Chapter VI: Part 6

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 passage 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 assent, if not at his suggestion, Bismarck was met on his arrival with the news that the German Ambassador, Prince Reuss, and the Embassy 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.

SPACIOUS TIMES

1891-1899

A great English poet sings of the "spacious 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 spacious 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 Canal, 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 passenger 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 passing 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 analogous to the era inaugurated in England by the widening and brightening of the Englishman's horizon under Elizabeth. The analogy 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 anticipating 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."

The Emperor's world-policy was referred to more than once about this time by Chancellor Prince Bülow in the Reichstag. "It is," he said on one occasion, "Germany's intention and duty to protect the great and ever-growing oversea interests which she has acquired through the development of conditions." "We recognize," he continued,

"that we have no longer interests only round our own
fireside or in the neighbourhood of the church clock, but
everywhere where German industry and Germany's commercial
spirit have penetrated; and we must foster these interests
within the bounds of possibility and good sense."

"Our world-policy," he said on another occasion in the same place,

"is not a policy of interference, much less a policy of
intervention: had it interfered in South Africa (he was
alluding to the Boer War) it must have intervened, and
intervention implies the use of force."

On yet another occasion he explained that a prudent world-policy must go hand in hand with a sound protective policy for home industry, and that its basis must be a strong national home policy.

There is nothing in all this, even supposing Germany's interests at that time were purposely exaggerated, to which the foreigner could reasonably object. The foreigner felt perhaps slightly uncomfortable when the same statesman, departing for a moment from his usual objective standpoint, spoke of the German "traversing the world with a sword in one hand and a spade and trowel in the other"; but otherwise no act of Germany's world-policy need have inspired alarm, or need inspire alarm at the present time, in sensible foreign minds. The rapidity of its action probably helped to excite a feeling that it could not be altogether honest or above-board; but it should be remembered that the new Empire had much leeway to make up in the race with other nations, and that quick development was rendered necessary by her commercial treaties, by her protective system, by the unexpected growth of industry and trade, by the continuous increase of population, the development of the mercantile marine, and the growing consciousness of national strength.

And if there is nothing in Germany's development of her world-policy to which the foreigner can reasonably object, there is much in it at which he can reasonably rejoice. Competition is good for him, for it puts him on his mettle. A large and prosperous German population extends his markets and means more business and more profit. The minds of both Germans and the foreigner become broader, more mutually sympathetic and appreciative. The elder Pitt warned his fellow-countrymen against letting France become a maritime, a commercial, or a colonial power. She has become all three, and what injury has occurred therefrom to England or any other nation?

Germany's colonial development dates from about the year 1884, the period of the "scramble for Africa." The first step to acquiring German colonies for the Empire was taken in 1883, when a merchant of Bremen, Edouard Luderitz, made an agreement with the Hottentots by which the bay of Angra Pequena in South-West Africa, with an area of fifty thousand square kilometres, was ceded to him. Luderitz applied to Bismarck for imperial protection. Bismarck inquired of England whether she claimed rights of sovereignty over the bay. Lord Granville replied in the negative, but added that he did not consider the seizure of possession by another Power allowable. Indignant at what he called a "monstrous claim" on all the land in the world which was without a master, Bismarck telegraphed to the German Consul at the Cape to "declare officially to the British Government that Herr Luderitz and his acquisitions are under the protection of the Empire."

The Bremen pioneer was fated to gain no advantage from his enterprise, as he was drowned in the Orange River in 1886. His example as a colonist, however, was followed by three Hanseatic merchants, Woermann, Jansen, and Thormealen, of Hamburg, who acquired land in Togo, a small kingdom to the east of the British Gold Coast, and in the Cameroons, a large tract in the bend of the Gulf of Guinea, extending to Lake Chad, and applied for German imperial protection. Bismarck sent Consul-General Nachtigall with the gunboat _Moewe_ in 1884 to hoist the German flag at various ports. Five days after this had been done the English gunboat _Flirt_ arrived, but was thus too late to obtain Togoland and the Cameroons for England.

