He was
indefatigable
in visiting all parts of Germany and
learned much thereby.
learned much thereby.
Robertson - Bismarck
When, as so often, he was mastered
by personal hate, which coincided with a fundamental
political antagonism, there Were no limits to Bismarck's
unscrupulous brutality. One subject of bitter controversy,
involving foreign policy, had arisen in these tragic three
months--the proposed marriage between the Princess
Victoria, the Emperor's daughter, and Prince Alexander
of Battenberg. Since the secret Reinsurance Treaty,
Bismarck was determined in every way to keep on good
terms with the Tsar. The envenomed hostility of the
Tsar to Prince Alexander had been proclaimed broadcast
to the world in the preceding two years. In the summer
of 1888 Prince Alexander no longer ruled in the united
Bulgarias, and there was no chance of his ever being in
authority again at Sofia. Bismarck vetoed the marriage,
for the simple reason that it would stir such a ferocity of
resentment in the Tsar as to endanger, if not snap, the
entente of 1887. He chose to represent the proposal in
the press and in official circles as a Machiavellian effort
of England to control German policy for English ends, to
embroil Germany and Russia for English ends, and to
manipulate the destinies of Bulgaria for English purposes
against the interests of Germany and Russia. The press
under the Chancellor's control and in his pay had instruc-
tions to open a savage campaign against English interfer-
ence in German affairs and in the Near East. And the
instructions were obeyed with a scurrilous zest. If
Bismarck did not know that this was untrue, he was very
incompetent. But he was not incompetent, and the
inference is obvious and indisputable. The marriage did
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 459
not take place. But this was not a victory of an inde-
pendent Germany over an intriguing and unscrupulous
Great Britain. For, as we know now, the influence of
Queen Victoria and Lord Salisbury were exerted precisely
as Bismarck would have Germany believe they were not.
The accession of the Emperor William n. on June 16,
1888--the year of the Three Emperors--opened up a
wholly new situation. The new sovereign was in his
twenty-ninth year, and teeming with energy, ideas, and
masterfulness. Since 1887 he had been carefully in-
structed, at his grandfather's wish, in the mysteries of
statecraft by Bismarck, and the effusive enthusiasm with
which he proclaimed at the outset his desire to carry out
his grandfather's (not his father's) policy with the aid of
his grandfather's great Chancellor made the resignation
that Bismarck had contemplated after the death of
William 1. superfluous. Germany was instructed to
believe that the new sovereign would be in all things as
obedient to Bismarck's advice and ripe experience as had
been William 1.
Bismarck himself believed it. A year later, in the
autumn of 1889, when the Tsar was in Berlin and Bismarck
emphasised his earnest lesire that German policy should
maintain a close co-operation with Russia, the Tsar
pointedly asked, 'Are you sure of remaining in office? '
'Certainly, your Majesty,' Bismarck replied, 'I am
absolutely sure of remaining in office all my life. '1 That
was on October 11. Five months later he had ceased to
be Chancellor, and if any date must be selected for the
commencement of the serious collision between Chan-
cellor and Emperor it would be October I3,a two days
after Bismarck's confident utterance, when a serious
difference on foreign policy revealed itself. The publi-
cation by Geffcken (one of the Emperor Frederick's circle)
of elaborate excerpts from the late emperor's diary in the
Deutsche Rundschau, bearing particularly on the war of
1 Bismarck related this to the NauFreie Presse, which printed it in its issue of
June 22, 1892. Down to the autumn of 1889, Hohenlohe repeatedly noted that
the Emperor was 'entirely under the influence of the Chancellor. '
1 In the conversation between the two, after the Tsar's departure, as recorded
by Bismarck in the Hamburger Naekrichten, July 24, 1891,
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? 460
BISMARCK
1870, the foundation of the Empire and the Liberalism
of the Crown Prince, created a great stir. Bismarck's
'Immediate Report' attacked the authenticity of the
document, but as he admitted to Busch, whatever its
authenticity, it must be treated as spurious because the
record was damaging to the official version and the in-
terest of the dynasty, and not least to Bismarck himself.
Geffcken's prosecution was ordered, while Geffcken himself
was arrested and sent to prison. 'The legend that the
late Emperor was a Liberal, in sympathy with the Pro-
gressive party, was dangerous to the whole dynasty and
must be destroyed. '
Geffcken's acquittal (January 4, 1882) by the Supreme
Court was a damaging blow to Bismarck, which roused
him to uncontrollable anger. He wished to institute
'disciplinary measures' against Geffcken in the University.
of Strasburg; or, in other words, to compel the Univer-
sity to deprive him of his chair. But, apart from this
high-handed interference with academic and civic rights,
how could a professor be dismissed for an alleged offence
of which the highest tribunal in Germany had just
acquitted him? The idea was proved to be legally im-
possible, but Bismarck's desire to crush Geffcken, as he
had crushed Arnim, simply proved his intolerance of all
opposition and all intellectual or political liberty. It
proceeded from the same principles as the unrelenting
pressure that he applied during 1888 and 1889 to the
Swiss government in ' the Wohlgemuth affair,' to coerce
the Federal authorities into collaborating with the German
secret police, planted in Swiss territory, in hunting down
German Socialists, driven oat of Germany by the Anti-
Socialist Law. The Swiss government very properly
refused to comply with so unwarranted an intervention
in the internal affairs of a Sovereign State. There
followed a menacing correspondence in which Bismarck
went so far as to threaten that Germany might decline to
recognise any further the 'neutrality' of Switzerland
defined by an international guarantee; but the Swiss, to
Bismarck's anger, declined to be browbeaten by their
powerful neighbour, 'He,' (Bismarck) Hohenlohe noted
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 461
in the Geffcken affair, 'gave me the impression of a man
not quite sound mentally' (January 25, 1889). He
repeats the remark with reference to the Swiss. 'Even
Herbert Bismarck,' he notes (June 24), 'said he could
no longer understand his father, and many people were
beginning to think that he was no longer quite sane. '
The German soldier chiefs were seriously troubled. All
their military plans for a war in which Germany might be
involved with France were drawn on the assumption of a
friendly and neutral Switzerland. Switzerland driven
into the arms of France would dislocate the strategical
ideas that the great General Staff, in its continuous study
of the European situation, was always working out in
the light of every fresh political development. Bismarck
was, indeed, as sane as was Napoleon 1. in his later years,
but with both men uncontrolled power and overweening
confidence in their genius brought out all the latent des-
potism that from the very first was embedded in their
political principles and their interpretation of life; and
with both resentment concentrated in a personal hatred
of the individual who symbolised the opposition. Bis-
marck only desired to treat Geffcken as Napoleon treated
Mme. de Stael or the Duc D'Enghien. The world must
be made safe for autocracy. 1
The plain truth was that after June 1888 the conditions
which had made the Bismarckian system workable and
possible were suddenly reversed. Bismarck and Germany
had grown accustomed to the rule of an emperor never
fitted by his gifts to be a great master either of adminis-
tration or of policy, who in 1871 was in his seventy-fourth
year, and with every year was obliged to surrender more
and more of power and control to the adviser whose
1 No less characteristic of Bismarckian methods and manners and of the
'anti-English' campaign was the revival in the controlled German press of the
charge that Sir R. Morier, then British Ambassador at Petersburg, had in 1870,
when he was British minister at Darmstadt, betrayed to the French at Metx
important military information damaging to the German operations. Morier
publicly refuted this infamous and absurd libel, proving by a letter of Marshal
Bazaine that it was a lie; but Count Herbert Bismarck, though requested to do
so, declined officially to disavow it, or, when challenged, to produce any evidence
in its support; with the result that, to this day it is still believed in educated
quarters in Germany.
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? \6i
BISMARCK
genius, amazing capacity for work, and complete accord
with his sovereign in the general principles of government
inspired a deep confidence. Bismarck had thus syndicated
in himself both the formidable powers of the Imperial
Chancellorship and the still more formidable powers of the
Emperor and Prussian King. The new Emperor was
young, versatile, and fired by a devouring activity. Had
he been a constitutional sovereign he would not have
been prepared to step on to the shelf during the best years
of his life. But he was not a constitutional sovereign.
