Face to Face With Kaiserism

CHAPTER I. Personality of the Kaiser and Something of the King Business

PERSONALITY OF THE KAISER AND SOMETHING OF THE KING BUSINESS

To the American mind the Kaiser is the personification of Germany. He is the arch enemy upon whom the world places the responsibility for this most terrible of all wars. I have sat face to face with him in the palace at Berlin where, as the personal representative and envoy of the President of the United States, I had the honor of expressing the viewpoint of a great nation. I have seen him in the field as the commanding general of mighty forces, but I also have seen him in the neutral countries through which I passed on my return home and in my own beloved land--in the evidence of intrigue and plotting which this militaristic monarch has begotten and which is to-day "the Thing," as President Wilson calls it, which has brought the American people face to face with kaiserism in the greatest conflict of all history.

What manner of man is he? What is his character? How much was he responsible for what has happened--how much his General Staff? What of the Crown Prince and what of the neutral peoples and their rulers whom Germany has intimidated and would fain subjugate if it suited her purpose? These are the questions I shall attempt to answer out of my experiences in Germany and my contacts with the rulers of other countries in my journeys to and from Berlin and Washington.

To illustrate the craft of the Kaiser, I believe I can perform no better service to Americans than to reveal an incident which has not hitherto been published. It occurred at the New Year's reception of 1914 when the Ambassadors of all the foreign countries represented at the German court, were ranged in a large room at the Palace. They stood about six feet apart in the order of their residence in Berlin. The Kaiser and his aides entered the room, and the Emperor spoke a few minutes to each envoy. He tarried longest with the Turkish Ambassador and myself, thereby arousing the curiosity of the other diplomats who suspected that the Kaiser did more than merely exchange the greetings of the season. He did.

What the German Emperor said to me interests every American because it shows his subtlety of purpose. The Kaiser talked at length to me about what he called Japan's designs on the United States. He warned me that Mexico was full of Japanese spies and an army of Japanese colonels. He also spoke about France, saying that he had made every effort to make up with France, that he had extended his hand to that country but that the French had refused to meet his overtures, that he was through and would not try again to heal the breach between France and Germany!

All this was in 1914, six months before the outbreak of the European War. Little did I know then what the purpose was back of that conversation, but it is clear now that the Emperor wished to have the government of the United States persuaded through me that he was really trying to keep Europe at peace and that the responsibility for what was going to happen would be on France. The German is so skilful at intrigue that he seeks even in advance of an expected offensive to lay the foundation for self-justification.

But the reference to Japan and alleged hostility against us on the part of fanciful hordes of Japanese in Mexico made me wonder at the time. There were many evidences subsequent to that New Year's Day reception of an attempt to alienate us from Japan. As a climax to it all, as a clarification of what the Emperor had in mind, came the famous Zimmermann note, the instructions to the German Minister in Mexico to align both Japan and Mexico against us when we entered the war against Germany!

Plotting and intriguing for power and mastery! Such is the business of absolute rulers.

I believe that had the old Austrian Kaiser lived a little while longer, the prolongation of his life would have been most disastrous both for Austria and Hungary. I believe after the death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo and after a year of war the German Emperor and autocracy were brooding over a plan according to which, on the death of Francis Joseph, the successor should be allowed to rule only as King or Grand-Duke of Austria, the title of Emperor of Austria to disappear and German Princes to be placed upon the thrones of Hungary and of a new kingdom of Bohemia. These and the king or grand-duke of Austria were to be subject-monarchs under the German Kaiser, who was thus to revive an empire, if not greater, at least more powerful, than the empires of Charlemagne and of Charles the Fifth. Many public utterances of the German Kaiser show that trend of mind.

Emperor William deliberately wrote and published, for instance, such a statement as this: "From childhood I have been influenced by five men, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Theodoric II, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream of world empire. They failed. I have dreamed a dream of German world empire and my mailed fist shall succeed."

Could any declaration of a life's ambition be more explicit? It seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged animal or ambition drives him always on--he is never content with any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million, when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and desire, presses on insatiably with the first million in his pocket, more restless, more dissatisfied, than the hungry farmer's boy who first carries his ambitions to the great city.

When these zealous, scheming men gain the power of kingship, they usually bring disaster to their country. Their subjects find no compensation in the personal ambitions which hurry a nation into the miseries of war. Better Charles II, dallying with his ringletted mistresses, than an Alexander the Great; better Henry the Fourth of France, the "ever-green gallant," than Frederick the Great, bathing his people in blood. "Happy nations have no history."

William the Second, the present German Emperor, might well be called the Restless Emperor. He is never satisfied to remain more than a few days in any place or in any occupation. He commands his armies in person. He has won distinction as a writer and a public speaker. He is an excellent shot. He has composed music, written verses, superintended the production of a ballet, painted a picture; the beautiful Byzantine chapel in the Castle of Posen shows his genius for architecture; and, clothed in a clergyman's surplice, he has preached a sermon in Jerusalem. What ruler in all history has exhibited such extraordinary versatility?

In my conversations with the Emperor I have been struck by his knowledge of other countries, lands which he had never visited. He was familiar not only with their manners, customs, industries and public men, but with their commercial problems. Through his conversation one can see the keen eye of the Hanseatic trader looking with eager envy on the trade of a rival merchant. The Emperor, incidentally, while instinctively commercial, has an inborn contempt, if not for the law, at least for lawyers. In October, 1915, for instance, he remarked to me, "This is a lawyers' war, Asquith and Lloyd George in England, Poincare and Briand in France."

In appearance and conversation Emperor William is very manly. His voice is strong, with a ring in it. He is a good rider. Following the German custom, he puts on his nightshirt every afternoon after lunch and sleeps for two hours--for the German is more devoted to the siesta than the Spaniard or Mexican. The hours of the Berlin Foreign Office, for example, were from eleven to one and from four to eight. After a heavy lunch at one o'clock all the officials took a nap for an hour or two. Also, the hours of the bank where I did business were from ten to one and from four till six. This meant that after six o'clock the clerks had to sit until perhaps eight making up the books for the day.

In 1916, the Olympic games were to have taken place at Berlin, and in September, 1913, before sailing for Germany, I attended a luncheon at the New York Athletic Club, given by President Page, with the members of the German Commission who had come to America to study athletics and to see what could be done in Germany so that the Germans could make a good showing at the games in their own city.

After my arrival in Germany one of the members of this commission told me that it was impossible, he believed, to organise the Germans as athletes until German meal and business hours had been changed. He said that with us in America young men leaving business at four-thirty, five or five-thirty, had time in which to exercise before their evening meal, but that in Germany the young men ate so much at the midday meal that they required their siesta after it, and that they did not leave their offices until so late in the evening that exercise and practice were impossible.

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