William of Germany
by
Stanley Shaw
Part 7 out of 7
and in all its ramifications, has yet to be revealed. Here need only
be quoted what Chancellor Buelow--and also, by the way, Princess
Buelow--publicly said about the Emperor as man. The Prince's most
noteworthy statement was made in the Reichstag in 1903, when, in
answer to Leader-of-the-Opposition Bebel, the Prince said, "One thing
at least, the Emperor is no Philistine," and proceeded to explain,
rather negatively and disappointingly, that the Emperor possesses what
the Greeks call megalopsychia--a great soul. One knows but too well
the English Philistine, that stolid, solid, self-sufficient bulwark of
the British Constitution. The German Philistine is his twin brother,
the narrow-minded, conservative burgher. Other epithets the Prince
applied to the imperial character were "simple," "natural," "hearty,"
"magnanimous," "clear-headed," and "straightforward"; while Princess
Buelow, during a conversation her husband was having with the French
journalist, M. Jules Huret, in 1907, interjected the remark that he
was "a person of good birth, _fils de bonne maison_, the descendant of
distinguished ancestors, and a modern man of great intelligence."
But let us see how the Emperor appears to his contemporaries. Dr. Paul
Liman, who has made the most serious attempt to sketch the character
of the Emperor that has yet appeared in German, writes:--
"We see in him a nature whose ground-tone is enthusiasm,
phantasy, and a passionate impulse towards action. Filled
with the highest sense of the imperial rights and duties
assigned to him, convinced that these are the direct
expression of a divine will, he has inwardly thrown off the
bonds of modern constitutional ideas and in words recently
spoken, where he claimed responsibility for fifty-eight
million people, converted these ideas into a formula that,
while unconstitutional, is yet moral and deeply earnest.
These words were doubly valuable as giving insight into the
soul of a man who can be mistaken in his conclusions and
means, but not in his motives, since these are directed to
the general weal. Here, too, we find the explanation of the
fact that at one time he comes before us surrounded with the
blue and hazy nimbus of the romantic period, and at another
as the most modern prince of our time. Out of the rise in
him of the consciousness of majesty there grows a greater
sense of duty, and instead of keeping watch from his turret
over his people he loses himself in detail. And precisely
here must he fail, because modern life with its development
is far too rich in complications and activities to admit of
its submitting to patriarchal benevolence. And because an
artistic strain and a strong fantasy simultaneously work in
him, he moves joyfully beyond the limits of the actual to
raise before our eyes the highly coloured dream of the
picture of a time in which all men, all nations, will be
friendly and reconciled--an artist's dream. Here is
something characteristic, something unusual, to give
particular charm to a personality which has no parallel in
the history of the dynasty hitherto. There may be concealed
in it the seed of illustrious deeds, but only too often
disappointment and contempt lie scornfully in wait when the
deed is accomplished. For the heaven we erect on earth
always comes to naught, and the idealist is always
vanquished in the strife with fact."
So far, Dr. Liman. Mr. Sydney Brooks, in a sketch in _Maclure's
Magazine_ for July, 1910, writes:--
"The drawback to any and to every _regime_ of paternal
absolutism is that the human mind is limited. The Kaiser
will not admit it, but his acts prove it. It is not given to
one man to know more about everything than anybody else
knows about anything; and the Kaiser, who is a good deal of
a dilettante, and believes himself omniscient, at times
speaks from a lamentable half-knowledge, and occasionally
has to call in the imperial authority to back up his
verdicts against the judgments of experts.
"Unquestionably his mind is of an unusual order. It is a
facile, quickly moving instrument; it works in flashes; it
assimilates seemingly without effort, and it is at its best
under the highest pressure. The Kaiser is not to be laughed
at for wanting to know all there is to be known, but he may
justly be criticized for failing to distinguish between the
attempt and its failure....
"Is it all charlatanerie? Is it all of a part with his
speech in Russian to the regiment of which the Czar made him
honorary colonel, a studied trumpery effort, designed for a
momentary effect? Is the Kaiser just glitter and tinsel,
impulse and rhapsody, with nothing solid beneath? Is it his
supreme object to make an impression at any cost, to force,
like another Nero, the popular applause by arts more
becoming to a _cabotin_ than a sovereign? Vanity,
restlessness, a consuming desire for the palm without the
dust--an intense and theatrical egotism--are these the
qualities that give the clue to his character and actions?
"I do not think so altogether. The Kaiser has scattered too
much. In an age of specialists on many subjects he speaks
like an amateur. He is always the hero, and often the
victim, of his own imagination; like a star actor, he cannot
bear to be outshone; he is morbidly, almost pruriently,
conscious of the effect he is producing. And on all matters
of intellect and taste his influence makes for blatant
mediocrity. But he is not meretricious; at bottom he is not
by any means as superficial and insincere as he often seems.
He is one of those men in whom an instinct becomes an
immutable truth, an idea a conviction, and a suspicion a
certainty, by an almost instantaneous process; and, the
process completed, action follows forthwith. The Kaiser is
always resolved to do the right thing; the right thing, by
some quaint but invariable coincidence, is whatever he is
resolved to do."
These appreciations from afar may be as sound as they are brilliant,
but they rather refer to the non-essential parts of the character of
the Emperor in the first flush of imperial glory than to the essential
character as it has developed with the years.
As a man--he will be dealt with as monarch presently--his essential
character must be judged from his conduct, and conduct extending over
a good many years. One might say, conduct and reputation, but that
reputation is so often the result of a confused mixture of superficial
observation, gossip, tittle-tattle, envy, hatred and uncharitableness,
and, in the case of an Emperor, of merely picturesque and effective
writing.
There is another source which would materially help us in forming a
judgment, but it is wholly wanting in the case of the Emperor. No
private correspondence of his is, as yet, available to the world.
Again, a man's character is determined by his motives, if it is not
the other way about; in any case, a man's motives are for the most
part inscrutable and can only be deduced from conduct, while the world
usually makes the mistake of explaining conduct by attributing its own
motives. Tried, then, by the standard of conduct, the only one
available, the Emperor, as a man, shows us a high type of humanity. It
may not, probably does not, appeal to Englishmen wholly, but there are
features of it which must command, and do command, the respect of
people of all nationalities. And, first of all, he is a good man; good
as a Christian, good as a husband, good as a father, good as a
patriot. With all the power and temptation to gratify his
inclinations, he has no personal vices of the baser sort. He is
moderate in the satisfaction of his appetites, whether for food or
wine. He is no debauchee, no voluptuary, no gambler. He is faithful to
old friends and comrades. He has high ideals, and is not ashamed of
them. He is neither indolent nor fussy; neither a cynic, nor an
intriguer, nor a fool; he is neither wrong-headed nor stubborn; he is
honest and sincere to a degree that does him honour as a man, if it
has sometimes proved perilous and blameworthy in him as a monarch. He
is optimistic, and on good grounds. He is no physical or intellectual
giant, but he is a man of more than average all-round intelligence and
capacity. If this appreciation is correct, or even approximately
correct, it is a testimonial, whatever may be its worth, to great
merit.