William n. had been born and bred in the militarist
atmosphere of the Hohenzollern Court, and he had been
trained in the theory, sedulously enforced since 1847 by
no one more than by Bismarck himself, that the Prussian
monarch personally governed, and that the Prussian
Crown was not the idle ornament of a constitutional
building, but the living and operative force in the mechan-
ism of the State. . 'If a lion knew its own strength,'
Wolsey remarked of the young Henry vin. , 'hard it were
to rule him. ' There were, in fact, practically no limits
- to what the Emperor, with the help of the Prussian Crown,
could do, if he chose to exercise to its full all the latent
power in the prerogative, prestige, and influence of the
Imperial and Prussian Monarchy. William n. took some
months to discover what an unexplored and inexhaustible
heritage had fallen to him--a heritage enriched by
Bismarck's efforts for a quarter of a century. Therein lay
the irony of the situation. Had Bismarck been the Parlia-
ment-made minister of a constitutional sovereign, whose
ministerial position rested on a national mandate expressed
through a representative assembly to which he was re-
sponsible, it would have been William n. not Bismarck who
must have given way. Bismarck had indeed the confidence
of the nation. A plebiscite in t 890 would have retained
him in office till death came. But the nation could not
save him in 1890, nor could it bring him back. Once he
had lost the support of the Crown he was powerless. He
could not appeal to the Reichstag nor to the Federal
Council, still less to the nation by a general election. He
must either resign or be dismissed. He could not even
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 463
advise his Imperial Majesty whom the Crown should
invite to be its chief adviser in his place. And it is in the
record that the man who all his life had fought against the
conception of an electro-plated royalism, and against a
kingship emasculated by English Liberalism, should later
denounce this subservience to a personal monarchy as
'Byzantinism and Caesar worship. '
There was also more even than this in the situation
that was bitter. William n. was young. He could toil
and travel as only the young can. Age has its com-
pensations and its rewards, but not all its maturity of
wisdom and experience can find a substitute for the re-
cuperative vigour of manhood and womanhood in their
prime. Bismarck could recall the felicity of the time
when after a day at his desk he could swim in the moonlit
waters of the Rhine, snatch a couple of hours of sleep, and
then fling himself into work again or wear out a fiery
horse in the exultant freshness of youth and the joy of life.
He could do it no longer. He told the Reichstag in 1889
that he was obliged severely to limit his efforts and con-
centrate on the important and the essential. He now
fought a losing battle with the Emperor--ebbing forces
on the one side against vitality on the other. For all that,
he was not prepared to let go. The more his grip
slackened, the more fiercely did he demand submissive
obedience to his autocratic will. It is a characteristic that
history can exemplify fifty times over that the strong-
willed who have long held unquestioned sway may lose,
as the chariot of time drives remorselessly on, everything
but the strength of their will. The appetite for domina-
tion waxes precisely as the capacity to gratify it wanes.
The bitterest punishment indeed that the years can bring
to some men and women is the fear and the resentment of
rivals in power.
A new epoch had arrived in Germany which knew and
reverenced Bismarck, but Bismarck neither knew nor
reverenced it. William n. was a child of the new epoch.
Bismarck had taught Germany to be strong and how to
be strong. He had placed the Empire on the pinnacle
of Continental power, and new worlds had swum into its
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? 464 BISMARCK
ken. The young Imperial Germany of 1888 desired to
prove that it was as strong, as great, as ambitious, and as
saturated with the realism of life as the Germany that had
overthrown Vienna and the Babylon of France. It was
grateful for Bismarck's achievements; Bismarck summed
up for it all that . was mighty in Germanism; the ends
that Bismarck defined must pass with Bismarck himself;
but Bismarckian methods and the Bismarckian gospel were
imperishable and could not be superseded. The pro-
foundest homage that could be paid to the master was to
apply the principles and methods of Bismarckian state-
craft to the problems of the future. The Bismarckian
Empire that was the State, incarnating Continental Power,
must be transformed into the World-Empire that incar-
nated World-Power. Nothing must happen in the world
within or without Europe in which Germany had not
the deciding voice. Bismarckianism not Bismarck was
the model. In the magician's magic more than in the
magician himself lay the essential secret of success. Round
the Emperor collected the new Germany. Fear, jealousy,
ambition, revenge--the human appetites and carnal forces
that find their most nourishing environment in the court
of a militarist personal monarchy added their unlovely
stimulus. Bismarck had made many enemies, whose enmity
was all the stronger because it had been so impotent.
The Chancellor was not popular at the Federated Courts--
neither at Stuttgart, Munich, Dresden, nor Karlsruhe--
the soldier 'demi-gods,' the Clericals, the anti-Semites,
the Lutheran Conservatives, the great industrials were
quite ready to salute as they saw the Chancellor depart;
the Liberals and Radicals and Socialists had no reason
to love the Minister-President, for fate and Bismarck
had killed Liberalism. The German people alone was
Bismarck's most loyal ally, and the German people
through its representatives had been the accomplice in
the blunder by which the German people was excluded
from deciding in hours of crisis who should govern in
their name.
In the confidential circles of the monarchy and of the
official civil and military bureaucracy--the men who
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 465
governed and whom Bismarck had taught to regard the
Reichstag as the House of Phrases, a statutory but useless
appendage to the machinery of Power--it became clear
that the iron Titan of Friedrichsruhe planned for the per-
getuity of the Bismarckian autocracy. The House of
ismarck was to hold an unbroken mayoralty of the
palace over, rather than under, the House of Hohenzollern.
Count Herbert Bismarck, carefully trained in affairs of
State, and since 1886 Foreign Secretary under the Chan-
cellor, was obviously destined to sit in the Wilhelmstrasse
in his father's chair. Herbert Bismarck had capacity and
considerable powers of work. He modelled himself on his
father as capable sons of great men are entitled to do.
But he endeavoured to prove, not that he was a chip of
the old block, but the old block itself by imitating and
exaggerating with repellent fidelity all the worst defects
in his father's character--his brutality, coarseness, dicta-
torial insolence, and unscrupulous disregard of the con-
ventions of decent existence. His manners were insuffer-
able and a byword. 1 Men were prepared to endure much
from the Chancellor who had genius and achieved miracles.
They were not prepared to endure the intolerable from
one who was not a genius and had done nothing remarkable
(except be outwitted in colonial negotiations by Lords
Granville and Rosebery).
During 1888 and 1889 Bismarck was very little in Berlin.
Most of his time was spent at Varzin and Friedrichsruhe,
and it was at his country seats that the unending visitors
found the Chancellor and did their business. His absence
from the capital was not wholly the result of old age.
In Herbert Bismarck at the Chancery the father had a
devoted representative, and the Empire could be governed
on Bismarckian lines almost as easily from Friedrichsruhe
as from the Wilhelmstrasse. The Chancellor, however,
1 'I never go to Paris except in war time,' Herbert Bismarck is reputed to
have replied to a French diplomatist. One of many examples can be cited. 'H.
Bismarck had had the effrontery to say to the Prince of Wales that an emperor
who could not talk was not fit to reign. The Prince had said that, had he not
valued the good relations between England and Germany he would have thrown
him out of the room. '--{Hohenhhe Memoirs, June 22,1888). Herbert Bismarck's
conduct in the controversy with Sir R. Morier is another good example of his
insolence, boorishness, and dishonourable conduct.
I. 2 c
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? 466
BISMARCK
did not realise that under a young Emperor, bent on
probing into every department of State, and leaving an
Imperial imprint upon it, the loss of touch with the
personalities, the ministers and the forces of politics was
a grave disadvantage. Nor did he appreciate the signi-
ficance of the growing volume of criticism that found in
these prolonged absences a substantial reason for a change.