Dr. Carl Peters, the German Cecil Rhodes, now arrived at Zanzibar, and on obtaining concessions from the Sultan founded the German East Africa Company, with a charter from his Government. German hopes of great colonial expansion began to run high, but they were dashed by the Anglo-German agreement of June, 1890, delimiting the spheres of England, Germany, and the Sultan of Zanzibar, and stipulating that Germany should receive Heligoland from England in return for German recognition of English suzerainty in Zanzibar and the possession of Uganda, which had recently been taken for Germany by Dr. Peters. At that time Germans thought very little of Heligoland, but there was then no Anglo-German tension, and no apprehension of an English descent on the German coast.

The lease for ninety-nine years of Kiautschau, a small area of about four hundred square miles on the coast of China, was obtained from the Chinese in connexion with the murder of two German missionaries in 1897 in the Shantung Province, of which Kiautschau forms a part. Herr von Bülow, then only Foreign Secretary, referred to the transaction in the Reichstag in words that may be quoted, as they describe German foreign policy in the Far East. "Our cruiser fleet," he said,

"was sent to Kiautschau Bay to exact reparation for the
murder of German Catholic missionaries on the one hand, and
to obtain greater security for the future against a
repetition of such occurrences. The Government,"

he continued,

"has nothing but benevolent and friendly designs regarding China, and has no wish either to offend or provoke her. We are ready in East Asia to recognize the interests of other Great Powers in the certain confidence that our own interests will be duly respected by them. In one word--we desire to put no one in the shade, but we too demand our place in the sun. In East Asia, as in the West Indies, we shall endeavour, in accordance with the traditions of German policy, without unnecessary rigour, but also without weakness, to guard our rights and our interests."

In mentioning the West Indies the Foreign Secretary was alluding to a quarrel Germany had at this time with the negro republic of Haiti, owing to the arrest and imprisonment of a German subject in that island. Kiautschau is administratively under the German Admiralty.

The Caroline, Marianne, and Palau Islands, including the Marschall Islands and the islands of the Bismarck archipelago, were bought from Spain this year for twenty-five million pesetas, or about one million sterling. The islands are valuable in German eyes, not only for their fertility and capacity for plantation development, but as affording good harbourage and coaling stations on the sea-road to China, Japan, and Central America. By the agreement with England and America, which in this year also put an end to the thorny question of Samoan administration, Germany acquired the Samoan islands of Upolu and Sawaii in the South Sea.

The ten years we are now concerned with were perhaps the most strenuous and picturesque of the Emperor's life hitherto. He was now his own Chancellor, though that post was nominally occupied by General von Caprivi and Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe successively. He was Chancellor, too, knowing that not a hundred miles off the old pilot of the ship of State was watching, keenly and not too benevolently, his every act and word. He was conscious that the eyes of the world were fixed on him, and that every other Government was waiting with interest and curiosity to learn what sort of rival in statecraft and diplomacy it would henceforward have to reckon with. Naturally many plans coursed through his restlessly active brain, but there were always, one may imagine, two compelling and ever-present thoughts at the back of them. One of these was a determination to promote the moral and material prosperity of his people so as to make them a model and thoroughly modern commonwealth; the other, the resolve that as Emperor he would not allow Germany to be overlooked, to be treated as a _quantité négligeable_, in the discussion or decision of international affairs.

The Chancellorship of General von Caprivi, who had been successively Minister of War and Marine, lasted from March, 1890, to October, 1894. He may have been a good commanding general, but he has left no reputation either as a man of marked character or as a statesman of exceptional ability. Nor was either character or ability much needed. He was, as every one knew, a man of immensely inferior ability to his great predecessor, but every one knew also that the Emperor intended to be his own Chancellor, pursue his own policy, and take responsibility for it. Taking responsibility is, naturally, easier for a Hohenzollern monarch than for most men, since he is responsible to no one but himself. With the appointment of Caprivi the Emperor's "personal regiment" may be said to have begun.

During General von Caprivi's term of office some measures of importance have to be noted, among them the Quinquennat, which replaced Bismarck's Septennat and fixed the military budget for five years instead of seven; the reduction of the period of conscription for the infantry from three years to two; and the decision not to renew Bismarck's reinsurance treaty with Russia.

