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Robertson - Bismarck
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if I should discover that we might lose touch with
England I should act cautiously and endeavour to avoid
losing England's goodwill. ' It is asserted on good
authority that German diplomatic agents were in the
Bismarckian epoch instructed to ' Do all in your power to
keep up good relationship with the English. It is not
necessary to cable in cipher. We have nothing to conceal
from the English, for it would be the greatest possible folly
to antagonise England. '
Such an antagonism Bismarck foresaw jeopardised the
Triple Alliance--the basis of his Continental system
and the German control of Central Europe. In 1890
(January 13) an article written under Bismarck's inspiration
laid down the following: 'Italy must be able to rely on
the assistance of the English fleet, for the Triple Alliance
cannot protect the Italian coasts. Hence Italy has to
think of England, and consideration of England may con-
ceivably limit Italy's freedom of action. As long as
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy are united in the
Triple Alliance, and as long as these three States may
reckon on the assistance of English sea-power, the peace
of Europe will not be broken. '
So far general principles. Active German intervention
in the acquisition of colonies in 1884 was due to the pres-
sure of a combination of forces. German relations with
France were good; Great Britain was gravely embarrassed
in Egypt; British relations with France were strained:
Ireland and the Franchise question were additional burdens
on an administration, the credit of which was gravely
undermined, and the internal unity of which was sapped
by ministers themselves; a quarrel with Russia in the
Middle East was brewing. The British government was
not in a position to resist dexterous pressure. Great
Britain was not able in 1884 to quarrel with Germany, unless
she were prepared to abandon important commitments in
her policy elsewhere. Public opinion in Germany was
vociferous. It represented powerful material interests.
The government was not too strong in the Reichstag;
a general election was imminent and the internal measures
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BISMARCK
of State Socialism had stirred severe criticism in some,
and bitter opposition in other, quarters. The govern-
ment had to convince Germany that its policy was based
on true German interests. The closer Bismarck's policy
is studied the more apparent is the vital connection
between a stroke in foreign policy and the home situation.
Bismarck might affect to despise or ignore public opinion
in Germany--he frequently did, when it was essential to
his aims to do so--but he watched its course and weighed
its volume with vigilant care, and he always found a safety
valve to let the steam out and ease the pressure on the
ministerial boilers. As with the Kulturkampf and the
Vatican Decrees, so now with the colonial movement, he
saw the opportunity and gripped it with characteristic
firmness and dexterity. In the spring of 1884 he had been
able, as is indicated below, to secure an important under-
standing with Russia, endorsed in the autumn of the same
year. The embarrassment of Great Britain was the
Chancellor's opportunity to satisfy public opinion at
home, achieve what was necessary to satisfy public opinion
without sacrificing the essentials of his system, and do it
before the fall of Ferry's administration and the renaissance
of the inveterate hostility between France and Germany
made the opportunity no longer available.
It is not necessary or possible here to trace in detail the
swiftly developed plans by which Germany between 1884
and 1890 acquired Togoland, the Cameroons, South-
West Africa (but without Walfish Bay), the framework of
German East Africa, a third of New Guinea, and a share
of the Samoa group. The Anglo-German agreement of
July 1, 1890 (which brought Heligoland to Germany, but
ceded German claims on Zanzibar and Witu to Great
Britain) falls outside Bismarck's period of office, and was
concluded by his successor, Caprivi. The initial and
most characteristic stages in German colonial policy and
the Anglo-German conflict are described at length, and
from authoritative sources, in Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of
Lord Granville. It must suffice here to note that after
1885 a Conservative, not a Liberal, ministry in Great
Britain was responsible for the ' concessions' and conven-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 423
tions; that the German colonial party was by no means
satisfied with the achievements of their government; that
in 1885 the attempt to secure the Caroline Islands was
abandoned when Bismarck referred the dispute to the ar-
bitration of Pope Leo xin. , in order to conclude the
Kulturkampf and secure the Clerical Centre; and that
Bismarck bitterly criticised the agreement of July I, 1890,
which may be partly due to his determination to condemn
as a blunder everything done after he ceased to be Chan-
cellor. But the broad fact remains that the foundations
of Germany's Colonial Empire were laid by Bismarck, and
that unless we are to regard all his public utterances on
the subject as deliberate insincerity, he accomplished a
limited programme under pressure, with considerable mis-
giving and much reluctance. 1 He was severely criticised
in the Reichstag and in the press, inspired by the Colonial
Society, for being so apathetic, hesitating, and absurdly
considerate of Great Britain, no less than for sacrificing
Germany's future across the water to an obsolescent
Continentalism.
In 1883 and the spring of 1884 Lord Ampthill warned
our government that the pressure of powerful parties in
Germany was greatly influencing Bismarck ' whose interest
(in colonial policy) was increased by the prospect of a
general election this autumn' (March 15, 1884). The
German government was also indicating with unmis-
takable emphasis that German goodwill in Britain's
Egyptian policy was dependent on British goodwill in
German colonial policy. This plain hint was continually
repeated in the next two years. 'I am in perfect despair,'
Ampthill wrote (August 2, 1884), 'at Prince Bismarck's
present inclination to increase his popularity before the
general election by taking up an anti-English attitude.
