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

by Robert K. Massie

  Eulenburg lived at Liebenberg in seclusion until his death in 1921. From time to time, during these twelve years, court-appointed doctors burst in on him unexpectedly to see whether he was strong enough to return to court. Always their verdict was "Prince Eulenburg is not fit to stand trial."

  The scandal horrified the Kaiser-but William missed his friends. In October 1907, as the first Moltke-Harden trial was beginning, William suffered a nervous collapse and went to bed for two days. At Christmas that year, he wrote to Houston Stewart Chamberlain: "It has been a very difficult year which has caused me an infinite amount of worry. A trusted group of friends was suddenly broken up through… insolence, slander and lying. To have to see the names of one's friends dragged through all the gutters of Europe without being able or entitled to help is terrible." William never saw Philip Eulenburg again, although from time to time he was heard to sigh, "Poor Phili." In 1927, nine years after his abdication and flight to Holland, ex-Kaiser William II wrote to Eulenburg's son that he believed Philip Eulenburg had been "absolutely innocent."

  CHAPTER 37 The Daily Telegraph Interview

  At the end of October 1907, as the first Moltke-Harden trial was beginning in Berlin, the Kaiser-ordinarily eager to travel, especially to England-faced an English trip he dreaded. William had been shocked and infuriated by the alleged actions of his intimate friends, and was mortified that these charges had been published in newspapers throughout the world. What were the English thinking? What must his English relatives be saying about him behind his back? The questions were urgent because he and the Empress Augusta were about to set out on a state visit to Great Britain. The trip, scheduled to begin November 11, had been planned months in advance. In June, William had written to his uncle King Edward VII that he looked forward to seeing Windsor Castle and to "good sport in the dear old park I know so well." Then, on October 31, William telephoned Chancellor von Bulow to say that he had had an accident. An attack of giddiness had forced him to stretch out on a sofa; there he had fainted and rolled onto the floor. "My head hit the ground so hard that my wife was alarmed by the noise and came rushing to me, terrified," he told Bulow. Because of this, he continued, he could not possibly think of undertaking the exhausting trip to England; already he had wired this news to King Edward. In fact, the telegram to the King described the illness differently: "bronchitis and acute cough… a virulent attack of influenza… I feel quite unable to meet the strain of the program so kindly prepared for me." The King was furious: "I cannot say how upset I am," he told Knollys. Sir Edward Grey immediately telegraphed Sir Frank Lascelles, the British Ambassador in Berlin, that "there is little doubt that this decision would be attributed to the recent scandals in Berlin and nothing that we could say or do would alter the impression." Lascelles delivered this message to the Chancellor and added, "The worst of it is that about an hour ago I was in the Tiergarten and met the Emperor, who is alleged to be so seriously ill, galloping along… with a group of his aides, in very good spirits."

  In his Memoirs, Bulow said bluntly that William was too embarrassed to go to England. After seeing Lascelles, the Chancellor sent a sharp note to the Kaiser. William immediately changed his mind. He invited the Chancellor to join him that evening at the theater, where he informed Bulow that his indisposition had disappeared, he had taken a refreshing gallop, eaten a hearty meal, and now was ready to go wherever the Chancellor wished. Bulow informed Lascelles that the Kaiser would be coming to England as planned.

  On November 11, an unusually thick fog hung over the Channel and southern England. As the Hohenzollern approached Portsmouth, reported The Times, "the German squadron and the Admiralty were practically engaged in a game of hide and seek." Later that day, when the German party reached Windsor Castle, the fog was so thick that from a window in St. George's Hall, it was impossible to see across the Quadrangle as the state carriages arrived through the Royal Entrance. William, wearing his British admiral's uniform, nevertheless was ebullient. "It seems like coming home again to Windsor," he told the Mayor. "I'm always glad to be here." At a state banquet for 180 guests the following night, King Edward inserted a mischievous dig into his formal welcome: "For a long time we had hoped to receive this visit, but recently we feared that, owing to indisposition, it would not take place. Fortunately, Their Majesties are now both looking in such good health that I can only hope their stay in England will much benefit them."

