WHO DOES THE KAISER'S THINKING AND WHO DECIDED ON THE BREAK WITH
AMERICA?
Because the German Emperor possesses talents of no mean order,
because of his fiery energy, because of the charm of his
conversation and personality, his ambitions for world conquest
are most dangerous to the peace of the world.
Certainly of all the ruling houses of the world, the
Hohenzollerns have shown themselves the most able, and of the six
sons of the Kaiser there is not one who is unable or unworthy
from the autocratic standpoint to carry on the traditions of the
house. They are all young men who in any field of human endeavour
are more than a match for men of their age, and by reason of
these qualities, so rare in kings and princes, it has been easy
to arouse a great feeling of devotion for the royal house of
Prussia among all classes in Germany, with the possible exception
of the Social Democrats. The other kings and princes of Germany
have been overshadowed, mere puppets in the king business, by the
surpassing talents of the Hohenzollerns, and so the task of those
who, in Germany and out, hope for that evolution towards
liberalism or even democracy which alone can make the nations of
the world feel safe in making peace with Germany, is beset with
numerous difficulties.
Before the war the Emperor turned much of his enterprising talent
into peaceful channels, into the development of commercial and
industrial Germany. No one has a greater respect for wealth and
commercial success than the Emperor. He would have made a
wonderful success as a man of business. He ought to be the
richest person in the Empire, but the militaristic system which
he fostered gave that distinction to another. For the richest
person in Germany before the war was Frau Krupp-Bohlen, daughter
of the late manufacturer of cannon. She inherited control of the
factories and the greater part of the fortune of her father and
was rated at about $75,000,000. It was a contest between Prince
Henckel-Donnersmarck and the Emperor for second place, each being
reputed to possess about sixty to sixty-five million dollars.
Most of the Emperor's wealth is in landed estates, and of these
he has, I believe, about sixty scattered through the Empire. The
Emperor is credited with being a large stockholder in both the
Krupp works and the Hamburg-American Line. What a sensation it
would make in this country were the President to become a large
stockholder in Bethlehem Steel or the Winchester Arms Company!
The earnings of the Krupp's factory since the War have been
immense and doubtless the fortune of the Krupp heiress since then
has more than doubled. The subscriptions to war loans and war
charities, thrown by Frau Krupp-Bohlen and the Krupp directors
as sops to public opinion, are mere nothings to the fat earnings
made by that renowned factory in this war.
And what a sensation, too, would be caused in America if the
Bethlehem Steel Company or the United States Steel Corporation
were to purchase newspapers or take over The Associated Press in
order to control public opinion! Yet the German nation stands by,
apathetic, propagandised to a standstill, stuffed and fed by news
handed them by the Krupps and the alliance of six great
industrial iron and steel companies of western Germany.
* * * * *
A question which interests every inhabitant of the world to-day
is, where does the ultimate power reside in Germany?
Where is the force which controls the country? The Reichstag, of
course, has no real power; the twenty-five ruling princes of
Germany, voting in the Bundesrat through their representatives,
control the Reichstag, and the Chancellor is not responsible to
either but only to the Emperor.
Consider, for a moment, the personality of von Bethmann-Hollweg,
Chancellor of the Empire for eight or nine years. He lacked both
determination and decision. Lovable, good, kind, respected, the
Chancellor, to a surprising degree, was minus that quality which
we call "punch." He never led, but followed. He sought always to
find out first which side of the question seemed likely to
win,--where the majority would stand. Usually he poised himself
on middle ground. He could not have been the ultimate power in
the State.
I have a feeling that the Kaiser himself always felt in some
vague way that his luck lay with America, and I imagine that he
himself was against anything that might lead to a break with this
country. What, then, was the mysterious power which changed, for
instance, the policy of the German Empire towards America and
ordered unrestricted submarine war at the risk of bringing
against the Empire a rich and powerful nation of over a hundred
million population?
The Foreign Office did not have this decision. Its members, made
up of men who had travelled in other countries, who knew the
latent power of America, did not advise this step--with the
exception, however, of Zimmermann, who, carried away by his
sudden elevation, and by the glamour of personal contact with the
Emperor, the Princes and the military chiefs, yielded to the
arguments of military expediency.