Compelled by the colonial mania . . . he has discovered
1 'For the sake of two million marks I cannot throw myself against the
great impulse of the nation, or offer opposition to the will of the whole country.
To this day I am not "a colonies man," and I entertain the gravest apprehen-
sion on the subject ; but I was compelled to decide upon yielding to the general
demand of the nation. . . . If the locomotive of Empire has struck out a track
for itself, I shall not be the one to throw stones in its way. '--(Bismarck in the
Reichstag, January 26, 1S89. )
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? 424
BISMARCK
an unexplored mine of popularity in starting a colonial
policy, which public opinion persuades itself to be anti-
English: and the slumbering theoretical envy of the
Germans at our wealth and our freedom has awakened
and taken the form of abuse of everything English in the
press. ' The remark apart from its special reference is
deeply significant, for it confirms the trend in the develop-
ment of German public opinion, emphasised (p. 275)
earlier in these pages. The alienation of Germany from
England, which was in truth the gravest feature for the
future of both countries, had proceeded with great
rapidity since 1870, and though Bismarck regarded it with
misgiving, as he well might, he would have abandoned
all the principles and methods of his statecraft had he not
utilised it to the full when his policy required it.
The colonial chapter in his Chancellorship is, therefore,
of deep interest, for it reveals all the secrets of his statesman-
ship--his eye for realities, his extraordinary mastery of his
own peculiar technique, his recognition that a genuine
and deep-seated German public opinion must not be
ignored, together with an inflexible determination to
maintain his Continental system and not to push the anta-
gonism with Great Britain to measurable distance of a
rupture. Great Britain could be harried and badgered;
she must understand that international relations were the
result of bargains; she must make concessions that could
be represented as diplomatic victories for Germany; but
she must not be driven into the enemy's camp. And as
the situation developed from 1884 to 1890, Bismarck
relaxed or increased the pressure on the successive Cabinets
in London, not thinking so much of the Colonies them-
selves, as of the prestige- of his government, German
relations with France or Russia, and the Triple Alliance,
in which Italy's continued inclusion was not too certain.
The more clearly that the Anglo-German negotiations
are studied in detail, the more clearly stand out those
methods which this biographical study has continuously
emphasised as truly Bismarckian. The German demand
for colonies and the German movement towards expan-
sion outside Europe were not intrinsically indefensible and
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 445
were the product of forces beyond the control even of an
Iron Chancellor. The supposition which underlay much
1884-90 that Great Britain could have peremptorily vetoed
all German colonial acquisitions, and could have done so
without sacrificing British interests in Egypt or in the
Middle or Far East--in a word, that Great Britain was
strong enough between 1884 and 1890 to defy France,
Russia, and Germany, or should have embarked on a
which can be sustained by a careful study of a very compli-
cated and critical European situation, combined in those
years with a very critical situation at home. Great Britain
had to choose between France and Germany, and France
was practically under German direction. In these pages
we are not primarily concerned either with explaining
the origins and development of British policy, or with
drawing up a balance-sheet based on a critical survey of
mistakes, alternations and successes; for the complete
British balance sheet cannot be adequately set out here,
nor the verdict based on the necessary cross-examination
of the very copious evidence.
One conclusion, however, seems fully justified. It
would have been easy for Bismarck, had he chosen to do
so, to have picked a very formidable quarrel with Great
Britain. Such a choice could have been made really
popular in Germany. Bismarck, indeed, in a month, could
have lashed Germany into a frenzy over colonies, at any
moment after 1884 to 1890. His prestige savoured of the
miraculous: his knowledge of his countrymen's passions
was unrivalled and Germany's military strength was
beyond question. It would have been no less easy to have
lashed Great Britain and colonial sentiment, particularly
in Australia, into the temper that makes either a complete
diplomatic victory or war the only alternatives. The
Pendjeh incident in 1885 proved the readiness of the
country to respond to a strong lead against Russia. 'The
Colonies' would have been a far more formidabL appeal
to national passion than an obscure place on the Afghan-
violent criticism
Salisbury from
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? 426 BISMARCK
istan frontier. But neither Bismarck nor the successive
British governments embarked on a course so fraught with
peril. Bismarck deliberately refused indeed to push
Great Britain against the wall and the inference from his
refusal is irresistible. For reasons, that may be bad or
good, but to which he attached the greatest weight,
he was ready to badger, even to insult, while insisting
on concessions, but not to 'antagonise' Great Britain.
German critics then and since have questioned the accuracy
of his judgment and the validity of his reasons. In this
country we can appreciate the reason for, and ratify the
wisdom of, his decision. For Bismarck was convinced his
policy secured the best interests of Germany. He was
not concerned with the question whether it also made for
British interests. But it made for peace in Europe--and
peace he held was a supreme German interest in those
years. That it was also a British interest, not lightly to be
sacrificed, is demonstrable.
