These domestic tastes she has preserved, and the saying, quoted in Germany whenever she is the subject of conversation, that her character and tastes are summed up in the four words Kaiser, Kinder, Kirche, and Küche—Emperor, children, church, and kitchen—is as true as it is compendious and alliterative. It is often assumed, especially by men, that a woman who cultivates these tastes cultivates no other. This is not as true as is often supposed of the Empress, as a journal of her voyage to Jerusalem in 1898, published on her return to Germany, goes to show. Following the traditions and example of the queens and empresses who have preceded her, she has always given liberally of her time and care, as she still does, to the most multifarious forms of charity. She has a great and intelligible pride in her clever and energetic husband, while her interest in her children is proverbial. She appears to have no ambition to exercise any influence on politics or to shine as a leader of society. Like the Emperor, she is not without a sense of humour, and is always amused by the racy Irish stories (in dialect) told her and a little circle of guests by Dr. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin, who is a welcome guest at the palace.
The offspring of the marriage, it may be here noted, is a family of seven children—six sons and a daughter—as follows:—
Crown Prince Frederick William, born 1882
Prince Eitel Frederick " 1883
Prince Adalbert " 1884
Prince August William " 1887
Prince Oscar " 1888
Prince Joachim " 1890
Princess Victoria Louise " 1892
The Crown Prince was born on June 6th at the Marble Palace in Potsdam. He was educated at first privately by tutors, and later at the military academy at Plön, not far from Kiel. When eighteen he became of age and began his active career as an officer in the army. He is now commander of the First Regiment of Boay Guards ("Death's Head" Hussars) at Langfuhr, near Danzig, with the rank of major. He was married in June, 1905, to Cecilie, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and is the father of four children, all boys. The Crown Princess is one of the cleverest, most popular, and most charming characters in Germany, of the brightest intelligence and the most unaffected manners. The leading trait in the Crown Prince's character is his love of sport, from big-game shooting (on which he has written a book) to lawn tennis. In May last he began to learn golf. He is personally amiable, has pleasant manners, and is highly popular with all classes of his future subjects. He is credited with ability, but is not believed to have inherited the intellectual manysidedness of his father. The only part he can be said to have taken in public life as yet is having called the imperial attention to the Maximilian Harden allegations regarding Count Eulenburg and a court "camarilla," referred to later, and having, while sitting in a gallery of the Reichstag, demonstrated by decidedly marked gestures his disagreement with the Government's Morocco policy.
Since his marriage the Emperor has more than once publicly congratulated himself on his good fortune in having such a consort as the Empress. The most graceful compliment he paid her was in her own Province of Silesia in 1890, when he said:
"The band which unites me with the Province—that of all the provinces of the Empire which is nearest to my heart—is the jewel which sparkles at my side, Her Majesty the Empress. A native of this country, a model of all the virtues of a German princess, it is her I have to thank that I am in a position joyfully to perform the onerous duties of my office."
Only the other day at Altona, after thirty years of married life, he referred to her, again in her home Province and again as she sat smiling beside him, as the
"first lady of the land, who is always ready to help the needy, to strengthen family ties, to discharge the duties of her sex, and suggest to it new aims. The Empress has bestowed a home life on the House of Hohenzollern such as Queen Louise, alone perhaps, conferred."
Queen Louise, the famous wife of Frederick William III, died in 1810 and is buried in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, the suburb of Berlin. She has remained ever since, for the German nation, the type of womanly perfection.
III.
PRE-ACCESSION DAYS
1881-1887
The seven years between the date of his marriage and that of his accession were chiefly filled in by the future Emperor with the conscientious discharge of his regimental duties and the preparation of himself, by three or four hours' study daily at the various Ministries, among them the Foreign Office, where he sat at the feet of Bismarck, for the imperial tasks he would presumably have to undertake later.
Emperor William I, now a man of eighty-four, was still on the throne. Born in 1797, he lived with his parents, Frederick William III and Queen Louise, in Koenigsberg and Memel for three years after the battle of Jena, won the Iron Cross at the age of seventeen in the war with Napoleon in 1814, took part in the entry of the Allies into Paris, and devoted himself thenceforward, until he became King of Prussia in 1861, chiefly to the reorganization of the army. For a year during the troubled times of 1848 he was forced to take refuge in England, from whence he returned to live quietly at Coblenz until called to the Regency of Prussia in 1858. He was the Grand Master of Prussian Freemasonry. The attempts on his life in Berlin in 1878 by the anarchists Hödel and Nobiling are still spoken of by eye-witnesses to them. Both attempts were made within a period of three weeks while the King was driving down Unter den Linden, and on both occasions revolver shots were fired at him. Hödel's attempt failed, but in view of Socialist agitation, the would-be assassin was beheaded (the practice still in Prussia) a few weeks later. Pellets from Nobiling's weapon struck the King in the face and arm, and disabled him from work for several weeks. The political events of the reign, including the Seven Weeks' War with Austria in 1866, which ended at Sadowa, where King William was in chief command, and that with France in 1870, when he was present as Commander-in-Chief at Gravelotte and Sedan, are frequently referred to by Bismarck in his "Gedanke und Erinnerungen," and to these the reader may be referred.
The high and amiable character of the old Emperor, as he became after 1870, is common knowledge. He was a thoroughgoing Hohenzollern in his views of monarchy and his relations to his folk, but he was at the same time the type of German chivalry, the essence of good nature, the soul of honour, and the slave of duty. He was extremely fond of his grandson, Prince William, and it is clear from the latter's speeches subsequently that the affection was ardently reciprocated.
Of Emperor William, Bismarck writes in the highest terms, describing his "kingly courtesy," his freedom from vanity, his impartiality towards friend and foe alike; in a word, he says, Emperor William was the idea "gentleman" incorporated. On the other hand, Bismarck tells how the old Emperor all his life long stood in awe of his consort, the Empress Augusta, Bismarck's great enemy and the clearing-house (Krystallisationspunkt), as he describes her, of all the opposition against him; and how the Emperor used to speak of her as "the hot-head" ("Feuerkopf")—"a capital name for her," Bismarck adds, "as she could not bear her authority as Queen to be overborne by that of anyone else." The Iron Chancellor, by the way, mentions a curious fact in connexion with the attempt on Emperor William's life by Nobiling. The Chancellor says he had noticed that in the seventies the Emperor's powers had begun to fail, and that he often lost the thread of a conversation, both in hearing and speaking. After the Nobiling attempt this disability, strangely enough, completely disappeared. The fact was noticed by the Emperor himself, for one day he said jestingly to Bismarck: "Nobiling knew better than the doctors what I really needed—a good blood-letting."
Referring to the Empress Frederick at this period, Bismarck writes:
"With her I could not reckon on the same good-will as I could with her husband (Emperor Frederick). Her natural and inborn sympathy for her native country showed itself from the very beginning in the endeavour to shift the weight of Prussian-German influence on the European grouping of the Powers into the scale of England, which she never ceased to regard as her Fatherland; and, in consciousness of the opposition of interests between the two great Asiatic Powers, England and Russia, to see Germany's power, in case of a breach, used for the benefit of England."