The one force in Germany which ultimately decides every great
question, except the fate of its own head, is the Great General
Staff.
On one side of the Königs-Platz, in Berlin, stands the great
building of the Reichstag, floridly decorated, glittering with
gold, surrounded by statues and filled, during the sessions of
the Reichstag, with a crowd of representatives who do not
represent and who, like monkeys in a cage, jibber and debate
questions which they have no power to decide. Across the square
and covering the entire block in a building that resembles in
external appearance a jail, built of dark red brick without
ornament or display, is the home of the Great General Staff. This
institution has its own spies, its own secret service, its own
newspaper censors. Here the picked officers of the German army,
the inheritors of the power of von Moltke, work industriously.
Apart from the people of Germany, they wield the supreme power of
the State and when the Staff decides a matter of foreign policy
or even an internal measure, that decision is final.
The peculiar relations of the Emperor to the Great General Staff
make it possible for him to dismiss in disgrace a head of the
Staff who has failed. But at all times the Kaiser is more or less
controlled in his action by the Staff as a whole and at a time
when the chief of the Great General Staff is successful, the
latter, even on questions of foreign policy, claims the right
then to make a decision which the Emperor may find it difficult
to disregard. This is because in an autocratic government, as in
any other, personality counts for much. Von Tirpitz controlled
all departments of the navy, although only at the head of one.
The Ludendorff-Hindenburg combination, especially if backed by
Mackensen, can bend the will of the Emperor.
[Illustration: THE IRON CROSS. IN THE EXPECTATION OF A SHORT WAR
THOUSANDS OF THESE CROSSES WERE DISTRIBUTED IN THE FIRST MONTHS
OF THE WAR AND THE PRECEDENT THUS ESTABLISHED HAS LED TO THE
GIVING OF PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE DECORATIONS]
Yet while the head of the Great General Staff may fall, the
system always remains. An unknown, mysterious power it is,
unchanging, and relentless, a power that watches over the German
army with unseen eyes. It seeks always additions to its own ranks
from those young officers who have distinguished themselves by
their talents in the profession of arms. What does it mean to
them?
It is January twenty-seventh, the birthday of the Kaiser in a
German garrison town. The officers of the regiment are assembled
in the mess-hall, the regimental band plays the national air of
Prussia, "Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz" (Hail, thou, in the
conqueror's wreath). (The music is familiar to us because we sing
it to the words of "America." The British sing the air to the
words of "God Save the King." This music was originally written
for Louis XIV.) The health of the Emperor is proposed and drunk
with "Hurrahs" and again "Hurrahs," and then comes a telegram
from Berlin announcing the promotions and decorations granted to
some of the officers of the regiment: the most envied of all is
that younger officer, perhaps the student among them, who
receives the laconic despatch telling him that he is detailed to
the Great General Staff!
Then commences for the young officer a life of almost monastic
devotion. No amusements, no social obligations or entertainments
must interfere in the slightest with his earnest work in that
plain building of mystery which so calmly, and with such mock
modesty, faces the garish home of the Reichstag on the Königs-Platz,
in Berlin.
Who decided on the break with America? It was not the Chancellor,
notoriously opposed; it was not the Foreign Office, nor the
Reichstag, nor the Princes of Germany who decided to brave the
consequences of a rupture with the United States on the submarine
question. It was not the Emperor; but a personality of great
power of persuasion. It was Ludendorff, Quartermaster General,
chief aid and brains to Hindenburg, Chief of the Great General
Staff, who decided upon this step.
Unquestionably a party in the navy, undoubtedly von Tirpitz
himself, backed by the navy and by many naval officers and the
Naval League, advocated the policy and promised all Germany peace
within three months after it was adopted; unquestionably public
opinion made by the Krupps and the League of Six (the great iron
and steel companies), desiring annexation of the coal and iron
lands of France, demanded this as a quick road to peace. But it
was the deciding vote of the Great General Staff that finally
embarked the German nation on this dangerous course.
