William of Germany

The Emperor's world-policy was referred to more than once about this time by Chancellor Prince Bulow in the Reichstag. "It is," he said on one occasion, "Germany's intention and duty to protect the great and ever-growing oversea interests which she has acquired through the development of conditions." "We recognize," he continued,

"that we have no longer interests only round our own fireside or in the neighbourhood of the church clock, but everywhere where German industry and Germany's commercial spirit have penetrated; and we must foster these interests within the bounds of possibility and good sense."

"Our world-policy," he said on another occasion in the same place,

"is not a policy of interference, much less a policy of intervention: had it interfered in South Africa (he was alluding to the Boer War) it must have intervened, and intervention implies the use of force."

On yet another occasion he explained that a prudent world-policy must go hand in hand with a sound protective policy for home industry, and that its basis must be a strong national home policy.

There is nothing in all this, even supposing Germany's interests at that time were purposely exaggerated, to which the foreigner could reasonably object. The foreigner felt perhaps slightly uncomfortable when the same statesman, departing for a moment from his usual objective standpoint, spoke of the German "traversing the world with a sword in one hand and a spade and trowel in the other"; but otherwise no act of Germany's world-policy need have inspired alarm, or need inspire alarm at the present time, in sensible foreign minds. The rapidity of its action probably helped to excite a feeling that it could not be altogether honest or above-board; but it should be remembered that the new Empire had much leeway to make up in the race with other nations, and that quick development was rendered necessary by her commercial treaties, by her protective system, by the unexpected growth of industry and trade, by the continuous increase of population, the development of the mercantile marine, and the growing consciousness of national strength.

And if there is nothing in Germany's development of her world-policy to which the foreigner can reasonably object, there is much in it at which he can reasonably rejoice. Compet.i.tion is good for him, for it puts him on his mettle. A large and prosperous German population extends his markets and means more business and more profit. The minds of both Germans and the foreigner become broader, more mutually sympathetic and appreciative. The elder Pitt warned his fellow-countrymen against letting France become a maritime, a commercial, or a colonial power. She has become all three, and what injury has occurred therefrom to England or any other nation?

Germany's colonial development dates from about the year 1884, the period of the "scramble for Africa." The first step to acquiring German colonies for the Empire was taken in 1883, when a merchant of Bremen, Edouard Luderitz, made an agreement with the Hottentots by which the bay of Angra Pequena in South-West Africa, with an area of fifty thousand square kilometres, was ceded to him. Luderitz applied to Bismarck for imperial protection. Bismarck inquired of England whether she claimed rights of sovereignty over the bay. Lord Granville replied in the negative, but added that he did not consider the seizure of possession by another Power allowable. Indignant at what he called a "monstrous claim" on all the land in the world which was without a master, Bismarck telegraphed to the German Consul at the Cape to "declare officially to the British Government that Herr Luderitz and his acquisitions are under the protection of the Empire."

The Bremen pioneer was fated to gain no advantage from his enterprise, as he was drowned in the Orange River in 1886. His example as a colonist, however, was followed by three Hanseatic merchants, Woermann, Jansen, and Thormealen, of Hamburg, who acquired land in Togo, a small kingdom to the east of the British Gold Coast, and in the Cameroons, a large tract in the bend of the Gulf of Guinea, extending to Lake Chad, and applied for German imperial protection.

Bismarck sent Consul-General Nachtigall with the gunboat _Moewe_ in 1884 to hoist the German flag at various ports. Five days after this had been done the English gunboat _Flirt_ arrived, but was thus too late to obtain Togoland and the Cameroons for England.

Dr. Carl Peters, the German Cecil Rhodes, now arrived at Zanzibar, and on obtaining concessions from the Sultan founded the German East Africa Company, with a charter from his Government. German hopes of great colonial expansion began to run high, but they were dashed by the Anglo-German agreement of June, 1890, delimiting the spheres of England, Germany, and the Sultan of Zanzibar, and stipulating that Germany should receive Heligoland from England in return for German recognition of English suzerainty in Zanzibar and the possession of Uganda, which had recently been taken for Germany by Dr. Peters. At that time Germans thought very little of Heligoland, but there was then no Anglo-German tension, and no apprehension of an English descent on the German coast.

The lease for ninety-nine years of Kiautschau, a small area of about four hundred square miles on the coast of China, was obtained from the Chinese in connexion with the murder of two German missionaries in 1897 in the Shantung Province, of which Kiautschau forms a part. Herr von Bulow, then only Foreign Secretary, referred to the transaction in the Reichstag in words that may be quoted, as they describe German foreign policy in the Far East. "Our cruiser fleet," he said,

"was sent to Kiautschau Bay to exact reparation for the murder of German Catholic missionaries on the one hand, and to obtain greater security for the future against a repet.i.tion of such occurrences. The Government,"

he continued,

"has nothing but benevolent and friendly designs regarding China, and has no wish either to offend or provoke her. We are ready in East Asia to recognize the interests of other Great Powers in the certain confidence that our own interests will be duly respected by them. In one word--we desire to put no one in the shade, but we too demand our place in the sun. In East Asia, as in the West Indies, we shall endeavour, in accordance with the traditions of German policy, without unnecessary rigour, but also without weakness, to guard our rights and our interests."

