The Schemes of the Kaiser Part 14

October 28, 1895. [12]

His Majesty the German Emperor, King of Prussia, seems to be quite incapable of understanding that, in love as in hate, it is wisest not to be overfond of repeating either the word "always" or the word "never." It is the intention of William II, that Germany should for ever and ever remain the gate of h.e.l.l for France, and he has continued to din into our ears his _lasciate speranza_ every year for the last twenty-five. He never misses an opportunity of showing us France humiliated and Germany magnified and glorified. The monument at Worth has been unveiled with such a noisy demonstration, that it has for ever banished from our minds the figure, softened by suffering, of that Emperor Frederick, who had made us forget "Unser Fritz" of blood-stained memory. William II noisily recalls to our mind the conqueror, when we wished to see in him only the martyr. This is what the German Emperor now tells the world at large: "Before the statue of this great Conqueror, let us swear to keep what he conquered, to defend this territory against all comers and to keep it German, by the aid of G.o.d and our good German sword."

To do him justice, William II has rendered to us patriots a most conspicuous service. At a word he has set us back in the position from which the luke-warm, the dreamers, and the cowards were trying to drive us. By saying that Alsace-Lorraine is to remain Prussian for ever and for ever, he has compelled France either to accept her defeat for centuries to come, or to protest against it every hour of her national existence.

November 2, 1895.

William II suffers from a curious kind of obsession, which makes him want to astonish the world by his threats, every time that his recruits take the oath. On the present occasion he said, that the army must not only remember the Watch on the Rhine but also the Watch on the Vistula.

[1] _La Nouvelle Revue_, April 1, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[2] _La Nouvelle Revue_, April 16, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[3] _Ibid._, May 1, 1894.

[4] _La Nouvelle Revue_, August 1, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[5] _La Nouvelle Revue_, September 15, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[6] A pun on the word _clou_, a nail.

[7] _La Nouvelle Revue_, December 15, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[8] _La Nouvelle Revue_, January 15, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[9] _Ibid._, March 16, 1895.

[10] _La Nouvelle Revue_, April 1, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[11] _La Nouvelle Revue_, April 15, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[12] _La Nouvelle Revue_, November 1, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

CHAPTER V

1896-1897

Telegram from William II to President Kruger--The Emperor Nicholas II visits France--William II and Turkish affairs; he becomes Protector of the Sultan--Why the condolences of William II preceded those of the Tzar on the occasion of the fire at the Charity Bazaar--"Germany, the Enemy": Skobeleff's word remains true--We have been, and we still are, gulls--Peace signed between Turkey and Greece.

January 11, 1896. [1]

As the result of his telegram to President Kruger, William II has recovered the popularity of the early days of his reign. The German Emperor had undoubtedly very powerful reasons for making a chivalrous display on behalf of the Transvaal, from which he antic.i.p.ated deriving the greatest advantages. He expected to produce a moral effect by undertaking the defence of the weaker side (a role that once belonged to France). He saw a way to flatter Holland, deeply touched by these manifestations of German sympathy for Dutchmen, who were represented by others as barbarians. He saw also an opportunity for acquiring and keeping admirable outlets into the Transvaal, which had threatened to become for ever closed to German emigrants. Finally, he expected to produce a feeling of admiration for his magnanimous att.i.tude, which would divert the German people from socialism and make them forget the Hammerstein affair. Truly, the Transvaal is for William II one of those lucky finds from which all sorts of good things may spring.

The educated cla.s.ses in Germany, as well as the lower orders, were beginning to get very weary of the everlasting celebrations in memory of 1870-71, which continually fed the flames of French hatred. A Silesian journal had just informed us that the 25th anniversary of the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles would be celebrated by a great fete in all the German schools. The German artillery of the Siege of Paris had arranged for a commemorative banquet, to be held in Berlin on January 5. The senate and the _bourgeoisie_ of Hamburg had made a gift of nearly 200,000 marks on behalf of the regiment of Hanseatic infantry which fought at Loigny on December 2, and for distressed veterans of that regiment.

Germany was in great need of something to distract her attention by a stroke of exotic brilliancy and by the creation of some new object of hatred. Enmity for ever directed against France, was beginning somewhat to pall. This continually living on the strength of one's old triumphs, made Germany to appear like some much-dyed old dandy, seeking to gain recognition for past conquests by means of art and cosmetics.

The time had come to create a diversion. The German Emperor, King of Prussia, has found it with his usual headlong impetuosity, the quality which impels him always to seize things on the wing, to display alternately the capacity of a genius, and that of a stupid blunderer. . . .

March 1, 1896. [2]

German opinion persists in expressing its severe criticisms on the subject of the Transvaal business and continues to display its sympathy for the Boers. There is every reason to expect that German interests will now be able to create for themselves numerous outlets in the Transvaal.

William II has made another speech on the subject of the war of 1870; in this he is like the tide, which the waves carry away only to bring it back. Lord, Lord, deliver us from this torture! I, for one, can bear it no longer. My eyes are filled with tears of rage as I listen and listen again, for ever, unceasingly and without end, to the tale of our defeat and to the glorification of the army which conquered us, to the tale of the German Empire born of these Prussian victories. Will it ever be finished, this tale? When will they have done, once and for all, with inscribing these cruel records of theirs in the golden book of Germany, and shut the clasp upon it?

