The Schemes of the Kaiser Part 15

April 28, 1897. [6]

William II, the G.o.d of war and of force, is in every way responsible for events in the East. Only his friendship, and the many consequences of that friendship, have given to Abdul Hamid the courage of his ma.s.sacres, of his resistance to all efforts at reconciliation, and of his military proceedings in Greece. The German Emperor had been able to persuade the simple-minded Government of France of his peaceful and humanitarian intentions. It only needed a few of us to revolt and to express our indignation, to unmask him, and to show in its true, lurid light, the real nature of his actions, so as to enable the nations to know him for what he is. To-day he is the master of Europe; but let the power of the Kaiser be what it may (and it is a power no more capable of honesty than that of Bismarck, who lied without ceasing, forfeited without ceasing his honour, and accepted responsibility for crime), whatever conquests hereafter William II may achieve, even should we be defeated again, we shall be able to stand up before him and to his face to say, "You will never achieve greatness!" Material greatness turns again to dust, like all matter, but moral greatness is eternal, an intangible thing, which surrounds men, invisible, and which emanates from the best amongst them.

We will leave to history, which shall surely record it, the judgment of _human_ men, of real peace-lovers, concerning William II, concerning this protector of the Red Sultan, this renegade and denier of his faith, who has sold his soul in order to govern the world through evil, through trickery, through force and through war. You have only to read the German legends, to a.n.a.lyse the souls of the traditional heroes of Germany, to see that they are indeed much more closely allied to the Turks (who have only understood Islamism under its aspects of conquest) than they are to the traditions which Europe has inherited from Greece and from her daughters, Rome and Byzantium.

The struggle of to-day lies between these two spirits: one the barbarian spirit, the spirit of conquest, which knows no other law but force, the spirit which subdues and kills, represented by Turkey and by Germany; the other, the spirit of civilisation, of love, which knows no other law than the right, the spirit which emanc.i.p.ates and vivifies, the spirit of Greece, from which European civilisation is drawn, excepting always that of the Germans and Turks. Either the East will resist the Turks, and Europe will resist Germany, or else both will relapse into barbarism, and be condemned to war without ceasing, to butcheries, to the brutality of force and all its works.

May 27, 1897. [7]

At all events they have not yet won their bet in Berlin that they would make us look ridiculous and hateful. Those very wise and well-bred people, who have been advising us to revise our national education, so as to welcome the Kaiser in 1900, have had but meagre success. As to the golden stream, which brought us the 8000 marks of the King of Prussia,[8] thank Heaven, it has not been able to drown our patriotism.

Brother Frenchmen, it is still lawful for lunatics and ill-bred people like ourselves to remember Sedan, Metz, Strasburg and Paris, as well as Kronstadt and Toulon. Then let us not forget either the first rays of sunlight which reach us from Russia, or the darkness of 1870. [9]

There is not a single German journalist (_and I wish to emphasise this fact most clearly_), even in the ultra-Prussian party, who would have dared to put his signature to such an article as one of our greatest newspapers has published concerning William II, whom it describes as "a humanitarian thinker, a gentle philosopher, thinking only of the happiness of the human race, of appeasing ancient hatreds and removing old grudges. How joyfully would he not have restored Metz and Strasburg had he not been prevented in performing this act by the historical necessities of his position." In proof of all which things, this article cites his telegrams of sympathy, the splendid bouquets which he has sent to our ill.u.s.trious dead, his wish to pay homage to France in 1900, etc., etc.

The journalist grown old in harness, who has dared to write such monstrous things as well as such nonsense, will no doubt be greatly astonished when I inform him that no foreign reporter, however inexperienced, of any nation great or small, is ignorant of the fact that William II is relentlessly determined to achieve the re-establishment of absolute autocracy as it was conceived by certain Emperors of Rome and Byzantium. His motto is _Voluntas Regis Supremo Lex_, which, on the occasion of his first visit to Munich, he wrote there with his own Imperial hand. On the first occasion of the opening of the States of Brandenburg, he declared that he counted on their fidelity to help him to crush and destroy everything that might oppose his personal wishes. Is it necessary to say once more for the hundredth time that he never has the oath taken by his recruits without telling them that "they must ever be ready to fire on those who oppose his rule, even though they should be their own fathers, mothers and brothers"? The other day, did he not make his brother Prince Henry read a letter to the sailors of his war-ship the _Wilhelm Imperator_ (the vessel appointed to attend the Jubilee of Queen Victoria), in which letter he held up to the execration of the army and navy those "unpatriotic" Germans who refused to provide him with millions for his wild scheme of increasing the navy, that is to say, about nine-tenths of the Reichstag? There is in Germany one inst.i.tution which commands very general respect, and enjoys traditional liberty, viz. the University. For the last year William II has opened a campaign against the liberties of University education, and the scandalous manner in which he has attacked the professors at Berlin because of the dignity with which they have defended their rights of scientific research, are known to every one except "this brilliant Chronicler of the Boulevards."