Yet the Emperor as man has his failings and drawbacks, though they are
such as time is almost sure to diminish or eradicate. Notably in his
earlier years he lacked judgment, the power of balancing
considerations and arriving at conclusions from them which men more
gifted with poise would endorse as logical and inevitable. He does
not, like spare Cassius, see quite through the deeds of men, as his
friendship for Count Phili Eulenburg and the malodorous "Camarilla" go
to show, and his choice of Imperial Chancellors, his grand viziers,
has not in every instance been happy. He has less tact than character,
as he showed once in Vienna, where he greatly pained the Foreign
Minister, Count Goluchowski, one day at a club by calling to him,
"Golu, Golu, come and sit beside your Kaiser." He has the German
masculine enjoyment in a kind of humour which would have delighted Fox
and the three-bottle men, but would sadly shock the susceptibilities
of an Oxford aesthete. He has a share of personal vanity, but it
springs from the desire to look the Emperor he is, not because he
supposes for a moment that he is an Adonis. He is theatrical in
exactly the same spirit--the desire imperially to impress his folk in
the sense of the German word _imponieren_, a word that needs no
translation. If he has lost much of Dr. Liman's "romantik," he still
retains the "scatteredness" of Mr. Sidney Brooks, though the Emperor
would rather hear it called "many-sidedness." _En resume_ he has the
defects of his qualities, but to no man or woman's unmerited loss or
injury, and if we weigh the good qualities with the bad, we find a
fine balance remaining to his credit as a man.
The fierce light which beats upon a throne, if it is apt to dazzle the
bystander, helps those at a distance, especially in these days of the
still fiercer light of modern publicity, to judge fairly the throne's
occupant. The character of the Emperor as monarch ought, therefore, as
far as is possible in the absence of archives marked "secret and
confidential" and yet lying in the ministries of all countries, to
disclose itself nowadays with reasonable clearness. Yet, even still,
different and conflicting opinions regarding it are to be gathered in
Germany and out of it.
Indeed, his own people are among the severest critics. One of them,
Professor Quidde, early in the reign, made an extraordinarily
ingenious, but quite unjustifiable, comparison of him to Caligula,
which, though only consisting of classical quotations and making no
mention of the Emperor, was seen by everybody to refer to him and has
caused discussion ever since. While many foreign critics have done the
Emperor justice, others in turn have made him out to be arrogant,
snobbish, bombastic, superficial, incompetent, and insincere. To
writers of this class he is always the German War Lord, ready to
pounce, like a highwayman or pirate, on any unprotected person or
property he may come across, regardless of treaty obligations, of
international disaster, or of the dictates of humanity. One day they
announce he is planning the annexation of Holland in order to get a
further set of naval bases, the next that he means to take Belgium to
make a road for his armies into France, a third that he is about to
set at naught the Monroe doctrine and with his Dreadnoughts seize
Brazil. All these things are conceivable and not impossible, but they
are in the very highest degree improbable, and, as yet at least, ought
not to be considered seriously. To sensible and better-informed people
everywhere he is a Prussian king of the best type, a sincere friend of
peace, with a mania for pushing the maxim "_Si vis pacem para bellum_"
to extremes, politically the most influential man in Europe, and, with
all his faults, one of the greatest Germans of his time.
The character of the Emperor, as monarch, is reflected very largely in
the character of the Germany of to-day.
Germany is optimistic, ardently desirous of peace, bent on worthily
maintaining the great place she has won, and deserved to win, among
the nations, and so materially prosperous as to make many Germans
tremble at the thought that the prosperity may be too great to last.
This, however, is not to assert that in Germany everything is _couleur
de rose_. There are not a few things in the Empire's social and
political conditions which are antiquated or promise no good. Noxious
as well as beneficial forces have been introduced into the social life
of the country and are beginning to make themselves felt. German
home-life is ceasing to be the admirable and exemplary thing it was
before the present era of class rivalry, commercialism, the parvenu
and the snob. The idealism which made the Empire a possibility is
passing away. There is need, and a general demand, for franchise
reform in Prussia, and a change in the spirit of Prussian bureaucratic
administration would be acceptable, though it is, perhaps, hopeless to
expect it. The opposition in Germany between the monarchic and the
democratic principle, if not more marked than it was twenty or thirty
years ago, is manifesting itself over a wider and perhaps deeper area.
The relations between capital and labour are far from satisfactory
adjustment. Social democracy is yearly gaining fresh adherents, and if
guilty of no political violence, is yet a constant source of danger to
domestic peace. The German middle class, that bourgeoisie which is the
backbone and strength of the Empire, is losing its Spartan simplicity
and its content with small and moderate pleasures; and the national
virtues of thrift and self-denial are yielding to the temptations of
wealth and luxury. Business credit is unduly stretched, speculation in
land has attained disturbing proportions, and the banking world is in
too many instances allied with hazardous or doubtful enterprises.
Nevertheless the country as a whole is sound, intellectually, morally,
and financially.
It would be difficult to mention any of the greater tasks of imperial
administration to which the Emperor does not continue to devote
personal attention. He is the life and soul of the army and navy,
though it should not be forgotten that as regards the latter he has in
Admiral Tirpitz an executive talent worthy of his own directive. His
interest in the mercantile marine remains what it was when in 1887, as
Prince William, he drew up an expert opinion which decided the
Hamburg-Amerika Company to build their fast ocean-going steamers at
home instead of abroad, and by the success of the experiment commenced
the modern development of Germany's shipbuilding industry. Indeed, his
attention to the Hamburg line, familiarly known as the "Hapag" line,
from the initial letters of its legal title, "Hamburg-Amerika
Packetfahrt-Aktien Gesellschaft," and to the Norddeutsche line from
Bremen, has given rise to the unfounded belief that he is heavily
interested in their financial success. Herr Albert Ballin, the
Director of the Hamburg line, though a Jew, is among his intimates and
advisers, and the Emperor is said to have caused umbrage more than
once to Court officials and the aristocracy by giving directors of
both lines precedence at his table. Without the Emperor's personal
support it is probable that neither the firm of Krupp at Essen nor the
splendid shipbuilding yards at Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin and elsewhere
would continue to progress as they are doing. He neglects no
opportunity of stimulating Germany's internal and external trade.
He is at all times ready to encourage the introduction of useful
achievements of modern science and invention. And lastly, by
tactful treatment of other German rulers, and a wise policy of
non-interference with their States, he is promoting a feeling of
federal solidarity.
The Emperor's conception of his relations to the people remains to-day
what he was brought up in and what it was when he mounted the throne.
In England, America, and France the people are the real rulers, and
their monarch or president is their highest official servant and
representative. The idea is not perhaps constitutionally expressed,
but it is universally and deeply felt in the countries named. In
Germany the opposite theory obtains--for how long it must be left to
the future to say. In Germany the Emperor is the real ruler, the
genuine monarch, and the people are his subjects, the country his
country. Hence, while an English king in an official document or
public statement would not think of putting himself first and the
people or country second, the German Emperor's official statements and
speeches constantly repeat such expressions as "I and my people," "I
and the army," "my capital," "me and the Fatherland," and a score
more; so that Anglo-Saxons and other foreigners acquire the impression
that the word "my" is no figure of rhetoric or pride, but a simple
claim of ownership or possession. And the official relation between
monarch and people is reflected in the people's ordinary life. To the
foreigner it continually appears that the public are the servants of
the official, not the contrary, whether officialism takes the shape of
a post-office clerk, a tramcar conductor, a shop salesman, a
policeman, or a waiter. All these functionaries are the possessors of
an authority which the citizen is expected to, and usually does, obey.
The explanation of such a state of things is a little abstruse, but an
attempt may be made at giving it.
