The Kaiser

by Virginia Cowles

  The Kaiser was horrified when he read this dispatch. He had no intention of risking a war over Morocco, and wired Bethmann from the Hohenzollern that no steps involving threats to France should be taken in his absence. He instructed him to open negotiations with M. Cambon along the lines suggested by the Ambassador, and announced his immediate return to Berlin. “I can’t let my government act so,” he wrote on the dispatch, “without being on the spot to watch the consequences and keep a hand on them! It would be unpardonable and too parliamentary! Le roi s'amuse! And meanwhile we are heading for mobilisation.” He also noted: “London will turn nasty.”[320]

  When Kiderlen received these instructions he was enraged, and declared that the Kaiser was spoiling his game. He threatened to resign, but Bethmann managed to calm him down, particularly when the Emperor’s prophecy about London proved correct. The British Foreign Office could not believe that the German suggestion about the Congo could be a bona-fide demand. It was so excessive that London decided it must have been designed purposely to provoke a refusal. Seventeen days of silence had passed since Grey had called the German Ambassador and demanded an explanation of the gunboat. Now Grey again summoned Count Metternich and asked him point-blank whether Germany was after territory in Africa or an Atlantic port. The Ambassador had received no instructions and was unable to reply.

  Kiderlen’s plan contained a fatal flaw. He had not taken into consideration the fact that his silence might frighten England into thinking that her interests were threatened more than those of France. By this time the British Government was gravely perturbed. Even members of the radical Liberal “peace wing” felt that if Germany thought she could brush England aside and seize an Atlantic port under her very nose she was greatly mistaken. Mr. Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, feared that unless Britain spoke out quickly and clearly a catastrophe might occur. That same night, July 21st, he attended a dinner at the Mansion House, and made a speech which rang round the world. “If a situation were 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 were 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.”

  The language of pre-world war diplomacy was so dignified and sedate, sometimes almost purring, that it is difficult for the present generation, nurtured on the vulgar abuse of modern dictators, to understand the sensation produced by these measured words. They blew up a storm of anger in Germany. They were a threat and an insult; an impertinent attempt by England to interfere in Franco-German affairs; and, delivered as they were by a radical who was supposed to have peaceful inclinations, they gave startling proof that Britain was far more bellicose than anyone had imagined.

  Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg sent a stiff note of remonstrance to London, so stiff that Britain ordered a concentration of the fleet. The Kaiser, still on board the Hohenzollern, refused to be ruffled and wired the Wilhelmstrasse that it was just “a little act of courtesy toward Paris which is simply howling for help in London.”[321]

  Nevertheless, Britain’s action had far-reaching results; for although the German public was not clear what the Wilhelmstrasse was after, it felt with some justification that the Fatherland had suffered a humiliating defeat at England’s hands. The anger in Germany was so great that the war-scare continued in Britain for two months — almost the whole time that Kiderlen and Cambon were negotiating — for Whitehall was fearful that Germany might change her mind, and make a sudden fierce gesture in order to re-establish her prestige. Agreement between the two principals, however, finally was reached on November 4th when France promised to cede 100,000 fairly worthless square miles in the Congo; nevertheless the land gave Germany two much needed river outlets for her exports from the Cameroons.

  Neither country was satisfied. In France, the Prime Minister, M. Caillaux, was replaced by M. Poincare; and in Germany the militarists poured scorn on the government for its timidity. Kiderlen put it about that Germany’s failure was due to the Kaiser who had lost his nerve and “funked it.” This prompted the Berlin Post to ask hysterically: “Are we a race of women?”; and inspired Harden’s Zukunft to launch an attack on “Wilhelm the Peaceable,” concluding with the words: “Here ends, O Zollern, thine historic glory, and here, but not in battle, fell a king.”