Thus by the autumn of 1889 the whole Bismarckian
system was being challenged--and by the Emperor. For
William n. had inaugurated his reign by a series of travels.
He was indefatigable in visiting all parts of Germany and
learned much thereby. He went to Petersburg, Vienna,
London, Athens, and most remarkable of all, to Constan-
tinople, the first European sovereign to be received as a
guest by an Ottoman Sultan. And in these visits what
he learned about foreign policy caused him to think and
think again. Bismarck resented these continuous. journeys,
and expressed his resentment in remarks that travelled
to the travelling sovereign. They made the Emperor
more important than Bismarck, and they did not resist
the peculiar methods by which Bismarckian foreign policy
was maintained. The old Emperor had been told just as
much as the Chancellor thought fit; the young Emperor
was insisting on knowing what he thought fit--and he
made discoveries, had ideas, and ' interfered. '
Bismarck's foreign policy was never easy to understand.
It certainly needed a great deal of explanation in the last
two years of his Chancellorship. Although Carnot's
election to the Presidency and the slow pricking of the
Boulanger bubble had greatly eased the situation in France,
Bismarck had continued a deliberate policy of provocation.
The new administrative order forbidding entry into
Alsace-Lorraine except to those provided with a passport,
vised at the German embassy at Paris, coupled with the
semi-official explanation that 'Germany did not desire
war, but only more distant relations with France,' pro-
voked a fresh Press campaign on both sides of the frontier.
The order seemed to cool heads a wanton provocation.
The tension in the Near East had also been relieved,
though Russian resentment against Bulgaria continued
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 467
unabated. But Russo-German relations showed no im-
provement, despite the secret reinsurance; and the
German Staff, impressed with the excellence of the French
army and the completeness of French armaments, was
very anxious about the outlook when the exhibition of '89
at Paris was over. Austrian policy was no less disquieting,
for Austria desired to recognise Prince Ferdinand in
Bulgaria, and this might lead to a rupture with Russia.
The quotation of a Bulgarian loan on the Viennese
exchange evoked an explosion of wrath at Petersburg that
was very significant. Count Kalnoky's visit to Friedrichs-
ruhe (November 3), shortly after the Tsar had visited
Berlin, and while the Emperor William was at Constan-
tinople caused justifiable speculation in every capital.
A crisis had been reached alike in the relations of Austria
and Germany and of Austria and Russia, and Bulgaria, as
usual, was at the bottom of the trouble.
To the Emperor and his circle the position seemed to be
very clear. They professed to be 'perplexed' by the
Chancellor's inexplicable leanings now to Austria, now to
Russia, and they convinced themselves that Bismarck, if
it came to a choice between Austria and Russia, would
'desert' Austria, throw over the Dual Alliance, and let
Austria fight alone with Russia while Germany stood by:
whereas the Emperor was determined to stand by Austria,
even at the cost of a war with both France and Russia.
Bismarck's ' vacillations' were interpreted as proofs either
of senility or dishonesty. Things were being kept back
from the Emperor--which is very probable.
The 'veerings' may not have been due either to
senility or to dishonesty. Since 1871 Bismarck's policy
had turned on maintaining a very delicate equipoise
between Austria and Russia, (just as since 1882 he had
maintained a delicate equipoise between Italy and Austria)
with Germany as the controller of the levers, and he had
accomplished the difficult task by disregard of scruples, by
prestige and an extraordinary intuition into the shifting
phases of an ever-shifting situation. He had persistently
refused to commit Germany by unlimited pledges to
either side, and he was confident that no one but himself
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? 468
BISMARCK
could achieve the perpetual miracle of preventing a war
in the Near East. Nor could he have a partner in the
task--he must have carte blanche and unlimited trust from
his sovereign.
Apparently now he was ready to let Russia, if need be,
intervene in Bulgaria to reassert her waning authority,
while assuring to Austria her sphere of influence in Serbia.
But he was not ready either to provoke Russia by recog-
nising Prince Ferdinand, or to give Vienna a free hand to
drag Germany in to cover Austria's blunders or to win
Austria's battles. The improved relations with Great
Britain, consequent on the Emperor's visit to London,
would result in shifting the odium of vetoing Russia from
Germany on to a joint entente between Great Britain and
Austria. 'We shall begin no war either with Russia or
France,' he explicitly told Prince Hohenlohe (December
15, 1889). Moreover, Bismarck was gravely perturbed
by the internal condition of Austria. The 'ally' might
crack up internally, and where would Germany be then?
It is tempting to infer that a new orientation of German
policy was taking definite shape in the Emperor's circle.
The dynastic connection, sealed by the marriage of the
Emperor's sister with the heir to the Greek throne, the
Duke of Sparta, the much advertised journey to Constan-
tinople, with its hint of protection to Abdul Ha mid
against all and sundry, and the recent completion of the
railways to Salonica and Constantinople, which laid direct
communication via Belgrade from Vienna both to the
^Egean and the Dardanelles, were the beginning of a new
epoch. The plan of substituting Germany for Russia
as the leading power at Constantinople, of drawing the
new Bulgaria slowly and surely into the German sphere
of influence, of assigning Salonica definitely as the Austrian
goal with Serbia under a benevolent Habsburg thumb,
and of a general German protectorate over the Balkans
with Athens as one of its bases and the Hohenzollern in
Roumania as another, had a beginning; and all the evidence
available supports the hypothesis that that beginning must
be placed in 1889. Such a policy, however tentative at
first, meant at some future date something like a breach
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 469
with Russia and a closer co-operation with Austria. The
identification of Austrian and German objects would be
tolerably secure if it were accompanied by a clear under-
standing with Great Britain, with its reflex action on Italy,
and its reflex action upon Austria. The Anglo-German
agreement of July 1, 1890, is on record, and Chancellor
Caprivi who concluded it refused to renew the Secret
Insurance Treaty of 1887. What actually lay behind
these two significant facts is a matter of inference, not of
proof. But the new policy was certainly not Bismarckian.
It was a reversal of Bismarck's policy. His resistance to
it was inevitable, if for no other reason than that it was
an abandonment of Centralism as he understood it; and
it would lead straight to a Russo-French entente, cul-
minating in an alliance. Moreover Bismarck foresaw
that this 'world policy,' substituted for the Centralism
that he had created and maintained so successfully, would
lead, must indeed lead, if logically pursued, to an antagon-
ism between Great Britain and Germany. That was
fatal to the Bismarckian system. Germany, which had
isolated both its friends and its foes, was thereby ensuring
its own isolation by provoking an anti-German coalition. 1
The principles of Bismarck's home policy were no less
in grave danger. The Chancellor's last speech in the
Reichstag (though neither he nor his audience dreamed
it would be his last) was on May 18, 1889, on the Old Age
Pension Bill. The whole argument was a concentrated
indictment of Liberalism and Socialism, and a defence of
Conservatism, concluding with a menacing challenge to the
1 Cp. the significant passage in Hohenlohe Memoirs, ii. p. 413 (March 31,
1890). 'The Emperor told the generals that Russia wished to begin a military
occupation of Bulgaria, and to assure herself of the neutrality of Germany in the
meantime. He said that he had promised the Emperor of Austria to be a loyal
ally and he would keep his word. The occupation of Bulgaria by the Russians
would mean war with Austria, and he could not leave Austria in the lurch.
. . . Bismarck was ready to abandon Austria. . . . From this point of view I
understand Bismarck's statement when he said that the Emperorwas conducting
his policy in the manner of Friedrich William IV. This is the black cloud on
the horizon. ' Cp. the entry for January 14, 1895 (ii. p. 462): 'We (Bismarck
and Hohenlohe at Friedrichsruhe) talked . . . of the (secret) treaty with Russia
which Caprivi had not renewed because the policy it. led to was too complicafed
for him. The difficulty of my position (Hohenlohe was about to becorcte
Chancellor) lay in the sudden decisions of his Majesty. '
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? 470
BISMARCK
Liberal and Democratic parties: 'To the members of the
Conservative party alone--and I include the National
Liberals and the Centre in the Conservatives--to these
members alone have I explanations to offer: with all the
others I have to fight--that is another matter; and I
would beg them especially to cut themselves adrift from
all pommon action with Socialists, Poles, Guelphs, Alsatian
Frenchmen, yes, and with the Liberals also. ' The solid
cartel that gave him a majority was quite ready to act
on the advice; it was prepared to vote for all repressive
measures and to fight with the Chancellor against every
form of Liberalism. What failed Bismarck now was not
the government majority but the Crown.
