It is difficult to exaggerate the part played by the personality of the Kaiser in German imperial politics at that moment. If one probed any great German question to the bottom, one always came back to that fact. Take the question of the Navy—that vital Anglo-German problem of the early century. The Army chiefs were, I think, quite ready to contemplate a naval “deal,” if only to keep England out of the land-wars of the Continent. The Social Democrats, of course, were more than willing; they were anti-naval as well as anti-militarist. But to the Kaiser the Navy was always prime favourite; it was his toy, his darling dream, his cherished ambition. His sincerest belief and hopes were expressed in the phrase, “Our future lies on the ocean.” He stimulated the popular zeal for the Navy in every possible way. The Nord Deutsche Lloyd Liners had elaborate pictures comparing the respective navies, and showing the smallness of the German in comparison with ours; the great German Navy League was constantly pushed forward; and no Minister could long remain in power who did not sympathise with this cult. The curious thing was that the German populations along the sea-board were not half so enthusiastic for the Navy as the inland populations, who seemed enthusiastic in proportion to their ignorance of the sea.
Many Germans used to put down the Kaiser’s passion for the Navy to his English blood. He was a very enthusiastic yachtsman; and, as most yachtsmen are Englishmen, that threw him into constant relations of intimacy with English sailor-men. The English yachtsmen on the North Sea found him almost excessive in his friendliness. I remember an instance given to me by a famous English yachtsman, fond of cruising in northern waters. A German torpedo-boat had accidentally one evening broken the bowsprit of his yacht. During the night, while the owner was asleep, a body of carpenters came on board of the English yacht and mended the bowsprit. In the morning, after breakfast, the Kaiser arrived himself. He had sent the carpenters. “Well!” he said, “how do you like your new bowsprit?” Then he looked at it whimsically. “When you go back to England,” he said, “tell them it was ‘made in Germany’!”
And yet at that very time this friendliness towards English yachtsmen—of which this was only one example—was not preventing the Kaiser from regarding the British naval power with a haunting jealousy that led him into the constant intrigues against England, of which we gain a glimpse in the secret correspondence discovered in the palace of the Russian Czar.
The Kaiser, indeed, was at that time always a great trouble to all the diplomats. He was like a perpetual cracker explosively zig-zagging about in all the Foreign Offices of Europe. Nobody ever knew what he would do or say—to whom he would talk, and with whom he would correspond. He had a touch of freakish irresponsibility. “I always knew that Willy would come to no good,” sighed an English Princess of the old school; and she seemed to have an eye for character. After Agadir, he calmly protested that the British Government had no right to object, as he had told some one of his intentions when he was visiting the British Court! His telegram to President Wilson seems to show that he carried this view of the British Constitution right up to the eve of the Great War.
“He is a bad neighbour,” said an official of the British Foreign Office at that time; and that really seemed to sum it up.
His constant changes of mood made German foreign policy very difficult to forecast, and I do not think that any one can claim to have foreseen the future.
The German officials told me that they had never had a visitor with a quicker mind than Mr. Lloyd George. After a long day spent in the Central Insurance Office at Berlin, the men who went round with us were very enthusiastic. “He grasps the system more rapidly than any student we have ever had.” Mr. Lloyd George, indeed, made a very exhaustive study of the German system. But in his Act he improved upon it and added to it in many important respects.[[56]]
It was a strange visit, curious to look back upon at this distance of time. Our days were filled with the insistent calls of a great social inquiry. But we could not ignore another aspect. After all, there was a greater problem darkening the air than insurance against individual sickness and unemployment. What about insurance against another and greater human sickness—the sickness of war? The thought of that kept recurring, like a secondary theme in some piece of music.