My close relations with the army are a matter of common knowledge. In this direction I conformed to the tradition of my family. Prussia's kings did not chase cosmopolitan mirages, but realized that the welfare of their land could only be assured by means of a real power protecting industry and commerce. If, in a number of utterances, I admonished my people to "keep their powder dry" and "their swords sharp," the warning was addressed alike to foe and friend. I wished our foes to pause and think a long time before they dared to engage with us. I wished to cultivate a manly spirit in the German people; I wished to make sure that, when the hour struck for us to defend the fruits of our industry against an enemy's lust of conquest, it should find a strong race.

In view of this I attached high value to the educational duty of the army. General compulsory military service has a social influence upon men in the mass equaled by nothing else. It brings together rich and poor, sons of the soil and of the city; it brings acquaintanceship and mutual understanding among young people whose roads, otherwise, would lead them far apart; the feeling that they are serving one idea unites them.

And think what we made out of our young men! Pale town boys were transformed into erect, healthy, sport-hardened men; limbs grown stiff through labor were made adroit and pliable.

I stepped direct from brigade commander to king—to repeat the well-known words of King Frederick William III. Up to then I had climbed the steps of an officer's career. I still think with pleasure of my pride when, on the 2d of May, 1869, during the spring parade, I first stood in the ranks before my grandfather. Relations with the individual man have always seemed valuable to me, and, therefore, I particularly treasured the assignments, during my military service, where I could cultivate such relations. My activities as commander of a company, a squadron, and a battery, likewise as head of a regiment, are unforgettable to me.

I felt at home among my soldiers. In them I placed unlimited trust. The painful experiences of the autumn of 1918 have not diminished this trust. I do not forget that a part of the German people, after four years of unprecedented achievements and privations, had become too ill to withstand being corrupted by foes within and without. Moreover, the best of the Germans lay under the green sod; the others were thrown into such consternation by the events of the revolution which had been held to be impossible that they could not spur themselves to act.

Compulsory military service was the best school for the physical and moral toughening of our people. It created for us free men who knew their own value. From these an excellent corps of noncommissioned officers was formed; from the latter, in turn, we drew our Government officials, the like of whom, in ability, incorruptibility and fidelity to duty no other nation on earth can show.

BELIEVES OFFICERS STILL LOYAL

And it is from these very elements that I receive nowadays signs of loyalty, every one of which does me good. My old Second Company of the First Infantry Guard Regiment has shared, through good and evil days, the vicissitudes of its old captain. I saw them for the last time in 1913, in close formation—still one hundred twenty-five strong—under that excellent sergeant, Hartmann, on the occasion of the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of my accession to the throne.

In view of its proud duty as an educator and leader of the nation in arms, the officer corps occupied a particularly important position in the German Empire. The method of replacement, which, by adoption of the officers' vote, had been lodged in the hands of the various bodies of officers themselves, guaranteed the needed homogeneity. Harmful outcroppings of the idea of caste were merely sporadic; wherever they made themselves felt they were instantly rooted out.

I entered much and willingly into relations with the various officer corps and felt like a comrade among them. The materialistic spirit of our age, to be sure, had not passed over the officer corps without leaving traces; but, on the whole, it must be admitted that nowhere else were self-discipline, fidelity to duty, and simplicity cultivated to such an extent as among the officers.

A process of weeding out such as existed in no other profession allowed only the ablest and best to reach positions of influence. The commanding generals were men of a high degree of attainment and ability and—what is even more important—men of character. It is a difficult matter to single out individuals from among them.

Though the man in the ranks at the front was always particularly close to my heart, I must, nevertheless, give special prominence to the General Staff as a school for the officer corps. I have already remarked that Field Marshal Count Moltke had known how by careful training to build up men who were not only up to requirements, technically speaking, but also qualified for action demanding willingness to assume responsibility, independence of judgment, and far-sightedness. "To be more than you seem" is written in the preface to the Pocket Manual for the General Staff Officer.

Field Marshal Count Moltke laid the foundations for this training; and his successors—Count Waldersee, that great genius, Count Schlieffen, and General von Moltke—built upon them. The result was the General Staff, which accomplished unprecedented feats in the World War, and aroused admiration throughout the world.

