THE EMPEROR WILLIAM.
I.
NO one who has not had the opportunity in recent years of approaching the Emperor William and of conversing with him can realize the favourable impression that he at first creates. To have a conversation with him means to play the part of a listener, to allow him to unfold his ideas in lively fashion, while from time to time one ventures upon a remark on which his quick mind, flitting readily from one subject to another, seizes with avidity. While he is talking, he looks one squarely in the face, his left hand resting on his sword-hilt in an attitude that has become a habit with him. His voice, very guttural in tone, and almost hoarse, is disagreeable; but he has a mobile, expressive face, with magnificent eyes that keep it always bright and animated. At a first meeting, it is these eyes that impress one more than his words: eyes of light blue, now merry and smiling, now hard and stern, with sudden gleams that flash like steel. Yet when we come away from an interview of this kind, we begin to feel doubts as to the sincerity of this dangerous talker. We ask ourselves, with a touch of anxiety, whether the man whom we have just seen is really convinced of what he says, or whether he is the most striking actor that has appeared on the political stage of our day.
In his mother-tongue, William II. has a natural eloquence, with a pompous style, full of metaphors and similes. Hardly had he been seated on the throne before his love of speaking had revealed itself in oratorical displays of all kinds—after-dinner speeches, answers to addresses, and soldierly harangues to military and naval recruits. All these have been delivered during the continual journeys in which he delights, whether rushing to and fro about his own empire, or navigating all the seas of Europe in his yacht, or paying visits to his fellow-monarchs. Some of his orations are models of the Imperial style, but his self-assurance has led him more than once to utter, in the heat of improvisation, some tactless or inopportune phrase which has aroused a feeling of uneasiness or disgust in Germany no less than in foreign countries: bold ideas, presented in an original form, but the unripe products of an over-impulsive temperament, and entirely at variance with public feeling. With advancing years, he has become slightly more discreet in his language. Moreover, the text of his speeches is nowadays revised and expurgated by his civil Cabinet before being issued to the public. Together with this impulse to trumpet forth his ideas, he has a decided propensity for striking a theatrical pose, whenever he knows that he is the cynosure of every eye—that is to say, whenever he appears in public; whereas, in the privacy of his home, he is by no means lacking in geniality or even in simplicity.
Undoubtedly the Emperor is a man of many gifts, intelligent and well-informed. For all that, one gets an impression, when talking to him, that he has but a superficial acquaintance with certain subjects on which he loves to dilate.
This is not surprising. In spite of his uncommon capacity for assimilating knowledge, William II. is not a man of universal mind, able to discourse with equal aptness upon politics, industry, commerce, agriculture, music, painting, architecture—one may as well say, upon every branch of human knowledge, for he does not even shrink from venturing on the steep path of the exact sciences. Perhaps he would have acted more wisely if, instead of spreading his mental activities over so many different fields, he had centred them in the study of foreign politics, and had endeavoured to find out for himself, at first hand, the real state of public opinion in the countries surrounding Germany. Had he adopted this course, those who conversed with him would not have had to record the disquieting fact that he accepted, as articles of faith, many prejudiced and utterly wrong-headed notions that were current in the German Press and among the German public.
His confidence in himself has always made it impossible for him to endure, in the governance of the Empire, the co-operation of a superior mind or an independent will. When he had been on the throne two years, he impatiently shook himself free from the leading-strings—irksome, no doubt, but still necessary—held by the man to whom he owed his Imperial crown. In order to enjoy a long spell of service, his ministers must either adopt his ideas or possess the art of presenting theirs as if he had inspired them. After the dismissal of Bismarck, his chancellors were nothing but executors, more or less skilful, of his divine will, and heads of an army of bureaucrats. For an Imperial chancellor, to govern means not to foresee, but to obey a headstrong and unstable master.
In other aspects of his character the Emperor is a very modern ruler. He has always had a fondness for the society of noted scholars and scientific men. Having some artistic pretensions himself, he likes to surround himself with artists who follow his advice and carry out his suggestions. In Prussia, building has always been a noble pastime for princes, a pastime that Frederick the Great pursued, with admirable results, in the intervals between his wars. William II. is a great builder: in the course of twenty-five years his architects have erected more monuments and palaces in Berlin than their fellow-craftsmen in other capitals have produced throughout a whole century. Too often, however, these constructions bear the imprint of his taste for the massive, the colossal, and the overloaded. Under his inspiration, German artists are making laborious efforts to create a style that may deserve to be called the “William II. Style.” In spite of this, the most pleasing monuments of the Imperial residence are still those which were raised under the earlier kings, and to which Herr von Ihne, an artist who is an ardent admirer of eighteenth-century French art, has made some fine additions. One observes with some surprise, by the way, that the old palace of the first King of Prussia is still large enough to contain the first German Emperors. May we imagine that the haughty son of the Great Elector, with the limitless ambition of the Hohenzollerns, foresaw the remote future destiny of his house?
From the sculptors, William II., faithful to the same Æsthetic principles, has ordered statues, gigantic in size or cast into stiff, formal attitudes, representing the heroes of his line and the great men who served his ancestors. Surely they do not deserve such barbarous treatment! His infatuation for official painting has prevented him from appreciating artists of original talent, such leaders of schools as Max Liebermann, whom he looks upon as revolutionaries. The same remark applies to men of letters. The most noted living novelists and playwrights of Germany, a Hauptmann or a Sudermann, are nowhere less understood than at the Court of Berlin.
