Chapter 15
The fourth Navy Bill was brought in in 1908, with the diminution of the age of the German battleship from twenty-five to twenty years as its principal aim. As a result the number of new ships to be built by 1912 was raised from six to twelve. The fifth and last Navy Bill was passed last year, 1912, creating a third active squadron as reserve, made up of existing vessels and three new battleships. The German navy now consists of 41 battleships of the line, 12 large armoured cruisers, and 30 small armoured cruisers, the cruisers being for purposes of reconnaissance; the foreign-service fleet of 8 large and 10 small armoured cruisers; and an active reserve fleet of 16 battleships, 4 large and 12 small armoured cruisers.
Like sailors everywhere, the German sailor is a frank and hearty type of his race, and welcome wherever he goes. The German naval officer is usually of middle-class extraction, while a slightly larger proportion of the officers of the army is taken from the _noblesse_. He is a fine, frank, and manly fellow as a rule, and, like the Emperor, perfectly willing to admit that his navy is closely modelled on that of Great Britain. Moreover, in addition to a thorough knowledge of his profession, he is able, in two cases out of three, to converse with useful fluency in English, French, and in some cases Italian as well.
The navy, like the army, is recruited by conscription, but active service is for three years, as in the German cavalry and artillery, while only two years in the German infantry. Naturally young men of an adventurous turn of mind frequently elect for the navy, as they hope thereby to see something of the world. At the end of their third year of service they may go back to civil life as reservists or may "capitulate," that is, continue in active service for another year, and renew their "capitulation" thenceforward from year to year. The ordinary sailor receives (since 1912) the equivalent of 14s. 6d. in cash monthly and 9s. for clothing, but when at sea additional pay of 6s. a month. The result of the system of conscription is that about 40 per cent. of the fleet's crews consist of what may be called seasoned sailors, the remainder being three-year conscripts. The officer class is recruited from young men who have passed a certain school standard examination and enter the navy as cadets. The one-year-volunteer system (_Einjähriger Dienst_) only partially obtains in the navy, for purposes, namely, of coast defence and other services on land. After two years the cadet becomes a midshipman, and with five or six other middies serves for a year or so on board ship, when he becomes a sub-lieutenant and is promoted by seniority to full lieutenant, captain-lieutenant (the English naval lieutenant with eight years' service), corvette-captain (the English naval commander, with three stripes), frigate-captain (corresponding in rank to a lieutenant-colonel in the English army), and finally captain-at-sea (with four stripes), when he may get command of a battleship. To reach this great object of the German naval officer's ambition takes on an average twenty-four years, or about the same period as in the British navy.
The upper ranks, in ascending order, are contre-admiral (the English rear-admiral), vice-admiral, admiral, grand-admiral (English Admiral of the Fleet). There are only four grand-admirals in Germany, namely, the Emperor (as "Chef" of the navy), his brother Prince Henry (as inspector-general), retired Admiral von Koester (president of the Navy League), and Admiral von Tirpitz (Secretary of Admiralty and the only "active" grand-admiral). King George V of England is an admiral of the German navy, as the Emperor is an admiral of the British navy.
Salutes are a matter of international agreement. They are: 33 guns (simultaneously from all ships) for the Emperor and foreign monarchs, 21 for the Crown Prince of Germany or of a foreign country, 19 for a grand-admiral or an ambassador, 17 for an admiral, the Secretary of Admiralty or inspector-general, 15 for a vice-admiral, 13 for contre-admiral, and so descending. 101 guns are fired on the Emperor's birthday or on the birth of an imperial prince. 66 guns is the salute when a German monarch ascends the imperial throne, and 101 when a German Emperor dies.
The yearly salaries of German naval officers are as follows: Admiral, £1,294 (of which £699 is "pay"), vice-admiral, £897 (£677 "pay"), contre-admiral, £772 (£677 "pay"), captain-at-sea, £520 (£438 "pay"), corvette-captain, £396 (£280 "pay"), full lieutenant, £174 (£120 "pay"), and so on downwards. Jews are not allowed to become officers of the navy, thus following the practice in the army. There is no law to prevent Jews becoming officers in either army or navy, but, as a matter of tradition or prejudice, no regimental or naval commander is willing to accept an Israelite among his officers.
It is time, however, to return to the personal doings of the Emperor. He is responsible for Germany's foreign policy, and his duties in connexion with it and with the navy must often have suggested to him the desirability of seeing with his own eyes something of the Orient, the new battlefield of the world's diplomacy, and possibly a new Eldorado for European merchants and engineers. His journey to the East, now undertaken, was, however, chiefly a religious one, though it had also something of a chivalric character, since much of every German's imagination is concerned with the Crusades, the Order of Knight Templars, and similar historical or legendary incidents and personalities in the early stages of the struggle between the Christian and the Saracen. The birthplace of Christ has special interest for a Hohenzollern who holds his kingship by divine grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The Emperor, lastly, cannot but have been glad to escape, if only for a time, such harassing concerns as party politics, scribbling journalists, long-winded ministerial harangues, and Social Democrats.