The Chancellor spent the autumn of 1889 in the country.
The anti-Socialist law was due for renewal; and Bismarck
wished it to be made permanent, with added powers to
expel Socialist agitators and to suppress in perpetuity
Socialist papers. He was summoned by telegram from
Count Herbert Bismarck to return to the capital on
January 23, 1890, where he found the ministers very
uneasy at the strong opposition in the Reichstag to the
anti-Socialist law as drafted by the government. On
January 24 he resigned the Ministry of Commerce. The
Emperor desired conciliation with, and concessions to,
the Socialists, and two Imperial rescripts announcing this
policy, to be consummated by an international conference
on Labour and Social Problems, were ready for publication.
They were, in fact, a reversal of Bismarck's policy, and
had been prepared in his absence. When they appeared
they lacked the customary ministerial counter-signature
(February 4)--the first official documents for twenty-
seven years published without the counter-signature of
the Chancellor or Minister-President. On January 25
no official indication was given to the Conservative party
how to vote on the anti-Socialist Bill. The Conservatives,
regarding the measure, from which the expulsion clauses
had been struck out, as too lenient, went into the same
lobby as the Radicals and the Centre, and the anti-Socialist
law was rejected by 169 to 98 votes. All Berlin now knew
that it was confronted with a real' Chancellor Crisis. '
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 471
Foreign policy, however, was the main cause of the
collision. The explicit reports of Russian armaments and
movements of troops perturbed Vienna and the German
General Staff. The Emperor was determined to convince
Austria that Germany was on her side--Bismarck stub-
bornly resisted any steps to support Austria and thereby
alienate Russia: and the Emperor accused him of sup-
pressing information in the Foreign Office.
The quarrel over home policy could have been settled,
but the conflict over foreign policy cut down to funda-
mentals. A compromise was impossible. Bismarck's
system was in issue. The general election, however,
turned on the new Social and Labour policy. Bismarck
declined to organise. a governmental campaign; he had
quarrelled both with the Emperor and his colleagues, and
the results were a rout for the cartel. The Conservatives
lost 36, the National Liberals, 52 seats; the Liberals
gained 30, the Socialists, 24 seats. The cartel of 1887 was
dissolved, although the Clerical Centre returned in un-
diminished strength. Bismarck now made a subtle move.
Recognising that the Crown was undermining his presi-
dential pre-eminence by uniting the ministers against him,
he demanded that the Cabinet order of September 8,
1852, should be vigorously enforced. This order, requiring
all ministers to submit their departmental business to the
Minister-President before submitting it to the Crown,
practically forbade all independent relations between the
ministers and the Crown, and made the Minister-President
the sole constitutional avenue of communication with the
sovereign. Bismarck had always acted on it, though in
the last ten years his frequent absences had required its
relaxation. But such had been his prestige that the re-
laxation had not involved any real diminution of his
authority in all essentials of governmental action. It was
different now, when Bismarck realised that the King-
Emperor aimed at uniting the ministerial cabinet against
its constitutional chief. To the Emperor the order was
an odious restriction on his prerogative. It meant that
he could only confer with his ministers by and through a
Minister-President, hostile to his policy and his ideas,
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? 472
BISMARCK
alike in home and foreign affairs. Accordingly he de-
manded that the Minister-President should advise him to
rescind the order. The dispute was a forcible illustration
of Bismarck's warning to the Progressive Party in 1862:
'Questions of right (Rschtfragen) in the long run become
questions of might (Machtfraggn). ' The Emperor told
Hohenlohe that February and March were for him 'a
beastly time,' and that it had become ' a question whether
the Bismarck dynasty or the Hohenzollern dynasty should
rule. '
For Bismarck the issues were simple, but fundamental.
His whole system was challenged. As Minister-President
he was to be reduced to a position of equality with col-
leagues placed in complete independence in their relations
with himself and with the Crown; a policy in home
affairs was to be carried out through the ministers of the
Interior and Finance which reversed all his principles; as
Chancellor he was expected to carry out a foreign policy
in flat contradiction to his convictions and ideas. The
close connection between home and foreign policy--the
keystone of his system and his success--was to be snapped;
alike in the Prussian Landtag and the Imperial Reichstag
he would speak without any control over parties or any
security that the votes would not be influenced by Imperial
intrigues or ministerial pressure, unfavourable to himself.
In the daily intercourse with the representatives of foreign
governments he could no longer invite their confidence
or express his own. Moltke had resigned his post as Chief
of the General Staff. The new chief, Waldersee, in
Bismarck's judgment was a second-rate soldier and an in-
triguing politician in the hands of a 'military ring' bent
on controlling the civil authority. In a word, the Chan-
cellor and Minister-President would have lost all his rights
to co-ordinate strategy and policy. The Emperor, he
told more than one confidant, ' now wishes to reign alone
--to be his own Chancellor and Minister-President. '
It was impossible that Bismarck could accept after twenty-
seven years of power a position that was a personal humilia-
tion, a reversal of his policy, and a reduction to impotence.
'I cannot serve,' he said, ' on my knees' (Ich kann nicht
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 473
mit Proskynesis dienert). The final touch was given on
March 14. Windthorst who wished to consult the Chan-
cellor about the forthcoming session was received 'in
audience' by Bismarck. What passed between them--
whether Bismarck suggested a coalition between the shat-
tered Conservatives and the Clericals, cemented by a final
repeal of the May Laws--is uncertain and matters little.
'1 come,' Windthorst observed,' from the political death-
bed of a great man. ' The next day the Emperor in person
demanded an explanation of what had passed, and Bismarck
was dragged from his sleep to wait upon the unexpected
visitor. 'It was all that Bismarck could do,' the Emperor
subsequently related, 'to refrain from throwing the ink-
pot at my head. ' Bismarck was no less certain that the
Emperor lost his temper even more completely than he
did himself. He refused to give the information de-
manded. The discussions with Windthorst or other
leaders of parties were personal and confidential, and could
not be controlled by the Crown, not even if the Crown
commanded. According to one source, Bismarck drawing
himself up to his full height asserted that he had received
Windthorst as a gentleman had the right to receive his
friends in his own house, and then he added that 'the
orders of the Sovereign stopped at the door of the Princess's
drawing-room. ' The phrase may be an invention, but it
exactly expressed Bismarck's attitude. The memorable
conversation was not one between Minister and Emperor,
but between the Prussian Junker of Sch8nhausen, Varzin,
and Friedrichsruhe, and the Elector of Brandenburg whom
the Junker had made German Emperor.
Repeatedly pressed, Bismarck at last submitted his
resignation. On March 20 the official Gazette announced
that the Emperor had been graciously pleased to accept
with profound regret the Chancellor's request to be
relieved of his offices, and in return for his ' imperishable
services' conferred upon him the title of Duke of Lauen-
burg and Colonel-General, with the rank of Field-Marshal
in the army. Punch, in one of the most famous of its
famous cartoons which, curiously enough, delighted both
Bismarck and William n. , summed up the event with
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? 474
BISMARCK
unerring felicity. 'The Pilot' who had steered the ship
through so many storms and so many shoals,' was dropped. '
The Emperor henceforward intended to be Captain and
Pilot in one.
