The Kaiser

by Virginia Cowles

  Meanwhile, Count Metternich, the German Ambassador in London, was deeply unhappy. Repeatedly he presented the British argument to Berlin, which struck him as eminently sensible. Mr. Asquith’s Liberal Government, he said, did not want to spend its money on armaments as it had been elected to carry out a large programme of social reform. However, as England possessed no army, and as her navy constituted her sole security, no British Government could allow its naval superiority to be whittled down. For every dreadnought Germany built, England was determined to build two. But would it not be preferable for the two nations to reach an agreement on naval ratios, and save both countries ruinous and unnecessary expenditure? Metternich declared forcibly that if Germany insisted on an arms race a dangerous and permanent breach would open between the two countries which would make English hostility certain in the event of a European war.

  Mctternich’s dispatches infuriated William II. His anger seemed to be becoming almost psychopathic, for as the weeks passed the mere mention of the word “discussion” threw him into a towering rage. He scribbled wildly over the Ambassador’s reports. “We will never submit to dictation as to how our armaments are to be arranged;” “I should reply with grenades;” “That is language to be used to China or Italy or similar creatures. Unheard of!!!” “I do not wish for good relations with England at the price of not building the German Fleet… The German Fleet is built against nobody, and so not against England. It is governed by our own needs. This is clearly laid down in the Naval Law and has been unchallenged for 11 years. The Law will be carried out to the last tittle, whether the Britons like it or not; it is the same to us. If they want war let them begin it; we are not afraid of it.”[277]

  The insistence that the German Fleet was being built in a void, irrespective of the size of anyone else’s fleet, was too foolish to be countenanced. Even William did not believe it, for how was it possible to determine a “requirement” unless it was related to something? Indeed, the preamble of the German Navy Law stated clearly that the German Fleet must be so powerful that 66 if the strongest naval power engaged it, it would endanger its own supremacy.”

  The plan of William II and Admiral Tirpitz was to “neutralise” the British Navy. If they could close the gap between the two fleets, Britain would not dare to range herself against Germany, nor to thwart her will. Despite English assertions to the contrary Tirpitz was convinced that this aim could be achieved. Britain would find the financial burden too great, he argued, to maintain a wide margin of superiority. Indeed, he told the Kaiser bluntly, that “if the English fleet is permanently and fundamentally made and maintained so strong as to make it safe to attack Germany, then German naval development from an historic standpoint would be a mistake, and Your Majesty’s fleet policy an historic fiasco.” And in a sentence calculated to keep the Emperor up to the mark, he added: “Germany’s world position, in the existing political situation, would remain dependent on England’s favour.”[278]

  England’s favour: that was the odious factor that prompted the Kaiser’s shipbuilding. He had no plan to attack the British Navy, and it never entered his head to invade the British Isles. He wanted a navy for grandeur; a navy large enough to ensure respect for the words of the German Emperor the world over; a navy powerful enough to free him from any need to consider the goodwill of England. What he failed to comprehend, however, was that a fleet strong enough to defy Britain was a fleet so strong that it would constitute a threat to the safety of the British Isles. The Kaiser flatly refused to countenance this argument, or to consider for one moment that there was anything to be said on the other side. “They will just have to get used to our fleet,” he wrote haughtily, “and from time to time we must assure them it is not against them.”[279]

  This was the Kaiser’s mood when Edward VII travelled through Germany en route to Austria in the summer of 1908. Before his departure Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, asked him if he would bring up the subject of naval armaments when he met the German Emperor at Cronberg; the Foreign Office was anxious to know if the stone wall it had run up against was erected by Tirpitz or the Kaiser himself. Edward gave an emphatic no. Ever since his disastrous political talk with William in 1901, when he had handed his nephew the wrong Foreign Office document, he had refused to play the part of a negotiator; he was no good at it, he said, and it was not his constitutional role. Furthermore he found it impossible to carry on a rational discussion with William, and he did not want their meeting to deteriorate into a bitter scene. However he consented to take with him Sir Charles Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office, and said that if the occasion presented itself Hardinge could broach the subject himself.

  Hardinge did so when the Emperor talked to him after lunch. William II appeared to be in an amiable mood, and although the Kaiser produced an entirely different set of naval figures from those the British Admiralty had given Sir Charles, the two men were soon deep in conversation. Hardinge became so interested that he lowered his guard and at one point in the argument said: “But you must build slower.” The Kaiser was an expert at humiliating rebuffs. Instantly he fastened on this phrase and drew himself up stiffly, making it clear that no one used the word “must to a German Emperor.” “Then we shall fight,” he retorted, “for it is a question of national honour and dignity.” Gleefully he reported the scene to Prince Bülow. “I looked him straight in the eye,” he wrote. “Sir Charles became scarlet, made me a bow, begged pardon for his words and urged me expressly to forgive and forget and treat them as remarks inadvertently made in private conversation.” The Kaiser went on to report that after dinner, “when I conferred on him the Order of the Red Eagle, First Class, he was ready to eat out of my hand… My frank words when I had showed him my teeth had not failed in their effect. You must always treat Englishmen thus”[280] The Emperor’s belief that Germany could not rank as a truly great power unless she acquired a fleet was not shared by other European rulers. The foreign guests who attended the Kaiser’s annual army manoeuvres usually left with a very healthy respect for the might of Germany and the majesty of William II. In 1908 Mr. Winston Churchill, the President of the Board of Trade, was one of the visitors, and the Kaiser seemed to him the very symbol of earthly splendour. “As he sat on his horse surrounded by Kings and Princes while his legions defiled before him,” wrote Churchill, “he represented all that this world has to give in material things. The picture which lives the most vividly in my memory is his entry into the city of Breslau at the beginning of the manoeuvres. He rode his magnificent horse at the head of a squadron of cuirassiers, wearing their white uniform and eagle-crested helmet. The streets of the Silesian capital were thronged with his enthusiastic subjects, and lined, not with soldiers, but more impressively with thousands of aged veterans in rusty black coats and stove-pipe hats, as if the great past of Germany saluted her more splendid future.”[281]