But if Bismarck's ends were and remain defensible, his
methods were and remain' quite indefensible. British
ministers must plead guilty to lack of vigilance and errors
of judgment; the Colonial governments cannot escape
severe criticism; but whatever their mistakes, our Foreign
and Colonial Offices acted in a straightforward and honour-
able manner; and in the beginning they credited, quite
wrongly, the German government with similar intentions
and methods. It would be, on the facts before us, im-
possible to pronounce but one verdict on German diplo-
macy. From the negotiations about Angra Pequena to
the annexation of part of New Guinea, Bismarck's methods
were marked by duplicity and a demonstrable intention
to deceive the British government as . to the true aims of
the German government, to present our government
with faits accomplis, snatched in defiance of soothing
assurances or virtual pledges, and thus to make the whole
situation doubly difficult. The German White Books
were an incomplete, misleading, and, in places, positively
inaccurate version of the negotiations; our Blue Books,
which threw a very different light on what had happened,
roused Bismarck's deepest wrath, and we can understand
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 447
the reasons for his anger. The Chancellor utilised his
unique position in Germany to work up carefully prepared
explosions in the Reichstag, even publicly to suggest that
the British government was hostile to, and jealous of, any
German colonial acquisitions--which he knew was not true
--and to make charges against both Lord Granville and
Lord Derby which he was quite unable to sustain. 1 The
public statements of the Chancellor were intended for a
credulous German public opinion and an invitation to draw
its own (and quite false) conclusions; the withdrawal of
the charges was either privately made or slurred over, after
the poison ha*d been allowed to inflame German feeling.
The missions of Count Herbert Bismarck, whose reception
in England by ministers and society deeply gratified a
sensitive father's heart, were intended to do more than
effect an amicable settlement. 'Count Herbert Bismarck,'
wrote Sir C. Dilke, 'came over again. If at his former
visit he had only tried to get us to dismiss Lord Derby,
on this occasion he wanted us to dismiss Lord Granville
and Lord Derby. ' He failed. So gross and unwarranted
an interference in our home politics, thoroughly Bis-
marckian in character, was calculated to produce precisely
the opposite effect to that which Bismarck desired. All
through this trying period Lord Granville, who acted as
an honourable gentleman towards a great statesman, who
in his diplomacy was never a gentleman, suspected that
the cession of Heligoland was at the bottom of Bismarck's
tortuous and dishonest methods. The possibility of the
concession had been confidentially mentioned more than
once to Lord Granville, but no formal or open suggestion
on the subject was made, though Lord Granville was
1 I. t. the charge that Lord Granville had betrayed confidential communica-
tions of . Bismarck's to the French government (Granville's Life, ii. p. 370), and
that the British government had failed to reply to an important dispatch of
May 5, 1884, when as a matter of fact the dispatch had, by Bismarck's instruc-
tions of which he was well aware, not been communicated to our Foreign Office.
'I had a talk with Munster,' Lord Granville wrote privately to Mr. Gladstone,
'he was frightened out of his wits. He found the famous dispatch, but a
telegram not to act upon it. He begged me to keep this secret. ' And this
our government did, to their honour (op. at. , ii. p. 428). Munster was grate-
ful. But Bismarck never repudiated his statement, and to this day it is believed
in Germany--along with many other innuendoes and allegations, derived from
Bismarck's speeches which were untrue in fact.
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? 428
BISMARCIt
aware ' it was the intention of Germany to open a canal
into the Baltic . . . for the security of which it would be
necessary to give a good and fortified harbour to Heligo-
land. ' The concession was ultimately made by Lord
Salisbury on July I, 1890, as part of the general Anglo-
German agreement of that date.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Bismarck
threw away a great opportunity between 1883 and 1885,
and threw it away deliberately. Had he frankly and
openly approached the British government in 1883 with
an explanation of the difficult position the German
government was in, placed all the cards loyally on the
table, invited our goodwill while emphasising the neces-
sity of concessions on grounds of policy, and his readiness
in return for such concessions to support us against Ferry
and the French government, whose policy was to em-
barrass Great Britain everywhere by subservience to
Germany, all that Germany subsequently obtained might
have been gained and more, without endangering the good
relations of both countries. Bismarck pursued a very
different course: partly because such methods were not
his idea of diplomacy, partly because he could not resist
this opportunity to utilise the difficulties of Great Britain,
partly because he conceived it necessary to mislead Ger-
many by representing Great Britain as hostile, while
representing that her hostility was only broken down by
the skill and force of an invincible German diplomacy.
Tactically he succeeded. The incompleteness of the
German success was concealed from the German public:
the embittered controversy was left to rankle in the
German mind. Strategically, the campaign failed. There
can be little doubt that Bismarck desired to draw
Great Britain into the German net and the German
system--to establish a general entente which would have
placed the Triple Alliance beyond question and left
Germany completely master of the European situation
and of British policy, and put the British fleet under
German direction, objects all the more desirable when
the fall of the Ferry Ministry (April 1885) freed our policy
from the continuous onslaught of a French premier,
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 429
'determined to stir up trouble for Great Britain in every
quarter of the globe. '1 The whole colonial episode left
a deep impression on the minds of Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Granville, and Lord Derby, and deepened Mr. Gladstone's
distrust of any general understanding with Germany while
her policy was directed by Bismarck and pursued by such
Bismarckian methods.
