Everything had gone wrong; the talks with Lord Salisbury, the sailing, even the public goodwill. An English-German partnership suddenly seemed a long way off. William blamed everyone but himself and decided to cut his stay short. As a parting gesture of defiance he got in touch with Mr. George Lennox Watson who had designed the Prince of Wales’s Britannia. He ordered a new yacht to be named Meteor Ü, with one stipulation: to out build the Britannia. Then he returned to Germany and took the Empress on a tour of Alsace-Lorraine where he gave vent to his feelings by making a whole series of provocative speeches.
On his return to Berlin with the Kaiser, Count Eulenburg found the capital in a state of turmoil. General Caprivi had resigned in the autumn of 1894 and been replaced by the Kaiser’s seventy-three-year-old uncle, Prince Hohenlohe, a former Governor of Alsace-Lorraine. As Hohenlohe was almost as much of a novice in foreign affairs as Caprivi, and as the Foreign Secretary, Marschall, was weak and unsure of himself, Baron Holstein remained master of the Wilhelmstrasse. Yet the Baron was full of grievances. Eulenburg knew that the Kladderadatsch incident had sparked off “a Holstein hate” for the Kaiser, and he recognised the dangerous fruit it was bearing when he heard him talk bitterly against His Majesty’s intolerable “interferences.” He also found that his own relations with Holstein were disturbed, for the latter had begun to resent the fact that Eulenburg would not support him in his vendetta against the Sovereign. “He scarcely ever writes to me — regards me as a renegade from the cause,” Eulenburg wrote to von Bülow, the German Ambassador in Rome.
Bülow was in close correspondence with Holstein and tried to smooth matters over. “What is at present worrying and exasperating him [Holstein] is that he does not know everything that the Emperor writes and has in mind,” he replied to Eulenburg. “He willingly granted that the Emperor is very talented, full of the best intentions and… of his own accord praised H.M.’s attitude during the last English visit towards Salisbury… He only wishes that you would put up a still stronger opposition to the Emperor’s whim for personally conducting policy.”[138]
This was an attempt to interpret Holstein’s actions logically, but Holstein was not a logical being. He was a psychopathic character and his dislike and jealousy of the Sovereign had swollen to such proportions that he seized any stick to beat him with. Holstein was in the happy position of wielding power without responsibility. Although almost all instructions sent abroad by the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary were drafted by himself, he did not hesitate to deny his own advice when it suited him. It soon transpired that the main reason for his stand against Salisbury’s Turkish proposals was simply to deprive the Emperor of a diplomatic triumph. The fact that William II followed his recommendations did not pacify him, but merely prompted him to shift his ground.
Eulenburg was astonished when he returned to Berlin and discovered what was happening. He ran into Count Hadzfeldt, who was in the capital on a few days’ leave, and asked him why he thought Holstein had taken “a negative and dilatory attitude toward the idea of a partition over Turkey.” The Ambassador replied that it might have been the fear of seeming “too Bismarckian,” then commented drily “that Holstein was now of a different opinion, and had expressed his dissatisfaction with the way H.M. had let Lord Salisbury down.” Eulenburg indignantly passed this story on to Bülow, adding: “And I myself had later an opportunity of confirming this. Holstein actually went so far as to declare that the Emperor’s independent conduct of policy had got us into another mess. But you know as well as I do that H.M. in his conversation with Salisbury was only putting forth the point of view which had formerly been suggested to him by Holstein.”
