I bear my personal fate with resignation, for the Lord knows what He does and what He wishes. He knows why He subjects me to this test. I shall bear everything with patience and await whatsoever God still holds in store for me.
The only thing that grieves me is the fate of my country and my people. I am pained at the hard period of trial which my children of the German land are undergoing, which I—obliged to live in foreign parts—cannot suffer with them. That is the sword thrust which pierces through my soul; that is what is bitter to me. Here in solitude I still feel and think solely for the German people, still wonder how I can better matters and help with enlightenment and counsel.
Nor can bitter criticism ever lessen my love for my land and people. I remain faithful to the Germans, no matter how each individual German may now stand with regard to me. To those who stand by me in misfortune as they stood in prosperity, I am grateful—they comfort me and relieve my gnawing homesickness for my beloved German home. And I can respect those who, impelled by honest convictions, array themselves against me; as for the rest, let them look to justifying themselves to God, their consciences, and history.
They will not succeed in separating me from the Germans. Always I can look upon country and people solely as one whole. They remain to me what they were when I said on the occasion of the opening of the Reichstag on the 1st of August, 1914, in the Imperial Palace: "I know no more of parties; I know only Germans."
The revolution broke the Empress's heart. She aged visibly from November, 1918, onward, and could not resist her bodily ills with the strength of before. Thus her decline soon began. The hardest of all for her to bear was her homesickness for the soil of Germany, for the German people. Notwithstanding this, she still tried to bring me consolation.
The revolution destroyed things of enormous value. It was brought about at the very moment when the German nation's fight for existence was to have been ended, and every effort should have been concentrated upon reconstruction. It was a crime against the nation.
WIND AND WHIRLWIND
I am well aware that many who rally around the Social Democratic banner did not wish revolution; some of the individual Social Democratic leaders likewise did not wish it at that time, and more than one among them was ready to co-operate with me. Yet these Social Democrats were incapable of preventing the revolution, and therein lies their share of guilt for what is now going on, all the more so since the Socialist leaders stood closer to the revolutionary masses than the representatives of the monarchical Government and, therefore, could exert more influence upon them.
But the leaders, even in the days before the war, had brought the idea of revolution to the masses and fostered it, and the Social Democracy had been, from time immemorial, openly hostile to the earlier, monarchical form of government, and had worked systematically toward eliminating it. It sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
The time and nature of the revolution were not to the liking of a number of the leaders, but it was exactly these men who, at the decisive moment, abandoned leadership to the most unbridled elements and failed to bring their influence to bear toward maintaining the Government.