Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

  Bülow left without seeing the Kaiser. The Crown Prince arrived. “I rushed upstairs,”55 he recorded in his Memoirs. “My father seemed aged by years; he had lost hope and felt himself to be deserted by everybody. He was broken down... his self-confidence and his trust were shattered. He talked vehemently... bitterness aroused by the injustice... kept reasserting itself. I stayed with him for an hour sitting on his bed, a thing which, so long as I can remember, had never happened before.”

  William never mentioned abdication again, but his depression was evident. “The Emperor made no attempt56 to conceal the deep dejection of his soul,” said Princess Victoria Louise’s English governess. “[He] 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.... Everyone else, too, seemed to talk in whispers.” In his rare public appearances, William veered to the opposite extreme, affecting a forced cheerfulness, cracking jokes and laughing louder than anyone else. The Kaiser avoided Bülow. The morning visits to the Wilhelmstrasse and strolls in the Chancellory garden ceased; Kaiser and Chancellor saw each other only when business required it. At the end of six weeks, William began to recover. On New Year’s Day, as he drove through the streets and the crowd broke into cheers, William’s self-confidence and self-esteem began to creep back. Public sympathy for the Emperor increased; his silence and withdrawal were ascribed, not to collapse, but to a becoming royal dignity. Blame was directed at the Chancellor: the Emperor, after all, had done his constitutional duty by showing the draft of the interview to Prince von Bülow. The Chancellor had betrayed his master twice: first, by failing to read the document before publication; second, by not sufficiently defending the monarch in the Reichstag. In private, then gradually, in a wider circle, William accepted and repeated this view. He had been “left in the lurch,”57 he said; “I became the scapegoat58 and my Chancellor washed his hands in innocence.” To Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian Heir, he wrote: “You will understand59 what agony it is for me to behave as though everything were normal, and to go on working with people whose cowardice and lack of responsibility has [sic] deprived me of the protection which anyone else would have accorded to the Head of State as a matter of course. The German people is beginning to look into its soul and to realize the deed which has been done to it.” Bülow, sensing that public opinion was shifting to the Emperor, became alarmed. He wrote to William on February 13 that everything he had said and done in November had been motivated “solely and exclusively60 by loyalty to Your Majesty’s house and country and inner love for Your Majesty’s... Person.” In the margin of this letter, William wrote “Pharisee!”61

  On March 11, 1909, with the Bosnian Crisis at a critical stage, William received Bülow in the picture gallery of the Berlin Castle. “I walked up and down62 with him,” the Kaiser said, “between the portraits of my ancestors and the paintings of the battles of the Seven Years War... and was amazed when the Chancellor harked back to the events of the autumn of 1908 and undertook to explain his attitude.” Bülow employed the technique which had worked in the past, telling William that “I could not continue63 to shoulder the heavy burden of office unless I felt that I had the entire confidence of my sovereign.” The Kaiser countered bluntly that, in the autumn, the Chancellor had not “shown sufficient energy64 in contradicting attacks” against the Crown. “Froben,” he said, “would not have spoken65 as you did in the Reichstag debate on November 10.” As he spoke, William stood before a portrait of Froben, a royal equerry, who, at the Battle of Fehrbellin in 1675, had mounted the piebald horse of the Great Elector in order to attract enemy musketballs away from his master. As Chancellor, said William, Froben would have declared that he had advised the Emperor to say what he did in the Daily Telegraph. Bülow replied that he could not have said this since, knowing his beliefs, the public would not have believed him. “Which simply means,”66 retorted William, “that you consider me a donkey, capable of blunders you yourself never could have committed.” Bülow apologized, extolled the Kaiser’s remarkable qualities—and William swung around. “This frank conversation67 released the tension between us,” the Kaiser said. “Haven’t I always told you that we complete one another famously?” he asked Bülow. “We should stick together and we will.” He pumped the Chancellor’s hand and took him in to lunch. “I’ve just been having it out68 with the Imperial Chancellor and everything has been put right between us,” the Kaiser announced to the waiting entourage. “If anyone says anything against Prince Bülow, I shall punch his nose for him.” That night, William wired his brother, Henry, “Have just forgiven Bülow69 who begged my pardon in a flood of tears.” The following night, at Bülow’s request, the Imperial couple dined with him. William walked in the door and greeted Princess von Bülow: “How happy I am70 to be here again! What a terrible winter this has been! But now it’s all going to be perfect.”

