A BREAK WITH BÜLOW
The relationship between Emperor and Chancellor, excellent and amicable up to that time, was, at all events, disturbed. I gave up personal relations with the Chancellor and confined myself to official dealings. After consultation with the Minister of the Royal Household and the chief of the Cabinet, I resolved to follow Prince Fürstenberg's advice as to getting together the Highcliffe dispatches, and charged the Foreign Office with this task. It failed of accomplishment because the dispatches in question were not to be found.
Toward the end of the winter the Chancellor requested an audience with me. I walked up and down with him in the picture gallery of the palace, between the pictures of my ancestors, of the battles of the Seven Years' War, of the proclamation of the Empire at Versailles, and was amazed when the Chancellor harked back to the events of the autumn of 1908 and undertook to explain his attitude. Thereupon I took occasion to talk with him about the entire past. The frank talk and the explanations of the Prince satisfied me. The result was that he remained in office.
The Chancellor requested that I dine with him that evening, as I had so often done before, in order to show the outer world that all was again well. I did so. A pleasant evening, enlivened by the visibly delighted Princess with charming amiability, and by the Prince with his usual lively, witty talk, closed that memorable day. Alluding to the Prince's audience with me, a wag wrote later in a newspaper, parodying a famous line: "The tear flows, Germania has me again."
By this reconciliation I also wished to show that I was in the habit of sacrificing my own sensitiveness to the good of the cause. Despite Prince Bülow's attitude toward me in the Reichstag, which was calculated to pain me, I naturally never forgot his eminent gifts as a statesman and his distinguished services to the fatherland. He succeeded, by his skill, in avoiding a world war at several moments of crisis, during the period indeed, when I, together with Tirpitz, was building our protecting fleet. That was a great achievement.
A serious epilogue to the above-mentioned audience was provided by the Conservatives. The Civil Cabinet informed the party leaders of the Chancellor's audience and what happened there, with the request that the party might now take back its "Open Letter." This request—which was made solely in the interest of the Crown, not of myself personally—was declined by the party. Not until 1916, when the war was under way, did we get into touch again, through a delegate of the party, at Great General Headquarters.
Just as the Conservatives did not do enough out of respect for the Crown to satisfy me, so also the Liberals of the Left, the Democrats and the Socialists, distinguished themselves by an outburst of fury, which became, in their partisan press, a veritable orgy, in which loud demands were made for the limitation of autocratic, despotic inclinations, etc. This agitation lasted the whole winter, without hindrance or objection from high Government circles. Only after the Chancellor's audience did it stop.
Later, a coolness gradually arose between the Chancellor and the political parties. The Conservatives drew away from the Liberals—rifts appeared in the bloc. Centrists and Socialists—but, above all, the Chancellor himself—brought about its downfall, as Count Hertling repeatedly explained to me later—for the last time at Spa. He was proud to have worked energetically toward causing Bülow's downfall.
When matters had reached an impossible pass, the Chancellor drew the proper conclusions and recommended to me the choice of Herr von Bethmann as the fifth Chancellor of the Empire. After careful consultations, I decided to acquiesce in the wish of Prince Bülow, to accept his request for retirement, and to summon the man recommended by him as his successor.