I soon realized that the greatest possible improvement of our highly developed technical department was absolutely necessary and would save precious blood. Wherever possible, I worked toward the perfection of our armament and sought to place machinery in the service of our army.

Among new creations, the very first place is taken by the heavy artillery of the army in the field. In bringing this into being I was obliged to overcome much opposition—particularly, strange to relate, in the ranks of the artillery itself. It is a source of great satisfaction to me that I put this matter through. It laid the foundation for the carrying out of operations on a large scale, and it was long before our foes could catch up with us in this direction.

BETTER MILITARY EQUIPMENT

Mention must also be made of the machine gun, which developed from modest beginnings to being the backbone of the infantry's fighting powers; the replacement of the rifle by the machine gun multiplied the firing power of the infantry while, at the same time, diminishing its losses.

Nor can I pass over without mention the introduction of the movable field kitchen, which I had seen for the first time at some maneuvers of the Russian army. It was of the greatest value in maintaining the fighting efficiency of the army, since the possibility of getting sufficient nourishment kept our troops fresh and healthy.

All human work remains unfinished. Nevertheless, it may be said, without exaggeration, that the German army which marched to battle in 1914 was an instrument of warfare without an equal.

Whereas, at my accession to the throne, I had found the army in a condition which merely required development upon the foundations already laid, the navy, on the other hand, was in the first stage of development. After the failure of all the attempts of Admiral Hollmann to move the recalcitrant Reichstag to adopt a slowly progressing, systematic strengthening of German sea power—largely due to the cheap catchwords of Deputy Richter and the lack of understanding of the Liberals of the Left, who were fooled by them—the Admiral requested me to retire him. Deeply moved, I acceded to his request; this plain, loyal man, the son of a genuine Berlin bourgeois family, had become dear to me through his upright character, his devotion to duty, and his attachment to me. My friendship with him, based upon this estimate, lasted for many years up to the moment of the Admiral's sudden death; it often caused me to visit this faithful man, endowed with fine Berlin wit, at his home, and there to associate with him as head of the German Orient Society, as well as to see him, in a small circle of intimates, at my own home, or to take him with me as a treasured traveling companion. He was one of the most faithful of my faithful friends, always remaining the same in his disinterestedness, never asking anything for himself. Happy the city which can produce such citizens! I preserve a grateful memory of this tried and trusted friend.

Admiral Tirpitz succeeded Hollmann. In his very first reports, which laid the foundation of the first Naval law, he showed himself thoroughly in accord with me in the belief that the sanction of the Reichstag for the building of warships was not to be gained by the old form of procedure. As I have already pointed out, the opposition was not to be convinced; the tone of the debates conducted by Richter was unworthy of the importance of the subject; for instance, the gunboat obtained in the Reichstag by the Poles, under Herr von Koscielsky, was jokingly dubbed Koscielska. Ridicule was the weapon used, though the future of the fatherland was in question.

It was necessary that the representative of the navy should have a solid phalanx behind him, both among the Ministers of State and in the Reichstag, and that it should, from absolute conviction, energetically support him and the cause. Therefore, there was need of communicating to the Reichstag members, still rather ignorant in naval matters, the details of the great work; moreover, a great movement must be engineered among the people, among the "general public," indifferent as yet, to arouse its interest and enthusiasm for the navy, in order that pressure from the people itself might be brought to bear upon the Reichstag members. To this end, an energetic propaganda was needed, through a well-organized and well-directed press, as well as through eminent men of science at the universities and technical high schools.

FIGHT IN THE REICHSTAG

There was need of a complete change in the whole method of handling the matter in the Reichstag. There must be no more bickerings about individual ships and docks. In making up the military budget, no arguments arose over the strength of the army, unless it was a matter of new formations. The makeup of the navy, like that of the army, must be settled by law once for all, its right of existence recognized and protected. The units composing it must no longer be a matter for debate. Moreover, not only the officer corps but that of noncommissioned officers must be strengthened and trained, in order to be ready for service on the new ships. At the beginning of my reign, sixty to eighty cadets, at the most, were enrolled every year; in the last few years before the war several hundred asked admission. Twelve precious years, never to be retrieved, were lost by the failure of the Reichstag; it is even harder to create a navy overnight than an army.