Holstein could not know that war would break out in 1914 and that afterwards all the German official papers including his own private memoranda would be published. In 1908 he began to write a series of political essays for posterity in which he bitterly attacked the Emperor for mistakes and exonerated himself in every instance. In January 1909 he alluded to the Turkish affair. The dignified, controlled style and the air of detachment with which he sought to mislead his readers reveal the extent of his cunning. “Since it was of the utmost importance,” he wrote, “to prepare the Kaiser for the possibility of the Eastern question being raised… I sent Kiderlen a personal telegram which reached him in Heligoland before he left for England with the Kaiser, whom he was accompanying as the representative of the Foreign Ministry. The Kaiser had in fact scarcely landed before Lord Salisbury broached the Eastern question. I heard no details of the discussion, but we did learn immediately afterwards that the Kaiser had ‘turned him down flat.’ This quite unnecessary brusqueness bore fruit. Lord Salisbury, unused to such treatment, avoided a subsequent interview requested by the Kaiser by pleading pressure of business and going to London.”[139]
With the Kaiser and Baron Holstein at loggerheads, German policy was hopelessly confused. Although both men paid lip service to the idea of luring Britain into the Triple Alliance they pursued their objectives in a most peculiar way. Holstein did not regard friendliness or frankness as a policy; the only diplomatic weapons he understood were threats and blackmail. The Kaiser on the other hand simply followed his own emotional impulses and allowed them to lead him wherever they chanced. Neither man understood the meaning of the word subtlety. They failed to see that a working partnership with England over some practical matter, which might slowly develop into a larger alliance, was the only sensible way to try to reach their goal.
On the contrary, as far as practical matters were concerned they were wholly uncooperative, and repeatedly used small issues to kick up fearful rows. When the Kaiser returned to Berlin he learned that Sir Edward Malet, the retiring British Ambassador, had criticised German policy in South Africa. Still smarting with resentment at the way Lord Salisbury had “treated” him, the Emperor sent for Colonel Swaine the British Military Attache and poured out a list of angry grievances. Malet, he said, not only had accused the German Foreign Office of stirring up trouble for England in South Africa, but had gone so far as to mention the “astounding word war.” “For a few square miles full of niggers and palm trees, England had threatened her one true friend, the German Emperor, grandson of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, with war!”[140] The Kaiser went on to say that Britain’s concern for the Armenians in Turkey was quite incomprehensible to him. Was it merely a cloak for a design to get control of the Dardanelles herself? If so, Britain should have confided frankly in him for he would have seen to it that Austria and Italy joined hands with them. However, his patience was now running out and he was toying with the idea of making a pact with France and laying the structure of a purely continental alliance which, if it came to pass, would not suit England at all. “I closed the conversation,” he wrote, “with a clear warning that England could only escape from her present complete isolation, into which her policy of selfishness and bullying had plunged her, by a frank and outspoken attitude either for or against the Triple Alliance.”
Holstein instantly saw something he could get His teeth into. He pounced on the Kaiser’s boast that Germany would have helped England to force the Dardanelles. What would Russia say to that? Lord Salisbury would scarcely fail to bring it to the Czar’s notice. Holstein worked himself into a frenzy, bombarding Eulenburg with exhortations to use his influence to subjugate the Emperor’s “personal rule.” Again Bülow was drawn in and wrote to Eulenburg: “I don’t think that H.M,’s talk with Swaine was, in itself, such a terribly portentous event, as it seems to Holstein, or as he wants us to think it… But what is serious, very serious, is that antagonism between Holstein and H.M. which was revealed by the incident in question. I can say to you alone and you will not say it to anyone else: Can so complete a divergence between such elemental and subjective natures — when it concerns the whole direction and conception of affairs — ever be reconciled? Can it even in the long run be concealed?”[141]
Eulenburg replied on December 29th: “Holstein’s excitement and agit
ation about His Majesty keeps equal pace with his fears of a tack into Bismarckian waters. In his state of agitation he becomes unfair to our side, and on the other hand he rushes into a blind alley because he does not stop to think. The monstrous difficulty lies, at the moment, in the fact that if we want to preserve the present system — and I most decidedly do — we are without a common basis of understanding between the most important factors, i.e. the Emperor, Imperial Chancellor, Marschall, Holstein; and I doubt whether this can ever be reconstituted.