For a long time past the Emperor has delighted in the society of agreeable dilettante, poets, and musicians—for he adores music and poetry—the companions of the famous “Round Table.” The scandalous Eulenburg case brought these intimacies to an abrupt close. Evil has been whispered, quite without justification, of his friendship with that attractive but unhappy figure, Prince Philip von Eulenburg. It would be more to the point to note his weakness for rich men, for the founders of vast fortunes. In this respect he has shown, like some other crowned heads, that he has a sense for present-day realities—that he appreciates the services rendered to modern society by wealth. Americans visiting Berlin are assured of a warm welcome at the Imperial Court, provided they bear names to conjure with in the money-market of the United States. It is only fair to add that, in paying these flattering attentions to opulent Yankees, William II. is partly actuated by what has been called his “American policy”—that is to say, his desire for a close understanding with the Great Republic. His admiration for the power conferred by money has been similarly displayed in his method of bestowing honours on his loyal nobility. In creating an exalted aristocracy of princes and dukes, who before his time were very few and far between in Prussia, he has sometimes shown less regard for ancient lineage and services claiming the gratitude of the State than for the territorial possessions of those concerned. Nobles who have remained poor have not been much favoured, even when they inherit the most honoured names in the military history of the kingdom.
Brought up by a father whose “liberal” ideas have been overpraised (such is the view of those who knew him best), the Emperor, at the outset of his reign, felt an impatient eagerness to improve the lot of the labouring classes and—as he announced at the opening of the Reichstag in 1888—to continue, in accordance with the principles of Christian morality, the legislative work of social protection inaugurated by his grandfather. In 1890 an international conference held by his orders in Berlin, for the purpose of studying industrial legislation. On the other hand, he came to the throne with a youthful hatred of Socialists and freethinkers—a hatred that grew in intensity as the years went by, and as the advance of Social Democracy became more menacing at each election to the Reichstag. Nothing has occupied his mind more than the fear of Socialism, the struggle with this elusive Proteus. In a speech delivered at KÖnigsberg in 1894, he denounced the enemy in no measured terms: “Let us arise, and fight for religion, morality, and order, against the partisans of anarchy!” In 1907 he even entered the lists against the foe, to such good purpose that on the balcony of his palace in Berlin he was hailed with cheers from the bien pensants after the electoral verdict which for the time being thinned the ranks of the Social-Democratic delegates. As ruler of a great empire containing some millions of Socialists, would he not have acted more wisely by holding aloof from the feuds of classes and of parties, and by dwelling serenely above the turmoil?
William II., without sharing all the reactionary ideas of the Prussian Conservatives, has anything but a liberal turn of mind. He is a monarch by divine right—one who considers himself, like his predecessors, entrusted with the mission of governing his States and of moulding the happiness of his subjects, even though it be against their own immediate wishes, in accordance with the principles of religion and the monarchical tradition; an unbending champion of the sacred privileges of kingship, limited solely by the barriers of modern constitutionalism.
It is not within the scope of the present study to enter into a more detailed analysis of so complex a character, one that has already furnished material for numerous portraits, and, with all its twists and turns, will severely test the powers of future biographers. I will merely endeavour, at the end of this chapter, to summarize the most striking features of the Imperial temperament, and to indicate the aspect under which he must appear to us hereafter in the light of an appalling war. After all, in the man who sways the destinies of Germany, it is the statesman who claims our chief interest, because of his attempt to give a new direction to the destinies of Europe. From this standpoint, it is impossible to overlook the part that religion plays in his life. He has always been an ardent Protestant. For him, as for Treitschke, the historian of modern Prussia, Protestantism is not only the true faith, but the corner-stone of German unity, the strong rampart behind which the language and customs of the German race have been kept intact from the shores of the Baltic to the borders of Transylvania. William II.’s creed, however, though sincere, is decidedly too garrulous and too nationalistic. It is paraded before the world with an intolerable lack of reticence. It is revealed in his speeches by startling invocations to the Deity, a Deity who is exclusively German, who confines his love to the Germans and rejoices in their exploits. At the threshold of the twentieth century, this defender of the faith, modelling himself upon the Biblical heroes and the champions of the Reformation had come to regard himself as the right hand and sword of the Almighty, as the predestined being on whom the Spirit from on high had descended. How can we be astonished if, under the sway of such a creed, he has embarked upon a war that recalls the merciless struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a sort of crusade against the enemies of God’s chosen people, embodied to-day in the Germanic race? This theory and practice of religion will explain why the head of the pious German nation, after solemnly invoking upon his arms the blessing of the Christian God—a God of peace and good will!—has ordered, without any qualms of conscience, the bombardment of defenceless cities and the destruction of the architectural triumphs of Catholic art, the old historic cathedrals.
II.
During the decade preceding the war, too much confidence was placed abroad in the pacifism and sincerity of William II. It was forgotten that, after all, he is a descendant of Frederick the Great, and that, where politics are concerned, he must have studied the lessons taught by his unscrupulous ancestor. He claims for himself, not altogether without justice—for in his early years he might well have fallen a victim to the glamour of military laurels—the merit of having maintained the peace of Europe, in spite of unwearied efforts to perfect the organization of the German army, or rather by virtue of those accessions of strength which made an attack upon it almost impossible. This claim was accepted in all good faith by a world which failed to realize that the competition in armaments must inevitably lead to war, just as every fever that becomes acute results in a violent crisis. Apart from the peaceful intentions of the Emperor, it was felt that the Triple Alliance, formed by Bismarck and renewed from time to time after his day, might well calm the fears of the smaller nationalities. The old Chancellor and his successors always represented the Triplice as an insurance policy against the danger of a widespread conflagration. Safely ensconced in this impregnable fortress, the forces of the three allies could defy any coalition; hence other Powers were careful not to challenge them, not to do anything that might disturb the ordered state of Europe. But from the day that the Cabinet of Berlin, in order to support the claims of the Cabinet of Vienna, forced the Slav nations and the other Powers, taken off their guard, to recognize the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Triple Alliance wore a new aspect. The policeman of Europe, impelled by a restless greed, was beginning to fail in his duties as guardian. The confidence hitherto placed in the honesty of his intentions grew sensibly weaker.
