CHAPTER IX.—A YEAR OF HELPFUL LESSONS
The first few months of 1889 present nothing of special note to the observer. There was perhaps a trifle more nervousness on the bourses during that early spring-time which, for some occult reason, is the chosen season of alarmist war rumours, than had been usual in the lifetime of the old Kaiser, but this signified no more than a vague uneasiness born of the sword-clanking reputation which had preceded William’s accession to the throne. The surface of events at Berlin seemed smooth enough, although dissensions and jealousies were warring fiercely underneath. Everybody was talking about the tremendous battle going on between the Bismarcks and the Waldersees, but of public evidence of this conflict there was none, This very reticence shows that the Chancellor must thus early have become impressed with the menacing power of the combinations confronting him, for it was never his habit to be silent about quarrels in which he was confident of victory. He must have become truly alarmed when, on February 25th, he gave a great dinner, at which the Kaiser and Waldersee were the principal guests. So far from creating a false impression of cordiality, this banquet, with its incongruous people and its hollow gaiety, only strengthened the notion that Bismarck was toppling.
In May, however, two things happened which at the time much occupied the world’s attention—the abortive Strasburg visit incident and the great miners’ strike in Westphalia. These two episodes are particularly noteworthy in that they for the first time show us William confronted by something bigger than questions of personal politics and individual piques and prejudices. A dangerous international quarrel and a threatening domestic convulsion loomed up suddenly side by side before him—and the experience left him a wiser and more serious man.
To glance first at the incident which, creating the greater furor at the time, has left the slighter mark upon history—the King of Italy, with his son and his Premier, came, on May 21st, to visit William in Berlin, There were many reasons why the reception extended to him should have been, as indeed it was, of the most affectionate and enthusiastic character. The old Emperor William had grown to be considered at the Quirinal as Victor Emmanuel’s best friend, and Prussia was proudly pleased to be thought of as the chief protector and sponsor of young United Italy. The more romantic Frederic had cultivated a highly sentimental intimacy, later on, with King Humbert and Queen Marguerite, and had made all Rome a party to it by that celebrated spectacular appearance on the balcony of the Quirinal with the little Italian Crown Prince in his arms. Thus peculiarly emotional ties bound Humbert now to Frederic’s son, and his coming to Berlin was hailed as the arrival of a warm personal friend even more than as the advent of a powerful ally.
It may have been from mere lightness of heart—conceivably there was a deeper motive—but at all events William proposed to this good friend that on his way home they should together visit Strasburg, and the amiable Humbert, a slow, patient, honest fellow, consented. The assertion has since been authoritatively made by Italian statesmen that the idea really originated with the adventurous Italian Premier, Crispi, and that Bismarck and William merely fell in with it. However that may it is fact that the visit was agreed upon, and that orders were despatched to Strasburg to make things ready for the royal party.
When the news of this intended trip became public, its effect was that of a shock of earthquake. During the twenty-four hours which elapsed before the frightened Crispi could issue a statement that the report of such a visit was a pure Bourse canard, Europe was sensibly nearer a war than at any time in the last fifteen years. The French press raised a clamorous and vibrant call to arms, and the politicians of Rome and Vienna kept the wires to Berlin hot with panic-stricken protests. What it all meant was, of course, that Europe has tacitly consented to regard the possession of Alsace-Lorraine as an open question, to be finally settled when France and Germany fight next time. Upon this understanding, no outside sovereign has formally sanctioned the annexation of 1871 by appearing in person within the disputed territory. King Humbert’s violation of this point of international etiquette would have been a deliberate blow in the face of the French Republic. Luckily he had the courage to draw back when the lightnings began playing upon his path, and with diminishing storm mutterings the cloud passed away. Its net result had been to show the world William’s foolhardiness in favouring such a wanton insult to France, and his humiliation in having publicly to abandon an advertised intention—and the spectacle was not reassuring.