An incident may be mentioned here which took place at what was to turn out to be the Emperor William's death-bed and refers particularly to our young Prince William. Bismarck was talking to the sick Emperor a few days before the latter's death. The Chancellor spoke about the necessity of publishing an Order, already drawn up in November of the preceding year, appointing Prince William regent in case the necessity for such a measure should occur. The sick Emperor expressed the hope that Bismarck would stand by his successor. Bismarck promised to do so and the Emperor pressed his hand in token of satisfaction. Then, suddenly, Bismarck relates, the Emperor became delirious and began to rave. Prince William was the central figure in his ravings. He evidently thought his grandson was at his bedside and exclaimed, using the familiar Du; "Du you must always keep on good terms with the Czar (Alexander III) … there is no need to quarrel in that quarter." Thereafter he was silent, and Bismarck left the sick-room.
The Prince's parents, Crown Prince Frederick and his English consort, had also their Court at the Marmor Palais in Potsdam, and their palace in Berlin, but the life they led was comparatively simple. The Crown Prince and Princess were great travellers and consequently often absent from Germany; and when at home, while the Crown Prince, in his serious-minded fashion, was absorbed in study, the Crown Princess divided her time between the practice of the arts and correspondence with her now grown-up sons and daughters.
Still, it is clear from the signs of the time that there was a good deal of intrigue going on throughout this pre-accession period, or, if intrigue is too strong a term for it, a good deal of friction, social and political, in high circles. It was chiefly caused, if the old Chancellor's statements to his sycophantic adorer, Busch, are to be credited, by the interference of the Empress Augusta and her daughter-in-law, the Crown Princess, in the sphere of politics, the Empress seeking to influence her husband in favour of the Catholics, whom she had taken under her protection, and the Crown Princess trying, as we have seen, to influence German policy in favour of England.
Exactly what part Prince William took in it all is not very clear. One thing we know, that he greatly displeased Bismarck by his constant attendance at the Waldersee salon, then a social centre in Berlin. Countess Waldersee, who is still living in Hannover, was the daughter of an American banker named Lee. She married Frederick, Prince of Schleswig, but he died six months after the wedding. His widow afterwards married Count Waldersee, who was subsequently to command the international forces during the Boxer troubles in China. Bismarck detested Waldersee, perhaps because many people spoke of him as his probable successor, and consequently looked with anything but favour on his imperial pupil's visit to the Waldersees.
The great figure of the time, however, was neither the Emperor nor the Crown Prince nor Prince William, but Prince Bismarck, who, as Chancellor for now more than a quarter of a century, had throughout that period guided the destinies of Prussia and the German Empire. Emperor William and Crown Prince Frederick and Prince William were playing, doubtless, more or less prominent parts on the public stage, but all things of moment gravitated towards Bismarck, whose days were spent, now persuading or convincing the Emperor, now warring with a Parliament growing impatient of his dictatorial attitude, now countermining the intrigues and opposition of his adversaries at Court and in the Ministries. He hardly ever went into society, but though he spent his days growling in his den at the Foreign Office when he was not immersed in work, he was the great popular figure of Berlin; indeed, it might be said, of all Germany.
As second lieutenant, Prince William had naturally a good deal to learn, though, entering life, as we have seen, as a "fine young recruit," having had a "military governor" appointed to his service when he was four, being made an officer at the age of ten, and having passed most of his life hitherto in a military society and atmosphere, he had less perhaps to learn than the ordinary young German officer. He went through the usual drills, and doubtless felt, as keenly as does the young officer everywhere, their monotonous and seemingly unnecessary repetitions, but they fulfilled the object in view and gave him the well-set-up bearing and martial tread which still distinguish him. Living in the old Town Castle of Potsdam, in rooms that had once been occupied by Frederick the Great, he entered with zest into the task of learning the mechanism of his regiment and at the same time of the army generally, though it cannot have been as interesting a task then as now, when science has added so many new branches to military organization. Both he and his young wife were as hospitable as their not too generous means and occasional cheques from the Emperor William would allow, particularly to any Borussian of the Prince's Bonn university days who might be passing through Berlin or Potsdam. The young Prince and Princess took part, as was to be expected of them, in the festivities and ceremonies of the Emperor's and Crown Prince's Court, and, when they had nothing more interesting to do, might be seen strolling arm in arm about the streets in Potsdam looking into the shops as young married people do in every town, and being apparently, as the story-books say, as happy as the day is long.
On the whole, however, during these pre-accession years, only glimpses of Prince William's character and doings are obtainable, but, though meagre, they are sufficient to suggest that in his case, too, if we extend the saying to cover the entire period of youth, the child was father to the man. The chief, almost the only, reliable authorities for the inner history of the time are the memoirs and notes left by the two Chancellors, Prince Bismarck and Prince Hohenlohe—en passant let the hope be expressed here that in the interests of Germany herself another Chancellor, Prince Bernhard Ernst von Bülow, now living in retirement at Rome, will enlighten the world as to that of the last ten or twelve stirring years, quorum pars magna fuit. Both Bismarck and Hohenlohe were excellent judges of character, and have, described, though with regrettable brevity, the character of Prince William about this time. Talking to his confidant, Dr. Busch, in June, 1882, Bismarck says of the Prince:
"He is quite different from the Emperor William, and wishes to take the government into his own hands; he is energetic and determined, not at all disposed to put up with parliamentary co-regents, a regular guardsman; Philopater and Antipater at Potsdam! He is not at all pleased at his father (Crown Prince Frederick) taking up with professors, with Mommsen, Virchow, Forckenbeck. Perhaps he may one day develop into the rocher de bronze of which we stand in need."
This rocher de bronze is an expression constantly employed by devoted royalists and imperialists in Germany. It was first used by Frederick William IV, who, in the jargon which in his time passed for the German language, exclaimed: "Ich werde meine Souvereinetat stabilizieren wie ein rocher de bronze."
Again, about this time Bismarck says:
"Up to that time (when Prince William was studying at the Ministries) he knew little, and indeed did not trouble himself much about it, but preferred to enjoy himself in the society of young officers and such-like,"
and he goes on to tell how the Prince took—or did not take—to this Ministerial education. It was proposed that the Under Secretary of State, Herrfurth, who was reputed to be well informed, particularly in statistics, should instruct him about internal questions. The Prince agreed and invited Herrfurth to lunch, but afterwards told Bismarck he could not stand him, "with his bristly beard, his dryness and tediousness." Could Bismarck suggest some one else? The Chancellor mentioned Privy Councillor von Brandenstein. The Prince did not object, had the Baron several times to meals, but paid so little attention to his explanations that Brandenstein lost patience and begged for some other employment. Concerning a rendezvous, Bismarck writes:
"He (Prince William) has more understanding, more courage and greater independence (than his grandfather), but in his leaning for me he goes too far. He was 'surprised' that I had waited for him, a thing his grandfather was incapable of saying;"
and the Chancellor adds:
"It is only in trifles and matters of secondary importance that one occasionally has reason to find fault with him, as, for instance, in the form of his State declarations—but that is youthful vivacity which time will correct. Better too much than too little fire."
