventually obtained the edicts in spite of Bismarck's opposition. Bismarck, however, secretly continued his opposition, and tried to persuade Switzerland to persevere with its idea of an International Labour Conference. The attempt was rendered nugatory by the loyal attitude of the Swiss Minister in Berlin, Roth. At the very same time Bismarck was trying to influence the diplomatists against the conference.
"The relations between the Emperor and Bismarck, already shaken by these dissensions, were still further embittered by the question of the Cabinet Order of 1852. Bismarck had often advised the Emperor to summon the Ministers to him. This the Emperor did, and as the intercourse became more frequent Bismarck took it ill, was jealous, and dragged out the Order of 1852 so as to keep Ministers from the Emperor. The Emperor resisted and acquired the abrogation of the Cabinet Order. Bismarck at first agreed, but gave no further sign in the matter. The Emperor now demanded either that the recission of the Order should be laid before him, or that Bismarck should resign—a demand which the Emperor communicated to Bismarck through General von Hahnke. The Chancellor delayed, but at length gave in the resignation on March 18th. It should be added that already, at the beginning of February, Bismarck had told the Emperor that he would retire. Afterwards, however, he declared that he had thought the position over and would remain—a thing not agreeable to the Emperor, though he made no remonstrance until the affair of the Cabinet Order came in addition. The visit of Windthorst to the Chancellor also gave rise to unpleasantness, though it was not the deciding factor. In any case the last three weeks were filled with disagreeable conversations between the Emperor and the Chancellor. It was, as the Emperor expressed it, a 'devil of a time,' and the question was, as the Emperor himself said, whether the dynasty Bismarck or the dynasty Hohenzollern should reign. The Emperor spoke very angrily, too, about the article in the Hamburg News. In foreign policy Bismarck, according to the Emperor, went his own way, and kept back from the Emperor much of what he did. 'Yes,' he said, 'Bismarck had it conveyed to St. Petersburg that I wanted to adopt an anti-Russian policy. But for that,' the Emperor added, 'he had no proofs.'
"This conversation," concludes Prince Hohenlohe, "between the Emperor and myself was told partly on the way to the lodge and partly on the way back. Between came the shooting; but there was no sport, as the Emperor took his stand in the dark under a tree on which was a cock that did not 'call.'"
The following further extracts from the Hohenlohe Memoirs are given rather with the object of showing the state of the political and social atmosphere in which the quarrel took place than as throwing any fresh light on its course. In June of the preceding year (1889) occurs an entry which registers the first signs of the coming storm. Prince Hohenlohe is telling of a visit he made in June to the Grand Duke of Baden, whom he found irritated by Bismarck's proposal, made in connection with the arrest of a Prussian police officer by the Swiss, to close the frontier against the canton Aargau. The Grand Duke, the Prince relates, quoted Herbert Bismarck as saying he "could not understand his father any longer and that people were beginning to believe he was not right in his head."
The next entry in the Journal is dated Strasburg, August 24th. It concerns another meeting with the Grand Duke, who now told him that Bismarck had changed his views and that these oscillations had puzzled the Emperor and at the same time heightened his self-consciousness; moreover, that the Emperor noticed that things were being kept back from him and was becoming suspicious. There had already been a collision between the Emperor and the Chancellor and the latter might have to go. What then? Probably the Emperor thought of conducting foreign policy himself—but that, added the Grand Duke, would be very dangerous.
The feeling at Court regarding Bismarck's fall is shown by a passage in the Memoirs about this time. It runs:
"At 1.30 p.m. dinner (at the palace) at which I sat between Stosch and Kameke. The former told me much about his own quarrel with Bismarck, and was as gay as a snow-king that he can now speak freely and that the great man is no longer to be feared. This comfortable sentiment is obvious here on all sides."
The anecdote still current in Berlin, that Bismarck actually threw an inkstand at the Emperor's head is reduced to its proper proportions by the following entry:
"The Grand Duke of Baden, with whom I was yesterday, knows a good deal about the recent crisis. He says the cause of the breach between the Emperor and Chancellor was a question of power, and that all other differences of opinion about social legislation and other things were only secondary. The chief ground was the Cabinet Order of 1852, which Bismarck pressed on the attention of the Ministers without the Emperor's knowledge, and so hindered them from going to make their reports to the Emperor. The Emperor wanted the Order rescinded, while Bismarck was against it. Nor had the conversation with Windthorst led to the breach. A talk between the Emperor and Bismarck about this conversation is said to have been so tempestuous that the Emperor subsequently said when describing it, 'He (Bismarck) all but threw the inkstand at me.'" To Hohenlohe Bismarck said, as Hohenlohe remarked that the resignation had surprised him, "Me also," and that three weeks before he did not think things would end as they had. Bismarck added: "However, it was to be expected, for the Emperor is now quite determined to rule alone."