The episode is chiefly interesting now because it seems to have been of great educational value to the young Emperor. It really marked out for him, in a striking object lesson, the grave international limitations by which his position is hemmed in. He has never since made another such false step. Indeed the solitary other cause of friction between France and Germany which has arisen during his reign proceeded from an action of a diametrically opposite nature—to wit, an attempt to conciliate instead of offend.
Of much more permanent importance in the history of William and of his Empire was the great miners’ strike in Westphalia, which may be said to have begun on the 1st of May. This tremendous upheaval of labour at one time involved the idleness of over 100,000 men—by no means all miners or all Westphalians. The shortened coal supply affected industries everywhere, and other trades struck because the spirit of mutiny was in the air. In many districts the military were called out to guard the pits’ mouths, and sanguinary conflicts with the strikers ensued.
Evidently this big convulsion took William completely by surprise. Up to this time he had been deeply engrossed in the spectacular side of his position—the showy and laborious routine of an Emperor who is also a practical working soldier. Such thought as he had given to the great economic problems pressing for solution all about him, seems to have been of the most casual sort and cast wholly in the Bismarckian mould. What Bismarck’s views on this subject were and are, is well known. He believes that over-education has filled the labouring classes of Germany with unnatural and unreasonable discontent, which is sedulously played upon by depraved Socialist agitators, and that the only way to deal with the trouble is to imprison or banish as many of these latter as possible, and crush out the disaffection by physical force wherever it manifests itself. He decorates this position with varying sophistical frills and furbelows from time to time, but in its essence that is what he thinks. And up to May of 1889 that is apparently what William thought, too.
The huge proportions of this sudden revolt of labour made William nervous, however, and in this excited state he was open to new impressions. The anti-Bismarck coalition saw their chance and swiftly utilized it. With all haste they summoned Dr. Hinzpeter from his home at Bielefeld, and persuaded William to confer with his old tutor upon this alarming industrial complication, with which it was clearly enough to be seen his other advisers did not know how to deal. No exact date is given for the interview which William had with Dr. Hinzpeter, but the day upon which it was held should be a memorable one in German history. For then dawned upon the mind of the young Kaiser that dream of Christian Socialism with the influence of which we must always thereafter count.
It is true that the angered and dispossessed ex-Chancellor declares now that William never was morally affected by the painful aspects of the labour question, and that he took the side of the workmen solely because he thought it would pay politically. But men who know the Kaiser equally well, and who have the added advantage of speaking dispassionately, say that the new humanitarian views which Dr. Hinzpeter now unfolded to him took deep hold upon his imagination, and made a lasting mark upon his character. Even if the weight of evidence were not on its side, one would like to believe this rather than the cynical theory propounded from Friedrichsruh.
William did not become a full-fledged economic philosopher all at once under this new influence.
There was a great deal of the rough absolutist in the little harangue he delivered to the three working-men delegates who, on May 14th, were admitted to his presence to lay the case of the strikers before him. He listened gravely to their recital of grievances, asked numerous questions, and seemed considerably impressed. When their spokesman had finished he said that he was anxiously watching the situation, had ordered a careful inquiry into all the facts, and would see that evenhanded justice was done. Then, in a sharper voice, he warned them to avoid like poison all Socialist agitators, and specially to see to it that there were no riots or attempts to prevent the non-strikers from working. If this warning was not heeded, he concluded, in high peremptory tones, he would send his troops “to batter and shoot them down in heaps.”
