The Schemes of the Kaiser Part 17

Consequently, there is an end of the dispute. The facts, you see, are simple. But Prince Henry has made him ready to receive his solemn invest.i.ture at the hands of his brother, the Emperor, by going to kiss Prince Bismarck on his forehead and cheek ("forehead and cheek," as Prince Henry unctuously remarks, "so often kissed by my grandfather, William I"). Next Prince Henry goes to seek the blessing of General Waldersee; then he has himself blessed by his mother, and by his aunt, and later he will go and get blessed by his grandmother, Queen Victoria. Slowly and solemnly each act and formality is accomplished in accordance with the rites prescribed by William. The Imperial missionary, the sailor transformed into a sort of bishop, sets forth.

The quest of the pirate-knight is to conquer all China, to become its emperor, to fall upon it, inspired by the G.o.d of battles. What matters it that the Chinese will not resist, that they will fall prostrate before him? The grandeur of Tartarin's setting forth has nothing to do with his getting there.

At Kiel all was prepared. Germany trembled with impatience and this is what she heard:--

"Imperial power means sea power: the existence of the one depends upon the other. The squadron which your ships will reinforce must act and hold itself as the symbol of Imperial and maritime power; it must live on good terms of friendship with all its comrades of the fifteen foreign fleets out yonder, so as energetically to protect the interests of the Fatherland against any one who would injure a German. Let every European over them, every German merchant, and, above all, every foreigner in the land to which we are going, or with whom we may have to do, understand that the German Michael has firmly planted on this soil his shield bearing the Imperial Eagle, so as to be able, once and for all, to give his protection to all those who may require it of him.

May our fellow-countrymen out yonder be firmly convinced that, no matter what their situation, be they priests or merchants, the protection of the German Empire will be extended to them with all possible energy by means of the warships of the Imperial fleet. And should any one ever infringe our just rights strike him with your mailed fist! If G.o.d so will He shall bind about your young brow laurels of which none, throughout all Germany, shall be jealous!

"Firmly convinced that, following the example of good models (and models are not lacking to our house, Heaven be praised!), you will fulfil my wishes and my vows, I drink to your health and wish a good journey, all success, and, a safe return! Hurrah for Prince Henry!"

Prince Henry's incredible reply was as follows--

"As children we grew up together. Later, when we grew to manhood, it was given to us to look into each other's eyes and to remain faithfully united to each other. For your Majesty the Imperial Crown has been girt with thorns. Within my narrower sphere and with my feeble strength strengthened by my vows, I have endeavoured to help your Majesty as a soldier and a citizen. . . .

"I am very sincerely grateful to your Majesty for the trust which you place in my feeble person. And I can a.s.sure your Majesty that it is not laurels that tempt me, nor glory. One thing and one only leads me on, it is to go and proclaim in a foreign land the gospel of the sacred person of your Majesty and to preach it as well to those who will hear it as to those who will not. It is this that I intend to blazon upon my flag and wherever I may go. Our comrades share these sentiments!

Eternal life to our well-beloved Emperor!"

Such gems must be left intact. One should read them again and again, line by line. Ponderous eloquence, fustian bombast, and mouldy pathos combine with the display of pomp, to excite world-wide admiration.

This play of well-rehea.r.s.ed parts is given before an audience of generals, high officials and politicians, and the scene is set at Kiel, that moving pedestal which the King of Prussia inaugurated when he made all the fleets of Europe file past him.

William II looks upon history as a vulgar photographic plate designed for the purpose of "taking" him in all his poses and in such places as he may select and appoint.

A crusade is afoot: they go, they are gone, to preach "the gospel of the sacred person of William II." A holy war is declared, to be waged against a people which declines to fight. Never mind, they will find a way to glory, be it only in the size of the slices of territory which they will seize.

The two great conceptions of our Minister of Foreign Affairs are to act as the honest broker in China between St. Petersburg and Berlin, and to put the European Concert to rights. How often have I not told him that all he has to gain by playing this game is a final surrender on the part of France? Alas! my prophecy, already fulfilled in the East, is very near to coming true in the Far East. If it should prove otherwise, it would not be to anything in our foreign policy that our good luck would be due, but to the fact that all Russia has come to realise that she is likely to be Germany's dupe in the Far East, as she has been in the East.

During the reign of the Emperor Alexander III and the Presidency of M.