The chief event, however, with which Chancellor Caprivi's name is usually associated, is the conclusion of commercial treaties between Germany and most other continental countries. Other countries had followed Germany's example and adopted a protective system, and with a view to the avoidance of tariff wars, Caprivi, strongly supported, it need hardly be said, by an Emperor who had just declared that "the world at the end of the nineteenth century stands under the star of commerce, which breaks down the barriers between nations," began a series of commercial treaty negotiations.

The first agreements were made with Germany's allies in the Triplice, Austria and Italy. Treaties with Switzerland and Belgium, Servia and Rumania, followed. Russia held aloof for a time, but as a great grain-exporting country she too found it advisable to come to terms. With France there was no need of an agreement, since she was bound by the Treaty of Frankfurt, concluded after the war of 1870, to grant Germany her minimum duties. One of the regrettable results of the Empire's new commercial policy was an antagonism between agriculture and industry which now declared itself and has remained active to the present day. The political cause of Caprivi's fall from power, if power it can be called, was the twofold hostility of the Conservative and Liberal parties in Parliament, that of the Conservatives being due to the injury supposed to be done to landlord interests by the commercial treaties, and that of the Liberals by an Education Bill, which, it was alleged, would hand the Prussian school system completely over to the Church. Perhaps the main cause, however, was the general unpopularity he incurred by attacking, officially and through the press, his predecessor, Bismarck, the idol of the people.

It was in the Chancellorship of Prince Hohenlohe, which ended in 1900, that the most memorable events of this remarkable decade occurred; but, as was to be expected, and as the Emperor himself must have expected, the Prince, now a man of seventy-five, played a very secondary part with regard to them. The Prince was what the Germans call a "house-friend" of the Hohenzollern family and related to it. He was useful, his contemporaries say, as a brake on the impetuous temper of his imperial master, though he did not, we may be sure, turn him from any of the main designs he had at heart. Prince Hohenlohe, in character, was good-nature and amiability personified. He was beloved by all classes and parties, and no foreigner can read his Memoirs without a feeling of friendliness for a Personality so moderate and calm and simple. A note he makes in one of his diaries amusingly illustrates the simple side of his character. He is dining with the Emperor, when the Emperor, catching the Prince's eye, which we may be sure was on the alert to gather up any of the royal beams that might come his way, raises his glass in sign of amity. "I felt so overcome," notes the Prince, "that I almost spilt the champagne."

The famous "Kruger telegram" episode occurred during the Chancellorship of Prince Hohenlohe.

For many years the sending of the telegram was cited as a convincing proof of the Emperor's "impulsive" character, and it was not until 1909 that the truth of the matter was stated by Chancellor von Bülow in the Reichstag. In March of that year he said:

"It has been asked, was this telegram an act of personal
initiative or an act of State? In this regard let me refer
you to your own proceedings. You will remember that the
responsibility for the telegram was never repudiated by the
directors of our political business at the time. The
telegram was an act of State, the result of official
consultations; it was in nowise an act of personal
initiative on the part of his Majesty the Kaiser. Whoever
asserts that it was is ignorant of what preceded it and does
his Majesty completely wrong."

The Emperor's telegram to President Kruger, despatched on January 3, 1896, ran as follows:--

"I congratulate you most sincerely on having succeeded with
your people, and without calling on the help of foreign
Powers, by opposing your own force to an armed band which
broke into your country to disturb the peace, in restoring
quiet and in maintaining the independence of your country
against external attack."

The echoes of this historic message were heard immediately in every country, but naturally nowhere more loudly than in England; and the reverberation of them is audible to the present day. In Germany, however, for a day or two, the telegram seems to have surprised no one, was indeed spoken of with approval by deputies in the Reichstag, and seems not to have occurred to any one in the light of a serious diplomatic mistake. This state of feeling did not last long, and when the English newspapers arrived an entirely new light was thrown on the matter. The _Morning Post_ concluded an article with the words: "It is not easy to speak calmly of the Kaiser's telegram. The English people will not forget it, and in future will always think of it when considering its foreign policy." The British Government's comment on the telegram was to put a flying squadron in commission and issue an official statement _urbi et orbi_, calling attention to the Convention made with President Kruger in London in 1884, reserving the supervision of the foreign relations of the Transvaal to the British Government.

