The interviewer reminded the Kaiser that an important and influential section of the German newspapers interpreted these acts very differently, and effusively approved of them because they indicated that Germany was bent upon shaping events in Morocco.
"There are mischief makers," replied the Emperor, "in both countries. I will not attempt to weigh their relative capacity for misrepresentation, but the facts are as I have stated. There has been nothing in Germany's recent action in regard to Morocco contrary to the explicit declaration of my love of peace made both at the Guildhall and in my latest speech at Strassburg."
Kaiser and the Boer War.
Reverting to his efforts to show his friendship for England, the Kaiser said they had not been confined to words. It was commonly believed that Germany was hostile to England throughout the Boer war. Undoubtedly the newspapers were hostile and public opinion was hostile. "But what," he asked, "of official Germany? What brought to a sudden stop, indeed, to an absolute collapse, the European tour of the Boer delegates, who were striving to obtain European intervention?"
"They were fêted in Holland. France gave them a rapturous welcome. They wished to come to Berlin, where the German people would have crowned them with flowers, but when they asked me to receive them I refused. The agitation immediately died away and the delegates returned empty handed. Was that the action of a secret enemy?
"Again, when the struggle was at its height, the German Government was invited by France and Russia to join them in calling upon England to end the war. The moment had come, they said, not only to save the Boer republics, but also to humiliate England to the dust. What was my reply? I said so far from Germany joining in any concerted European action to bring pressure against England and bring about her downfall Germany would always keep aloof from politics that could bring her into complications with a sea power like England.
"Posterity will one day read the exact terms of a telegram, now in the archives of Windsor Castle, in which I informed the sovereign of England of the answer I returned to the powers which then sought to compass her fall. Englishmen who now insult me by doubting my word should know what my actions were in the hour of their adversity.
"Nor was that all. During your black week in December, 1899, when disasters followed one another in rapid succession, I received a letter from Queen Victoria, my revered grandmother, written in sorrow and affliction and bearing manifest traces of the anxieties which were preying upon her mind and health. I at once returned a sympathetic reply. I did more. I bade one of my officers to procure as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants on both sides and the actual positions of the opposing forces.
"With the figures before me I worked out what I considered the best plan of campaign in the circumstances and submitted it to my General Staff for criticism. Then I dispatched it to England. That document likewise is among the State papers at Windsor awaiting the serenely impartial verdict of history.
"Let me add as a curious coincidence that the plan which I formulated ran very much on the same lines as that actually adopted by Gen. Roberts and carried by him into successful operation. Was that the act of one who wished England ill? Let Englishmen be just and say."