William II and the Court of Berlin--The Emperor of Illusion
I wish to speak of William II as of one dead. He does not belong to this
world; he belongs to another.
I must be excused if I am sparing of anecdotes. It would be painful to
me to recall to life and movement one who has passed. My desire is to
limit myself to explaining effects of which I know the cause.
It was puerile to wish under high-sounding vain words such a petty thing
as the arrest and trial of a Government sunk in shame.
Society cannot recognize any Divine law in crimes against civilization,
since they place man below the level of the beast.
William II fell from the throne and was arrested by a more powerful
hand than that of earthly justice. He has known the severest prison
of all--exile; the most frightful regime--fear; the most terrible
sentence--that of conscience. Who will know the secret of the nights
of this fugitive traitor to his people whom he fed with deceptions and
lies, and whom he has led to ruin, civil war and dishonour? For not only
did he dishonour himself, but he dishonoured Germany in dishonouring her
arms.
Where is the honest German who has recovered from the intoxication of
war who can hear the name of Louvain, of the _Lusitania_, of poison
gas and other horrors without shuddering? But the responsibility of all
these crimes must rest on William II.
The passing of centuries will be necessary to wipe out the stain of his
murderous folly. This constitutes the shadow over the unfortunate Empire
which makes it appear monstrous to the nations of the Entente.
But I wish to say at once, because I am certain of it, Germany is what
Imperial Prussia has made her, and would again make of her.
The victim of her confidence and candour, she accepted as gospel
all that her Sovereign, the heir of victorious ancestors, declared,
professed and taught her.
It is harder to inherit a kingdom than people think, and I say this
without irony. William II was not human like his grandfather, who cried
out when he saw the sacrifice of the cuirassiers of Reisdroffen: "Ah, my
brave men!" William II possessed nothing of his father, who earned the
name of Frederick the Noble, and who died of two maladies, that of his
throat and that of his feverish impatience to reign.
William II was charming as a boy. As a child he was an amiable
playfellow. We have plundered the strawberry beds of Laeken together--a
sacrilege which was pardoned solely on his account.
I have followed his career as far as it was possible. I believed him to
be great. I have heard much of his power not only from his own people,
but from all people. He had a wonderful part to play. He did not know
how to play it; he could not; he lacked the means to do so, and perhaps,
first of all, a clever and good wife. He had no depth of soul. A
different wife might perhaps have supplied him with this quality.
Francis Joseph at the beginning of his active career as an Emperor was
almost brilliant; he certainly appeared distinguished. Thirty years
after, his face assumed an expression of vulgarity of which his first
portraits gave no forecast, although at a distance he still gave the
impression of being "somebody." But the high _morale_ of the Empress was
somewhat reflected in him.
Less blessed in a wife, the longer William II has lived the worse his
looks, his speech and his bearing have become. Two men--the late King
Edward VII and my father, the King of the Belgians--took his exact
measure and augured nothing good for his future.
The intimate opinion of him expressed by my father has often recurred to
me, but this would entail a separate chapter and it would lead us far.
I will confine myself to stating that the King had always foreseen that
Germany, intoxicated with the warlike perorations of William II, who
was a preacher of the old Prussian regime, would end by throwing herself
upon Belgium, upon France and upon the whole world.
The defences of the Meuse were a convincing indication of the King's
forethought. But we shall never know all that the King said, what he
did, and what he desired to do in this matter.
Unfortunately certain parties and certain influential men in Belgium
wrongly countered his plans instead of acting upon them. The country has
suffered cruelly for this mistake.
By what means did William II arrive at those false conclusions which
swept away the thrones of Central Europe and which have caused so many
calamities? It was not, as has been thought by the Entente, the result
of a fatal environment created alike by the ambitions of Germany and her
barbaric instincts. The German Emperor wielded immense power. He was
in truth an absolute monarch, and in consequence the Reichstag, the
Bundesrath, or the various State Parliaments never interfered with
him. The Emperor's Cabinet ruled the army, which in its turn ruled the
nation. Thus everything was centred in the person of the Emperor, this
magnificent fruit of Prussian discipline and force.
But in this fruit which made such an impression when seen on its wall,
there was a hidden worm. William II was a liar; he lied to others and
to himself without knowing that he was a liar. He lived continually in a
world of fiction. In short, he was an actor.
But he was the worst of actors; he was the amateur, the man of the
world who plays comedy--and drama--who is so taken up with his own
small talent that he becomes more of an actor than an actor, and in
consequence is always acting in everything and everywhere.
This passion for the theatre is alike William II's excuse and his
condemnation. It is his excuse because he entered so well into the
"skin" of the various characters which he played, that in each of them
he was sincere. It is his condemnation, because a king and an emperor
should be a Reality, a Will, a Wisdom; but he was none of these.
Personally he was hollow and sonorous. He did not know much. He did not
at close quarters, like Francis Joseph, give one the impression of being
the concièrge at an embassy, but he always gave one the impression that
is best illustrated by a saying which I remember having seen in the
_Figaro_: "Have you seen me in the part of Charlemagne, or as a Lutheran
bishop?"--(for he was _summus episcopus_)--"or as an admiral, or as the
leader of an orchestra?" His many talents have been recounted. They may
all be reduced to one--the art of self-deception in order to deceive
others. Under this veneer of self-deception there existed an empty soul,
without a standard of honour, without poise, at the mercy of any kind of
flattery, impressions, or circumstances. No sooner did he hear a speech
than he gave his opinion, and assumed an attitude according to the rôle
of the character to be represented.