“Each of them is more or less incensed with all the others. If you think of policy (sans comparison, of course!) as a bitch in heat, you will have a vivid picture of the present aspect of affairs. The handsome Newfoundland (His Majesty) can inflict a deadly wound on each of the rest whenever it suits him. The long-legged one (Marschall) he really wants to dispose of, but he growls and snaps at all the others; and the solitary little grey terrier (Holstein) is frantically exasperated. How are we to stop his bristling, yapping, and whimpering? We cannot very well kill the bitch — and she is kept in such a continuous state of excitement!”[142]
This was the twisted, tormented atmosphere prevailing in Berlin when the Jameson Raid took place. On December 30th, 1895, the day after Eulenburg’s bitter summary, news reached Berlin that 600 irregular troops employed by Cecil Rhodes’s Charter Company and led by Dr. Jameson, Chief Administrator of Rhodesia, had invaded the Transvaal Republic. This small independent state in the southern part of Africa was surrounded by British-run territories. Although its population was predominantly English it was ruled by settlers of Dutch-German stock known as Boers, and in order to keep the government in Boer hands its President, Dr. Kruger, refused to give “foreigners” — as he called them — the vote, and taxed them heavily. The raiders had launched their attack in the hope of provoking a general uprising which would lead to a new government and a fair deal for the non-Boer settlers.
German officialdom was thrown into a high state of excitement. Obviously this was a plot on the part of London to seize the Transvaal. Germany had 15,000 nationals living in the territory and extensive possessions of her own in East Africa; and she was not prepared to stand by idly in the face of British aggression. Holstein immediately put out feelers to Russia and France on the possibility of concerted action against Britain. And as he always proffered complicated motives for his actions he explained — in a dispatch which he drafted for Prince Hohenlohe to send to Count Munster in Paris — that Germany’s anti-English move was merely another attempt to force Britain into the Triple Alliance! “While England finds that she can remain between the two hostile groups — the Dual Alliance and the Triple Alliance — not only quite happily, but also be able to continue expanding, she will naturally reject any suggestion to declare her solidarity with the Triple Alliance.”[143]
The Kaiser on the other hand did not stop for reflection. He was still smarting with indignation against the haughty Lord Salisbury. First and foremost he saw an opportunity to humiliate the British Prime Minister; secondly a chance to lead a great continental combine that would represent a grouping far more powerful than the British Empire; and thirdly the possibility of acquiring a naval base for himself in South Africa as a reward for upholding the moral rights of the Boer Government. The first disappointment came when Lord Salisbury condemned the Jameson Raid and declared that the British Government had known nothing about it; the second blow fell when news arrived that Jameson’s force had been surrounded and compelled to surrender. It looked as though William’s hopes were dashed.
But the Emperor refused to be deterred. The bright role he had conjured up for himself had so completely captured his fancy that he could not bear to relinquish it. He insisted that Lord Salisbury’s attitude was merely a ruse, and called a Crown Council at the Chancellery on January 3rd to discuss possible moves. The conference was attended by the Imperial Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary, Baron von Marschall, and a number of high-ranking naval and military advisers. Baron Holstein and Herr Kayser, the Colonial Secretary, waited in an adjoining ante-room to tender advice.
Although Holstein’s feelers to Russia and France had produced no support, the Kaiser was in an excited state and still favoured strong action. Not only did he suggest sending a warship to Lourenço Marques but he put forward the idea of dispatching troops from German East Africa and declaring a protectorate in the Transvaal. His ministers were thunderstruck and pointed out that this would call out the British Navy and mean war with England. William began to argue that the affair could be localised, then he hit on a better scheme; why not send a German staff officer to the Transvaal, disguised as a lion-hunter, to help the country organise its own force against England? At this point someone suggested rebuking England publicly in a telegram of congratulations from the Kaiser to President Kruger. Erich Brandenburg, the eminent German historian, claims that the idea emanated from the ante-room where Holstein and Kayser were sitting.
William II did not like the suggestion the least little bit. In the first place he favoured positive action, not pin-pricks. Secondly, he recoiled from sending a telegram to Kruger signed by himself, thus drawing England’s wrath inescapably on his own head. It was one thing for his government to incur odium, another for him to attract it personally. However, in the end he gave way to the opinion of his advisers, and sent the following wire. “I express my sincere congratulations that, supported by your people, without appealing for help of friendly powers, you have succeeded by your own energetic action against armed bands which invaded your country as disturbers of the peace, and have thus been enabled to restore peace and safeguard the independence of the country against attacks from the outside. William II.”