Busch relates, under date of April 6, 1888, Bismarck's birthday, how
Prince William came to offer his congratulations, and, having done so,
invited himself to dinner. The meal over, he made a speech toasting
Bismarck, in which he said:
"The Empire is like an army corps that has lost its commander-in-chief in the field, while the officer who is next to him in rank lies severely wounded. At this critical moment forty-six million loyal German hearts turn with solicitude and hope to the standard, and the standard-bearer in whom all their expectations are centred. The standard-bearer is our illustrious Prince, our great Chancellor. Let him lead us. We will follow him. Long may he live!"
Prince Hohenlohe's references to Prince William as Emperor are frequent and full, but he has little to say about his character as Prince William beyond noting, when there was some talk of the Prince directly succeeding Emperor William, that he was "too young." On an occasion subsequently Prince Hohenlohe amusingly notes that the Emperor shook hands with him until his fingers "nearly cracked." This is still a genial gesture of the Emperor's.
One document, however, is available to show the spirit of religious tolerance which then animated our young Lutheran Prince, as it has animated him, it may be added, ever since. Pius IX had been succeeded in the Papacy by the more liberal Leo XIII, and the Kulturkampf had come to an end. Prince William, writing to an uncle, Cardinal Hohenlohe, says:—
"That this unholy Kulturkampf is at an end is a thing which rejoices me beyond expression. Of late many eminent Catholics, among them Kopp (afterwards Cardinal) have frequently visited me and honoured me with a confidence at once complete and gratifying. I was often so happy as to be able to be the interpreter of their wishes (to the Emperor and Bismarck, presumably) and do them some service. So it has been granted to my youth to co-operate in this work of peace. This has given me great pleasure and happiness.
"Give my regards to Galimberti and lay my respects at the feet of the Pope.
"Thy devoted nephew,
"WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA."
With his future subjects Prince William was brought into close relations only in a very limited way. No one, save perhaps Bismarck, seems to have known or suspected his true character and aims. This was natural enough, since it is not until a man comes to occupy some influential or prominent position that the public begins to take an interest in him. His father would be Emperor before him, and fate might have it that he himself would not live to come to the throne. Royal highnesses are not uncommon in a country with such a feudal history and so many courts as Germany. The young Prince, moreover, was never, to use a phrase of to-day, in the limelight. He was never involved in a notorious scandal. He had not, as his eldest son, the present Crown Prince, has, published a book. He was more or less absorbed in the army, the early grave of so many dawning talents. And there was no newspaper press devoted to chronicling the doings and sayings of the fashionable world of his time. His natural abilities would doubtless have secured him reputation and success in any sphere of life, but, as he himself would probably be the first to admit, much of his fame, and even much of his merit, is due to the splendid opportunities afforded him by his birth and position.
At the same time it is obvious that if his people at this period had not much opportunity of studying the young Prince, he had been studying them and their requirements as these latter appeared to him. He had evidently thought much on Germany's conditions and prospects before he came to the throne, and was Empire-building in imagination long before he became Emperor. It is not hard to guess the drift of his meditations. The success of the Empire depended on the success of Prussia, and the success of Prussia, ringed in by possibly hostile Powers, on union under a Prussian King whom Germans should swear fealty to and regard as a Heaven-granted leader. From the history of Prussia he drew the conclusion that force, physical force, well organized and equipped, must be the basis of Germany's security. Physical force had made Brandenburg into Prussia, and Prussia into the still nascent modern German Empire. He knew that France was only waiting for the day to come when she would be powerful enough to recover her lost provinces. Russia was friendly, but there was no certainty she would always be so. Austria was an ally, but many people in Austria had not forgotten Sadowa, and in any case her military and naval forces were far from being efficient. An irresistible army, and a national spirit that would keep it so, were consequently Germany's first essentials.
Simultaneously a new fact of vital importance for Germany's prosperity presented itself for consideration—the growth of world-policy in trade, the expansion of commerce through the development caused by new conditions of transport and intercommunication in which other nations were already engaged. The Prince saw his country's merchants beginning to spread over the earth, and believing in the doctrine that trade follows the flag, he felt that the flag, with the power and protection it affords, must be supplied. For this it appeared to him that a navy was as indispensable as was an efficient army for Germany's internal security. All other great countries had fine navies, while to Germany this complement of Empire was practically wanting. Accordingly he now took up the study of naval science and naval construction.
There was an occasion, however, at this time when the young Prince attracted general attention, if only for a few days. It was when as colonel of the Body Guard Hussars, he ordered his officers to withdraw from a Berlin club in which hazard and high play had ruined some of the younger and less wealthy members. The committee of the club used their influence to cause Emperor William to make the new commander cancel his order. The Emperor sent for his grandson and requested its withdrawal.
"Majesty," said the young commander, "permit me a question—am I still commander of the regiment?"
"Of course—"
"Well, then, will your Majesty allow me to maintain the order—or else accept my resignation?"
"Oh," said the Emperor, who was in reality pleased with the young disciplinarian, "there can be no talk of such a thing. I could not find so good a commanding officer again in a hurry."
When the club committee's ambassadors came to the Emperor to learn the result of his intervention, his answer was, "Very sorry, gentlemen; I did my best, but the colonel refuses."
The political situation as regards France was just now highly precarious. General Boulanger, whom Gambetta once described as "one of the four best officers in France," had become Minister of War in the de Freycinet Cabinet of 1886. Relying on a supposed superiority of the French army, he prepared for a war of revenge against Germany and aimed, with the help of Deroulède and Rochfort, at suppressing the parliamentary régime and establishing himself as dictator. His plans were answered in Germany by the acceptance of Bismarck's Septennat proposals for increasing the army and fixing its budget for seven years in advance. The war feeling in France diminished, and though it revived for a time owing to the arrest of the French frontier police commissary Schnaebele, it finally died out on that officer's release at the particular request of the Czar to Emperor William. Boulanger's subsequent history only concerns France. He was sent to a provincial command, but returned to Paris, where he was joyously received and elected to Parliament by a large majority. He might, it is believed, a year or two later, on being elected by the department of the Seine, with Paris at his back, have made a successful coup d'état on the night of his triumphant election, but his courage at the last moment failed, and on learning that he was about to be arrested he fled to Brussels, where he committed suicide on the grave of his mistress.
The time, however, was approaching, the most interesting, and as the succession of events have shown, the most momentous for the Empire since 1870, when Prince William's accession was obviously at hand. During the year 1887 and the early part of 1888 the attention of the world was fixed, first curiously, then anxiously, then sympathetically on the situation in Berlin. Emperor William was an old man just turned ninety; he was fast breaking up and any week his death might be announced. Hereditarily the Crown Prince Frederick, now fifty-six, should succeed, and a new reign would open which might introduce political changes of moment to other countries as well as Germany. The new reign was indeed to open, but only to prove one of the shortest in history.