From one end of Germany to the other they go into ecstasies whenever, either before, during, or after his acts of politeness to France, William finds some new pretext for humiliating, humbling, or threatening us. [10]

A German pamphlet published two years ago, ent.i.tled _Caligula; a Study of Caesarian Madness_, by Mr. Quidde, achieved such a success, that hundreds of thousands of copies were bought up in a few days by the faithful subjects of the German Emperor. This pamphlet, ingeniously compiled by means of quotations from Suetonius, Dion Ca.s.sius, Philo, etc., gives a marvellous a.n.a.lysis of the character of William II. I cannot resist the pleasure of giving a few extracts from this little work, for it would appear that William II is endeavouring, since its publication, to emphasise the resemblance between himself and Caligula and Nero.

"The dominant feature in the actions of Caligula lies in a certain nervous haste, which led him spasmodically from one obsession to another, often of a self-contradictory nature; moreover, he had the dangerous habit of wanting to do everything himself. Caligula seems to have a great fondness of the sea. The strolling-player side of his character was by no means limited to his military performances. He was pa.s.sionately devoted to the theatre and the circus, and would occasionally take part himself on the stage, led thereto by his peculiar taste for striking costumes and frequent changes of clothing.

He was always endeavouring to shine in the display of eloquence; and was fond of talking, often in public. We know that he developed a certain talent in this direction, and was particularly successful in the gentle art of wounding people. His favourite quotation was the celebrated verse of Homer--

There is only one Master, only one King.

Sometimes he loved the crowd, and sometimes solitude; at other times he would start out on a journey, from which he would return quite unrecognisable, having allowed his hair and beard to grow."

Just as the names of Caligula and Nero are daily affixed in Germany to the name of William II, Herr Hinzpeter is called Senecus, General von Hahnke is known as Burrhus; there is also an Acte and a Poppea at Berlin. Frederick III is Germanicus and Prince Bismarck is called Macro, after the powerful prefect of the praetorium in disgrace. Like Nero, William II has been cruel to his mother; he is cruel to his sister, the Princess of Greece. He hates England, just as Caligula hated Brittany. With a mind like that of Nero, William II derives the greatest pleasure from the thought of degrading the French people by making them receive him with acclamation. What a triumph it must be for this grandson of William I (who defeated us but left us our honour) thus to bring us to dishonour: us, the descendants of the France of 1789, republicans in the service of a Prussian Caesar!

June 10, 1897. [11]

It should have been to the interest of France and, of Russia, and a policy of skilful strategy, to oppose Turkey when supported by the Triple Alliance, and to create around and about her, in Greece as in the Balkans, such a force of resistance as would have put a stop to her schemes of expansion, resulting from those of the Powers of the Triple Alliance. By so doing, France and Russia might have taken them in the rear and upset their plans. We were already in a position of considerable advantage, in that we could leave to the King of Prussia, the German Emperor, all the responsibility for the crimes of the Sultan, observing at the same time all those principles which would have maintained, in their integrity, the moral and Christian traditions of France and Russia. But our policy has been that of children building castles in the sand. Confronted by a triumphant Turkey, leaning on the Triple Alliance, and by a Sultan suffering from the dementia of blood-l.u.s.t, certain of the faithful friendship of William II, and confident in his victorious army (already 720,000 strong, and commanded by a German General Staff); confronted by such fears and threats, we have chosen to place all our hopes upon the balanced mind of William II, the generosity of the Sultan, and the loyalty of oriental statecraft! I have said it so repeatedly that I may have wearied my readers, but I say it again; "_To their undoing, France and Russia have sacrificed their policy to Turkey, protected by Germany_."

They are now confronted by German policy, evasive and at the same time triumphant, that is to say, in full command of the situation which it has brought about. William II is at last revealed, even to the blindest eyes, as the instigator and sole director of everything that has taken place in the East since his visit to Constantinople. He takes pleasure in advising the Sultan day by day, for he makes him do everything that he himself is prevented from doing, and he enjoys the satisfaction of being a tyrant in imagination when he cannot be one actually.

June 25, 1897. [12]

The Sultan's million of armed men, organised under a German General Staff, in a country where Germany is making every effort to possess herself of every kind of influence and every source of wealth, is not this the chief danger which Russia has to fear, and whose imminence she should clearly foresee, in dealing with a Sultan like Abdul Hamid, a man of nervous fears and bloodthirsty instincts, bound to furtherance of the sudden or premeditated schemes of William II?

