Part 28

Referring to Frederick's declaration that he was the "first servant of the State," the Emperor said:--

"He could only learn to be so by subordination, by obedience, in a word by what we Prussians describe as discipline. And this discipline must have its roots in the King's house as in the house of the citizen, in the army as among the people. Respect for authority, obedience to the Crown, and obedience to parental and paternal influence--that is the lesson the memories of to-day should teach us. From these attributes spring those which we call patriotism, namely the subordination of the individual ego, of the individual subject, to the welfare of all. It is what is particularly needed at the present time."

The Emperor was, of course, thinking of the Social Democrats. Having finished his speech, he went and for a while stood thoughtfully at the historic window of Cüstrin Castle, from which Frederick watched the execution of his unfortunate companion, Katte.

Only the year 1904 separates us from the Emperor's Morocco adventure. The economic ideas which have been referred to as the basis of German foreign policy were germinating in his mind, and the plans for at least a partial realization of them were working in his head. Addressing the chief burgomaster of Karlsruhe in April, just a year before he started for Tangier, he spoke of Weltpolitik. "You are right," he told the burgomaster,

"in saying that the task of the German people is a hard one.... I hope our peace will not be disturbed, and that the events that are now happening will open our eyes, steel our courage, and find us united, if it should be necessary for us to intervene in world-policy."

The Emperor had, no doubt, specially in mind the birth of the Anglo-French Entente and the war between Russia and Japan, both events forming the dominant factors of the political situation at this time. The Russo-Japanese War arose primarily from the unwillingness of Russia to evacuate Manchuria after the Boxer troubles in China. The incidents of the war are still fresh in public memory.

It need only be recalled here that Germany was neutral throughout the conflict, that both President Roosevelt and the Emperor offered their services as mediators in its course, and that on the capture of Port Arthur by Admiral Nogi, in January, 1905, the Emperor telegraphed his bestowal of the Ordre pour le Mérile on General Stoessel, the Russian defender of Port Arthur, and on Admiral Nogi.

In the troubled history of Anglo-German relations is to be recorded the presence, in June of this year, of King Edward VII at Kiel with a squadron of battleships to pay an official visit to his nephew. The two fleets, those sunny days, formed a splendid spectacle--the two mightiest police forces, the Emperor would probably agree in saying, the world could produce. In fact, the Emperor had some such thought in mind, for he addressed King Edward as follows:--

"Your Majesty has been welcomed by the thunder of the guns of the German fleet. It is the youngest navy in the world and an expression of the reviving sea-power of the new German Empire, founded by the late great Emperor, designed for the protection of the Empire's trade and territory, and intended, equally with the German army, for the preservation of peace."

One or two other incidents of interest in the Emperor's life may close the record of this year. One of them was the arrival of the Italian composer, Leoncavallo, in Berlin, to hand the Emperor the text of the opera "Der Roland von Berlin," Leoncavallo had composed at the Emperor's express request. Roland was a "strong, valiant and pious" knight of Charlemagne's time--like the Emperor, let us say--who originally hailed from Brittany--that lone and lovely Cinderella of France--and afterwards, for some unexplained reason, came to be the type of municipal independence in Germany.

During the summer the Emperor and the Empress made an excursion, when on the Saalburg, to the statues of the Roman Emperors Hadrian and Severus. Did the Emperor recall, one wonders, as he stood before the figure of Hadrian, that pagan monarch's address to his soul:--

"Animula vagula, blandula, Hospes, comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nudula, Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos?"

It sounds a little gloomy as a quotation, but, fortunately for Germany and the Emperor, for "nunc" can be put, pace the poet, the indefinite, yet all too definite, "aliquando."

XII.

MOROCCO

1905

The Emperor started for Tangier towards the end of March, but before that he had got through imperial business of a miscellaneous kind which exemplifies the life he leads practically at all times.

In January he had exchanged telegrams with the Czar and the Mikado concerning his bestowal of the Order of Merit on Generals Stoessel and Nogi, asking permission to bestow the Order and receiving expressions of consent. Another telegram went to the composer Leoncavallo in Naples, congratulating him on the success there of his "Roland von Berlin." In February, the Emperor opened an international Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, received Prince Charles, Infanta of Spain, and the King of Bulgaria, unveiled a monument to his ancestor, Admiral Coligny, who was killed in the Bartholomew massacre, listened to a naval captain's lecture on Port Arthur, opened the new Lutheran Cathedral (the "Dom") in Berlin, telegraphed thanks to the University of Pennsylvania for its doctor's degree which the Emperor said he was proud to know George Washington once held, attended a lecture by Professor Delitzsch on "Assyria," and was present at a memorial service for the painter Adolf von Menzel, who died this month. In March he visited Heligoland, inspected the progress of some alterations at the Royal Opera in Berlin, and sent the Gold Medal for Science to Manuel Garcia, on the occasion of the latter's hundredth birthday, as recognition of his invention of the laryngoscope, or mirror for examining the throat.

Just before starting for Morocco the Emperor made the speech in which he claimed that Germans are the "salt of the earth." In the same speech he had previously declared that as the result of his reading of history he meant never to strive after world-conquest. "For what," he asked,

"has become of the so-called world-empires? Alexander the Great, Napoleon the First, all the great warrior heroes swam in blood and left behind them subjugated peoples, who at the first opportunity rose and brought their empires to ruin. The world-empire which I dream of will be, above all, the newly established German Empire, enjoying on every side the most absolute confidence as a peaceable, honest, and quiet neighbour, not founded on conquest by the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations, striving for the same objects."