The Emperor himself appears to have recognized that he and his advisers had made a serious blunder, and that a gesture which, it is highly probable, was partly prompted by the chivalrous side of his character, was certain to be gravely misunderstood. At any rate his policy, or that of his Government, changed, and instead of following up his encouraging words with mediation or intervention, he assumed an attitude of neutrality towards the war which soon after began. Subsequently, in the Reichstag, Chancellor von Bülow described the course the German Government pursued immediately before and during the war; and there seems no reason to discredit his account. The speech was made apropos of the projected visit of President Kruger to Berlin, when on his tour of despair to the capitals of Europe while the war was still in progress. He was cheered by boulevard crowds in Paris, itself a thing of no great significance, and was received at the Elysée and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Delcassé. The visitor was very reserved on both occasions, and confined himself to sounding his hosts as to whether or not he could reckon on their good offices.

From Paris he started for Berlin, where he had engaged a large and expensive first-floor suite of rooms in a fashionable hotel. At Cologne, however, shortly after entering Germany, a telegram from Potsdam awaited him, announcing the Emperor's refusal to grant him audience. The imperial telegram consisted of a few words to the effect that the Emperor was "not in a position" to receive him. Nor in truth was he. An audience at that moment would have meant war between Germany and England.

As to German policy with regard to the Boer War, Prince Bülow explained that the German Government deplored the war not only because it was between two Christian and white races, that were, moreover, of the same Germanic stock, but also because it drew within the evil circle of its consequences important German economic and political interests. He went on to describe their nature, enumerating under the one head the thousands of German settlers in South Africa, the industrial establishments and banks they had founded there, the busy trade and the millions sterling of invested capital; while, as regarded the other head, the Government had to take care that the war exercised no injurious influence on German territory in that region.

The Government, the Chancellor claimed, had done everything consistent with neutrality and the conservation of German interests to hinder the outbreak of the war. It had "loyally" warned the two Dutch republics of the disposition in Europe, and left them in no doubt as to the attitude Germany would adopt if war should come. These communications were not made directly, but through the Hague authorities and the Consul-General of the Netherlands in Pretoria. At that time the United States Government had come forward with a proposal for a submission of the quarrel to its arbitration, but the proposal had been rejected by President Kruger.

A little later the President changed his mind, but it was then too late and war was declared. Once the die was cast, Germany could only with propriety have interfered, provided she had reason to believe her mediation would be accepted by both parties: otherwise her conduct would not be mediation, but be regarded, in accordance with diplomatic usage, as intervention with coercive measures in the background. For such a policy Germany had no disposition, for it meant running the risk of a diplomatic defeat on the one hand and of an armed conflict with England on the other.

As regards the visit of the President to Berlin and the Emperor's refusal to receive him, the Chancellor asked would a reception have done any good either to the President or to Germany, and he answered his own question with an emphatic negative. To the President an audience would have been of no more use than the ovations and demonstrations he was greeted with in Paris. To Germany a reception would have meant a shifting of international relations to the disadvantage of the country: in other words, would have meant the risk, almost the certainty, of war. "Wars," said the Chancellor in this connexion,

"are much more easily unchained through elementary popular
passions, through the passionate excitation of public
opinion, than in the old days through the ambitions of
monarchs or through the jealousies of Ministers."

And he concluded:

"With regard to England we stand entirely independent of
her: we are not a hair's-breadth more dependent on England
than England is on us. But we are ready on the basis of
mutual consideration and complete equality--about this
obvious preliminary condition for a proper relation between
two Great Powers we have never left any Power in doubt: I
say, we are ready on this basis to live with England in
peace, friendship, and harmony. To play the Don Quixote and
to lay the lance in rest and attack wherever in the world
English windmills are to be found, for that we are not
called upon."

But just then there was little prospect of "peace friendship, and harmony" with England. The world remembers, and unfortunately the English people do not forget, that they had nowhere more bitter and offensive critics than in Germany. One refined method of opprobrium was the unprohibited sale in the main streets of Berlin of spittoons bearing the countenance of the English Colonial Minister, Mr. Chamberlain. A war with England would at that moment have been highly popular in Germany, but as the Chancellor wisely reminded the Parliament, it was the duty of the statesman to protect international relations from disturbance by intrigue or by popular demonstration.