July 27, 1897. [13]

Although Germany has commemorated her victories for the last twenty-five years, and will doubtless continue to commemorate them for the next six months and then for evermore, it seems that we are to be compelled, in deference to "superior orders" revealed at the Council of Ministers, to postpone the official consecration of a monument intended to prove our devotion to our mutilated country, and our incurable grief at the defeat of Sedan. It seems that we have not the right, a free people, to give to sorely oppressed Alsace-Lorraine (which never ceases to give proofs of her fidelity to France) a proof in our turn, that we remember the disaster which has separated us, that we lament this disaster, and hope one day to repair, if not to avenge it. Our pride is being systematically humiliated in every direction! The nature and consequences of victory have indeed been cruelly modified, if one must submit to the law of the conqueror after having been delivered from him for twenty-five years. The glorious resistance of the past thus becomes an ignominious surrender and makes us shed tears of shame, even more bitter than those which we shed over our saddest memories.

Gentlemen of the Government of France, I would ask you to read the German newspapers; go to Berlin, go wherever you like in Germany or in Alsace-Lorraine, and you will find there hundreds and hundreds of monuments which have been inaugurated by the Imperial German Government. For these, the smallest event, ancient or modern, affords sufficient pretext. [14]

In all things and in every direction we yield today to the authority of a monarch who emphasises our defeat more severely than those who actually conquered us. Our strict national duty towards him who did not overcome us with his own sword, was to hold ourselves firmly upright before him and to protect our brethren, victims of the war.

Alas! we have been obedient to Bismarck, and we shall be submissive to William II. But why, and to what end? Had we met the liar and cheat with honesty, had we remained calm in presence of this nerve-ridden individual, we should have been able to recover, morally at first and then actually, all the advantages that Prussia gained by her victory.

The Imperial victim of restlessness, whose nerves are so unhealthily and furiously shaken when he goes abroad, has a craving for disturbing the nerves of others; this in itself makes him the most dangerous of advisers. William II never allows to himself or to others any relaxation of the brain; like all spirits in torment, he must needs find, forthwith, to the very minute, a counter-effect to every thing that confronts him. With him, even a sudden calm contains the threat of a storm, excitement lurks beneath his moods of quietness. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d peace which he has authorised Turkey to conclude, conceals a new revolution in Crete: such is his will. No sooner is there evidence of an improvement in our relations with Italy, than he invites King Humbert to be present at the German military manoeuvres, in order to create dissension between the two countries. And so it is in everything. He makes it his business to inspire weariness and vexation of spirit, to destroy those hopes and feelings which restore vitality to the soul of a people. He is for ever stretching out a hand that would fain control by itself the rotation of the globe, and he sets it all awry.

The glorification of William II at Kiel is founded upon shifting sands.

Schleswig remains Danish and resists the Germanising process with a force of energy at least equal to that of Alsace-Lorraine. The Danes of Schleswig are still Danes, they have not bowed the knee in admiration of German _Kultur_, any more than the Alsatians, Schleswig says: "Let them ask us by a _plebiscite_ and they shall see what we want, what civilised men have the right to ask: light and air and the right to dispose of themselves." The people of Alsace-Lorraine say: "If you would know what Alsace-Lorraine, which was never consulted, thinks of the Treaty of Frankfort, ask her."

I blush, and my soul is filled with shame, when I think of the degradation of French patriotism contained in the utterances of . . . ., of those words which, to our lasting sorrow, evoked in _the Centre_ of the Chamber an outburst of enthusiasm. May our patriots never forget this cowardly session of the French Parliament! Thus, then, twenty-seven years after the war, when we have spent countless millions on the remaking of our army and navy, when every Frenchman has bled himself to the bone to make France so strong and independent that she might cherish the brightest hopes, a President of the French Council has the unutterable weakness, from the tribune, to threaten France with the German cane, should she dare to follow any other policy than that desired by Berlin!

And French deputies have applauded these shameful words, that are reproduced, with such joy as may be imagined, by the whole German Press! That Press has every reason to be delighted and to find in these words clear proof that the official cla.s.s in France has always looked upon the Russian Alliance as a show-piece, never relying upon it, and that since the Berlin Congress (how often have I said it!) this official cla.s.s has never ceased to gravitate towards Germany.

And I, a Republican, a fanatic for the Russian Alliance, such as it might and should have been, a Frenchwoman, blind worshipper of my vanquished country--how can I hold my head up in the face of such a shameful collapse!