It is true that for twenty-five years—longum aevi spatium—William II. kept the promise he had made to the German people, at Bismarck’s advice, in his first speech from the throne—the promise that he would have a peaceful reign. Throughout that period his one idea was to make Germany the first country in the world through the development of her commerce and industry, to enrich every class in the community, to dethrone Paris and London in favour of Berlin. “Our future lies on the water!” he said to his subjects, with a clear view of the goal towards which he was to direct their energies—the creation of a powerful navy, which would ensure in all the markets of the world a predominant place for the products of German labour. During this quarter of a century Germany indeed made remarkable strides, and her progress filled other nations with amazement. William II. consorted chiefly with the great bankers, manufacturers, and armament-makers of the Empire, and constantly took their advice. He was on intimate terms with Herr Krupp, whose private life scarcely entitled him to this honour. He did all he could to encourage Herr Ballin, the clever and enterprising director of the Hamburg-Amerika line. He presided in person at the launching of the transatlantic giants of this powerful company. In the speech delivered by him when the last of these leviathans left the dock—a vessel of fifty thousand tons, christened by him “Bismarck,” as a tardy act of homage to the genius of the Iron Chancellor—he gave vent to an extraordinary outburst of patriotic pride. It was a pÆan of triumph in honour of the German shipyards, which had built the largest liner in the world, far surpassing anything that the maritime art of England had so far attempted.
The long spell of peace imposed by this ruler of a military nation had no doubt other causes than the desire to ensure the economic prosperity of Germany. Although William II. from his early youth has taken a keen interest in his army, he does not possess the martial spirit inherent in several princes of his house. Like Frederick William I., he is fond of the barracks, without having a taste for the battlefield. Since the age of twenty-nine, when he became the supreme commander of the army, the “War Lord,” he has performed with scrupulous care all the military ritual prescribed for a King of Prussia; he has regularly been seen taking part in his officers’ mess, appearing from daybreak in the midst of his cavalry regiments on the drill-ground at DÖberitz, inspecting every army corps in turn, and presiding at the “Imperial” autumn manoeuvres, where his criticism of the operations raised a smile among professional soldiers. All along the streets of Berlin the shop windows are filled with photographs of the Emperor in every naval and military uniform of his forces, in every character of his repertory; his moustaches fiercely turned up, his glance firm and threatening, his field-marshal’s baton in his hand. These portraits do their utmost to give us an impression of an exceedingly warlike sovereign. But is he really a soldier?
At the opening of hostilities, the German newspapers announced that His Imperial Majesty, in visiting the theatres of war, would be followed by a special train, carrying a collapsible wooden house, including materials for a floor, in order that the Emperor should not be exposed to the damp. We know, indeed, that this need of ease and comfort is partly due to a fear of colds and throat maladies, for William II. can take no liberties with his health. Still, precautions of this kind are hardly what we expect from a true soldier.
The true royal soldier of this war is not to be found among the crowned Germans who only follow it at a safe distance; he stands at the head of the little Belgian army that is making a desperate struggle to defend its homes. The true soldier is he who has faced danger in the firing-line and the trenches, in order to inspire his youthful troops with his own coolness and heroism, the heroism of a soul that no terror can daunt. The true soldier is he who has shown his mettle on the battlefields of Louvain, Antwerp, and the Yser as a great general and a great king—His Majesty King Albert.
Perhaps, too, William II. remained pacific for so long because he lacked confidence as to the result of a fresh struggle, although in his speeches he extolled the prowess of his forbears, and often recommended his soldiers to keep their powder dry. Perhaps he dreaded the uncertain fortune of battle, remembering the words of Bismarck on the subject of preventive wars, of wars inspired solely by the aim of crushing an opponent before he is ready: “We cannot get a glimpse of the cards that Providence holds.” Perhaps, again, he feared the unknown factors that may wreck the best-laid political schemes, those imponderabilia or incalculable elements which the same statesman regarded as so important. That a young sovereign, such as the Emperor in the first few years of his reign, should not wish to imperil the heritage of glory and conquest bequeathed by his grandfather is perfectly natural and intelligible. He liked to rattle his sabre, always at the wrong moment, but not to draw it from its sheath, for he had no inborn love of war. Yet these peaceful sentiments—or shall we rather say this unwillingness to face the hazards of fortune?—disappeared in course of time, and gave place in that restless mind to feelings of quite another order. The transformation, however, was not a sudden one; it was a gradual conversion, keeping pace with the changes that supervened in Germany herself, with the increase in her population, her needs and her appetites. The influence of Bismarck, a satisfied, sobered, and prudent Bismarck, not to be confused with the bold gambler of the war period, had long outlasted his retirement. For ten years more, ten years of internal conflict, during which the German people seemed to be angry with the Emperor for having broken its idol, the Bismarckian policy of consolidation and defence had been kept up by the mediocre successors of the irascible recluse of Varzin. After this, other ambitions came into play, and the counsels of the ex-Chancellor were gradually forgotten by the new generation of politicians, diplomats, professors, writers, and soldiers who aspired to lead Germany towards loftier goals. Their successful influence upon the mind of the Sovereign became perfectly apparent at the moment when he reached the zenith of his career.
