“And what is the success which you anticipate from this policy? The tranquillisation of the public mind and the restoration of peace? Do you believe that you can appease public sentiment by again offending its sense of justice? It seems to me contrary to human nature to expect a change when the existing feeling is being constantly confirmed and aggravated by the action of the Government. I will tell you what results I anticipate from your policy. You will go on quibbling with the Constitution until it loses all value in the eyes of the people. In that way you will on the one hand arouse anarchical movements that go beyond the bounds of the Constitution; while on the other hand, whether you intend it or not, you will pass from one venturesome interpretation to another until you are finally driven into an open breach of the Constitution.” (Bismarck’s comment: “Perhaps.”) “I regard those who lead his Majesty the King, my most gracious father, into such courses as the most dangerous advisers for Crown and country.” (Bismarck quotes in pencil: “Leicht fertig ist die Jugend mit dem Wort” = Youth is hasty in its judgments.) “P.S.—Already before the 1st of June of this year I but rarely made use of my right to attend the sittings of the Ministry of State. From the foregoing statement of my convictions you will understand my requesting his Majesty the King to allow me to abstain altogether from attending them at present. A continuous public and personal manifestation of the differences between myself and the Ministry” (Bismarck’s pencil remarks on this point: “Absalom!”) “would be in keeping neither with my position nor my inclination. In every other respect, however, I shall impose no restrictions upon the expression of my views; and the Ministry may rest assured that it will depend upon themselves and their own future action whether, in spite of my own strong reluctance, I find myself forced into further public steps, when duty appears to call for them.” (In face of the menacing attitude assumed in these threats, Bismarck’s undaunted pencil shouts out, “Come on!” “Nur zu!”)
On the 3rd of September the Crown Prince writes to Bismarck: “I have to-day communicated to his Majesty the views which I set forth to you in my letter from Putbus, and which I begged you not to submit to the King until I myself had done so. A decision which will have serious consequences was yesterday taken in the Council. I did not wish to reply to his Majesty in the presence of the Ministers. I have done so to-day, and have given expression to my misgivings—my serious misgivings—for the future. The King now knows that I am a decided opponent of the Ministry.” At the end of the letter Bismarck added, apparently as part of a draft reply: “I can only hope that your Royal Highness will one day find servants as faithful as I am to your father. I do not intend to be of the number.”
On the 5th of June, while at Danzig, during a tour in the performance of his military duties, the Crown Prince, speaking in public to the Chief Burgomaster Von Winter, declared himself to be opposed to the policy of his father. The latter wrote demanding a recantation, and stating that otherwise the Prince would be deprived of his dignity and position. The Crown Prince declined to retract anything, offered to lay down his command and other offices, and begged to be allowed to retire with his family to some place where he would be under no suspicion of interfering in State affairs. Intimations as to the contents of this correspondence were published (of course, first of all) in The Times, then in the Grenzboten (through Gustav Freytag) and in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (through me, at Freytag’s instance). A memorandum, dated Gastein, the 2nd of August, in Zitelmann’s handwriting, and probably dictated by Bismarck, expresses the belief that the publication was due to the Crown Princess, “whether it be that she has herself attained to definite views of her own as to the form of government most advantageous for Prussia, or that she has succumbed to the concerted influences of the Anglo-Coburg combination. However this may be, it is asserted that she has decided upon a course of opposition to the present Government, and has taken advantage of the Danzig incident and the excitement to which it has given rise in the highest circles, in order to bring her consort more and more into prominence by these revelations, and to acquaint public opinion with the Crown Prince’s way of thinking. All this out of anxiety for the future of her consort.” It is then stated that the Crown Princess’s most powerful supporter is Queen Augusta, who is extremely anxious as to her own position towards the country. They have had a memorandum drawn up by President Camphausen on the internal situation in Prussia, attacking the present Government, which was laid before the King. In a marginal note the King observes that the principles therein recommended would lead to revolution. Meyer, the Councillor of Embassy, is Augusta’s instrument, and it is beyond question that he is associated with the Anglo-Coburg party. The participation of Professor Duncker[17] as also of Baron Stockmar, would appear to be less certain. The memorandum dictated to Zitelmann is accompanied by comments in the Chief’s handwriting—either a long letter or a pro memoriâ for the King—in which the views expressed by the Crown Prince are refuted point by point. In the course of his criticism the writer says, inter alia: “The pretension that a warning from his Royal Highness should outweigh royal decisions, come to after serious and careful consideration, attributes undue importance to his own position and experience as compared to those of his sovereign and father. No one could believe that H.R.H. had any share in these acts of personal authority, as everybody knows that the Prince has no vote in the Ministry.... The démenti at Danzig was therefore superfluous. The liberty of H.R.H. to form his own conclusions was not affected by his attendance at the sittings, where he can keep himself in touch with the affairs of State and hear the views of others and express his own, which we hold to be the duty of the heir to the throne. The performance of this duty, when it becomes known through the newspapers, can only elicit on all sides approval of the diligence and conscientiousness with which the Crown Prince prepares himself for his high and serious vocation. The words ‘with my hands tied’ have no meaning. It is utterly impossible that the country should identify H.R.H. with the Ministry, as the country knows that the Crown Prince is not called upon to take any official part in its decisions.