Lord Fitzmaurice, for whose judgment and knowledge
all who have worked over the same material must have a
profound respect, is of opinion that 'the Berlin Act,' of
February 24, 1885, ' may some day be considered the most
remarkable event in Lord Granville's long tenure of the
Foreign Office. ' That Act finally defined and established
under international guarantees the Congo Free State;
it also defined the relations between Germany and the
new state and the claims of Portugal and France; it pro-
vided for the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade,
and for religious liberty; ana it was the first international
document formally to recognise ' spheres of influence ' as
distinct from territorial acquisitions. In a word, it went
a long way towards solving some of the acuter problems
of the Partition of Africa--and to solve them by a European
Concert.
The Anglo-German Agreement of July 1, 1890, com-
pleted the negotiations begun in 1883, and laid the
foundation of German East Africa. It was concluded
by Bismarck's successor Caprivi. Bismarck criticised
the agreement of 1890 with characteristic bluntness:
'Zanzibar,' he told Busch, ' ought not to have been left to
the English. It would have been better to maintain the
old arrangement. We could then have had it at some later
time when England required our good offices against France
or Russia. In the meantime our merchants, who are
clever, and, like the Jews, are satisfied with smaller profits,
would have kept the upper hand in business. To regard
Heligoland as an equivalent shows more imagination than
1 'Ferry,' wrote Lord Granville,' is certainly no loss to us. He arrived at
the Quai d'Orsay quite ignorant of foreign affairs; and the more he learnt of
them, the more subservient he became to Bismarck, and the more tricky to us. '
--Life, ii. p. 435 ; see also Lord Lyons's Life, passim.
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? 430
BISMARCK
sound calculation. In the event of war, it would be
better for us that it should be in the hands of a neutral
Power. '
The criticism contains in a nutshell Bismarck's ideas
and methods. The embarrassments of Great Britain
were to be utilised, as opportunities arose, to extract
concessions which would strengthen the prestige of the
government at home, consolidate Germany's position in
Europe and satisfy powerful sections of public opinion.
German trade would succeed in and for itself, under the
benevolent and careless aegis of the British flag, without
committing the German government to a systematic
colonial policy. Without a fleet adequate to protect the
German colonies, those colonies would simply be exposed
to British attack: and it was a profound mistake to put
Germany in a position in which she might require the good
offices of Great Britain, instead of having her own good
offices to bargain with in a British competition with
France or Russia.
Hence, from the first, Bismarck declined to incur Im-
perial responsibility for the administration or develop-
ment of the territories acquired. His principle was to
adopt the time-honoured British method of development
by chartered companies, with assistance, not readily
granted, of a subsidy to a steamship line. The Imperial
government did not incorporate the acquisitions, a step
which would have raised very difficult constitutional
and financial problems. Were the colonies, for example,
to be Imperial Territories (Reichsliinder)? What were
to be their administrative relations to the Imperial
government and the Reichstag? Who was to be re-
sponsible, and to whom for their government? How
were they to be financed during the long period when
they could not be self-supporting or policed, and so
forth? Technically during the Bismarckian regime they
were simply 'Protectorates' (Schiitz. - Gebiete), i. e. the
Imperial government undertook to 'protect' them from
foreign aggression--a definition of a 'Protectorate' much
narrower than that commonly accepted. But even, in
Bismarck's day, this guarded and limited liability broke
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 431
down. The Arab Revolt in East Africa of 1888 proved
that the German East African Company (Die Deutsche
Ost-Africa Gesellschaft), mainly financed by the German
traders interested in the vast district, was unable to
'protect' the 'Protectorate' from native attacks or re-
bellions. Direct Imperial assistance had to be given.
But even without the coercion of internal danger the
Bismarckian policy was bound to fail. Behind the
colonial movement worked the forces of a public opinion
that demanded the full status of German sovereignty for
the German 'colonies,' and the creation of n Germany
beyond the seas, to become as essentially and integrally a
part of the German Empire as Alsace or Mecklenburg.
But the later development of German colonial policy,
which led in 1907 to the establishment of a Colonial Office
in the central executive, and the gradual transference of
all the colonies to direct imperial administration fall
outside the Bismarckian period. How far the develop-
ment since 1890 has borne out Bismarck's original reluct-
ance to embark on a systematic colonial policy, and how
far it inevitably led to the one result that Bismarck feared
from the first--an irreconcilable antagonism between
Great Britain and Germany, spreading from the Atlantic
and the Pacific to the North Sea and the heart of Europe
--and how far colonial policy has been the main cause of
the creation of a German fleet, sufficiently powerful to
rival that of Great Britain, are questions of the profoundest
significance to all students of the European State system
in the quarter of a century that followed Bismarck's fall
from power. But they can neither be discussed with
advantage, still less adequately answered, by the student
of Bismarck's statecraft alone.