Finally the Prince's Journal has the following:
"Two things struck me in these last three days: one that no one has any time and every one is in a greater hurry than before; and secondly, that individualities have expanded. Every individual is conscious of himself, while before, under the predominating influence of Prince Bismarck, individualities shrank and were kept down. Now they are all swollen like sponges placed in water. That has its advantages, but also its dangers. The single-minded will is lacking."
The period between the great Chancellor's fall and his death nine years later was marked by so many incidents as to make it almost as mouvementé as the period of the fall itself. He retired to Friedrichsruh, all the more immediately as the new Chancellor, General von Caprivi, showed such indecent haste in taking possession of the official residence that a portion of Bismarck's furniture was broken and rendered useless. That Bismarck retired with the angry feelings of a Coriolanus in his heart, or, as Anglo-Saxon slang would have it, of a "bear with a sore head," became evident only a few weeks later. He was visited by the inevitable interviewer, and chose the Hamburg News as the medium of communicating to the world his opinion of the new régime and the men who were conducting it; and made use of that paper with such instant vigour and acerbity that little more than two months from his retirement elapsed before the new Chancellor thought it advisable to issue instructions to Germany's diplomatic representatives warning them carefully to distinguish between the "present sentiments and views of the Duke of Lauenburg and those of the erstwhile Prince Bismarck," and to pay no serious attention to the former. Bismarck replied in the Hamburg News that he would not allow his mouth to be closed, and set about proving that he meant what he said. Nothing the men of the "new course" could do met with his approval. The first thing he fell foul of was the Anglo-German agreement of July 1, 1890, which gave Germany Heligoland in exchange for Zanzibar, deploring the badness of the bargain for Germany, and evidently not foreseeing the importance that island's position, commanding the approaches to the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, was afterwards to possess. Besides the friendliness with England, the detachment of Germany from Russia in favour of Austria, also a feature of the "new course," did not please him as tending to drive Russia into the arms of France.
His prescience, however, in this respect was demonstrated when a year later the Czar saluted a French squadron in the harbour of Cronstadt to the strains of the "Marseillaise" and signed a secret agreement that was alluded to four years later by the French Premier, M. Ribot, in the French Chamber of Deputies, who spoke of Russia as "our ally," and was publicly announced in 1897, on the occasion of President Felix Faure's visit to St. Petersburg, by the Czar's now famous employment of the words "deux nations amies et alliées."
The ex-Chancellor was as little satisfied with the new tariff treaties entered into by General Caprivi with Austria, Italy, Belgium, and other countries, which the Emperor, wiser, as events have shown, than his former Minister, characterized on their passage by Parliament as the country's "salvation" (eine rettende Tat). The ex-Chancellor's caustic but mistaken criticism was punished by the calculated neglect of the Berlin authorities to invite him to the ceremonies attending the celebration of the ninetieth birthday of his old comrade, General von Moltke, in October, 1890, and that of his funeral in the following April: still more publicly punished in connexion with the marriage of his son Herbert.
The wedding of the latter to Countess Marguerite Hoyos was to take place in Vienna on June 21, 1892, and on the 18th Prince Bismarck started with his family to attend it. The journey was a species of triumphal progress to Vienna, but it was to end in disappointment and chagrin. As the result of representations from Germany, made doubtless with the Emperor's assent, if not at his suggestion, Bismarck was met on his arrival with the news that the German Ambassador, Prince Reuss, and the Embassy staff had orders to absent themselves from the wedding, that the widow of the Crown Prince Rudolph, who had accepted a card of invitation to it, had suddenly left Vienna, and that the Emperor Franz Joseph would not receive him. The German action was explained by the publication two months later of the edict, stigmatized by Bismarck as an "Urias Letter," in which Caprivi warned foreign Governments against attaching any importance to the utterances of the Duke of Lauenburg. The Bismarckian and anti-Bismarckian storm came up afresh in Germany. Bismarck was reproached by the Government as "injuring monarchical feeling," and by his enemies as a traitor to his country; while the angry statesman published a statement expressing the opinion that
"the control of private social intercourse abroad, and the influencing of dinner invitations, were not tasks for which high officers of State were selected nor public money for the payment of diplomatic representatives voted":
doubting, at the same time, "if the foreign archives of any other country than Germany could show a parallel to the incident."