This moment coincides with the end of the first twenty-five years of his reign, which had dowered the German people with an unexampled prosperity. The Imperial Jubilee of 1913 was an epoch-making date. Germany, in fact, was not content with celebrating that year the peaceful conquests achieved since the accession of her third Emperor; she commemorated, at the same time, the centenary of the wars of liberation, while the members of the Reichstag patriotically voted for a military law more burdensome and more crushing than any previous measure of the kind. Thus Germany associated the superb results of her national energy for the past quarter of a century, which no real menace of war had ever threatened to wreck, with the glowing memories of her emancipation from the Napoleonic yoke, and with feverish preparation for a fresh struggle, which the condition of Europe by no means appeared to warrant. This triple coincidence aroused serious misgivings in the minds of foreign observers. The patriotic memories of 1813 seemed like low rumblings of thunder, the harbingers of an approaching storm. As if the passions of his subjects were not heated enough already, the Emperor in his public speeches did not cease from fanning their flame. He must have said to himself then that the first part of his task was over, and that the second was about to begin. He had launched his people upon a career of prosperity and progress in which it could no longer cry halt, and a new war, far from checking this marvellous economic advance, would only act as a fresh stimulus. Germany, having trebled her commerce and almost doubled her population, with millions of workers who no longer left their country to seek a living elsewhere, needed new fields for expansion, and thirsted for an unquestioned supremacy in every sphere. It would be the glory of William, while still in the full vigour of his years, to realize these splendid ambitions.
With implicit faith in the historians of his house, he had already come under the spell of dreams that took their rise in a remote past. Although heir to a modern empire, entirely different from the Germanic empire of Otto and Barbarossa, he had sedulously set himself to link up the creation of Bismarck and Moltke with that of the Middle Ages, to re-forge the chain of historic tradition, to proclaim himself the heir of the old elected CÆsars. It is obviously with this intention that the Siegesallee was laid out through the Thiergarten in Berlin, with its double row of marble statues, symmetrical and funereal, more suited to a royal family vault than to a public park. There, almost shoulder to shoulder, stand Emperors of Germany, ancient and modern, Electors of Brandenburg and Kings of Prussia—a significant Pantheon! At Vienna, the princes of the Hapsburg house avenged the defeats of 1866 by treating the Hohenzollerns as upstarts. At Berlin, however, the descendant of these upstarts aimed at nothing less than reviving the monarchy of Charlemagne. He set up in his capital a monument to the mythical Roland, as a symbol of the bond between past and present, and dreamed of re-establishing a Carlovingian hegemony over the Continent of Europe.
III.
I will deal later with those European events and those features of the internal situation in Germany which reacted upon the mind of William II. and helped to bring about his moral transformation. The point that must be emphasized here is that he fancied at first that he would only have to fight France, the old, implacable enemy. The coming war seemed to him nothing but a mere duel between the Empire and the Republic.
For a long time he hoped to sow dissensions between his opponents, and to secure the inaction of Russia. At the Court of Berlin the Franco-Russian alliance was not regarded as a rock that nothing could shatter. The Potsdam agreement, concluded by M. Kokovtzow, and restricted in its scope (so far as we can tell) to Western Asia, seemed to open up a promising vista. Repeated advances were made to Tsar Nicholas; interviews took place, such as the one at Baltic Port, where William II. exercised all the seductive wiles at his command to cajole the Russian sovereign and win the confidence of his ministers. The Emperor himself remarked to me, only a few months before the war, that false ideas were current in France regarding the stability of the Dual Alliance; he was well informed as to the true feeling of the Tsar’s Court, for some exalted Russian personages, in passing through Berlin, had not scrupled to indicate the side on which their sympathies lay.
One of the main axioms of Bismarck’s policy was that Germany must always strive to maintain friendly relations with her great northern neighbour. This sound advice, which the Chancellor himself had not acted upon at the Congress of Berlin, was neglected by his successors. In March 1909, William II., in full accord with the views of Prince von BÜlow, did not hesitate to inform St. Petersburg that he would give unswerving support to Austria, if the diplomatic debate on the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina should culminate in a war. The threatening front that Count de PortalÈs was ordered to show rankled in the hearts of Russian patriots, who were compelled to retreat before this menace. But at the Court of Berlin the memory of it soon faded, for it is characteristic of the Emperor to forget any ill-feeling of which he is the cause. He is always ready to pardon those whom he has insulted.
Even the Balkan War did not entirely dispel his illusions, although it showed clearly that France and Russia were firmly united, and determined to face the same risks hand in hand. The expert fingers of M. DelcassÉ, who was sent as ambassador to St. Petersburg during the events of 1912, tied the knot of the alliance more tightly than ever. After this, it is true, the Emperor paid great attention to Russian military activity on his eastern frontier; but it must have cost him much to abandon his dream of a neutral or inactive Russia in the event of a war with France. On March 2, 1914, the semi-official KÖlnische Zeitung,1 under the guise of a letter from its St. Petersburg correspondent, issued a final warning to the Tsar! This document denounced the increase of armaments and the ingratitude with which Russia was repaying the services that Germany had rendered to her at the time of the Macedonian war. The Russian newspapers replied in an acrimonious tone, hinting that the commercial treaty with Germany would not be renewed. Herr von Jagow, in a statement on foreign affairs read to the Reichstag some weeks later, confined himself to a general censure of these Press campaigns, the responsibility for which he assigned to the Pan-Slavic journals.
IV.
In William II.’s eyes France has always been the chief enemy. In spite of this, the idea of a reconciliation with her has repeatedly flitted across his romantic brain. Not for one moment, however, has he thought of restoring Alsace-Lorraine to her or of making it neutral territory. He regarded these questions as settled for good and all by the victories of 1870 and the Treaty of Frankfort, and would not even humour France to the extent of granting a more liberal constitution to the conquered provinces. Some Frenchmen, anxious to promote a better understanding between France and Germany, wished to see Alsace-Lorraine enjoy a complete autonomy, after the pattern of a federal State like Bavaria or Saxony. This suggestion, impressed Berlin as an unwarrantable interference in the internal affairs of the Empire.
