William of Germany Part 9

"In this disposition I remain to you and yours in the future also your sincere, obliged, and grateful Emperor and King,

"WILLIAM I.R."

The Emperor has never, so far as is publicly known, issued, or caused to be issued, an official account of the episode and its _peripeties_, but the story he poured, evidently out of a full heart, into the ears of Prince Hohenlohe, then Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine, during a midnight drive from the railway station at Hagenau to the hunting lodge at Sufflenheim, is an historical doc.u.ment of practically official authenticity. It appears as follows in the Prince's Memoirs:--

"STRASBURG, 26 _April_, 1890.

"On the evening of the 23rd, nine o'clock, I drove with Thaden and Moritz to Hagenau, there to await the arrival of the Emperor. We spent the evening with circle-officer Klemm.

I went to bed at eleven o'clock in the guest-room, and slept until half-past twelve. Moritz and Thaden drove to the station with a view to changing their clothes in the train.

At one o'clock I was again at the station, when the Emperor punctually arrived. I presented the gentlemen to him, and turned over General Hahnke to Baron Charpentier and Lieutenant Cramer, for them to conduct him to the hunting ground. Our journey lasted about an hour, during which the Emperor related without a pause the whole story of his quarrel with Bismarck. According to this the coolness had already begun in December. The Emperor then demanded that something should be done about the Working Cla.s.s Question.

The Chancellor was against doing anything. The Emperor held the view that if the Government did not take the initiative, the Reichstag, _i.e_. the Socialists, Centre and Progressives, would take the matter in hand, and then the Government would lag behind. The Chancellor wanted to lay the anti-Socialist Bill with the expulsion paragraph again before the Reichstag, dissolving the chamber if it did not accept the Bill, and then, if it came to disturbances, to take energetic measures. The Emperor objected, saying that if his grandfather, after a long and glorious reign, were forced to repress disturbances no one would think ill of him. It was different in his case, who had as yet accomplished nothing. People would reproach him with beginning his reign by shooting down his subjects. He was ready to act, but he wished to do it with a good conscience after endeavouring to redress the well-founded grievances of the workmen, or at least after doing everything to meet their justifiable claims.

"The Emperor therefore demanded at a ministerial conference the submission of ministerial edicts which should contain what subsequently they in fact did contain. Bismarck would not hear of it. The Emperor then laid the question before the Council of State, and eventually obtained the edicts in spite of Bismarck's opposition. Bismarck, however, secretly continued his opposition, and tried to persuade Switzerland to persevere with its idea of an International Labour Conference. The attempt was rendered nugatory by the loyal att.i.tude of the Swiss Minister in Berlin, Roth. At the very same time Bismarck was trying to influence the diplomatists against the conference.

"The relations between the Emperor and Bismarck, already shaken by these dissensions, were still further embittered by the question of the Cabinet Order of 1852. Bismarck had often advised the Emperor to summon the Ministers to him.

This the Emperor did, and as the intercourse became more frequent Bismarck took it ill, was jealous, and dragged out the Order of 1852 so as to keep Ministers from the Emperor.

The Emperor resisted and acquired the abrogation of the Cabinet Order. Bismarck at first agreed, but gave no further sign in the matter. The Emperor now demanded either that the recission of the Order should be laid before him, or that Bismarck should resign--a demand which the Emperor communicated to Bismarck through General von Hahnke. The Chancellor delayed, but at length gave in the resignation on March 18th. It should be added that already, at the beginning of February, Bismarck had told the Emperor that he would retire. Afterwards, however, he declared that he had thought the position over and would remain--a thing not agreeable to the Emperor, though he made no remonstrance until the affair of the Cabinet Order came in addition. The visit of Windthorst to the Chancellor also gave rise to unpleasantness, though it was not the deciding factor. In any case the last three weeks were filled with disagreeable conversations between the Emperor and the Chancellor. It was, as the Emperor expressed it, a 'devil of a time,' and the question was, as the Emperor himself said, whether the dynasty Bismarck or the dynasty Hohenzollern should reign.

The Emperor spoke very angrily, too, about the article in the _Hamburg News_. In foreign policy Bismarck, according to the Emperor, went his own way, and kept back from the Emperor much of what he did. 'Yes,' he said, 'Bismarck had it conveyed to St. Petersburg that I wanted to adopt an anti-Russian policy. But for that,' the Emperor added, 'he had no proofs.'

"This conversation," concludes Prince Hohenlohe, "between the Emperor and myself was told partly on the way to the lodge and partly on the way back. Between came the shooting; but there was no sport, as the Emperor took his stand in the dark under a tree on which was a c.o.c.k that did not 'call.'"

