by Frank Harris
For years he built upon the support of Russia and the personal friendship of the Tsar “Nicky,” though Bulow convinced him that Russia had entered into a close alliance with France.
In all history we have no record of so brainless a ruler. And yet Kaiser Wilhelm had a certain mental intelligence and charm of conversation. He was by nature an actor greedy of popular applause. I think of the charming letter he wrote to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, when he was forty years of age:
“How incredible it must seem to you that the tiny weeny little rat you so often had in your arms, and dear Grandpapa swung about in his napkin, has now reached the forties, just the half of your prosperous successful life. It is to be hoped you are not displeased with your impetuous colleague.”
And then think of his defiance:
“When Metternich frankly declared in July 1908 that the English Ministers were all for peace and only wanted a reciprocal diminution in the Navy Estimates, the Emperor was infuriated and wrote in the margin: 'A veiled threat! We will suffer no dictation! Ambassador has exceeded his instructions!' Further: 'It must be made clear to him that an arrangement with England at the expense of the fleet is no desire of mine. It is a piece of boundless impudence, a mortal insult to the German people and their Emperor; it must be imperatively and finally discountenanced. The Law will be carried out to the last fraction; whether Britain likes it or not is nothing to us. If they want war, let them begin itwe are not afraid! I must beg that the Ambassador will henceforth take no notice whatever of this kind of vaporing!'
Those who have read this book of Ludwig on the Kaiser will have to admit that Wilhelm was the chief cause of the war.
One curious fact should be recorded here. Ludwig traces Wilhelm's growth in conceit in a marvelous way. Very early on, Ballin wrote about Bulow: “Bulow is utterly ruining the Emperor; with his perpetual adulation, he is making him overestimate himself beyond all reason.”
The tide of flattery mounted steadily: In 1912, Lamprecht, Germany's leading historian, wrote of the Kaiser: “His is a personality of primitive potency, of irresistible authority, for which the whole domain of emotion and experience is perpetually opened anew, as for the soul of a creative artist. Self-reliance, fixity of purpose, ever directed to the loftiest aimsthose are the distinguishing marks of the Imperial personality.”
The Kaiser sucked it all in as Gospel. He wrote: “My subjects should always do what I tell them, but they will think for themselves and that's what makes all the trouble.”
Again and again Ludwig gives proof of the Kaiser's cowardice. He calls it “poltroonery,” but worst of all was his instability and his curious belief in the divine rights of monarchs. It seems to one reading this long exposure as if a King had to be specially designed by the Almighty in order to insure Germany's defeat in the World War.
The Kaiser made the navy which brought him the enmity of England, and when Tirpitz in December 1914 wanted to use it to blockade England, the Kaiser would not allow it. The English Admiral Sir Percy Scott admitted afterwards, however, that had the German fleet been used then as Tirpitz wanted: “England would have been forced to sue for peace in a month to avoid famine.”
The Kaiser not only provoked the war, but took care to wage it so that he must lose it. The war had altered England's position too. Her insularity was no longer a protection and though she did not seem to realize it, she had lost her pride of place to the United States, both as a world power and in business. And yet this was the country that, thanks to Sir Austin Chamberlain in 1927, refused to diminish the number of her cruisers and so spurred the American government to increase the United States Navy, as if in immediate fear of war.
June 1913, President Poincare paid a visit to England and was toasted everywhere as “a friend and ally.” Of course, it was a formal visit to King George, yet Poincare was the chief figure at the great review of English battleships at Portmouth.
Meanwhile peace conferences followed each other as if in derision. At the end of August 1913, a great Palace of Peace, due to the liberality of Andrew Carnegie, was opened at The Hague. It was the first universally recognized Temple of Peace and was praised in the press as a mark of “visible history.” First the Hague Peace Conference of 1899, and now this “pledge of peace universal and eternal” as the magazines called it. Mr. Van Swinderen, the head of the permanent Board of Arbitration, in his speech accepting the custody of the magnificent building, said: “No international controversies are so serious that they cannot be settled peaceably if both parties desire it.” It was asserted openly by the representatives of labor that the previous Peace Conference had been a failure because no one cared to propose that merchant ships should be immune in all wars.
The second Hague Conference held in 1907 had proposed that the third should be held in 1915 and that each nation should prepare a committee and charge it to make the proposals considered necessary. But in 1913 neither Russia nor England appointed such a committee. Clearly a pledge of universal and eternal peace needed better ratification than a splendid Temple. But Stead, the founder of the Review of Reviews and The War on War, the great apostle of peace, had unfortunately gone down with the Titanic in 1912. There was no one in England to take his place or work for peace as he had worked. One result was that in 1913-14, when the British expenditure on the Army and Navy had risen to?75,000,000, the expenditure on the Peace Conference was nil.