We know that William II either painted himself, or had painted, a picture, which was all the rage in Germany and which represented Europe invaded by the Chinese. It would look as if William II really believed in the danger of this impending invasion, to judge by the inscription on the engraving of this picture, reproduced by the thousand; "Nations of Europe, take care for your most sacred treasures!--WILLIAM I.R."

But if this be so, how comes it that the German Emperor is sending hundreds of military instructors to the Chinese, who are supposed to be threatening his country?

June 1, 1896. [3]

William II believes that the victories of 1870 were due to Prussia alone, and that it was she who made the Empire; and this explains why he takes such complete possession of the Empire, and makes the celebrations of these victories so personal a matter. The people of Bavaria, Wurtemberg and Saxony are herein exposed to humiliation of a kind which they decline to accept. There is no doubt that all Germans hate us with an equal hatred, and all have united with the same enthusiasm to crush our unfortunate France; nevertheless, we may derive some profit from the antipathy inspired in them by Prussia's grasping claims to glory and authority.

September 1, 1896. [4]

Do you remember, my faithful friends, and you, my earliest readers, what were the sentiments of hatred, love and fidelity, that inspired the letters which I addressed to you nearly eighteen years ago--the violence of my hatred for the most tyrannical, and at the same time, the most dangerously vindictive, of European statesmen, viz. Von Bismarck?

Have you not often smiled, when I then denied the strength of the Colossus and a.s.serted his fragility, when I used to say: "He must not die with a halo of glory; let him witness rather the bankruptcy of his moral estate and give proof of the pettiness of his character and evidence of his unbridled l.u.s.t for power. Let the effrontery of his lies return to him in bitterness?" And together, you and I, we have now seen Prince Bismarck, not hurled down, but slowly crumbling to ruin; there has been nothing great about his fall, neither the shout that he gave, nor his way of falling, nor the words which he said when he picked himself up.

And at the same time when I showed you, in the far distant future, this idol of blood-thirstiness broken, I preached to you the love of Russia.

I saw her freeing herself from German influence and drawing closer to us. Hardly had the Emperor Alexander III come to the throne, than I said to you: "He will be a popular Emperor, and the more he loves his own people the more he will love ours." For a long time you thought that my hatred of Prince Bismarck was blind, but from the outset you regarded my love of Russia as enlightened. How many strengthening and encouraging letters have I not received from you?

And now, Nicholas II, son of Alexander III, the well-beloved Emperor, who represents in his own person the highest expression of great, holy and mystical Russia, is coming to Paris officially, as the ally of France, so that all the ambitions of our patriotism, all our dreams of the last twenty-five years, are coming true together. Am I not ent.i.tled to say to you, dear readers, "I have fulfilled the mission that I set before myself, my work amongst you is accomplished"? But there remains still a tie between us, our common fidelity to Alsace!

How could we forget those who have not ceased to remember? Shall it be said that we failed those who rather than yield have suffered every form of torture? Let us endeavour together to prove in a more active manner our devotion to the brethren who are separated from us. Now that Prince Bismarck has one foot in the grave, now that the Russian Alliance is in the hands of the Government of France, let us devote all our strength and all the resources of our advocacy, all our love of justice, to the cause of Alsace-Lorraine. . . .

William II is sick, nervous and irritable. He has lost all patience with the question of the reform of military organisation; he did not raise that question, it would seem, and has plenty of other things to worry him. He is going to ask Parliament, on its re-a.s.sembling, to vote large sums for the increase of the navy, his own particular care.

After all, he received the army triumphant from the hands of Moltke and of Bismarck, but the navy is his own personal achievement; he believes this, and says so repeatedly. But the German navy has no luck. This year, besides the _Iltis_, the _Frauenlob_, and the _Amazone_, which swallowed up a large number of junior officers of the Prussian navy, it has lost the _Kurfurstin_ (as the result of an error of navigation) with 300 sailors, also the _Augusta_, the _Undine_, and other vessels.

February 22, 1897. [5]

William II has announced himself as the enemy of Greece, and the prop of the Ottoman Empire. At the subscription ball given at the Opera in Berlin, did he not walk arm-in-arm with Ghalik Bey, the Turkish Amba.s.sador, and authorise him to telegraph to the Sultan that, under existing conditions, he might count upon his sense of justice and his good-will? Does not this const.i.tute an insolent challenge to the decision which the Powers are supposed to have taken for the observation of neutrality?

When William II is insolent, he does not do things by halves; now, he repeats to all concerned: "One does not argue with Greece, one gives her orders," and on every occasion that has offered, he has displayed sentiments hostile to Greece and favourable to the Sultan. For these reasons, Abdul Hamid is devoted to William II. He is tied to him, and bound by all his sentiments, by all his admiration and his fear, to the Germans. Messrs. Cambon and de Nelidoff believed that they had detached the Sultan from Germany, but illusions on that score are no longer possible. Germany possesses his entire confidence. Did not he, the most nervous and suspicious of men, allow on one occasion the German military mission to take _effective_ command of his troops, whereas no other military mission has ever been allowed anything more than the right to put them through their drill? Germany, which in case of need can count upon the Turkish army, is fundamentally interested in preventing Turkey from being either weakened or divided up. A war in the East, in which Germany might get Russia deeply involved, at the same time that she kept her busy in Asia, is too great an advantage to risk losing, without doing everything possible to protect it. . . .