The young Emperor’s dislike for the press was indeed a fruitful source
of sensational incidents during the first year or two of his reign,
and still is uneasily felt to contain the elements of possibly further
disturbance. The fault of this attitude is by no means entirely on one
side. Both the character of the Kaiser and the character of the German
press are in large part what Bismarck has made them, and if their less
admirable sides clash and grind into each other with painful friction
from time to time, it is only what might be expected. During Bismarck’s
twenty-eight years of power in Prussia he so by turns debauched and
coerced the press that the adjective “reptile” had to be invented by
outsiders properly to describe its venomous cowardice. He openly and
contemptuously prostituted it to serve his poorest and pettiest uses,
so that it was not possible for any one to think of it with respect;
yet, oddly enough, he always showed the keenest and most thin-skinned
sensitiveness when its attacks or inuendoes were aimed at himself.
This whimsical susceptibility to affront in the printed word, no matter
how mean or trivial the force back of it, is a trait which has often
come near making Bismarck ridiculous, and it is not pleasant to note
how largely William seems also to be possessed with it. He is as nervous
about what the papers will say as a young _débutante_ on the stage. Not
only does he keep an anxious watch upon the talk of the German editors,
but he ordains a vigilant scrutiny of the articles printed in foreign
countries from the pens of correspondents stationed at Berlin. In this
he is very German. Nobody in England, for example, ever dreams of caring
about, or for the most part of even taking the trouble to learn, what
is printed abroad about English personages or politics. The foreign
correspondents in London are as free as the wind that blows. But matters
were ordered very differently at the beginning of the present reign in
Berlin, and to this day journalists pursue their calling there under
a sense of espionage hardly to be imagined in Fleet Street. It is true
that a change for the better is distinctly visible of late, but it
will be the work of many years to eradicate the low views of German
journalism which Bismarck instilled, alike, unfortunately, in the royal
palaces and the editorial offices of Prussia.
One of the very first acts of William’s reign was the expulsion from
Berlin of two French journalists whose sympathetic accounts of his
father’s dismissal of Puttkamer had been distasteful to the royal
eye. In the following January the correspondents of the _Figaro_
and _National_ of Paris were similarly driven out. In March, 1889,
simultaneously with the seizure of the Berlin _Volks-Zeitung_ and the
prosecution of the _Freisinnige Zeitung_, a new Penal Code was presented
to the Reichstag which contained such arbitrary provisions for stamping
out the remaining liberties of the press that even the Cologne _Gazette_
denounced it as “putting a frightful weapon into the hands of the
Government for suppressing freedom of speech and silencing opposition.”
This measure did not pass, but the odium of having introduced it
remained.
Although in other respects William was already observed to be separating
himself from his Chancellor, it is clear that he has a large share in
this odium. All his utterances, both at this time and up to the present
date, show how thoroughly he believes in editing the editors. This
tendency was during the year 1889 to exhibit its comical side.
The special organ of the Waldersee party was the high-and-dry old Tory
journal, the _Kreuz-Zeitung_. Early in the year this mouthpiece of
the anti-Bismarck coalition was raided by the Chancellor, and both its
offices and the house of its editor, Baron Hammerstein, ransacked for
incriminating documents. The Kaiser is believed to have intervened
to prevent more serious steps being taken. Later in the year, as the
success of the Waldersee combination in weaning the Kaiser away from
Bismarck grew more and more marked, the _Kreuz-Zeitung_ foolishly gave
voice to its elation, and attacked the “Cartel” coalition of parties
which controlled the Reichstag. The Kaiser thereupon printed a personal
_communique_ in the official paper saying that he approved of
the “Cartel” and was “unable to reconcile the means by which the
_Kreuz-Zeitung_ assailed it with respect for his own person.” This
warning proved insufficient, for in the following January Baron
Hammerstein put up as a candidate for a vacancy at Bielefeld, and talked
so openly about being the real nominee of the Kaiser that William
caused to be inserted in all the papers a notice of his order that
the _Kreuz-Zeitung_ should not henceforth be taken at any of the royal
palaces, or allowed in public reading-rooms. It may be imagined how the
Liberal editors chuckled over this.
So recently as in May of last year, two months after the retirement of
Bismarck, when the regular official deputation from the new Reichstag
waited upon William, he pointed out to the Radical members that the
_Freisinnige_ press was criticizing the army estimates, which he and
his generals had made as low as possible, and sharply warned them to see
that a stop was put to such conduct on the part of their friends, the
Radical editors. And only last December, in his remarkable speech to the
Educational Conference, he lightly grouped journalists with the “hunger
candidates” and others who formed an over-educated class “dangerous to
society.”
This inability to tolerate the expression of opinions different from his
own is very Bismarckian.
The ex-Chancellor, in fact, has for years past acted and talked upon
the theory that anybody who did not agree with him must of necessity
be unpatriotic, and came at last to hurl the epithet of
_Reichsfeind_--enemy of the Empire--every time any one disputed him on
any point whatsoever.
William has roughly shorn away Bismarck’s pretence to infallibility, but
about the divine nature of his own claims he has no doubt. Some of his
deliverances on questions of morals and ethics, in his capacity as a
sort of helmeted Northern Pope, are calculated to bring a smile to the
face of the Muse of History. His celebrated harangue to the Rector of
the Berlin University, Professor Gebhardt, wherein he complained that,
under the lead of democratic professors, the students were filled with
destructive political doctrines, and concluded by gruffly saying, “Let
your students go more to churches and less to beer cellars and fencing
saloons”--was put down to his youth, for it dates from the close of
1888. It is interesting to note, from William’s recent speech at Bonn,
that he has decidedly altered his views on both beer-drinking
and duelling among students. He began his reign, however, with
ultra-puritanical notions on these as well as other subjects.
