William of Germany Part 17

We are now in 1903. During the preceding years the Emperor's thoughts, as has been seen, were occupied with art as a means of educating his folk, purifying their sentiments, and, above all, making them faithful lieges of the House of Hohenzollern. By a natural a.s.sociation of ideas we find him this year thinking much and deeply about religion; for, though artists are not a species remarkable for the depth or orthodoxy of their views on religious matters, art and religion are close allies, and probably the greater the artist the more real religion he will be found to have.

In this year, accordingly, the Emperor made his remarkable confession of religious faith to his friend, Admiral Hollmann. He had just heard a lecture by Professor Delitzsch on "Babel und Bibel," and as he considered the Professor's views to some extent subversive of orthodox Christian belief, he took the opportunity to tell his people his own sentiments on the whole matter. In writing to Admiral Hollmann he instructed him to make the "confession" as public as possible, and it was published in the October number of the _Grenzboten_, a Saxon monthly, sometimes used for official p.r.o.nouncements. The Emperor's letter to Admiral Hollmann contained what follows:--

"I distinguish between two different sorts of Revelation: a current, to a certain extent historical, and a purely religious, which was meant to prepare the way for the appearance of the Messiah. As to the first, I should say that I have not the slightest doubt that G.o.d eternally revealed Himself to the race of mankind He created. He breathed into man His breath, that is a portion of Himself, a soul. With fatherly love and interest He followed the development of humanity; in order to lead and encourage it further He 'revealed' Himself, now in the person of this, now of that great wise man, priest or king, whether pagan, Jew or Christian. Hammurabi was one of these, Moses, Abraham, Homer, Charlemagne, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant, Kaiser William the Great--these He selected and honoured with His Grace, to achieve for their peoples, according to His will, things n.o.ble and imperishable. How often has not my grandfather explicitly declared that he was an instrument in the hand of the Lord! The works of great souls are the gifts of G.o.d to the people, that they may be able to build further on them as models, that they may be able to feel further through the confusion of the undiscovered here below. Doubtless G.o.d has 'revealed'

Himself to different peoples in different ways according to their situation and the degree of their civilization. Then just as we are overborne most by the greatness and might of the lovely nature of the Creation when we regard it, and as we look are astonished at the greatness of G.o.d there displayed, even so can we of a surety thankfully and admiringly recognize, by whatever truly great or n.o.ble thing a man or a people does, the revelation of G.o.d. His influence acts on us and among us directly.

"The second sort of Revelation, the more religious sort, is that which led up to the appearance of the Lord. From Abraham onward it was introduced, slowly but foreseeingly, all-wisely and all-knowingly, for otherwise humanity were lost. And now commences the astonis.h.i.+ng working of G.o.d's Revelation. The race of Abraham and the peoples that sprang from it regard, with an iron logic, as their holiest possession, the belief in a G.o.d. They must wors.h.i.+p and cultivate Him. Broken up during the captivity in Egypt, the separated parts were brought together again for the second time by Moses, always striving to cling fast to monotheism.

It was the direct intervention of G.o.d that caused this people to come to life again. And so it goes on through the centuries till the Messiah, announced and foreshadowed by the prophets and psalmists, at last appears, the greatest Revelation of G.o.d to the world. Then he appeared in the Son Himself; Christ is G.o.d; G.o.d in human form. He redeemed us, He spurs us on, He allures us to follow Him, we feel His fire burn in us, His sympathy strengthens us, His displeasure annihilates us, but also His care saves us.

Confident of victory, building only on His word, we pa.s.s through labour, scorn, suffering, misery and death, for in His Word we have G.o.d's revealed Word, and He never lies.