The storm, notwithstanding, had a good effect, for it brought out in bold relief the immense regard and respect the overwhelming majority of his countrymen entertained for the chief architect of their Empire; and when Bismarck fell ill at Kissingen in 1893 the Emperor, subordinating his political animosities to the chivalrous instincts of his nature, telegraphed his sorrow to the patient and offered to lend him one of the royal castles for the purpose of his convalescence. Bismarck declined, but not ungratefully, and the way to a reconciliation was opened. Next year, 1894, Bismarck suffered from influenza, and when this time the Emperor sent an adjutant to Friedrichsruh to express his regret, invited him to attend the festivities on the forthcoming royal birthday, and sent along with the invitation a flask of Steinberger Cabinet from the imperial cellar in characteristic German proof of the sincerity of his feelings, the country was delighted. Bismarck accepted the invitation and doubtless drank the Steinberger; and the visit to Berlin followed in due time.
The reconciliation was completed amid sympathetic popular rejoicing. The Emperor sent his brother, Prince Henry, to bring the ex-Chancellor from the railway station to the palace, where the Emperor himself, surrounded by a brilliant staff, stood to welcome the guest. Bismarck spent the day at the palace with the Royal Family and was taken back to the railway station in the evening by the Emperor. A few days later the Emperor returned the visit at Friedrichsruh.
The quiet of the ex-Chancellor's last years was once unpleasantly affected by the Reichstag in 1895, at the instance of his parliamentary enemies, rejecting, to its everlasting discredit, a proposal for an official vote of congratulation to the ex-Chancellor on his eightieth birthday; but against this unpleasantness may be set his gratification at the receipt of a telegram from the Emperor expressing his "deepest indignation" at the rejection.
Prince Bismarck died on July 30th, 1898, and was laid to rest at Friedrichsruh in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, while the world paused for a moment in its occupations to discuss with sympathetic admiration the dead man's personality and career. Bismarck's spirit is still abroad in Germany, and the popular memory of him is as fresh now as though he died but yesterday. It is more than probable, much rather is it certain, that all trace of irritation with the proud old Chancellor has long faded from the Emperor's mind: indeed at no time does there seem to have been sentiments of personal or permanent rancour on one side or the other. The episode, in short, was an inevitable collision of ages, temperaments, and times, regrettable no doubt as a possibly harmful example of political discord among the leaders of the nation, but—with due respect for the judgment of so capable an historian as von Treitschke—leaving no "indelible stain" either on the pages of German history or on the reputations of Bismarck or the Emperor.
VIII.
SPACIOUS TIMES
1891-1899
A great English poet sings of the "spacious days" of Queen Elizabeth. From the German standpoint the decade from the fall of Bismarck to the end of the century may not inaptly be described as the spacious days of William II and the modern German Empire. To the Englishman the actual territorial acquisitions of Germany during the period must seem comparatively insignificant, but, taken in connection with the Emperor's speeches, the building of the German navy, the Caprivi commercial treaties, the growth of friendly relations and of trade and intercourse with America, North and South, they mean the opening of a new era in the history of the Empire—the era of Weltpolitik.
Heligoland was obtained in exchange for Zanzibar in 1890, and is now regarded by Germans much as Gibraltar or Malta is regarded by Englishmen. The first Kiel regatta, due solely to the initiative of the Emperor, and starting the development of sport in all fields which is a feature of modern German progress, ethical and physical, was held in 1894. The Caprivi commercial treaties were concluded within the period. The Kiel Canal, connecting the Baltic and North Sea, and giving the German fleet access to all the open waters of the earth, was opened in 1895. In 1896 the Kruger telegram testified to imperial interest in South African developments. The Hamburg-Amerika Line now sent a specially fast mail and passenger steamer across the Atlantic. The district of Kiautschau was leased from China in 1898, securing Germany a foothold and naval base in the Far East. In the same year the modern Oriental policy of the Empire was inaugurated by the Emperor's visit to Palestine and his declaration in the course of it that he would be the friend of Turkey and of the three hundred millions of Mohammedans who recognized the Sultan as their spiritual head. To this year also belongs the measure, the most important in its consequences and significance of the reign hitherto, the passing of the First Navy Law. Finally, in 1899 Germany acquired the Caroline Islands by purchase from Spain, and certain Samoan Islands by agreement with England and America.