In placing his services at the disposal of the Grand Turk for the persecution of Christians, in supporting those in Russia whose policy it is to urge their country into war with j.a.pan and China and to divert it from its natural sphere of action in Europe, our Minister for Foreign Affairs has ruined one of the finest political situations in which France has ever found herself. If the conduct of our foreign affairs had been entrusted to a real statesman, France might have recovered her position in Europe instead of going, with giant strides, down the path of hopeless decadence.

Are not the intentions of Germany plain enough now and sufficiently proved? They must be stupidly foolish who cannot see that a great German war is being prepared against the Slavs and Gallo-Latins, under most disastrous conditions for us and for Russia. It needs all the blindness of King Humbert, of Leopold II and of the Hungarian Centralists, to believe that if and when it comes, a German victory would confer any benefits on anything that is not German.

September 8, 1897. [15]

The mind of Germany is everlastingly concerned with the toasts proposed by William II. We know the toast proposed after his review of the 8th Army Corps. First of all, come his remarks on the subject of foreign policy. "It rests with us to maintain in its integrity the work accomplished by the great Emperor and to defend it against the influences and claims of foreigners." On such an occasion, after the remarks on "justice and equity," which he made on board the _Pothuau_, the hot-headed Emperor was bound to deliver himself in some such strain.

The next toast was that which he proposed at Hamburg in honour of King Humbert and Queen Marguerita. This one is emphatic and at the same time gracious, for William II cultivates every style and all the arts.

On this occasion the King of Prussia, Emperor of Germany, referred as usual to the solidity of the Triple Alliance and to the mandate which it has a.s.sumed for the preservation of peace. He spoke as the grandson of William I. King Humbert replied as the grandson of Victor Emmanuel (_sic_), skilfully gliding over the question of the indissoluble nature of the Triple Alliance and reminding his hearers that Germany has no monopoly in the pursuit of peace, but that all the Governments of Europe are equally concerned in endeavouring to attain it.

A movement is taking shape in Italy, full of danger and of promise, as events will prove. The clericals and the republicans have sketched the outline of an understanding, which looks as if it might be approved by Leo XIII. The danger of this union between the parties will lead King Humbert back to a more national, a more peninsular, policy. The strong opposition that it has to face is useful, in that it will oblige the country's rulers to pay more attention to home affairs and to the nation's interests than to the glorification of the dynasty.

September 28, 1897. [16]

"Germany is the enemy," Skobeleff used to say at Paris in 1882, speaking to the younger generation of Slavs in the Balkans. These prophetic words were inspired in the hero of Plevna by Germany's intrigues at the Berlin Congress, intricate intrigues, full of menace for the future of the East. They should have haunted the spirit of every chancellery ever since, and become the formula around and about which European diplomacy should have organised its forces to resist Prussia's invading tendencies.

Until 1870 the liberal, philosophic, learned and federalist genius of Germany, was spreading all over the world through its literature, science, poetry and music, a genius whose att.i.tude and equilibrium were the fruit of an equal fusion of the mind of North Germany with that of the South. By the victories and conquest of 1870, this genius became suddenly and entirely absorbed in Prussian militarism, and has now grown to be a force hostile to all other races. The power of the intellect in all its forms, recognises reciprocity and scientific research; the power of brute force only recognises the idea of predominance and the subjection of others. The genius of Prussianised Germany to-day combines the l.u.s.t of conquest and power with the shopkeeping spirit, but even in this last, there is no idea of reciprocity but only of exclusive encroachment. Her international misdeeds are past all number; she saps and undermines all that has been laboriously built up by others. Germanisation carries with it the seeds of disintegration; it is a sower of hatred, proclaiming for its own exclusive benefit the equity of iniquity, the justice of injustice.

Only less extraordinary than the audacity of Prussia is Europe's failure to realise these truths. In 1870 Napoleon III was deluded, fooled and compromised, led into war by means of lies. Nameless intrigues set our generals one against the other. At a moment when victory was possible, the treachery of Bazaine made defeat inevitable for France, whom the so-called genius of Moltke and Frederick-Carl would never have vanquished. Having overthrown the Empire, the King of Prussia, who had declared that he was fighting against it alone, made war on France, well aware that sufficient vitality remained in the broken pieces to enable them to come together again, and that, under the threat of a French _revanche_, Prussia would be able to keep Germany exercised in such a state of mind as would reconcile her to remaining under the military yoke of the Hohenzollerns. And Europe, without protest, accepts this condition of things, fatal to her interests and security, created for the sole profit of the lowest of nations. By her self-effacement, indeed, she increased fivefold the influence and power of that nation.