In January, 1887, a Shadow fell on the House of Hohenzollern, the Shadow that must one day fall on every living creature. It was noticed that the Crown Prince was hoarse, had caught a cold, or something of the kind. A stay at Ems did him no good, Doctors Tobold and von Bergmann, the leading specialists of the day, were consulted, a laryngoscopic examination followed, the presence of cancer was strongly suspected, and an operation was advised. At this juncture, at the suggestion, it is said, of Queen Victoria, it was decided to summon the specialist of highest reputation in England, Sir Morell Mackenzie, who, having examined the patient, and basing his opinion on a report of Professor Virchow's, declared that the growth was not malignant. It was now May, and on Mackenzie's advice the patient visited England, where, accompanied by Prince William, he was present at the celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Some months after his return to the Continent were spent with his family in Tirol and Italy, until November found him in San Remo, where a meeting of famous surgeons from Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfort-on-Main finally diagnosed the existence of cancer, and Mackenzie coincided with the judgment.
The old Emperor died on March 9th. He had taken cold on March 3rd, and on the 7th a chronic ailment of the kidneys from which he suffered became worse, he could not sleep, his strength began to ebb, and it was clear the end was near. On the 6th, however, he was able to speak for a few minutes with Prince William, with Bismarck, and with his only daughter, the Grand Duchess of Baden, who had arrived post-haste the night before to be present at the death-bed. The Grand Duchess, as the Emperor spoke, besought him not to tire himself by talking. "I have no time to be tired," he murmured, in a flicker of the sense of duty which had been a lifelong feature of his character, and a few hours later he passed quietly away. The funeral, headed by Prince William and the Knights of the Black Eagle, took place on the 20th. The new Emperor Frederick, who had hurried from San Remo on receiving news of the Emperor's condition, was too ill to join it, but stood behind a closed window of his palace and saluted as the coffin went by.
The incidents of the Emperor Frederick's ascent of the throne, the amnesty and liberal-minded proclamations to his people, and in particular the heroic resignation with which he bore his fate, are events of common knowledge. One of them was the so-called Battenberg affair. Queen Victoria desired a marriage between Princess Victoria, the present Emperor's sister, then aged twenty-two, and Prince Alexander of Battenberg, at that time Prince of Bulgaria, so as to secure him against Russia by an alliance with the imperial house of Germany. Prince Bismarck objected on the ground that the marriage would show Germany in an unfriendly light at St. Petersburg, and might subject a Prussian princess to the risk of expulsion from Sofia. Another account is that the Chancellor feared an increase of English influence at the German Court with the Prince of Bulgaria as its channel. In any case, the result of the Chancellor's opposition was to place the sick Emperor in a delicate and painful situation. It was ended by his yielding to the Chancellor's representations, and the marriage did not come off.
Meanwhile, the Emperor's malady was making fatal progress. The Shadow was growing darker and more formidable. A season of patiently-borne suffering followed, until Death in his terrific majesty appeared and another Emperor occupied the throne.
IV.
"VON GOTTES GNADEN"
Prince William is now German Emperor and King of Prussia. Before observing him as trustee and manager of his magnificent inheritance a pause may be made to investigate the true meaning of a much-discussed phrase which, while suggesting nothing to the Englishman though he will find it stamped in the words "Dei gratia" on every shilling piece that passes through his hands, is the bed-rock and foundation of the Emperor's system of rule and the key to his nature and conduct.
Government in Germany is dynastic, not, as in England and America, parliamentary or democratic. The King of Prussia possesses his crown—such is the theory of the people as well as of the dynasty—by the grace of God, not by the consent of the people. The same may be said of the German Emperor, who fills his office as King of Prussia. To the Anglo-Saxon foreigner the dynasty in Germany, and particularly in Prussia, appears a sort of fetish, the worship of which begins in the public schools with lessons on the heroic deeds of the Hohenzollerns, and with the Emperor, as high priest, constantly calling on his people to worship with him. This view of the kingly succession may seem Oriental, but it is not surprising when one reflects that the Hohenzollern dynasty is over a thousand years old and during that time has ruled successively in part of Southern Germany, in Brandenburg, in Prussia, until at last, imperially, in all Germany. Moreover, it has ruled wisely on the whole; in the course of centuries it has brought a poor and disunited people, living on a soil to a great extent barren and sandy, to a pitch of power and prosperity which is exciting the envy and apprehension of other nations.
In England government passed centuries ago from the dynasty to the people, and there are people in England to-day who could not name the dynasty that occupies the English throne. Such ignorance in Germany is hardly conceivable. In Prussia government has always been the appanage of the Hohenzollerns, and the Emperor is resolved that, supported by the army, it shall continue to be their appanage in the Empire. Government means guidance, and no one is more conscious of the fact than the Emperor, for he is trying to guide his people all the time. Frederick William IV once said to the Diet: "You are here to represent rights, the rights of your class and, at the same time, the rights of the throne: to represent opinion is not your task." This relation of government and people has become modified of recent years to a very obvious degree, but constitutionally not a step has been taken in the direction of popular, that is to say parliamentary, rule.
England and Germany are both constitutional monarchies, but both the monarch and the Constitution in Germany are different from the monarch and the Constitution in England. The British Constitution is a growth of centuries, not, like the German Constitution, the creation of a day. The British Constitution is unwritten, if it is stamped, as Mary said the word "Calais" would be found stamped on her heart after death, on the heart and brain of every Englishman. The German Constitution is a written document in seventy-eight chapters, not fifty years old, and on which, compared with the British Constitution, the ink is not yet dry. In England to the people the Constitution is the real monarch: in Germany the monarchy is to the people what the British Constitution is to the Englishman; and while in England the monarch is the first counsellor to the Constitution, in Germany the Constitution is the first counsellor to the monarch.
The consequence in England is representative government, with a political career for every ordinary citizen; the consequence in Germany is constitutional monarchy, properly so-called, with a political career for no common citizen. Neither system is perfect, but both, apparently, give admirable national results. And yet, of course, an Englishman cannot help thinking that if Herr Bebel were made Minister to-morrow, Social Democracy would cease to exist.
The people acquiesce in the Hohenzollern view, not indeed with perfect and entire unanimity, for the small Progressive party demand a parliamentary form of government, if not on the exact model of that established in England. The Social Democrats, evidently, would have no government at all. Many English people suppose that Germans generally must desire parliamentary rule and would help them to get it, for multitudes of English people are firmly persuaded that it is England's mission to extend to other peoples the institutions which have suited her so well, without sufficiently considering how different are their circumstances, geographical position, history, traditions, and national character. A very similar mistake is made in Germany by multitudes of Germans, who believe it is Germany's mission to impose her culture, her views of man and life, on the rest of the world.
