Part 21

"BERLIN, 17 October, 1896.

"It is a curious thing--my relations to his Majesty. I come now and then to the conclusion, owing to his small inconsideratenesses, that he intentionally avoids me and that things can't continue so. Then again I talk with him and see that I am mistaken. Yesterday I had occasion to report to him, and he poured out his heart to me and took occasion in the friendliest way to ask my advice. And thus my distrust is dissipated."

Hunting with the Emperor:--

"15 December, 1896.

"Yesterday I obeyed the royal invitation to hunt at Springe. I had to leave Berlin as early as 7 a.m. to catch the royal train at Potsdam. From Springe railway station we passed immediately into the hunting district. Only sows were shot. I brought down six. Then we drove to the Schloss, rested for a few hours and then dined. The Emperor was in very good humour and talked incessantly; in addition the Uhlan band and the usually noisy conversation."

When presenting his resignation to the Emperor at Hamburg in October, 1900, the Prince, who had evidently been for some time aware that his term of office was drawing to a close, describes his conversation with the Emperor:--

"At noon, as I came to the Emperor, he received me in a very friendly way. We first settled about summoning the Reichstag, and then his Majesty said, 'I have received a very distressing letter'--an allusion to the Chancellor's official letter of resignation, which he had placed in the Emperor's hands through Tschirschky, Foreign Minister. 'As I then,' continued Hohenlohe, 'explained the necessity of my resignation on the ground of my health and age the Emperor, apparently quite satisfied, agreed, so that I could see he had already expected my request and consequently that it was high time I should make it. We talked further over the question of my successor, and I was agreeably surprised when he forthwith mentioned Bülow, who certainly at the moment is the best man available. His Majesty then said he would telegraph to Lucanus (Chief of the Civil Cabinet) to bring Bülow to Homburg so that we might consult about details. I breakfasted with their Majesties and went calmly home.'"

Writing to his daughter next day Prince Hohenlohe, in words that do equal credit to himself and the imperial family, says:

"It is always a pleasure to me when on such occasions I can convince myself of the Christian disposition of the imperial family. In our for the most part unbelieving age this family seems to me like an oasis in the desert."

Prince Hohenlohe was succeeded as Chancellor by Prince von Bülow, who had held the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for the preceding two years, and practically conducted the Emperor's foreign policy during that time. He had served as Secretary of Embassy in St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Athens, was a Secretary to the Congress of Berlin, fought in the war with France and after seven years as Minister in Bucharest spent four years as Ambassador in Rome. Here he married a divorced Italian lady, the Countess Minghetti. After acting as deputy Foreign Secretary for the late Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, he was appointed permanent Foreign Secretary, and on October 17, 1900, was called by the Emperor to the most responsible post in the Empire next to his own, that of Imperial Chancellor. The Emperor's choice was fully justified, for the new Chancellor proved himself to be the most brilliant diplomatist and parliamentarian since Bismarck.

THE NEW CENTURY

1900-1901

German writers, commenting on the turn of the century, claim to discover a change in the Emperor's character about this period. He has lost much of his imaginative, his Lohengrin, vein, and has become more practical, more prosaic and matter-of-fact. To use the German word, he is now a Realpolitiker, one who deals in things, not words or theories, and drawing his gaze from the stars makes them dwell more attentively on the immediate practical considerations of the world about him. His nature has not changed, of course, nor his manner, but he has begun to see that he must employ means and ways different from those he employed previously. He has not become a Bismarck, for he still pursues his aims more in the spirit of the colonel of a regiment leading his men to the attack with banners flying, drums beating, swords rattling in their scabbards and mailed gauntlets held threateningly aloft, than in that of the cool and calculating politician ruminating in his closet on the tactics of his opponents, and deliberating how best to meet and confound them; but he gives more thought to what is going on about him, to party politics, to the economic necessities of the hour, and to modern science and its inventions.

What strikes the Englishman perhaps as much as anything in the Emperor's character at this time is the Cromwellian trait in it. This is a side of his Protean nature which never seems to have been adequately recognized in England, yet in a singularly baffling character-composition it is one of the fundamental elements. The view of Prussian monarchy, inherited from one Hohenzollern to another for generation after generation, that the race of people to which he belonged (with any other race he could include by conquest in it) has been handed over by Heaven for all eternity to his family, naturally predisposes him to take a religious, a patriarchal, one might say an Hebraic, view of government; but in addition we find the warrior spirit at all times going hand in hand with the religious spirit, almost as strongly as in the case of Mahomet with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other.

There was nothing in the Emperor's youth to show the existence of deeply religious conviction, but as soon as he mounted the throne, and all through the reign up to the close of the century, indeed some years beyond it, his speeches, especially when he was addressing his soldiery, were filled with expressions of religious fervour. "Von Gotten Gnaden," he writes as a preface for a Leipzig publication appearing on January 1, 1900,

"is the King; therefore to God alone is he responsible. He must choose his way and conduct himself solely from this standpoint. This fearfully heavy responsibility which the King bears for his folk gives him a claim on the faithful co-operation of his subjects. Accordingly, every man among the people must be thoroughly persuaded that he is, along with the King, responsible for the general welfare."

It may be noted in passing that Cromwell and the Emperor are alike in being the founders of the great war navies of their respective countries.

On the date mentioned (New Year's Day), in the Berlin arsenal when consecrating some flags, he addressed the garrison on the turn of the year:

"The first day of the new century finds our army, that is our folk in arms, gathered round its standards, kneeling before the Lord of Hosts--and certainly if anyone has reason to bend the knee before God, it is our army."