  The visit's public climax was a reception in London. "Sunshine and breeze and cloud-flecked blue sky, more reminiscent of April than November" greeted the Kaiser as he drove through cheering crowds and waving banners from Paddington Station to the Guildhall. One large banner, "blut ist dicker als wasser" ("Blood is thicker than water"), touched him especially and he added the expression to his speech later that morning. His address to the Lord Mayor referred to his first visit as Emperor in 1891, when he had been given the Freedom of the City: "Sixteen years ago, I said that my aim was above all the maintenance of peace. History, I venture to hope, will do me the justice that I have pursued this aim unswervingly ever since. The main support and base for the peace of the world is the maintenance of good relations between our two countries and I shall further strengthen them as far as lies within my power. Blood is thicker than water. The German nation's wishes coincide with mine."

  Haldane, whose German was fluent, was called upon for extra duty, as some of the German guests did not speak English. One day, he escorted General Karl von Einem, the Prussian War Minister, and other members of the Kaiser's party to London, where he showed them the War Office and invited them to lunch at his house in Queen Anne's Gate. (Afterwards, he noted, they wished to visit, not the Tower of London or Westminster Abbey, but Harrods.) Einem had special reason to be grateful to Haldane. After the Windsor Castle banquet, when the gentlemen were sitting in the smoking room with the King and the Kaiser, Haldane, "next to General von Einem… noticed that he was in pain… [I] tracked the source of his discomfort to his feet; his pumps were too tight across the instep. As soon as the two sovereigns left, I turned to the War Minister and said it was the custom of Windsor Castle as soon as royalty left to kick off our shoes, and I set the example. He looked at me gratefully."

  It was understood before the visit that political issues would not be discussed at Windsor. The Kaiser, however, was incapable of compartmentalizing his conversation and, while talking to Haldane, brought up the matter of the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway. Germany had obtained a concession from the Sultan to build the Turkish section of the new line; the project was delayed by British concern that the railroad would open a potentially hostile approach to India through the Persian Gulf. What did England want? William asked. "I said I knew we wanted a 'gate' to protect India from troops coming down the new railway."* "I will give you the 'gate,' " William replied. That night, during the theatrical performance which followed dinner, Haldane sat behind the Kaiser. Leaning forward, he asked William whether he was serious about "giving us a 'gate.'… Next morning, a helmeted Prussian guardsman, one of those

  * The "gate" was control of the final section which would reach the Gulf.

  the Emperor had brought with him, knocked loudly on my door and handed me a message from the Emperor that he had meant what he said." That evening, the Kaiser invited Haldane to his apartment after the theatricals. Haldane went at one in the morning and discovered William talking and smoking with Baron Wilhelm von Schoen (the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs), Einem, and Metternich. Haldane bowed and began to withdraw, saying, "I feel myself an intruder because it is like being at a meeting of Your Majesty's Cabinet," he said. "Be a member of my Cabinet. I appoint you," William responded. At three a.m. Haldane left the Kaiser's apartments and groped his way down dark passageways back to his own room in a different part of the castle.

  Politicians in both countries were pleased by the visit. "I wish to express my satisfaction at the welcome of the Imperial couple by the King and people," Bulow told the Reichstag. "I believe that when the histor
y of the last decade is written… it will appear that the tension between England and Germany which has long oppressed the world was due in the last resort to a great mutual misunderstanding. Each attributed to the other purposes that it did not entertain… I am certain that I speak for this House and the German people when I say that such peaceful and friendly feelings are shared by us." Sir Edward Grey agreed: "It is bound to have a good effect." Morley hoped that "the visit of the German Emperor… will much improve the chances of a little decent calm in Europe." Esher, writing in his journal, introduced a discordant note: "Our King makes a better show than William II. He has more gra-ciousness and dignity. William is ungrateful, nervous, and plain… Grey had two long talks with him. At the first, he declaimed violently against Jews. 'There are far too many of them in my country. They want stamping out. If I did not restrain my people, there would be Jew-baiting.' "

  The state visit lasted a week. At the end, the Empress Augusta returned to Germany. William, delighted by his enthusiastic reception, so different from the murky atmosphere of Berlin, decided to prolong his stay on a private basis. He rented Highcliffe Castle near Bournemouth in Hampshire and invited the owner, Colonel Edward Montague Stuart-Wortley, a Regular Army officer, to stay on as his guest. William delighted in these surroundings: "The great British people… received me with warmth and open arms. During my stay, I sampled, as I had long wanted to do, all the delights of English home and country life. Comfortable affluence, excellent people in all walks of life, with all classes giving clear evidence of culture in their elegance and cleanliness. Pleasant intercourse between gentlemen on an equal footing without all the ceremonial of royalty. I found it immensely refreshing and soothing."