It must be admitted that this sentiment does not touch the high-water mark of Christian Socialism, but the drift of the Kaiser’s mind was obviously forward. Two days later he received a delegation of mine masters, and to them spoke rather bitterly of the perversity and greed of capitalists, and their selfish unwillingness to “make certain sacrifices in order to terminate this perilous and troublous state of things.” On May 17th it was announced that Dr. Hinzpeter had been commissioned to travel through the disturbed districts and report to the Kaiser upon the origin and merits of the strike. This practically settled the matter. The masters as a whole made concessions, under which work was resumed. Those owners who displayed stubbornness were in one way or another made to feel the imperial displeasure, and soon the trouble was at an end. It is worthy of note that Germany has since that time been far less agitated by labour troubles than any of the states by which she is surrounded, and that upon the occasion of the recent May-day demonstrations German workmen were practically the only ones on the Continent who did not come into collision with the police.
But, after all, the vitally important thing was the reappearance of Dr. Hinzpeter, involving, as it did, the revival in the young Kaiser’s daily thoughts and moods of the gentle and softening influences of those old school days at Cassel, before Bonn and the Bismarcks came to harden and pervert.
Upon the heels of the Strasburg incident followed another flurry in international politics, which for the moment seemed almost as menacing, and which hurried forward a highly significant step on the part of William.
The precipitate haste with which the young Kaiser had rushed off to visit St. Petersburg, almost before the public signs of mourning for his father had been removed in Berlin and Potsdam, had impressed everybody as curious. Nearly a year had now elapsed, and the failure of the Czar to say anything about returning the visit was growing to seem odder still. It was, of course no secret that the Czar did not like William. No two men could present greater points of difference, physically and mentally. The autocrat of all the Russias is a huge, lumbering, slow, and tenacious man, growing somewhat fat with increasing years, hating all forms of regular exercise, and cherishing a veritable horror of noisy, overzealous, and bustling people. Every smart public servant in Russia is governed by the knowledge that his imperial master has a peculiar aversion to all forms of bother, and values his officials precisely in proportion as they make short and infrequent reports, free from all accounts of unpleasant things, and, still more important, from all meddlesome suggestions of reform. When a Russian diplomat was asked, a year ago, what the Czar’s personal attitude toward William was, he answered expressively by shrugging his shoulders and putting his fingers in his ears.
But now the Czar, from passively affronting William by not returning his visit, summoned the energy for a direct provocation. A palace luncheon was given in St. Petersburg, celebrating the betrothal of a Montenegrin Princess to a Russian Grand Duke, and the Czar, standing and in a loud, clear voice, drank to Prince Nikolo of Montenegro as “the only sincere and faithful friend Russia had” among European sovereigns. That there might be no doubt about this, the Czar had the words printed next day in the Official Messenger.
Germany was not slow to comprehend the meaning of this remarkable speech. But to make it still clearer the Czarowitch, three weeks later, paid a formal visit to Stuttgart to attend some Court festivities, and passed through Berlin both going and coming—though the Breslau-Dresden route would have been more direct—apparently for no other purpose than to insult the Kaiser by stopping for an hour each time inside the railway station, as if there were no such people as the Hohenzollerns to so much as leave a card upon. As a capstone to this insolence, the Russian officers of his suite refused to drink the toast to the German Empire at the Stuttgart banquet, and, when a dispute arose, left the room in a body.
The immediate effect of this was to remove the last vestige of reserve existing between William and his English relatives. He at once sent word that, if convenient, he would visit his grandmother, the Queen, at the beginning of August. An assurance of hearty welcome was as promptly returned.
This decision marked another stage in the decline of Bismarck’s power. We have seen how he had been gradually pushed aside in the management of German internal affairs. Now the Kaiser was to break through the dearest traditions of Bismarck’s foreign policy—the cultivation of Russian amiability at whatever cost of dignity, and the contemptuous snubbing of England. With a fatal inability to distinguish between the promptings of passion and the dictates of true policy, the Chancellor had been led into a position where he could maintain himself only if every one of the elements and chances combined to play his game for him, and keep William at daggers-drawn with all things English. The miracle did not happen. As we have seen, even the Czar took it into his head to interfere to the damage of Bismarck’s plans.