Carnot, the Franco-Russian Alliance possessed a definite meaning, because both these rulers understood that any pro-German tendencies in their mutual policy must have const.i.tuted an obstacle to the perfect union of the national policies of their two countries. France had ceased to indulge in secret flirtations with Germany when the latter was no longer Russia's ally. The plain and inevitable duty of our Government was to promote an antagonism of interests between Germany and Russia and to prove to the latter that France was loyally working to promote her greatness above all else, on condition that she should help us to hold our own position. If France had been governed as she should have been, had we possessed a statesman at the Quai d'Orsay, our diplomatic defeats at Canea, Athens and Constantinople, though possibly inevitable, might have found a Court of Appeal; and France would finally have been in a position of exceptional advantage in securing a judgment favourable to our alliance.

Germany's brutal seizure in China of a naval station that the Chinese Government had leased to Russia for the purposes of a winter harbour for her fleet, foreshadows the sort of thing that William II is capable of doing, under cover of an _entente_, so soon as j.a.pan comes to evacuate Wei-hai-wei, upon China's payment of the war indemnity.

Germany's scruples in dealing with "sick men," remind one of the charlatans who either kill or cure, according to their estimate of their prospects of being able to grab the inheritance.

[1] _La Nouvelle Revue_, January 15, 1896, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[2] _La Nouvelle Revue_, March 1, 1896, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[3] _La Nouvelle Revue_, June 1, 1896, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[4] _Ibid._, September 1, 1896.

[5] _La Nouvelle Revue_, March 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[6] La Nouvelle Revue, May 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[7] _La Nouvelle Revue_, June 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[8] William II had just sent 8000 marks to the fund for the victims of the fire at the Charity Bazaar.

[9] Since Parisian journalists have dared to sing their cynical praises in honour of the German Emperor, no considerations need restrain our pen in defending the Tzars from the charges that have been brought against them. These people ask: How is it that _your_ Emperor of Russia has delayed so long in expressing to us his condolence? Why?

Let me explain. The fire at the Charity Bazaar broke out at 4 p.m. on May 4, but the Russian Amba.s.sador in Paris only telegraphed the news to Count Mouravieff on the evening of May 5. The Emperor can only have heard of the disaster on the 6th; it was then too late for him to telegraph a direct message, and it was therefore thought best to send instructions to the Russian Emba.s.sy. The blame in this matter falls therefore upon M. de Mohrenheim. It was due to his methods of proceeding that the Emperor learnt the news forty-eight hours late.

_Le Gaulois_, in a somewhat officious explanation, informs us that the Russian Amba.s.sador kept back his telegram because May 5 is the birthday of the Empress, and because there is a superst.i.tion in Russia that it is bad luck to get bad news on one's birthday. This explanation is untrue; there is no such superst.i.tion. Did they conceal from Nicholas II, on the day of his coronation, the terrible catastrophe at Khadyskaje, which cost the lives of thousands of Russians; and did this disaster prevent the Tzar from attending M. de Montebello's ball that same evening? Moreover, M. de Mohrenheim should have telegraphed on May 4 to Count Mouravieff, leaving to him the choice as to the hour for communicating the information to the Tzar. M. de Mohrenheim is in the habit of doing this sort of thing; when he chooses, his instincts are dilatory. He behaved in exactly the same way, and with the same object, on the day when M. Carnot was a.s.sa.s.sinated.

As soon as the news of that dreadful event reached the Quai d'Orsay, the _Chef du Protocole_, (then Count Bourqueney) went in all haste to the Russian Emba.s.sy, woke up the Amba.s.sador, and informed him officially of the disaster which had just overtaken France. It was then two o'clock in the morning. Instead of telegraphing the news at once to Alexander III, M. de Mohrenheim only did so at eleven o'clock on the following day. Now, he knew perfectly well that, as the result of this delay, the Tzar could only learn the news two days later because, on the following day in the early morning, Alexander III was starting with the whole Imperial family for Borki, where he was about to open a memorial chapel on the spot where several years before an attempt had been made on his life. The journey takes about forty-eight hours, and as the destination of the Imperial train is always kept secret, the Tzar could not receive the telegram until after his arrival at Borki. It will be remembered that the delay which thus took place, in the communication of the Tzar's sympathy with France in her mourning, created an unfortunate impression, and enabled the German Emperor to get in ahead of him by two days. The explanation of the delay which occurred on that occasion should have been communicated to the Havas Press Agency, and the Tzar's journey mentioned. This was done by all foreign newspapers, but good care was taken that no word of the sort should be published in Paris. It is, therefore, evident that, if the Kaiser has been twice placed in the position which has enabled him to get in well ahead of Alexander III and Nicholas II, the blame must not be ascribed to any indifference, or lukewarm feelings on the part of the friends of France. The most one can reproach them with is to have retained at Paris an Amba.s.sador about whose sentiments both Tzars were fully informed long ago.

