The Schemes of the Kaiser Part 19

Created by force, the unity of Germany is maintained by force. On the day that another force arises, Germany will collapse, for her cohesion has only been attained and cemented by cunning and contempt for the truth; she has lived by the sword and she shall perish by the sword.

It is said that Bismarck was the real obstacle to an understanding between England and Germany. It is certainly true that neither France nor Russia has anything to gain by England's throwing herself into the arms of Germany. Mr. Chamberlain is ready to do all in his power to draw England into the Triple Alliance, and William II, no longer dreading the criticisms of Varzin, would now accept with pleasure the proposals which he seemed to disdain. Nevertheless, the real rival that threatens England's future is Germany.

The German peril, industrial and commercial, inspires England with fear, and we should know how to turn this situation to our advantage.

Let us do all we can to prevent an _entente_ being arranged which would deprive us of a card and add one to the enemy's hand.

A war in China between Russia and Great Britain, no matter how it might end, would fulfil Germany's dream of being delivered from Russia in the East and the Balkans. This is precisely what William II desires and seeks--herein pursuing Bismarckian tactics. France and Russia must, therefore, exercise all their skill to prevent it, and go exceeding warily amidst the intrigues that are now afoot.

What has been the result of the Note which the representatives of the Powers have handed to the Porte, on the initiative of France and Russia, stating that they will never permit the landing of new Turkish forces in Crete? Merely to prove that Austria and Germany refuse to be parties to these proceedings, and to speak plainly, support the Sultan.

Ah, if Russia could only be kept busy in China! What a G.o.dsend if France could be left alone to play the part of this admirable European Concert, the genial notion of our last Minister of Foreign Affairs!

Germany alone secures her ends, profits by all the disturbances she creates, waxes and grows fat, and William II smiles at the thought of a world-wide kingdom ruled by himself alone. Once master of the whole earth, he may come to stand face to face with G.o.d.

September 11, 1898. [10]

On the occasion of a gala dinner at Hanover, William II, always in a hurry to display his likes and everlastingly parading his dislikes, did not fail to seize the opportunity of being polite to England and uncivil to France. He proposed a toast to the health of the 10th Army Corps, recalling to memory the brotherhood of arms between Englishmen and Germans at Waterloo; he glorified the victory of the Sirdar, Kitchener, in the Soudan.

A few days later, speaking of peace, the German Emperor, King of Prussia, let fly his Parthian arrow at his august brother, the Tzar.

At Porta, in Westphalia, he said: "Peace can only be obtained by keeping a trained army ready for battle. May G.o.d grant that 'e may always be able to work for the maintenance of peace by the use of this good and sharp-edged weapon."

Nothing could have been more bluntly expressed; it is now perfectly clear that the reduction of armaments has no place in the dreams of William II. I know not by what subterfuge he will pretend to approve of a Congress "to prepare for universal peace," but I know that, for him, the dominating and absorbing interest of life lies in conquest, in victories, in war. Turkey victorious, America victorious, England victorious--these are the lights that lead him on. He excels at gathering in the inheritance won for him by his own people, and he likes to have a share also in the successes of others. He has had his share in Turkey and has filed his application in America. He is already beginning with England in China and speculating with Great Britain in Delagoa Bay, under the eyes of his greatly distressed friends of the Transvaal.

Amidst a hundred other schemes, the German Emperor, King of Prussia, is by no means neglecting his apotheosis at Jerusalem. We are told even the details of his clothes, which combine the military with the civil, "An open tunic of light cloth, brown coloured; tight trousers, boots and sword-scabbard of yellow leather, the insignia of a German General of the Guards, a helmet winged with the Prussian eagle." A truly pious rig-out forsooth, in which to go and kneel before the tomb of Christ!

They say that, in order to judge of the effect of this costume, William II has posed for his photograph forty times.

The German Church in Palestine certainly never expected to see the _summus episcopus_ adopting an att.i.tude of extreme humility in that country. If any simple-minded Lutheran were to address the Kaiser in the streets of Jerusalem, after the manner of the Hungarian workman, who saw the archbishop primate, all glittering with gold in his gala coach, pa.s.sing over the Buda bridge, William II would answer him in the same style as did the archbishop: "That is just the sort of carriage in which Jesus used to drive," exclaimed the workman. The archbishop heard him, and leaning from the carriage door, replied: "Jesus, my good fellow, was the son of a carpenter. I am the son of a magnate, and Archbishop Primate of Hungary."

William II undoubtedly believes that he does Christ an honour in going to visit Him. He goes in the full pride of a personality which sees in itself all the great events of the past, gathered together as in an historic procession. He goes, with all the pomp and circ.u.mstance of a glorious omnipotence, he, whose diplomacy has made a protege of the Khalif and a footstool of the Crescent--he goes, I say, to manifest himself as the Emperor of Christianity.

