It also showed, what in the circumstances must have been peculiarly reassuring to the German Government, that our Navy and Army were under the charge of Ministers whose judgments were apt to be led captive by their tempers. Although the Secretary of State for War did not remain in office for many days to encourage the hearts of the general staff at Berlin, his important post was never filled. It was only occupied and kept warm by the Prime Minister, whose labours and responsibilities—according to the notions of the Germans, who are a painstaking and thorough people—were already enough for one man to undertake. Moreover, the First Lord of the Admiralty had not resigned; and it was perhaps natural, looking at what had just happened, to conclude that he would be wholly incapable of the sound and swift decision by which a few months later he was destined to atone for his recent blunder.
THE DUBLIN RIOT
Moreover, although the Curragh incident, as it was called, had been patched over in a sort of way, the danger of civil war in Ireland had not diminished in the least by Midsummer. Indeed it had sensibly increased. During the interval large quantities of arms and ammunition had been imported by Ulstermen in defiance of the Government, and Nationalists were eagerly engaged in emulating their example. The emergency conference of the leaders of parties which the King, acting upon the desperate advice of his Ministers, had called together at Buckingham Palace ended in complete failure.
On Monday the 27th of July readers of the morning newspapers, looking anxiously for news of the Servian reply to the Austrian ultimatum, found their eyes distracted by even blacker headlines, which announced that a Scots regiment had fired on a Dublin mob.
How the bureaucrats of Berlin must have rubbed their hands and admired their own prescience! Civil war in Ireland had actually begun, and in the very nick of time! And this occurrence, no less dramatic than opportune, was a triumph not merely for German foresight but for German contrivance—like a good many other things, indeed, which have taken place of late. When the voyage of the good ship Fanny, which in April carried arms to the coast of Antrim, comes to be written, and that of the anonymous yacht which sailed from German waters, transhipped its cargo in the channel, whence it was safely conveyed by another craft to Dublin Bay to kindle this blaze in July—when these narratives are set out by some future historian, as they deserve to be, but not until then, it will be known how zealously, benevolently, and impartially our loyal and kindly Teuton cousins forwarded and fomented the quarrel between Covenanter and Nationalist. What the German bureaucrats, however, with all their foresight, apparently did not in the least foresee, was that the wound which they had intentionally done so much to keep open, they would speedily be helping unintentionally to heal.
With regard to South Africa, German miscalculation and intrigue pursued a somewhat similar course, though with little better results. It was assumed that South Africa, having been fully incorporated in the Empire as a self-governing unit only twelve years earlier, and as the result of a prolonged and sanguinary war, must necessarily be bent on severing the British connection at the earliest opportunity. The Dutch, like the frogs in the fable, were imagined to be only awaiting a favourable moment to exchange the tyranny of King Log for the benevolent rule of King Stork.
In these forecasts, however, various considerations were overlooked. In the first place, the methods of incorporation pursued by the British in South Africa were as nearly as possible the opposite of those adopted by Prussia in Poland, in Schleswig-Holstein, and in Alsace-Lorraine. In many quarters there were doubtless bitter memories among the Dutch, and in some others disappointed ambition still ached; but these forces were not enough to plunge into serious civil war two races which, after nearly a century of strife and division, had but a few years before entered into a solemn and voluntary covenant to make a firm union, and dwell henceforth in peace one with another. What object could there be for Dutchmen to rise in rebellion against a government, which consisted almost exclusively of Dutch statesmen, and which had been put in office and was kept there by the popular vote?
MISTAKES AS TO DUTCH
What German intrigue and bribery could do it did. But Dutchmen whose recollections went back so far as twenty years were little likely to place excessive confidence in the incitements and professions of Berlin. They remembered with what busy intrigues Germany had in former times encouraged their ambitions, with what a rich bribery of promises she had urged them on to war, with what cold indifference, when war arose, she had left them to their fate. They also remembered how, when their aged President, an exiled and broken-hearted man, sought an interview with the great sovereign whose consideration for him in his more prosperous days had never lacked for warmth, he received for an answer, that Berlin was no place for people who had been beaten to come whining, and was turned from the door.
In India, as in South Africa, Germany entertained confident hopes of a successful rising. Had not the Crown Prince, a shrewd judge, visited there a few years earlier and formed his own estimate of the situation? Was there not a widely spread network of sedition covering the whole of our Eastern Empire, an incendiary press, and orators who openly counselled violence and preached rebellion? Had not riots been increasing rapidly in gravity and number? Had not assassins been actively pursuing their trade? Had not a ship-load of Indians just been refused admission to Canada, thereby causing a not unnatural outburst of indignation?