Long after this early deliverance his confidence in himself, so far
from suffering abatement, had so magnified itself that he called the
professors of another University together and lectured them upon the bad
way in which they taught history. He had discovered, he said, that there
was now much fondness for treating the French Revolution as a great
political movement, not without its helpful and beneficent results. This
pernicious notion must no longer be encouraged in German universities,
but students should be taught to regard the whole thing as one vast and
unmitigated crime against God and man.
In this dogmatic phase of his character William is much more like
Frederic William I than like any of his nearer ancestors in the
Hohenzollern line. These later monarchs, beginning with Frederic the
Great and following his luminous example, were habitually chary about
bothering themselves with their subjects’ opinions. William at one time
thought a good deal upon the fact that he was a successor of Frederic
the Great, and by fits and starts set himself to imitate the earlier
acts of that sovereign. His restless flying about from place to place,
and, even more clearly, his edicts rebuking the army officers for
gambling and for harshness to their men, were copied from that
illustrious original. But in his attitude toward the mental and
moral liberty of his subjects he goes back a generation to Frederic’s
father--and suggests to us also the reflection that he is a grandson of
that highly self-confident gentleman whom English-speaking people knew
as the Prince Consort.
Frederic the Great had so little of this spirit in him that he made
himself memorably unique among eighteenth-century sovereigns by allowing
such freedom to the press that liberty sank into license, and the most
scandalous and mendacious attacks upon his personal life were printed
in and hawked about Berlin to the end of his days. As for his refusal to
interfere in the alleged perversion of Protestant children by Catholic
teachers, his comment on the margin of the ministerial complaint, “In
this country every man must get to heaven in his own way,” is justly
cherished to this day as worth all his other writings put together.
William’s spasms, so to speak, of imitative loyalty to the memories
of his ancestors have been productive of many curious, not to say
diverting, results. Their progressive consecutiveness is not always easy
to make out, but they afford, as a whole, very interesting insights into
the young man’s temperament.
When tragic chance thrust him forward and upon the throne, his youthful
imagination happened to be in some mysterious way under the spell of
that most astounding of all his forefathers, Frederic William I. He
spoke frequently with enthusiasm of the character of this rude, choleric
barbarian, and even brought himself to believe that there was something
fine in that strange creature’s inability to speak any language but
German. It was under the sway of this admiration for the second Prussian
King that William, in January of 1889, had all the French cooks in his
palaces discharged, and ordered that hereafter the royal bill of fare
should be a _Speisekarte_, with the names of dishes in German, instead
of the accustomed _menu_ in French. It will not, however, have escaped
notice that William is a changeable young man, and this ultra-Teutonic
mood did not last very long. In the following autumn he had so far
recovered from it that his visit to Constantinople was reported to have
been marred by the Sultan’s mistaken hospitality in giving him nothing
but German champagnes to drink. It must be admitted, however, that
scarcely the most robust prejudice could stand out long under such a
test.
In the spring of 1890 there came the 150th anniversary of the accession
of Frederic the Great, and with it a sudden shift in the young Kaiser’s
admiration. For a long time thereafter he made no speech without
alluding to this most splendid figure in Prussian history, and quoting
him as an example to be followed with reverential loyalty.
Then in December came the turn of still a third bygone Hohenzollern. It
was on December 1, 1640, that the youth of twenty, who was later to be
known as the Great Elector, entered upon the herculean task of saving
hapless, bankrupt little Brandenburg from literal annihilation. William
has told us that as a boy he scarcely learned anything at all about this
illustrious ancestor of his. Apparently little had been done to make
good this lack of information up to the time when, toward the close of
1890, he found that the Great Elector’s 250th anniversary was near at
hand, and felt that it ought to be celebrated. He began reading the
history of that memorable reign, and was at once excitedly interested
and impressed. There has always been a charming, if childish, _naivete_
about the manner in which William frankly exposes his mental processes,
and, having just heard of something for the first time which everybody
else knows, brings it forward to public notice as if it were a fresh and
most remarkable discovery. The effect produced upon him by his belated
introduction to the life and works of the last Elector affords an apt
illustration of this tendency. At the celebration William made a long
speech in eulogy of his ancestor, which in every sentence seemed to take
it for granted that heretofore no one had written or thought or known
about the Great Elector. Since that time the young Emperor has rarely
spoken in public, at least to a Prussian audience, without some
reference to this distinguished predecessor--whereas we never hear now
of either Frederic the Great or his savage father.
Doubtless the fervour with which William has adopted the Great Elector
as his model ancestor is in large part due to the fact that the latter’s
first important act was the summary dismissal of his father’s Prime
Minister, Schwarzenberg. The parallel to be drawn between the disgrace
of this powerful favourite and the fall of Bismarck is often faulty and
nowhere exact, but it is evident that it impressed William’s imagination
greatly when he came upon it, and that he could not resist the
temptation to suggest it to the world at large. In this same anniversary
speech he said: “My stout ancestor had no one to lean upon.”
The eminent statesman who had served his predecessor was revealed to
have worked for his own personal ends, and the young sovereign was
forced to mark out his own path unaided. The comparison was a cruel
one, because the manner in which Schwarzenberg “worked for his own
personal ends” was that of taking bribes to betray his royal master
and his country. Yet the loose phrase could also describe Bismarck’s
hot-headed use of his vast governmental powers to crush his individual
enemies, and in this sense every one felt that William was instituting a
comparison.
But this embittered remark belongs to a much later period than has as
yet come under our view, and marks an acute stage of the dramatic and
momentous quarrel between Kaiser and Chancellor, of the dawning of which
there were only vague anticipatory rumours in 1889.