  The German Crown Prince, however, proffered no such sympathy. This foolish young man of twenty-nine added fuel to the fire by applauding in the Reichstag the warlike and anti-French speech of Herr Heydebrand, leader of the Conservative party. He was not on easy terms with his father, and except for the occasion when William II had toyed with the idea of abdication, had never had an intimate conversation with him. He spent most of his time hunting, which annoyed his father, or flirting, which upset his mother. And now he had taken to politics which angered them both. The Kaiser summoned him to the Palace and instructed Herr Bethmann to give him a dressing-down in his presence. The Chancellor did as he was bid, but it did not endear him to young William who describes him in his memoirs as “sluggish and irresolute.”

  The Kaiser undoubtedly had prevented a war, but he had no wish that the secret should become public knowledge; no wish that the world should know that he coveted the conqueror’s glory but shrank from the conqueror’s risks; that he desired, in Winston Churchill’s words, to be Napoleon without fighting Napoleon’s battles. In order to save his face, he began to lash out wildly at England. He spread the story that when he was at Buckingham Palace he had told George V that he intended to send a warship to Morocco and the King had agreed. But when the ship arrived England deliberately had double-crossed him and tried to embroil him in a war with France. These remarks were repeated to King George, who expressed surprise. “‘I will not deny that he perhaps could have said something about a ship,’ the King told the Austrian Ambassador, Count Mensdorff, ‘although I do not recall it. If he did, I thought of Mogador; in any case, he did not mention Agadir. And I absolutely did not express to him my own, or my Government’s, consent to any such action.’ The King added that it was his personal conviction that the German Emperor was a man of peace. The difficulty was that he might not for ever be strong enough to control his own militarists, since he was sensitive to their criticisms of his unwarlike hesitations.”[322]

  George V did not know that the pressure over Agadir had emanated from William’s Foreign Secretary, not his military advisers. But the bluff unimaginative sailor-king had come closer to divining his cousin’s true character than most people. “No man,” he concluded to the Austrian Ambassador, “likes to be called a coward.”

  Agadir brought the world war immeasurably closer. First, the fact that Bethmann-Hollweg, despite his pacific reputation, had employed the same methods as Prince Bülow, disillusioned many people and made them believe that a conflict was inevitable. Second, the crisis atmosphere gave Admiral Tirpitz a perfect excuse to introduce a supplementary naval bill, greatly increasing the strength of the German Fleet. “It was a question,” wrote the Admiral in his memoirs, “of our keeping our nerve, continuing to arm on a grand scale, avoiding all provocation, and waiting without anxiety until our sea power was established and forced the English to let us breathe in peace.” (“Only to breathe in peace!” commented Mr. Winston Churchill. “What fearful apparatus was required to secure this simple act of respiration!”)

  The Kaiser supported Tirpitz to the hilt. The fact that Britain had dared to concentrate her fleet at the height of the crisis showed, he said, that she had no value “for our friendship.” “Therefore,” he concluded, “we are not strong enough yet. Nothing impresses her but force and strength.”[323] Although Count Metternich pointed out that if Germany went ahead with her Bill, England was bound to follow suit, and the ratio would remain the same, the Kaiser dismissed his observations with conte
mpt. “Metternich’s standpoint is exactly the same as it was over the Supplementary Laws of 1904 and 1908,” he wrote on November 27th. “If I had followed him then, we should have no fleet at all now. His deduction permits a foreign power to control our naval policy, which I, as Chief War Lord and Emperor, shall not and cannot allow either now or ever! And it means humiliation for our people! We stick to our Bill!”[324]