Nevertheless, the Emperor has often believed in all sincerity that he might improve the relations between the two countries, ease the tension between Paris and Berlin, and even pave the way for an eventual friendship, by paying flattering attentions to Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, celebrities in politics, art, and society, who visited Germany. He considered that in paying these attentions to individuals and in supplementing them by smiles and compliments addressed to the Republican Government and to prominent people he was making real advances. His conversations with Coquelin and Mlle. Granier amused the Parisians, who thanked him with neatly turned paragraphs in the newspapers, and held themselves free of all further obligations. Those who thought that these displays of Imperial graciousness might be followed by a more favourable trend in Germany’s policy towards France were doomed to disappointment. Offers of association in commercial enterprises between subjects of the two countries in Morocco were made (without any success, by the way) after the agreement of 1909, but they must not be taken as instances of William II.’s good will towards a neighbour whom in reality he detested. He fancied that he could conquer the French by his winning ways, and in this his vanity deceived him, although at certain times, partly owing to his reputation as a pacifist, he was a not unpopular figure in Paris.
For some time previous to the war he had been cured of these fits of benevolence, after discovering that they were practically useless. In fact, during the last few months before the cataclysm he went to the other extreme, and when any French visitor was presented to him, his manner was unusually brusque and haughty. At a Court ball one evening in February 1914, while conversing with my friend and fellow-countryman Baron Lambert, he gave vent in my presence to the following epigram, more picturesque than true (it was one that he loved to repeat, for he had already uttered it to other diplomats): “I have often held out my hand to France; she has only answered me with kicks!” He followed this up with a diatribe against the Parisian Press, which, he said, attacked Germany day after day with unreasoning violence. He ended in a grave tone, exclaiming with those expressive gestures that added so much weight to his words: “They had better take care in Paris—I shall not live for ever!” While he was holding forth in this style, his mind, as will be seen later on, was already made up for war. Was he playing a part? Or should we rather see in all this a desire to heap up grievances, in order to justify his later acts?
Since he procured a regular supply of cuttings from the French nationalist organs, in which his Government was pilloried, why did he not read their German counterpart—the daily attacks of the Pan-Germanic Press upon France in general and President PoincarÉ in particular? Undoubtedly this warfare of pens was not merely regrettable, but dangerous in the interests of peace; still, it was carried on by each side in the tone and style characteristic of the two races. In order to form a conception of the haughtiness, insolence, and bad faith of certain German publicists, it would be enough to wade through some of the articles with which Dr. Schiemann, who had his little hour of favour and popularity at the Court of Berlin, regaled the Gallophobe and Russophobe readers of the Kreuzzeitung in his political notes of the week every Wednesday morning.
After Agadir, William II. came to regard a war with France as inexorably decreed by Fate. On the 5th and 6th of November 1913, the King of the Belgians was his guest at Potsdam, after returning from LÜneburg, where he had paid his usual courtesy visit to the regiment of dragoons of which he was honorary colonel. On this occasion the Emperor told King Albert that he looked upon war with France as “inevitable and close at hand.” What reason did he give for this pessimistic statement, which impressed his royal visitor all the more strongly since the belief in the peaceful sentiments of the Emperor had not yet been shaken in Belgium? He pointed out that France herself wanted war, and that she was arming rapidly with that end in view, as was proved by the vote on the law enacting a three years’ term of military service. At the same time he declared that he felt certain of victory. The Belgian monarch, who was better informed as to the real inclinations of the French Government and people, tried in vain to enlighten him, and to dispel from his mind the false picture that he drew from the language of a handful of fanatical patriots, the picture of a France thirsting for war.
On the 6th of November General von Moltke, Chief of the General Staff, after a dinner to which the Emperor, in honour of his guest, had invited the leading officials present in Berlin, had a conversation with King Albert. He expressed himself in the same terms as his Sovereign on the subject of war with France, asserted that it was bound to come soon, and insisted still more emphatically on the certain prospect of success, in view of the enthusiasm with which the whole German nation would gird up its loins to beat back the traditional foe. General von Moltke used the same blustering language that evening to the Belgian military attachÉ, who sat next to him at table. I have been told that later in the evening he showed a similar lack of reserve towards other military attachÉs in whom he was pleased to confide, or whom he wished to impress.
The real object of these confidential outbursts is not hard to discover. They were an invitation to our country, face to face with the danger that threatened Western Europe, to throw herself into the arms of the stronger, arms ready to open, to clasp Belgium—yes, and to crush her. When we think of the ultimatum issued to Belgium on the following 2nd of August, we realize to what an act of servility and cowardice William II., through this Potsdam interview, would fain have driven King Albert.
The conversation between the two sovereigns was reported to the French ambassador, as is shown by a dispatch from M. Cambon, inserted in the French Yellow Book of 1914. This was done solely from a hope that the disaster of a Franco-German war might still be averted. In the higher interests of humanity, it was essential for France to learn that the Emperor had ceased to be an advocate of peace, and was calmly facing the prospect of a new war as something inevitable. The French Government, who, whatever William II. might think, were still anxious for peace, had now to guard carefully against the occurrence of incidents that might prove difficult to smooth over, because they would be regarded as provocations at Berlin.