The colonial movement, as a phenomenon in the revo-
lution of the German Empire, does indeed enforce, with
the same clearness that the history of Social Democracy
brings out, one great truth, salutary alike for the pure
historical student and the political researcher into the
springs and causes of national development. The in-
dustrialism of Germany, with its concurrent features of a
rapid increase of wealth and a marvellous expansion of
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? 432
BISMARCK
population, was not Bismarck's work, nor did he deliber-
ately at any time in his career make it his task to promote
it, in and for itself. He endeavoured in 1862, and still
more in 1879, to utilise the economic ambitions and ex-
panding material resources of Germany in achieving his
main political object; he checked from time to time its
energies or directed them into channels approved by
himself. His success was certainly very limited even in
this limited programme. The forces were too vast,
too ubiquitous, and too complex to be controlled
within the mould of a policy which had originated
and attained a successful issue in a very different field of
action. And by 1890, when Bismarck departed, the
economic and industrial elements that made the new .
Germany were beyond the power of any statesman to say
--' thus far and no farther; this we will have, but not
that. ' Had Bismarck held his place until 1898 this con-
clusion would be more apparent than it was in 1890.
The Chancellor was, in short, experiencing the lesson that
eighteenth-century British history drives home. Neither
a Chatham, nor a Clive, nor a Warren Hastings could
prevent the ' expansion of England' from taking a form,
a volume, or a direction which their policy had not con-
templated; and when the industrial revolution was
superimposed on the originally narrower colonial and
imperial movement, the government at home was obliged
to follow where the nation, mastered by its own internal
vitality, unconsciously led. England, often reluctantly,
was driven by forces within and without, which were like
the propulsive forces of life within a healthy and growing
human individual. So thin and obscure is the partition
in the lives of individuals and nations between appetites
and ideals. British policy in Europe was gradually
coerced by the colonial expansion into a new orientation
and a re-definition of the ends and methods of British
action in Europe.
So with Bismarck. He had taught his nation the
Bismarckian gospel of power and proved its efficacy. The
industrial revolution in Germany, superimposed on
unification and victory, inspired new concepts and a new
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
and deeper meaning in the principles of power as the end
and justification of organised State action. The colonial
movement in Germany was at once both the expression
of the new interpretation of power--of which the German
nation was becoming more and more conscious--and a
demand for the realisation of that new power by the old
methods by which Bismarck had taught Germany the
gospel of the State that stood for Power. Bismarck
felt, indeed, intuitively, that the German demand could
not be ignored. What he refused to admit was that
the satisfaction of the demand must in the end result in
a re-interpretation of German policy in Europe and re-
sult in a new attitude to the problems of international
relations. And until he fell he was really wrestling
with an insoluble dilemma. He insisted on maintaining
the Bismarckian conception of Central Europe, with its
strategic and political conceptions, its delicate equipoise
of European State relations, derived from the Europe of
1848 to 1870, and its theory of alliances and preventive
combinations, directed chiefly against France. But, as the
next two decades conclusively indicated, the colonial and
industrial movement in the civilised States of Europe, the
'armed peace ' resting on ' nations in arms,' more or less
Prussianised in their military machinery, and the new ideas
of power in conflict with the new ideas of political liberty,
law and right, had produced a deadlock in Europe by
1890. The struggle had been shifted from the chancel-
leries with their obsolescent political conceptions to the
Europe beyond the seas, reacting on the new industrial
basis at home, and in turn influenced by it. Hence in
1890 Europe as the result of forces, at best only indirectly
created by Bismarckian principles, was on the eve of an
effort to readjust the whole European State system and
the international relations of the armed nations to the
new ideas of power, and of empires based on a modern
colonial mercantilism. Colonialism and industrialism
were destined to produce a new Europe and a new world;
and for Germany w particular they were shortly not to
supersede, but to re-write, the meaning and value of the
fundamental conceptions of German hegemony, and to
B. 2 E
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BISMARCK
re-interpret Central Europe in terms that Bismarck re-
garded as a departure, and a blundering departure, from
sound policy.
The Chancellor, however, to the end adhered with im-
pressive tenacity to his fundamental conception, and the
final decade of his career witnessed a resolute effort to fit
Russia into the system embodied in the Triple Alliance.
The new Tsar, Alexander m. , had not the same dynastic
connection with the royal house of Prussia that had so
materially influenced the relations of Alexander n. and the
Emperor William. He was torn between the desire to
represent a powerful Russia in Europe and his fear of
Nihilism, which by the assassination of his father had
brought him to the throne. Liberalism and all its works
were in his eyes only the inclined plane to democracy and
anarchy. Liberal Great Britain and the democratic
French Republic changing its ministries every few months
were a public danger. The solidarity of the Conservative
interest and the monarchical principle demanded the
formation of a 'monarchical international 'to comKat
the Socialist international--so formidable in Germany.
