Chapter 28
The Emperor's "shining armour" political remark dates from this period. He was on a visit to his Triplice ally, Kaiser Franz Josef, in September, 1910, and made a speech at the Vienna Town Hall on the 21st which contained a reference to the loyal conduct he claimed Germany had observed when the action of Austria-Hungary in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the wording of the Treaty of Berlin, had raised an outcry in other countries, and in particular strained Austrian relations with Russia. After thanking his audience for the personal reception given him, he continued:
"On the other hand, it seems to me I read in your resolution the agreement of the city of Vienna with the action of an ally in taking his stand in shining armour at a grave moment by the side of your most gracious sovereign."
The outcry caused in the world by Austria's high-handed annexation, and especially in Russia, theoretically always Austria's most probable enemy, owing to conflicting interests in the Balkans, subsided, we know, as suddenly as it was raised. The reason, it is currently believed, and the form in which the rays of the shining armour acted, was an intimation from the Emperor to the Czar that, if necessary, Germany was prepared to fight for Austria.
Peoples are said to have the institutions, and husbands the wives, they deserve; but if German cities, and especially Berlin, have the police they deserve, the fact speaks very uncomplimentarily for their inhabitants. Foreigners in Germany, coming from countries where manners are more natural and obliging, frequently use the adjectives "brutal" and "stupid" when speaking of the Prussian constable. The proceedings of the Berlin police during the Moabit riots in the capital in September this year are often quoted as an example of their brutality, while, as to stupidity, it is enough to say that a stranger in Berlin, discussing its mounted police, naïvely remarked that what most struck him about them was the look of intelligence on the faces of the horses. Judgments of this kind are too sweeping. It should be remembered that Germany is surrounded by countries of which the riff-raff is at all times seeking refuge in it or passing through it, that polyglot swindlers of every kind, the most refined as well as the most commonplace, abound, and that Anarchists are not yet an extinct species. For the Prussian police, moreover, there is a Social Democrat behind every bush.
Possibly to this condition of things, and to the suspicion that Social Democratic organizers were about, was due the gallant charge made by half a dozen policemen, with drawn swords in their hands and revolvers at their belts, on four inoffensive English and American journalists during the Moabit riots. Towards midnight of September 29th the journalists were seated in an open taximeter cab, in a brilliantly lighted square, which some little time before had been swept of rioters--rioters from the Berlin police point of view being any one, man, woman, or child, who is, with guilty or innocent intent, it makes no difference, in or near a theatre of disturbance. Suddenly half a dozen burly policemen, led on by a police spy, as he afterwards turned out to be, charged the cab and laid about them with their swords. They probably only intended to use the flat of their weapons, but one of them succeeded in slashing deeply the hand of Reuter's representative, who was of the party. The other journalists escaped with contusions and bruises, thanks chiefly to the sides of the cab impeding the sword-play of the attackers.
The journalists naturally complained to their Ambassadors, who took up their cause with commendable readiness. Without immediate effect, however; the authorities, though themselves very strong on the point of duty, wondered much at journalists being in a place where duty alone could have brought them, and refused any sort of apology or other satisfaction. The Government, however, eventually expressed its "regret," and a year or two after, possibly in the spirit of conciliation and compensation, agreed to give foreign journalists in Berlin the _passe-partout_, or _coupe-fil_, as it is known in France, which is one of the privileges most valued by the journalist, native and foreign, in Paris.
Among the international agreements of the year was a commercial one between Germany and America. Commercial relations between the two countries have never been quite satisfactory to either, and if there is no tariff war, occasions of tariff tension, with consequent disturbance of trade, constantly arise. Germany's European commercial treaties have secured her a sufficiency of raw material for her industry. Her chief object now is not so much perhaps to facilitate imports of material from other countries as to find markets, in America as elsewhere, for her industry's finished products. Consequently she strongly dislikes the high tariff barriers of the United States, inaugurated by the Dingley tariff of 1897, and has in addition certain grievances against that country regarding customs administration in respect of appraisement, invoices, and the like. Her commercial connexion with America dates from the treaty of "friendship and commerce" made by Frederick the Great, and having the most-favoured-nation treatment as its basis; a regular treaty of the same kind between Prussia and America was entered into in 1828; and since then commercial relations have been regulated provisionally by a series of short-term agreements which, however, America claims, do not confer on Germany unrestricted right to most-favoured-nation treatment. By the agreement now in force, concluded this year (1910), America and Germany grant each other the benefit of their minimum duties.