The goal to be striven for was implied in the law, which expressed the "idea of risk"; the aim was to cause even the strongest hostile fleet to think seriously before it came to blows with the German fleet, in view of the heavy losses that were to be feared in a battle, which put the foe in danger of becoming too weak for other tasks. The "idea of risk" was brilliantly vindicated in the Skager-Rak (Jutland) battle; the enemy, in spite of his immense superiority, dared not risk a second battle. Trafalgar was already dim; its laurels must not be completely lost.

The total number of units (ships) on hand—it was principally a matter of ships of the line—was taken as a basis for the Naval law, although these, with the exception of the four ships of the Brandenburg class, were little better than old iron.

The Naval law was looked upon by many laymen, in view of the numbers involved, as a naval increase. In reality, however, this was a false view, since the so-called existing fleet was absolutely no longer a fleet. It was slowly dying of old age—as Hollmann said when he retired; included in it were almost the oldest ships still in service in all Europe.

Now that the Naval law was gradually coming into force, lively building operations set in, launchings were reported in the press, and there was joy among those under the dominion of the "rage du nombre" at the growing number of ships. But when it was made clear to them that as soon as the new ships were ready the old ones must be eliminated, so that, as a matter of fact, the total number of ships of fighting value would, at first, not be increased, they were greatly disillusioned. Had the necessary ships been built in time during the wasted twelve years the Naval law would have found a quite different, usable basis already in existence. But as matters now stood it was really a question of the complete rebuilding of the entire German fleet.

The large number of ships, to which those which had to be eliminated were added, was a fallacy. Therefore the English made a mistake when they merely took account of the number of ships—since that fitted in well with the propaganda against Germany—but paid no attention to age or type, arriving thus at a total that was far too high, and, by such misleading methods, artificially nourishing the so-called apprehension at the growth of the German navy.

Admiral Tirpitz now went ahead with the program approved by me. With iron energy and merciless sacrifice of his health and strength he soon was able to inject efficiency and power into the handling of the naval question. At my command he went, after the drafting of the Naval law, to Friedrichsruh, the residence of Prince Bismarck, in order to convince the latter of the necessity for having a German navy.

The press worked zealously toward the introduction of the Naval law, and political economists, experts on commerce and politics and so forth, placed their pens at the service of the great national cause, the necessity for a navy having been by now widely realized.

In the meantime the English, too, helped—though quite unconsciously—toward bettering the Naval law's chance of being passed. The Boer War had broken out, and had aroused among the German people much sympathy for the little country and much indignation on account of England's violent assault upon it. Thereupon the news came of the utterly unjustified capture of two German steamers on the East African coast by English warships. Indignation was general.

The news of the stopping of the second steamer happened to be received by the Secretary of State, von BÜlow, at the very moment when Tirpitz and I were with him. As soon as BÜlow had read the dispatch aloud, I quoted the old English proverb, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," and Tirpitz exclaimed, "Now we have the wind we need for bringing our ship into port. The Naval law will go through. Your Majesty must present a medal to the captain of the English ship in gratitude for having put it through."

The Imperial Chancellor ordered up champagne and the three of us drank joyously to the new law, its acceptance, and the future German fleet, not forgetting to express our thanks to the English navy, which had proved so helpful to us.

Many years later, on my return from Lowther Castle, where I had been hunting with Lord Lonsdale, I was invited to dine with Lord Rosebery, the great Liberal statesman and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, also known through his researches in the history of Napoleon, at his beautiful country estate of Dalmeny Castle, situated close to the sea, not far from the great Forth bridge. Among the guests was General Sir Ian Hamilton, a Scotchman, well known on account of his part in the Boer War, with whom I had become acquainted when he was a guest at the Imperial German maneuvers, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and a captain of the English navy, who was commander of the naval station there.