Was all then to be lost to us at a stroke--the Crusades, all the moral and economic interests of France in the East, that secular protectorate of which we, the possessors, make so light whilst William II devotes to its conquest all the resources of his skill and cunning? Not so! Our Minister of Foreign Affairs was on the alert. William XI, who is an artistic walking advertis.e.m.e.nt, designed, like a Mucha or a Cheret, for the German market, has now had evidence of the fact that, if religion is an article of export for him, anti-clericalism is nothing of the kind for us. Our interests in the East have been protected and preserved. The Pope of Lutheranism has not been able to silence the Pope of Rome. The radical Republic which represents France remains the grand-daughter of Saint Louis. On hearing the authoritative news of William II's journey to Jerusalem, Cardinal Langenieux, Archbishop of Rheims, begged Leo XIII for "a rea.s.suring word." Up to the present, the Holy See has recognised our Protectorate in the East as a simple fact; to-day it is recognised as a right. Here is the "rea.s.suring word," the answer given by Leo XIII to Cardinal Langenieux:--

"We know that for centuries the French nation's protectorate has been established in Eastern Countries and that it has been confirmed by treaties between governments. Therefore no change whatsoever should be made in this matter. This nation's protectorate, wherever it is exercised, should be religiously maintained and missionaries must be notified accordingly, so that, if they have need of help, they may have recourse to the Consuls and other agents of the French nation."

At their last Congress the German Catholics--we know that the Catholics const.i.tute a third of the population of Germany and that their representatives can hold in check the Imperial policy in the Reichstag--openly expressed their sympathy for Leo XIII, for the "n.o.ble exile at Rome, who is compelled, from the day of his elevation to the Papacy, to pledge himself never to cross the threshold of the Vatican alive." When William II is compelled hereafter to make concessions to the Centre in the Reichstag, his allies, the Italians, will be well advised to give the matter their attention.

September 26, 1898. [11]

All the actions of that modern Lohengrin, William II, derive their inspiration from a Wagnerian theory concerning the harmony of discords.

This friend of the Sultan, soon to be the guest of the Khedive, congratulates Kitchener, the Sirdar, whose deeds are the blood-stained consecration of England's machinations in Mussulman territory.

Almost at the identical moment that he sent his telegram to the Sirdar to celebrate a British victory, he said at the opening of the new harbour at Stettin: "I rejoice that the ancient spirit of Pomerania is still alive in the present generation, urging it from the land towards the sea. _Our future lies on the water_."

Queen of the Seas, take warning!

We know how William II is wont to express his pacific ideas and what is his conception of the reduction of armaments--with bl.u.s.tering threats and hosannahs in praise of rifles and cannons. On the subject of peace, the German mind has long since been fixed in its ideas. One cannot sum them up better than in the following quotation from a Berlin newspaper.

"At the Paris Salon in 1895 there was a great picture by Danger ent.i.tled 'The Great Authors of Arbitration and Peace,' depicting all those, from Confucius and Buddha down to the Tzar Alexander III, who have laboured in the cause of peace. In a note which explained the painter's work, it was said to be impossible to depict all the friends of arbitration and peace. It seems to me that such friends of peace as William II and Prince Bismarck should not have been forgotten, for, by the Treaty of Frankfort, they have brought about a lasting peace and have obtained the power required to maintain it."

Between this German conception of peace and ours, is there not a gulf that nothing can ever bridge?

October 23, 1898. [12]

William II is in the seventh heaven. One by one he dons his s.h.i.+ning garments, which the eastern sun gladdens with silver and gold. He has made another trip on his swan, that is to say, on the white _Hohenzollern_, which carries Lohengrin to the four corners of the earth. The German Emperor's departure from Venice was a master-stroke of scenic effects, one of those subversions of history, to which the eccentric monarch of Berlin is so pa.s.sionately addicted. Nothing indeed could have been more original than to make the sons of the ancient Venetians, hereditary foes of the Turk, welcome a Protestant monarch who is the friend of the chief slaughterer of Catholics.

A Christian Emperor landing at Stamboul accompanied by his Empress, obtaining permission from the Sultan to hold a review of troops on a _Selamlik_ day, acclaimed by the Mussulman people and soldiery, exalted amidst all the pomp and splendour of the East, feasting his eyes on magic colours, the hero of unrivalled entertainments, surely it is enough to raise to a frenzy of pride the potentate who has made such things possible.