The period immediately preceding the reign of Frederick the Great was
a period of absolute monarchy in Germany, a system introduced from
France, where Louis XIV had proclaimed the doctrine _L'etat, c'est
moi_, according to which the lives and property of the subject
belonged to the Prince, whose will was to be obeyed without question
or demur. There were now four hundred courts in Germany in imitation
of the Court of Versailles, and the smaller the principality the
greater the absolutism. Absolutism, however, required an army to
support it; hence the establishment of standing and mercenary armies
and the disuse of arms by the citizen. The result, to quote Professor
Ernst Richard's work on "German Civilization," was that
"the pride of the burgher and the peasant was broken. A
submissive servility hopelessly pervaded the masses, and
even the best had lost all social and national feeling, all
sense of being part of a greater body.... The luxurious life
and the arrogance of the ruling classes were accepted as a
matter of course, one might say as a divine institution.
Thus those traits of character, which had come to light
under the cruel stress of the Thirty Years War, fostered by
the rule of despotism and the worst vices, took deeper root.
To these belong that greed for social position, for titles
and the smiles of the great; servility towards those who
hold a higher position as bearers of official titles and
dignity, a fear of publicity, above all a rather remarkable
inclination to a peevish, petty, and sceptical attitude as
regards the knowledge and ability of others. The exaltation
of the position of the prince extended to his Court and his
officials, as well as to the nobility, which had long since
become a Court nobility."
But absolutism had to go with the changes in human thought under the
influence of Rationalism, which brought with it the idea of the State,
not the absolute prince, as ruler. This idea was embodied in the
_Rechtstaat_, or State based on law, which was introduced by Frederick
the Great, the "first servant of the State." The State, he said,
exists for the sake of the citizens. "One must be insane," he wrote,
"to imagine that men should have said to one of their
equals, 'We will raise you so that we may be your slaves, we
will give you the power to guide our thoughts according to
yours.' They rather said: 'We need you in order to execute
our laws, that you show us the way, and defend us. But we
understand that you will respect our liberties.'"
The _Rechtstaat_ exists in Germany to the present day, the Emperor is
at the head of it, and the people are content to live within its
confines. It is not, as has been seen, coterminous with the whole
liberty of the subject, but is yet a vast bundle of rights and
obligations which in public, and much of private, life leaves as
little as possible to the unaided or undirected intelligence or
goodwill of the citizen. It is an exaggeration, but still expresses a
popular feeling even in Germany itself--and certainly describes an
impression made on the Anglo-Saxon--to say that outside this bundle of
laws and regulations, which, clearly and logically paragraphed, orders
to a nicety all the public, and many of the private, relations of the
citizens, everything is forbidden or discouraged by authority. Yet, as
has been said, the people are satisfied with it, and it must be
admitted that if it confines individual liberty within what to the
Anglo-Saxon seem narrow limits, still, by directing the individual to
common ends, it works great public advantage. It is in truth a very
intelligent and practical form of Socialism, infinitely less
oppressive to the people than would be the socialism of the professed
Socialist.
It left, however, the German caste system of Frederick's day
undisturbed; as Professor Richard says:
"The nobility retained its privileged position. It was
considered a law of nature that the noblemen should assist
the monarch in the administration of the State and as
leaders of the army; the peasant should cultivate the fields
and provide food; the commoner should provide money through
industry and commerce."
To the Anglo-Saxon, of course, brought up with individualistic views
of life and demanding complete personal freedom, the German
_Rechtstaat_ would be galling, not to say intolerable. The Englishman,
however, has his _Rechtstaat_ too, but the limits it places on his
liberty are not nearly so restrictive in regard to public meeting,
public talking, public writing, in short, public action of all sorts,
as in Germany. Besides, the spirit of laws in England, as naturally
follows from the Englishman's political history, is a much more
liberal one than the German spirit, which is still to some extent
under the influence of the age of absolutism.
The German conception of the _Rechtstaat_ entails, as one of its
consequences, a sharp contrast between the rights and privileges of
the Crown and the rights and privileges of the people; and therefore,
while the Emperor is never without apprehension that the people may
try to increase their rights and privileges at the expense of those of
the Crown, the people are not without apprehension that the Crown may
try to increase its rights and privileges at the expense of the
political liberties of the people. To this apprehension on the part of
the people is to be attributed their widespread dissatisfaction with
the Emperor's so-called "personal regiment," which, until recently,
was the chief hindrance to his popularity. In truth the Emperor is in
a difficult position. To be popular with the people he must be popular
with the Parliament, but if he were to seek popularity with the
Parliament he would lose popularity and prestige with the aristocracy
and large landowners, who have still a good deal of the old-time
contempt for the mere "folk," the burgher, and he would lose it with
the military officer class, which is aristocratic in spirit, and is,
as the Emperor is constantly assuring it, the sole support of throne
and Empire. In addition to this it has to be remembered that a large
majority of South Germany is Catholic, and, generally speaking, no
great lover of Prussia, its people, and their airs of stiff
superiority.
The personal relations of the Emperor to his people, and in especial
to the vast burghertum, are precisely those to be expected from his
traditional and constitutional relations. He is not popular, but he is
widely and sincerely respected. His preference for the army,
intelligible though it is, and the cleavage that separates Government
and people, explain to some extent the want of popularity, using
that word in its "popular" sense; while the consciousness of all
the nation owes to his "goodwill," his initiative and energy, his
conscientiousness in all directions, is quite sufficient to account
for the respect. It is, in truth, in part at least, the respect which
excludes the popularity. No one is ever likely to be popular,
anywhere, who is constantly endeavouring to teach people how to live
and what to think, and at the same time seems to have no social
weaknesses to reconcile him with those--no small number--who are fond
of cakes and ale. Some of the Emperor's acts and speeches have
postponed, if not precluded, eventual popularity--his breach with
Bismarck, for example, the whole "personal regiment," and speeches
like that at Potsdam in 1891, when he told his recruits that if he had
to order them to shoot down their brothers, or even their parents,
they must obey without a murmur. Speeches of this last kind live long
in public memory. In his dealings with his people the Emperor is
neither arrogant--"high-nosed" is the elegant German expression:
"arrogant" is no German word, Prince Buelow would doubtless say--
towards his subjects, nor are they cringing towards him, though this
statement does not exclude the excusable embarrassment an ordinary
mortal may be expected to feel in the presence of a monarch. The
Emperor himself desires no "tail-wagging" from his subjects, and
though there is something of the autocrat in him, there is nothing of
the despot.
Certainly for the present, Germans, with rare exceptions, are
satisfied with him. They are prospering under him. The shoe pinches
here and there, and if it pinches too hard they will cry out and
perhaps do more than cry out. They do not consider the Emperor
perfect, but they forgive his errors, and particularly the errors of
his impetuous youth, even though on three or four occasions they
brought the country into danger. Monarchy has been defined as a State
in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person
doing interesting things: a republic, as a State in which the
attention is divided between many who are all doing uninteresting
things: Germans find their Emperor interesting, and that is a stage on
the road to popularity.