The following further extracts from the Hohenlohe Memoirs are given rather with the object of showing the state of the political and social atmosphere in which the quarrel took place than as throwing any fresh light on its course. In June of the preceding year (1889) occurs an entry which registers the first signs of the coming storm. Prince Hohenlohe is telling of a visit he made in June to the Grand Duke of Baden, whom he found irritated by Bismarck's proposal, made in connection with the arrest of a Prussian police officer by the Swiss, to close the frontier against the canton Aargau. The Grand Duke, the Prince relates, quoted Herbert Bismarck as saying he "could not understand his father any longer and that people were beginning to believe he was not right in his head."

The next entry in the Journal is dated Strasburg, August 24th. It concerns another meeting with the Grand Duke, who now told him that Bismarck had changed his views and that these oscillations had puzzled the Emperor and at the same time heightened his self-consciousness; moreover, that the Emperor noticed that things were being kept back from him and was becoming suspicious. There had already been a collision between the Emperor and the Chancellor and the latter might have to go. What then? Probably the Emperor thought of conducting foreign policy himself--but that, added the Grand Duke, would be very dangerous.

The feeling at Court regarding Bismarck's fall is shown by a pa.s.sage in the Memoirs about this time. It runs:

"At 1.30 p.m. dinner (at the palace) at which I sat between Stosch and Kameke. The former told me much about his own quarrel with Bismarck, and was as gay as a snow-king that he can now speak freely and that the great man is no longer to be feared. This comfortable sentiment is obvious here on all sides."

The anecdote still current in Berlin, that Bismarck actually threw an inkstand at the Emperor's head is reduced to its proper proportions by the following entry:

"The Grand Duke of Baden, with whom I was yesterday, knows a good deal about the recent crisis. He says the cause of the breach between the Emperor and Chancellor was a question of power, and that all other differences of opinion about social legislation and other things were only secondary. The chief ground was the Cabinet Order of 1852, which Bismarck pressed on the attention of the Ministers without the Emperor's knowledge, and so hindered them from going to make their reports to the Emperor. The Emperor wanted the Order rescinded, while Bismarck was against it. Nor had the conversation with Windthorst led to the breach. A talk between the Emperor and Bismarck about this conversation is said to have been so tempestuous that the Emperor subsequently said when describing it, 'He (Bismarck) all but threw the inkstand at me.'" To Hohenlohe Bismarck said, as Hohenlohe remarked that the resignation had surprised him, "Me also," and that three weeks before he did not think things would end as they had. Bismarck added: "However, it was to be expected, for the Emperor is now quite determined to rule alone."

Finally the Prince's Journal has the following:

"Two things struck me in these last three days: one that no one has any time and every one is in a greater hurry than before; and secondly, that individualities have expanded.

Every individual is conscious of himself, while before, under the predominating influence of Prince Bismarck, individualities shrank and were kept down. Now they are all swollen like sponges placed in water. That has its advantages, but also its dangers. The single-minded will is lacking."

The period between the great Chancellor's fall and his death nine years later was marked by so many incidents as to make it almost as _mouvemente_ as the period of the fall itself. He retired to Friedrichsruh, all the more immediately as the new Chancellor, General von Caprivi, showed such indecent haste in taking possession of the official residence that a portion of Bismarck's furniture was broken and rendered useless. That Bismarck retired with the angry feelings of a Coriola.n.u.s in his heart, or, as Anglo-Saxon slang would have it, of a "bear with a sore head," became evident only a few weeks later. He was visited by the inevitable interviewer, and chose the _Hamburg News_ as the medium of communicating to the world his opinion of the new _regime_ and the men who were conducting it; and made use of that paper with such instant vigour and acerbity that little more than two months from his retirement elapsed before the new Chancellor thought it advisable to issue instructions to Germany's diplomatic representatives warning them carefully to distinguish between the "present sentiments and views of the Duke of Lauenburg and those of the erstwhile Prince Bismarck," and to pay no serious attention to the former. Bismarck replied in the _Hamburg News_ that he would not allow his mouth to be closed, and set about proving that he meant what he said. Nothing the men of the "new course" could do met with his approval. The first thing he fell foul of was the Anglo-German agreement of July 1, 1890, which gave Germany Heligoland in exchange for Zanzibar, deploring the badness of the bargain for Germany, and evidently not foreseeing the importance that island's position, commanding the approaches to the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, was afterwards to possess. Besides the friendliness with England, the detachment of Germany from Russia in favour of Austria, also a feature of the "new course," did not please him as tending to drive Russia into the arms of France.

His prescience, however, in this respect was demonstrated when a year later the Czar saluted a French squadron in the harbour of Cronstadt to the strains of the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and signed a secret agreement that was alluded to four years later by the French Premier, M. Ribot, in the French Chamber of Deputies, who spoke of Russia as "our ally,"

and was publicly announced in 1897, on the occasion of President Felix Faure's visit to St. Petersburg, by the Czar's now famous employment of the words "_deux nations amies et alliees_."