  Meanwhile, the rumours of an impending increase in the German Navy prompted Mr. Lloyd George to make an effort to remove the ill-feeling between the two nations, and to get on better terms. “We knew,” wrote the newly appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill, “that a formidable new Navy Law was in preparation and would be shortly declared. If Germany had definitely made up her mind to antagonise Great Britain, we must take up the challenge; but it might be possible by friendly, sincere and intimate conversation to avert this perilous development. We were no enemies to German colonial expansion, and we would even have taken active steps to further her wishes in this respect. Surely something could be done to break the chain of blind causation… We therefore jointly consulted Sir Edward Grey, and then with the Prime Minister’s concurrence we invited Sir Ernest Cassel to go to Berlin and get into direct touch with the Emperor… We armed him with a brief but pregnant memorandum, which cannot be more tersely summarised than in von Bethmann-Hollweg’s own words: ‘Acceptance of English superiority at sea — no augmentation of the German naval programme — and on the part of England, no impediment to our Colonial expansion — discussion and promotion of our Colonial ambitions — proposals for mutual declarations that the two powers would not take part in aggressive plans and combinations against one another.’”[325] Cassel returned from Berlin after two days, and that night Mr. Churchill reported to Sir Edward Grey that the Emperor and the Chancellor “appeared deeply pleased by the overture. Bethmann-Hollweg earnest and cordial, the Emperor ‘enchanted, almost childishly so.’… Cassel says they did not seem to know what they wanted in regard to colonies. They did not seem to be greatly concerned about expansion. ‘There were ten large companies in Berlin importing labour into Germany.’ Over-population was not their problem. They were delighted with Cassel’s rough notes of our ideas. They are most anxious to hear from us again…”[326] Encouraged by this friendly response, the British Government decided that a cabinet minister should go to Berlin and sound the ground for an agreement. They chose Lord Haldane, the Minister of War, because he knew Germany well and spoke the language perfectly. But the Germans could not understand a Minister of War arriving to discuss naval matters, and were suspicious from the start.

  As soon as the conversations developed the same familiar obstacles were struck. Britain wanted Germany to drop the new naval supplements in their entirety, and Germany wanted Britain to pledge herself to neutrality if war broke out. The Kaiser conducted the German naval talks, and the best he was prepared to offer was a slowing down of the newly planned construction, which amounted to very little. Britain, on her side, would not even consider the neutrality pledge and was amazed that Berlin should return to such a hopeless quest. Germany, however, wanted England to sacrifice the Triple Entente; and all this for a niggardly retarding of the building programme.

  The truth was that the British Foreign Office would not have sacrificed the entente for half the German Fleet. Why then, the reader may ask, did the British Government send Lord Haldane to Berlin? The answer was that the politicians interfered to the consternation of the diplomats. A deep schism divided the British Foreign Office and the British Cabinet. The Foreign Office contended that Germany was stronger than France and Russia combined, and that only the shadow of Britain prevented her from seizing control of Europe. It was of vital importance, therefore, to ensure the cohesion of the Triple Entente. Yet the entente was not a military alliance, only a loose partnership. The danger that it might fall apart over some disagreement haunted Sir Arthur Nicolson, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State. Ever since 1909 he had begged Sir Edward Grey to place the facts before the Cabinet and try to persuade his colleagues of the urgent necessity for changing the character of the entente and undertaking firm military commitments. This not only would weld the partnership firmly together but would leave Germany in no doubt about England’s position, and prevent her from taking dangerous risks.

  Grey replied, however, that the majority of his Cabinet colleagues would not face hard facts. Some were pacifists, and some were radicals who would never agree to an official alliance with such a reactionary regime as Czarist Russia. “I do not think it is practical to change our agreement into alliances,” he wrote to Sir Arthur in 1909. “The feeling here about definite commitments to a continental war on unfavourable occasions would be too dubious to permit us to make an alliance. Russia too must make her internal regime less reactionary — till she does liberal sentiment here will remain very cool…”[327]

  Perhaps it would have been impossible for Grey to convince the Cabinet that the best chance of peace was for Britain to state her position unequivocally; but the truth was that Grey never attempted to do so, for he himself preferred to remain in “a balancing position” or, to use his favourite expression, “to keep his hands free.” By not undertaking any military commitments England could throw her weight first one way, then another. She not only could restrain Germany, but France and Russia as well. The Foreign Office countered by insisting that this was a false position. Britain’s hands were not free, despite Sir Edward’s illusions. Morally, Britain was deeply obligated to France. Military conversations had been going on between the General Staffs of the two countries for years, and soon there would be joint naval deployment. And even if no moral obligations existed, Britain could never allow Germany to smash France, for once she stood supreme in Europe what was to prevent her from threatening the British Empire?