May we suppose that the mental condition of the Emperor, who had become very nervous and irritable, had made him blind to evidence and deaf to persuasion? William II. would not admit the truth that is as clear as daylight to all impartial observers: that France, with a neighbour whose overwhelming military strength was a perpetual menace to her security, had armed with the main purpose of not being left at the mercy of unexpected events or ruthless designs. He had no doubt whatever that the desire for a war of revenge haunted the brain of every Frenchman. The recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, an achievement which most sons of France had banished to the limbo of their patriotic dreams, and only saw now and then as a distant mirage, seemed to him, in his obstinate self-deception, the secret aim towards which most French statesmen were striving. The sanguine and gullible pacifism of the French Radicals and Socialists, which had come so plainly to the fore in their opposition to the three years’ term of military service, was entirely left out of his calculations.
When a man persists in a view that is so palpably opposed to the truth, one is inclined to doubt his sincerity. Was the Kaiser misinformed as to the real intentions of France, or, in crediting her with these hostile schemes, was he only looking for a pretext that might seem to justify an attack on his part? This is a question that we have a right to ask to-day.
V.
Up to the last moment the Emperor counted on the neutrality of England, whatever might be the cause of the struggle between the Triple and the Dual Alliance. He had too readily forgotten all the grievances that the United Kingdom had against him, although they had not vanished from the memories or the hearts of Britons: the famous telegram to President Kruger in 1896, in connection with the Jameson Raid, an ill-timed manifesto, which completely deceived the old patriot of Johannesburg as to the likelihood of support from the Kaiser; the campaign of slander against England carried on in Germany from the outset of the Boer War, three years later; and, last but not least, the tremendous expansion of the German navy, heralded by Prince von BÜlow and Admiral von Tirpitz immediately after the first British reverses at the hands of the Boers.
Had William II. also forgotten the resolutely hostile front shown by the British Cabinet during the Algeciras Conference, and, more recently, during the Franco-German negotiations after the Agadir affair? No doubt he fancied, like many Germans, that the support given by England to France would not go beyond certain moral and geographical limits. He felt that it would be enough to pave the way for a solution of the Moroccan problem (since it had been decided in London to help in setting up a French protectorate in Morocco), and of certain Mediterranean questions in which the two countries held similar views. It was generally believed in Germany that the Cabinet of St. James’s, realizing the frankly pacific outlook of its Liberal majority in Parliament, would remain a patient spectator in a Continental war that did not involve any vital British interests. How often did the Berlin Press dwell on this theme, and, during the brief Austro-Serbian crisis preceding the war, embroider it with fulsome flatteries of Great Britain! There was high financial authority to support this conviction among the German public. These potentates of the purse carried on their intrigues in London up to the very end, not only in the business world but even in political circles. In the parliamentary lobbies at Westminster, financiers of German origin took steps with a view to preventing any participation by England in a Continental struggle. Shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, Herr Ballin, the Kaiser’s confidential servant, came to London with orders from his master to make all his arrangements for war and to hoodwink his English friends into the belief that Germany’s intentions were peaceful, when in point of fact all was ready for hurling the thunderbolt.
William II.’s political blunders have often proceeded from his trusting too much to his own adroitness and powers of judgment. After 1911, he was exceedingly anxious to promote a better understanding between the Anglo-Saxon and the Germanic nations, linked together as they were by ties of blood and by common historical memories. In the following year the tension was somewhat relaxed, but William II. overrated this increase of warmth in the relations between the two Governments and peoples. Confident that he held the winning cards, he showed his hand too soon, with the result that the British Cabinet decided to abandon the game.
At a meeting held in Cardiff on the 2nd of October 1914, the Prime Minister made a most interesting disclosure regarding the 1912 attempt to arrive at an understanding.2 “We said, and we communicated this to the Berlin Government: ‘Britain declares that she will neither make nor join in any unprovoked attack upon Germany. Aggression upon Germany is not the subject and forms no part of any treaty, understanding or combination to which Britain is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object.’” But that, Mr. Asquith went on to say, was not enough for German statesmanship. “They wanted us to go further. They asked us to pledge ourselves absolutely to neutrality in the event of Germany’s being engaged in war, and this, mind you, at a time when Germany was enormously increasing both her aggressive and defensive resources, and especially upon the sea. They asked us, to put it quite plainly, for a free hand, so far as we were concerned, when they selected the opportunity to overbear and dominate the European world. To such a demand but one answer was possible, and we gave that answer.”
Thus the arrogant demands of William II.’s diplomacy lost him an excellent opportunity of banishing the suspicions of the British Cabinet, and of re-establishing cordial relations with the Island Kingdom. In spite of this set-back, he did not abandon hope, and when the situation arising out of the Balkan War brought the two nations together, he again imagined that he could rely implicitly upon British neutrality.
Once more appearances deceived him. He ascribed too much value to the dexterity of his new ambassador. Prince Lichnowsky, who was a persona grata in London society, and to the influence of the friends whom Germany had even in the Asquith Cabinet, men like Haldane, Burns, and Harcourt. The language of the Germanophile organs of the English Press also did something to mislead him as to the true feelings of the English people towards its chief maritime and commercial rival; but these journals were not, as the Emperor thought, the real voice of England.
In his conversations with foreigners he was fond of ridiculing the French for their belief in the reality of the Triple Entente, and for their fruitless efforts to turn it into an effective alliance. The visit of King George and Queen Mary to Paris can have caused him no anxiety on this score. But his most serious blunder, it would seem, was to imagine, on the strength of reports which can only have come from his Ambassador, that in the early summer of 1914 England was hopelessly distracted by the Irish quarrel, trembling on the verge of civil war, and therefore totally incapable of armed intervention on the Continent.
It appeared to him the moment for the great throw of the dice. Had the Emperor not felt so certain on this point, would he have exposed the thriving trade of Germany and her unfinished fleet, the very apple of his eye, to the terrible ordeal of a naval war with England? Would he have been ready to endanger the economic prosperity of his Empire, a prosperity in which the mercantile marine was an indispensable factor?