Finally the Chancellor dealt with a report widely current in England and Germany at the time, to the effect that the Emperor's refusal to receive President Kruger was due to the influence of his uncle, King Edward. The Chancellor emphatically denied that any pressure of the kind from the English Court, or from any other source, had been employed, and ended by saying:

"To suppose that his Majesty the Kaiser could allow himself
to be influenced by family relations shows little
understanding of his character, or of his love of country.
For his Majesty solely the national standpoint is decisive,
and if it were otherwise, and family relations or dynastic
considerations determined our foreign policy, I would not
remain Minister a day longer."

A precisely similar and unfounded charge, it will be remembered, was made against King Edward VII in 1902, to the effect that it was Court influence, not the deliberate judgment of the Cabinet, that was the efficient cause of the co-operation of the British with the German fleet in the demonstration off the coast of Venezuela.

A recent writer, Dr. Adolf Stein, gives an account of the sending of the famous telegram which corroborates that of Prince von Bülow. The telegram, according to this version, was a well-considered answer to a question from the Transvaal Government put to the German Government a month before the Raid occurred, and when the Transvaal Government got the first inkling of the preparations being made for it. President Kruger asked what attitude Germany would adopt in case of a war between England and the Boer republics. The answer given to the person who made the inquiry on behalf of the Transvaal Government was that President Kruger might rest assured of Germany's

"diplomatic support in so far as it was also Germany's
interest that the independence of the Boer States should be
maintained, but that for anything beyond this he should not
reckon on Germany's assistance or that of any Great Power."

This answer, Dr. Stein says, was in course of transmission by the post when the Raid occurred.

The Raid was made on January 1st. The event was at once telegraphed to Berlin, where Prince Hohenlohe was Chancellor, with Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein, afterwards German Ambassador in Constantinople and London, as his Foreign Secretary. According to Dr. Stein, they drew up a telegram to President Kruger, and on the morning of the 3rd laid it before the Emperor, who had come early from Potsdam for consultation on the matter. The Chancellor, it should be mentioned, had been at Potsdam the day previous, but at that time the news of the Raid had not reached the Emperor. The Emperor, Chancellor, and Foreign Secretary now decided that a telegram congratulating President Kruger for having repulsed the Raid "without foreign aid" was the best non-committal form to adopt. The Emperor, Dr. Stein continues, raised some objections, but was over-persuaded by Prince Hohenlohe and von Bieberstein.

As confirming this version, a little note in Lord Goschen's Biography may be recalled, in which Lord Goschen confides to a friend a few weeks before the Raid that the "Germans were taking the Boers under their wing, as the Americans had done with the Venezuelans."

Enough perhaps has been said to show that the sending of the telegram had nothing to do with the Emperor's "impulsive" character, and it will only be fair to him to let the notion that it had drop finally out of contemporary history. As an act of State it was in consonance with German policy at the time. That policy, if it did not look to acquiring possession of the Transvaal, may very well have looked to enlisting the sympathies and friendship of the Dutch in South Africa, and finding in them and their country a field for German enterprise and a market for German goods; and there was therefore nothing impulsive, however mistaken the act may have been as a matter of foreign policy, in the German Government's congratulating President Kruger on successful resistance to a private raid.

We have suggested that the telegram was partly due to a certain element of chivalry in the Emperor's character. The Emperor was well acquainted with other forms of government and other social systems besides his own, and though a Hohenzollern could put himself in the position of the chief of the little Boer republic, threatened as he was with annihilation by a mighty and powerful opponent. Moreover, there is always to be remembered the sympathy of view, particularly of religious view, that existed in the two men as regarded their attitude and duties to their respective "folk." The President had appealed to the Emperor for help. The Emperor had had to refuse it, but had wired that he would do all he could "diplomatically." He knew that this was but a poor sort of assistance, but it was something, and when the Raid occurred he gave the diplomatic assistance he had promised by sending a telegram of congratulation. In any case--_tempi passati_. Foreign policy is not concerned with sympathies or antipathies, and the whole episode should be ignored, or, better still, forgotten.