The ex-Chancellor was as little satisfied with the new tariff treaties entered into by General Caprivi with Austria, Italy, Belgium, and other countries, which the Emperor, wiser, as events have shown, than his former Minister, characterized on their pa.s.sage by Parliament as the country's "salvation" (_eine rettende Tat_). The ex-Chancellor's caustic but mistaken criticism was punished by the calculated neglect of the Berlin authorities to invite him to the ceremonies attending the celebration of the ninetieth birthday of his old comrade, General von Moltke, in October, 1890, and that of his funeral in the following April: still more publicly punished in connexion with the marriage of his son Herbert.

The wedding of the latter to Countess Marguerite Hoyos was to take place in Vienna on June 21, 1892, and on the 18th Prince Bismarck started with his family to attend it. The journey was a species of triumphal progress to Vienna, but it was to end in disappointment and chagrin. As the result of representations from Germany, made doubtless with the Emperor's a.s.sent, if not at his suggestion, Bismarck was met on his arrival with the news that the German Amba.s.sador, Prince Reuss, and the Emba.s.sy staff had orders to absent themselves from the wedding, that the widow of the Crown Prince Rudolph, who had accepted a card of invitation to it, had suddenly left Vienna, and that the Emperor Franz Joseph would not receive him. The German action was explained by the publication two months later of the edict, stigmatized by Bismarck as an "Urias Letter," in which Caprivi warned foreign Governments against attaching any importance to the utterances of the Duke of Lauenburg. The Bismarckian and anti-Bismarckian storm came up afresh in Germany. Bismarck was reproached by the Government as "injuring monarchical feeling," and by his enemies as a traitor to his country; while the angry statesman published a statement expressing the opinion that

"the control of private social intercourse abroad, and the influencing of dinner invitations, were not tasks for which high officers of State were selected nor public money for the payment of diplomatic representatives voted":

doubting, at the same time, "if the foreign archives of any other country than Germany could show a parallel to the incident."

The storm, notwithstanding, had a good effect, for it brought out in bold relief the immense regard and respect the overwhelming majority of his countrymen entertained for the chief architect of their Empire; and when Bismarck fell ill at Kissingen in 1893 the Emperor, subordinating his political animosities to the chivalrous instincts of his nature, telegraphed his sorrow to the patient and offered to lend him one of the royal castles for the purpose of his convalescence.

Bismarck declined, but not ungratefully, and the way to a reconciliation was opened. Next year, 1894, Bismarck suffered from influenza, and when this time the Emperor sent an adjutant to Friedrichsruh to express his regret, invited him to attend the festivities on the forthcoming royal birthday, and sent along with the invitation a flask of Steinberger Cabinet from the imperial cellar in characteristic German proof of the sincerity of his feelings, the country was delighted. Bismarck accepted the invitation and doubtless drank the Steinberger; and the visit to Berlin followed in due time.

The reconciliation was completed amid sympathetic popular rejoicing.

The Emperor sent his brother, Prince Henry, to bring the ex-Chancellor from the railway station to the palace, where the Emperor himself, surrounded by a brilliant staff, stood to welcome the guest. Bismarck spent the day at the palace with the Royal Family and was taken back to the railway station in the evening by the Emperor. A few days later the Emperor returned the visit at Friedrichsruh.

The quiet of the ex-Chancellor's last years was once unpleasantly affected by the Reichstag in 1895, at the instance of his parliamentary enemies, rejecting, to its everlasting discredit, a proposal for an official vote of congratulation to the ex-Chancellor on his eightieth birthday; but against this unpleasantness may be set his gratification at the receipt of a telegram from the Emperor expressing his "deepest indignation" at the rejection.

Prince Bismarck died on July 30th, 1898, and was laid to rest at Friedrichsruh in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, while the world paused for a moment in its occupations to discuss with sympathetic admiration the dead man's personality and career.

Bismarck's spirit is still abroad in Germany, and the popular memory of him is as fresh now as though he died but yesterday. It is more than probable, much rather is it certain, that all trace of irritation with the proud old Chancellor has long faded from the Emperor's mind: indeed at no time does there seem to have been sentiments of personal or permanent rancour on one side or the other. The episode, in short, was an inevitable collision of ages, temperaments, and times, regrettable no doubt as a possibly harmful example of political discord among the leaders of the nation, but--with due respect for the judgment of so capable an historian as von Treitschke--leaving no "indelible stain" either on the pages of German history or on the reputations of Bismarck or the Emperor.

VIII.

s.p.a.cIOUS TIMES

1891-1899

A great English poet sings of the "s.p.a.cious days" of Queen Elizabeth.