Official Berlin heard the news, expected for so many
months, with a sigh of profound relief :1 but to Germany
and the German nation the Emperor's dismissal of the
man who summed up German power and represented the
Empire in the Councils of the world--the greatest German
political figure since the Middle Ages--rwas received with
consternation and genuine sorrow.
by personal hate, which coincided with a fundamental
political antagonism, there Were no limits to Bismarck's
unscrupulous brutality. One subject of bitter controversy,
involving foreign policy, had arisen in these tragic three
months--the proposed marriage between the Princess
Victoria, the Emperor's daughter, and Prince Alexander
of Battenberg. Since the secret Reinsurance Treaty,
Bismarck was determined in every way to keep on good
terms with the Tsar. The envenomed hostility of the
Tsar to Prince Alexander had been proclaimed broadcast
to the world in the preceding two years. In the summer
of 1888 Prince Alexander no longer ruled in the united
Bulgarias, and there was no chance of his ever being in
authority again at Sofia. Bismarck vetoed the marriage,
for the simple reason that it would stir such a ferocity of
resentment in the Tsar as to endanger, if not snap, the
entente of 1887. He chose to represent the proposal in
the press and in official circles as a Machiavellian effort
of England to control German policy for English ends, to
embroil Germany and Russia for English ends, and to
manipulate the destinies of Bulgaria for English purposes
against the interests of Germany and Russia. The press
under the Chancellor's control and in his pay had instruc-
tions to open a savage campaign against English interfer-
ence in German affairs and in the Near East. And the
instructions were obeyed with a scurrilous zest. If
Bismarck did not know that this was untrue, he was very
incompetent. But he was not incompetent, and the
inference is obvious and indisputable. The marriage did
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 459
not take place. But this was not a victory of an inde-
pendent Germany over an intriguing and unscrupulous
Great Britain. For, as we know now, the influence of
Queen Victoria and Lord Salisbury were exerted precisely
as Bismarck would have Germany believe they were not.
The accession of the Emperor William n. on June 16,
1888--the year of the Three Emperors--opened up a
wholly new situation. The new sovereign was in his
twenty-ninth year, and teeming with energy, ideas, and
masterfulness. Since 1887 he had been carefully in-
structed, at his grandfather's wish, in the mysteries of
statecraft by Bismarck, and the effusive enthusiasm with
which he proclaimed at the outset his desire to carry out
his grandfather's (not his father's) policy with the aid of
his grandfather's great Chancellor made the resignation
that Bismarck had contemplated after the death of
William 1. superfluous. Germany was instructed to
believe that the new sovereign would be in all things as
obedient to Bismarck's advice and ripe experience as had
been William 1.
Bismarck himself believed it. A year later, in the
autumn of 1889, when the Tsar was in Berlin and Bismarck
emphasised his earnest lesire that German policy should
maintain a close co-operation with Russia, the Tsar
pointedly asked, 'Are you sure of remaining in office? '
'Certainly, your Majesty,' Bismarck replied, 'I am
absolutely sure of remaining in office all my life. '1 That
was on October 11. Five months later he had ceased to
be Chancellor, and if any date must be selected for the
commencement of the serious collision between Chan-
cellor and Emperor it would be October I3,a two days
after Bismarck's confident utterance, when a serious
difference on foreign policy revealed itself. The publi-
cation by Geffcken (one of the Emperor Frederick's circle)
of elaborate excerpts from the late emperor's diary in the
Deutsche Rundschau, bearing particularly on the war of
1 Bismarck related this to the NauFreie Presse, which printed it in its issue of
June 22, 1892. Down to the autumn of 1889, Hohenlohe repeatedly noted that
the Emperor was 'entirely under the influence of the Chancellor. '
1 In the conversation between the two, after the Tsar's departure, as recorded
by Bismarck in the Hamburger Naekrichten, July 24, 1891,
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? 460
BISMARCK
1870, the foundation of the Empire and the Liberalism
of the Crown Prince, created a great stir. Bismarck's
'Immediate Report' attacked the authenticity of the
document, but as he admitted to Busch, whatever its
authenticity, it must be treated as spurious because the
record was damaging to the official version and the in-
terest of the dynasty, and not least to Bismarck himself.
Geffcken's prosecution was ordered, while Geffcken himself
was arrested and sent to prison. 'The legend that the
late Emperor was a Liberal, in sympathy with the Pro-
gressive party, was dangerous to the whole dynasty and
must be destroyed. '
Geffcken's acquittal (January 4, 1882) by the Supreme
Court was a damaging blow to Bismarck, which roused
him to uncontrollable anger. He wished to institute
'disciplinary measures' against Geffcken in the University.
of Strasburg; or, in other words, to compel the Univer-
sity to deprive him of his chair. But, apart from this
high-handed interference with academic and civic rights,
how could a professor be dismissed for an alleged offence
of which the highest tribunal in Germany had just
acquitted him? The idea was proved to be legally im-
possible, but Bismarck's desire to crush Geffcken, as he
had crushed Arnim, simply proved his intolerance of all
opposition and all intellectual or political liberty. It
proceeded from the same principles as the unrelenting
pressure that he applied during 1888 and 1889 to the
Swiss government in ' the Wohlgemuth affair,' to coerce
the Federal authorities into collaborating with the German
secret police, planted in Swiss territory, in hunting down
German Socialists, driven oat of Germany by the Anti-
Socialist Law. The Swiss government very properly
refused to comply with so unwarranted an intervention
in the internal affairs of a Sovereign State. There
followed a menacing correspondence in which Bismarck
went so far as to threaten that Germany might decline to
recognise any further the 'neutrality' of Switzerland
defined by an international guarantee; but the Swiss, to
Bismarck's anger, declined to be browbeaten by their
powerful neighbour, 'He,' (Bismarck) Hohenlohe noted
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 461
in the Geffcken affair, 'gave me the impression of a man
not quite sound mentally' (January 25, 1889). He
repeats the remark with reference to the Swiss. 'Even
Herbert Bismarck,' he notes (June 24), 'said he could
no longer understand his father, and many people were
beginning to think that he was no longer quite sane. '
The German soldier chiefs were seriously troubled. All
their military plans for a war in which Germany might be
involved with France were drawn on the assumption of a
friendly and neutral Switzerland. Switzerland driven
into the arms of France would dislocate the strategical
ideas that the great General Staff, in its continuous study
of the European situation, was always working out in
the light of every fresh political development. Bismarck
was, indeed, as sane as was Napoleon 1. in his later years,
but with both men uncontrolled power and overweening
confidence in their genius brought out all the latent des-
potism that from the very first was embedded in their
political principles and their interpretation of life; and
with both resentment concentrated in a personal hatred
of the individual who symbolised the opposition. Bis-
marck only desired to treat Geffcken as Napoleon treated
Mme. de Stael or the Duc D'Enghien. The world must
be made safe for autocracy. 1
The plain truth was that after June 1888 the conditions
which had made the Bismarckian system workable and
possible were suddenly reversed. Bismarck and Germany
had grown accustomed to the rule of an emperor never
fitted by his gifts to be a great master either of adminis-
tration or of policy, who in 1871 was in his seventy-fourth
year, and with every year was obliged to surrender more
and more of power and control to the adviser whose
1 No less characteristic of Bismarckian methods and manners and of the
'anti-English' campaign was the revival in the controlled German press of the
charge that Sir R. Morier, then British Ambassador at Petersburg, had in 1870,
when he was British minister at Darmstadt, betrayed to the French at Metx
important military information damaging to the German operations. Morier
publicly refuted this infamous and absurd libel, proving by a letter of Marshal
Bazaine that it was a lie; but Count Herbert Bismarck, though requested to do
so, declined officially to disavow it, or, when challenged, to produce any evidence
in its support; with the result that, to this day it is still believed in educated
quarters in Germany.
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? \6i
BISMARCK
genius, amazing capacity for work, and complete accord
with his sovereign in the general principles of government
inspired a deep confidence. Bismarck had thus syndicated
in himself both the formidable powers of the Imperial
Chancellorship and the still more formidable powers of the
Emperor and Prussian King. The new Emperor was
young, versatile, and fired by a devouring activity. Had
he been a constitutional sovereign he would not have
been prepared to step on to the shelf during the best years
of his life. But he was not a constitutional sovereign.