The Prussian view of monarchy, expressed in the words "von Gottes Gnaden" ("By the Grace of God"), is a political conception, which, under its customary English translation, "by Divine Right," has often been ridiculed by English writers. Lord Macaulay, it will be remembered, in his "History of England," asserts that the doctrine first emerged into notice when James the Sixth of Scotland ascended the English throne. "It was gravely maintained," writes Macaulay,
"that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other systems of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a divine institution anterior to the Christian, and even to the Mosaic, dispensation; that no human power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive the legitimate prince of his rights; that his authority was necessarily always despotic; that the laws by which, in England and other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and that any treaty into which a king might enter with his people was merely a declaration of his present intention, and not a contract of which the performance could be demanded."
The statement exactly expresses the ideas on the subject attributed abroad to the Emperor.
The distinguished German historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, writes of King Frederick William IV, the predecessor of Emperor William I, as follows:—
"He believed in a mysterious enlightenment which is granted 'von Gottes Gnaden' to kings rather than other mortals. All the blessings of peace, which his People could expect under a Christian monarch, should Proceed from the wisdom of the Crown alone; he regarded his high office like a patriarch of the Old Testament and held the kingship as a fatherly power established by God Himself for the education of the people. Whatever happened in the State he connected with the person of the monarch. If only his age and its royal awakener had understood each other better! He had, however, in his strangely complicated process of development, constructed such extraordinary ideals that though he might sometimes agree in words with his contemporaries he never did as to the things, and spoke a different language from his people. Even General Gerlach, his good friend and servant, used to say: 'The ways of the King are wonderful;' and the not less loyal Bunsen wrote about a complaint of the monarch that 'no one understands me, no one agrees with me,' the commentary—'When one understood him, how could one agree with him?'"
It was this king, be it parenthetically remarked, who said, when his people were clamouring for a Constitution, in 1847: "Now and never will I admit that a written paper, like a second Providence, force itself between our God in Heaven and this land"—and a few months later had to sign the document his people demanded.
Von Treitschke, writing on the last birthday of Emperor William I, thus spoke of the doctrine:
"A generation ago an attempt was made by a theologizing State theory to inculcate the doctrine of a power of the throne, divine, released from all earthly obligations. This mystery of the Jacobins never found entrance into the clear common sense of our people."
Prince Bismarck's view of the doctrine was explained in a speech he made to the Prussian Diet in 1847. He was speaking on "Prussia as a Christian State." "For me," he said,
"the words 'von Gottes Gnaden,' which Christian rulers join to their names, are no empty phrase, but I see in them the recognition that the princes desire to wield the sceptre which God has assigned them according to the will of God on earth. As God's will I can, however, only recognize what is revealed in the Christian gospels, and I believe I am in my right when I call that State a Christian one which has taken as its task the realization, the putting into operation, of the Christian doctrine…. Assuming generally that the State has a religious foundation, in my opinion this foundation can only be Christianity. Take away this religious foundation from the State and we retain nothing of the State but a chance aggregation of rights, a kind of bulwark against the war of all against all, which the old philosophers spoke of."
On the second occasion, thirty years later, the Chancellor's theme was
"Obedience to God and the King."
"I refer," he said,
"to the wrong interpretation of a sentence which in itself is right—namely, that one must obey God rather than man. The previous speaker must know me long enough to be aware that I subscribe to the entire correctness of this sentence, and that I believe I obey God when I serve the King under the device 'With God for King and Country.' Now he (the previous speaker) has separated the component parts of the device, for he sees God separated from King and Fatherland. I cannot follow him on this road. I believe I serve my God when I serve my King in the protection of the commonwealth whose monarch 'von Gottes Gnaden' he is, and on whom the emancipation from alien spiritual influence and the independence of his people from Romish pressure have been laid by God as a duty in which I serve the King. The previous speaker would certainly admit in private that we do not believe in the divinity of a State idol, though he seems to assert here that we believe in it."
In these passages, it may be remarked, Bismarck avoids an unconditional endorsement of the Hohenzollern doctrine of divine "right" or even divine appointment. Indeed all he does is to express his belief in the sincerity of rulers who declare their desire to rule in accordance with the will of God as it appears in Holy Scripture. In addition to his dislike of a "Christianity above the State," the fact that he did not subscribe to the doctrine of divine right, as these words are interpreted in England, is shown by another speech in which he said, "The essence of the constitutional monarchy under which we live is the co-operation of the monarchical will and the convictions of the people." But what, one is tempted to ask, if will and convictions differ?
In recent times, Dr. Paul Liman, in an excellent character sketch of the Emperor, devotes his first chapter to the subject, thus recognizing the important place it occupies in the Emperor's mentality. Dr. Liman, like all German writers who have dealt with the topic, animadverts on the Hohenzollern obsession by the theory and attributes it chiefly to the romantic side of the Emperor's nature which was strongly influenced in youth by the "wonderful events" of 1870, by the national outburst of thanks to God at the time, and by the return from victorious war of his father, his grandfather, and other heroes, as they must have appeared to him, like Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon.
It is worth noting that Prince von Bülow, during the ten years of his Chancellorship, made no parliamentary or other specific and public allusion to the doctrine.
Before, however, attempting to offer a somewhat different explanation of the Emperor's attitude in the matter from those just cited, let us see what statements he has himself made publicly about it and how the doctrine has been interpreted by his contemporaries. He made no reference to it in his declarations to the army, the navy, and the people when he ascended the throne. His first allusion to it was in March, 1890, at the annual meeting of the Brandenburg provincial Diet at the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin, and then the allusion was not explicit. "I see," said the Emperor,
"in the folk and land which have descended to me a talent entrusted to me by God, which it is my task to increase, and I intend with all my power so to administer this talent that I hope to be able to add much to it. Those who are willing to help me I heartily welcome whoever they may be: those who oppose me in this task I will crush."
His next allusion, at Bremen in April of the same year, when he was laying the foundation-stone of a statue to his grandfather, King William, a few months subsequent to Bismarck's retirement, was more explicit, yet not completely so.
"It is a tradition of our House," so ran his speech,
"that we, the Hohenzollerns, regard ourselves as appointed by God to govern and to lead the people, whom it is given us to rule, for their well-being and the advancement of their material and intellectual interests."
The next reference, and the only one in which a divine "right" to rule in Prussia is formally claimed, occurs four years later at Koenigsberg, the ancient crowning-place of Prussian kings. Here he said:—
"The successor (namely himself) of him who of his own right was sovereign prince in Prussia will follow the same path as his great ancestor; as formerly the first King (of Prussia, Frederick I.) said, 'My crown is born with me,' and as his greater son (the Great Elector) gave his authority the stability of a rock of bronze, so I too, like my imperial grandfather, represent the kingship 'von Gottes Gnaden.'"