The imperial ego, which is quite consistent with the German view of
monarchical rule and conformity with the _Rechtstaat_, is specially
advertised by the pictures and statues of the Emperor which are to be
found all over Germany, to the apparent exclusion of the pictures and
statues of national and local men of distinction. The Emperor's
picture almost monopolizes the walls of every public and municipal
office, every railway-station refreshment-room, every shop, every
restaurant throughout the Empire. Wherever it turns the eye is
confronted by the portrait or bust of the Emperor, and if it is not
his portrait or bust, it is the portrait or bust of one or other of
his ancestors. An exception should be made in the case of Bismarck,
the reproduction of whose rugged features, shaggy eyebrows, and bulky
frame are not infrequent; statues and portraits, too, of Moltke and
Roon, though much more rarely met with than those of Bismarck, are to
be seen, while those of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Lessing, Wagner, or
other German "Immortal," are still rarer. Only once, or perhaps twice,
in all Germany is there to be found a public statue of Heine--for
Heine was a Jew and said many unpleasant, because true, things about
his country. The travelling foreigner in Germany after a while begins
to wonder if he is not in some far Eastern country where
ancestor-worship obtains, and where one tremendous personality
overshadows, obscures, and obliterates all the rest. In truth,
however, this is not the lesson of the imperial images for the
foreigner. They teach him that he is in a country with a system of
government and views of the State different from his own, that the
Empire is ruled in a military, not a civic spirit, and that the
counterfeit presentment of the Emperor, always in dazzling uniform, is
the sign of the national acceptance of system, views, and spirit.
A similar lesson is taught by the Emperor's speeches. In England the
King rarely speaks in public, and then with well-calculated brevity
and reserve. In five words he will open a museum and with a sentence
unveil a monument. The Emperor's speeches fill four stout volumes--and
he is only fifty-four. The speeches deal with every sort of topic, and
have been delivered in all parts of the Empire--now to Parliament, now
to his assembled generals, now at the celebration of some national or
individual jubilee, now at the dedication of a building or the opening
of a bridge. The style is always clear and logical, in this respect
contrasting favourably with the German style of twenty years ago, when
the language wriggled from clause to clause in vermiform articulations
until the thought found final expression in a mob of participles and
infinitives. Metaphors abound in the speeches, some of them slightly
far-fetched, but others of uncommon beauty, appropriateness, and pith.
There is no brilliant employment of words, but not seldom one comes
across such terse and happy phrases as the famous "We stand under the
star of commerce," "Our future lies on the water," "We demand a place
in the sun."
On the English reader the speeches will be apt to pall, unless he is
thoroughly saturated with Prussian historic, military, and romantic
lore and can place himself mentally in the position of the Emperor.
The tone, never quite detached from consciousness of the imperial ego,
hardly ever descends to the level of familiar conversation nor rises
to heights of eloquence that carry away the hearer. With three or four
exceptions, there is no argumentation in the speeches, for they are
not meant to persuade or convince, but to enjoin and command. They do
not contain any of the important and interesting facts and figures of
which, nevertheless, the Emperor's mind must be full, and they are
wanting in wit and humour, though nature has endowed the Emperor with
both.
On the other hand, it should be remembered that they are the speeches
of an Emperor, not of a statesman. The speeches have no political
timeliness or object save that of rousing and directing imperial
spirit among the people by appeals to their imagination and
patriotism. Had the Emperor been actuated by the spirit of a Minister
or statesman, he would have been far more alive to the fact than he
appears to have been, that every word he uttered would instantly find
an echo in the Parliament, Press, and Stock Exchange of all other
countries.
The Emperor's fundamental mistakes, as disclosed by his speeches,
appear to an Englishman to have been in assuming when they were made
that the Empire was in a less advanced stage of consolidation and
settlement than it in fact was, and in underrating the intelligence,
knowledge, and patriotism of his people. From this point of view his
early speeches in particular sound jejune or superfluous. What would
the Englishman say to a king who began his reign by a series of
homilies on Alfred the Great or Elizabeth or Queen Victoria; by using
strong language about the Labour party or the Fabian Society; by
appeals to throne and altar; by describing to Parliament the chief
duties of the monarch; by recommending the London County Council to
build plenty of churches; by calling journalists "hunger-candidates";
by frequent references to the battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar? Yet,
_mutatis mutandis_, this is not so very unlike what the young Emperor
did, and not for a year or two, but for several years after his
accession. To an Englishman such addresses would appear rather
ill-timed academic declamation.
Yet there was much, and perhaps is still much, to account for, if not
quite justify, the Emperor's rhetoric. The peculiarity of Germany's
monarchic system placed, and places, the monarch in a patriarchal
position not very different from that of Moses towards the
Israelites--a leader, preacher, and prophet. Again, the Empire, when
the Emperor came to the throne, was not a homogeneous nation inspired
by a centuries-old national spirit, but suffered, as it still in a
measure suffers, from the particularism of the various kingdoms and
States composing it: in other words, from too local a patriotism and
stagnation of the imperial idea. Thirdly, the Empire had no navy,
while an Empire to-day without a navy is at a tremendous and dangerous
disadvantage in world-politics, and the mere conception that a navy
was indispensable had to be created in a country lying in the heart of
Europe and with only one short coast-line.
The Englishman is as loyal to his King as the German is to his
Emperor, and England, as little as Germany, is disposed to change from
monarchy to republicanism. But the Englishman's political and social
governor, guide, and executive is not the King, but the Parliament;
because while in the King he has a worthy representative of the
nation's historical development and dignity, in the Parliament he sees
a powerful and immediate reflection of himself, his own wishes, and
his own judgments. Moreover, with the spread of democratic ideas, the
position of a monarch anywhere in the civilized world to-day is not
what it was fifty years ago. The general progress in education since
then; the drawing together of the nations by common commercial and
financial interests; the incessant activity of writers and publishers;
the circulation and power of the Press--themselves almost threatening
to become a despotism--such facts as these tend to change the
relations between kings and peoples. Monarchs and men are changing
places; the ruler becomes the subject, the subject ruler; it is the
people who govern, and the monarch obeys the people's will.
Such is not the view of the German Emperor nor of the German people.
To both the monarch is no "shadow-king," as both are fond of calling
the King of England, but an Emperor of flesh and blood, commissioned
to take the leading part in decisions binding on the nation,
responsible to no one but the Almighty, and the sole bestower of State
honours. There are, it is true, three factors of imperial government
constitutionally--the Emperor, the Federal Council, and the Imperial
Parliament; but while the Council has only very indirect relations
with the people, the Parliament, a consultative body for legislation,
is not the depositary of power or authority, or an assembly to which
either the Emperor, or the Council, or the Imperial Chancellor is
responsible. It must be admitted that, while such is the
constitutional theory, the actual practice is to a considerable extent
different. The Emperor is no absolute monarch, even in the domain of
foreign affairs, as he is often said to be, but is influenced and
guided, certainly of late years, both by the Federal Council and by
public opinion, the power of which latter has greatly augmented in
recent times. Whether the Reichstag really represents public opinion
in the Empire is a moot-point in Germany itself. It can hardly be
denied that it does so, at least in financial matters, since with
regard to them it has all the powers, or almost all, possessed by the
English House of Commons in this respect. Where its powers fail, it is
said, is in regard to administration; for though it deliberates on and
passes legislation, it is left by the Constitution to the Emperor and
his Ministers to issue instructions as to how legislation is to be
carried into effect. The result is to throw excessive power over
public comfort and convenience into the hands of the official class of
all degrees, which naturally employs it to maintain its own dignity
and privileged position.
Towards one class of the population, and that a highly important and
exceptional one, the Emperor's attitude of unprejudiced goodwill has
never varied. Israelites form only a small proportion--about 1 per
cent.--of the whole people, and are to be found in very large numbers
only in Berlin and Frankfurt; but to their financial and commercial
ability Germany owes a debt one may almost describe as incalculable.
