The Kaiser could not decide what to do. His indignation against Bülow was tempered by the thought that perhaps the Chancellor had been driven to extremes in order to save the situation. He would wait until he returned to Berlin before passing final judgement, and in the meantime he would try to enjoy himself. But even this was doomed to failure. Although the Prince had laid on lavish entertainment, importing a cabaret show for His Majesty’s pleasure, a tragedy occurred on the last night which marred the memory of the visit. The Emperor’s close friend Count Hülsen-Haeseler, the Chief of the Military Cabinet (the man who had led the court attack on Eulenburg), decided to divert the assembly by dressing up like a ballet dancer and performing a pas-seul. It was not intended as a burlesque, for we are told that the Count “danced beautifully.” “We had the usual dinner,” wrote Count Zedlitz, who was in attendance, “and the ladies, Princess Fürstenburg, Princess Hohenlohe, etc., were in full evening dress with all their jewels, the gentlemen in green or black swallow tails with black shoes, and as there had been a steeplechase in the neighbourhood, some were in scarlet. This exceptionally smart and brilliant company assembled after dinner in the beautiful Great Hall of the Castle, with a band playing on the staircase. Suddenly Count Hülsen-Haeseler appeared in ballet skirts — not for the first time — and began to dance to the music. Everybody found it most entertaining, for the Count danced beautifully, and it is an unusual experience to see a Chief of the Military Cabinet capering about in the costume of a lady of the ballet.”[293]
After his exhausting performance, the Count went to the Long Gallery to get his breath and suddenly dropped to the floor. Count Zedlitz saw him and hurried to his aid. From then on pandemonium reigned. The Staff physician was called and worked for an hour and a half to bring him back to consciousness. Princess Fürstenburg sat in a chair and wept, while the Kaiser paced up and down near the prone figure. Another doctor came from the town, but at eleven o’clock they both gave up their attempts at restoration and pronounced the Count dead from heart failure. “The body,” wrote Zedlitz, “was then carried to the large saloon on the floor above, which was reserved for the greatest State banquets.” The doctors and assistants had great difficulty in removing the General’s ballet skirt and putting him back into a uniform, for by this time rigor mortis had set in. After much patience it finally was achieved, and the funeral service took place the following morning.
Meanwhile the Emperor had wired the Empress that he had lost “his best friend” and had decided to cancel his official trip to Kiel scheduled for the next afternoon. He suggested meeting the Empress at Baden-Baden, but after an hour or so changed his plans again and altered his time-schedule. Count Zedlitz protested that it was difficult to alter the complicated arrangements for the imperial trains twice in the same night. “The Emperor put his hand on my shoulder,” wrote the Count, “and looking at me with a tragic expression, as much as to say that I was always the one to make fife hard for him, exclaimed: ‘Is this the time for you to want to make difficulties?’”
Meanwhile Prince Bülow was growing uneasy. On the day of the Reichstag debate he had felt triumphant. “When amid a roar of cheering I sat down I felt that the battle had been won.” He believed that he had emerged from the ordeal, saved the Emperor and, miraculously enough, increased his own prestige, and although the Emperor might not like the method he had chosen, he was scarcely in a position to object; at any rate, Bülow was confident that he could bring him round to his point of view. When he received Sir Edward Goschen that afternoon he was so self-assured that he even allowed himself to indulge in badinage at the Kaiser’s expense. “The Prince was rather funny about the Plan of Campaign for the Boer War,” wrote Goschen to Sir Edward Grey. “He said he had taken the trouble to fish it out of the archives.
