In order to avoid any unpleasantness from the English press, which, angered by the Boer War and the partly unjustified attacks of certain German newspapers, had been answering in like tone, the Queen had commissioned the author of The Life of the Prince Consort, Sir Theodore Martin, to inform the English press of Her Majesty's desire that a friendly reception be accorded to her Imperial grandson. And that is what indeed came to pass. The visit ran its course harmoniously and caused satisfaction on all sides. I held important conferences with various leading men.
Not once in the entire visit was the Kruger dispatch mentioned. On the other hand, my royal grandmother did not conceal from her grandson how unwelcome the whole Boer War was to her; she made no secret of her disapproval and aversion for Mr. Chamberlain and all that he represented, and thanked me again for my prompt and sharp refusal of the Russo-French proposal to interfere and for my immediate announcement of this proposal. One could easily see how much the Queen loved her splendid army and how deeply she had been grieved by the heavy reverses suffered by it at the outset of the war, which had caused by no means negligible losses. Referring to these, the aged Field Marshal Duke of Cambridge coined the fine phrase: "The British nobleman and officer have shown that they can die bravely as gentlemen."
On my departure, the Queen bade me farewell with cordial and grateful greetings to her "much-cherished cousin," the Imperial Chancellor, whose ability and experience, she hoped, would continue to maintain good relations between our two countries.
My report entirely satisfied Prince Hohenlohe as to the success of my journey; at the same time, however, I was the object of the most violent attacks from a certain section of the press and from many excited "friends of the Boers." The German lacks the very thing with which the English people has been inoculated, and to which it has been trained by long political self-discipline: when a fight is on, even though it be merely upon the field of diplomacy, the Englishman unquestioningly follows the flag, in accordance with the proverb: "You can't change the jockey while running."
In the autumn of 1900 Prince Hohenlohe retired from the Chancellorship, since the work had become too arduous for a man of his advanced age. Moreover, the constant quarrels and disputes of the political parties with one another were disagreeable to him, and it went against the grain with him to make speeches before them in the Reichstag. Equally disagreeable to him was the press, part of which had taken the bit between its teeth and imagined that it could conserve the Bismarckian tradition by quoting sayings by Bismarck, and had greatly jeopardized relations with England, especially during the Boer War.
CHANCELLOR'S RETIREMENT
The hope, aroused by the choice of Prince Hohenlohe as Chancellor and his assumption of the office, that Prince Bismarck would place less obstacles in his path, had been only partly fulfilled. The atmosphere had been much relieved and Prince Bismarck brought to a much milder frame of mind by my reconciliation with him, which had received outward expression in his solemn entry into Berlin and his staying at the old Hohenzollern palace, but his adherents and those rallying around him for the sake of opposition were not to be dissuaded from their activities. Moreover, the political representatives of the people succeeded, while I was on my way to Friedrichsruh to celebrate Bismarck's eightieth birthday, in refusing to pay homage to the old Imperial Chancellor, a thing which naturally deeply hurt the sensitive Prince Hohenlohe and filled him with indignation.
He, like myself, was deeply moved by the death of his great predecessor, and we, together with the German people, sincerely mourned Prince Bismarck as one of the greatest of the sons of Prussia and Germany, in spite of the fact that he had not always made our task easy. I insisted upon hurrying back from my trip to Norway in order to pay honor to him who, as a faithful servant of his old master, had helped the German nation to unity, and under whom I, when I was Prince, had had the proud privilege of working.
It is said that one of the reasons why Prince Hohenlohe retired from his post was the advice of his son Alexander, who was much at his father's house; he was known in society as "the Crown Prince," and was essentially different from his lovable father.
Prince Hohenlohe could look back upon a series of successes during his term as Chancellor: the overcoming of the disputes concerning the "Citizens' Book of Laws," the reform of the military punishment procedure, the Naval law, the appointment of Waldersee to the command in China at the time of the Boxer War, Tsing-tao, and the Yangtse Treaty.