With regard, in particular, to a naval understanding between England and Germany, Chancellor von Bülow, in a Budget speech in March, 1909, declared that up to that time no proposals regarding the dimensions of the fleets or the amount of naval expenditure which could serve as a basis for an understanding had been made on the side of England, though non-binding conversations had taken place on the subject between authoritative English and German personalities. In March last year (1912) such proposals may be said to have been made in the form of a suggestion by Sir Edward Grey during the Budget debate that the ratio of 16 to 10 (i.e., 50 per cent. more and 10 per cent. over) should express the naval strength of the two countries. The suggestion was "welcomed" by Admiral von Tirpitz on behalf of Germany in February, 1913. And there the matter rests.
A perhaps inevitable result of the tension between England and Germany during the period under consideration has been the amount of mutual espionage discovered to be going on in both countries. An incident that attracted wide attention was the arrest in 1910 of Captains Brandon and Trench, the former of whom was arrested at Borkum and the latter at Emden. They were tried before the Supreme Court at Leipzig, and were both sentenced to incarceration in a fortress for four years. Many other arrests, prosecutions, and sentences have taken place both in England and Germany since then, with the consequence that English travellers in Germany and German travellers in England, particularly where the travellers are men of military bearing and are in seaside regions, are now liable, under very small provocation, to a suspicion of being spies. An English lady recently made the acquaintance of a German in England. He was a very nice man, she said, and went on to relate how they were talking one day about Ireland. She happened to mention Tipperary. "Oh, I know Tipperary," the German officer said; "it is in my department." "It was a revelation to me," the lady concluded when repeating the conversation to her friends. As a matter of fact, the Intelligence Departments of the army in both Germany and England are well acquainted with the roads, hills, streams, forts, harbours, and similar details of topography in almost all countries of the world besides their own.
In regard to 1911 should be recorded the journey of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess to England to represent the Emperor at the coronation of King George in June; the outbreak in September of the Turco-Italian War, which placed the Emperor in a dilemma, of which one fork was his duty to Italy as an ally in the Triplice and the other his platonic friendship with the Commander of the Faithful; and, lastly, the suspicion of the Emperor's designs that arose in connexion with the fortification of Flushing at a cost to Holland of some £3,000,000. The Emperor was supposed to have insisted on the fortification in order to prevent the use of the Netherlands by Great Britain as a naval base against Germany. Like many another scare in connexion with foreign policy, the supposition may be regarded only as a product of intelligent journalistic "combination."
Finally, among subsidiary occurrences, should be mentioned the meeting of the Emperor and the Czar in July, 1912, at Port Baltic in Finnish waters, accompanied by their Foreign Ministers, with the official announcement of the stereotyped "harmonious relations" between the two monarchs that followed; and the premature prolongation, with the object of showing solidarity regarding the Balkan situation, of the Triple Alliance, which, entered into, as mentioned earlier, in the year 1882, had already been renewed in 1891, 1896, and 1902. The next renewal should be in 1925, unless in the meantime an international agreement to which all Great Powers are signatories should render it superfluous.
The war in the Balkans need only be referred to in these pages in so far as it concerns Germany. The position of Germany in regard to it, so far, appears simple; she will actively support Austria's larger interests in order to keep faith with her chief ally of the Triplice, and so long as Austria and Russia can agree regarding developments in the Balkan situation, there is no danger of war among the Great Powers. People smiled at the declaration of the Powers some little time ago that the status quo in the Balkans should be maintained; but it should be remembered that the whole phrase is status quo ante bellum, and that, once war has broken out, the status, the position of affairs, is in a condition of solution, and that no new status can arise until the war is over and its consequences determined by treaties. The result of the present war, let it be hoped, will be to confine Turkey to the Orient, where she belongs, and that the Balkan States, possibly after a period of internecine feud, will take their share in modern European progress and civilization.
The amount of declaration, asseveration, recrimination (chiefly journalistic), rectification, intimidation, protestation, pacification, and many other wordy processes that have been employed in almost all countries with the avowed object of maintaining peace during the last four years is in striking contrast to the small progress actually made in regard to a final settlement of either of the two great international points at issue—the limitation of armaments and compulsory arbitration.
Enough perhaps has been said in preceding pages to show the attitude of the Emperor, and consequently the attitude of his Government, towards them. A history of the long agitation in connexion with them is beyond the scope of this work. The agitation itself, however, may be viewed as a step, though not a very long one, on the way to the desired solution, and it is a matter for congratulation that the two subjects have been, and are still being, so freely and copiously and, on the whole, so sympathetically and hopefully ventilated. The great difficulty, apparently, is to find what diplomatists call the proper "formula"—the law-that-must-be-obeyed. Unfortunately, the finding of the formula cannot be regarded as the end of the matter; there still remains the finding of what jurists call the "sanction," that is to say, the power to enforce the formula when found and to punish any nation which fails to act in accordance with it. Nothing but an Areopagus of the nations can furnish such a sanction, but with the present arrangements for balancing power in Europe, to say nothing of the ineradicable pugnacity, greed, and ambition of human nature, such an Areopagus seems very like an impossibility. Time, however, may bring it about. If it should, and the Golden Age begin to dawn, an epoch of new activities and new horizons, quite possibly more novel and interesting than any which has ever preceded it, will open for mankind.
XVI.
THE EMPEROR TO-DAY
What strikes one most, perhaps, on looking back over the Emperor's life and time, are two surprising inconsistencies, one relating to the Emperor himself, the other to that part of his time with which he has been most closely identified.