William n. had been born and bred in the militarist
atmosphere of the Hohenzollern Court, and he had been
trained in the theory, sedulously enforced since 1847 by
no one more than by Bismarck himself, that the Prussian
monarch personally governed, and that the Prussian
Crown was not the idle ornament of a constitutional
building, but the living and operative force in the mechan-
ism of the State. . 'If a lion knew its own strength,'
Wolsey remarked of the young Henry vin. , 'hard it were
to rule him. ' There were, in fact, practically no limits
- to what the Emperor, with the help of the Prussian Crown,
could do, if he chose to exercise to its full all the latent
power in the prerogative, prestige, and influence of the
Imperial and Prussian Monarchy. William n. took some
months to discover what an unexplored and inexhaustible
heritage had fallen to him--a heritage enriched by
Bismarck's efforts for a quarter of a century. Therein lay
the irony of the situation. Had Bismarck been the Parlia-
ment-made minister of a constitutional sovereign, whose
ministerial position rested on a national mandate expressed
through a representative assembly to which he was re-
sponsible, it would have been William n. not Bismarck who
must have given way. Bismarck had indeed the confidence
of the nation. A plebiscite in t 890 would have retained
him in office till death came. But the nation could not
save him in 1890, nor could it bring him back. Once he
had lost the support of the Crown he was powerless. He
could not appeal to the Reichstag nor to the Federal
Council, still less to the nation by a general election. He
must either resign or be dismissed. He could not even
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 463
advise his Imperial Majesty whom the Crown should
invite to be its chief adviser in his place. And it is in the
record that the man who all his life had fought against the
conception of an electro-plated royalism, and against a
kingship emasculated by English Liberalism, should later
denounce this subservience to a personal monarchy as
'Byzantinism and Caesar worship. '
There was also more even than this in the situation
that was bitter. William n. was young. He could toil
and travel as only the young can. Age has its com-
pensations and its rewards, but not all its maturity of
wisdom and experience can find a substitute for the re-
cuperative vigour of manhood and womanhood in their
prime. Bismarck could recall the felicity of the time
when after a day at his desk he could swim in the moonlit
waters of the Rhine, snatch a couple of hours of sleep, and
then fling himself into work again or wear out a fiery
horse in the exultant freshness of youth and the joy of life.
He could do it no longer. He told the Reichstag in 1889
that he was obliged severely to limit his efforts and con-
centrate on the important and the essential. He now
fought a losing battle with the Emperor--ebbing forces
on the one side against vitality on the other. For all that,
he was not prepared to let go. The more his grip
slackened, the more fiercely did he demand submissive
obedience to his autocratic will. It is a characteristic that
history can exemplify fifty times over that the strong-
willed who have long held unquestioned sway may lose,
as the chariot of time drives remorselessly on, everything
but the strength of their will. The appetite for domina-
tion waxes precisely as the capacity to gratify it wanes.
The bitterest punishment indeed that the years can bring
to some men and women is the fear and the resentment of
rivals in power.
A new epoch had arrived in Germany which knew and
reverenced Bismarck, but Bismarck neither knew nor
reverenced it. William n. was a child of the new epoch.
Bismarck had taught Germany to be strong and how to
be strong. He had placed the Empire on the pinnacle
of Continental power, and new worlds had swum into its
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? 464 BISMARCK
ken. The young Imperial Germany of 1888 desired to
prove that it was as strong, as great, as ambitious, and as
saturated with the realism of life as the Germany that had
overthrown Vienna and the Babylon of France. It was
grateful for Bismarck's achievements; Bismarck summed
up for it all that . was mighty in Germanism; the ends
that Bismarck defined must pass with Bismarck himself;
but Bismarckian methods and the Bismarckian gospel were
imperishable and could not be superseded. The pro-
foundest homage that could be paid to the master was to
apply the principles and methods of Bismarckian state-
craft to the problems of the future. The Bismarckian
Empire that was the State, incarnating Continental Power,
must be transformed into the World-Empire that incar-
nated World-Power. Nothing must happen in the world
within or without Europe in which Germany had not
the deciding voice. Bismarckianism not Bismarck was
the model. In the magician's magic more than in the
magician himself lay the essential secret of success. Round
the Emperor collected the new Germany. Fear, jealousy,
ambition, revenge--the human appetites and carnal forces
that find their most nourishing environment in the court
of a militarist personal monarchy added their unlovely
stimulus. Bismarck had made many enemies, whose enmity
was all the stronger because it had been so impotent.
The Chancellor was not popular at the Federated Courts--
neither at Stuttgart, Munich, Dresden, nor Karlsruhe--
the soldier 'demi-gods,' the Clericals, the anti-Semites,
the Lutheran Conservatives, the great industrials were
quite ready to salute as they saw the Chancellor depart;
the Liberals and Radicals and Socialists had no reason
to love the Minister-President, for fate and Bismarck
had killed Liberalism. The German people alone was
Bismarck's most loyal ally, and the German people
through its representatives had been the accomplice in
the blunder by which the German people was excluded
from deciding in hours of crisis who should govern in
their name.
In the confidential circles of the monarchy and of the
official civil and military bureaucracy--the men who
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 465
governed and whom Bismarck had taught to regard the
Reichstag as the House of Phrases, a statutory but useless
appendage to the machinery of Power--it became clear
that the iron Titan of Friedrichsruhe planned for the per-
getuity of the Bismarckian autocracy. The House of
ismarck was to hold an unbroken mayoralty of the
palace over, rather than under, the House of Hohenzollern.
Count Herbert Bismarck, carefully trained in affairs of
State, and since 1886 Foreign Secretary under the Chan-
cellor, was obviously destined to sit in the Wilhelmstrasse
in his father's chair. Herbert Bismarck had capacity and
considerable powers of work. He modelled himself on his
father as capable sons of great men are entitled to do.
But he endeavoured to prove, not that he was a chip of
the old block, but the old block itself by imitating and
exaggerating with repellent fidelity all the worst defects
in his father's character--his brutality, coarseness, dicta-
torial insolence, and unscrupulous disregard of the con-
ventions of decent existence. His manners were insuffer-
able and a byword. 1 Men were prepared to endure much
from the Chancellor who had genius and achieved miracles.
They were not prepared to endure the intolerable from
one who was not a genius and had done nothing remarkable
(except be outwitted in colonial negotiations by Lords
Granville and Rosebery).
During 1888 and 1889 Bismarck was very little in Berlin.
Most of his time was spent at Varzin and Friedrichsruhe,
and it was at his country seats that the unending visitors
found the Chancellor and did their business. His absence
from the capital was not wholly the result of old age.
In Herbert Bismarck at the Chancery the father had a
devoted representative, and the Empire could be governed
on Bismarckian lines almost as easily from Friedrichsruhe
as from the Wilhelmstrasse. The Chancellor, however,
1 'I never go to Paris except in war time,' Herbert Bismarck is reputed to
have replied to a French diplomatist. One of many examples can be cited. 'H.
Bismarck had had the effrontery to say to the Prince of Wales that an emperor
who could not talk was not fit to reign. The Prince had said that, had he not
valued the good relations between England and Germany he would have thrown
him out of the room. '--{Hohenhhe Memoirs, June 22,1888). Herbert Bismarck's
conduct in the controversy with Sir R. Morier is another good example of his
insolence, boorishness, and dishonourable conduct.
I. 2 c
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? 466
BISMARCK
did not realise that under a young Emperor, bent on
probing into every department of State, and leaving an
Imperial imprint upon it, the loss of touch with the
personalities, the ministers and the forces of politics was
a grave disadvantage. Nor did he appreciate the signi-
ficance of the growing volume of criticism that found in
these prolonged absences a substantial reason for a change.
Thus by the autumn of 1889 the whole Bismarckian
system was being challenged--and by the Emperor. For
William n. had inaugurated his reign by a series of travels.
