Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  On November 30, the day after the Kaiser and Bülow had sailed, Joseph Chamberlain, suffering a heavy cold, rose at a Unionist luncheon in Leicester to present his British version of the Anglo-German campaign for better understanding. "Any far-seeing English statesman must have long ago desired that we not remain permanently isolated on the continent of Europe," he declared. Further, "It must appear evident to everybody that the natural alliance is between ourselves and the great German Empire." Enlarging his vision, the Colonial Secretary spoke of "a new Triple Alliance between the Teutonic race and the two great trans-Atlantic branches of the Anglo-Saxon race which would become a potent influence on the future of the world." Chamberlain's speech evoked congratulations from Eckardstein. The Kaiser, basking in the glow of Windsor and Sandringham, wired his compliments. Holstein attacked the speech as "an incomprehensible blunder." Bülow, surprised that Chamberlain had made his proposal public so quickly, described the speech as "a gaucherie, I believe unintentional, but still a gaucherie." The Times icily rebuked the Colonial Secretary for using the word "alliance" and wondered why Mr. Chamberlain was trespassing into matters properly managed by Lord Salisbury. The Prime Minister said nothing.

  Chamberlain waited confidently for the German State Secretary, in his speech to the Reichstag on December 11, to fulfill the bargain he believed had been struck at Windsor. Chamberlain's expectations were clear. The day after his Leicester speech, he wrote cheerfully to Eckardstein, "Count Bülow, whose acquaintance I was delighted to make… expressed a wish that I might be able at some time to say something as to the mutual interests which bind the United States to a triple understanding with Germany as well as to Great Britain. Hence my speech yesterday which I hope will not be unsatisfactory to him."

  When Bülow rose in the Reichstag, it was to speak in support of Tirpitz' Second Navy Bill. The future of the Reich, he declared, depended on linking strong naval power to overwhelming military force. "Without power, without a strong army and a strong navy, there can be no welfare for us." He went on to coin a ringing phrase: "In the coming century, the German nation will be either the hammer or the anvil." There was nothing in Bülow's speech about an alliance or even an understanding with Great Britain. Indeed, although the State Secretary spoke warmly of Russia, of the United States, and even of France, his references to England were cool. England was presented as a declining nation, jealous of the rising powj-er of Imperial Germany, even vaguely hostile; a state which would oppose Germany's rightful destiny unless the Reichstag voted money for a fleet which would instill a proper respect.

  ] Chamberlain read Bülow's speech with astonishment. "I will say no more about the way I have been treated by Bülow," he wrote to Eckardstein. "I consider it advisable to drop every kind of further negotiation as to the alliance question. I am really sorry that all your hard work should seem to have been in vain; but I am also sorry for myself. Everything was going so well and even Lord Salisbury had become quite favorable… to the future development of Anglo-German relations. But, alas, it was not to be."

  Bülow did not completely dismiss his conversation with Chamberlain at Windsor. Through Hatzfeldt, he attempted to repair the damage he had done by having the ambassador stress to Chamberlain "the extreme difficulty of Count Bülow's position in the Reichstag… The weapon of the Opposition is the repeated insinuation that the Government is carrying on secret political deals with England and sacrificing the true interests of Germany. The attack in the Reichstag has been so violent that Count Bülow has had to take it into account and compose his speech with reference to it… Wei no longer live in the days when Prince Bismarck was all-powerful in foreign policy and had nothing to fear even when he took no account of public opinion. The present Chancellor [Hohenlohe] cannot do this and still less can Count Bülow."