Nothing was more natural as a result of the new world-policy than a change in the mental outlook of the people. It inaugurated in Germany an era somewhat analogous to the era inaugurated in England by the widening and brightening of the Englishman's horizon under Elizabeth. The analogy may not be closely maintainable throughout, but, generally speaking, just as the eyes of Englishmen suddenly saw the possibilities of expansion disclosed to them by Drake, Raleigh, and Frobisher, so the Emperor's appeals, with the pursuance of German colonial policy and the attempt to develop Germany's African possessions, led to an awakening in Germany of a similar, if weaker, kind. To this awakening the building of the German navy contributed; and though it did not appeal to the German imagination as did the deeds of the old navigators to that of Elizabethan Englishmen, it widened the national outlook and fired the people with new imperial ambitions. Hitherto, moreover, Germany's attention had been confined almost solely to trade within continental boundaries: henceforth she was to do business actively and enterprisingly with all parts of the world.
The Emperor's thoughts on the subject were expressed in January, 1896, at a banquet in the Berlin palace given to a miscellaneous company of leading personalities of the time. The occasion was the celebration of the twenty-fifth year of the modern Empire's foundation. He said:
"The German Empire becomes a world-empire. Everywhere in the farthest parts of the earth live thousands of our fellow-countrymen. German subjects, German knowledge, German industry cross the ocean. The value of German goods on the seas amounts to thousands of millions of marks. On you, gentlemen, devolves the serious duty of helping me to knit firmly this greater German Empire to the Empire at home."
The expression "greater German Empire" immediately reminded the Englishman of his own "Greater Britain," and he concluded that the Emperor was secretly thinking of rivalling him in the extent and value of his colonial possessions. Possibly he was, and doubtless he ardently desired to see Germany owning large and fertile colonies; but it is quite as probable he was thinking of his economic Weltpolitik, and knew as well then as he does now that it must be left to time and the hour to show whether they fall to her or not.
In the same order of ideas may be placed, though it is anticipating somewhat, the Emperor's utterances at Aix in 1902 and three years later at Bremen. At Aix, after describing the failure of Charlemagne's successors to reconcile the duties of a Holy Roman Emperor with those of a German King, he continued:
"Now another Empire has arisen. The German people has once more an Emperor of its own choice, with the sword on the field of battle has the crown been won, and the imperial flag flutters high in the breeze. But the tasks of the new Empire are different: confined within its borders it has to steel itself anew for the work it has to do, and which it could not achieve in the Middle Ages. We have to live so that the Empire, still young, becomes from year to year stronger in itself, while confidence in it strengthens on all sides. The powerful German army guarantees the peace of Europe. In accord with the German character we confine ourselves externally in order to be unconfined internally. Far stretches our speech over the ocean, far the flight of our science and exploration; no work in the domain of new discovery, no scientific idea but is first tested by us and then adopted by other nations. This is the world-rule the German spirit strives for."
At Bremen he said:
"The world-empire I dream of is a new German Empire which shall enjoy on all hands the most absolute confidence as a quiet, peaceable, honest neighbour—not founded by conquest with the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations aiming at the same end."
The Emperor's world-policy was referred to more than once about this time by Chancellor Prince Bülow in the Reichstag. "It is," he said on one occasion, "Germany's intention and duty to protect the great and ever-growing oversea interests which she has acquired through the development of conditions." "We recognize," he continued,
"that we have no longer interests only round our own fireside or in the neighbourhood of the church clock, but everywhere where German industry and Germany's commercial spirit have penetrated; and we must foster these interests within the bounds of possibility and good sense."
"Our world-policy," he said on another occasion in the same place,
"is not a policy of interference, much less a policy of intervention: had it interfered in South Africa (he was alluding to the Boer War) it must have intervened, and intervention implies the use of force."
On yet another occasion he explained that a prudent world-policy must go hand in hand with a sound protective policy for home industry, and that its basis must be a strong national home policy.