  Despite this jaunty talk, the Kaiser’s renewed affection for his Chancellor had a hollow quality. To a friend he confided that the whole reconciliation has been “a comedy” and that as soon as the political situation permitted, he intended to remove Bülow from office. The opportunity arrived in June; the occasion was the Chancellor’s defeat on a key vote in the Reichstag. By the spring of 1909, the building of the fleet had created a fiscal crisis in Germany. Five hundred million additional marks were required. In deference to the power of the conservatives in the Reichstag, four fifths of the new revenues—400 million marks—was to be raised from sales taxes, which hit the lower and middle classes hardest. Some concession, however, had to be made to the liberals; Bülow proposed that one fifth of the required sum—one million marks—be raised from property owners by means of an inheritance tax. Conservatives stiffly opposed death duties, which had never before been imposed in Germany. The Kaiser supported the Chancellor, but he made it clear that if Bülow failed to deliver the vote for the inheritance tax, he must resign. One June 24, the inheritance tax was defeated by eight votes, 195 to 187.

  On June 26, 1909, twelve years to the day after he had accepted the State Secretaryship from the Kaiser on board the Hohenzollern at Kiel, Bülow returned to the same site to offer his resignation as Chancellor. William was waiting on deck, impatient and nervous. “As a matter of fact,71 I’m in rather a hurry,” the Emperor said. “In an hour I have to have lunch with the Prince of Monaco.” He told Bülow that his successor would be Bethmann-Hollweg, the Imperial Secretary of the Interior. “I’m sure you’ll agree with me,” the Kaiser said. “He’ll soon put the Reichstag down a peg or two. Besides, I shot my first roebuck at his estate in Hohenfinow.” Bülow’s response was tentative: “As far as domestic policy is concerned,72 Bethmann-Hollweg is perhaps the best man... [but] he understands nothing about foreign policy.” “You leave foreign policy to me,”73 William said. “You’ve managed to teach me something, you know.” When Bülow recommended that the Kaiser do everything possible to reach a naval agreement with England, William frowned. “I cannot and will not allow John Bull to give me orders on how many ships I can build.” Cheerily, the Kaiser returned to Bethmann-Hollweg: “Just wait till that great tall fellow stands up in the Reichstag and glares at all the ‘honorable’ members. Why, he’ll scare them to death. They’ll run off and hide in their mouse holes.” When it was time to leave, the Kaiser took Bülow with him to lunch on the Prince of Monaco’s yacht. At the table, where most of the other guests were French, William was in high spirits and laughed loudly. “I had the peculiar sensation74 I had eaten the condemned man’s last meal in the presence of foreigners,” Bülow remembered.

  For three weeks, the Chancellor lived in limbo, hoping that William might change his mind. On July 14, the announcement came: Prince von Bülow, who was resigning as Imperial Chancellor, would receive for his services the Order of the Black Eagle set in diamonds. That night, the Kaiser invited himself to dinner at Bülow’s table. William presented to Princess von Bülow a bouquet of roses which he said he had picked h
imself; he also offered her an enameled portrait of himself set in diamonds. His remarks over dinner were less generous. When the Princess said she was sad at what had happened, the Kaiser replied, “I feel even worse75 than you do. I’ve fought against it tooth and nail, but Bernhard was determined to go.” Princess von Bülow mentioned the Reichstag tax vote as the reason for her husband’s resignation. William disagreed. “You mustn’t think76 that the... Death Duties are what made Bernhard retire,” he said. “The real reason was the events of last November. You see, those fellows let me know privately that they didn’t really mind the death duties. They overthrew him because they didn’t think he showed enough zeal defending his Imperial Master.” What, asked the Princess, did the Emperor think her husband should have done in November? “He ought to have declared in the Reichstag: ‘I won’t have any more of this insolent speech about the Emperor. How dare you speak like this? Quick march! Get out!’”

