But to return to the 10th of October, 1905, 6 P.M. While the Chancelleries of all Europe were quaking with deliberations on the Anglo-Russian rapprochement in connection with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the War Lord's chief minister spent an anxious quart d'heure trying to convince His Majesty that he was not intriguing against one of the numerous Eulenburg-maggots, fattening in the public cheese, Limburger brand.
Majesty, it seems, was deeply concerned about a certain titled member of the German Embassy in London who had befouled his record by spying. This pretty gentleman attended the Essex manoeuvres in the fall of 1904, notebook in hand, and sent elaborate reports, accompanied by sketches and diagrams, to the Berlin General Staff, acting the part of Secret Service agent no less treacherously, but rather more clumsily, than the German aristocrat who was convicted at Edinburgh in 1911.
Subsequently, of course, no British Army officer could afford to know this individual, and Mayfair, too, showed a decided inclination to cut dead the chevalier d'espionnage.
"Quite naturally!" Prince Bülow saved himself by adding: "From the English standpoint."
The telephone fairly "zizzled" as the War Lord shouted back:
"What? Ostracise a man who has done nothing but his —— duty toward me and the Fatherland. Intolerable! ——!! He must be reinstated in clubs and Society. He must be able to hold up his head in Piccadilly as proudly as in Unter den Linden. I command it. Speak to Lascelles about it, and have this boycott ended at once.
Of course Bülow promised—with his left hand on his back, which, as explained, allows a good German to vow one thing and mean another.
CHAPTER XXVI
EXPLAINING "THE DAY"
The True Wilhelm—The War Lord is Angry—More Disclosures—Bülow Sums Up—Dreams of Conquest—The Subjugation of England—Peace Must Wait on War—The New Big Gun—von Bohlen is Dense