When I first began to hear things that led me to believe a world war was possible, I did not believe them. Grey, I said to myself, is too sensible and France has too much to fear; but Germany was always there with her brainless, provoking Kaiser. Still, I made up my mind that there was nothing serious to fear. Then, in the spring of 1914, I was imprisoned by Judge Horridge for contempt. Never was there a more unjust verdict. In the journal I had founded, Modern Society, an article had appeared commenting on Lord Fitzwilliam's divorce case; but I was not the editor. I had gone to the South of England to write my book on Oscar Wilde and never even saw the article before it was published. For the first time the managing director of a company was held responsible as if he had been the editor of the company magazine. The judge's clerk told me I would be forgiven if I apologized, but I had nothing to apologize for and therefore refused.
I was not a criminal and was only imprisoned by order of the judge and could be let out at any moment. I was therefore treated better than the perpetrators of even the pettiest crimes, but I can never describe how dreadful to me the prison was. Fixed hours for everything; at 7 o'clock the light went out and you had to pass the hours till 7 next morning in complete darkness. To get hot water to shave was only possible if you paid the keepers. Thanks to my wife who brought me money, I paid them lavishly, so lavishly that one day the cook came up to know what I would like to eat for lunch. But he could not make bad meat into good meat, or bad mutton into palatable mutton. When I stopped eating altogether because of the dreadful attacks of indigestion, the doctor came in and found me fainting. He told me that if I would not eat, I would be forcibly fed. I asked him to let me have hot water to wash my stomach out. He told me he had nothing to do with that. I suffered like a beaten dog every day. Prison in England is for healthy people. For those with indigestion, it is a perfect hell.
The man in the next cell kept crying and groaning half the night. But at the end of the week, I was told once again that if I apologized I would be freed. Again I refused to apologize. Still, my friends did a good deal for me. Lord Grimthorpe and others went to the Home Secretary and declared that my punishment was disgraceful and must be stopped. At the end of the month, Mr. Justice Horridge sent his own doctor to see if I was indeed ill.
The doctor reported that he would not answer for my life if I were imprisoned for another week and so I was set free.
An amusing incident highlighted my deliverance. I had tipped all the keepers and attendants so well that when I went out at 10 o'clock in the morning to leave the prison, they all took different parcels of mine to carry for me
, half a dozen of them. Suddenly the governor of the prison arrived screaming with rage.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted at one keeper.
“Oh,” said the man addressed, “I brought his hatbox.”
“And you, what are you doing?”
“I brought his coat.”
The governor was furious and said that one more prisoner such as I was would turn the prison upside down. My wife and I stood there laughing.
The prison and my rage at being unjustly punished had broken my health. Horridge and his novel idea of punishing a managing director as if he had been the editor, nearly killed me. I was 58 years of age; the prison fare had ruined my digestion. I came out very ill indeed and this only increased my dislike of England and most English attributes. I came down to the South of France and there in brilliant sunshine soon began to get better. By the summer I was well again. But war was in the air and I resolved not to return to England. Instead, I would go to New York and begin a new life there. With only a few dollars in my pocket I set off. My wife decided to return to London and await results.
In my first days in New York I did a good deal of thinking. I was at the St. Regis Hotel where I had stayed during a prior visit to New York some years before. I had become friends with Mr. Hahn, the proprietor, and he was now very nice to me. I asked him to my room one day and put the case before him: Would he let me stay at the hotel for three months, and then I would be able to pay him everything. If he could not give me credit, I would have to leave. He told me very nicely that he could not give me three months' credit. I left the next day and went into lodgings on Riverside Drive.
There I sat down and wrote a short article on railroads, describing the main American railway organizations, including the Union Pacific.
I sent this little note to the heads of three American railways and asked them if they wanted an advertisement agent who could do new ads for them and whether they would employ me. I told them I wanted a large sum per month, and I gave the little paragraph I'd written as a specimen of my work. I was hired by two of them at oncethe Union Pacific and the Chesapeake and Ohio. I went to White Sulphur in Virginia to study the road, assured of a good reception in the hotel. I must also add that Otto Kahn was kind enough to write both to the Union Pacific and the Chesapeake and Ohio, recommending me.
Some time later I got to know Arthur Little, who was the printer and practically owner of Pearson's Magazine. He was not only kindly, but wise, and soon took me on as editor. Of course, I gave up my position on the railways and went back to my old work.
At first, I was very successful with Pearson's. The circulation rose rapidly and for nearly a year it looked as if I could make a great magazine out of it. But later came bad times. The Germans had invaded France and were beating the French and the English together. They had also practically crushed Russia. The idea was in the air that America should go to the help of the Allies and prevent Germany winning an undeserved victory. I was against the war passionately. I wanted America to force a peace, a “peace without victory,” as Wilson had said, which she could have done quite easily. But Wilson was not the man for the job, and so the war dragged on, sacrificing more than a million lives every month. To me it was all horrible and I protested against it in Pearson's again and again. That soon earned me the dislike of the authorities at Washington, and A. S. Burleson, the Secretary of State, held up Pearson's Magazine again and again in the mail for weeks at a time. When I went to Washington and asked him why he did it, he told me that it was on information he had received that it was seditious and against the interest of America. I pointed out that he had been mistaken six times running but got no satisfaction from the fool. Finally he held up the magazine for 27 days and that practically ruined the circulation. A.S.S. Burleson, as I called him to his face, was too strong for me. Instead of making $25,000 a year, I began to lose money. Soon the position became intolerable to me.