But amidst these pomps and vanities, William is by no means neglectful of his skilful and lucrative business schemes. It is said that he has secured a concession for a commercial harbour at Hadar Pasha, near Scutari. Hadar Pasha is the railhead of the Anatolian line, which belongs to a German company. Will the great commercial traveller, William II be able to persuade his sweet friend the Slayer, to make him a grant of the coaling station which he covets at Hafa? The Sultan will refuse him nothing. Will France and Russia have time to spare for lodging protests, their attention having been so skilfully diverted to Fashoda on the one hand and to China on the other? Is it not written that the two nations must unite forces if they would check the schemes of him who aspires to world-wide dominion over religion and commerce?

Though France and Russia have sometimes quarrelled over the question of the Holy Places, they cannot regard without anxiety the triumphant entry of the third thief upon the scene.

England, too, is busy with Fashoda and does not seem to be in such a position, diplomatically speaking, at Constantinople, as to be able to oppose the cession by Turkey to Germany of a Mediterranean harbour.

Moreover, the manner in which she has grabbed Cyprus leaves her without much voice to talk of the _status quo_ in the Mediterranean.

William II in Palestine! This man with his mania for glittering pomp and grandeur going to kneel at the stable in Bethlehem; the proudest and most conceited of men, the most puffed up with vainglory, treading the paths trodden by the feet of the Humblest; the most egotistical and least brotherly, coming to bow before Him who is brotherhood personified: could any spectacle be sadder for true Christians?

November 10, 1898. [13]

The Imperial pilgrim has left the Holy City, _El Cods_, as the Turks themselves have it. Amidst the silence of its holy places his turbulent majesty manifested itself in every direction. He prayed, discoursed, telegraphed, wrote and conducted inaugural functions. He made all the Stations of the Cross and preached to the German Colony in Jerusalem, telling them that amidst such surroundings "they should be possessed of a perpetual inclination to do good." And forthwith he proceeded to speak of his great friends.h.i.+p for the Sultan, for the individual who methodically suppresses Christians in his empire by killing them.

William has seen the tomb of David, which infidels may not approach, and whose stones only Mussulmans may lawfully tread. The very dear friend of Abdul Hamid, he whom the Turkish troops salute with the same words as they use for the Sultan, has written to the Holy See, announcing his gift of a plot of land to the German Catholic a.s.sociation in the Holy Land and adding "that he was happy to have been able to prove to Catholics that their religious interests lie very near to his heart."

Leo XIII might have replied: "Sire--Let your Majesty do even more for Catholics; persuade your friend the Sultan to cease from killing them."

November 24, 1898. [14]

William II's journey to Palestine has completely proved the thorough understanding which he has established with Abdul Hamid--that he should take possession of the Holy Places, as head of the Lutheran religion and as representative of the Catholics of his Empire. France is, therefore, no longer _de facto_ protector of Christians in the East, since she is not required to protect the German Catholics, now directly protected by their Emperor. In the Far East, William II had already refused to allow France to protect his Catholic subjects. The advantages which he derived from this decision were too great for him to abandon them elsewhere, since the murder of a single missionary had brought him Kiao-ohao.

Thus, then, ended this journey, accomplished in pomp and splendour, applauded at the same time by German Christians and by the slayers of Christians. William II has attained his object in the matter of religious influence and of the emigration of German colonists, whom the Sultan will be pleased to receive with open arms. The Kaiser paid his reckoning liberally by proposing the health of the Sultan at Damascus and by declaring his intention to help and sustain the Master and the Khalif of 300 million Mussulmans. The seed of the words thus spoken will sprout and will inspire encouragement for every kind of revolt in the Mussulman subjects of France--and, for that matter, of England also.

Whilst William II was paying his devotions at the Holy Places, giving all the impression of a pious benevolent Head of the Church, a number of horrible evictions were being carried out in Schleswig in his name and by his orders. Hundreds of families, dragged from their native soil, from their homes and kindred, were led away to the frontier on the pretext that they still clung to their belief in a "Southern Jutland." Day after day, for the last thirty-four years, on one pretext or another--and sometimes without any--the Danes have been discouraged from living in Schleswig. Either life has gradually been made impossible for them, or else they have been suddenly compelled to leave the house where they were born, where their elders hoped to die in peace, and their places have been filled by German colonists. A terrible exodus, shameful cruelty! But "Germany for the Germans" is an axiom before which all must bow, big and little, rich and poor.

December 10, 1898. [15]

Mr. Chamberlain's coquetting with Germany has ceased for the time being. _The Times_, in contrast with its former hymns of praise, now contents itself with asking William II not to make difficulties for England in Europe or beyond the seas, and it adds that a friendly att.i.tude would serve the interests of German subjects in the Colonies much better than one of hostility.