‘ But,’ he added, ‘please do not ask me my opinion of it or I should have to tell you that it was really a very childish production, consisting partly of extracts from a well-known work on the art of war, and partly of some original thoughts on that same art which would scarcely meet with the approbation of military experts.’” Sir Edward did not feel that Bülow’s speech had been as much of a success as the latter believed. He informed London that it was regarded as “unsatisfactory.” “Everyone,” he wired on November 13, “is angry with somebody. The general public are furious because in his speech Prince Bülow did not say enough, and… the Conservatives are angry with him because he said too much while not sufficiently defending the Emperor…” Apparently this last criticism began to spread, for a week later the Ambassador was reporting “the fairly general opinion” that the Emperor will not easily forgive “the somewhat half-hearted way” in which the Chancellor defended the Kaiser. “Whether Prince Bülow will remain very long in office remains to be seen.” The Berliner Tageblatt seized upon the situation to deliver another attack on the Emperor. “We have a population of more than sixty million, a highly intelligent nation, and yet the fate of the Chancellor as well as the choice of his successor rests with one man! Such a situation is intolerable to a self-respecting nation. The events of the last few days have made it clear that the German people will not continue to allow their vital interests to depend on the mood of a single individual whose impulsiveness they have once again had the opportunity of witnessing.”[294]
Despite this line of defence, the gossip began to worry Bülow and he made up his mind that he would ask the Emperor to sign a statement approving the remarks he had made in the Reichstag. This would make it impossible for William to disown him at a later date, or suddenly to demand his resignation.
The two men met at Potsdam on November 17th in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion. When Prince Bülow arrived at the Palace he was greeted by the Empress who whispered: “Be really kind and gentle with the Emperor. He is quite broken up.” This was a relief to Bülow; at least he was not going to have an explosive scene with his master. On the contrary, he found the Kaiser as pained and submissive as at their last meeting. He was surprised that the press was still referring to the incident and seemed almost bemused. “But what are they so annoyed about?” he asked childishly. The Chancellor gave him a long dissertation on the imperial actions that had undermined confidence, and then told him that the public was waiting for a statement from him. He drew from his pocket the following draft: “Today His Majesty the Emperor and King received a report from Prince Bülow lasting several hours. The Imperial Chancellor described the temper roused in the German People by the Daily Telegraph publication and explained the position which he had adopted towards the interpolations in the Reichstag. His Majesty received the representations and explanations of the Imperial Chancellor with great seriousness, and thus announced his will: Undisturbed by the exaggerations of public opinion, which he feels to be unjustified, he regards it as his Highest Imperial duty to ensure the continuity of the Emperor’s policy by the preservation of constitutional responsibilities. His Majesty accordingly approved the Imperial Chancellor’s statements in the Reichstag and assured the Prince of his continued confidence.”[295]
Prince Bülow declares in his memoirs that the Kaiser seemed relieved that so little was demanded of him, and agreed wholeheartedly to sign the document. He claims that when he took his leave William kissed him on both cheeks and said: “Thank you. Thank you with all my heart.” The Emperor’s memoirs, however, give a different impression. “After my return home the Chancellor appeared, read me a lecture on my political sins, and demanded the signature of the well-known document, which was afterwards communicated to the Press. I signed it in silence, as in silence I let the Press attacks on me and the Crown take their course.”[296]
Whatever the truth of the two accounts, Bülow had made a mistake. In the Reichstag he had taken the middle course, so dear to his heart, and neither defended the Emperor nor thrown him over. By failing to back up his sovereign with all the skill he could summon, or alternatively to demand the constitutional changes that would have stripped the Crown of power, he had got the worst
of both worlds and set the seal on his own doom.
A curious aspect of the episode was the Kaiser’s delayed reaction. As soon as Bülow departed, his nerves fell to pieces and he took to his bed with “cold shiverings and hysteria.” His humiliation seemed complete. After twenty years of praise and idolisation, the sudden cruel change in the temper of his people had proved too much for him. How could he ever lift up his head again? What had come over the German nation? And why was Bülow so critical? The Chancellor knew perfectly well what the Kaiser had said at Highcliffe; William remembered telling him, and he had not raised the slightest objection. The Emperor felt abandoned by everyone, and wept like a child for hours at a time. Suddenly he decided that he could endure it no longer. He would abdicate. He sent a message to the Crown Prince to come to Potsdam at once, and instructed the Court Chamberlain, Count Schulz, to get a message to Prince Bülow informing him of the decision.