The journey of the Emperor and Empress to Palestine occupied about a month from the middle of October, 1898, to the middle of the following November, and while it was one of the most delightful and picturesque experiences of the Emperor, it entailed some unforeseen and not altogether agreeable consequences. It was very much criticized in Germany as an exhibition of a theatrical kind, of the "decorative in policy," as Bismarck used to say, who saw no utility in decoration, and evidently did not agree with Shakspeare that the "world is still deceived by ornament." It was objected that the Emperor should have stayed at home to look after imperial business, that such a journey must excite suspicion in England and France--in the former because England is an Oriental power, and in the latter because France is supposed to claim special protective rights over Christianity in the East.
The Englishman who reads what German writers say about the journey gets the impression that the criticism was an expression of jealousy--jealousy, as we know from Bismarck and Prince Bülow, being a national German failing. Every German ardently desires to see Italy and the Orient, but until of late years few Germans had the means of gratifying the wish. In one point, however, the critics were right. The Emperor, when in Damascus, after saying that he felt "deeply moved at standing on the spot where one of the most knightly sovereigns of all times, the great Sultan Saladin, stood," went on to say that Sultan Abdul "and the three hundred million Mohammedans who, scattered over the earth, venerated him as their Caliph, might be assured that at all times the German Emperor would be their friend." It was a harmless and vague remark enough, one would think, but political writers in all countries have made great capital out of it ever since whenever Germany's Oriental policy is discussed. At the risk of repetition it may be said that that policy is, in the East as elsewhere, a purely economic one. The Emperor's mistake perhaps chiefly lay in raising hopes in Turkish minds which were very unlikely to be realized.
The Emperor's allusion to Saladin as the most knightly sovereign of all times was a bad blunder. He was doubtless carried away by a combination, in his probably at this time somewhat excited imagination, of the chivalrous figures of the crusading times with thoughts of the German Knight Templars and other soldierly characters. Saladin was a brave man physically, and fond of imperial magnificence, as is only natural and necessary for an Oriental potentate to be; and a good deal of Eastern legend grew up about him on that account. Legend was enough for the Emperor in his then romantic mood. He forgot, or did not know, that Saladin, from the point of view of a modern and in reality far more knightly age, was a sanguinary and fanatic ruffian, who showed no mercy to his Christian prisoners--killed, in fact, one of them, Rainald de Chatillon, with his own hand, sacked Jerusalem, turned the Temple of Solomon into a mosque, after having it "disinfected" with rose-water, and killed Pope Urban III, who died, the chronicles tell, of sorrow at the news.
The journey was, as has been said, a delightful and picturesque experience for the Emperor and the Empress. They passed through Venice with its marble palaces, sailed over the sapphire waters of the Adriatic, and were received with great demonstrations of welcome by the Sultan in Constantinople. When they were leaving, the Sultan gave the Emperor a gigantic carpet, and the Emperor gave the Sultan a gold walking-stick, an exact imitation of the stick Frederick the Great used to lean on, and sometimes, very likely, apply to the backs of his trusty but stupid lieges.
Before disposing of the events of this period of the Emperor's life mention may be made of two or three occurrences which must have been a source of political interest or social entertainment to him. From among them we select the Dreyfus case and the historic scene arranged for the painter, Adolf Menzel, in Sans Souci.
The Dreyfus case, though its investigation brought to light no fact implicating the German authorities, naturally aroused interest throughout Germany. The interest was felt equally in the army, notwithstanding that it contains no Jewish officer, and among the civil population. In France, it will be remembered, the case acquired its importance from the charge, made by the anti-Semite Drumont and his journal _La Libre Parole_, that the Jews were exploiting the Government and the country. There is an anti-Semite party in Germany, founded by the Court preacher Stoecker in 1878, but possibly owing to the prudence and good citizenship of the Jews in Germany, it has gained little weight or momentum since.
The "affaire," as it was universally known, was only once referred to in the German Parliament, in January, 1898, when Chancellor von Bülow declared "in the most positive way possible" that there had "never been any traffic or relations of any kind whatsoever between Dreyfus and any German authority," adding that the alleged finding of an official German communication in the wastepaper basket of the German Embassy in Paris was a fiction. The Chancellor concluded by saying that the case had in no respect ever troubled relations between Germany and France.