  William evolved different versions of his role in Bülow’s departure. In his Memoirs, he recorded, “I decided to acquiesce77 in the wish of Prince Bülow to grant his request for retirement.” Soon after the resignation, he explained to his entourage that the Chancellor was becoming senile and could not remember one day what he had said the day before. To the King of Württemberg, standing under the same tree in the garden of Sans Souci where the Kaiser had held his last interview with the fallen Chancellor, William boasted: “This is where78 I gave that sweep the boot!”

  fn1 The “gate” was control of the final section which would reach the Gulf.

  fn2 Two weeks later, Bülow transferred Klehmet from Berlin to the post of Consul in Bucharest.

  Chapter 38

  Naval Talks and Bethmann-Hollweg

  As Kaiser William was enjoying “dear old sport” in Windsor Park, basking in the cheers of London crowds, proclaiming friendship at the Guildhall, and being “soothed and refreshed” by Colonel Stuart-Wortley and his friends at Highcliffe Castle, the German Admiralty was preparing a new Supplementary Navy Law. The useful life of battleships, set by the Navy Law of 1898 at twenty-five years, was to be reduced to twenty years, after which a new, replacement ship would be laid down. To effect the new law, the 1906 program of two dreadnoughts a year, increased to three in 1907, would increase to four dreadnoughts annually. For four years—1908, 1909, 1910, and 1911—three battleships and one battle cruiser were to be authorized. In 1912, when these sixteen capital ships were built or building, the program would drop back to two a year. In March 1908, the Reichstag passed this Supplementary Navy Law.

  The new German Navy Law alarmed the British government. The Liberals, in power for two years in 1908, had attempted to diminish armaments costs to devote more money to social programs. There had been no effort to reach an understanding with Germany on shipbuilding; instead, Campbell-Bannerman had tried to lead by example. In 1906 and 1907, the four dreadnoughts a year of the Unionist program had been cut to three a year. In 1908, British dreadnought building had been cut even further, to two a year. The Germans were moving in the opposite direction. It was disheartening; surely the Germans understood that no British government, Unionist or Liberal, could permit a potential enemy to equal or surpass British naval strength. German shipbuilding could only provoke increased British building and a consequent waste of money by both countries. Surely, rational discussion could persuade the government in Berlin to put a reasonable limit on its naval ambitions.

  One British Cabinet Minister acutely affected by the new German Navy Law was David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who would have to find the money to pay for any increase in the size of the British fleet. Sir Edward Grey decided to put the Chancellor in touch with Count Metternich, the German Ambassador to England; Lloyd George could then express his views in person to a representative of the German government. On July 14, 1908, Grey invited Lloyd George and Metternich to lunch at the Foreign Office.

  Count Paul Wolff-Metternich was an Anglophile. A Rhineland aristocrat and a Roman Catholic, he had first arrived in London in 1900 to assist the Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt, who was gradually succumbing to emphysema. In November 1901, when Hatzfeldt died, Metternich—as envisaged—slipped smoothly into the post which he was to hold for ten years. The Kaiser, introducing his new representative to his uncle, then Prince of Wales, in 1900, called Metternich “no ordinary man.1 He is by conviction a staunch friend of England and was chosen by me on that account. But he is at the same time a trusted and true friend of mine, enjoying my fullest confidence.” Metternich, a bachelor, was little seen in London society and, although a niece lived with him to act as his hostess, during his term the immense German Embassy at 9, Carlton House Terrace, was closed to music, dancing, and laughter. Nevertheless, the Ambassador held the respect of both the British and German governments. He had, said Bülow, “an open mind2 for the... enormous latent power of the British Empire. The underestimation of this power was an error particularly deep-rooted... in Prussian military and aristocratic circles.” Sir Edward Grey respected Metternich’s professionalism: “I always felt, with Metternich,”3 wrote Grey, “that whatever I said would be faithfully reported by him; that no chance and unintentional slip of mine... would be distorted or misrepresented.”