  During this happy sojourn on the British coast, William talked freely to Colonel Stuart-Wortley about his desire for England's friendship and his frustration that England constantly misunderstood and rejected his good intentions. Stuart-Wortley took careful notes.

  During the week in October 1908 in which Austria precipitated an international crisis by annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bernhard von Bulow was at his seaside villa on Norderney, a Frisian island on the North Sea coast. "Overwhelmed with work, absorbed from morning to night in these difficult problems," Bulow "received from the Kaiser, who was at Romintern, a bulky, almost illegible manuscript, written on bad typing paper, with a covering letter asking if I saw any objection to its publication." The manuscript, written in English, was the draft of an extended interview with Kaiser William II on the subject of Anglo-German relations. Using remarks William had made during his three weeks at Highcliffe the previous autumn, Colonel Stuart-Wortley was asking permission to publish the interview in the London Daily Telegraph. In Stuart-Wortley's view, if the English public knew the extent of the Kaiser's Anglophilia, relations between the two countries would greatly improve. The Kaiser, too, wished for publication, but, in accordance with the German constitution, was asking the Chancellor's advice and approval. William demanded only that Bulow "on no account forward it to the Foreign Office in Berlin."

  Bulow ignored the Kaiser: "Without the slightest suspicion in my mind of the ominous contents of the manuscript, which I could not find the time to read, I sent it off to the Wilhelmstrasse with a note: 'Please read the enclosed article carefully, transcribe it in clear, official script… duplicate it, and enter in the margin such corrections, additions or deletions as may seem suitable.' "

  State Secretary Schoen was absent from No. 76 Wilhelmstrasse when the manuscript arrived; accordingly, it went to Under State Secretary Stemrich, who read the draft and forwarded it untouched to Reinhold Klehmet, for the previous twelve years a Counselor in the Political Division. Klehmet interpreted Bulow's instructions literally: he was to correct any errors of fact and not to express an opinion as to the advisability of publication. He made two minor corrections and returned the manuscript-now written neatly on good paper-to the Chancellor. Bulow stated he again did not read the interview. He sent it back to the Kaiser, saying that he saw no reason not to publish. William sent it to Stuart-Wortley, who gave it to the Daily Telegraph.

  On the morning of October 29, Bulow found on his desk a long message from the Wolf Telegraph Agency office in London, summarizing an interview with the German Emperor published the previous day in the Daily Telegraph. In the interview, given to an anonymous person "of unimpeachable authority," the Kaiser protested that he had always been a friend of England but that his friendship was unappreciated. "You English are mad, mad as March hares," he said. "What on earth has come over you that you should harbor such suspicions against us, suspicions so unworthy of a great nation." He took "as a personal insult," William continued, the "distortions and misinterpretations" of the British press in describing his "repeated offers of friendship" with England. This hostility made his own effort to promote friendship all the more difficult as the majority of Germans disliked the English. Then came what Bulow, in his Memoirs, was to call "the three enormities": when the Boer War was at its height, Russia and France had urged him to save the Boer republics by joining a Continental coalition which would "humiliate England to the dust." He had refused, the Kaiser declared, and had informed the Russians and the French that "Germany would use her armed might to prevent such concerted action." He had sent this letter to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and it had been placed "in the archives of Windsor Castle."