  This splendid future already was darkening; William’s obsession about his fleet, combined with Prince Bülow’s tortuous foreign policy, were to stamp 1908-09 as a landmark on the road leading to the holocaust of 1914. The breach with England was followed by an equally dangerous breach with Russia. When the Kaiser learned in October 1908 that Austria had announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was enraged. Although the Emperor Franz Joseph had been administering these two Slav provinces for nearly thirty years, according to the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, nominally they belonged to Turkey. William was furious that he had not been informed and furious that one of his allies had seen fit to act in so high-handed a manner to another of his allies. “Robbery and felony,” he wrote on the report. “Vienna… has duped us in a most unheard-of fashion… if the Sultan in his necessity declares war, and hoists in Constantinople the green flag of the Holy War, I should not blame him.”

  The real clash, however, was not between Austria-Hungary and Turkey, for Franz Joseph soon managed to quiet the Sultan by paying large indemnities. The struggle was far more serious, for it
heralded the dreaded conflict between Russia and Austria-Hungary that Bismarck had been so eager to avoid. Franz Joseph’s Empire contained many Slav minorities, and these minorities were being encouraged by Russia to break away and link up with other Slav states. Independent Serbia (now part of Yugoslavia) was the spearhead of the attack. Backed by Russian money and influence it had cast longing eyes on Bosnia and Herzegovina for many years, hoping one day to form a Greater Serbia. Austria-Hungary had announced the annexation to forestall any such future development; but in doing so she had broken the Treaty of Berlin, and set the whole of the Balkans into a ferment.

  The Kaiser’s first reaction was to maintain a neutral role and to urge restraint on both sides. Although Bülow was in favour of “backing Austria-Hungary to the hilt” he played his hand prudently for several months. Meanwhile the situation worsened. Serbia was in a state of high excitement and employed agents to provoke insurrections in Bosnia. Austrian troops were sent to the Serbian frontier and General Conrad, the Austrian Chief of Staff, begged the Emperor Franz Joseph to allow him “to crush the dangerous little viper.” St. Petersburg became alarmed that their little protege might be attacked, and the Czar called a Crown Council to discuss possible intervention. But the generals gave an emphatic no, for Russia had not recovered from her defeat at the hands of Japan and was in no position to fight. The situation, the Czar told a friend, was frightful, “because Russia is unprepared for war, and a Russian defeat would be the ruin of Slavdom.” He believed that Germany was encouraging Austria-Hungary in its belligerent attitude and even feared that Berlin might be looking for an opportunity to attack Russia.

  This was not the case, and up till this moment Germany had behaved with circumspection. But as soon as Prince Bülow learned from secret service reports that the Crown Council had decided against war, no matter what the circumstances, he could not resist reaching out for a cheap victory. He allowed the Wilhelmstrasse to send Russia a stiff note — so stiff that it amounted to an ultimatum — telling her that unless she recognised the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina unequivocally and without further delay Berlin would not restrain Austria-Hungary from attacking Serbia. Russia had no alternative but to accept this bitter humiliation.

  Prince Bülow cunningly tried to patch things up by putting about the story — which he repeats in his memoirs — that his diktat was a friendly gesture designed to extricate Russia from the embarrassing situation of seeing Serbia chastised by Austria-Hungary. The Czar, however, did not feel that Germany had done him a favour! On March 18th he wrote to his mother, who was visiting her sister Queen Alexandra in London, and referred bitterly to the ultimatum. “Once the matter had been put as definitely and unequivocably as that, there was nothing to do but swallow one’s pride, give in and agree. The Ministers were unanimous about it. If this concession on our part can save Serbia from being crushed by Austria, it is, I firmly believe, well worth it. Our decision was the more inevitable as we were informed on all sides that Germany was absolutely ready to mobilise. Against whom? Evidently not against Austria! But our public does not realise this and it is hard to make them realise how ominous things looked a few days ago…”[282] The Czar continued his letter next day. “It is quite true that the form and method of Germany’s action — I mean toward us — has simply been brutal and we won’t forget it. I think they were again trying to separate us from France and England — but once again they have undoubtedly failed. Such methods tend to bring about the opposite results.”