So the perplexed and baffled old Chancellor, noting with new rage and mortification how power was slipping from his hands, yet helpless to do other than fight doggedly to hold what yet remained, stopped behind in Berlin, the while Kaiser William steamed at the head of his splendid new squadron into Portsmouth Harbour, and the very sea shook with the thunderous cannon roar of his welcome. The world had never before seen such a show of fighting ships as was gathered before Cowes to greet him. There was one other thing which may be assumed to have been unique in human chronicles. William, in the exuberance of his delight at his really splendid reception, and at being created a British Admiral, issued a solemn imperial order making his grandmother a Colonel of Dragoons.
The English did well to surround the young Kaiser’s visit with all imaginable pomp and display of overwhelming naval force, for it meant very much more both to them and to him than any one is likely to have imagined at the time. The splendour of the material spectacle, and the sentimental interest attaching to the fact that this young man coming to greet his grandmother was the first German Emperor to set foot on English soil since the days of the Crusaders, were much-dwelt upon in the press. To us who have been striving to trace the inner workings of the influences shaping the young man’s character, the event has a nearer significance. It meant that William—having for years been estranged from the liberalizing English impulses and feelings of his boyish education; having since his majority exulted in the false notion that to be truly German involved hatred of all things English—had come to see his mistake.
It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of this visit, and of the causes leading up to it, upon William’s mind. The Hohenzollerns, until within our own times the comparatively needy Princes of a poor country, have always been greatly impressed by the superior wealth and luxurious civilization of the English. The famous Double-Marriage project of Frederic William I’s days was clung to in Berlin through years of British snubs and rebuffs because thrifty Prussian eyes saw these islands through a golden mist. To the imagination of German royalty, English Princesses appear in the guise of fairies, not invariably beautiful, perhaps, but each bearing the purse of Fortunatus. This view of the English colours the thoughts of more lowly-born Germans. When Freytag * seeks to explain the late Kaiser Frederic’s complete and almost worshipping subjection to his wife, he says: “She had come to him from superior surroundings.”
* “The Crown Prince and the German Imperial Crown,” p. 49.
William had tried hard, in his ultra-German days, to despise English wealth along with English political ideas. The theory of a Spartan severity, governing expenditure and all other conditions of daily life, was the keynote of his Teutonic period. But when he became Kaiser he had yielded to the temptation of getting the Reichstag to augment his annual civil list by 3,500,000 marks. That in itself considerably modified his austere hatred of luxury. Now, as the guest of the richest nation in the-world, he was able to feel himself a relative, and wholly at home. The English conquest of William was complete.
No hint of unfilial conduct had been heard, now, for a long time, nor was henceforth to be heard. William had by this time become fully reconciled to his mother, and in the following month, September of 1889, he purchased for and presented to her the Villa Reiss, a delightful summer chateau in the Taunus Mountains.
Thereafter a strong sympathy with England has manifested itself in all his actions. The Czar did at last, in the most frosty, formal manner, pay a brief visit to Berlin, and William the following year returned the courtesy by attending the Russian manoeuvres, but this has not at all affected his open preference for English friendship. He always spoke German with an English accent—which now is more marked than ever.
He has a bewildering variety of uniforms, but the one which affords him the greatest pride is the dress of the British Admiral. He wears it whenever the least excuse offers. Upon his journey to Athens in October of 1889, to attend the wedding of his sister and the Greek Crown Prince, he was so much affected by his new English naval title that when he steamed into the classic Ægean Sea on his imperial yacht he flew the British Admiral’s flag from her top. A British fleet was also there to participate in the ceremonies, and William took his new position so seriously, and had such delight in descending suddenly upon the squadron at unexpected and unreasonable hours, and routing everybody out for parade and inspection, that the British officers themselves revolted and preferred an informal complaint to the British Minister. “This thing is played out,” they said. “If he would merely wear the uniform and let it end with that, we shouldn’t mind. But we didn’t make him Admiral to worry the lives out of us in this fashion.”