There is nothing in all this, even supposing Germany's interests at that time were purposely exaggerated, to which the foreigner could reasonably object. The foreigner felt perhaps slightly uncomfortable when the same statesman, departing for a moment from his usual objective standpoint, spoke of the German "traversing the world with a sword in one hand and a spade and trowel in the other"; but otherwise no act of Germany's world-policy need have inspired alarm, or need inspire alarm at the present time, in sensible foreign minds. The rapidity of its action probably helped to excite a feeling that it could not be altogether honest or above-board; but it should be remembered that the new Empire had much leeway to make up in the race with other nations, and that quick development was rendered necessary by her commercial treaties, by her protective system, by the unexpected growth of industry and trade, by the continuous increase of population, the development of the mercantile marine, and the growing consciousness of national strength.
And if there is nothing in Germany's development of her world-policy to which the foreigner can reasonably object, there is much in it at which he can reasonably rejoice. Competition is good for him, for it puts him on his mettle. A large and prosperous German population extends his markets and means more business and more profit. The minds of both Germans and the foreigner become broader, more mutually sympathetic and appreciative. The elder Pitt warned his fellow-countrymen against letting France become a maritime, a commercial, or a colonial power. She has become all three, and what injury has occurred therefrom to England or any other nation?
Germany's colonial development dates from about the year 1884, the period of the "scramble for Africa." The first step to acquiring German colonies for the Empire was taken in 1883, when a merchant of Bremen, Edouard Luderitz, made an agreement with the Hottentots by which the bay of Angra Pequena in South-West Africa, with an area of fifty thousand square kilometres, was ceded to him. Luderitz applied to Bismarck for imperial protection. Bismarck inquired of England whether she claimed rights of sovereignty over the bay. Lord Granville replied in the negative, but added that he did not consider the seizure of possession by another Power allowable. Indignant at what he called a "monstrous claim" on all the land in the world which was without a master, Bismarck telegraphed to the German Consul at the Cape to "declare officially to the British Government that Herr Luderitz and his acquisitions are under the protection of the Empire."
The Bremen pioneer was fated to gain no advantage from his enterprise, as he was drowned in the Orange River in 1886. His example as a colonist, however, was followed by three Hanseatic merchants, Woermann, Jansen, and Thormealen, of Hamburg, who acquired land in Togo, a small kingdom to the east of the British Gold Coast, and in the Cameroons, a large tract in the bend of the Gulf of Guinea, extending to Lake Chad, and applied for German imperial protection. Bismarck sent Consul-General Nachtigall with the gunboat Moewe in 1884 to hoist the German flag at various ports. Five days after this had been done the English gunboat Flirt arrived, but was thus too late to obtain Togoland and the Cameroons for England.
Dr. Carl Peters, the German Cecil Rhodes, now arrived at Zanzibar, and on obtaining concessions from the Sultan founded the German East Africa Company, with a charter from his Government. German hopes of great colonial expansion began to run high, but they were dashed by the Anglo-German agreement of June, 1890, delimiting the spheres of England, Germany, and the Sultan of Zanzibar, and stipulating that Germany should receive Heligoland from England in return for German recognition of English suzerainty in Zanzibar and the possession of Uganda, which had recently been taken for Germany by Dr. Peters. At that time Germans thought very little of Heligoland, but there was then no Anglo-German tension, and no apprehension of an English descent on the German coast.
The lease for ninety-nine years of Kiautschau, a small area of about four hundred square miles on the coast of China, was obtained from the Chinese in connexion with the murder of two German missionaries in 1897 in the Shantung Province, of which Kiautschau forms a part. Herr von Bülow, then only Foreign Secretary, referred to the transaction in the Reichstag in words that may be quoted, as they describe German foreign policy in the Far East. "Our cruiser fleet," he said,
"was sent to Kiautschau Bay to exact reparation for the murder of German Catholic missionaries on the one hand, and to obtain greater security for the future against a repetition of such occurrences. The Government,"
he continued,
"has nothing but benevolent and friendly designs regarding China, and has no wish either to offend or provoke her. We are ready in East Asia to recognize the interests of other Great Powers in the certain confidence that our own interests will be duly respected by them. In one word—we desire to put no one in the shade, but we too demand our place in the sun. In East Asia, as in the West Indies, we shall endeavour, in accordance with the traditions of German policy, without unnecessary rigour, but also without weakness, to guard our rights and our interests."
In mentioning the West Indies the Foreign Secretary was alluding to a quarrel Germany had at this time with the negro republic of Haiti, owing to the arrest and imprisonment of a German subject in that island. Kiautschau is administratively under the German Admiralty.