Since the "November storm" the Emperor had made no reference to the doctrine of Divine Right, nor given any indication of a desire to exercise the "personal regiment" which is the natural corollary to it. It has been seen that the doctrine, viewed from the English standpoint, is a species of mental malady to which Hohenzollern monarchs are hereditarily subject. It recurs intermittently and particularly whenever a Hohenzollern monarch speaks in Koenigsberg, the Scone of Prussia, where Prussian Kings are crowned. When at Koenigsberg this year the Emperor suffered from a return of the royal _idée fixe_. "Here my grandfather," he said,
"placed, by his own right, the crown of the Kings of Prussia on his head, once again laying stress upon the fact that it was conferred upon him by the Grace of God alone, not by Parliament, by meetings of the people, or by popular decisions; and that he considered himself the chosen instrument of Heaven and as such performed his duties as regent and as ruler."
Speaking of himself on the occasion he said:
"Considering myself as an Instrument of the Lord, without being misled by the views and opinions of the day, I go my way, which is devoted solely and alone to the prosperity and peaceful development of our Fatherland."
The Emperor, by the way, on this occasion made what sounds like an indirect reference to the Suffragette craze. "What shall our women," he asked, after mentioning the pattern Queen of Prussia, Queen Louise,
"learn from the Queen? They must learn that the principal task of the German woman does not lie in attending public meetings and belonging to societies, in the attainment of supposed rights in which women can emulate men, but in the quiet work of the home and in the family."
The Emperor's reference to his divine appointment did not pass without a good deal of popular criticism in Germany, but nearly all Germans were at one with the Emperor in his view of the proper sphere for womanly activities.
The Emperor's domestic life for the last two or three years, including the early months of the present year, have passed without special cause of interest or excitement, if we except the visit he and the Empress made to London in May, 1911, to be present at the unveiling of Queen Victoria's statue, and the announcement he was able to make a few months ago that his only daughter, Princess Victoria Louise, had become engaged to Prince Ernest August, Duke of Cumberland, the still persisting claimant to the Kingdom of Hannover, absorbed by Prussia in 1866. The visit to London lasted only five days and produced no incident particularly worthy of record. The engagement of Princess Victoria Louise, while generally believed to be a love-match, possesses also political significance for Germany, not indeed as putting an end to the claim of the Duke of Cumberland, but as practically effecting a reconciliation between the Hohenzollerns and Guelphs. The young Duke of Brunswick had already implicitly renounced his claim to Hannover by entering the German army and taking the oath of allegiance to the Emperor as War Lord, so that, when his father dies, the Guelph claim to Hannover will die with him.
It is difficult to determine whether the Government's abandonment of its design to amend the Prussian franchise system in 1910, its submissive attitude towards the Pope's Borromeo Encyclical in 1911, the rapid rise in food prices which marked both years, or finally, the Emperor's failure to secure a slice of Morocco for Germany had most antagonizing effect on German popular feeling; but whatever the cause, the general elections of January, 1912, proved a tremendous Socialist victory, which must have been, and still remains, gall and wormwood to the Emperor. Notwithstanding official efforts, over one-third of the votes polled at the first ballots went for Social Democratic candidates. The number of seats thus obtained was 64, and this number, after the second ballots, rose to 110, thus making the Socialist party numerically the strongest in the Reichstag. Up to the present, however, Herr Bebel and his cohorts appear to be happy in possessing power rather than in using it.