The last sat next Admiral Freiherr von Senden, directly across the table from me, and attracted my attention by the obvious embarrassment which he manifested in his talk with the Admiral, which he conducted in a low voice. After dinner Admiral von Senden introduced the captain to me, whereat the Englishman's embarrassment caused him to behave even more awkwardly than before, and aroused my attention because of the worried look of his eyes and his pale face.

After the conversation, which turned on various maritime topics, had come to an end, I asked Freiherr von Senden what the matter was with the man; the Admiral laughed and replied that he had elicited from his neighbor, during the meal, that he had been the commander of the ship which had captured the two German steamers in the Boer War, and that he had been afraid that I might find this out. Senden had thereupon told him that he was entirely mistaken about this; that had His Majesty learned who he was he could rest assured that he would have been very well treated and thanked into the bargain.

"Thanked? What for?" queried the Englishman.

"For having made the passage of the Naval law so much easier for the Emperor!"

One of the prime considerations in the passage of the Naval law—as also for all later additions, and, in general, for the whole question of warship construction—was the question whether the German shipbuilding industry would be in a position to keep pace with the naval program; whether, in fact, it would be able to carry it out at all. Here, too, Admiral von Tirpitz worked with tireless energy. Encouraged and fired with enthusiasm by him, the German shipbuilding yards went at the great problem, filled with German audacity, and solved it with positively brilliant results, greatly distancing their foreign competitors. The admirable technical endowment of the German engineers, as well as the better education of the German working classes, contributed in full measure toward this achievement.

FEVERISH HASTE FOR NAVY

Consultations, conferences, reports to me, service trips to all shipbuilding yards, were the daily bread of the indefatigable Tirpitz. But the tremendous trouble and work were richly rewarded. The people woke up, began to have a thought for the value of the colonies (raw materials provided by ourselves without foreign middlemen!) and for commercial relations, and to feel interest in commerce, navigation, shipping, etc.

And, at last, the derisive opposition stopped cracking its jokes. Tirpitz, always ready for battle, wielded a sharp blade in fighting, never joked and allowed nobody to joke with him, so that his opponents no longer felt like laughing. Things went particularly badly with Deputy Richter when Tirpitz brilliantly snubbed and silenced him by quoting a patriotic saying, dating from the 'forties, of old Harkort—whose district Richter represented—concerning the need for a German fleet. Now it was the turn of the other side of the Reichstag to laugh.

And so the great day dawned. The law was passed, after much fighting and talking, by a great majority. The strength of the German navy was assured; naval construction was to be accomplished.

By means of construction and keeping an increased number of ships in service a fleet soon sprang into being. In order to maneuver, lead, and train its personnel a new book of regulations and signal code were needed—at the beginning of my reign these had been worked out merely for one division—four ships—since at that time a larger number of units never navigated together in the German navy—i. e., a larger number were not kept in service. And even these were out of service in the autumn, so that, in winter, there was (with the exception of cruisers in foreign waters) absolutely no German navy. All the care expended during the summer season on training of crews, officers, noncommissioned officers, engine-room crews, and stokers, as well as on rigging and upkeep of ships, was as good as wasted when the ships were retired from service in the autumn; and when spring came and they were put back into commission things had to be started at the beginning again. The result was that any degree of continuity in training and of coherence among the crews with relation to each other and their ships—of "ship spirit," in short—could not be maintained. This was maintained only on board the ships stationed in foreign waters. Therefore, after the necessary heating equipment, etc., had been put in, I ordered that ships be kept in service also through the winter, which was a veritable boon to the development of the fleet.

In order to obtain the necessary number of units needed by the new regulations, Admiral von Tirpitz, in view of the shortage of ships of the line, had already formed into divisions all the sorts of vessels available, including gunboats and dispatch boats, and carried out evolutions with them, so that when the replacement of line ships began to take place the foundations for the new regulations had already been laid. The latter were then constantly developed with the greatest energy by all the officials concerned and kept pace with the growth of the fleet.