The Kruger telegram, it turned out, was to usher in a long period of tension between two countries of the same race, singularly alike in their ideals of whatever is sound and praiseworthy in Christian civilization, and almost equally mutual admirers of the fundamental features of each other's national character. Unfortunately, along with these fundamental features of the English and German national characters, the love of money, the _auri sacra fames_, has to be reckoned with, and in the race of nations for wealth and power the fundamental qualities are apt, for a time, to be overborne and cease to act. The rise of the modern German Empire to power and prosperity, and the new world-situation thus created, largely by the Emperor, is at the bottom of Anglo-German tension. As a main contributory cause of both the power and the prosperity, was the creation of the German navy at the period of which we write.

The following is a parable which he who runs may read:--

In a certain town, with a large and heterogeneous
population, there was once a "monster" shop. The firm (there
were three partners) had been established for hundreds of
years, had thrown out several branches, and by hard work,
enterprise, and honesty had acquired a leading position in
the trade of the town: so much so, indeed, that as time went
on it had also come to do the carriage and delivery of goods
for most of the smaller shops, though some of these were
large houses themselves and the majority of them in a fair
way of business. The smaller shops were naturally a little
jealous of the "monster," and it was the dream of every
owner of them to enlarge his premises and become the
proprietor of an equally great emporium as the "monster."
One day, therefore, a little cluster of shops, at some
distance from the "monster," suddenly resolved to form a
combination, and after settling a dispute with a neighbour
in consideration of a sum of money and a fruitful tract of
land, issued the prospectus of the new company and began to
do business on modern lines.

Almost from the very beginning the new company was a great
success: its situation was central; the company inspired its
members with enterprise and spirit; it was industrious,
energetic, and splendidly organized; and at last it began to
cut into the trade of the old-established "monster."
Competition might have gone on in the ordinary way had not
the new company made a departure in business methods that
gradually roused special uneasiness among the members of the
"monster" firm. Hitherto the latter had its delivery vans
travel all over the town, and so well was this part of its
system carried on that the firm acquired all but a monopoly
of carrying and delivery. The new company, however, now
began to do a little in the same line, whereupon the
"monster" took to building a superior type of van much more
powerful and imposing, if also much more expensive, than the
one previously in use. The new company naturally followed
suit, and in a surprisingly short time had built, or had
under construction, several vans of an exactly similar kind.
The "monster" saw the new departure of their rivals at first
with curiosity, then with contempt, then with anxiety, and
finally with suspicion and alarm. At the time of writing the
alarm appears to have abated, but a good deal of the
suspicion remains. The town is the world, the "monster"
Great Britain, and the rival company the modern German
Empire.

It would require the Emperor himself properly to tell the story of his creation of the modern German navy, and if he has a right to call any part of his people's property his own, he is justified in speaking, as he invariably does, of "my navy." As Prince William, his interest in the subject may have been originally due, as has been seen, to his partly English parentage, his frequent visits to England, and the fact that his physical disability threatened to prevent him taking an active part in the more strenuous duties of the soldier. It is very probable that it was in the region that cradled the British navy the idea of a great German navy was conceived by him. We have seen that the Emperor, as Prince William, showed his enthusiasm in the matter by delivering lectures on it in military circles, though it was not his lot, but that of his brother Henry, to be assigned the navy as a profession. In his Order to the Navy on ascending the throne, he spoke of the "lively and warm interest" that bound him to the navy, shortly afterwards issued directions for a new marine uniform on the English model, and caused the introduction into the Lutheran Church service of a special prayer for the arm. He gave a parliamentary soirée at the New Palace in Potsdam, and before allowing his Conservative and National Liberal guests to sit down to supper, made them listen to a lecture which occupied two hours, giving particular attention, with the aid of maps and plans, to the battle of the Yalu between the fleets of China and Japan. He founded the Technical Shipbuilding Society, and took, and takes, an animated part in its proceedings, suggesting positions for the guns, the disposition of armour, the dimensions of submarines, and a hundred other details. In 1908 he delivered an after-dinner lecture at the "Villa Achilleion" in Corfu on Nelson and the battle of Trafalgar, based on the writings of Captain Mark Kerr of the _Implacable_, at which the situations of the French, English, and Spanish fleets were sketched by the imperial hand. To his admiration for the writings of Captain Mahan his persistence in enlarging the fleet is said largely to be due. He is, of course, assisted by a host of able experts, among whom Admiral von Tirpitz--the ablest German since Bismarck, many Germans say--is the most distinguished; but as he is his own Foreign Minister and own Commander-in-Chief, he is, in the fullest sense, his own First Lord of the Admiralty.