In mentioning the West Indies the Foreign Secretary was alluding to a quarrel Germany had at this time with the negro republic of Haiti, owing to the arrest and imprisonment of a German subject in that island. Kiautschau is administratively under the German Admiralty.

The Caroline, Marianne, and Palau Islands, including the Marschall Islands and the islands of the Bismarck archipelago, were bought from Spain this year for twenty-five million pesetas, or about one million sterling. The islands are valuable in German eyes, not only for their fertility and capacity for plantation development, but as affording good harbourage and coaling stations on the sea-road to China, j.a.pan, and Central America. By the agreement with England and America, which in this year also put an end to the th.o.r.n.y question of Samoan administration, Germany acquired the Samoan islands of Upolu and Sawaii in the South Sea.

The ten years we are now concerned with were perhaps the most strenuous and picturesque of the Emperor's life hitherto. He was now his own Chancellor, though that post was nominally occupied by General von Caprivi and Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe successively. He was Chancellor, too, knowing that not a hundred miles off the old pilot of the ship of State was watching, keenly and not too benevolently, his every act and word. He was conscious that the eyes of the world were fixed on him, and that every other Government was waiting with interest and curiosity to learn what sort of rival in statecraft and diplomacy it would henceforward have to reckon with. Naturally many plans coursed through his restlessly active brain, but there were always, one may imagine, two compelling and ever-present thoughts at the back of them. One of these was a determination to promote the moral and material prosperity of his people so as to make them a model and thoroughly modern commonwealth; the other, the resolve that as Emperor he would not allow Germany to be overlooked, to be treated as a _quant.i.te negligeable_, in the discussion or decision of international affairs.

The Chancellorship of General von Caprivi, who had been successively Minister of War and Marine, lasted from March, 1890, to October, 1894.

He may have been a good commanding general, but he has left no reputation either as a man of marked character or as a statesman of exceptional ability. Nor was either character or ability much needed.

He was, as every one knew, a man of immensely inferior ability to his great predecessor, but every one knew also that the Emperor intended to be his own Chancellor, pursue his own policy, and take responsibility for it. Taking responsibility is, naturally, easier for a Hohenzollern monarch than for most men, since he is responsible to no one but himself. With the appointment of Caprivi the Emperor's "personal regiment" may be said to have begun.

During General von Caprivi's term of office some measures of importance have to be noted, among them the Quinquennat, which replaced Bismarck's Septennat and fixed the military budget for five years instead of seven; the reduction of the period of conscription for the infantry from three years to two; and the decision not to renew Bismarck's reinsurance treaty with Russia.

The chief event, however, with which Chancellor Caprivi's name is usually a.s.sociated, is the conclusion of commercial treaties between Germany and most other continental countries. Other countries had followed Germany's example and adopted a protective system, and with a view to the avoidance of tariff wars, Caprivi, strongly supported, it need hardly be said, by an Emperor who had just declared that "the world at the end of the nineteenth century stands under the star of commerce, which breaks down the barriers between nations," began a series of commercial treaty negotiations.

The first agreements were made with Germany's allies in the Triplice, Austria and Italy. Treaties with Switzerland and Belgium, Servia and Rumania, followed. Russia held aloof for a time, but as a great grain-exporting country she too found it advisable to come to terms.

With France there was no need of an agreement, since she was bound by the Treaty of Frankfurt, concluded after the war of 1870, to grant Germany her minimum duties. One of the regrettable results of the Empire's new commercial policy was an antagonism between agriculture and industry which now declared itself and has remained active to the present day. The political cause of Caprivi's fall from power, if power it can be called, was the twofold hostility of the Conservative and Liberal parties in Parliament, that of the Conservatives being due to the injury supposed to be done to landlord interests by the commercial treaties, and that of the Liberals by an Education Bill, which, it was alleged, would hand the Prussian school system completely over to the Church. Perhaps the main cause, however, was the general unpopularity he incurred by attacking, officially and through the press, his predecessor, Bismarck, the idol of the people.