Bismarck could work on this line of thought. Lord
Granville openly recognised from 1881 to 1885 that a
Liberal ministry, because it was a Liberal ministry,
would be harassed, and that Bismarck would enjoy
harassing it, because the German system required that
the destruction of Liberalism in Germany should be
followed by the destruction of it elsewhere. The world
could have peace, but only if it first made a Conservative
solitude. Accordingly Bismarck 'got at' the Tsar in the
autumn of 1881 in Denmark. The Emperor William, so
sincere, straightforward, -and so eminently admirable in
his simplicity, could be persuaded to employ the hypo-
dermic syringe for ' doping ' the Tsar into sanity. That
autumn there was much discussion in exalted circles about
the desirability of saving a perishing world by an inter-
national anti-Nihilist and anti-Socialist league. Great
Britain was the trouble, of course, as Great Britain had
been the trouble under Castlereagh in the earlier form
of the Holy Alliance. Even a Conservative Great Britain
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
was never at any time ready, at the dictation of Berlin,
Vienna, or Petersburg, to wreck the constitutional system
and to abolish its freedom of the press or abandon
the right of asylum to political refugees. Fortunately
for Germany Great Britain was in cruel difficulties and
Alexander in. was amenable to influence. When the
Tsar replaced the anti-German Ignatieff by de Giers
(June 12, 1882), and when Skobeleff died, Katkoff lost
influence, and it was clear the German wind was once
more blowing steadily along the repaired wires from the
Wilhelmstrasse to Gatchina and Tsarkoe Seloe. The
Austrians were restive, for they suspected treachery at
Berlin. They had not learned, even in 1882, that Bismarck
refused alliances or conventions in which he did not sit
on the longer arm of the lever. In the spring of 1884
(March 24) Bismarck could rejoice, for he had made his
first 'reinsurance' (Ruckversicherungs) treaty. In the
autumn of that year, at a meeting of the three Emperors
at Skierniewice, a verbal endorsement was given to the
written compact of March 24. But, unless the evidence
available is absolutely untrustworthy, there was no written
understanding at Skierniewice. The convention in writ-
ing had already been made in the spring, and there was
no adequate reason either for writing it out again or
altering its terms.
The compact apparently was to hold good for three
years: and provided that if one of the three contracting
parties made war on a fourth Power, the other two were to
maintain a benevolent neutrality; that in the problems of
the Balkan peninsula the contracting parties would consult
their own interests, but in cases of disagreement between
two Powers there was to be a casting vote with the third;
Turkey was to come under a kind of joint Protectorate
which would be responsible for the execution of the terms
of the Treaty of Berlin; while the occupation of the Balkan
principalities was forbidden to all the three signatories. 1
For Bismarck the treaty was a triumph. It is very
1 See Appendix B for a further discussion of the Treaty of 1884-87, and the
questions arising out of them. The Treaty of 1884 had been preceded by a
treaty (dealing with the Near East) in 1881.
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? 436
BISMARCK
difficult to see, if the terms given above broadly represent
the contents of the convention, why Alexander in. should
have consented to become a party to such an undertaking.
He gained on the face of it nothing, while he lost every-
thing, including his independence of action. It is true
that in the struggle, now approaching a crisis, in the
Middle East between Great Britain and Russia the Tsar
was freed from the fear of German and Austrian attack,
should it come to war with Great Britain, but cool re-
flection should have convinced the Tsar that it was in-
conceivable that Germany or Austria would ever attack
Russia to enable Great Britain to win a victory that
would consolidate British power in the Middle or Near
East. Bismarck was not likely to sacrifice the bones of
Pomeranian grenadiers in the interest of a Liberal Great
Britain. And had he been so inconceivably foolish, he
would at once have brought about an alliance between
France and Great Britain, which he feared even more than
an alliance between France and Russia. A Franco-British
Alliance meant that Italy would at once desert the
Triple Alliance. Russian diplomacy from 1862 to 1890 (to
proceed no further) is indeed a mysterious and fearful
thing--so bristling with patent miscalculations, glaring
blunders, and the inconsistent idiosyncrasies of mediocre
autocrats, that the student is driven to suspect some
rational but hidden explanation, the nature of which has
never been revealed, to account for the mistakes. The
truth, probably, is that in Bismarck's hands Alexander in.
was a hypnotised stripling. Lord Ampthill's last letter
to Lord Granville (August 16, 1884), however, repeats a
familiar theme: 'the progress of democracy in England,'
he wrote, 'is the cause of very serious alarm to the sove-
reigns and governments; and they purpose to meet it by
consolidating the Monarchical League. ' If the Tsar was
so impressed with the danger to his person, throne, and
principles from the progress of democracy, led by a pestilent
Great Britain, as to sacrifice his political independence and
initiative and tie himself up in the meshes of the Compact
of 1884, no sovereign ever made a' more unjustified and
foolish sacrifice to Conservative principles.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
The Tsar interpreted the compact as giving Russia
a free hand in Central Asia; and certainly as the result of
it he was enabled to conduct, under continuous German
inspiration, the negotiations over the Pendjeh affair in a
way that he could not have done, had he not been assured
of German neutrality. But in so doing he was playing
Bismarck's game to perfection. The diversion of Russia
to Central Asia, a continuous and rasping antagonism
with Great Britain, the diversion of Great Britain in
Egypt or the Middle East, the alienation of Russia from
France, and of France from Great Britain, the with-
drawal of Russia from Europe and the Balkans, and the
elimination thereby of a conflict between Austria and
Russia, together with the weakening of Russian and
British influence and the increase of German power at Con-
stantinople, were results that in the glades of Friedrichs-
ruhe and by the cigars smoked in serene reflection by the
Chancellor's hearth seemed to be the gifts of Providence to
the wise. There is every reason to believe that Bismarck
supported (for adequate considerations) Great Britain in
Egypt against France, and urged Russia to increase her
Asiatic Empire. It was Great Britain not Bismarck who
suffered from 'Mervousness,' and it is practically certain
that in 1885 Bismarck used all his unrivalled influence and
skill to keep open the breach between Russia and Great
Britain, while dexterously suggesting to both parties that
Codlin was the friend, not Short. He did not want an
Anglo-Russian war; but he wanted the highest tension
possible short of war, and if both governments in conse-
quence lost prestige, or felt they must secure German
goodwill in a political world in which they had no friend
but Germany, the Wilhelmstrasse more demonstrably
than ever became the central exchange of European
rivalries. The 'honest broker' meanwhile took his com-
mission in West Africa or New Guinea, best of all in
shutting the doors of the Quai D'Orsay to all but the
German Ambassador. A Liberal Great Britain, as the
disturber of the peace of the world and the jealous foe of
every one's prosperity, was an effective theme alike at Paris
and Petersburg, and most effective of all in the Reichstag.
