The Chancellor wished to accomplish everything possible of accomplishment. But his inclination to get to the bottom of problems and his desire to deal only with what was, from his meticulous critical standpoint, thoroughly matured, tended, in the course of time, to hamper progress. It was difficult to bring him to make decisions before he was thoroughly convinced of their being absolutely free from objection. This made working with him tiresome and aroused in those not close to him the impression of vacillation, whereas, in reality, it was merely overconscientiousness carried too far.
In addition, the Chancellor eventually developed a strong and growing inclination toward domination; in discussions this tended to make him obstinate and caused him to lay down the law to those thinking otherwise as dogmatically as a school teacher. This brought him many enemies and often made things hard for me. A boyhood friend of the Chancellor, to whom I spoke once about this, replied, with a smile, that it had been so with him even in school; there Herr von Bethmann had constantly taught and school-mastered his fellow students, of whom my informant was one, so that finally his classmates had nicknamed him "the governess." He added that this trait was a misfortune for Bethmann, but that it had so grown into his very being that he would never be able to get rid of it.
An example of this is Bethmann's relationship to Herr von Kiderlen, whom he desired to have as Secretary of State, despite my emphatic objections. Herr von Kiderlen was an able worker and a man of strong character, who always sought to assert his independence. He had been about one year in office when Herr von Bethmann came to me one day, complained of Kiderlen's obstinacy and insubordination, and asked me to appeal to his conscience. I declined, with the observation that the Chancellor had chosen Kiderlen against my wishes and must now manage to get along with him; that the maintenance of discipline at the Foreign Office was a duty devolving upon the Chancellor, in which I had no desire to interfere.
FINDS FAULT WITH BETHMANN
Meanwhile, Bethmann's inadequacy to the post of Chancellor became evident. Deep down in his heart he was a pacifist and was obsessed with the aberration of coming to an understanding with England. I can perfectly well understand that a man of pacifist inclinations should act thus in the hope of avoiding a war thereby. His object was entirely in accord with my policy. The ways and means whereby Bethmann sought to achieve it were, in my opinion, unsuitable. Nevertheless, I backed his endeavors. But I certainly did not believe that real success would result. It became ever more apparent, while he was Chancellor, that he was remote from political realities. Yet he always knew everything better than anybody else. Owing to this overestimation of his own powers he stuck unswervingly to his ideas, even when things all turned out differently from what he had expected.
His reports were always admirably prepared, brilliant in form, and, hence, impressive and attractive. And in this there was an element of danger. In his opinion there was always but one solution, the one which he proposed! The apparent solidity and thoroughness of his reports and suggestions, the illuminating treatment of the matters reported upon from every angle, the references to experts, to foreign and native statesmen and diplomats, etc., easily led to the impression that solely the Bethmann solution was worthy of consideration. In spite of these thorough preparations, he made mistake after mistake.
Thus he had an actual share in our misfortune. When I returned from my Norwegian trip in 1914 he did not place his resignation in my hands, to be sure, but he admitted that his political calculations had gone wrong. Nevertheless, I left him in office, even after his Reichstag speech and the English declaration of war of August 4, 1914, because I considered it most serious to change the highest official in the Empire at the most critical moment in German history. The unanimous attitude of the nation in the face of the challenge from the Entente might have been impaired by such action.
Moreover, both the Chancellor and the chief of the Civil Cabinet maintained that they had the working classes behind them. I was loath to deprive the working classes, which behaved in an exemplary manner in 1914, of the statesman whom, I had been told, they trusted.
The theory, constantly repeated to me in 1914 by the chief of the Civil Cabinet and the representative of the Foreign Office, that only Bethmann had the support of the working classes, was finally supplemented further by reports to me that the Chancellor enjoyed the confidence in foreign countries which was necessary to the conclusion of peace. Thus it came about that Bethmann always stayed in office, until, finally, the Crown Prince made the well-known investigation among the party leaders which showed that the above-mentioned theory was mistaken. This mistake was made all the clearer to me when I read, at the time of Bethmann's dismissal—to which other factors also contributed—the most unfavorable opinions of him, especially in the Social Democratic and Democratic press.
I do not wish to blame Bethmann with these frank remarks, nor to exonerate others; but, when such important matters are discussed, personal considerations must be ignored. I never doubted the nobility of Bethmann's sentiments.