"That is my view of the matter. The Word is especially for us evangelicals made the essential thing by Luther, and as good theologian surely Delitzsch must not forget that our great Luther taught us to sing and believe--'Thou shalt suffer, let the Word stand.' To me it goes without saying that the Old Testament contains a large number of fragments of a purely human historical kind and not 'G.o.d's revealed Word.' They are mere historical descriptions of events of all sorts which occurred in the political, religious, moral, and intellectual life of the people of Israel. For example, the act of legislation on Sinai may be regarded as only symbolically inspired by G.o.d, when Moses had recourse to the revival of perhaps some old-time law (possibly the codex, an offshoot of the codex of Hammurabi), to bring together and to bind together inst.i.tutions of His people which were become shaky and incapable of resistance. Here the historian can, from the spirit or the text, perhaps construct a connexion with the Law of Hammurabi, the friend of Abraham, and perhaps logically enough; but that would no way lessen the importance of the fact that G.o.d suggested it to Moses and in so far revealed Himself to the Israelite people.

"Consequently it is my idea that for the future our good Professor would do well to avoid treating of religion as such, on the other hand continue to describe unmolested everything that connects the religion, manners, and custom of the Babylonians with the Old Testament. On the whole, I make the following deductions:--

"1. I believe in One G.o.d.

"2. We humans need, in order to teach Him, a Form, especially for our children.

"3. This Form has been to the present time the Old Testament in its existing tradition. This Form will certainly decidedly alter considerably with the discovery of inscriptions and excavations; there is nothing harmful in that, it is even no harm if the nimbus of the Chosen People loses much thereby. The kernel and substance remain always the same--G.o.d, namely, and His work.

"Never was religion a result of science, but a gus.h.i.+ng out of the heart and being of mankind, springing from its intercourse with G.o.d."

It is antic.i.p.ating by a few months, but part of a speech the Emperor made in Potsdam at the confirmation of his two sons, August Wilhelm and Oscar--two Hohenzollerns as yet not distinguished for anything in particular--may be quoted in this connexion. Naturally he began by comparing his sons' spiritual situation with that of a soldier on the day he takes the oath of allegiance: they were _vorgemerkt_, that is, predestined as "fighters for Christ." "What is demanded of you," the imperial father went on, "is that you shall be personalities. This is the point which, in my opinion, is the most important for the Christian in daily life. For there can be no doubt that we can say of the person of the Lord, that He is the most 'personal personality' who has ever wandered among the sons of men.... You will read of many great men--savants, statesmen, kings and princes, of poets also: but nevertheless no word of man has ever been uttered worthy of comparison with the words of Christ; and I say this to you so that you may be in a position to bear it out when you are in the midst of life's turmoil and hear people discussing religion, especially the personality of Christ. No word of man has ever succeeded in making people of all races and all people enthusiastic for the same cause, namely, to imitate Him, even to sacrifice their lives for Him. The wonder can only be explained by a.s.suming that what He said were the words of the living G.o.d, which are the source of life, and continue to live thousands of years after the words of the wise have been forgotten.

That is my personal experience and it will be yours.

"The pivot and turning-point," he continued,

"of our mortal life, especially of a life full of responsibility and labour--that is clearer and clearer to me every year I live--lies simply and solely in the att.i.tude a man adopts towards his Lord and Saviour;"

and he concludes by exhorting his sons to disregard what people may say about the cult of Christ being irreconcilable with the tasks and responsibilities of "modern" life, but simply to do their best, whatever their occupation, to become a personality after Christ's example.

This is a sound and just statement of Christian faith, and it is quoted here to justify the view that the Emperor's soldiers and his Dreadnoughts, his mailed fist and s.h.i.+ning armour, are built and put on in the spirit of precaution and defence. The att.i.tude, it cannot of course be denied, is based on the un-Christlike a.s.sumption that all men (and particularly all peoples and their governments and diplomatists) are liars; but in his favour it may be urged that for that saying the Emperor could cite Biblical authority. And yet there is an inconsistency; for the saying is that of one of those same wise men whose words, the Emperor admits, are transitory and mortal.