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? 438
BISMARCK
'Bizzimarck here, Bizzimarck there, Bizzimarck, Bizzi-
marck everywhere,' said Punch in a famous cartoon--and
it was so true. Moreover, what an appropriate moral
for sovereigns shivering in panic at Socialism--' To what
impotence and embarrassments will not Liberalism bring
deluded nations and ministers! ' Gambetta, Ferry,
and Gladstone compared with de Giers, Taaffe, and
Bismarck.
The entente of 1884 was, as usual, primarily directed
against France. The compact provided for the neutrality
of Russia if any of the three partners came to war with a
fourth Power (France). But it did much more than dis-
solve the possibility of a Franco-Russian Alliance (with
the war on two fronts for Germany); it constituted
Bismarck the arbiter and mediator between Russia and
Austria. A quarrel between Russia and Germany in the
Balkans was very unlikely; but a quarrel between Russia
and Austria was always on the horizon. Bismarck, by
the compact of 1884, could decide whether he would
support Russia or Austria, and the choice of the alter-
native gave him just the leverage he required to keep both
his 'friends' in order. The absorption of Russia in
Central Asia immensely facilitated the task. But what
Bismarck desired above all was to secure the requisite
degree of control over Austrian policy. If Austria was
'in hand ' the diversion of Russia or the coercion of Italy
was easy, and it is a fair inference that the compact of
1884 tightened, and was intended to tighten, the control
of the Wilhelmstrasse on the Ball-Platz.
The unscrupulous ingenuity and dexterity of Bismarck's
diplomacy may easily conceal the real source of his success
---German strength. Germany could secure allies, not
because her minister was a master of the technique of the
higher direction, but because she was a State of such
organised power. The Prussian sword was a permanent
weight in the scales of the international Balance of Power.
Europe in these days was steadily going to school in
Germany. In German universities the foreigner could
learn what organised work really meant, and it was a re-
velation that inspired justly a profound admiration and
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 439
a no less wholesome fear. From 1870 onwards the mighty
preparation of, and sacrifice by, trained brains from 1815
to 1870 was bringing its harvest safely home; and surely it
deserved to do so. German science in its broadest sense
had its origin in the universities, but by 1880 it had gripped
the whole nation. The German mind might be un-
political--which is very doubtful--but in commerce as in
the professions it understood, as no other national mind
in Europe understood, the meaning of science and the
vital difference between amateurism and expert know-
ledge. The most demonstrable manifestation of that
national science was the German nation in arms--the
German army as a political organ of the State that repre-
sented Power. That army was neither a luxury nor a
profession for the well-to-do and the rank and file who
could not be fitted by an individualistic rule of thumb into
the civil life of trade or agriculture. The foreign soldier
who studied at Berlin became acquainted with a great
national machine, the education and training of which
was based on the severest science co-ordinated to political
ends. Foreign soldiers in Europe realised that the German
army was not merely large in numbers or well-equipped
with guns and ammunition, but was trained for war.
England I should act cautiously and endeavour to avoid
losing England's goodwill. ' It is asserted on good
authority that German diplomatic agents were in the
Bismarckian epoch instructed to ' Do all in your power to
keep up good relationship with the English. It is not
necessary to cable in cipher. We have nothing to conceal
from the English, for it would be the greatest possible folly
to antagonise England. '
Such an antagonism Bismarck foresaw jeopardised the
Triple Alliance--the basis of his Continental system
and the German control of Central Europe. In 1890
(January 13) an article written under Bismarck's inspiration
laid down the following: 'Italy must be able to rely on
the assistance of the English fleet, for the Triple Alliance
cannot protect the Italian coasts. Hence Italy has to
think of England, and consideration of England may con-
ceivably limit Italy's freedom of action. As long as
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy are united in the
Triple Alliance, and as long as these three States may
reckon on the assistance of English sea-power, the peace
of Europe will not be broken. '
So far general principles. Active German intervention
in the acquisition of colonies in 1884 was due to the pres-
sure of a combination of forces. German relations with
France were good; Great Britain was gravely embarrassed
in Egypt; British relations with France were strained:
Ireland and the Franchise question were additional burdens
on an administration, the credit of which was gravely
undermined, and the internal unity of which was sapped
by ministers themselves; a quarrel with Russia in the
Middle East was brewing. The British government was
not in a position to resist dexterous pressure. Great
Britain was not able in 1884 to quarrel with Germany, unless
she were prepared to abandon important commitments in
her policy elsewhere. Public opinion in Germany was
vociferous. It represented powerful material interests.
