It is said that Bismarck, then seventy-five years old, and since 1862 accustomed to undisputed power, demurred to the wish of the Emperor that the other ministers should have access to him directly, and not as heretofore only through the chancellor. It is said too that the matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical Bismarck, had but scanty respect for the mystical view of his grandfather as a saint, that the Emperor everywhere proclaimed. In 1896, the 20th of February, in speaking of his grandfather, he refers to him as: “The Emperor William, that personality which has become for us in some sort that of a saint.”
Bismarck, too, objected to the Emperor’s policy as regards the treatment of, and the legislation for, the workingmen. On February the 5th, 1890, he writes to Bismarck: “It is the duty of the state to regulate the duration and conditions of work in such manner that the health and the morality of the workingman may be preserved, and that his needs may be satisfied and his desire for equality before the law assured.”
“Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
“And the young king said:-‘I have found it, the road to the rest ye seek:
The strong shall wait for the weary, and the hale shall halt for the weak;
With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from the line,
Ye shall march to peace and plenty, in the bond of brotherhood — sign!’ ”
Whatever the reasons, the criticisms, or the causes, the man whom we have been describing was as certain to dismiss Bismarck from office, as a bird is certain to fly and not to swim. The ruler who at a banquet May the 4th, 1891, proclaimed: “There is only one master of the nation: and that is I, and I will not abide any other”; and later, on the 16th of November, in an address to recruits said: “I need Christian soldiers, soldiers who say their Pater Noster. The soldier should not have a will of his own, but you should all have but one will and that is my will; there is but one law for you and that is mine.” Again, in addressing the recruits for the navy on the 5th of March, 1895, he said to them: “Just as I, as Emperor and ruler, consecrate my life and my strength to the service of the nation, so you are pledged to give your lives to me.” Such a man could not share his rule with Bismarck.
Bismarck left Berlin amid groans and tears. A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath the empire. The young Emperor would stumble and sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. Men said this was the first sign of an imperious will and temper.
There is an Arab proverb which runs: “When God wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings.” The Kaiser was to be given power for his own destruction. But what has happened? Absolutely nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884 Bismarck was saying to Gerhard Rohlfs, the African explorer: “The main thing is, we neither can nor really want to colonize. We shall never have a fleet like France. Our artisans and lawyers and time-expired soldiers are no good as colonists.” If the ideas of William the Second were to prevail, it was time that Bismarck went over the side as pilot of the ship of state. The Kaiser in appropriate terms regretted the loss of this tried public servant and said: “However, the course remains the same — full steam ahead!”
Three days after the Jameson raid, on the 3d of January, 1896, the Kaiser telegraphed to President Krüger: “I beg to express to you my sincere congratulations that, without help from foreign powers, you have succeeded with your own people and by your own strength in driving out the armed bands which attempted to disturb the peace of your country, and in reestablishing order and in defending the independence of your people from attacks from outside.”
On the 28th of October, 1908, The Daily Telegraph of London published a long interview with the Emperor, the gist of which was that the British press and people continued to distrust him, while all the time he was and had been the friend of Great Britain. The Emperor cited instances of his friendship, declared the English were as mad as March hares not to believe in him; insisted that by reason of Germany’s increasing foreign commerce, and on account of the growing menace to peace in the Pacific Ocean, Germany was determined to have an adequate fleet, which perhaps one day even England might be glad to have alongside of her own.
In addition to these two incidents, the Emperor had written a letter to Lord Tweedmouth, who was already then a sick man, and probably not wholly responsible, in which it was said he had offered advice as to the increase of the British navy.
I have described these furious indiscretions, as they were called at the time, together, though they were years apart; for these utterances, and the constant repetition of his sense of responsibility to God, and not to the people he governs, are the heart of this whole contention that the German Emperor is indiscreet, is indiscreet even to the point of damaging his own prestige, and injuring his country’s interests abroad.