I.
Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg is to-day the most tragic figure amongst the statesmen of Europe. For three years he has borne a crushing burden, a burden which even Bismarck, the man of blood, was unable to bear in the piping days of peace; a burden from which the Iron Chancellor had to seek periodical liberation amidst the heather and the pine-forests of his native Brandenburg. As Prime Minister of Prussia, as Chancellor of the German Empire, as Foreign Secretary of the Teutonic Alliance, he has to keep a firm grip of all the threads, both of internal and of external policy. Distracted between Catholics and Protestants, between agrarians and industrials, between Germany and Austria, he has been made responsible for all the blunders of his subordinates. A rich man, and the scion of an historic house, he has led the life of a galley-slave; an honest man, he has been doomed to perpetual prevarication; a humane man, he has had to condone every atrocity; an independent man, he must cringe before his master; a peaceful man, he must submit to the continuation of insensate slaughter; a highly gifted intellectual, he has had to pursue a policy of insane stupidity. Twenty-five years ago a professor of the University of Munich, Dr. Quidde, compared the Kaiser to Caligula. The analogy between William and Caligula or Nero points to another analogy, that between Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg and Seneca, the ill-fated counsellor of the Cæsars. Read in the Annals of Tacitus the speech of Seneca to Nero, and you will perhaps understand the position of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg in the Imperial Palace of Potsdam.