Other whisperings there were of the storm that was so soon to burst on
the world. In the ominous silence there were rumours of a certain change
that was coming over the spirit of the Kaiser. For long years he had
been credited with a sincere love of peace, and a ceaseless desire
to restrain the forces about him that were making for war. Although
constantly occupied with the making of a big army, and inspiring it with
great ideals, he was thought to have as little desire for actual warfare
as his ancestor, Frederick William, had shown, while gathering up his
giant guardsmen and refusing to allow them to fight. Particularly it was
believed in Berlin (not altogether graciously) that his affection for,
and even fear of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, would compel him to
exhaust all efforts to preserve peace in the event of trouble with Great
Britain. But Victoria was dead, and King Edward might perhaps be smiled
at--behind his back--and then a younger generation was knocking at the
Kaiser’s door in the person of his eldest son, who represented forces
which he might not long be able to hold in check. How would he act now?
Thousands of persons in this country had countless opportunities before
the war of forming an estimate of the Kaiser’s character. I had only
one, and it was not of the best. For years the English traveller
abroad felt as if he were always following in the track of a grandiose
personality who was playing on the scene of the world as on a stage,
fond as an actor of dressing up in fine uniforms, of making pictures,
scenes, and impressions, and leaving his visible mark behind him--as in
the case of the huge gap in the thick walls of Jerusalem, torn down (it
was said with his consent) to let his equipage pass through.
In Rome I saw a man who was a true son of his ancestors. Never had
the laws of heredity better justified themselves. Frederick William,
Frederick the Great, William the First--the Hohenzollerns were all
there. The glittering eyes, the withered arm, the features that gave
signs of frightful periodical pain, the immense energy, the gigantic
egotism, the ravenous vanity, the fanaticism amounting to frenzy, the
dominating power, the dictatorial temper, the indifference to suffering
(whether his own or other people’s), the overbearing suppression of
opposing opinions, the determination to control everybody’s interest,
everybody’s work--I thought all this was written in the Kaiser’s
masterful face. Then came stories. One of my friends in Rome was an
American doctor who had been called to attend a lady of the Emperor’s
household. “Well, doctor, what’s she suffering from?” said the Kaiser.
The doctor told him. “Nothing of the kind--you’re entirely wrong. She’s
suffering from so and so,” said the Majesty of Germany, stamping up and
down the room. At length the American doctor lost control. “Sir,” he
said, “in my country we have a saying that one bad practitioner is worth
twenty good amateurs--you’re the amateur.” The doctor lived through
it. Frederick William would have dragged him to the window and tried to
fling him out of it. William II put his arm round the doctor’s shoulder
and said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, old fellow. Let us sit down and
talk.”
A soldier came with another story. After a sham fight conducted by the
Kaiser the generals of the German army had been summoned to say what
they thought of the Royal manoeuvres. All had formed an unfavourable
opinion, yet one after another, with some insincere compliment, had
wriggled out of the difficulty of candid criticism. But at length came
an officer, who said:
“Sir, if it had been real warfare to-day there wouldn’t be enough wood
in Germany to make coffins for the men who would be dead.”
The general lived through it, too--at first in a certain disfavour, but
afterwards in recovered honour.
Such was the Kaiser, who a year ago had to meet the mighty wind of War.
He was in Norway for his usual summer holiday in July 1914 when affairs
were reaching their crisis. Rumour has it that he was not satisfied
with the measure of the information that was reaching him, therefore
he returned to Berlin, somewhat to the discomfiture of his ministers,
intending, it is said, for various reasons (not necessarily
humanitarian) to stop or at least postpone the war. If so, he arrived
too late. He was told that matters had gone too far. They must go on
now. “Very well, if they must, they must,” he is reported to have said.
And there is the familiar story that after he had signed his name on the
first of August to the document that plunged Europe into the conflict
that has since shaken it to its foundations, he flung down his pen and
cried, “You’ll live to regret this, gentlemen.”