I do not think the Emperor himself, unless backed by the whole
public opinion of Germany, would dare to withstand the Great
General Staff which he himself creates. They are so much his
devotees that they would overrule him in what they consider his
interest.
Whatever thinking the Emperor does nowadays is more or less on
his own account. There is to-day no shining favourite who has his
ear to the exclusion of others. The last known favourite was
Prince Max Egon von Fürstenberg, a man now about fifty-four years
old, tall, handsome, possessed at one time of great wealth and a
commanding position in Austria as well as Germany, with the
privilege of citizenship in both countries. The Prince in his
capacity as Grand Marshal accompanied the Emperor, walking in
his train as the latter entered the White Hall at a great ball
early in the winter of 1914. The Emperor was stopping at the
Prince's palace in southern Germany at Donnaueschingen when the
affair at Zabern and the cutting down of the lame shoemaker there
shook the political and military foundations of the German
Empire. Prince Max together with Prince Hohenlohe, Duke of Ugest,
embarked, however, on a career of vast speculation in an
association known as the Princes' Trust. They built, for
instance, the great Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, and a hotel of the
same name in Hamburg, and an enormous combined beer restaurant,
theatre and moving picture hall on the Nollendorff Platz in
Berlin. They organised banks, and the name of the princely house
of Fürstenberg appeared as an advertisement for light beer. They
even, through their interest in a department store on the east
end of the Leipziger Strasse, sold pins and stockings and ribbons
to the working classes of Berlin. As this top-heavy structure of
foolish business enterprise tumbled, the favour of Prince Max at
the Imperial Court fell with it. For the Emperor never brooks
failure.
During the present war Von Gontard, related by marriage, I
believe, to brewer Busch in St. Louis; von Treutler, who
represented the Foreign Office; von Falkenhayn, for a while head
of the Great General Staff and Minister of War, and the Prince of
Pless, and von Plessen with several minor adjutants, have
constituted the principal figures in the surroundings of the
Emperor. Falkenhayn fell because of his failure in the attack of
Verdun, ordered by him or for which he was the responsible
commander. Von Treutler probably told the truth; he was against
the breaking of the submarine pledges to America; and Prince
Pless, who remains still in favour, never took a decided stand on
any of these questions. Prince Pless, as Prince Max was, is rich.
His fortune before the war, represented mostly by great landed
estates in Silesia, mines, etc., amounted approximately to thirty
million dollars. His wife is an Englishwoman, once celebrated as
one of the great beauties of London, daughter of Colonel and Mrs.
Cornwallis-West, and sister of the Duchess of Westminster and
Cornwallis-West, formerly married to Lady Randolph Churchill, and
now the husband of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the well-known actress.
And therefore the position of Princess Pless has not been
enviable during this war.
Emperor William does not, like many kings and dictators, confine
himself in his search for general information regarding men and
conditions to the reports of a few persons. He always has been
accessible, seeking even to meet strangers, not merely his own
people but foreigners, thus escaping the penalty of those rulers
who shut themselves up and who have all their information and
thoughts coloured for them by the preferences and desires of
prejudiced counsellors.
The chiefs of the army are always in close touch with the Kaiser,
but he is consulted on army commands and promotions much less
than on civil and even naval promotions.
Always with him is the head of the Civil Cabinet, who advises
with the Emperor on all appointments and promotions on the civil
side of the Government, helping even to make and unmake
Ambassadors and Chancellors. Admiral von Mueller, head of the
Marine Cabinet, is constantly in the Emperor's company. He is a
shrewd, capable, reasonable man; for a long time Admiral von
Mueller was against taking the chance of war with America and
perhaps, even to the end, persisted in this course. After the
fall of von Tirpitz, von Mueller acquired more real power. But in
a sense it is incorrect to speak of the forced retirement of von
Tirpitz as a "fall," because from his retirement he was able to
carry on such a campaign in favour of "ruthless" submarine war
that the mass of the people, Reichstag deputies, the General Staff,
and all came over to his point of view and von Bethmann-Hollweg,
who had brought about his dismissal, was forced officially to adopt
the policy first sponsored by this skilful old sea-dog and politician.