[10] "Truly, this man must be devoted to France," M. Emile Hinzelin writes me, "he must love her dearly, since he keeps a strip of her, cut from the living flesh, which still palpitates and bleeds. Whom can he possibly hope to deceive? Mulhausen is not far from Paris, neither is Colmar, nor Strasburg, nor Metz. It is from this unhappy town of Metz, the most cruelly tortured of all, that he sends us his condolences and his bag of money. As is usual with complete hypocrites, he is by no means lacking in impudence. Never have the French people of Alsace-Lorraine been accused with more bitter determination, prosecuted, condemned and exploited by all possible means and humiliated in every way. Never has William himself displayed such unrestraint and wealth of insult in his speeches to the Army. I came across him during a journey of mine some months ago, just as he was unveiling a monument, commemorating the fatal year of 1870. With his head thrown back, his eyes rolling in frenzy and rage, shaking his fist towards France and with his voice coming in jerks, he uttered imprecations, challenges and threats in wild confusion. Next day the German Press published his speech, very carefully arranged, toned down, and even changed in certain respects; but it still retained, in spite of this diplomatic doctoring, an unmistakable accent of fierce and determined hatred. There you have him in his true light, and in his real sentiments, this man of sympathetic telegrams, of flowers, and easy tears."

[11] _La Nouvelle Revue_, June 16, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[12] _La Nouvelle Revue_, July 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[13] _La Nouvelle Revue_, August 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[14] Amongst the latest proofs of this, here is one, I quote from a German newspaper: "In 1870, when war was declared, the _Kolnische Zeitung_ offered a reward of 500 thalers for the first capture of a French gun. This prize was won by some soldiers of the first Silesian Battalion of the 5th Regiment of Cha.s.seurs, who, in their first fight at Wissemburg, took possession of a cannon which bore the name of Le Douay, after the commander-in-chief of a French Army Corps. It occurred to these soldiers to erect a monument at the spot where this gun was captured. The monument itself, consisting of a large rock from the Vosges, was the gift of one of them, and on June 20 the presentation of the monument took place, in the presence of Cha.s.seurs who had come from all parts of the country and of a large number of officers. Twenty-seven years ago, the Cha.s.seurs were there, on the same spot, facing the enemy; to-day, they hail the heights of Wissemburg as part of the great German Fatherland, reconquered after a fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y struggle." It is evident that the Emperor is not the only one to celebrate these anniversaries, that new ones are always being invented, and that no humiliation will be spared us in Alsace-Lorraine.

[15] _La Nouvelle Revue_, September 15, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[16] _La Nouvelle Revue_, October 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[17] This article appeared in the _Pet.i.t Ma.r.s.eillais_ under the t.i.tle of "The Gulls."

[18] _La Nouvelle Revue_, October 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[19] A friend writes to me from Germany: "You cannot conceive the effects produced upon me by the _incredible_ development of industrial enterprise throughout all Germany. Factories seem to spring out of the ground; in all the large towns that one visits, smoke ascends from hundreds of chimneys. The workshops that manufacture steam-engines are so overloaded with work, that orders take more than a year to fill. I went all over the offices of the Patents Bureau in Berlin--a place as large as our Ministry of Commerce, with a library more complete than that of our poor Conservatoire of arts and trades. Alas, we are but pigmies beside these giants! Everywhere one sees evidence of order, discipline and patience, qualities in which we are somewhat lacking.

But I am not down-hearted, and with the help of a few colleagues, we are going to try and propagate some of the ideas we have learned from our neighbours and which may be of benefit to our country."

[20] _La Nouvelle Revue_, December 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[21] _La Nouvelle Revue_, December 15, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[22] _La Nouvelle Revue_, January 2, 1898, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

CHAPTER VI

1898

The encroaching expansion of Germany--When will there be a determined coalition against Germany?--The crime of Jules Ferry--William II checked in his attempt to obtain a representative of the Holy See at Constantinople--Leo XIII confirms France in her protectorate over Christians in the East--William's journey to Palestine.

January 9, 1898. [1]