It is possible that the Emperor had a presentiment of some kind that his life was now in danger, and that the presentiment may have attuned his thoughts to meditation on Christ's life and teaching; for it is a fact, well worthy of remark, that in the fear of death man's one and only relief and consolation is the knowledge that there was, and is, a mediator for him with his Creator. The address at his sons'

confirmation was delivered on October 17th, and on Sunday morning, November 8th all the world, it is hardly too much to say, was astonished and pained to learn, by a publication in the _Official Gazette_, that the Emperor the day before had had to submit to a serious operation on his throat. The announcement spoke of a polypus, or fungoid growth, which had had to be removed; but all over the world the conclusion was come to that the mortal affliction of the father had fallen on the son and that the Emperor was a doomed man. Most providentially and happily it was nothing of the sort. On the 9th the Emperor was out of bed and signing official papers, on the 15th he was allowed to talk in whispers, and on the 17th it was declared by the physicians that all danger was over and that no more bulletins would be issued. On December 14th the Emperor received a congratulatory visit from the President of the Reichstag, who reported to Parliament his impression that "the Emperor had completely recovered his old vigour (great applause) and that his voice was again clear and strong."

The Emperor had pa.s.sed through what one may suppose to have been the darkest hour of his life. He was naturally in high spirits, and a few days after went to Hannover, where he made a martial speech in which he toasted the German Legion for having "by its unforgettable heroism, in conjunction with Blucher and his Prussians, saved the English army from destruction at Waterloo," a view, of course, which to an Englishman has all the charm of novelty.

One or two further memorable incidents of 1903 may be recorded.

Theodore Mommsen, the now aged historian of Rome, the greatest scholar of his time, died in November. He was in his day a Liberal parliamentarian of no mean ability; but for such men there is no career in Germany. However, as it turned out, the German people's loss proved to be all the world's gain. A son of the historian now represents a district of Berlin in the Reichstag. Two years before the historian's death an exchange of telegrams in Latin took place between him and the Emperor. The occasion was the Emperor's laying the foundation-stone of a museum on the plateau where the old Roman castle, known as the Saalburg, stands. The Emperor telegraphed:

"Theodoro Mommseno, antiquitatum romanarum investigatori incomparabili, praetorii Saalburgensis fundamenta jaciens salutem dicit et gratias agit Guilelmus Germanorum Imperator."

To which the historian, with a modesty equal to his courtesy, replied: "Germanorum principi, tam majestate quam humanitate, gratias agit antiquarius Lietzelburgensis."

Mention may also be made of a very characteristic speech of the Emperor's this year at Custrin, where he was unveiling a monument to a favourite Hohenzollern, the Great Elector. Custrin, it will be remembered, is the town where Frederick the Great, another of the Emperor's favourites, was imprisoned by an angry father, along with his friend Lieutenant Katte, when Frederick was trying to escape the parental cruelty and violence.

Referring to Frederick's declaration that he was the "first servant of the State," the Emperor said:--

"He could only learn to be so by subordination, by obedience, in a word by what we Prussians describe as discipline. And this discipline must have its roots in the King's house as in the house of the citizen, in the army as among the people. Respect for authority, obedience to the Crown, and obedience to parental and paternal influence--that is the lesson the memories of to-day should teach us. From these attributes spring those which we call patriotism, namely the subordination of the individual ego, of the individual subject, to the welfare of all. It is what is particularly needed at the present time."

The Emperor was, of course, thinking of the Social Democrats. Having finished his speech, he went and for a while stood thoughtfully at the historic window of Custrin Castle, from which Frederick watched the execution of his unfortunate companion, Katte.

Only the year 1904 separates us from the Emperor's Morocco adventure.

The economic ideas which have been referred to as the basis of German foreign policy were germinating in his mind, and the plans for at least a partial realization of them were working in his head.

Addressing the chief burgomaster of Karlsruhe in April, just a year before he started for Tangier, he spoke of Weltpolitik. "You are right," he told the burgomaster,

"in saying that the task of the German people is a hard one.... I hope our peace will not be disturbed, and that the events that are now happening will open our eyes, steel our courage, and find us united, if it should be necessary for us to intervene in world-policy."

The Emperor had, no doubt, specially in mind the birth of the Anglo-French Entente and the war between Russia and j.a.pan, both events forming the dominant factors of the political situation at this time.

The Russo-j.a.panese War arose primarily from the unwillingness of Russia to evacuate Manchuria after the Boxer troubles in China. The incidents of the war are still fresh in public memory.