The incident most often cited as evidence of the Emperor's love of recalling the days of his great ancestor, Frederick the Great, is the concert he arranged at Sans Souci on June 13, 1895, to gratify, we may be sure, as well as surprise, the famous painter. The incident and its origin are described in a work already mentioned, the "Private Lives of William II and His Consort," by a lady of the Court. The account given below is illustrative of the unfriendly sentiments which are evident throughout the work, but the lady is probably fairly accurate as regards the incident, and in any case her gossip will give the reader some notion, though by no means an entirely faithful one, of the Court atmosphere at the time. Talk at the palace during afternoon tea having turned on the fact that Adolf Menzel, the painter, would shortly celebrate his eightieth birthday, some one remarked on the refusal by the Court marshal in the previous reign to allow him to see the scene of his celebrated "Flute Concert at Sans Souci," which he was then composing, lighted up. The conversation, according to the lady writer, continued thus:--
"'Maybe he was frightened at the prospect of furnishing a couple of dozen wax candles,' sneered the Duke of Schleswig.
"'More likely he knew nothing of Menzel's growing reputation,' suggested Begas, the sculptor.
"The Emperor overheard the last words. 'Are you prepared to say that my grand-uncle's chief marshal failed to recognize the genius of the foremost Hohenzollern painter?' he asked sharply.
"'I would not like to libel a dead man,' answered Begas, 'but appearances are certainly against the Count. I have it from Menzel's own lips that the Court marshal refused him all and every assistance when he was painting the scenes of life in Sans Souci. The rooms of the chateau were accessible to him only to the same extent as to any other paying visitor or the hordes of foreign tourists, and he had to make his sketches piece-meal, gathering corroborative and additional material in museums and picture-galleries.'
"Quick as a flash the Kaiser turned to Count Eulenburg. 'I shall repay the debt Prussia owes to Menzel,' he spoke, not without declamatory effect. 'We will have the representation of the Sans Souci flute concert three days hence. Your programme is to be ready tomorrow morning at ten. Menzel, mind you, must know nothing of this: merely command him to attend us at the Schloss at supper and for a musical evening.' And, turning round, he said to her Majesty: 'You will impersonate Princess Amalia, and you, Kessel' (Adjutant von Kessel, then Commander of the First Life Guards), 'engage all your tallest and best-looking officers to enact the great King's military household.'
"Again the Kaiser addressed Count Eulenberg: 'Be sure to have the best artists of the Royal Orchestra perform Frederick the Great's compositions, and let Joachim be engaged for the occasion.' Saying this, he took her Majesty's arm, and bidding his guests and the Court a hasty good-night, strode out of the apartment."
A description of the Empress's costume for the concert follows.
"Her Majesty's dress consisted of a petticoat of sea-green satin, richly ornamented with silver lace of antique pattern and an overdress of dark velvet, embroidered with gold and set with precious stones. On her powdered hair, amplified by one of Herr Adeljana, the Viennese coiffeur's, most successful creations, sat a jaunty three-cornered hat having a blazing aigrette of large diamonds in front, the identical cluster of white stones which figured at the great Napoleon's coronation, and which he lost, together with his entire equipage, in the battle of Waterloo. In her ears her Majesty wore pearl ornaments representing a small bunch of cherries. Like the aigrette, they are Crown property, and that Auguste Victoria thought well enough of the jewels to rescue them from oblivion for this occasion was certainly most appropriate."
The Emperor's costume is also described.
"He wore the cuirassier uniform of the great Frederick's period, a highly ornamented dress that suited the War Lord, who was painted and powdered to perfection, extremely well, especially as Wellington boots, a very becoming wig and his strange head-gear really and seemingly added to his figure, while his usually stern face beamed pleasantly under the powder and rouge laid on by expert hands."
The arrival of Menzel is then narrated and the reception by the Emperor, who took the part of an adjutant of Frederick the Great's, and in that character "bombarded the helpless master," as the chronicler says,
"with forty stanzas of alleged verse, in which the deeds of Prussia's kings and the masterpieces that commemorate them were extolled with a prosiness that sounded like an afterclap of William's Reichstag and monument orations."
A real concert followed, and supper was taken in the Marble Hall adjoining. The authoress concludes as follows:--
"I was contemplating these reminiscences (the pictures of La Barberini) in silent reverie when the door opened and the Kaiser came in with little Menzel.
"'I have a mind to engage Angeli to paint her Majesty's picture in the costume of Princess Amalia,' said the Emperor 'What do you think of it?'
"'Angeli is painter to many emperors and kings,' replied the Professor, and I saw him smile diplomatically as he moved his spectacles to get a better view of the allegorical canvas on the left wall that exhibits the nude figure of the famous mistress in its entirety.
"'I am glad you agree with me on that point,' said the Emperor, impatient to execute the idea that had crossed his mind. 'I will telegraph to him to-night.'