The Emperor closed one of his naval lectures with an anecdote which the papers reported next day as being received with "stormy amusement." It was about the metacentrum, the centre of gravity in ship construction. The Emperor told of his having asked an old sea lieutenant to explain to him the metacentrum. "I received the answer," said the Emperor, "that he did not know very exactly himself--it was a secret. 'All I can say is,' the old seaman went on, 'that if the metacentrum was in the topmast, the ship would over-turn.'" The success of a jest, one is told, lies in the ear of the hearer. Possibly something of the "stormy amusement" may have been called forth by the reflection that the imperial metacentrum had on occasion got misplaced.

In addition to the natural and accidental predispositions of the Emperor, certain general considerations, which imposed themselves irresistibly on all men's attention as the century drew to its close, impelled him to more energetic action. A student of the history of other countries as well as his own, and a watchful observer of the tendencies of the time, he felt that the young Empire was incomplete as long as it was without a navy corresponding in size and power to its army, the organization of which had been completed. With its army alone he regarded the Empire as a colossus, no doubt, but a colossus standing on one leg, and was convinced that if the Empire was to be a success it must have a navy at least able to withstand attack by any of his continental neighbours and potential enemies.

On ascending the throne the Emperor was naturally most occupied with the internal situation of his new inheritance, and spent a good deal of his time railing at Social Democracy and the press, explaining the nature of his Heaven-appointed kingship, and rousing his somewhat lethargic people to a sense of their power and possibilities; but he found a moment in 1891 to write under a photograph he gave the retiring Postmaster-General Stephan:

"The world, at the end of the nineteenth century, stands
under the star of commerce; commerce breaks down the
barriers which separate the peoples and creates new
relations between the nations."

Then the idea slumbered in his mind for a few years, while he continued to make his own people restless with criticism, perhaps deserved, of their sluggishness, their pessimism, their party strife, and foreign peoples equally restless with phrases like "_nemo me impune lacessit_"; until the idea came suddenly to utterance in 1897, when, on seeing the figure of Neptune on a monument to the Emperor William, he broke out: "The trident should be in our grip!" From this time, and for the next few years, the growth of the navy may be said to have never long been far from his thoughts. In sending Prince Henry to Kiautschau at the close of 1898 he made the remark that "imperial power means sea power, and sea power and imperial power are dependent on each other." Nine months afterwards at Stettin he used a phrase alone sufficient to keep his name alive in history: "Our future lies on the water!"

At Hamburg, in 1899, he laid emphasis on the changes in the world which justify a naval policy one can see now was almost inevitable.

"A strong German fleet," he said, "is a thing of which we stand in bitter need." And he continued:

"In Hamburg especially one can understand how necessary is a
powerful protection for German interests abroad. If we look
around us we see how greatly the aspect of the world has
altered in recent years. Old-world empires pass away and new
ones begin to arise. Nations suddenly appear before the
peoples and compete with them, nations of whom a little
before the ordinary man had been hardly aware. Products
which bring about radical changes in the domain of
international relations, as well as in the political economy
of the people, and which in old times took hundreds of years
to ripen, come to maturity in a few months. The result is
that the tasks of our German Empire and people have grown to
enormous proportions and demand of me and my Government
unusual and great efforts, which can then only be crowned
with success when, united and decided, without respect to
party, Germans stand behind us. Our people, moreover, must
resolve to make some sacrifice. Above all they must put
aside their endeavour to seek the excellent through the ever
more-sharply contrasted party factions. They must cease to
put party above the welfare of the whole. They must put a
curb on their ancient and inherited weakness--to subject
everything to the most unlicensed criticism; and they must
stop at the point where their most vital interests become
concerned. For it is precisely these political sins which
revenge themselves so deeply on our sea interests and our
fleet. Had the strengthening of the fleet not been refused
me during the past eight years of my Government,
notwithstanding all appeals and warnings--and not without
contumely and abuse for my person--how differently could we
not have promoted our growing trade and our interests beyond
the sea!"