The Empress was so shocked that she sent a footman to find Prince Bülow, asking him to come quickly and to see her first. The Chancellor received the Kaiser’s message on the floor of the Reichstag just as he was rising to make a speech. Afterwards, when he was leaving the building, the royal footman caught him, and he immediately went to Potsdam. “Her Majesty the Empress received me on the ground floor. Her eyes were red with tears, but her bearing was entirely regal. She asked me at once: ‘Must the Emperor abdicate? Do you wish him to abdicate?’”[297] Bülow replied that such a thing had never occurred to him. He remained with her some time trying to calm her but she seemed at a loss to know what to do.
Meanwhile the Crown Prince had arrived. “I rushed upstairs. My mother received me immediately. She was agitated, and her eyes were red. She kissed me and held my head before her in both her hands. Then she said: ‘You know, my boy, what you are here for?’ ‘No, Mother.’ ‘Then go to your father. But sound your heart well before you decide.’ Then I knew what was coming. A few minutes later I stood by my father’s sick-bed. He seemed aged by years; he had lost hope, and felt himself to be deserted by everybody; he was broken down by the catastrophe which had snatched the ground from beneath his feet; his self-confidence and his trust were shattered… He talked vehemently, complainingly, and hurriedly of the incidents; and the bitterness aroused by the injustice which he saw in them kept reasserting itself… I stayed with him for quite an hour sitting on his bed, a thing which, so long as I can remember, had never happened before.”[298]
But William II did not broach the subject of abdication; he had no real intention of taking such a plunge. Yet he found it impossible to throw off his depression. Although he rose from his bed and attended one or two small official functions, his amour propre had been so deeply wounded that he could not recover himself. “The gloom of the Prussian Court,” wrote the English governess,”… can hardly be adequately pictured. The Emperor made no attempt to conceal the deep dejection of his soul, but moved about — this man usually so loquacious, so pleased with himself and the world — in a mournful silence, speaking seldom and then in an undertone, as though someone he loved were dead. Everyone else, too, seemed to talk in whispers, not daring to break the ghastly silence that surrounded the Palace like a chilly winter atmosphere… All the young Princes — the two at Pion, and Prince Albert from Kiel — made short, hurried visits home, in the hope of distracting their father from the brooding grief into which he appeared to have sunk.”[299]
On New Year’s Day, 1909, the tide turned. When the Kaiser attended a public reception in Berlin he received a tumultuous ovation. The agitation against him had come mainly from intellectuals; the prosperous middle classes had always been shocked by the criticism, and now the pendulum had swung far the other way. Sympathy for the Emperor was widespread and mounting. He had been misjudged and wronged, people said; he had been forced to take the rap for the Chancellor, who had scarcely lifted a finger in his defence. He had borne his lot with dignity and silence, and the real culprit was Bülow who had “betrayed his king.” The Berlin reception was the first overt sign of sympathy for the monarch, and it was followed by many others. At the end of January the Princes came in a body to Berlin to celebrate the Emperor’s fiftieth birthday, and gave a stirring demonstration of their loyalty; and at the musical festival at Frankfurt, several months later, the fervour and adulation of the crowds exceeded anything that William had experienced throughout his long reign. Even when he rode through the streets, he received cheers far more whole-hearted than ever before. “There,” he exclaimed triumphantly, “I always knew the people were behind me.”
The whispers about Bülow were repeated to the Kaiser and confirmed his innermost thoughts. Suddenly his self-confidence was restored, for it was Bülow, not the Kaiser, who had committed the wrong. Soon the Kaiser was asserting that he had acted constitutionally; that everything he said had been approved. The reason for the disaster was simply that “Bülow had betrayed his king.” From then on, William could say no good of his Chancellor. Probably Bülow had read the manuscript and deliberately passed it for publication in order to increase his own authority; no doubt it was a conspiracy concocted by Baron Holstein in order to get revenge for his dismissal by the Kaiser.