  "Nor was that all," the Kaiser continued. "Just at the time of your Black Week [early in the Boer War], when disasters followed one another in rapid succession… I worked out what I considered to be the best plan of campaign… submitted it to my General Staff… then… despatched it to England. That paper is likewise among the State Papers at Windsor Castle awaiting the severely impartial verdict of history. And as a matter of curious coincidence, let me add that the plan which I formulated ran very much on the same lines as that which was actually adopted by Lord Roberts…

  "But, you will say, what of the German Navy?… Against whom but England is it being steadily built up?" Its purpose, William explained, was to protect Germany's growing worldwide trade. "Germany looks ahead. Her horizons stretch far away. She must be prepared for any eventualities in the Far East… Look at the accomplished rise of Japan… It may even be that England herself will be glad that Germany has a fleet…"

  Bulow's reaction was utter dismay. The interview revealed,

  "more than any previous manifestation of the kind, the Emperor's intellectual extravagance, his incoherent regard of facts, his complete lack of political moderation and balance, combined with an excessive urge towards… display." "As I read these sad effusions, which could scarcely have been surpassed in tactless stupidity, I sent for Klehmet and asked him how he could ever have let pass such incredible expressions of opinion. He replied that he had received the definite impression that His Majesty personally was very anxious to have the whole article published." Bulow exploded: "And haven't you learned yet that His Majesty's personal wishes are often sheer nonsense?"

  Bulow had chosen his own defense: busy with a crisis, the Chancellor had trusted the Foreign Office; the Foreign Office-which, Bulow knew, the Kaiser intensely disliked-had betrayed the trust and, therefore, the Kaiser and himself. The Foreign Office, then in the hands of the weak Baron von Schoen, was ill equipped to refute this charge. It had obeyed specific orders to make "such corrections, additions or deletions as may seem suitable." Beyond this, it had in the Bismarckian tradition left the ultimate decision as to the advisability of publication up to the Chancellor.

  The vital point, on which no one except Bulow could supply the truth, was whether Bulow had actually read the interview before approving publication. He claimed that he had not; he clung to this through the parliamentary storm that followed and maintained it even in his Memoirs. Yet no one had greater experience with the Kaiser's inflammatory exaggerations and rhetorical bluster than Bulow. As Chancellor, he lived in constant apprehension of William's indiscretions; he was constantly editing, suppressing, rew
riting the Kaiser's speeches. Further, a German Emperor did not publish a lengthy interview in an English newspaper every day. If not as a duty, then out of sheer curiosity, would not the Chancellor have wished to know what William was saying? Schoen, Stemrich, and others at the Wilhelmstrasse were convinced that Bulow was lying. Some have suggested that he read the interview, anticipated the result, and permitted publication in the hope of using the subsequent constitutional crisis as a means of improving his own position in relation to the Crown.

  The interview startled the world. Japan wondered what "eventualities" might involve the German Fleet with its own navy. France and Russia denied that they had proposed a coalition against England during the Boer War; indeed, Tsar Nicholas II told Sir Arthur Nicolson, it was the Kaiser who had suggested Continental intervention. The English reaction ranged from amusement to contempt.

  Lord Roberts threatened to return his Order of the Black Eagle. The Times observed that if Germany were planning a naval war in the Pacific, the accumulation of a powerful, short-range battle fleet in the North Sea seemed odd. Grey wrote to a friend: "The German Emperor is aging me; he is like a battleship with steam up and screws going, but with no rudder, and he will run into something some day and cause a catastrophe." In the House of Commons, Haldane was asked whether the plan of campaign which had won the Boer War could be made public. The War Minister replied that the War Office had been unable to locate the document in its archives. Consequently, he said, "I am not in a position to fulfill the wish of those who want the document published."

  In a Germany just emerging from the first Eulenburg trial, the interview ignited a new firestorm of shock, embarrassment, and indignation. The ruler who seemed to have chosen his friends so indiscreetly had now proclaimed to Germany and Europe that the Empire was ruled by a man who was constitutionally irresponsible and possibly mentally unbalanced. Sir Edward Goschen, the new British Ambassador, was amazed. "To a newcomer like myself, imbued with the idea that His Majesty was more or less outside public criticism, this onslaught upon him comes as a most striking surprise," he reported to Sir Edward Grey. The Austrian ambassador sent a similar report to Vienna: "Never before in Prussian history have all circles been captured by such deep resentment against their sovereign." Germans, most of whom had passionately supported the Boers, were furious that the Kaiser claimed to have drawn up the plan of campaign by which the British had conquered the South African republics. Why alienate the Japanese? Why antagonize the French and Russians? Why provoke the British by saying that most Germans hated them?