He was indefatigable in visiting all parts of Germany and
learned much thereby. He went to Petersburg, Vienna,
London, Athens, and most remarkable of all, to Constan-
tinople, the first European sovereign to be received as a
guest by an Ottoman Sultan. And in these visits what
he learned about foreign policy caused him to think and
think again. Bismarck resented these continuous. journeys,
and expressed his resentment in remarks that travelled
to the travelling sovereign. They made the Emperor
more important than Bismarck, and they did not resist
the peculiar methods by which Bismarckian foreign policy
was maintained. The old Emperor had been told just as
much as the Chancellor thought fit; the young Emperor
was insisting on knowing what he thought fit--and he
made discoveries, had ideas, and ' interfered. '
Bismarck's foreign policy was never easy to understand.
It certainly needed a great deal of explanation in the last
two years of his Chancellorship. Although Carnot's
election to the Presidency and the slow pricking of the
Boulanger bubble had greatly eased the situation in France,
Bismarck had continued a deliberate policy of provocation.
The new administrative order forbidding entry into
Alsace-Lorraine except to those provided with a passport,
vised at the German embassy at Paris, coupled with the
semi-official explanation that 'Germany did not desire
war, but only more distant relations with France,' pro-
voked a fresh Press campaign on both sides of the frontier.
The order seemed to cool heads a wanton provocation.
The tension in the Near East had also been relieved,
though Russian resentment against Bulgaria continued
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 467
unabated. But Russo-German relations showed no im-
provement, despite the secret reinsurance; and the
German Staff, impressed with the excellence of the French
army and the completeness of French armaments, was
very anxious about the outlook when the exhibition of '89
at Paris was over. Austrian policy was no less disquieting,
for Austria desired to recognise Prince Ferdinand in
Bulgaria, and this might lead to a rupture with Russia.
The quotation of a Bulgarian loan on the Viennese
exchange evoked an explosion of wrath at Petersburg that
was very significant. Count Kalnoky's visit to Friedrichs-
ruhe (November 3), shortly after the Tsar had visited
Berlin, and while the Emperor William was at Constan-
tinople caused justifiable speculation in every capital.
A crisis had been reached alike in the relations of Austria
and Germany and of Austria and Russia, and Bulgaria, as
usual, was at the bottom of the trouble.
To the Emperor and his circle the position seemed to be
very clear. They professed to be 'perplexed' by the
Chancellor's inexplicable leanings now to Austria, now to
Russia, and they convinced themselves that Bismarck, if
it came to a choice between Austria and Russia, would
'desert' Austria, throw over the Dual Alliance, and let
Austria fight alone with Russia while Germany stood by:
whereas the Emperor was determined to stand by Austria,
even at the cost of a war with both France and Russia.
Bismarck's ' vacillations' were interpreted as proofs either
of senility or dishonesty. Things were being kept back
from the Emperor--which is very probable.
The 'veerings' may not have been due either to
senility or to dishonesty. Since 1871 Bismarck's policy
had turned on maintaining a very delicate equipoise
between Austria and Russia, (just as since 1882 he had
maintained a delicate equipoise between Italy and Austria)
with Germany as the controller of the levers, and he had
accomplished the difficult task by disregard of scruples, by
prestige and an extraordinary intuition into the shifting
phases of an ever-shifting situation. He had persistently
refused to commit Germany by unlimited pledges to
either side, and he was confident that no one but himself
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BISMARCK
could achieve the perpetual miracle of preventing a war
in the Near East. Nor could he have a partner in the
task--he must have carte blanche and unlimited trust from
his sovereign.
Apparently now he was ready to let Russia, if need be,
intervene in Bulgaria to reassert her waning authority,
while assuring to Austria her sphere of influence in Serbia.
But he was not ready either to provoke Russia by recog-
nising Prince Ferdinand, or to give Vienna a free hand to
drag Germany in to cover Austria's blunders or to win
Austria's battles. The improved relations with Great
Britain, consequent on the Emperor's visit to London,
would result in shifting the odium of vetoing Russia from
Germany on to a joint entente between Great Britain and
Austria. 'We shall begin no war either with Russia or
France,' he explicitly told Prince Hohenlohe (December
15, 1889). Moreover, Bismarck was gravely perturbed
by the internal condition of Austria. The 'ally' might
crack up internally, and where would Germany be then?
It is tempting to infer that a new orientation of German
policy was taking definite shape in the Emperor's circle.
The dynastic connection, sealed by the marriage of the
Emperor's sister with the heir to the Greek throne, the
Duke of Sparta, the much advertised journey to Constan-
tinople, with its hint of protection to Abdul Ha mid
against all and sundry, and the recent completion of the
railways to Salonica and Constantinople, which laid direct
communication via Belgrade from Vienna both to the
^Egean and the Dardanelles, were the beginning of a new
epoch. The plan of substituting Germany for Russia
as the leading power at Constantinople, of drawing the
new Bulgaria slowly and surely into the German sphere
of influence, of assigning Salonica definitely as the Austrian
goal with Serbia under a benevolent Habsburg thumb,
and of a general German protectorate over the Balkans
with Athens as one of its bases and the Hohenzollern in
Roumania as another, had a beginning; and all the evidence
available supports the hypothesis that that beginning must
be placed in 1889. Such a policy, however tentative at
first, meant at some future date something like a breach
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 469
with Russia and a closer co-operation with Austria. The
identification of Austrian and German objects would be
tolerably secure if it were accompanied by a clear under-
standing with Great Britain, with its reflex action on Italy,
and its reflex action upon Austria. The Anglo-German
agreement of July 1, 1890, is on record, and Chancellor
Caprivi who concluded it refused to renew the Secret
Insurance Treaty of 1887. What actually lay behind
these two significant facts is a matter of inference, not of
proof. But the new policy was certainly not Bismarckian.
It was a reversal of Bismarck's policy. His resistance to
it was inevitable, if for no other reason than that it was
an abandonment of Centralism as he understood it; and
it would lead straight to a Russo-French entente, cul-
minating in an alliance. Moreover Bismarck foresaw
that this 'world policy,' substituted for the Centralism
that he had created and maintained so successfully, would
lead, must indeed lead, if logically pursued, to an antagon-
ism between Great Britain and Germany. That was
fatal to the Bismarckian system. Germany, which had
isolated both its friends and its foes, was thereby ensuring
its own isolation by provoking an anti-German coalition. 1
The principles of Bismarck's home policy were no less
in grave danger. The Chancellor's last speech in the
Reichstag (though neither he nor his audience dreamed
it would be his last) was on May 18, 1889, on the Old Age
Pension Bill. The whole argument was a concentrated
indictment of Liberalism and Socialism, and a defence of
Conservatism, concluding with a menacing challenge to the
1 Cp. the significant passage in Hohenlohe Memoirs, ii. p. 413 (March 31,
1890). 'The Emperor told the generals that Russia wished to begin a military
occupation of Bulgaria, and to assure herself of the neutrality of Germany in the
meantime. He said that he had promised the Emperor of Austria to be a loyal
ally and he would keep his word. The occupation of Bulgaria by the Russians
would mean war with Austria, and he could not leave Austria in the lurch.
. . . Bismarck was ready to abandon Austria. . . . From this point of view I
understand Bismarck's statement when he said that the Emperorwas conducting
his policy in the manner of Friedrich William IV. This is the black cloud on
the horizon. ' Cp. the entry for January 14, 1895 (ii. p. 462): 'We (Bismarck
and Hohenlohe at Friedrichsruhe) talked . . . of the (secret) treaty with Russia
which Caprivi had not renewed because the policy it. led to was too complicafed
for him. The difficulty of my position (Hohenlohe was about to becorcte
Chancellor) lay in the sudden decisions of his Majesty. '
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? 470
BISMARCK
Liberal and Democratic parties: 'To the members of the
Conservative party alone--and I include the National
Liberals and the Centre in the Conservatives--to these
members alone have I explanations to offer: with all the
others I have to fight--that is another matter; and I
would beg them especially to cut themselves adrift from
all pommon action with Socialists, Poles, Guelphs, Alsatian
Frenchmen, yes, and with the Liberals also. ' The solid
cartel that gave him a majority was quite ready to act
on the advice; it was prepared to vote for all repressive
measures and to fight with the Chancellor against every
form of Liberalism. What failed Bismarck now was not
the government majority but the Crown.