  In conversation at the Foreign Office lunch, Grey and Lloyd George emphasized that Anglo-German relations hinged on the naval competition. Ruinous expenditure for battleships would not improve Germany’s relative position, they argued, because “every Englishman would spend4 his last penny to preserve” British supremacy at sea. But the shipbuilding race and the waste of millions of pounds and marks would embitter relations. German fears of a British attack and arguments that a fleet was needed to deter such an attack were groundless; Lloyd George jokingly reminded Metternich of Bismarck’s quip that, if an English army landed on German soil, he would “leave it to the police5 to arrest” it. Lloyd George suggested that a slowing of the tempo of German battleship construction would be the most effective way of reassuring English public opinion. Britain, he said, would be “most ready to meet Germany half way6 in establishing a joint basis for curtailment of the fleet building on both sides.”

  The Kaiser, who regarded the Fleet as his private preserve, treated any advice that it be limited as a personal insult, an attack on his prerogative. Across the margins of Metternich’s dispatch he scribbled: “Such insolent talk7 has never been heard from England”; “First-class cheek!”;8 “We shall never be dictated to as to how our armament should be constituted”; “We should look upon that9 as a declaration of war”; “No! There will be no talk about that at all!” At the end of the letter, William let his feelings flow at length:

  Bravo! Metternich!10 Has done his business very well, except in one point, which is the most important. The Ambassador has overlooked entirely that he was not permitted, even if entirely non-committally and only as a private opinion, to [agree] to the insolent demands of the English Ministers to make their peacefulness dependent on the diminution of our sea force. Through that he has put himself on a very dangerous slope. I am sorry for him because of that. It must be pointed out to him that I do not wish a good understanding with England at the expense of the extension of the German fleet. If England only intends graciously to hold out her hand to us with the indication that we should curtail our fleet, then this is an excessive impudence, which contains a great insult for the German people and its Kaiser, and which should be refused a limine by the Ambassador! By the same rights France and Russia could then demand a curtailment of our land force. As soon as one allows any foreign Power under any pretext whatsoever to have something to say about our own armaments, then one may retire, like Portugal and Spain! The German fleet is not built against anybody and not against England either! But according to our needs! This has been said quite clearly in the Navy Law and has remained unchanged for eleven years! This law is being carried out to the very last tittle: whether the British like it or not does not worry us. If they want a war, they must start it, we are
not afraid of it!

  (Signed) WILHELM R.I.

  Two weeks later, Metternich invited Grey and Lloyd George to the German Embassy. The two English ministers returned to their original theme: “The naval question11 [was] the central point of German-English relations.” “Mr. Lloyd George,” Metternich reported to Berlin, “then returned to his pet idea, the slackening down in the speed of naval construction and exhorted me to make use of the time during which the peace-loving Liberal Government was at the helm.” The Kaiser’s colorful marginalia continued violent: “This is talk12 which until now has been only used against creatures like China or Italy! It is unheard of!”; “If England want to have war, just let her start it, we’ll give her what for!” In his long footnote to this second report, William vented his anger on Metternich:

  “This sort of conversation13 as it has been carried on between Lloyd George and Metternich is utterly unworthy and provoking for Germany! I must beg him in future to have nothing to do with that sort of expectoration. Here he has accepted very patiently as a listener the opinions and orders of English statesmen, and has only ventured protests which had no effect at all. He should give these gentlemen... an answer like ‘Go to Hell,’ etc. That would bring these fellows to their senses again. That Lloyd George even dared to come out with an order for defining the speed of OUR building is beyond the limit, but is a result of Metternich putting himself during the first discussions on the dangerous path of ‘a possibility not being out of the question.’ The clever British are trying to hook him, and sooner or later they will pull the string and drag him out; despite this ‘private talk,’ ‘non-committal character of expression of opinion,’ etc.! He should ab ovo refuse everything with such remarks as, ‘No country allows itself to be dictated to or admonished by another country about the size and kind of its armaments.’ ‘I refuse to discuss such a matter.’...