He may be described as the best son in the world, for he was not wicked;
he was worse--he was weak. It was Chamfort, if my memory serve me
rightly, who wrote: "The weak are the advance guard of the army of the
wicked." William II was the scout of the advance guard; his Staff was
the army. He who was so afraid of thunder usurped the place of Jupiter,
the Thunderer, but this amateur soldier was far too nervous to endure
even the noise of battle. When his officers for their own advancement
persuaded him that he possessed military and naval talent, he dreamt of
the rôle of "Welt Kaiser," and prepared for the conquest of the earth.
Caught in their own trap, his faithful adherents were intoxicated by
the intoxication which they had provoked. The Emperor's Cabinet was
the theatre of a continuous orgy of gigantic schemes. At Vienna men's
imaginations were inflamed. The Berlin-Bagdad Railway of Central Europe
revived the earlier Near-East scheme. And a whole camarilla interested
in the advantages to be derived from these splendid enterprises praised
them extravagantly.
If in 1914 the Emperor Francis Joseph had possessed any glimmer of
reason and good sense, he would have taken notice of the formidable
uncertainties of the Berlin problems, and maintained peace while
refusing to die at the cries of the victims of a war.
Left to himself, William II let loose the worst and most barbarous
powers on the nations who were dragged into the horrors of war.
I have said that he lacked depth. He was in reality inconsistent.
Although playing a thousand parts, he had no personality.
A man is only "someone" by reason of his personality. Many fools and
dishonest men reach their goals in life through intrigue, chance,
favouritism and human folly. But they are none the less foolish and
dishonest for all that, and this is why the world is so evil.
William II assumed chivalrous airs, but he still remained coarse in his
outlook. This was often apparent in his jokes with the officers of the
Guards. He had no tact or judgment. His lack of tact was due to his bad
Prussian education; to his student days at Bonn, which were given up
to drinking bouts; and as a young man, to his taste for frequenting
the Berlin casinos. As for his lack of judgment, this was the result of
inherent vanity, which everything tended to develop to his own injury
and that of Germany. The vain man is the being who is deceived by
everyone, because he has begun by deceiving himself. And he is usually a
hopeless idiot.
William II once said to me, under the impression that he was paying me
a compliment: "You would make a fine Prussian grenadier." The compliment
seemed to me "Pomeranian."
If William II had possessed tact and judgment he would have known how to
adopt a policy other than threats and violence, and a diplomacy utterly
opposed to the trickery with which Germany was so affected during his
reign.
Incapable of judging the times in which he lived, weighed down by
Prussian tradition, and full of zeal as titular chief of the House
of Prussia, descended from a Suabian family which had emigrated to
Brandenburg, he persuaded the upper classes of Germany that he had
consolidated his prestige. The Middle Ages have had a disastrous effect
on him and, through him, on all Germany.
In addition to battlemented railway stations and post offices fortified
by machiolated galleries, the influence of mediævalism led the
Emperor-King and his people back to the old hates, the old struggles and
the old ideas, just as if the world had not changed with the passing of
centuries. The result was that science, inventions, and discoveries were
first made to serve the industry of war, the continuation of conquests,
the mailed fist, and all the follies which soldiers, writers and
military journalists applied themselves to serve, finding therein their
daily bread.
However, those nations brought into closer contact by means of
intercommunication and by exchange of ideas have commenced to find
solutions of difficulties in pacific ways--solutions which until
now have only been dragged from the path of war. By this I mean the
preservation and the development of the human species, its better
distribution on the earth, and its rights to greater happiness and
justice.
William II lacked depth (I again mention the fact) because he lacked
moral strength. Not that he was immoral. Without being a saint, he
admirably fulfilled the rôle of husband and father. He was in everything
a zealous amateur. Yet he lacked moral strength because his Lutheran
attitude, which allowed him to play the part of a Protestant preacher,
was not a religious rôle. His sermons as Head of the Church did not
teach him to be humble, charitable and just before God.
Contrary to what is generally believed, especially if the religious
problem has not been studied, neither Lutheranism nor Calvinism is a
religion. The beautiful souls one meets who have held, and who hold
these religious beliefs would be beautiful no matter what belief they
held, or even in the absence of any belief. They possess an innate
beauty which touches the Divine. But a phase of religious belief cannot
be a religion. Schisms are the accidents of the life of the Church. A
tear in a costume is not a costume--on the contrary! Lutheranism was
not originally a form of worship; it was a revolt, and this species of
revolt will always make more rebels than believers. A revolt against
Rome--_Los von Rome!_ Impious cry! This is not only a case of "Deliver
us from Rome," it is also a case of "Deliver us from the Christian
religion, from the unity of the Catholic Church, otherwise called the
Universal Church, which is our only chance of peace on earth." It is a
denial of Latinity and of Hellenism; it is the retrogression of Central
Europe to the Scandinavian Valhalla; it is not a world which expands, it
is a world which confines. It does not represent the free harmony of the
actions and the thoughts of men; it is the enforced uniformity of the
parade step, and the silence on parade, in the ranks of the Prussian
Guard.
If William II, who is responsible for the violation of the neutrality
of Belgium, the burning of Louvain, the massacres of Dinant and so many
other atrocities, were not, so far as I am concerned, dead, and if I
were to see him again, I would say to him:
"You miserable man! Have you read Goethe? Can you imagine what he
who wrote 'Man is only great according to the Heaven which is within
himself' would think of you? You do not possess Heaven. You have driven
away God with the Luther of hate and negation which was your God; you
are a mere nullity."