"And when, five minutes later, Menzel bent over my hand to take formal leave, I heard him murmur in his dry, absent-minded manner--'Pesne ... Angeli ... Frederick the Great ... William II!"
We have spoken of the Court atmosphere of this time. The following extracts from the Memoirs of ex-Chancellor Prince Hohenlohe will assist the reader, perhaps even better than a connected account, to enter, in imagination at all events, into it. The conversations cited between the Emperor and the Prince turn on all sorts of topics--the pass question in Alsace (where Hohenlohe was then Statthalter), the possibility of war with Russia, pheasant shooting, projected monuments, the breach with Bismarck, the Triple Alliance, and a hundred more of the most different kinds. Once talking domestic politics, the Emperor said:
"It will end by the Social Democrats getting the upper hand. Then they will plunder the people. Not that I care. I will have the palace loop-holed and look on at the plundering. The burghers will soon call on me for help;"
and on another occasion, in 1889, Hohenlohe tells of a dinner at the palace, and how after dinner, when the Empress and her ladies had gone into another _salon_, the Emperor, Hohenlohe, and Dr. Hinzpeter (the Emperor's old tutor) conversed together for an hour, all standing. "The first subject touched on," relates the Prince, was the gymnasia (high schools), the Emperor holding that they made too exacting claims on the scholars, while Hohenlohe and Hinzpeter pointed out that otherwise the run on the schools would be too great and cause danger of a "learned proletariat." Prince Hohenlohe concludes:
"In the whole conversation, which never once came to a standstill, I was pleased by the fresh, lively manner of the Emperor, and was in all ways reminded of his grandfather, Prince Albert."
Next year the Prince was present at an official dinner in the Berlin palace. He writes:--
"BERLIN, 22 _March_, 1890.
"At seven, dinner in the White Salon (at the palace). I sat opposite the Empress and between Moltke and Kameke. The former was very communicative, but was greatly interfered with by the continuous music, and was very angry at it. Two bands were placed facing each other, and when one ceased the other began to play its trumpets. It was hardly endurable. The Emperor made a speech in honour of the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward, present on the occasion of the investiture of his son Prince George, now King George V, with the Order of the Black Eagle), and mentioned his nomination as English admiral (whose uniform he was wearing) and the comradeship-in-arms at the battle of Waterloo; he also hoped that the English fleet and the German army would together maintain peace. Moltke then said to me: 'Goethe says, "a political song, a discordant song."'
"He also said he hoped the speech wouldn't get into the papers."
(It did, however.)
The next extract describes a conversation Prince Hohenlohe had with the Emperor at Potsdam the following year. It gives an idea of the ordinary nature of conversations between the Emperor and his high officials on such occasions.
"BERLIN, 13 _December_, 1891.
"Yesterday forenoon was invited to the New Palace at Potsdam. Besides myself were the Prince and Princess von Wied, with the Mistress of the Robes and the Court marshal. Emperor and Empress very amiable. The Emperor spoke of his hunting in Alsace, and supposed it would be some years before the game there would be abundant. Then he expressed his satisfaction at my acquisition of Gensburg, and when I told him there was not much room in the castle he said, no matter, he could nevertheless pass a few days there with a couple of gentlemen very pleasantly. Passing to politics, he gave vent to his displeasure at the attitude of the Conservative party, who were hindering the formation of a Conservative-monarchical combination against the Progressives and Social Democrats. This was all the more regrettable as the Progressives, if now and then they opposed the Social Democrats, still at bottom were with them. The Emperor approves of the commercial treaties and seemed to have great confidence in Caprivi generally. As we came to speak of intrigues and gossip, the Emperor hinted that Bismarck was behind them. He added that people were urging him from many quarters to be reconciled with Bismarck, but it was not for him to take the first step. He seemed well informed about the situation in Russia and considered it very dangerous. When I asked the Emperor how he stood now with the Czar, he replied 'Badly. He went through here without paying me a visit, and I only write him ceremonious letters. The Queen of Denmark prevented him coming to Berlin, for fear he should go to Potsdam. She has gone now with him to Livadia on the pretext of the silver wedding, but in reality to keep him away from Berlin.'"
Writing of a lunch at Potsdam, under date Berlin, November 10, 1892, the Prince notes:--
"The Emperor came late and looked tired, but was in good spirits. We went immediately to table. Afterwards the conversation turned on Bismarck. 'When one compares what Bismarck does with that for which poor Arnim had to suffer!' He would do nothing, he said, against Bismarck, but the consequences of the whole thing were very serious. Waldersee and Bismarck couldn't abide one another. They had, however, become allies out of common hatred of Caprivi, whose fall Bismarck desired. What might happen afterwards neither cared."
The following was penned after the old Chancellor's visit of reconciliation:--
"BERLIN, 27 _January_, 1894.