The Chancellor spent the autumn of 1889 in the country.
The anti-Socialist law was due for renewal; and Bismarck
wished it to be made permanent, with added powers to
expel Socialist agitators and to suppress in perpetuity
Socialist papers. He was summoned by telegram from
Count Herbert Bismarck to return to the capital on
January 23, 1890, where he found the ministers very
uneasy at the strong opposition in the Reichstag to the
anti-Socialist law as drafted by the government. On
January 24 he resigned the Ministry of Commerce. The
Emperor desired conciliation with, and concessions to,
the Socialists, and two Imperial rescripts announcing this
policy, to be consummated by an international conference
on Labour and Social Problems, were ready for publication.
They were, in fact, a reversal of Bismarck's policy, and
had been prepared in his absence. When they appeared
they lacked the customary ministerial counter-signature
(February 4)--the first official documents for twenty-
seven years published without the counter-signature of
the Chancellor or Minister-President. On January 25
no official indication was given to the Conservative party
how to vote on the anti-Socialist Bill. The Conservatives,
regarding the measure, from which the expulsion clauses
had been struck out, as too lenient, went into the same
lobby as the Radicals and the Centre, and the anti-Socialist
law was rejected by 169 to 98 votes. All Berlin now knew
that it was confronted with a real' Chancellor Crisis. '
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 471
Foreign policy, however, was the main cause of the
collision. The explicit reports of Russian armaments and
movements of troops perturbed Vienna and the German
General Staff. The Emperor was determined to convince
Austria that Germany was on her side--Bismarck stub-
bornly resisted any steps to support Austria and thereby
alienate Russia: and the Emperor accused him of sup-
pressing information in the Foreign Office.
The quarrel over home policy could have been settled,
but the conflict over foreign policy cut down to funda-
mentals. A compromise was impossible. Bismarck's
system was in issue. The general election, however,
turned on the new Social and Labour policy. Bismarck
declined to organise. a governmental campaign; he had
quarrelled both with the Emperor and his colleagues, and
the results were a rout for the cartel. The Conservatives
lost 36, the National Liberals, 52 seats; the Liberals
gained 30, the Socialists, 24 seats. The cartel of 1887 was
dissolved, although the Clerical Centre returned in un-
diminished strength. Bismarck now made a subtle move.
Recognising that the Crown was undermining his presi-
dential pre-eminence by uniting the ministers against him,
he demanded that the Cabinet order of September 8,
1852, should be vigorously enforced. This order, requiring
all ministers to submit their departmental business to the
Minister-President before submitting it to the Crown,
practically forbade all independent relations between the
ministers and the Crown, and made the Minister-President
the sole constitutional avenue of communication with the
sovereign. Bismarck had always acted on it, though in
the last ten years his frequent absences had required its
relaxation. But such had been his prestige that the re-
laxation had not involved any real diminution of his
authority in all essentials of governmental action. It was
different now, when Bismarck realised that the King-
Emperor aimed at uniting the ministerial cabinet against
its constitutional chief. To the Emperor the order was
an odious restriction on his prerogative. It meant that
he could only confer with his ministers by and through a
Minister-President, hostile to his policy and his ideas,
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BISMARCK
alike in home and foreign affairs. Accordingly he de-
manded that the Minister-President should advise him to
rescind the order. The dispute was a forcible illustration
of Bismarck's warning to the Progressive Party in 1862:
'Questions of right (Rschtfragen) in the long run become
questions of might (Machtfraggn). ' The Emperor told
Hohenlohe that February and March were for him 'a
beastly time,' and that it had become ' a question whether
the Bismarck dynasty or the Hohenzollern dynasty should
rule. '
For Bismarck the issues were simple, but fundamental.
His whole system was challenged. As Minister-President
he was to be reduced to a position of equality with col-
leagues placed in complete independence in their relations
with himself and with the Crown; a policy in home
affairs was to be carried out through the ministers of the
Interior and Finance which reversed all his principles; as
Chancellor he was expected to carry out a foreign policy
in flat contradiction to his convictions and ideas. The
close connection between home and foreign policy--the
keystone of his system and his success--was to be snapped;
alike in the Prussian Landtag and the Imperial Reichstag
he would speak without any control over parties or any
security that the votes would not be influenced by Imperial
intrigues or ministerial pressure, unfavourable to himself.
In the daily intercourse with the representatives of foreign
governments he could no longer invite their confidence
or express his own. Moltke had resigned his post as Chief
of the General Staff. The new chief, Waldersee, in
Bismarck's judgment was a second-rate soldier and an in-
triguing politician in the hands of a 'military ring' bent
on controlling the civil authority. In a word, the Chan-
cellor and Minister-President would have lost all his rights
to co-ordinate strategy and policy. The Emperor, he
told more than one confidant, ' now wishes to reign alone
--to be his own Chancellor and Minister-President. '
It was impossible that Bismarck could accept after twenty-
seven years of power a position that was a personal humilia-
tion, a reversal of his policy, and a reduction to impotence.
'I cannot serve,' he said, ' on my knees' (Ich kann nicht
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 473
mit Proskynesis dienert). The final touch was given on
March 14. Windthorst who wished to consult the Chan-
cellor about the forthcoming session was received 'in
audience' by Bismarck. What passed between them--
whether Bismarck suggested a coalition between the shat-
tered Conservatives and the Clericals, cemented by a final
repeal of the May Laws--is uncertain and matters little.
'1 come,' Windthorst observed,' from the political death-
bed of a great man. ' The next day the Emperor in person
demanded an explanation of what had passed, and Bismarck
was dragged from his sleep to wait upon the unexpected
visitor. 'It was all that Bismarck could do,' the Emperor
subsequently related, 'to refrain from throwing the ink-
pot at my head. ' Bismarck was no less certain that the
Emperor lost his temper even more completely than he
did himself. He refused to give the information de-
manded. The discussions with Windthorst or other
leaders of parties were personal and confidential, and could
not be controlled by the Crown, not even if the Crown
commanded. According to one source, Bismarck drawing
himself up to his full height asserted that he had received
Windthorst as a gentleman had the right to receive his
friends in his own house, and then he added that 'the
orders of the Sovereign stopped at the door of the Princess's
drawing-room. ' The phrase may be an invention, but it
exactly expressed Bismarck's attitude. The memorable
conversation was not one between Minister and Emperor,
but between the Prussian Junker of Sch8nhausen, Varzin,
and Friedrichsruhe, and the Elector of Brandenburg whom
the Junker had made German Emperor.
Repeatedly pressed, Bismarck at last submitted his
resignation. On March 20 the official Gazette announced
that the Emperor had been graciously pleased to accept
with profound regret the Chancellor's request to be
relieved of his offices, and in return for his ' imperishable
services' conferred upon him the title of Duke of Lauen-
burg and Colonel-General, with the rank of Field-Marshal
in the army. Punch, in one of the most famous of its
famous cartoons which, curiously enough, delighted both
Bismarck and William n. , summed up the event with
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BISMARCK
unerring felicity. 'The Pilot' who had steered the ship
through so many storms and so many shoals,' was dropped. '
The Emperor henceforward intended to be Captain and
Pilot in one.
Official Berlin heard the news, expected for so many
months, with a sigh of profound relief :1 but to Germany
and the German nation the Emperor's dismissal of the
man who summed up German power and represented the
Empire in the Councils of the world--the greatest German
political figure since the Middle Ages--rwas received with
consternation and genuine sorrow.