There is a strong national prejudice against them in all parts of the
Empire, as there probably is in all countries, and it must be admitted
that the manners and customs of the lower-class Jew, his unpleasant
and insistent curiosity, his intrusiveness where he is not desired,
his want of cleanliness, his sharpness at a bargain, his oily bearing
to those he wishes to propitiate and his ruthless sweating of the
worker in all fields when in his power, are all disagreeable personal
qualities. There is also, as a concomitant of the nation's growth in
wealth of every sort, and mostly perhaps to be found in the capital a
class of Jewish parvenu, remarkable for snobbishness, ostentation, and
affectation.
But one must distinguish; and of a large percentage of the educated
class of Jew in Germany it would be difficult to speak too highly.
Germans may be the "salt of the earth," as the Emperor once told them
they were, but Jewish talent can with quite as much, perhaps more,
justice be called the salt of German prosperity. And not alone in the
region of finance and commerce. Some of the best intellect, most of
the leading enterprise in Germany, in all important directions, is
Jewish. Many of her ablest newspaper proprietors and editors are Jews.
Many of her finest actors and actresses are Jews and Jewesses. Many of
her cleverest lawyers, doctors, and artists are Jews. The career of
Herr Albert Ballin, the Jewish director of the Hamburg-Amerika line,
the Emperor's friend, to whom Germany owes a great deal of her
mercantile marine expansion, is a long romance illustrative of Jewish
organizing power and success.
The Emperor's friendship for Herr Ballin is obviously not entirely
disinterested, but the interest at the root of it is an imperial one.
In this spirit he cultivates to-day, as he has done since he took over
the Empire, the society of all his subjects, German or Jew, who either
by their talents or through their wealth can contribute to the success
of the mighty task which occupies his waking thoughts, and for all one
knows, his sleeping thoughts--his dreams--as well. Accordingly, the
wealthy German is quite aware that if he is to be reckoned among the
Emperor's friends he must be prepared to pay for the privilege, since
the Emperor is neither slow nor shy about using his influence in order
to make the more fortunate members of the community put their hands
deeply into their pockets for national purposes. A little time ago he
invited a number of merchant princes and captains of industry, as
American papers invariably call wealthy Germans, to a _Bier-abend_ at
the palace. When the score or so of guests were seated, he announced
that he was collecting subscriptions for some public object--the
national airship fund, perhaps--and sent a sheet of paper to Herr
Friedlander Fuld, the "coal-king" of Germany, to head the list. Herr
Fuld wrote down L5,000, and the paper was taken back to the Emperor.
"Oh, this will never do, lieber Fuld," he exclaimed, on seeing the
amount. "At this rate people will be putting down their names for L50.
You must at least double it." And Herr Fuld had to do so. A few weeks
afterwards there was another invitation to the palace, and the same
sort of scene took place. A little later still Herr Fuld got a third
invitation, and as an imperial invitation is equivalent to a command,
he had to go. When he arrived he noticed his fellow-industrials
looking uneasy, not to say sad. The Emperor noticed it too, for his
first words were: "Dear gentlemen, to-night the beer costs nothing."
Throughout the reign Germany has made it her constant policy to
cultivate friendly relations with the United States. Chancellor von
Buelow, in 1899, apropos of Samoa, said in the Reichstag: "We can
confidently say that in no other country has America during the last
hundred years found better understanding and more just recognition
than in Germany." This is true of the educated classes, professional,
professorial, and scientific; but the ordinary European German, who
does not know and understand America, still displays no particular
love for the ordinary American. At the same time he probably prefers
him to the people of any other nation. American outspokenness in
politics, for example, must be refreshing to minds penned within the
limits of the _Rechtstaat_. He sees in them, too, millionaires, or at
least people who come from a country where money is so abundant that,
as many country-people still think, you have only to stoop to pick it
up. When it comes to business, however, he is a little afraid of their
somewhat too sanguine enterprise, and is given to suspect that a
"bluff" of some sort is behind the simplest business proposition. Much
of this, of course, is due to ignorance heightened by yellow
journalism, for as a rule only the vastly interesting, but mostly
untrue, "stories" regarding Germany printed in the yellow press come
back to the Fatherland.
The German, again, is made uneasy by what he thinks the hasty manners
of the Americans; he considers them uncivil. So, let it be admitted,
they sometimes appear to be to people of other nationalities; but then
as a rule Americans who jar on European nerves will be found to hail
from places where life, to use the American expression, is "woolly,"
or too strenuous to allow of the delicacies of real refinement. The
ordinary idea of the German in Germany, held by the stay-at-home
American, is a vague species of dislike, founded on the conviction
that the American, not the German, is the salt of the earth; that the
German regard for tradition makes them a slow and slowly moving race;
and that the Emperor as War Lord--for he is almost solely known to him
in that capacity--must be ever desirous of war, in particular wishes
to seize a coaling-station or even a country, in South America, and,
generally speaking, set at naught the Monroe doctrine. The Governments
on both sides, of course, know and understand each other better. In
November, 1906, Prince Buelow publicly thanked America for her attitude
at Algeciras, implying that it was due to her representative's
conciliatory and reconciliatory conduct that the Conference did not
end in a fiasco. "This," said the Chancellor, "was the second great
service to the world rendered by America; the other," he added, "being
the bringing about of peace between Russia and Japan."
A great deal of the increased intercourse between the two countries is
due to the personal endeavours of the Emperor. What his motives are
may be conjectured with fair accuracy from a general knowledge of his
"up-to-date" character, the commercial policy of his Empire, and the
events of recent years. He has a whole-hearted admiration for the
American character and genius, so akin in many ways to his own
character and genius; and if he refuses to recommend for Germans
similar institutions to those in States, federated in a manner
somewhat analogous to that of the kingdoms and States composing his
own Empire, it is not from want of liberality of mind, but because
they are wholly opposed to Prussian tradition, because his people do
not demand them, and because he honestly believes that in respect of
topographical situation, climate, historical development, and race
feelings and sentiment, the safeguards and requirements of Germany are
widely different from those of America.
As a young man he naturally had very little to do with America or
Americans, though among his schoolboy playmates was a young American,
Poulteney Bigelow, who afterwards wrote an excellent appreciation of
the fine traits in the Emperor's character. At the same time the
Emperor himself has stated that the country always interested him, and
recent visitors bear out the statement fully. In 1889, a year after
his accession, he expressed his admiration for America, when receiving
the American Ambassador, Mr. Phelps. "From my youth on," the Emperor
said,
"I have had a great admiration for that powerful and
progressive commonwealth which you are called on to
represent, and the study of its history in peace and war has
had for me at all times a special interest. Among the many
distinguished characteristics of your people, which draw to
them the attention of the whole world, are their
enterprising spirit, their love of order, and their talent
for invention. The predominant sentiment of both peoples is
that of affinity and tested friendship, and the future can
only strengthen the heartiness of their relations."
More than twenty years have elapsed since the words were uttered, and
the prediction has been fulfilled.