While on the way to Morocco the Emperor put in at Lisbon to pay a visit to the King of Portugal, and with the latter attended a meeting of the Geographical Society. From Lisbon he went to Gibraltar, and from thence, after a few hours' stay, he started for Tangier.

The Morocco incident, as it is often too lightly called, should rather be regarded as a phase in the world's economic history and an occurrence of moment for the future peace of all nations than the mere game on the diplomatic chess-board many writers appear to consider it. According to French critics, and they may be taken as representative of the feeling everywhere prevalent during the seven years the incident lasted, its origin was a matter of alliances and the balance of power. Germany, according to these writers, wanted to preserve the position of hegemony in Europe she had obtained under Bismarck, and consequently felt annoyed by the Triple Entente, which robbed her of her traditional friend Russia and set up an effective counterpoise to the Triple Alliance of which Germany was the leading Power, and on which she could, or believed she could, rely for support in case of war with France. In going, therefore, to Tangier, at the moment when her defeat by Japan rendered Russia for the time being of little or no account in the considerations of diplomacy, the Emperor, according to these writers, in reality was making a determined attempt to break the Entente combination and protect his Empire from political isolation or inferiority.

It is quite possible that such were the motives of the Emperor's action, but if so he was building better than he knew. The vicissitudes of the Moroccan episode are described briefly below, yet some remarks of a general nature as to the whole episode considered in its historical perspective may be permitted in advance. But first, what is historical perspective? It may perhaps be defined as that view of history which shows in its true proportions the relative importance of an event to other events which strongly and permanently leave their mark on the character and development of the period or generation in which they occur. Regarded from this standpoint the Morocco incident can claim an exceptional position, for it was the first occasion in modern diplomatic history on which a Great Power officially proclaimed urbi et orbi the doctrine of the "open door," the doctrine of equal economic treatment for all nations for the benefit of all nations, and was willing to go to war in support of it.

It was not, of course, the first time the demand for the open door had been made; loudly and bloodily, too; since most wars from those of Greece and Rome to the war between Russia and Japan of recent years were waged with the intention, or in the hope, of opening, by conquest or contract, territory of the enemy to the mercantile enterprise of the victors. But this was the open door in a very selfish and restricted sense, and though many isolated events had occurred of late years, the international agreements regarding China among them, proving that the idea of the open door was gaining strength as a right common to all nations, it was not until the Emperor went to Tangier that a Great Power risked a great war in order to exemplify and enforce it.

The Emperor and his advisers were probably not moved by any altruistic sentiments in the matter, and their sole reason for action may have been to see that German subjects should not be excluded from Moroccan markets. It may also be that Germany was resolved that if there was to be a seizure of Morocco she should get her share of the territory to be distributed, notwithstanding her refusal, revealed by the late Foreign Secretary, Kiderlen-Waechter, in the Reichstag's confidential committee, to accede to Mr. Chamberlain's proposal, made some time before the incident, for a partition of the Shereefian Empire. But the acquisition of territory does not seem to have been the mainspring of her policy, while from the beginning to the end of the incident, however theatrical and questionable her diplomatic conduct may have been at moments during the negotiations, she was throughout consistent and successful in her demand for economic equality all round. This is a great gain for the future, for, with the world nearly all parcelled out, economic considerations, which are almost in all cases adjustable, are now the most weighty factors in international relations.

Apart from this view of the incident, it is clear that Germany was pursuing her claim to a "place in the sun," and she did so to the unconcealed annoyance of nations which up to then had never thought of her in a rôle she appeared to be aspiring to, that of a Mediterranean Power. To these nations she seemed an intruder in a sphere to which she neither naturally nor rightfully belonged. Evidently she had no political or historical claims in Morocco, while her commercial interests were less than 10 per cent of Morocco trade.

A narration of the incident may, for the sake of convenience, though involving some anticipation of the future, be dealt with in three sections: from the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, and the Emperor's visit to Tangier in March, 1905, to the Act of Algeciras a year subsequently; from the Act of Algeciras to the Franco-German Agreement of 1909; and from that to the--let it be hoped--final settlement by the Franco-German Agreement of November 5, 1911.

The Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 gave France a free hand in Morocco in consideration of France giving England a similar position in Egypt and the Nile Valley. The state of things in Morocco at this time was one of discord and rebellion. In the midst of it, the Sultan, El Hassan, died, and was succeeded by Abdul Aziz, a minor. On coming of age Abdul Aziz showed his inability to rule, the country fell again into disorder and Abdul turned for help to France. Meantime England and France had been negotiating without the knowledge of Germany, and in April, 1904, the Anglo-French Agreement was signed. It was accompanied by an official declaration that France had no intention of changing the political status of Morocco, but only contemplated a policy there of "pacific penetration and reforms." Thereupon Prince von Bülow, the German Chancellor, stated in the Reichstag that the German Government had no reason to assume that the Agreement was directed against any Power and that "it appeared to be an attempt by England and France to come to a friendly understanding respecting their colonial differences."