Before completing the Emperor's domestic chronicle of more recent years, a few lines may be devoted to the role in which he has last appeared before the public--that of farmer. On February 12, 1913, he attended a meeting of the German Agricultural Council in Berlin, and with only a few statistical notes to help him narrated in lively and amusing fashion his experiences as owner of a farm, the management of which he has been personally supervising since 1898. The farm is part of the Cadinen Estate, bequeathed to him by an admirer and universally known for the majolica ware made out of the clay found on the property. The Emperor was able to show that he had achieved remarkable success with his farm, and particularly with a fine species of bull, _Bos indicus major_, he maintained on it. A year or two before, at a similar meeting, when speaking of the same breed of bull, he caused much hilarity among the military portion of his audience by jokingly remarking that it had "nothing to do with the General Staff." On the present occasion he also caused laughter by recounting how he had "fired," to use an American expression exactly equivalent to the German word employed by the Emperor, a tenant who "wasn't any use." The Emperor, however, would, as it turned out, have done better by not mentioning the incident, for the Supreme Court at Leipzig a few days subsequently quashed the Emperor's order of ejectment on the tenant and condemned him to pay all the costs in the case. The role of farmer, it may be added, is one which, had he been born a country gentleman like Bismarck, the Emperor would have filled with complete success. But in what role would he not have done well?
Foreign politics everywhere for the last three or four years have been full of incident, outcry, and bloodshed. The state of things, indeed, prevailing in the world for some time past is extraordinary. A visitant from another planet would imagine that normal peace and abnormal war had changed places, and that civilized mankind now regard peace as an interlude of war, not war as an interlude of peace. He would be wrong, of course, but the race in armament, which threatens to leave the nations taking part in it financially breathless and exhausted, might easily lead him astray. On some of the situations with which these politics are concerned we may briefly touch.
For the last three or four years the dominant note in the music of what is called the European Concert, taking Europe for the moment to include Great Britain, has been the state of Anglo-German relations. There have been times, as has been seen, when public feeling in both England and Germany was strongly antagonized, but all through the period there has been evident a desire on the part of both Governments to adopt a mutually conciliatory attitude, and if the war in the Balkans does not lead to a general international conflagration, which at present appears improbable, the two countries may arrive at a permanent understanding. There was, and not so very long ago, a similar state of tension, prolonged for many years, between England and France. That tension not only ceased, but was converted into political friendship by the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904. Parallel with this tension between England and France was the tension between England and Russia, owing to the latter's advance towards England's Indian possessions. The latter state of things ended with the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, and it should engender satisfaction and hope, therefore, to those who now apprehend a war between England and Germany to note that neither of the tensions referred to, though both were long and bitter, developed into war.
The tension between England and Germany of late years has been tightened rather than relaxed by ministerial speeches as well as by newspaper polemics in both countries. One of the most disturbing of the former was the speech delivered by Mr. Lloyd George at the Mansion House on July 21, 1911. Doubtless with the approval of the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George said:
"I believe it is essential, in the highest interest not merely of this country, but of the world, that Britain should at all hazards maintain her place and her prestige amongst the Great Powers of the world. Her potent influence has many a time been in the past, and may yet be in the future, invaluable to the cause of human liberty. It has more than once in the past redeemed continental nations, which are sometimes too apt to forget that service, from overwhelming disasters and even from national extinction. I would make great sacrifices to preserve peace. I conceive that nothing would justify a disturbance of international goodwill except questions of the gravest national moment. But if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated, where her interests are vitally affected, as if she were of no account in the cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure."
These rhetorical platitudes were uttered at the time of the "conversations" between the French and German Foreign Offices about the compensation claimed by Germany for giving France, once for all, a free hand in Morocco. Germany was apparently making demands of an exorbitant character, and what Mr. Lloyd George really meant was that if Germany persisted in these demands England would fight on the side of France in order to resist them. As a genuinely democratic speaker, however, he followed the rule of many publicists, who are paid for their articles by the column and say to themselves, "Why use two words when five will do?"
Another unfortunate remark that may be noted in this connexion was that made by Mr. Winston Churchill in referring to the German navy as "to some extent a luxury." The remark, though true (also to a certain extent), was unfortunate, for it irritated public opinion in Germany, where it was regarded as a species of impertinent interference.
As evidence of the desire on the part of the Emperor and his Government for a friendly arrangement with England may be quoted the statement made in December, 1910, by the German Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, _to_ the following effect:--
"We also meet England in the desire to avoid rivalry in regard to armaments, and non-binding _pourparlers_, which have from time to time taken place, have been conducted on both sides in a friendly spirit. We have always advanced the opinion that a frank and sincere interchange of views, followed by an understanding with regard to the economic and political interests of the two countries, offers the surest means of allaying all mistrust on the subject of the relations of the Powers to each other on sea and land."
The Chancellor went on to explain that this mistrust had manifested itself "not in the case of the Governments, but of public opinion."