The Caroline, Marianne, and Palau Islands, including the Marschall Islands and the islands of the Bismarck archipelago, were bought from Spain this year for twenty-five million pesetas, or about one million sterling. The islands are valuable in German eyes, not only for their fertility and capacity for plantation development, but as affording good harbourage and coaling stations on the sea-road to China, Japan, and Central America. By the agreement with England and America, which in this year also put an end to the thorny question of Samoan administration, Germany acquired the Samoan islands of Upolu and Sawaii in the South Sea.
The ten years we are now concerned with were perhaps the most strenuous and picturesque of the Emperor's life hitherto. He was now his own Chancellor, though that post was nominally occupied by General von Caprivi and Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe successively. He was Chancellor, too, knowing that not a hundred miles off the old pilot of the ship of State was watching, keenly and not too benevolently, his every act and word. He was conscious that the eyes of the world were fixed on him, and that every other Government was waiting with interest and curiosity to learn what sort of rival in statecraft and diplomacy it would henceforward have to reckon with. Naturally many plans coursed through his restlessly active brain, but there were always, one may imagine, two compelling and ever-present thoughts at the back of them. One of these was a determination to promote the moral and material prosperity of his people so as to make them a model and thoroughly modern commonwealth; the other, the resolve that as Emperor he would not allow Germany to be overlooked, to be treated as a quantité négligeable, in the discussion or decision of international affairs.
The Chancellorship of General von Caprivi, who had been successively Minister of War and Marine, lasted from March, 1890, to October, 1894. He may have been a good commanding general, but he has left no reputation either as a man of marked character or as a statesman of exceptional ability. Nor was either character or ability much needed. He was, as every one knew, a man of immensely inferior ability to his great predecessor, but every one knew also that the Emperor intended to be his own Chancellor, pursue his own policy, and take responsibility for it. Taking responsibility is, naturally, easier for a Hohenzollern monarch than for most men, since he is responsible to no one but himself. With the appointment of Caprivi the Emperor's "personal regiment" may be said to have begun.
During General von Caprivi's term of office some measures of importance have to be noted, among them the Quinquennat, which replaced Bismarck's Septennat and fixed the military budget for five years instead of seven; the reduction of the period of conscription for the infantry from three years to two; and the decision not to renew Bismarck's reinsurance treaty with Russia.
The chief event, however, with which Chancellor Caprivi's name is usually associated, is the conclusion of commercial treaties between Germany and most other continental countries. Other countries had followed Germany's example and adopted a protective system, and with a view to the avoidance of tariff wars, Caprivi, strongly supported, it need hardly be said, by an Emperor who had just declared that "the world at the end of the nineteenth century stands under the star of commerce, which breaks down the barriers between nations," began a series of commercial treaty negotiations.
The first agreements were made with Germany's allies in the Triplice, Austria and Italy. Treaties with Switzerland and Belgium, Servia and Rumania, followed. Russia held aloof for a time, but as a great grain-exporting country she too found it advisable to come to terms. With France there was no need of an agreement, since she was bound by the Treaty of Frankfurt, concluded after the war of 1870, to grant Germany her minimum duties. One of the regrettable results of the Empire's new commercial policy was an antagonism between agriculture and industry which now declared itself and has remained active to the present day. The political cause of Caprivi's fall from power, if power it can be called, was the twofold hostility of the Conservative and Liberal parties in Parliament, that of the Conservatives being due to the injury supposed to be done to landlord interests by the commercial treaties, and that of the Liberals by an Education Bill, which, it was alleged, would hand the Prussian school system completely over to the Church. Perhaps the main cause, however, was the general unpopularity he incurred by attacking, officially and through the press, his predecessor, Bismarck, the idol of the people.
It was in the Chancellorship of Prince Hohenlohe, which ended in 1900, that the most memorable events of this remarkable decade occurred; but, as was to be expected, and as the Emperor himself must have expected, the Prince, now a man of seventy-five, played a very secondary part with regard to them. The Prince was what the Germans call a "house-friend" of the Hohenzollern family and related to it. He was useful, his contemporaries say, as a brake on the impetuous temper of his imperial master, though he did not, we may be sure, turn him from any of the main designs he had at heart. Prince Hohenlohe, in character, was good-nature and amiability personified. He was beloved by all classes and parties, and no foreigner can read his Memoirs without a feeling of friendliness for a Personality so moderate and calm and simple. A note he makes in one of his diaries amusingly illustrates the simple side of his character. He is dining with the Emperor, when the Emperor, catching the Prince's eye, which we may be sure was on the alert to gather up any of the royal beams that might come his way, raises his glass in sign of amity. "I felt so overcome," notes the Prince, "that I almost spilt the champagne."