Scores of anecdotes, it need hardly be said, are current in connexion
with the Emperor and American friends. One of them is that of an
American, Mr. Frank Wyberg, the husband of a lady who, with her
children, used often to visit Mr. and Mrs. Armour on their yacht
_Uttowana_ at Kiel, there met the Emperor, and was invariably kindly
greeted by him. Mr. Wyberg was summoned with his friend, General
Miles, to an audience of the Emperor in Berlin. Before going to the
palace Mr. Wyberg went to a well-known picture-dealer in the city and
bought a small but artistic painting costing about L1,000. He had the
picture neatly done up, and carried it off under his arm to the hotel
where he was to meet General Miles. As they were leaving for the
palace the General asked Mr. Wyberg what he was carrying. "Oh, only a
trifle for the Kaiser!" was the reply. The General was horrified, and
tried to dissuade his friend from bringing the picture, telling him
that the proper procedure was to ask through the Foreign Office or the
American Embassy for the Emperor's gracious acceptance of it.
Otherwise the Emperor would be annoyed, he would think badly of
American manners, and so on. Mr. Wyberg, however, was not to be
deterred, and insisted that it would be "all right." While waiting in
the reception-room for the Emperor, Mr. Wyberg unwrapped the picture
and placed it leaning against the wall on a piano. By and by the
Emperor came in, and almost the first thing he said, after shaking
hands, was to ask what the presence of the picture meant. Mr. Wyberg
explained that it was a mark of gratitude for the kindness the Emperor
had shown his wife and children at Kiel. The Emperor smiled, said it
was a very kind thought, and willingly accepted the gift. The story
has a sequel. A day or two after a Court official called at the hotel,
to get from General Miles Mr. Wyberg's initials, and after another few
days had passed reappeared with a bulky parcel. On being opened the
parcel was found to consist of a large silver loving-cup, with Mr.
Wyberg's name chased upon it, and underneath the words, "From Wilhelm
II."
Another anecdote refers to an American naval attache, a favourite of
the Emperor's. Dinner at the palace was over, and the attache, wishing
to keep a memento of the occasion, took his large menu card and
concealed it, as he thought, between his waistcoat and his shirt.
Unfortunately, when taking leave of the Emperor, the card slipped down
and part of it became visible. The Emperor's quick eye immediately
noticed it. "Hallo! H----," he exclaimed; "look out, your dickey's
coming down!" The story shows the Emperor's acquaintance with English
slang as well as his geniality.
The Emperor seems to take pleasure in displaying himself to Americans
in as republican a light as possible, and when he desires the company
of an American friend, stands on no sort of ceremony. The American's
telephone bell may ring at any hour of the day or evening, and a voice
is heard--"Here royal palace. His Majesty wishes to ask if the Herr
So-and-So will come to the palace this evening for dinner." On one
occasion this happened to Professor Burgess. The telephone at the
Hotel Adlon in Berlin rang up from Potsdam about six in the afternoon,
and there was so little time for the Professor to catch his train that
he was forced to finish his dressing _en route_. Or the invitation may
be for "a glass of beer" after dinner, about nine o'clock.
If it is a dinner invitation, the guest, in evening clothes, with his
white tie doubtless a trifle more carefully adjusted than usual,
drives or walks to the palace. He enters a gate on the south side
facing the statue of Frederick the Great, and under the archway finds
a doorway with a staircase leading immediately to the royal apartments
on the first floor. In an ante-room are other guests, a couple of
Ministers, the Rector Magnificus of the university, and perhaps a
"Roosevelt" or "exchange" professor; and if the party is not one of
men only, such as the Emperor is fond of arranging, and the Empress is
expected, the wives also of the invited guests. Without previous
notice the Emperor enters, an American lover of slang might almost say
"blows in," with quick steps and a bustling air that instantly fills
the room with life and energy, and showing a cheery smile of welcome
on his face. The guests are standing round in a half or three-quarter
circle, and the Emperor goes from one to the other, shaking hands and
delivering himself of a sentence or two, either in the form of a
question or remark, and then passing on. When it is not a bachelors'
party, the Empress comes in later with her ladies. A servant in the
royal livery of red and gold, on a signal from the Emperor, throws
open a door leading to the dining-room, and the Emperor and Empress
enter first. The guests take their places according to the cards on
the table. If it is a men's party of, say, four guests, the Emperor
will seat them on his right and left and immediately opposite, with an
adjutant or two as makeweights and in case he should want to send for
plans or books. On these occasions he is usually in the dark blue
uniform of a Prussian infantry general, with an order or two blazing
on his breast. He sits very upright, and starts and keeps going the
conversation with such skill and verve that soon every one, even the
shyest, is drawn into it. There is plenty of argument and divergence
of view. If the Emperor is convinced that he is right, he will, as has
more than once occurred, jestingly offer to back his opinion with a
wager. "I'll bet you"--he will exclaim, with all the energy of an
English schoolboy. He enjoys a joke or witticism immensely, and leans
back in his chair as he joins in the hearty peal about him. When
cigars or cigarettes are handed round, he will take an occasional puff
at one of the three or four cigarettes he allows himself during the
evening, or sip at a glass of orangeade placed before him and filled
from time to time. When he feels disposed he rises, and having shaken
hands with his guests, now standing about him, retires into his
workroom. A few moments later the guests disperse.
Conversation, both in England and Germany, sometimes turns on the
question whether or not the Emperor will be known to future
generations as William "the Great." It is agreed on all sides that he
will not take a place among the mediocrities or sink into oblivion. We
have, though only negatively and indirectly, his own view of the
matter, if, that is, it may be deduced from the fact that he has more
than once tried to attach this _epitheton ornans_ to the memory of his
grandfather. At Hamburg in 1891 he desired a statue to the Emperor
William I to bear the inscription "William the Great." The cool common
sense of the cautious Hamburgers refused to anticipate the decision of
posterity and placed on the pedestal the simple words "William the
First." In deference to the Emperor's well-known wishes, if not at his
request, the Hamburg-Amerika line of steamers christened one of their
ocean greyhounds _Wilhelm der Grosse_. The mere fact that people
discuss the question in his lifetime is of happy augury for the
Emperor. Perhaps some other epithet will be found for him. "Puffing
Billy" is one of his titles among English officers, taken from the
name given locally to Stephenson's first locomotive. But history has
many ranks in her peerage and many epithets at her disposal--great,
good, fair, lionhearted, silent--_that_ the Emperor will not have--and
a host more. Maybe the greatest rulers were those whom history, as
though in despair of finding a single term with which to do them
justice, has refrained from decorating. Timur, Akbar, Attila, Julius
Caesar, Elizabeth, Victoria, Napoleon have no epithets, and need none.
However, it is clear that a verdict on the Emperor's deserts is
premature. Suppose him at the bar of history. The case is still
proceeding, the evidence is not complete, counsel have not been heard,
and--most obvious defect of any--the jury has not been impanelled.
More than half a century has passed since the Emperor was born. How
time flies!
"Alas, alas, O Postumus, Postumus,
The years glide by and are lost to us, lost to us."
But not the memories they enshrine. It is, let us imagine, the night
of the Emperor's Jubilee, and he lies in the old Schloss, still awake,
reflecting on the past. What a multitude of happenings, gay and grave,
throng to his recollection, what a glorious and crowded canvas unrolls
itself before his mental vision! The toy steamer on the Havel; the
games in the palace corridors, with the grim features of the Great
Elector betrayed, one is tempted to think, into a half-smile as he
watches the innocent gaiety of the romping children from the old
wainscoted walls; the irksome but disciplinary hours in the Cassel
schoolroom; the youthful escapades with those carefree Borussian
comrades at the university on the broad bosom of Father Rhine; the
excursions and picnics among the Seven Hills; the visits to England,
its crowded and bustling capital, its country seats with their
pleasant lawns and stately oaks; the war-ships in the Solent, with
their black mass and frowning guns, as they towered, like Milton's
Leviathan, above his head.