Hard work was done on the development of that important weapon, the torpedo boat. At that time we were filled with joyful pride that a German torpedo-boat division was the first united torpedo squadron ever to cross the North Sea. It sailed, under the command of my brother, Prince Henry, to take part in the celebration of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee (1887).

COLONEL GOETHAL'S VISIT

The development of Heligoland and its fortifications as a point of support for small cruisers and torpedo boats—also, later on, for U-boats—was also taken in hand, after the necessary protective work for preserving the island had been constructed by the state—in connection with which work the Empire and Prussia fought like cat and dog.

On account of the growth of the fleet it became necessary to widen the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. After a hard struggle we caused the new locks to be built of the largest possible size, capable of meeting the development of dreadnaughts for a long time to come. There the far-sighted policy of the Admiral was brilliantly vindicated.

This found unexpected corroboration by a foreigner. Colonel Goethals, the builder of the Panama Canal, requested through the United States Government permission to inspect the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal and its new locks. Permission was most willingly granted. After a meal with me, at which Admiral von Tirpitz was present, the Admiral questioned the American engineer (who was enthusiastic over our construction work) concerning the measurements of the Panama locks, whereupon it transpired that the measurements of the locks of the Panama Canal were much smaller than those of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. To my astonished question as to how that could be possible, Goethals replied that the Navy Department, upon inquiry by him, had given those measurements for ships of the line. Admiral von Tirpitz then remarked that this size would be far from adequate for the future, and that the newer type of dreadnaughts and superdreadnaughts would not be able to go through the locks, consequently the canal would soon be useless for American and other big battleships. The Colonel agreed, and remarked that this was already true of the newest ships under construction, and he congratulated His Excellency upon having had the courage to demand and put through the big locks of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, which he had looked upon with admiration and envy.

In like manner the very backward and antiquated Imperial docks [the old tinker's shops, as Tirpitz called them] were rebuilt and developed into model modern plants and the arrangements for the workers were developed so as to further the welfare of the latter along the most approved lines. Only those who, like myself, have followed and seen with their own eyes from the very beginning the origin and development of all these factors necessary to the building up—nay, the creation anew—of the fleet can form anything like a proper idea of the enormous achievement of Admiral von Tirpitz and his entire corps of assistants.

The office of the Imperial Naval Department was also a new creation; the old "Oberkommando" was eliminated when it was divided into the two main branches of Admiralty Staff and Imperial Naval Department. Both of these (as in the army) were directly under the supreme war commander in chief—this meant that there was no longer any official between the Emperor and his navy.

COMING OF THE DREADNAUGHT

When Admiral Fisher evolved an entirely new type of ship for England in the shape of the "dreadnaught"—thereby surprising the world as if he had launched a sudden assault upon it—and thought that he had thus given England, once for all, an unapproachable naval superiority which the rest of the powers could never meet, there was naturally great excitement in all naval circles. The idea, to be sure, did not originate with Fisher, but came—in the form of an appeal to shipbuilders of the whole world—from the famous Italian engineer Cuniberti, who had made public a sketch in Fred Jane's Illustrated Naval Atlas.

At the first conference regarding the introduction of the "dreadnaught" type of big fighting ship by England I at once agreed with Admiral von Tirpitz that it had robbed all pre-dreadnaughts of their value and consigned them to the scrap heap, especially the German ships, which it had been necessary to keep considerably smaller, on account of the measurements of our old locks, than the ships of other navies, particularly the English.

Thereupon Admiral von Tirpitz remarked that this would also apply to the English fleet itself as soon as the other nations had followed Fisher's example; that England had robbed her enormous pre-dreadnaught force, upon which her great superiority lasted, of its fighting value, which would necessitate her building an entirely new fleet of big fighting ships, in competition with the entire world, which would do likewise; that this would be exceedingly costly; that England, in order to maintain her notorious "two-Power standard," would have to exert herself to such an extent that she would look with more disfavor than ever on new warships built by other nations, toward whom she was unfriendly, and begin to make objections; then this would be especially true if we started building, but would be in vain, since, with the existing types of ships in our fleet, we could not expect to fight against big battleships, but were forced, "nolens volens," to follow England along this road.