Cruel was his awakening, and savagely did he resent the blow. We have a proof of this in the message conveyed by one of his aides-de-camp to Sir Edward Goschen, after the scandalous demonstration of the Berlin mob against the British Embassy, on the arrival of the news that England had declared war.3
“The Emperor,” said the aide-de-camp, “has charged me to express to your Excellency his regret for the occurrences of last night, but to tell you at the same time that you will gather from these occurrences an idea of the feelings of his people respecting the action of Great Britain in joining with other nations against her old allies of Waterloo.”
William II. added that he was divesting himself of his titles of British Field-Marshal and British Admiral, of which he had formerly been so proud. To any one who knows the value and importance attached in Germany to these honorary distinctions—which we should be inclined to regard as mere trivialities—this act of the Emperor’s will convey more than any words of anger and indignation.
VI.
Astonishment has been expressed at his having gone so far astray in his judgment of public opinion and of the real intentions of the Governments of the countries of the Triple Entente. He was no better acquainted with the outlook of Italian statesmen, for the Quirinal’s decision to hold aloof from the conflict, instead of taking part as a member of the Triplice, undoubtedly caused him no little surprise and irritation. This ignorance proceeds from his bad selection of men to represent him abroad, and from his claim to be his own Foreign Minister, just as he is his own Chancellor. The ambassadors are appointed by the Emperor himself, often on the strength of a mere fancy that he has taken to some particular person. Positions of the highest importance have accordingly been given to men of very little experience. His ambassadors, since their tenure depends on his will and pleasure, make it their chief object to find favour in his sight, to chime in with all his theories, and to send him reports that are in harmony with his own opinions. With such scanty information from diplomatic sources, the Imperial Government could not form a precise idea as to what Russia, France, England, Japan, and Italy would do in the event of a war between Austria and Servia, a war which was fated not to remain localized. The same uncertainty, the same illusions prevailed as regards the loyalty of the British dominions, the devotion of the Indian princes, the acquiescence of Egypt, and the fidelity of the Moslems in the French colonies. We cannot suppose, moreover, that the German military attachÉs, official spies accredited at the headquarters of foreign Governments, were any more clear-sighted than their chiefs. The inferiority of the German diplomatic staff was nowhere more glaringly shown up than by their own countrymen in Berlin, whether in the debates on the Foreign Office estimates, or in the columns of the Liberal Press, to say nothing of Socialist organs. Liberal journalists were fond of contrasting the failures of German diplomats with the successes of their French and English colleagues; but these writers were wrong in ascribing the shortcomings of their compatriots to their status as nobles of ancient lineage or men of the middle classes who had recently been ennobled. The fault lay in the Emperor’s capricious methods of selection.
William II. directed the foreign policy of Germany in person. From the first, he liked to chat with ambassadors and Foreign Secretaries, and to utter his thoughts freely upon the most delicate questions, knowing well that none of his words would be wasted. His formidable jokes, like his unexpected fits of frankness—whether they have been thought out beforehand, or come as sudden flashes of his impatient temper—have more than once disconcerted his hearers. Nor did he rest content with talking; he took up the pen as well, to express his ideas to foreign correspondents, such as Lord Tweedmouth—inspirations that were nearly always unlucky! A notorious affair was that of the interview with the Emperor published by the Daily Telegraph in November 1908, after being submitted to Prince von BÜlow, who did not take the trouble to inspect it personally. It brought about a crisis that must have had the salutary effect of teaching the Sovereign to tread more warily and with less self-confidence upon the shifting sands of foreign politics. The German public simmered with indignation, and the Reichstag refused to keep quiet. In the end the Chancellor had to intervene, and a promise was exacted from the Emperor that he would be more discreet in future. “The profound sensation and the painful impression created by these disclosures,” said the Chancellor in the Reichstag, “will lead His Majesty to maintain henceforth, in his private conversations, that reserve which is no less essential for a continuous policy than for the authority of the Crown.”
William II. accordingly promised to be more reticent, and for several years he kept his word, but he never forgave Prince von BÜlow for not having defended him at the bar of the Reichstag and of public opinion. Until the death of Herr von Kiderlen-WÄchter, at the end of 1912, he refrained from any open interference in foreign affairs. No more sensational speeches were made, no more long conversations on questions of the day were held with ambassadors. It is true that Herr von Kiderlen-WÄchter, the strongest personality that has appeared at the Wilhelmstrasse since the departure of Prince von BÜlow—less clever than the latter in the art of concealing his thoughts, but more inclined to stand on his dignity, so much so that he could not tolerate any interference by the Emperor in his domain—would rather have resigned his post than be led about on a leash by his master, like some submissive bulldog. Rightly or wrongly he was regarded as the only man who could put into practice the treaty that he had concluded with France. That treaty had been made with pacific intentions; for, brutal as he was, this statesman was no lover of war. Had he lived, his peculiar knowledge of the Near East would probably have ensured his being kept in office throughout the period of the Balkan conflict, if not longer. When Kiderlen-WÄchter vanished from the scene, the Emperor began once more to direct foreign policy, and resumed his freedom of language with the diplomats of other countries. The Turkish ambassador, Osman Nizami Pasha, who had previously been in high favour, was marked out as a special victim; he was told some cruel home-truths by the great friend of Turkey, after the first disasters of the Thracian campaign.
VII.
It often happens that a monarch or a statesman is made up of several distinct personalities, which come to the fore in turn at the various stages of his career. Few are those who remain unchanged from early youth to the grave, as if hewn from a block of granite. In rulers who are conscious of their responsibilities, the years as they roll by assuage or curb the passions of their springtime. Maturity and experience lead them to take a less confident view of enterprises to which they would like to apply their energies and their resources. In William II., a contrary process has taken place. Such relative wisdom as he can boast has been shown in his middle age, not in his youth.