  I It remained for Hatzfeldt to decipher and clarify for the Wilhelmstrasse the post-Windsor thinking of the British government and' especially the murky relationship between the powerful Colonial' Secretary and the ailing Prime Minister. "Chamberlain and Arthur Balfour are looked upon as the real supporters of a policy friendly to Germany," the Ambassador wrote, "while Lord Salisbury is credited, if not with a negative, at any rate with a passive pare." Rejecting German speculation that Chamberlain's alliance proposal might have been an anti-Salisbury political maneuver designed to embarrass or even overthrow the Prime Minister, Hatzfeldt cautioned that Lord Salisbury "must not yet by any means be regarded as a spent political force." Perhaps, Hatzfeldt suggested, "when Mr. Chamberlain made his speech… he already had in his pocket Lord Salisbury's consent in principle, or else proceeded in the conviction that-as in the Samoan question-with the help of the majority of his colleagues, he would succeed in inducing the Prime Minister to accede to his wishes." Whatever Chamberlain's motivation, and despite his irritation at Bülow's behavior, the Ambassador concluded, the Colonial Secretary's interest in a German alliance was not dead. The correct German policy, therefore, was the one chosen by Holstein and Bülow: to encourage Britain to believe that a German alliance might come one day, but only if England continues "to show a spirit of accommodation towards us in… colonial questions."

  CHAPTER 15 The Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion

  While the Kaiser was still at Windsor and Sandringham, Britain's value as an alliance partner was being eroded by events in South Africa. As early as 1897, it had become evident that; the Transvaal was preparing for war. President Kruger signed an offensive-defensive alliance with the sister Boer republic, the Orange Free State. Using the taxes collected from non-Boer Uitlanders, he bought cannon and Maxim guns from Germany. In negotiations with Joseph Chamberlain and the Colonial Secretary's representatives in South Africa, Kruger demanded indemnities for the Jameson Raid: £677,938 for material damages, £1 million for "moral and intellectual damages." He rejected outright the proposal that British and other Uitlanders be given full civic rights after five years' residence in the Transvaal; the time requirement was to be fourteen years. Kruger also claimed that the 1882 London Convention had lapsed and that Britain no longer held rights over the foreign and defense policies of the Boer republics.

  Lord Salisbury, having entrusted the conduct of negotiations to Chamberlain, was wary of a confrontation in South Africa. "A war with the Transvaal will have a reaction on European politics which may be pernicious," he wrote to Chamberlain. Chamberlain disagreed and, arguing that "Kruger has never looked into the mouth of a cannon," persuaded the Cabinet to a show of force. At the end of August, Chamberlain switched metaphors and warned the Boer government that "the sands are running low in the glass." Kruger responded by rejecting all British suzerainty over the Transvaal. The British Cabinet dispatched a cavalry brigade, an infantry regiment, and two artillery batteries to reinforce the scanty British forces in the Cape Colony and Natal. Kruger demanded that British troops on the Transvaal frontiers be withdrawn and that all British reinforcements which had arrived in South Africa since June i be placed on ships and sent back home. This ultimatum, threatening war, was rejected. On October 11, Boer cavalry struck into the Cape Colony, Natal, and Bechuanaland. The towns of Kimberley, Mafeking, and Ladysmith were besieged. On December 15, a British army under General Sir Redvers Buller, marching to the relief of Ladysmith, was defeated at Colenso with the loss of eleven hundred men killed, wounded, or missing. That same week, other British forces were repulsed at Stormberg and Magersfontein. In England, these days were known as "Black Week." Queen Victoria did not share the national gloom. "I will tell you one thing," she said to Arthur Balfour, who had come to report to her at Windsor. "I will have no depression in my house. We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat." Lord Salisbury sorrowfully referred to "Joe's War" among his intimates, although in public he sturdily backed the Colonial Secretary.

  Europe was pleased by Britain's defeats. "The vast majority of German military experts believe that the South African war will end with a complete defeat of the English," Bülow wrote to Hatzfeldt on December 26, 1899.
Herbert Bismarck turned violently Anglophobe: "The South African question… will give the British Empire its death blow; for I believe that England is being smothered in its own fat and is no longer capable of severe exertion." From Paris, the British Ambassador wrote of "the infamous language and shameless mendacity of the French press." From St. Petersburg came news that the hostility of Russian society and newspapers was "phenomenal."