With regard, in particular, to a naval understanding between England and Germany, Chancellor von Bülow, in a Budget speech in March, 1909, declared that up to that time no proposals regarding the dimensions of the fleets or the amount of naval expenditure which could serve as a basis for an understanding had been made on the side of England, though non-binding conversations had taken place on the subject between authoritative English and German personalities. In March last year (1912) such proposals may be said to have been made in the form of a suggestion by Sir Edward Grey during the Budget debate that the ratio of 16 to 10 (i.e., 50 per cent. more and 10 per cent. over) should express the naval strength of the two countries. The suggestion was "welcomed" by Admiral von Tirpitz on behalf of Germany in February, 1913. And there the matter rests.
A perhaps inevitable result of the tension between England and Germany during the period under consideration has been the amount of mutual espionage discovered to be going on in both countries. An incident that attracted wide attention was the arrest in 1910 of Captains Brandon and Trench, the former of whom was arrested at Borkum and the latter at Emden. They were tried before the Supreme Court at Leipzig, and were both sentenced to incarceration in a fortress for four years. Many other arrests, prosecutions, and sentences have taken place both in England and Germany since then, with the consequence that English travellers in Germany and German travellers in England, particularly where the travellers are men of military bearing and are in seaside regions, are now liable, under very small provocation, to a suspicion of being spies. An English lady recently made the acquaintance of a German in England. He was a very nice man, she said, and went on to relate how they were talking one day about Ireland. She happened to mention Tipperary. "Oh, I know Tipperary," the German officer said; "it is in my department." "It was a revelation to me," the lady concluded when repeating the conversation to her friends. As a matter of fact, the Intelligence Departments of the army in both Germany and England are well acquainted with the roads, hills, streams, forts, harbours, and similar details of topography in almost all countries of the world besides their own.
In regard to 1911 should be recorded the journey of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess to England to represent the Emperor at the coronation of King George in June; the outbreak in September of the Turco-Italian War, which placed the Emperor in a dilemma, of which one fork was his duty to Italy as an ally in the Triplice and the other his platonic friendship with the Commander of the Faithful; and, lastly, the suspicion of the Emperor's designs that arose in connexion with the fortification of Flushing at a cost to Holland of some £3,000,000. The Emperor was supposed to have insisted on the fortification in order to prevent the use of the Netherlands by Great Britain as a naval base against Germany. Like many another scare in connexion with foreign policy, the supposition may be regarded only as a product of intelligent journalistic "combination."
Finally, among subsidiary occurrences, should be mentioned the meeting of the Emperor and the Czar in July, 1912, at Port Baltic in Finnish waters, accompanied by their Foreign Ministers, with the official announcement of the stereotyped "harmonious relations" between the two monarchs that followed; and the premature prolongation, with the object of showing solidarity regarding the Balkan situation, of the Triple Alliance, which, entered into, as mentioned earlier, in the year 1882, had already been renewed in 1891, 1896, and 1902. The next renewal should be in 1925, unless in the meantime an international agreement to which all Great Powers are signatories should render it superfluous.
The war in the Balkans need only be referred to in these pages in so far as it concerns Germany. The position of Germany in regard to it, so far, appears simple; she will actively support Austria's larger interests in order to keep faith with her chief ally of the Triplice, and so long as Austria and Russia can agree regarding developments in the Balkan situation, there is no danger of war among the Great Powers. People smiled at the declaration of the Powers some little time ago that the _status quo_ in the Balkans should be maintained; but it should be remembered that the whole phrase is _status quo ante bellum_, and that, once war has broken out, the _status_, the position of affairs, is in a condition of solution, and that no new _status_ can arise until the war is over and its consequences determined by treaties. The result of the present war, let it be hoped, will be to confine Turkey to the Orient, where she belongs, and that the Balkan States, possibly after a period of internecine feud, will take their share in modern European progress and civilization.
The amount of declaration, asseveration, recrimination (chiefly journalistic), rectification, intimidation, protestation, pacification, and many other wordy processes that have been employed in almost all countries with the avowed object of maintaining peace during the last four years is in striking contrast to the small progress actually made in regard to a final settlement of either of the two great international points at issue--the limitation of armaments and compulsory arbitration.