It was in the Chancellorship of Prince Hohenlohe, which ended in 1900, that the most memorable events of this remarkable decade occurred; but, as was to be expected, and as the Emperor himself must have expected, the Prince, now a man of seventy-five, played a very secondary part with regard to them. The Prince was what the Germans call a "house-friend" of the Hohenzollern family and related to it. He was useful, his contemporaries say, as a brake on the impetuous temper of his imperial master, though he did not, we may be sure, turn him from any of the main designs he had at heart. Prince Hohenlohe, in character, was good-nature and amiability personified. He was beloved by all cla.s.ses and parties, and no foreigner can read his Memoirs without a feeling of friendliness for a Personality so moderate and calm and simple. A note he makes in one of his diaries amusingly ill.u.s.trates the simple side of his character. He is dining with the Emperor, when the Emperor, catching the Prince's eye, which we may be sure was on the alert to gather up any of the royal beams that might come his way, raises his gla.s.s in sign of amity. "I felt so overcome,"

notes the Prince, "that I almost spilt the champagne."

The famous "Kruger telegram" episode occurred during the Chancellorship of Prince Hohenlohe.

For many years the sending of the telegram was cited as a convincing proof of the Emperor's "impulsive" character, and it was not until 1909 that the truth of the matter was stated by Chancellor von Bulow in the Reichstag. In March of that year he said:

"It has been asked, was this telegram an act of personal initiative or an act of State? In this regard let me refer you to your own proceedings. You will remember that the responsibility for the telegram was never repudiated by the directors of our political business at the time. The telegram was an act of State, the result of official consultations; it was in nowise an act of personal initiative on the part of his Majesty the Kaiser. Whoever a.s.serts that it was is ignorant of what preceded it and does his Majesty completely wrong."

The Emperor's telegram to President Kruger, despatched on January 3, 1896, ran as follows:--

"I congratulate you most sincerely on having succeeded with your people, and without calling on the help of foreign Powers, by opposing your own force to an armed band which broke into your country to disturb the peace, in restoring quiet and in maintaining the independence of your country against external attack."

The echoes of this historic message were heard immediately in every country, but naturally nowhere more loudly than in England; and the reverberation of them is audible to the present day. In Germany, however, for a day or two, the telegram seems to have surprised no one, was indeed spoken of with approval by deputies in the Reichstag, and seems not to have occurred to any one in the light of a serious diplomatic mistake. This state of feeling did not last long, and when the English newspapers arrived an entirely new light was thrown on the matter. The _Morning Post_ concluded an article with the words: "It is not easy to speak calmly of the Kaiser's telegram. The English people will not forget it, and in future will always think of it when considering its foreign policy." The British Government's comment on the telegram was to put a flying squadron in commission and issue an official statement _urbi et orbi_, calling attention to the Convention made with President Kruger in London in 1884, reserving the supervision of the foreign relations of the Transvaal to the British Government.

The Emperor himself appears to have recognized that he and his advisers had made a serious blunder, and that a gesture which, it is highly probable, was partly prompted by the chivalrous side of his character, was certain to be gravely misunderstood. At any rate his policy, or that of his Government, changed, and instead of following up his encouraging words with mediation or intervention, he a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of neutrality towards the war which soon after began.

Subsequently, in the Reichstag, Chancellor von Bulow described the course the German Government pursued immediately before and during the war; and there seems no reason to discredit his account. The speech was made apropos of the projected visit of President Kruger to Berlin, when on his tour of despair to the capitals of Europe while the war was still in progress. He was cheered by boulevard crowds in Paris, itself a thing of no great significance, and was received at the Elysee and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Delca.s.se. The visitor was very reserved on both occasions, and confined himself to sounding his hosts as to whether or not he could reckon on their good offices.

From Paris he started for Berlin, where he had engaged a large and expensive first-floor suite of rooms in a fashionable hotel. At Cologne, however, shortly after entering Germany, a telegram from Potsdam awaited him, announcing the Emperor's refusal to grant him audience. The imperial telegram consisted of a few words to the effect that the Emperor was "not in a position" to receive him. Nor in truth was he. An audience at that moment would have meant war between Germany and England.

As to German policy with regard to the Boer War, Prince Bulow explained that the German Government deplored the war not only because it was between two Christian and white races, that were, moreover, of the same Germanic stock, but also because it drew within the evil circle of its consequences important German economic and political interests. He went on to describe their nature, enumerating under the one head the thousands of German settlers in South Africa, the industrial establishments and banks they had founded there, the busy trade and the millions sterling of invested capital; while, as regarded the other head, the Government had to take care that the war exercised no injurious influence on German territory in that region.

The Government, the Chancellor claimed, had done everything consistent with neutrality and the conservation of German interests to hinder the outbreak of the war. It had "loyally" warned the two Dutch republics of the disposition in Europe, and left them in no doubt as to the att.i.tude Germany would adopt if war should come. These communications were not made directly, but through the Hague authorities and the Consul-General of the Netherlands in Pretoria. At that time the United States Government had come forward with a proposal for a submission of the quarrel to its arbitration, but the proposal had been rejected by President Kruger.