At Coblenz in 1897, in reference to the first Emperor William's labours for the army and people:—
"He (Emperor William) left Coblenz to ascend the throne as the selected instrument of the Lord he always regarded himself to be. For us all, and above all for us princes, he raised once more aloft and lent lustrous beams to a jewel which we should hold high and holy—that is the kingship von Gottes Gnaden, the kingship with its onerous duties, its never-ending, ever-continuing trouble and labour, with its fearful responsibility to the Creator alone, from which no human being, no minister, no parliament, no people can release the prince."
Here, too, if the words "responsibility to the Creator alone" be taken in their ordinary English sense, the allusion to a divine right may be construed, though it is observable that the word "right" is not actually employed.
In Berlin, when unveiling a monument to the Great Elector, the Emperor was filled with the same idea of the God-given mission of the Hohenzollerns. After briefly sketching the deeds of the Elector—how he came young to the throne to find crops down-trodden, villages burnt to the ground, a starved and fallen people, persecuted on every side, his country the arena for barbarous robber-bands who had spread war and devastation throughout Germany for thirty years; how, with "invincible reliance on God" and an iron will, he swept the pieces of the land together, raised trade and commerce, agriculture and industry, in for that period an incredibly short time; how he brought into existence a new army entirely devoted to him; how, in fine, guided by the hope of founding a great northern Empire, which would bring the German peoples together, he became an authority in Europe and laid the corner-stone of the present Empire—after sketching all this, the Emperor continues:
"How is this wonderful success of the house of Hohenzollern to be explained? Solely in this way, that every prince of the House is conscious from the beginning that he is only an earthly vicegerent, who must give an account of his labour to a higher King and Master, and show that he has been a faithful executor of the high commands laid upon him."
One finds exactly the same idea expressed three months later when talking to his "Men of Brandenburg." "You know well," he reminded them,
"that I regard my whole position and my task as laid on me by Heaven, and that I am appointed by a Higher Power to whom I must later render an account. Accordingly I can assure you that not a morning or evening passes without a prayer for my people and a special thought for my Mark Brandenburg."
To the Anglo-Saxon understanding, of course, the theory of divine right has long appeared untenable, obsolete, and, as Macaulay says, absurd. Many people to-day would go farther and argue that there is no such thing as a divine right at all, since "rights" are a purely human idea, possibly a purely legal one. But it is at least doubtful that the Emperor uses the expression "von Gottes Gnaden" in a sense exactly coterminous with that of "divine right" as used by Lord Macaulay and later Anglo-Saxon writers and speakers. The latter, when dealing with things German, not unfrequently fall into the error of mistranslation and are thus at times responsible for national misunderstandings. The Italian saying, "traduttore, tradittore," is the expression of a fact too seldom recognized, especially by those whose business it is to interpret, so to speak, one people to another. Language is as mysterious and elusive a thing as aught connected with humanity, as love, for example, or music; and it may be asserted with some degree of confidence that among every people there are ideas current, and in all departments—in law, society, art—which it is impossible exactly to translate into the speech of other nations. The words used may be the same, but the connotation, all the words imply and suggest, is, perhaps in very important respects, different, and requires a paraphrase, longer or shorter, to explain them. Take the word "false" in English and "falsch" in German. They look alike, yet while the English "false" carries with it a moral reproach, the German word, where the context does not explicitly prove otherwise, means simply "incorrect," "erroneous," without the moral reproach added. Accordingly, when a German Chancellor asserts that the statement of an English Minister is "falsch" he does not necessarily mean anything offensive, but only that the English Minister is mistaken.
From this point of view one may regard the statements of the Emperor concerning his kingly office. He has recently begun to use the expression "German Emperor von Gottes Gnaden," a thing done by none of his imperial predecessors, and certainly a very curious extension of a doctrine which traditionally only applies to wearers of the crown of Prussia. But if he does, it may, it is here suggested, be considered further evidence that he employs the terms "von Gottes Gnaden" in a sense other than that of "divine right" as conceived by the Anglo-Saxon. The German "Gnade" means "favour," "grace," "mercy," "pity," or "blessing," and is at times used in direct contrast with the word "Recht," which means "justice" as well as "right." The point, indeed, need hardly be elaborated, and the Emperor's own explanation of the revelation of God to mankind, with its special reference to his grandfather which we shall find later in the confession of faith to Admiral Hollmann, is highly significant of the sense in which he regards himself and every ruling Hohenzollern as selected for the duties of Prussian kingship. It is the work of the kingship he is divinely appointed to do of which he is always thinking, not the legal right to the kingship vis à vis his people he is mistakenly supposed to claim. He regards himself as a trustee, not as the owner of the property. And is not such a spirit a proper and praiseworthy one? In a sense we Christians, if in a position of responsibility, believe that we are all divinely appointed to the work each of us has to do: instruments of God, who shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may. The Emperor finely says of the Almighty: "He breathed into man His breath, that is a portion of Himself, a soul." Reason is what chiefly distinguishes man from the brute, though there are those who hold that reason is but a higher form of brutish instinct, which again has its degree among the brutes; but, assuming that reason is of divine origin, enabling us to receive, by one means or another, the dictates of the Almighty, it seems clear that there must be channels through which these dictates become known to us.
This conveyance, this making plain is, as many people, and the Emperor among them, believe, performed by God through the agency of those whom mankind agree to call "great." For the last nineteen centuries a large part of civilized mankind is at one in the belief that Christ was such an agency, while millions again agree to call the agency Buddha, Mahomet, Confucius, or Zoroaster. In the creed of Islam Christ, as a prophet, comes fifth from Adam. In America there are thousands who believe, or did believe, in the agency of a Mrs. Eddy or a Dr. Dowie. And if this is so in matters of religion, itself only a form of the reasoning soul, why should it not be the same in morals or philosophy, art or science, government or administration: why should we not all accept, as many still do, the sayings and writings of the Hebrew prophets (as does the Emperor), of Plato and Aristotle, of Bacon and Hobbes, of Milton and Shakespeare and Goethe, of Kepler and Galileo, or Charlemagne and Napoleon, as divinely intended to convey and make plain to us the dictates of Heaven until such time as yet greater souls shall instruct us afresh and still more fully?
It may be that the Emperor thinks in some such way; his speeches and edicts at least suggest it. Certainly, as already mentioned, he did on one occasion, when speaking of his kingship, employ the word "right" as descriptive of the nature of his appointment by God. But that was early in his reign, and at no time since has he insisted on a Heaven-granted right to rule. It was, no doubt, different with some of his absolute predecessors, but it was not the view of Frederick the Great, who declared himself "the first servant of the State." Moreover, it is hardly conceivable that the Emperor, who is acquainted with the facts of history and is a man of practical common sense besides, does not know that the doctrine of "divine right" has long been rejected by people of intelligence in every civilized country, including his own.