Perhaps; but perhaps, too, it was as well for the peace of the world that Germany had no great war fleet during those eight years of troubled international relations, and that the gentle and adjusting hand of Providence, not the mailed fist of the Emperor, was guiding the destinies of nations.

Previous to the opening of the reign a German navy can hardly be said to have existed. Yet it should not be forgotten that Germany also has maritime traditions of no small interest, if of no great importance, to the world. The Great Elector, the ancestor of the Emperor who ruled Brandenburg from 1640 to 1688, was fully conscious of the profit his people might acquire by sea commerce, and the little navy of high-sea frigates which he built stood manfully, and often successfully, up to the more powerful navies of Sweden and Spain. This fleet was known, too, far away from Brandenburg, for the records tell how the Pope and the Maltese Knights and Louis XIV willingly admitted it to their harbours.

But there was lacking what until lately has always hemmed German progress--money; and the commercially-minded Dutch, a people themselves with many German characteristics, kept the Germans from the sea. Then came Frederick the Great, who ruled from 1740 to 1786, and those Germans who are fond of claiming Shakespeare for their own will also tell you that the plan drawn up by Frederick for Pitt's seven years' struggle with France--that plan so unfortunately imitated afterwards by the Emperor in his correspondence with Queen Victoria during the Boer War--was the foundation-stone of British naval supremacy! Frederick, too, saw the advantage of possessing a fleet, but he had his hands full with France and Russia, and reluctantly had to decline the offer of the French naval hero, Labourdonnais, to build him a battle-fleet. At this period, and in the Great Elector's time, Emden was the Plymouth of Prussia. When Frederick died, there followed that time of which Germans themselves are ashamed--the hole-and-corner time, the time when the parochial spirit was abroad and no German burgher saw beyond the village church and the village pump; the Biedermeier time (that comic figure of the German _Punch_), the time of genuine German philistinism, when the people were lapped in an idyllic repose and were content, as many are to-day, with the smallest and simplest pleasures.

This spirit continued until the early quarter of the nineteenth century, when Professor Frederick List roused the attention of his countrymen, and notably that of Bismarck, to the necessity of an independent national existence and a national economic policy. In 1836 a committee recommended naval coast protection, but it was not until 1848, when Denmark blockaded the German coast, that anything was done to provide for it. In that year the National Assembly of delegates from various German Diets, which met at Frankfort, voted for the marine a million sterling to be levied on the German States, but only one-half of the money could be collected. Still, three steam frigates, one large and six small steam corvettes, and two sailing corvettes were got together, but in 1852, owing to the poverty of the States, two of the ships were sold to Prussia for £60,000 and the rest disposed of by auction at less than a fourth of their value. The officers and men were disbanded with a year's pay.

To this humiliating state of things Bismarck refers in his "Gedanken und Erinnerungen." "The German fleet," he writes,

"and Kiel harbour as a foundation for its institution, were
from 1848 on one of the most burning thoughts at whose fire
German aspirations for unity were accustomed to warm
themselves and to concentrate. Meanwhile, however, the
hatred of my parliamentary opponents was stronger than the
interest for a German fleet, and it seemed to me that the
Progressive party at that time preferred to see the
newly-acquired rights of Prussia to Kiel, and the prospect
of a maritime future founded on its possession, rather in
the hands of the auctioneer, Hannibal Fischer, than in those
of a Bismarck Ministry."

From this on naval development in Prussia was slow; there was no interest for a marine either among the governing classes or the people; but it was not wholly neglected, for Wilhelmshaven was acquired from the Duchy of Oldenburg, a small fleet was sent to the Orient with a view to obtaining commercial treaties and concessions, and a sum of £320,000 was devoted annually to naval requirements. During the Danish War of 1864 a fleet of three screw corvettes, two paddle steamers, and a few gunboats was considered sufficient to protect the coasts and make a blockade impossible.