A little later the President changed his mind, but it was then too late and war was declared. Once the die was cast, Germany could only with propriety have interfered, provided she had reason to believe her mediation would be accepted by both parties: otherwise her conduct would not be mediation, but be regarded, in accordance with diplomatic usage, as intervention with coercive measures in the background. For such a policy Germany had no disposition, for it meant running the risk of a diplomatic defeat on the one hand and of an armed conflict with England on the other.

As regards the visit of the President to Berlin and the Emperor's refusal to receive him, the Chancellor asked would a reception have done any good either to the President or to Germany, and he answered his own question with an emphatic negative. To the President an audience would have been of no more use than the ovations and demonstrations he was greeted with in Paris. To Germany a reception would have meant a shifting of international relations to the disadvantage of the country: in other words, would have meant the risk, almost the certainty, of war. "Wars," said the Chancellor in this connexion,

"are much more easily unchained through elementary popular pa.s.sions, through the pa.s.sionate excitation of public opinion, than in the old days through the ambitions of monarchs or through the jealousies of Ministers."

And he concluded:

"With regard to England we stand entirely independent of her: we are not a hair's-breadth more dependent on England than England is on us. But we are ready on the basis of mutual consideration and complete equality--about this obvious preliminary condition for a proper relation between two Great Powers we have never left any Power in doubt: I say, we are ready on this basis to live with England in peace, friendship, and harmony. To play the Don Quixote and to lay the lance in rest and attack wherever in the world English windmills are to be found, for that we are not called upon."

But just then there was little prospect of "peace friendship, and harmony" with England. The world remembers, and unfortunately the English people do not forget, that they had nowhere more bitter and offensive critics than in Germany. One refined method of opprobrium was the unprohibited sale in the main streets of Berlin of spittoons bearing the countenance of the English Colonial Minister, Mr.

Chamberlain. A war with England would at that moment have been highly popular in Germany, but as the Chancellor wisely reminded the Parliament, it was the duty of the statesman to protect international relations from disturbance by intrigue or by popular demonstration.

Finally the Chancellor dealt with a report widely current in England and Germany at the time, to the effect that the Emperor's refusal to receive President Kruger was due to the influence of his uncle, King Edward. The Chancellor emphatically denied that any pressure of the kind from the English Court, or from any other source, had been employed, and ended by saying:

"To suppose that his Majesty the Kaiser could allow himself to be influenced by family relations shows little understanding of his character, or of his love of country.

For his Majesty solely the national standpoint is decisive, and if it were otherwise, and family relations or dynastic considerations determined our foreign policy, I would not remain Minister a day longer."

A precisely similar and unfounded charge, it will be remembered, was made against King Edward VII in 1902, to the effect that it was Court influence, not the deliberate judgment of the Cabinet, that was the efficient cause of the co-operation of the British with the German fleet in the demonstration off the coast of Venezuela.

A recent writer, Dr. Adolf Stein, gives an account of the sending of the famous telegram which corroborates that of Prince von Bulow. The telegram, according to this version, was a well-considered answer to a question from the Transvaal Government put to the German Government a month before the Raid occurred, and when the Transvaal Government got the first inkling of the preparations being made for it. President Kruger asked what att.i.tude Germany would adopt in case of a war between England and the Boer republics. The answer given to the person who made the inquiry on behalf of the Transvaal Government was that President Kruger might rest a.s.sured of Germany's

"diplomatic support in so far as it was also Germany's interest that the independence of the Boer States should be maintained, but that for anything beyond this he should not reckon on Germany's a.s.sistance or that of any Great Power."

This answer, Dr. Stein says, was in course of transmission by the post when the Raid occurred.

The Raid was made on January 1st. The event was at once telegraphed to Berlin, where Prince Hohenlohe was Chancellor, with Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein, afterwards German Amba.s.sador in Constantinople and London, as his Foreign Secretary. According to Dr. Stein, they drew up a telegram to President Kruger, and on the morning of the 3rd laid it before the Emperor, who had come early from Potsdam for consultation on the matter. The Chancellor, it should be mentioned, had been at Potsdam the day previous, but at that time the news of the Raid had not reached the Emperor. The Emperor, Chancellor, and Foreign Secretary now decided that a telegram congratulating President Kruger for having repulsed the Raid "without foreign aid" was the best non-committal form to adopt. The Emperor, Dr. Stein continues, raised some objections, but was over-persuaded by Prince Hohenlohe and von Bieberstein.

As confirming this version, a little note in Lord Goschen's Biography may be recalled, in which Lord Goschen confides to a friend a few weeks before the Raid that the "Germans were taking the Boers under their wing, as the Americans had done with the Venezuelans."