From the German standpoint the decade from the fall of Bismarck to the end of the century may not inaptly be described as the s.p.a.cious days of William II and the modern German Empire. To the Englishman the actual territorial acquisitions of Germany during the period must seem comparatively insignificant, but, taken in connection with the Emperor's speeches, the building of the German navy, the Caprivi commercial treaties, the growth of friendly relations and of trade and intercourse with America, North and South, they mean the opening of a new era in the history of the Empire--the era of Weltpolitik.

Heligoland was obtained in exchange for Zanzibar in 1890, and is now regarded by Germans much as Gibraltar or Malta is regarded by Englishmen. The first Kiel regatta, due solely to the initiative of the Emperor, and starting the development of sport in all fields which is a feature of modern German progress, ethical and physical, was held in 1894. The Caprivi commercial treaties were concluded within the period. The Kiel Ca.n.a.l, connecting the Baltic and North Sea, and giving the German fleet access to all the open waters of the earth, was opened in 1895. In 1896 the Kruger telegram testified to imperial interest in South African developments. The Hamburg-Amerika Line now sent a specially fast mail and pa.s.senger steamer across the Atlantic.

The district of Kiautschau was leased from China in 1898, securing Germany a foothold and naval base in the Far East. In the same year the modern Oriental policy of the Empire was inaugurated by the Emperor's visit to Palestine and his declaration in the course of it that he would be the friend of Turkey and of the three hundred millions of Mohammedans who recognized the Sultan as their spiritual head. To this year also belongs the measure, the most important in its consequences and significance of the reign hitherto, the pa.s.sing of the First Navy Law. Finally, in 1899 Germany acquired the Caroline Islands by purchase from Spain, and certain Samoan Islands by agreement with England and America.

Nothing was more natural as a result of the new world-policy than a change in the mental outlook of the people. It inaugurated in Germany an era somewhat a.n.a.logous to the era inaugurated in England by the widening and brightening of the Englishman's horizon under Elizabeth.

The a.n.a.logy may not be closely maintainable throughout, but, generally speaking, just as the eyes of Englishmen suddenly saw the possibilities of expansion disclosed to them by Drake, Raleigh, and Frobisher, so the Emperor's appeals, with the pursuance of German colonial policy and the attempt to develop Germany's African possessions, led to an awakening in Germany of a similar, if weaker, kind. To this awakening the building of the German navy contributed; and though it did not appeal to the German imagination as did the deeds of the old navigators to that of Elizabethan Englishmen, it widened the national outlook and fired the people with new imperial ambitions. Hitherto, moreover, Germany's attention had been confined almost solely to trade within continental boundaries: henceforth she was to do business actively and enterprisingly with all parts of the world.

The Emperor's thoughts on the subject were expressed in January, 1896, at a banquet in the Berlin palace given to a miscellaneous company of leading personalities of the time. The occasion was the celebration of the twenty-fifth year of the modern Empire's foundation. He said:

"The German Empire becomes a world-empire. Everywhere in the farthest parts of the earth live thousands of our fellow-countrymen. German subjects, German knowledge, German industry cross the ocean. The value of German goods on the seas amounts to thousands of millions of marks. On you, gentlemen, devolves the serious duty of helping me to knit firmly this greater German Empire to the Empire at home."

The expression "greater German Empire" immediately reminded the Englishman of his own "Greater Britain," and he concluded that the Emperor was secretly thinking of rivalling him in the extent and value of his colonial possessions. Possibly he was, and doubtless he ardently desired to see Germany owning large and fertile colonies; but it is quite as probable he was thinking of his economic Weltpolitik, and knew as well then as he does now that it must be left to time and the hour to show whether they fall to her or not.

In the same order of ideas may be placed, though it is antic.i.p.ating somewhat, the Emperor's utterances at Aix in 1902 and three years later at Bremen. At Aix, after describing the failure of Charlemagne's successors to reconcile the duties of a Holy Roman Emperor with those of a German King, he continued:

"Now another Empire has arisen. The German people has once more an Emperor of its own choice, with the sword on the field of battle has the crown been won, and the imperial flag flutters high in the breeze. But the tasks of the new Empire are different: confined within its borders it has to steel itself anew for the work it has to do, and which it could not achieve in the Middle Ages. We have to live so that the Empire, still young, becomes from year to year stronger in itself, while confidence in it strengthens on all sides. The powerful German army guarantees the peace of Europe. In accord with the German character we confine ourselves externally in order to be unconfined internally.

Far stretches our speech over the ocean, far the flight of our science and exploration; no work in the domain of new discovery, no scientific idea but is first tested by us and then adopted by other nations. This is the world-rule the German spirit strives for."

At Bremen he said:

"The world-empire I dream of is a new German Empire which shall enjoy on all hands the most absolute confidence as a quiet, peaceable, honest neighbour--not founded by conquest with the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations aiming at the same end."