I have heard it suggested that the state of his health may have had something to do with his moral deterioration. In spite of his taking constant exercise in the open air, or perhaps because of his excessive travelling and of the exhaustion that it involved, his overstrained nerves became considerably weaker as time went on. In the end, the daily rest that he forced himself to take, lying down on his bed for at least an hour every afternoon, was not enough to restore his physical balance. His drawn face and ashen complexion were tell-tale signs of wear and tear. His subjects, who did not often get a chance of seeing him, were shocked to discover how their Sovereign was growing old before his time. Who knows, it has been asked, whether the decline in his powers of resistance has not reacted upon his mental condition? Physiologists and doctors, accustomed to trace connections between physical and moral states, would be inclined to confirm this theory. Personally, I do not believe that fatigue and exhaustion have played their part in determining William II.’s actions. That his nervousness has increased of late, that his growing irritability has made him more trying to his personal attendants, more liable to insist upon unquestioning obedience—these facts are supported by so many independent witnesses, that we cannot question their truth. But his schemes have been drawn up with perfect mental calm, and not in that state of morbid over-excitement which the world has been too ready to regard as his normal mood.
What manner of a man, then, is William II.? An ambitious ruler of the stamp of Charles V., Louis XIV., or Napoleon—that Napoleon who is popular to-day in Berlin, where his portrait is exhibited in the shop windows more often than those of the Prussian kings, with the exception of “Old Fritz”? A great prince who has studied the lessons of his professors in history, and has striven to realize the ancient aspirations of his people? “The Hohenzollerns,” his teachers tell him, “after centuries of waiting, are destined to build up that great Empire of the West for which the heirs of Otto laid out the plans and the Hohenstaufen reared the scaffolding. Germany, united at last under the Hohenzollern sway, in vigour, in population, in intelligence, in power of production and expansion, superior to the decadent nations that surround her, must go forth resolutely to conquer Europe, and after that to dominate the world.” Such, I think, will be the flattering verdict that future German historians will pass on William II. In the world outside Germany, the Belgians, at any rate, will hold a different view. They will not subscribe to the accuracy of this idealized portrait, which omits those hitherto unsuspected features that the war has brought to their notice. In one who had motives for watching him during the last years before the catastrophe, the Emperor aroused a sense of perplexity and fear, like some momentous riddle that no man may read. To-day we cannot study his character without reference to the actions that have displayed it in a ghastly light. His dramatic figure is lit up for his victims by the flames of Louvain and other ill-starred cities, and in that same lurid glare they behold their country writhing beneath the blows that his insensate rage has dealt it.
We must picture to ourselves, the Belgians will say, a monarch mighty in rank and power, effusively cordial to strangers whom he wished to charm and dazzle, but liable to disappoint those who were rash enough to trust in his kindness of heart; always able to give the impression of complete frankness, and using this as a means of seduction; really admiring nothing but strength, and ready to abuse his own; looking with utter contempt on small States and petty princes, yet never loath to flatter them when occasion demanded; a wooer of public opinion, especially that of other countries, but resolved to defy it in order to attain his ambitions; a ruler who enjoyed a false reputation for chivalry, while he has shown himself relentless in his malice; of a faith that was sincere, if superficial, yet did not prevent him from setting his interests above his most solemn engagements, and ruthlessly tearing up any treaty that had become inconvenient; always careful to play his part, and clever in staging his effects; accustomed, unfortunately, to seeing everything bow to his will; such a spoilt child of fortune that he came to the point of thinking himself infallible; one whom Nietzsche might have called a superman, and the Romans a demigod.
It has been asserted that this “demigod” was merely an exalted type of the ill-balanced or decadent man. What a mistake! He was in full possession of all his faculties when he ordered that hasty mobilization which made the cataclysm inevitable. Some have maintained that he was, beyond all question, the tool of a caste and a party for whom war was the sole means of consolidating their power. He did indeed listen to their advice, but only because their views were in harmony with his own. Without any hesitation, the verdict of history will make him answerable for the disasters that have overwhelmed Europe. If we carefully read and compare the documents relating to the brief negotiations carried on during the Austro-Serbian crisis, we find ample proof that it was within William II.’s power, up to the last moment, to say the word that would have prevented war. So far from doing this, he sent his ultimatum to Russia, and thus let loose the deluge at the moment which he had chosen.
One would like to believe that he hesitated a long time before venturing upon a path beset with so many terrors. One would fain imagine that his conscience revolted at the thought of the streams of blood and the heartrending misery which the coming struggle would involve, but that he was swept along, in spite of himself, by an irresistible fate. Idle speculations! The blow had been planned several months in advance, the scheme had been prepared down to its minutest details, and the Emperor deliberately hastened on the signal for attack, cutting short in his impatience the discussions which the Entente Powers were desperately anxious to continue. The projects that he was carrying out had matured at leisure. Posterity will regard this point as settled, and will brush aside the charge of provocation trumped up against his opponents by himself, by his Chancellor, and by his Press, in order to gain the suffrages of public opinion at home and abroad.
When all is said and done, history will not forgive William of Hohenzollern for having initiated an appalling war, carried on in his name. Why these frightful devastations, this systematic destruction of towns, villages, and country-houses, this methodical vandalism directed against secular and religious monuments, these wholesale executions of innocent civilians, these unpardonable murders of priests, women, and children, this raping and looting, all this useless cruelty that recalls the native barbarism of the primitive Germanic tribes? For such methods of warfare posterity, like the present generation, will find no excuse. It will say that the campaign of 1914 in Belgium and in Northern France, where these harrowing scenes occurred over and over again, brought dishonour both to the German army and to its Emperor.