  Grey was not to be moved. This reasoning, he said, was sound if one believed implicitly in “the German menace;” if, on the other hand, one entertained doubts about German intentions, it was only right to try and break the deadlock. Therefore, he agreed to Lord Haldane’s mission to Berlin. The Foreign Office was angry and alarmed that a cabinet minister should be sent to negotiate over the heads of the diplomats. France reacted uneasily and Russia excitedly. If Germany reached an official agreement with England, no matter how innocuous, the entente which had withstood threats of war and gunboats might fall to the ground, shattered in a hundred pieces.

  But Germany failed to see her opportunity. The Kaiser and Admiral Tirpitz were just as suspicious of England as the British diplomats were of Germany. They examined the “promotion of German colonial expansion” as envisaged by Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill with justifiable scepticism. Although Lord Haldane hinted that Britain might consider ceding Zanzibar and Pemba, two small islands off the east coast of Africa, he dwelt with far more enthusiasm on the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola! As for the neutrality pledge, all that could be offered, he said, was a promise that “England will make no unprovoked attack on Germany and pursue no aggressive policy toward her.” This, the Kaiser retorted, was worthless, as who was to define an “unprovoked attack?” Germany then made it clear that she was interested in nothing else but Britain’s unconditional neutrality, in return for which she would retard, but not curtail, her new programme.

  The Foreign Office was delighted when Lord Haldane returned to London with this meagre proposal. Sir Edward Grey informed the German Ambassador that England could not give the desired neutrality pledge. He was aware that Bethmann-Hollweg had fought gallantly to persuade Tirpitz to forgo his fleet increases, so he tried to gild the pill by telling Count Metternich that he was confident that no quarrels would arise while the present Chancellor was at the helm. But he had to look ahead, he said, and new personalities might bring changes in German policy. When the Kaiser’s eye fell on this, his indignation knew no bounds. “So he mistrusts me!!! Never have I heard of anyone concluding an agreement with… one particular statesman,
independently of the reigning Sovereign. From the foregoing it is evident that Grey does not in the least realise who the ruler here is, and that I am the ruler…”[328] The attempts of the Foreign Office to disavow Lord Haldane’s colonial offers aroused even greater ire in the Kaiser. The civil servants feared that the suggestions he had made might leak out and stir up trouble. So they drew up a memorandum emphasising that he had not made any direct offers — only offered to help in assisting Germany in her negotiations with the foreign powers concerned. “It never occurred to him,” wrote the Emperor indignantly. “He made the offer sans phrase over the table!”[329]

  The Kaiser was so annoyed by the stalemate that he made great play about perfidious Albion bargaining away other nations’ possessions. “Haldane’s representations were designed to induce the German Government to accept as an offering from England a trans-continental colonial Empire in Africa — consisting of a territory owned by foreign nations and not the property of England (and there was no knowledge or guarantee that those nations were prepared to renounce them in our favour) — and to drop the Supplementary Bill. In the political clause neutrality was at the same time refused, as being too difficult to define. Haldane was to return home with this success. The Government, which in the present uncomfortable situation in England were in urgent need of a success, wished to improve their tottering fortunes, start off with a coup, make an effect in Parliament, announce this great triumph over Germany and be praised and glorified for it… This was Haldane’s Mission in a nutshell.”[330]

  In May 1912 Tirpitz introduced his new Navy Law, and in July Mr. Winston Churchill retaliated with supplementary estimates of his own which, he told Parliament, were the direct result of Germany’s move. Even more important, Britain drew her battleships out of the Mediterranean to reinforce the “Home Fleet,” while France transferred all heavy ships to the Mediterranean. This pooling of resources visibly tightened the entente. “But,” wrote Churchill, “all was lost on Admiral Tirpitz. This sincere, wrongheaded, purblind old Prussian firmly believed that the growth of his beloved navy was inducing in British minds an increasing fear of war, whereas it simply produced naval rejoinders and diplomatic reactions which strengthened the forces and closed the ranks of the entente…”[331]