  The Kaiser, in his Christmas greeting to his uncle, became lyrical in his lamentation: "What days of sad news and anxiety… Many brave officers and men have fallen or are disabled after showing pluck, courage and determined bravery! How many homes will be sad this year and how many sufferers will feel agonizing pain morally and physically in these days of holy pleasure and peace! What an amount of bloodshed has been going on and is to be expected for the next months to come… Your losses, as they are made known little by little, are quite appalling… especially the losses of the Highlanders… as they are much admired by my soldiers over here… The sight of white men killing white is not good for the blacks to look on for too long; the simple suspicion that they might find it practical to fall on the whites in general is enough to make one's blood run cold."

  A few weeks later, William urged his uncle to accept that defeat in South Africa meant no disgrace. "Last year," he pointed out, "in the great cricket match of England vs. Australia, the former took the latter's victory quietly, with chivalrous acknowledgement of her opponent." The Prince's reply was stiff: "I am afraid I am unable to share your opinions… in which you liken our conflict with the Boers to our cricket matches with the Australians, in which the latter were victorious and we accepted our defeat. The British Empire is now fighting for its very existence, as you know full well, and for our superiority in South Africa. We must therefore use every effort in our power to prove victorious in the end."

  The Kaiser defended his metaphor in another letter to his uncle: "My last paragraph… seems to have given you some umbrage. But I think I can easily dispel your doubts about it. The allusion to Football and Cricket Matches was meant to show that I do not belong to those people who, when the British Army suffers reverses, or is unable at a given time to master the enemy, then immediately cry out that British prestige is in danger or lost. Forsooth! Great Britain has fought bravely for and lost the whole of North America against France and the Rebels, and yet has become the greatest Power in the world! Because her fleet remained unimpaired and by this the Command of the Sea! As long as you keep your fleet in good fighting trim, and as long as it is looked upon as the first and feared as invincible, I don't care a fiddlestick for a few lost fights in Africa. But the Fleet must be up-to-date in guns and officers and men and on the 'Qui vive' and should it ever be necessary to fall back upon it, may a second Trafalgar be awarded to it! I shall be the first to wish it luck and God-speed!"

  In the middle of January 1900, three German steamers, Bundesrat, Herzog, and General, suspected of carrying rifles and cannon to the Boers, were stopped by British warships off the east coast of Africa. After a quick search at sea, two of the ships were released, but the Bundesrat was taken into Durban for a more thorough examination. No arms were found. When the news reached Berlin, howls of protest and demands for apology, compensation, and guarantees against recurrence filled the newspapers. Tirpitz seized the moment to declare that only a powerful fleet could prevent such national humiliation; the response must be a doubling of the 1898 Building Program. Lord Salisbury received German protests with detachment. Holstein telegraphed Eckardstein (again in charge of the German Embassy in the absence of Hatzfeldt) that "the Kaiser is considering whether someone should not be sent from here within forty-eight hours to get a definite answer by Thursday." The threat was a break in diplomatic relations. Eckardstein warned that it would do no good. "Lord Salisbury," he explained, "as on previous occasions when he considered himself insulted by the Kaiser's methods, went into the sulks and became almost unapproachable." The crisis was defused, according to Eckardstein, by his own prompt visit to the Prime Minister at the Foreign Office, where he turned the matter of eighteen large crates of Swiss cheese, seized on board a German ship near South Africa, into a joke. Lord Salisbury began to laugh and a peaceful settlement of the mail steamers' ultimatum swiftly followed.*

  By spring 1900, the British military position in South Africa was much improved. Lord Roberts, the hero of India, and Lord Kitchener, hero of the Sudan, had relieved Sir Redvers Buller. The British Army in South Africa was swelling from the original garrison of 25,000 men to more than 250,000. The Boers had been thrown back, and relieving columns were approaching the besieged towns of La-dysmith and Mafeking. The Kaiser now proclaimed his pride in the success of his grandmother's army.t He informed the Prince of

  * Shortly before calling on Lord Salisbury, Eckardstein spoke to the Swiss Minister, who told him about the cheese and asked him to do what he could to obtain its release. Eckardstein decided to put this triviality to use:

  "On arriving at the Foreign Office, I was given to understand by the Private Secretary that his chief was in a great state of exasperation against the German Government and would not be easy to deal with. And, when I was received by Lord Salisbury, I found… [him] very stiff and distant in manner. 'Well, what news have you got?' he asked me very abruptly. 'No good news, I regret to say,' I replied. 'I am afraid we are faced by the most serious trouble.' 'Indeed, and what is that?' said he, more brusquely than ever. 'Yes,' I went on, '… if something isn't done at once, you will have to be prepared for an ultimatum from-the Swiss Government.' He looked up in astonishment and asked: 'From the Swiss Government? Whatever do you mean?' I replied, 'The Swiss Minister… told me… that if… [the crates of cheese] are not released, you may expect a forty-eight-hour ultimatum from Switzerland; and, if you then don't give way, you will have to take the consequences.' Thereupon, Lord Salisbury's face cleared, he began to laugh, and after a bit he said, 'Tell your friend, the Swiss Minister, that Her Britannic Majesty's Government would prefer to go into the matter in a friendly way.' " t To the young Queen Wilhelmina of Holland, who appealed to the Kaiser to do something to save the crumbling Boers, William presented another face. He declined Wilhel-mina's entreaties, declaring grandiloquently, "Yet whosoever believes in God the Lord as supreme judge of the world-order knows that He overlooks nothing and that He punishes injustice with relentless severity… Therefore it is in the interest of world peace as well as of the Dutch-Frisian race on the Continent that a mighty [German] fleet shall be on the sea…1 Till then Silence and Work."

  Wales that, during the winter, he had spurned a Russian proposal that Germany and Russia offer mediation between the British Empire and the Boer Republic. "You have no idea, my dear William, how all of us in England appreciate the loyal friendship you manifest towards us on every occasion," the Prince replied. Johannesburg fell on May 31 and Pretoria on June 5. President Kruger took the railroad to Lourenco Marques, where he boarded a ship for Europe, leaving his invalid wife and South Africa forever. The war seemed over. In August the Queen proclaimed, "My armies have driver; back the invaders beyond the frontier they had crossed and have occupied the two capitals of the enemy and much of his territory." In September, Great Britain annexed the Transvaal. Lord Roberts came home to become Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, leaving the tidying-up to Kitchener.

  On June 6, 1900, news of the fall of Pretoria had been telegraphed to the Queen at Balmoral. Bells were rung, the guard of honor fired a salute, and the Union Jack was run up alongside the Royal Standard. That night, a procession of Highlanders accompanied by pipers had marched to the summit of Craig Gowan Height overlooking the Castle and lit a huge bonfire. The Queen, watching from the castle lawn, had drunk to the success of the British Army and continued to watch as the Highlanders marched down the mountain and danced reels on her lawn. The celebration had ended with everyone singing "God Save the Queen."

  That same day, under a small headline which read "the disturbances in china," The Tim
es had reported that two British missionaries had been murdered by a Chinese group known as Boxers.

  Over six decades, the Western Powers had been dismembering China, each scrambling for leases and concessions, tearing off pieces, dividing the vast country into spheres of influence. The Manchu government, nominally ruling the empire from the northern city of Peking, seemed powerless to halt this disintegration. Crippled by corruption, the Imperial Court lacked the will and power to galvanize and direct the political destiny of China's 350 million people. The army possessed neither modern weapons, nor central command, nor reason to fight. Not since the Manchus had come down from the north to overthrow the Ming Dynasty in the sixteenth century had the Celestial Kingdom been so helpless.

  And then, in the spring and summer of 1900, China's peasants in the northern part of the empire took matters into their own hands. A popular movement, whose purpose was to rid China of foreigners and their pernicious works, sprang up. The peasantry, usually noted for passive observance of the law, tied red ribbons around their waists, heads, wrists, and ankles, took up swords, spears, and old muskets, and left the fields which their ancestors had tilled for several millennia. They developed secret rites which, they believed, made them invulnerable to foreign bullets. Their battle cry was "Sha! Sha!" ("Kill! Kill!"). In Chinese, their name was "Fists of Righteous Harmony." To the rest of the world they were known as Boxers.