It need only be recalled here that Germany was neutral throughout the conflict, that both President Roosevelt and the Emperor offered their services as mediators in its course, and that on the capture of Port Arthur by Admiral Nogi, in January, 1905, the Emperor telegraphed his bestowal of the _Ordre pour le Merile_ on General Stoessel, the Russian defender of Port Arthur, and on Admiral Nogi.

In the troubled history of Anglo-German relations is to be recorded the presence, in June of this year, of King Edward VII at Kiel with a squadron of battles.h.i.+ps to pay an official visit to his nephew. The two fleets, those sunny days, formed a splendid spectacle--the two mightiest police forces, the Emperor would probably agree in saying, the world could produce. In fact, the Emperor had some such thought in mind, for he addressed King Edward as follows:--

"Your Majesty has been welcomed by the thunder of the guns of the German fleet. It is the youngest navy in the world and an expression of the reviving sea-power of the new German Empire, founded by the late great Emperor, designed for the protection of the Empire's trade and territory, and intended, equally with the German army, for the preservation of peace."

One or two other incidents of interest in the Emperor's life may close the record of this year. One of them was the arrival of the Italian composer, Leoncavallo, in Berlin, to hand the Emperor the text of the opera "Der Roland von Berlin," Leoncavallo had composed at the Emperor's express request. Roland was a "strong, valiant and pious"

knight of Charlemagne's time--like the Emperor, let us say--who originally hailed from Brittany--that lone and lovely Cinderella of France--and afterwards, for some unexplained reason, came to be the type of munic.i.p.al independence in Germany.

During the summer the Emperor and the Empress made an excursion, when on the Saalburg, to the statues of the Roman Emperors Hadrian and Severus. Did the Emperor recall, one wonders, as he stood before the figure of Hadrian, that pagan monarch's address to his soul:--

"Animula vagula, blandula, Hospes, comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nudula, Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos?"

It sounds a little gloomy as a quotation, but, fortunately for Germany and the Emperor, for "nunc" can be put, _pace_ the poet, the indefinite, yet all too definite, "aliquando."

XII.

MOROCCO

1905

The Emperor started for Tangier towards the end of March, but before that he had got through imperial business of a miscellaneous kind which exemplifies the life he leads practically at all times.

In January he had exchanged telegrams with the Czar and the Mikado concerning his bestowal of the Order of Merit on Generals Stoessel and Nogi, asking permission to bestow the Order and receiving expressions of consent. Another telegram went to the composer Leoncavallo in Naples, congratulating him on the success there of his "Roland von Berlin." In February, the Emperor opened an international Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, received Prince Charles, Infanta of Spain, and the King of Bulgaria, unveiled a monument to his ancestor, Admiral Coligny, who was killed in the Bartholomew ma.s.sacre, listened to a naval captain's lecture on Port Arthur, opened the new Lutheran Cathedral (the "Dom") in Berlin, telegraphed thanks to the University of Pennsylvania for its doctor's degree which the Emperor said he was proud to know George Was.h.i.+ngton once held, attended a lecture by Professor Delitzsch on "a.s.syria," and was present at a memorial service for the painter Adolf von Menzel, who died this month. In March he visited Heligoland, inspected the progress of some alterations at the Royal Opera in Berlin, and sent the Gold Medal for Science to Manuel Garcia, on the occasion of the latter's hundredth birthday, as recognition of his invention of the laryngoscope, or mirror for examining the throat.

Just before starting for Morocco the Emperor made the speech in which he claimed that Germans are the "salt of the earth." In the same speech he had previously declared that as the result of his reading of history he meant never to strive after world-conquest. "For what," he asked,

"has become of the so-called world-empires? Alexander the Great, Napoleon the First, all the great warrior heroes swam in blood and left behind them subjugated peoples, who at the first opportunity rose and brought their empires to ruin.

The world-empire which I dream of will be, above all, the newly established German Empire, enjoying on every side the most absolute confidence as a peaceable, honest, and quiet neighbour, not founded on conquest by the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations, striving for the same objects."