The Germans were astonished by the violence of England’s reaction. The British public was first amazed, then furious. Here was the Kaiser, who had been parading as England’s best friend for the past seven years, turning against her at the drop of a hat, and even intimating that if the raid had not fizzled out, he would have declared war on her. The nation rose in a wave of angry resentment. The press poured out a torrent of abuse, the officers of the Royal Dragoons turned the Emperor’s picture to the wall, and dozens of aristocratic old ladies picked up their pens and let the Kaiser know what they thought of him.
The Kruger telegram tore a breach in Anglo-German relations which never wholly mended. Although officially the rift lasted only three years, it encouraged the hostile elements on both sides and created a permanent feud which aggravated every international difficulty and continually fouled the atmosphere between the two nations. As soon as the Kaiser and his gentlemen saw that the intervention had achieved nothing but ill-will each hastened to blame the other. William reminded his ministers that he had been opposed to the telegram, conveniently forgetting the bellicose suggestions put forward by himself. In his memoirs he strongly criticises Marschall’s ignorance of “English national psychology.” Holstein, on the other hand, insists that Marschall regarded the Kruger telegram as a lightning conductor for the Kaiser’s dangerous energy. In an account written in 1908 he describes sitting with Kayser, the Colonial Secretary, in the ante-room. “After a considerable time Marschall came in, and in that laconic way of his instructed Kayser to draw up a telegram to Kruger, at the same time telling him what to put in it. When I quite naturally expressed my misgivings he said: ‘Oh don’t you interfere; you’ve no idea of the suggestions being made in there. Everything else is much worse!’ That is how the world-famous telegram came into being. The driving force was not reflection but the Kaiser’s whim.”[144]
Is it possible to believe that Holstein twiddled his thumbs while Kayser, at the next desk, drafted the explosive message? Baron von Eckardstein did not think so. Many members of the Wilhelmstrasse, he wrote in his memoirs, felt that Holstein was the true author; and even those with reservations agreed that “the influence Holstein had exercised since the dismissal of Bismarck was so unchallenged that he certainly could have prevented the mischief if he had wanted to.
” So we are forced to the conclusion that he did not want to. No doubt he found irresistible the pleasure of watching the Kaiser blot his copy-book with his English relations.
The Prince of Wales was convinced that William and William alone was responsible for the telegram and urged his mother to administer “a good snub” to him. But Victoria thought otherwise. “These sharp cutting answers only irritate and do harm and in Sovereigns and Princes should be most carefully guarded against. William’s faults come from impetuousness (as well as conceit); and calmness and firmness are the most powerful weapons in such cases.”[145] “My dear William,” she wrote, “As your Grandmother to whom you have always shown so much affection and of whose example you have always spoken with so much respect, I feel I cannot refrain from expressing my deep regret at the telegram you sent President Kruger. It is considered very unfriendly towards this country, which I am sure it is not intended to be, and has, I grieve to say, made a very painful impression here. The action of Dr. Jameson was of course very wrong and totally unwarranted; but considering the very peculiar position in which the Transvaal stands to Great Britain, I think it would have been far better to have said nothing. Our great wish has always been to keep on the best of terms with Germany, but I fear your Agents in the Colonies do the very reverse, which deeply grieves us. Let me hope that you will try and check this…”[146]
William’s answer was childish, for instead of defending the position he had taken, he pretended that he had been misunderstood. “To me,” he wrote, “rebels against the will of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — the Jameson raiders — are the most execrable beings in the world, and I was so incensed at the idea of your orders being disobeyed, and thereby peace and the security of my subjects being endangered, that I thought it necessary to show that publicly. It has, I am sorry to say, been totally misunderstood by the British press. I was standing up for law, order and obedience to a Sovereign whom I revere and adore, and whom to obey I thought paramount for her subjects. Those were my motives and I challenge anybody who is a gentleman to point out where there is anything hostile to England in this.”[147]
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