If he really believes in divine right in the Stuart sense he must think that the conditions of Germany are so different from those of the rest of civilized mankind, and his own people so little advanced in knowledge and political science, that a doctrine absurd and dangerous to the peace of enlightened commonwealths is applicable as a basis of rule in his own. It seems a more plausible view, that the Emperor considers the expression "von Gottes Gnaden" an academic formula of government, or what is still more likely, as a moral and religious, not a legal, dogma, which yet expresses one of the leading and most admirable features of his policy as a ruler. If it is not so, he is inconsistent with himself, since he has repeatedly declared himself bound by the Constitution in accordance with which his grandfather and father and he himself have hitherto ruled. At present the doctrine of divine "right" is regarded by Germans no less than by Englishmen as dead and buried, and mention of it in Germany is usually greeted with a smile. Even the notion of appointment by divine "grace," while considered a harmless and praiseworthy article of faith with the Emperor, is no longer regarded as a living principle of government.
V.
THE ACCESSION
1888-1890
With his accession began for the Emperor a period of extraordinary activity which has continued practically undiminished to the present day. During that time he has been the most prominent man and monarch of his generation. From the domestic point of view his life perhaps has not been marked by many notable events, but from the point of view of politics and international relations it has been the history of his reign and to no small extent the history of the world.
When a German Emperor ascends the throne there is no great outburst of national rejoicing, no great series of popular ceremonials. There is no brilliant procession as in England, no impressive coronation like that of an English monarch in Westminster Abbey, no State visit of the monarch to the Houses of Parliament. In Germany Parliament goes to the King, not the King to Parliament.
On the same day that the Emperor began his reign he addressed proclamations to the army and navy. The addresses to the people and the Parliament were to come a few days later. In the proclamation to the army he said:
"I and the army were born for each other. Let us remain indissolubly so connected, come peace or storm, as God may will. You will now take the oath of fidelity and obedience to me, and I swear always to remember that the eyes of my ancestors are bent on me from the other world, and that one day I shall have to give an account touching the fame and the honour of the army."
His address to the navy was in the same vein.
"We have only just put off mourning for my unforgettable grandfather, Kaiser William I, and already we have had to lower the flag for my beloved father, who took such an interest in the growth and progress of the navy. A time of earnest and sincere sorrow, however, strengthens the mind and heart of man, and so let us, keeping at heart the example of my grandfather and father, look with confidence to the future. I have learned to appreciate the high sense of honour and of duty which lives in the navy, and know that every man is ready faithfully to stake his life for the honour of the German flag, be it where it may. Accordingly I can, in this serious hour, feel fully assured that we shall stand strongly and steadily together in good or bad days, in storm or sunshine, always mindful of the Fatherland and always ready to shed our heart's blood for the honour of the flag."
To his people he promised that he would be a
"just and mild prince, observant of piety and religion, a protector of peace, a promoter of the country's prosperity, a helper to the poor and needy, a faithful guardian of the right."
To the Parliament a week later he announced that he meant to walk in the footsteps of his grandfather, particularly in regard to the working classes, to acquire the confidence of the federated princes, the affection of the people, and the friendly recognition of foreign countries. He said that in his opinion the
"most important duties of the German Emperor lay in the domain of the military and political security of the nation externally, and internally in the supervision of the carrying out of imperial laws."
The highest of these laws, he explained, was the Imperial Constitution and "to preserve and protect the Constitution, and in especial the rights it gives to the legislative bodies, to every German, but also to the Emperor and the federated states," he considered "among the most honourable duties of the Emperor."
While the order of these addresses is different to what it would be in England, it entirely accords with the spirit of the Prussian monarchy and the political system of the German people. Settled in the heart of Europe, the nation rests on the army, and it is hardly too much to say that, from the Emperor's point of view, possibly also from the popular German point of view, the interests of the army must be considered before the interests of the rest of the population. An English monarch, who issued his first address to the British navy, would be as justified in doing so by the real necessities of Great Britain as a German Emperor who first addresses the German army is justified by the real necessities of Germany; for the British navy is as vital to the British as the German army is to the German nation. In England, however, the monarch's respect for the people and Parliament takes precedence of his respect for the army, not vice versa as in Germany.
In a speech from the throne to the Prussian Diet the Emperor took the Constitutional Oath: "I swear to hold firmly and unbrokenly to the Constitution of the Kingdom and to rule in agreement with it and the laws … so help me God!" and went on to proclaim the continuance in Prussia and the Empire of his grandfather's and father's policy and work. He said at the same time, while undertaking not to make the People uneasy by trying to extend Crown rights, that he would take care that the constitutional rights of the Crown were respected and used, and that he meant to hand them over unimpaired to his successor. He concluded by saying that he would always bear in mind the words of Frederick the Great, who described himself as the "first servant of the State."
At Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, a few months later, he declared, when unveiling a monument to his uncle, Prince Frederick Karl, a hero of the Franco-Prussian War, that he meant never to surrender a stone of the acquisitions made in the war and
"believed he voiced the feeling of the entire army in saying that Germany, rather than do so, would suffer its eighteen army corps and its whole population of 42 millions to perish on the field of battle."
At this period of his career the Emperor was, first and foremost, a thoroughgoing Hohenzollern. Doubtless he is so still, if he talks less about the dynasty. He admired Frederick the Great, then as now, and in the first place as military commander, but the ancestor with whom he even more sympathized, and sympathizes, was the Great Elector. "The ancestor," he said himself,
"for whom I have the most liking (Schwärmen, a hardly translatable German verb, is the word he used) and who always shone before me as an example in my youth, was the Great Elector, the man who loved his country with all his heart and strength, and unrestingly devoted himself to rescuing the Mark Brandenburg out of its deep distress and made it a strong and united whole."
What particularly attracted the Emperor in the history of the Elector was the fact that he was the first Hohenzollern who saw the importance of promoting trade and industry, building a navy, and acquiring colonies. As yet, however, the Emperor had only clear and fairly definite ideas about the need for a navy. The world-policy may have been in embryo in his mind, but it was not born.
The imaginative side of the Emperor's character at this period is well illustrated in a speech he made in 1890 to his favourite "Men of the Mark." He was talking of his travels, to which allusion had been made by a previous speaker.
"My travels," said the Emperor,
"have not only had the object of making myself acquainted with foreign countries and institutions, or to create friendly relations with neighbouring monarchs, but these journeys, which have been the subject of much misunderstanding, had for me the great value that, withdrawn from the heat of party faction, I could review our domestic conditions from a distance and submit them to calm consideration. Any one who, standing on a ship's bridge far out at sea, with only God's starry heaven above him, communes with himself, will not fail to appreciate the worth of such a journey. For many of my fellow-countrymen I would wish that they might live through such an hour, in which one can make up an account as to what he has attempted and what achieved. Then would he be cured of exaggerated self-estimation, and that we all need."
Having discharged the duty of addressing his own subjects, the Emperor's next care, after a stay at Kiel where a German Emperor and King now for the first time in history appeared in the uniform of an admiral, was personally to announce his accession at the courts of his fellow-European sovereigns. We find him, accordingly, paying visits to Alexander II in St. Petersburg, to King Oscar II in Stockholm (where he received a telegram announcing the birth of his fifth son), to Christian IX in Copenhagen, to Kaiser Franz Joseph in Vienna and to King Humbert in Rome. To both the last-mentioned he presented himself in the additional capacity of Triplice ally.