"A glance at our standards," the Emperor continued,

"is sufficient explanation, for they incorporate our history. What was the state of our army at the beginning of the century? The glorious army of Frederick the Great had gone to sleep on its laurels, ossified in pipeclay details, led by old, incapable generals, its officers shy of work, sunk in luxury, good living, and foolish self-satisfaction. In a word, the army was no longer not only not equal to its task, but had forgotten it. Heavy was the punishment of Heaven, which overtook it and our folk. They were flung into the dust, Frederick's glory faded, the standards were cast down. In seven years of painful servitude God taught our folk to bethink itself of itself, and under the pressure of the feet of an arrogant usurper (Napoleon) was born the thought that it is the highest honour to devote in arms one's life and property to the Fatherland--the thought, in short, of universal conscription."

The word for conscription, it may be here remarked, is in German Wehrpflicht, the duty of defence. To most people in England it means simply "compulsory military service." It is important to note the difference, as it explains the German national idea, and the Emperor's idea, that all military and naval forces are primarily for defence, not offence. This is, indeed, equally true of the British, or perhaps any other, army and navy; but how many Englishmen, when they think of Germany, can get the idea into the foreground of their thoughts or accustom themselves to it?

However, we have not yet done with the Emperor's baffling character. There was a third element that now developed in it--the modern, the twentieth-century, the American, the Rockefeller element. It is intimately connected with his Weltpolitik, as his Weltpolitik is with his foreign policy in general--indeed one might say his Weltpolitik is his foreign policy--a policy of economic expansion, with a desperate apprehension of losing any of the Empire's property, and a determination to have a voice in the matter when there is any loose property anywhere in the world to be disposed of. To the Hebraic element and the warrior element (an entirely un-Christlike combination, as the Emperor must be aware) there now began to be added the mercantile, the modern, the American element--the interest in all the concerns of national material prosperity, in the national accumulation of wealth, the interest in inventions, in commercial science, in labour-saving machinery, the effort to win American favour, to facilitate intercourse and establish close and profitable relations with that wealthy land and people.

We know that the Emperor has English blood in him, greatly admires England, and is immensely proud of being a British admiral. We have seen him exhibiting traits of character that remind one of Lohengrin or Tancred. He has played many parts in the spirit of a Hebrew prophet and patriarch, of a Frederick the Great, a Cromwell, a Nelson, a Theodore Roosevelt. Preacher, teacher, soldier, sailor, he has been all four, now at one moment, now at another. We shall find him anon as art and dramatic critic, to end--so far as we are concerned with him--as farmer. Is it any wonder if such a man, mediæval in his nature and modern in his character, defies clear and definite portrayal by his contemporaries?

Taking the year 1900 as the first year of the new century, not as some calculators, and the Emperor among them, take it, as the last year of the old, the twentieth century may be said to have opened with a dramatic historical episode in which the Emperor and his Empire took very prominent parts--the Boxer movement.

Little notice has been taken in our account of Germany's spacious days of her relations to China and the Far East generally. They were, nevertheless, all through that period intimately connected with her expansion or dreams of expansion. About 1890 the Flowery Land awoke to the benefits of European civilization and in particular of European ingenuity; and in 1891, for the first time in Chinese history, foreign diplomatists were granted the privilege of an annual reception at the Chinese Court. So exclusive was the Manchu dynasty--the Hohenzollerns of China in point of antiquity; yet not a score of years later the Manchu monarchy had been quietly removed from its five-thousand-year-old throne, and China, apparently the most conservative and monarchical people on earth, proclaimed itself a republic--a regular modern republic!--an operation that among peoples claiming infinite superiority to the Chinese would have cost thousands of lives and a vast expenditure of money.

Naturally, once China showed a willingness to abandon its axenic attitude towards foreign devils and all things foreign-devilish, the European Powers turned their eyes and energies towards her, and a strenuous commercial and diplomatic race after prospective concessions for railways, mines, and undertakings of all kinds began. Each Power feared that China would be gobbled up by a rival, or that at least a partition of the vast Chinese Empire was at hand. Consequently, when China was beaten in her war with Japan, and made the unfavourable treaty of Shimonoseki, the European Powers were ready to appear as helpers in time of need. Russia, Germany, and France got the Shimonoseki Treaty altered, and the Laotung Peninsula with Port Arthur given back, and in return Russia acquired the right to build a railway through Manchuria (the first step towards "penetration" and occupation), French engineers obtained several valuable mining and railway concessions, and Germany got certain privileges in Hankow and Tientsin.

Meantime the old, deeply-rooted hatred of the foreign devil, the European, was spreading among the population, which was still, in the mass, conservative. Missionaries were murdered, and among them, in 1897, two German priests. Germany demanded compensation, and in default sent a cruiser squadron to Kiautschau Bay. Russia immediately hurried a fleet to Port Arthur and obtained from China a lease of that port for twenty-five years. England and France now put in a claim for their share of the good things going. England obtained Wei-hai-Wei, France a lease of Kwang-tschau and Hainan. China was evidently throwing herself into the arms of Europe, when, in 1898, the Dowager Empress took the government out of the hands of the young Emperor and a period of reaction set in. The appearance of Italy with a demand for a lease of the San-mun Bay in 1899 brought the Chinese anti-foreign movement to a head, and the Boxer conspiracy grew to great dimensions.