What a good time it was, and how rich in manifold and picturesque
impressions!
The canvas continues to unroll and a literary period opens--that age
between youth and manhood, of all ages most passionate and ideal, when
we are enthralled and moved by what we read--by those studies which
"_adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res
ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent, delectant
domi, non impediunt foris; pernoctant nobiscum,
peregrinantur, rusticantur_."
It was the Lohengrin period, when, filled with the ardour and
imaginativeness of high-souled youth, the future Emperor was dimly
thinking of all he would do in the days to come for the happiness and
prosperity of his people, nay, of all mankind.
Another tableau presents itself. Life has now become real and the
Emperor's soldiering days have begun--never to conclude! His regiment
is his world; parades and drills, the orderly-room and the barrack
square occupy his time; and would seem monotonous and hard but for the
little Eden with its Eve close beside them.
The Emperor turns uneasily, for his thoughts recur to the painful
circumstances of his accession; but calmness soon succeeds as the
curtain rises on the splendid panorama of the reign. He sees himself,
a young and hitherto unknown actor, leaving the wings and taking the
very centre of the stage, while the vast audience sits silent and
attentive, as yet hardly grasping the significance of his words and
gestures, emphatic though they are. And then he recalls the years of
_Sturm und Drang_, the growth of Empire in spite of grudging rivals
and of fellow-countrymen as yet not wholly conscious of their
destinies, which one can now see constituted a whole drama in
themselves, fraught with great consequences to the world.
But we are keeping the Emperor awake when he should be left to
well-deserved repose. He has doubtless half forgotten it all; the
Bismarck episode is one of those
"... old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago"
of which the poet sings. One unquiet political care excepted, all the
rest must be pleasant for him to remember--the rising with the dawn,
the hurried little breakfast with the Empress, the pawing horses of
the adjutants and escort in the courtyard of the palace; the constant
travelling in and far beyond the Empire; the incessant speech-making,
with its appeals to the past and its promises, nobly realized, of
"splendid days" in the future--its calls to the people to arms, to the
sea, to the workshop, to school, to church, to anything praiseworthy,
provided only it was action for the common good; the dockyards in Kiel
and Danzig, with their noise of "busy hammers closing rivets up"; the
ever-swelling trade statistics; and the proud feeling that at last his
country was coming into her own.
Even the sensation the Emperor caused from time to time in other
countries must have had a certain charm for him--endless telegrams,
endless scathing editorials, endless movement and excitement. There is
no fun like work, they say. The Emperor worked hard and enjoyed
working. It was the "personal regiment," maybe, and it could not last
for ever; but while it did it was doubtless very gratifying, and,
notwithstanding all his critics say, magnificently successful.
Those strenuous times are long over, and if strenuous times have yet
to come they will find the Emperor alert and knowing better how to
deal with them. He has, one may be sure, no thoughts of well-earned
rest or dignified repose--he probably never will, with his strong
conception of duty and his interest in the fortunes of his Empire.
Still, he is a good deal changed. Time has taught him more than his
early tutor, worthy Dr. Hinzpeter, ever taught him; and if his spring
was boisterous, and his summer gusty and uncertain, a mellow autumn
gives promise of a hale and kindly winter.
INDEX
Abdul Aziz, 259.
Absolutism, 2, 295, 368 _seq_.
Accession, date, I; period, 69 _seq_.
Achilleion, 317.
Aegir, Song to, 224.
Agadir, 264 _seq_.
Alexandra, Queen, 327.
Algeciras Conference, 261 _seq_.;
Act of, 262.
Alsace-Lorraine, 84 _seq_.
America,
art exhibition, 222;
Germany and, 238;
Frederick the Great and, 242;
squadron at Kiel, 244;
commercial relations with, 331, 380 _seq_.
Anarchism, 42 _seq_.
Anglo-French Agreement, 1904, 259 _seq_.
Anglo-German Agreement,
1890, 140;
1904, 335;
relations, 4-7, 243, 282, 335 _seq_.
Anglo-Japanese Agreement, 201.
Anti-Semites, 178.
Arbitration, compulsory, 340.
Aristocracy, German, 114.
Armament, limitation of, 340.
Army,
accession speech to, 69;
importance of, 71;
true character of, 285;
Emperor and, 294.
Art, Emperor on, 202, 205 _seq_.;
speech to sculptors, 207;
German ideals, 218.
Attempt on,
Emperor, 202;
on William I, 42.
Augusta, Empress, wife of William I, 43, 45.
Auguste, Victoria, present Empress, 37 _seq_.
"Babel und Bibel," 246.
Baghdad railway, 200.
Balkans, 339.
Ballin, 367.
Battenberg affair, 55.
Bebel, August, 58, 90, 359. _See_ Social Democracy
Bennigsen, von, 13.
Berlin palace (Schloss), 114.
Bethmann Hollweg, 322 _seq_.
Biedermeier time, 167.
Bismarck, 13;
Empress Fred. and, 44;
William I and, 43 _seq_.;
on Divine Right, 60 _seq_.;
on foreign policy, 76;
resignation, 104,133;
Emperor and, 49, 131;
"blood and iron" speech, 128;
Emperor's account of quarrel with, 135;
journey to Vienna, 141;
death, 143.
"Bloc" party, 281, 288, 322.
Boer war, German policy and, 156, 303.
Bonn, Emperor at, 29; address at, 203.
Borussia, 30, 36, 203.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 329.
Boulanger, 52, 76.
Boxer troubles, 46, 194 _seq_.
Brandon, 338.
"Brilliant second" speech, 279.
Brooks, Sydney, 361.
Buelow, Prince von, 47;
succeeds Hohenlohe, 187;
fainting fit, 322;
resignation, 322.
Burgess, Prof., 241.
Butler, Dr. Nicholas Murray, 272.
Byzantinism, 121 _seq_.
Cadinen, 334.
Camarilla, 277
Caprivi, von, 141;
treaties, 141, 152 _seq_.;
chancellorship, 151.
Caroline Islands, 151.
Casablanca, 264.
Centrum, 3, 280.
Chamberlain, Mr., 158, 258.
Chamberlain, Stewart, 348.
Chancellor, "responsibility," 289 _seq_.
China,
relations with, 193;
Boxer indemnity, 197.
Chun, Prince, 197 _seq_.
Churchill, Winston, 337.
Colonial development, 148 _seq_.
Commercial treaties, 152; American, 331.
Conscription, 191.
Constitution, German and British compared, 57.
Corps, student, 30 _seq_.
Crefeld, 278.
Crown Prince, 14, 18;
income, 112;
marriage, 270;
Indian tour, 328;
at English coronation, 339;
in aeroplane, 359.
Court,
comparison with English, 109;
nobility, 113.
Cowes, 75.
_Daily Telegraph_,
interview, 302 _seq_.;
text of, 304;
Buelow and, 311 _seq_.;
Emperor's undertaking, 310.
Delcasse, 261, 282.
Delitzsch, Prof., 246.
Dewey, Admiral, 170.
Dictator Paragraph, 86.
Diedrich, Admiral, 170.
Dingley tariff, 331.
Disarmament, 317.
Divine Right, 331 _seq_.
Dreibund, _see_ Triple Alliance.
Dreyfus case, 178.
Dual Alliance.
(Germany and Austria), 79;
(Russia and France), 141.
Duel, _see_ Mensur.
Dynasty, _see_ Hohenzollern.