Nothing was too bad to think of Bülow. He fulminated against him in front of his staff, remarking bitterly that he had left him “in the lurch,” and writing sarcastic minutes on the margins of dispatches. “I suppose he wants to be a Court Marshal too.” The Emperor’s suspicions had become accusations, and soon the accusations became monstrous facts. The following year he shocked Count Zedlitz by his “annihilating” pronouncements. “He went so far as to say that the world had not seen such a hypocrite or a liar since Caesar Borgia. He laid the whole blame for the downfall of Prince Eulenburg and the others concerned at Bülow’s door. He said that he had bungled the whole business so that no other result was possible; and that quite probably the scandals had not been unwelcome to him for personal reasons.”[300]
This was the unhappy background against which the affairs of Germany were conducted from January to July 1909. Every important political development bore the stamp of the strained relations between the two men at the helm of the nation’s affairs, and gave each situation a twist it otherwise might not have had. Although William dealt officially with Bülow he refused to see him privately. When they met he was polite and even amiable, but he maintained a reserve which Bülow found disturbing, for, coupled with the malicious stories repeated back to the Chancellor, it left no doubt as to the Emperor’s bitter displeasure. When Bülow saw public opinion swinging back to William, he became more afraid. Once again he became anxious to please, eager to impress, and loath to take any line which might exacerbate His Majesty’s hostility.
In one instance, Prince Bülow’s fear served Germany well. In February he reached an agreement with France, designed to put an end to the wrangle about Morocco. This was an attempt to placate William. In October, a day or two after the Austrian annexation of Bosnia had been announced, the Emperor had written the Foreign Office that if Germany was going to run into trouble with Russia, it was time she patched up things with France. He was sick and tired of the endless disputes over Morocco. Each time there was a revolt in North Africa or an outrage against Europeans, and the French landed troops to restore order, Germany accused her of breaking the terms of the Algeciras Act, and sent a threatening note “that Berlin could not look with indifference at possible French encroachments.”
These pin-pricks not only irritated the French but William II as well. “This wretched Morocco business must be brought to a conclusion quickly and finally,” he had written to Bülow. “There is nothing to be done about it. It will be French. So let us get out of the affair with dignity and be done with this friction with France, now that great issues are at stake.”[301] He also wrote a similar letter to Baron von Schoen who informed M. Cambon, the French Ambassador, that it was time Germany and France shook hands over Morocco, as “the Emperor wished it.” In January an agreement was drawn up in which
Germany recognised Morocco as a French sphere of interest, and France reiterated her pledge to preserve Moroccan independence and promised specific economic benefits for Germany. The document was signed on February 9th, the day that King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra arrived in Berlin for a state visit — the first official visit the King had paid during the eight years of his reign.
The Kaiser was eager to flourish the agreement in his uncle’s face. Although M. Cambon only arrived back in Berlin from Paris on the 9th, he was received by the Emperor within an hour of applying for an interview and the signatures were hastily affixed. William then decorated the Ambassador with the Order of the Red Eagle (which was given wide publicity) and presented him with a photograph of himself on which was written: “because the path I ordered in our Moroccan policy has had such a brilliant success in the whole world, and because we owe so much to the devoted and unselfish work of Cambon as well as to his loyalty.”
Edward VII looked old and ill. He had only made the effort to come to Berlin because he wished to show the world that the Daily Telegraph interview had not caused any ill will. But although he was on a mission of peace, William always nettled him and he could not resist a few tart observations. After the state dinner, he congratulated the Chancellor on the agreement with France and said he hoped he would settle the Bosnian affair with equal success. “But keep a sharp look out at him,” he added with an oblique look, “and see that he doesn’t get too uppish about it.” The King was well aware of the tension between Bülow and his master and the next day, after the luncheon at the British Embassy, he asked the Chancellor point-blank, somewhat impudently: “How do you get on with the Emperor? It does not seem to me to be very easy for his ministers to get on with him.” Bülow replied cattily that His Majesty was still very young despite his fifty years.
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