In August of the year following his accession he paid his first visit as Emperor to England. It was a very different thing, one may imagine, from the earliest recorded visit of a German Emperor to the English Court. That was in 1416, when the Emperor Sigismund (1411-1437) arrived there and was received by Henry V. Henry postponed the opening of Parliament specially on his account, made him a Knight of the Garter, and signed with him at Canterbury an offensive and defensive alliance against France. How poor the German Empire and the German Emperor were at that epoch may be judged from the fact that on his way home Sigismund had to pawn the costly gifts he had received in England.
On the present occasion a grand naval review of over a hundred warships, with crews totalling 25,000 men, was held in honour of the Emperor at Osborne. This was followed, a few days afterwards, by a parade of the troops at Aldershot under the command of General Sir Evelyn Wood. On this occasion, after expressing his admiration for the British troops, the Emperor concluded: "At Malplaquet and Waterloo, Prussian and British blood flowed in the prosecution of a common enterprise." In a little speech after the review the Emperor spoke of the English navy as "the finest in the world." The impression made by the Emperor on Sir Evelyn has been recorded by that general. "The Emperor is extremely wide-awake," he writes to a friend, "with a decided, straightforward manner. He is a good rider. His quick and very intelligent spirit seizes every detail at a glance, and he possesses a wonderful memory." The Emperor was now nominated an honorary Admiral of the British navy and as a return compliment made Queen Victoria honorary "Chef" of his own First Dragoon Guards. At the naval review a journalist asked an English naval officer what would happen if the Emperor, in command of a German fleet, should meet a British fleet in time of war between England and Germany?—"Would the British fleet have to salute the Emperor?" "Certainly," replied the naval officer; "it would fire 100 guns at him."
Next year the Emperor was again in England, this time to be present at the Cowes regatta, which he took part in regularly during the four succeeding years, noting, doubtless, all that might prove useful for the development of the Kiel yachting "week," the success of which he had then, as always since, particularly at heart. He was received by Queen Victoria with the simple and homely words, "Welcome, William!"
A State visit to the City of London followed, when he was accompanied by the Empress, and was entertained to a luncheon given by the City Fathers in the Guildhall. The entertainment, which took place on July 10, 1891, was remarkable for a speech delivered by the Emperor in English, in which, besides declaring his intention of maintaining the "historical friendship" between England and Germany, he proclaimed that his great object "above all" was the preservation of peace, "since peace alone can inspire that confidence which is requisite for a healthy development of science, art, and commerce." On the same occasion he expressed his feeling of "being at home" in England—"this delightful country"—and spoke of the "same blood which flows alike in the veins of Germans and English." Shortly afterwards he attended a review of volunteers at Wimbledon, and, as he said, was "agreeably astonished at the spectacle of so many citizen-soldiers in a country that had no conscription."
The Emperor returned from England to receive the visit of his chief Triplice ally, the Emperor Franz Joseph, and to discuss with him doubtless the European situation. Bismarck has been pictured as sitting at the European chessboard pondering the moves necessary tor Germany to win the game of which the great prize was the hegemony of Europe. The chief opposing Pieces, whose aid or neutrality was desirable, were for long France, Russia, Austria, and Italy; but in 1883, with the conclusion of the Triple Alliance, Austria and Italy needed less to be considered, and the only two really important opposing pieces left were France and Russia. Still, Germany, through her allies of the Triplice, might be dragged into war, and consequently the doings of Austria and Italy, both in relation to one another and to France and Russia were, as they now are, of great importance to her.
At the time of the accession, the chessboard of our metaphor was mainly occupied with Franco-German relations and with Russian designs on Constantinople, the Dardanelles, and the Black Sea. The danger to Germany of war with France, which had arisen out of the Boulanger and Schnaebele incidents, had died down, but not altogether ceased. Hohenlohe tells us how at this time, in conversation with the Emperor, the latter ventured the forecast: "Boulanger is sure to succeed. I prophesy that as Kaiser Ernest he will pay a visit to Berlin." He was wrong, we know, as so many prophets are.
Russian designs on Turkey had had to reckon with the opposition of
England and Austria. As regards these designs, Bismarck says:
"Germany's policy should be one of reserve. Germany would act very foolishly if in Oriental questions, without having special interests, she took a side before the other Powers, who were more nearly interested: she would therefore do well to refrain from making her move as long as possible, and thus, besides, gain the benefit of longer peace."
The Chancellor, however, admitted that against the advantages of a policy of reserve had to be set the disadvantage of Germany's position in the centre of Europe with its frontiers exposed to the attacks of a coalition. "From this situation," said the Chancellor, "it results that Germany is perhaps the only Great Power in Europe which is not tempted to attain its ends by victorious war."
"Our interest," he goes on,
"is to maintain peace, whereas our continental neighbours without exception have wishes, either secret or officially admitted, which can only be fulfilled through war. Consequently, German policy must be to prevent war or confine it as much as possible: to keep in the background while the European game of cards is going on: and not by loss of patience or concession at the cost of the country, or vanity, or provocation from friends, allow ourselves to be driven from the waiting attitude: otherwise—plectuntur Achivi!—third parties will rejoice."
That was the Bismarckian policy twenty-five years ago, and though new economic conditions have had great influence in modifying it since, particularly as it regards the East, it is practically Germany's policy now.
In his first speech from the throne to the Reichstag the Emperor thus referred to the Triple Alliance:
"Our Alliance with Austria-Hungary is publicly known. I hold to the same with German fidelity, not merely because it has been concluded, but because I see in this defensive union a foundation for the balance of power in Europe and a legacy of German history, the importance of which is recognized by the whole of the German people, while it accords with European international law as undeniably in force up to 1866. Similar historical relations and similar national exigences of the time bind us to Italy. Both Germany and Italy desire to prolong the blessings of peace that they may pursue in tranquillity the consolidation of their newly acquired unity, the betterment of their national institutions, and the increase of their prosperity."
In a speech a few months later he declared that the Alliance had no other purpose than to strengthen the peaceful relations of Germany to other foreign Powers. His next public reference to it was in May, 1900, when Kaiser Franz Joseph visited Berlin on the occasion of the coming of age of the German Crown Prince. "Truly," exclaimed the Emperor, in a vein of some exaggeration,
"this Alliance is not alone an agreement in the eyes of the monarchs, but the longer it has existed, the deeper has it taken root in the convictions of the peoples, and the moment that the hearts of the peoples beat in unison nothing can tear them asunder. Common interests, common feelings, joy and sorrow shared together, unite our three nations for now twenty years, and although often enough misunderstandings and sarcasm and criticisms have been poured out on them, the three peoples have succeeded in maintaining peace hitherto, and are regarded by the whole world as its champions."