Education, Emperor on, 98 _seq_.
Edward VII,
at Kiel, 253;
visits Berlin, 323;
funeral, 327.
Elector, Great, 64, 72.
Emperor,
birth, 12;
marriage, 37;
brothers and sisters, 18;
offspring, 40;
first visit England, 20;
at Bonn, 29;
on Art, 207;
and theatre, 355;
on religion, 246;
character, 363 _seq_.;
and people, 368, 372.
Empress,
present, marriage, 37;
character, 39.
Farmer, Emperor as, 334.
Finance reform, 321.
Fleet, English, at Kiel, 253;
American, 244. _See_ Navy.
Flora bust, 324 _seq_.
Foreign policy, in Orient, 199 _seq_.;
Emperor's, 269.
France, and Germany, 51;
Franco-German Agreement, 1911, 266.
Frankfort, treaty of, 153.
Frederick the Great,
death, 120;
tomb, 121;
and navy, 167;
statue, 242;
Emperor and, 251.
Frederick III, 14;
as Crown Prince, 45;
last illness, 54.
Frederick, Empress, 15 _seq_.;
Bismarck and, 44;
death, 204.
Future, "Our future lies on the water," 203.
General Elections, 280, 333.
"Germans to the Front," 245.
Germany,
"Greater," 146;
to-day, 366;
foreign policy, 199, 269.
George V, 174, 237, 339.
George, Lloyd, speech, 336.
Goluchowski, Count, 279.
Goschen, Lord, 160.
Government, dynastic not democratic, 56 _seq_.
Great Elector,
Emperor and, 72;
German navy and, 166.
Grey, Sir Edward, 338.
Grieg, composer, 225; death, 287.
Griscom, ambassador, 319.
Guelphs, 333.
Guildhall, speech at,
1891, 75;
1907, 283.
Hamburg-Amerika line, 367.
Hannover, 333.
Harvard University, 272.
Heine, 13, 374.
Heligoland, 150.
Henry, Prince, 18;
sent Kiautschau, 165;
visits America, 241.
Highcliffe Castle, 285.
Hill, Dr. D.J., 318 _seq_.
Hinzpeter, Dr., 287.
Hoedel, attempt, 43.
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst, Prince, 47;
character, 153;
chancellor, 185;
resigns, 187.
Hohenzollern, 2, 11, 17, 23, 41, 56, 72;
Divine Right and, 62 _seq_., 332.
Iltis, gunboat, 195.
Italy, 261 _seq_.
Jameson raid,
Emperor's telegram on, 154;
date of, 159.
Jews, Emperor and, 378.
Journalists, attack on, 329.
Junker, 123.
Ketteler, von, murder of, 195.
Kiautschau, 145, 150.
Kiel, canal, 144;
first regatta, do.;
harbour, 168;
American squadron at, 244;
Edward VII at, 253.
Koenigsberg, speech at, 332.
Kruger, telegram, the, 154 _seq_.;
European tour, 155.
_Kulturkampf_, Emperor and, 50.
Labourdonnais, 167.
Labour Party, 93.
Leoncavallo, 253.
Liberalism, Emperor and, 126.
Liman, Dr. Paul, 62, 360.
Limitation of armaments, 340.
List, Prof., 168.
Lloyd George, speech, 336.
Louise, Queen, 41.
Luderitz, 149.
Mackenzie, Sir Morell, 16, 54.
Madrid Convention, 263.
Magna Charta, Germany's, 1.
Mahan, Captain, 164.
Manila, 170.
Marakesch, 264.
Marble Palace, 118.
"March Days," 128 _seq_.
Mensur, 29 _seq_.
Menzel,
painter, 179;
death, 255.
Moabit riots, 329.
Mommsen, Emperor and, 251.
Monroe doctrine, 240.
Morocco, 255 _seq_.
Navy, German,
First Navy Law, 145;
Prince William and, 163;
early history of, 166;
auctioned, 168;
early proposals, 169 _seq_.;
legislative stages, 171;
Grey's proposal, 317.
New Palace, Potsdam, 116.
Nobiling, attempt, 42, 90.
"November Storm," 289 _seq_.
Open door, The, 257.
"Our future lies on the water," 203.
Oxford university, 284.
Palestine, 145;
journey to, 176.
Panther, 264.
Parliament, introduction;
parliamentary rule, 58;
chancellor and, 291;
Emperor and, 294;
_See_ Reichstag.
"Personal regiment," 289, 296, 371.
Peters, Carl, 149.
"Place in the sun," 204.
Polypus, removed, 250.
Potsdam, 199.
Prussia, at Emperor's birth, 12;
Diet, 293;
electoral reform in, 316.
Quinquennat, 152.
Raid, Jameson, 159.
Rationalism, 344, 369.
Reaction, 123.
_Realpolitik_, see _Weltpolitik_;
in sport, 357.
_Rechtstaat_, 369 _seq_.
Reichstag, introduction, 280, 292 333, 377.
Reinsurance treaty, 133.
Religion, Emperor on, 246.
Rhodes, Cecil, 284.
Richard, Prof., 370.
"Roland von Berlin," 253.
Roosevelt, Alice, 241;
president, 253;
visits Berlin, 325 _seq_.;
professorships, 272.
Russia and Germany, relations, 80.
Russo-Japanese war, 252.
Saladin, 177.
Samoa, 151.
Sans Souci, 119, 179.
Sardanapalus, 235.
Septennat, 53, 152.
Seymour, Admiral, 195.
Shimonoseki, treaty of, 193.
"Shining armour," 328.
Social Democracy, introduction;
Emperor and, 87;
history of, 89;
programme, 91;
causes of, 94.
Socialist laws, 103, 279 _seq_.
Socialism, 92; _See_ Social Democracy.
Sport, in Germany, 357.
"Star of commerce," phrase, 165.
State, German interpretation of, 292.
Stein, Dr. Adolf, 158.
Stoessel, General, 195, 253.
Stone, Melville, 242.
Suffragettes, Emperor and, 332.
Sultan, promise to, 145, 177.
Swinemunde despatch, 244.
Taku Forts, 195.
Tangier, 256, 259;
Emperor's speech at, 260, 268.
Theatre, Emperor on, 230;
Germans and the, 254.
"Times," the, 297, 299, 301, 324.
Tirpitz, von, Admiral, 338.
Tower, ambassador, 318.
Trade Unionism, 92 _seq_.
Transvaal, 156 _seq_.; 303.
Tree, Sir Beerbohm, 287.
Treitschke, von, on Divine Right, 59;
on Bismarck, 125.
Trench, Captain, 338.
Triple Alliance, Emperor on, 77;
history of, 78;
provisions, 79;
renewals, 38, 339.
"Urias Letter," 142.
Universities, England and Germany compared, 98.
"Unser Fritz," 14.
Venezuela, 158, 239.
Victoria Louise, Princess, 333.
Victoria, Queen, 167;
death, 201.
"Von Gottes Gnaden," 56 _seq_.;.
doctrine to-day, 68.
Waldersee, Countess, 45;
Count, 46, 196.
Weihaiwei, 194.
_Weltpolitik_, 51, 144;
Buelow on, 147;
open door and, 201;
foreign policy and, 201, 192, 201, 203.
William I,
career, 42;
character, 43;
death, 54;
parliament and, 294.
Williams, George Valentine, 232.
Wyberg, Frank, 383.
Zeppelin, Count, 358.
Back to Full Books
|