“Unfortunately, the attitude which H.R.H. has adopted towards the Crown is sufficiently known in the country, and is condemned by every father of a family, to whatever path he may belong, as a disavowal of that paternal authority which it is an offence to our feelings and traditions to ignore. Even now clergymen are preaching from the text 2 Samuel, ch. xv., verses 3 and 4. H.R.H. could not be more seriously damaged in the eyes of public opinion than by the publication of this answer.” (That of the Prince to his father’s letter.)
Page 2 (of the answer). “It is true that H.R.H.’s situation is a thoroughly false one, because it is not the business of the heir to the throne to raise the banner of opposition to his King and father. He can only fulfil his ‘duty’ by retiring from that position and again adopting a proper attitude.”
Page 3. “There is no conflict of duties, as the first of these duties is self-imposed. It rests with the King, and not with the Crown Prince, to provide for the future of Prussia, and the future will show whether ‘mistakes’ have been made, and on which side. In cases where the ‘judgment’ of his Majesty is opposed to that of the Crown Prince, the former must always be preponderant, and there is therefore no conflict. H.R.H. himself recognises that in our Constitution there is ‘no place for the opposition of the heir to the throne.’ Opposition within the Council does not exclude obedience to his Majesty once a matter has been decided. Ministers also oppose when they hold different views, but they nevertheless obey” (The last three words are underlined in pencil by the King, who added on the margin: ‘When it is not opposed to their consciences,’) “the will of the King, although it may be part of their duty to carry into execution the measures they opposed.”
Page 4. “If H.R.H. knows that the Ministers act in accordance with the will of the King, he cannot fail to see that the opposition of the heir to the throne is directed against the reigning King himself.”
Page 5. “The Crown Prince has no call and no justification to enter upon a ‘struggle’ (Kampf) against the will of the King, for the precise reason that his Royal Highness has no official status. Each Prince of the Royal House would be equally justified in ‘laying claim’ to the duty of offering public opposition to the King, where his views differed from those of the sovereign, and thus defending the eventual rights of ‘himself and his children’ against the effects of alleged mistakes by the Government of the King, that is to say, in order to secure the succession, after the manner of Louis Philippe, if the King were to be deposed by a revolution.”
Page 6. “The Minister President is to give a more detailed explanation of the words used by him at Gastein.”
Page 7. “His Majesty has not caused the Crown Prince to attend the sittings as one of the King’s advisers, but only for the Prince’s own information, and as a means of preparing him for his future calling. The attempt to ‘neutralise’ the measures of the Government would mean a struggle and rebellion against the Crown. More dangerous than all the attacks of the democracy and all ‘gnawing’ at the roots of the monarchy is the loosening of the bonds that still unite the people with the dynasty through the example of open and avowed opposition on the part of the heir to the throne, through the intentional disclosure of discord in the Royal House itself. If the son and heir to the throne revolts against the authority of the father and King, to whom can that authority still remain sacred? If a premium is set by ambition for the future upon present desertion from the Sovereign, every bond will be loosened, to the detriment of the future King, and the damage done to the authority of the present Government will bear evil fruit for its successors. Any Government is better than one which is divided against itself and paralysed. The shocks which the Crown Prince may provoke affect the foundations of the structure over which he himself will hereafter have to preside as King.