The famous "Kruger telegram" episode occurred during the
Chancellorship of Prince Hohenlohe.
For many years the sending of the telegram was cited as a convincing proof of the Emperor's "impulsive" character, and it was not until 1909 that the truth of the matter was stated by Chancellor von Bülow in the Reichstag. In March of that year he said:
"It has been asked, was this telegram an act of personal initiative or an act of State? In this regard let me refer you to your own proceedings. You will remember that the responsibility for the telegram was never repudiated by the directors of our political business at the time. The telegram was an act of State, the result of official consultations; it was in nowise an act of personal initiative on the part of his Majesty the Kaiser. Whoever asserts that it was is ignorant of what preceded it and does his Majesty completely wrong."
The Emperor's telegram to President Kruger, despatched on January 3, 1896, ran as follows:—
"I congratulate you most sincerely on having succeeded with your people, and without calling on the help of foreign Powers, by opposing your own force to an armed band which broke into your country to disturb the peace, in restoring quiet and in maintaining the independence of your country against external attack."
The echoes of this historic message were heard immediately in every country, but naturally nowhere more loudly than in England; and the reverberation of them is audible to the present day. In Germany, however, for a day or two, the telegram seems to have surprised no one, was indeed spoken of with approval by deputies in the Reichstag, and seems not to have occurred to any one in the light of a serious diplomatic mistake. This state of feeling did not last long, and when the English newspapers arrived an entirely new light was thrown on the matter. The Morning Post concluded an article with the words: "It is not easy to speak calmly of the Kaiser's telegram. The English people will not forget it, and in future will always think of it when considering its foreign policy." The British Government's comment on the telegram was to put a flying squadron in commission and issue an official statement urbi et orbi, calling attention to the Convention made with President Kruger in London in 1884, reserving the supervision of the foreign relations of the Transvaal to the British Government.
The Emperor himself appears to have recognized that he and his advisers had made a serious blunder, and that a gesture which, it is highly probable, was partly prompted by the chivalrous side of his character, was certain to be gravely misunderstood. At any rate his policy, or that of his Government, changed, and instead of following up his encouraging words with mediation or intervention, he assumed an attitude of neutrality towards the war which soon after began. Subsequently, in the Reichstag, Chancellor von Bülow described the course the German Government pursued immediately before and during the war; and there seems no reason to discredit his account. The speech was made apropos of the projected visit of President Kruger to Berlin, when on his tour of despair to the capitals of Europe while the war was still in progress. He was cheered by boulevard crowds in Paris, itself a thing of no great significance, and was received at the Elysée and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Delcassé. The visitor was very reserved on both occasions, and confined himself to sounding his hosts as to whether or not he could reckon on their good offices.
From Paris he started for Berlin, where he had engaged a large and expensive first-floor suite of rooms in a fashionable hotel. At Cologne, however, shortly after entering Germany, a telegram from Potsdam awaited him, announcing the Emperor's refusal to grant him audience. The imperial telegram consisted of a few words to the effect that the Emperor was "not in a position" to receive him. Nor in truth was he. An audience at that moment would have meant war between Germany and England.
As to German policy with regard to the Boer War, Prince Bülow explained that the German Government deplored the war not only because it was between two Christian and white races, that were, moreover, of the same Germanic stock, but also because it drew within the evil circle of its consequences important German economic and political interests. He went on to describe their nature, enumerating under the one head the thousands of German settlers in South Africa, the industrial establishments and banks they had founded there, the busy trade and the millions sterling of invested capital; while, as regarded the other head, the Government had to take care that the war exercised no injurious influence on German territory in that region.
The Government, the Chancellor claimed, had done everything consistent with neutrality and the conservation of German interests to hinder the outbreak of the war. It had "loyally" warned the two Dutch republics of the disposition in Europe, and left them in no doubt as to the attitude Germany would adopt if war should come. These communications were not made directly, but through the Hague authorities and the Consul-General of the Netherlands in Pretoria. At that time the United States Government had come forward with a proposal for a submission of the quarrel to its arbitration, but the proposal had been rejected by President Kruger.