  The Kaiser had played little part in this unfortunate drama. He met the Czar in Finnish waters in the summer and tried to smooth matters over. We do not know whether or not he succeeded; we only know that when he visited Austria-Hungary in October 1909 he made matters even worse. He delivered an inflammatory speech in which he referred to the Bosnian crisis and declared that Germany had stood behind her ally, Austria-Hungary, “in shining armour.” All those who had suspected that the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a Berlin-Viennese plot were now sure of it. This conviction had far-reaching consequences. Bismarck had always stressed that the German and Austro-Hungarian alliance was purely defensive, and had laid down the axiom that Germany would not support Austria in any aggressive designs in the Balkans, as such a policy would lead her into trouble with Russia. For years the Wilhemstrasse had followed this same course, not in principle but in practice. Now, suddenly, Germany seemed to have made a new departure, and in one stroke transformed her alliance into an offensive instrument. St. Petersburg regarded it as a major event. From this moment on, Russia began to re-arm; and with the financial help of her ally, France, undertook the task of constructing strategic railways on her western frontier, necessary for a war against Germany.

  Chapter 12. The Interview

  In the middle of the Bosnian crisis the Kaiser committed a gaffe which nearly cost him his throne. It made the Fatherland the laughing stock of the world and for once the German public rose in its wrath and turned against the Crown. Forgotten was the wrangle with England over shipbuilding, forgotten the quarrel with Russia over Serbia; for weeks no one could talk of anything but the astonishing and precarious position of the German Emperor.

  The story began in the middle of October 1908 when Prince Bülow, who was at his country house on Nordeney, dealing with the Bosnian affair, received a communication from Baron Jenisch, the Foreign Office representative attached to the Kaiser’s suite at Rominten. Jenisch enclosed an article which had been written by Colonel Stuart-Wortley, the Emperor’s host at Highcliffe, Bournemouth, the year before. The Colonel had recorded His Majesty’s remarks on the “misunderstanding” between England and Germany, and now he had put them in the form of an interview with the Kaiser. He wanted permission to publish the article in an English newspaper, as the Emperor was so vehemently “pro-British” he felt sure it would alleviate suspicions and create a far healthier atmosphere.

  The Kaiser approved of the idea but was sending the article to Prince Bülow to ask if he had any objections to its publication. The Chancellor tells us in his memoirs that he was too overworked to read the manuscript, for it was written on bad typing paper, was “bulky and almost illegible.” “Without the slightest suspicion of the ominous contents,” he writes, “… I sent it off at once to the Wilhelmstrasse, together with a letter to Jenisch, adding to my note to the Foreign Office the following instructions in my own hand:

  ‘Please read the enclosed article carefully through, transcribe it in clear official script with a wide margin (or better still let it be type-written), duplicate it, and enter, in the same hand, in the margin, such corrections, additions or deletions as may seem suitable. Further, retain a copy of the revised text for His Majesty. It is important that the utmost secrecy be observed, and that this document be returned to me as soon as possible.’ The words ‘carefully’ and ‘deletions’ were both thickly underlined.”[283]

  Herr Stemrich, the Under-Secretary of State, was the first to read the manuscript; he thought it was too “tricky” for him to pass judgement on, so took it to Herr Klehmet who held Councillor rank; Klehmet did not gather from the instructions that he was to pass judgement on the article as a whole, but simply to make deletions, so he approved it; it then went to Baron von Schoen, the Secretary of State, who also approved it.

  “A few days later, back came the article from the Foreign Office,” wrote Bülow, “with the remark that only a few unimportant corrections had been found necessary — such trifles, for instance, as the correct name of the German Consular official who had been sent to Fez. Once again I had the article read, this time by the Minister von Müller, in attendance on me as Foreign Office representative I again asked, clearly and unmistakably, whether any possible objection could be raised against its publication. He answered me quite definitely in the negative, and I authorised him to reply in that sense to the inquiry I had received from Rominten. I had no idea that this package, from the imperial hunting-box, was a veritable charge of high explosive the detonation o
f which would shortly cause the most serious internal crisis I experienced during my whole term of office.”[284]

  It seems incredible that once the manuscript had been neatly typed Prince Bülow could not spare the time to read it. He was only too well aware of the Kaiser’s penchant for sensational utterances; he knew that the article was highly political, and that it was intended for publication in a British newspaper at a time when relations between the two countries were especially delicate. Indeed, it was the first “interview” the Kaiser had ever granted. Is it possible that Bülow really neglected to look at it? This writer is inclined to think that, like the other gentlemen at the Foreign Office, he glanced through it and saw no harm in it. The Germans were not the only people guilty of insensitivity; Colonel Stuart-Wortley was certain that it could do nothing but good. When the interview was published, he inserted an enthusiastic foreword. “Moments sometimes occur in the history of nations when a calculated indiscretion proves of the highest public service, and it is for that reason that I have decided to make known the substance of a recent conversation which it was my privilege to have with His Majesty the German Emperor. I do so in the hope that it may help to remove the obstinate misconception of the character of the Kaiser’s feelings toward England.”