The war fully confirmed Admiral Tirpitz's opinion. Every one of our ships not in the big fighting-ship class had to be retired from service.

When the first German big fighting ship was placed in service there was a loud outcry in the land of the British. The conviction gradually dawned that Fisher and his shipbuilders had counted absolutely on the belief that Germany would not be able to build any big fighting ships. Therefore the disappointment was all the greater. Why such an assumption was made is beyond comprehension, since, even at that time, German shipbuilders had already built the great ocean greyhounds, far surpassing our warships of the line in tonnage, which had occasioned painfully noticeable competition to the English steamship lines. Our big fighting ships, despite their small number, showed themselves, at the Skager-Rak (Jutland) battle, not only equal to their English opponents, but superior to them both in seaworthiness and in standing up under gunfire.

IMPATIENT FOR U-BOATS

The building of U-boats, unfortunately, could not be pushed forward before the war to an extent commensurate with my desires. On the one hand, it was necessary not to overburden the naval budget during the carrying out of the Naval law; moreover, most important of all, it was necessary to collect further data from experiments.

Tirpitz believed that the types with which other nations were experimenting were too small and fit only for coast defense; that Germany must build "seagoing" submarines capable of navigating in the open sea; that this necessitated a larger type—which, however, must first be systematically developed. This took a long time and required careful experiments with models.

The result was that, at first, in 1914, there were only a small number of seaworthy submarines in readiness. Even then more pressure might have been brought to bear upon England with the available submarines had not the Chancellor been so concerned lest England be provoked thereby.

The number and efficiency of the submarines rose rapidly in the course of the war; in considering numbers, however, one must always remember that in wartime, U-boats are to be reckoned as follows: One third of the total in active service, one third on the outward or return journey, one third undergoing repairs. The achievements of the U-boats aroused the admiration of the entire world and won the ardent gratitude of the fatherland.

Admiral von Tirpitz's tremendous success in creating the commercial colony of Tsing-tao must never be forgotten. Here he gave proof once more of his brilliant talent for administration and organization in all directions. Those talents of his created, out of a place that was previously almost unknown and entirely without importance, a commercial center which, within a few years, showed a turnover of between fifty and sixty millions.

The dealings with Reichstag members, the press, and big industrial and world-commercial elements gradually increased the Admiral's interest in political matters, particularly in foreign affairs, which were always bound up with the utilization of ships. The clear world-vision acquired by him as a traveled sailor, well acquainted with foreign parts, qualified Tirpitz to make quick decisions, which his fiery temperament wished to see translated promptly into action.

The opposition and slowness of officialdom irritated him greatly. A certain tendency to distrust, perhaps strengthened by many an experience, often misled him to harbor suspicion—sometimes justified, sometimes not—against individuals. This caused a strong tinge of reserve in Tirpitz's character and "hampered the joyful workings of the heart" in others. He was also capable of bringing to bear new views on a matter with great decision, when, after renewed reflection or study of new facts, he had altered his previous view. This made working with him not always exactly agreeable or easy. The tremendous results of his achievements, of which he was justly proud, gave him a consciousness of the power of his personality, which sometimes made itself apparent even to his friends.

During the war Tirpitz's tendency to mix in politics got the upper hand with him so much that it eventually led to differences of opinion which finally caused his retirement, since von Bethmann, the Imperial Chancellor, demanded the dismissal of the Admiral-in-chief with the observation that the Imperial Secretaries of State were his subordinates and that the political policy must be conducted by himself alone.

It was with a heavy heart that I acquiesced in the departure of this energetic, strong-willed man, who had carried out my plans with genius and who was indefatigable as a co-worker. Tirpitz may always rest assured of my Imperial gratitude. If only this source of strength might stand soon again by the side of the unfortunate German fatherland in its misery and distress! Tirpitz can do and dares to do what many others do not dare. The saying of the poet most certainly applies to Admiral von Tirpitz: "The greatest blessing to the children of earth is, after all, personality!"

The criticisms which the Admiral felt constrained to make of me, in his book—which is well worth reading—cannot change, in the slightest, my opinion of him.