In 1918 the war ended, as I had predicted it would. I began to lecture in my bureau on 5th Avenue in New York, and made some money. But I had to give up my hopes of a great and significant journalistic success, thanks to the enmity of the government in Washington. One little incident will show how far Wilson's spite went.
In 1919 I was asked to produce my naturalization papers. When I told the official that I could not, he said: “It must be done if you wish to be treated like an American citizen, otherwise you might be turned out of the country.”
I felt the threat and explained: “I was admitted to the Bar in Lawrence, Kansas in 1875. I could not have been admitted to the Bar and practice law without being a citizen.”
He said he had to refer the whole case to Washington. I proved that I was admitted to the Bar in Lawrence, Kansas as I had said, but after two or three days, the official came and told me that it was not sufficient, and the government would not regard me as a citizen.
I answered: “I have no wish to vote; I only want to remain quietly here.”
But he said: “You had better make yourself a citizen, if you can.”
That seemed to me significant. Accordingly I took all the necessary steps and was again accepted as an American citizen in 1919. This put an end to the petty annoyances of Wilson's government and A. S. Burleson.
One word more to show the idiocy of war. Considerable commotion was stirred up in 1905 by the publication of Sir W. Butler's report on the clever scheme by which, after the South African war was over, millions of pounds worth of supplies were sold by the British government to contractors at a low price and immediately bought back by the government from the same contractors at a very high price. As there was no need to sell it at allthis transaction represented an ingenious contrivance to put a great deal of money into somebody's pocket at the expense of the British taxpayer. The hopeless state of confusion into which the Ministers had allowed everything to slide in South Africa is shown by the fact that they were quite unable to say what had been lost by sheer dishonesty or whether, as Mr. Balfour wished to make out, England had actually made money on the transactions. Jingo finance is a mere affair of blind man's bluff. The War Office at first objected to selling the stores by contract, then gave way. It first demanded monthly returns of sales, and then allowed month after month to pass without any returns being made. Meanwhile, contractors got rich. Ministers obstinately turned a deaf ear to the warnings of the Liberal leader, and instead of exposing the scandal, did all they could to hush it up. Fortunately the Auditor-General, an official independent of the executive, brought the matter before the Accounts Committee. By this means General Butler's report came to be published. Otherwise everything would have been hushed up “in the best interest of the Army.”
I hate accusing my adopted nation of crimes, but now and then it is an imperative duty, an obligation of conscience. These accusations shame me to the soul.
In 1910 Secretary of War Baker promised to punish the officers who were found guilty of brutalities to soldiers in prison camps in France. “It is not too late,” he declared, “to punish any officer or enlisted man still in the service.”
It was not too late to punish, but it was certainly too late to prevent the atrocious cruelties that stained the name of America and which it was Secretary Baker's obvious duty to prevent at all costs.
For over two years he had been listening to the court-martial reports, confirming or mitigating, and revising them. He ought to have learned his work. “There have been three hundred and fifty thousand condemnations by court-martials in these United States.” I am quoting the daily papers. Dozens of soldiers and conscientious objectors were sentenced to ten and twenty years' imprisonment for offenses that nowhere else in the civilized world would have been punished with more than one or two years. Secretary Baker sympathized with medieval cruelty or he'd have revised these atrocious sentences. Dozens of men were tortured till they went mad in prison, or committed suicide, or died in agony, while Secretary Baker continued eating, drinking and talking platitudes, all the while callously neg
lecting his chief duty. He allowed these myriad crimes and devilish atrocities to be perpetrated without doing anything to prevent them.
The story of the martyrdom of the three Hofer brothers, who belonged to the religious sect of the Mennonites, will always in my mind be associated with Mr. Secretary Baker.
These men were objectors to war services on religious grounds. Though married, they were taken from their home in South Dakota to Camp Lewis. On the way they were treated worse than dogs. Their beards were clipped to make them ridiculous, and they were cursed by the various guards just to show them what our brand of Christianity means. After two months in close confinement they were court-martialed and sentenced to thirty-seven years' imprisonment! This, however was reduced by the base commander to twenty years.
They were sent to Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay fettered at the ankles and wrists. Here they were put in solitary dungeons below ground in darkness, filth and stench. For four and-a-half days they received no food. They had to sleep on the wet concrete floor without a blanket. During the next day and-a-half, they were manacled by the wrists to the bars of their cell, so high that they could hardly touch the floor with their feet. David, the one discharged man now at home, says he still feels the effects in his sides.
When they were taken out of the “hole” at the end of the week, they were covered with scurvy eruptions, insect-bitten, and with arms so swollen that they could not get the sleeves of their jackets on.
They had been beaten with clubs in the dungeons by their guards so unmercifully that when taken out, Michael fell down unconscious. Did Secretary Baker approve of this? If he didn't, he ought to have taken care that the brutality was never repeated.
The torturing at Alcatraz prison lasted for four months. Then they were transferred to Fort Leavenworth, chained two and two. The journey lasted four days and nights.