The government was not too strong in the Reichstag;
a general election was imminent and the internal measures
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? 422
BISMARCK
of State Socialism had stirred severe criticism in some,
and bitter opposition in other, quarters. The govern-
ment had to convince Germany that its policy was based
on true German interests. The closer Bismarck's policy
is studied the more apparent is the vital connection
between a stroke in foreign policy and the home situation.
Bismarck might affect to despise or ignore public opinion
in Germany--he frequently did, when it was essential to
his aims to do so--but he watched its course and weighed
its volume with vigilant care, and he always found a safety
valve to let the steam out and ease the pressure on the
ministerial boilers. As with the Kulturkampf and the
Vatican Decrees, so now with the colonial movement, he
saw the opportunity and gripped it with characteristic
firmness and dexterity. In the spring of 1884 he had been
able, as is indicated below, to secure an important under-
standing with Russia, endorsed in the autumn of the same
year. The embarrassment of Great Britain was the
Chancellor's opportunity to satisfy public opinion at
home, achieve what was necessary to satisfy public opinion
without sacrificing the essentials of his system, and do it
before the fall of Ferry's administration and the renaissance
of the inveterate hostility between France and Germany
made the opportunity no longer available.
It is not necessary or possible here to trace in detail the
swiftly developed plans by which Germany between 1884
and 1890 acquired Togoland, the Cameroons, South-
West Africa (but without Walfish Bay), the framework of
German East Africa, a third of New Guinea, and a share
of the Samoa group. The Anglo-German agreement of
July 1, 1890 (which brought Heligoland to Germany, but
ceded German claims on Zanzibar and Witu to Great
Britain) falls outside Bismarck's period of office, and was
concluded by his successor, Caprivi. The initial and
most characteristic stages in German colonial policy and
the Anglo-German conflict are described at length, and
from authoritative sources, in Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of
Lord Granville. It must suffice here to note that after
1885 a Conservative, not a Liberal, ministry in Great
Britain was responsible for the ' concessions' and conven-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 423
tions; that the German colonial party was by no means
satisfied with the achievements of their government; that
in 1885 the attempt to secure the Caroline Islands was
abandoned when Bismarck referred the dispute to the ar-
bitration of Pope Leo xin. , in order to conclude the
Kulturkampf and secure the Clerical Centre; and that
Bismarck bitterly criticised the agreement of July I, 1890,
which may be partly due to his determination to condemn
as a blunder everything done after he ceased to be Chan-
cellor. But the broad fact remains that the foundations
of Germany's Colonial Empire were laid by Bismarck, and
that unless we are to regard all his public utterances on
the subject as deliberate insincerity, he accomplished a
limited programme under pressure, with considerable mis-
giving and much reluctance. 1 He was severely criticised
in the Reichstag and in the press, inspired by the Colonial
Society, for being so apathetic, hesitating, and absurdly
considerate of Great Britain, no less than for sacrificing
Germany's future across the water to an obsolescent
Continentalism.
In 1883 and the spring of 1884 Lord Ampthill warned
our government that the pressure of powerful parties in
Germany was greatly influencing Bismarck ' whose interest
(in colonial policy) was increased by the prospect of a
general election this autumn' (March 15, 1884). The
German government was also indicating with unmis-
takable emphasis that German goodwill in Britain's
Egyptian policy was dependent on British goodwill in
German colonial policy. This plain hint was continually
repeated in the next two years. 'I am in perfect despair,'
Ampthill wrote (August 2, 1884), 'at Prince Bismarck's
present inclination to increase his popularity before the
general election by taking up an anti-English attitude.
Compelled by the colonial mania . . . he has discovered
1 'For the sake of two million marks I cannot throw myself against the
great impulse of the nation, or offer opposition to the will of the whole country.
To this day I am not "a colonies man," and I entertain the gravest apprehen-
sion on the subject ; but I was compelled to decide upon yielding to the general
demand of the nation. . . . If the locomotive of Empire has struck out a track
for itself, I shall not be the one to throw stones in its way. '--(Bismarck in the
Reichstag, January 26, 1S89. )
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? 424
BISMARCK
an unexplored mine of popularity in starting a colonial
policy, which public opinion persuades itself to be anti-
English: and the slumbering theoretical envy of the
Germans at our wealth and our freedom has awakened
and taken the form of abuse of everything English in the
press. ' The remark apart from its special reference is
deeply significant, for it confirms the trend in the develop-
ment of German public opinion, emphasised (p. 275)
earlier in these pages. The alienation of Germany from
England, which was in truth the gravest feature for the
future of both countries, had proceeded with great
rapidity since 1870, and though Bismarck regarded it with
misgiving, as he well might, he would have abandoned
all the principles and methods of his statecraft had he not
utilised it to the full when his policy required it.
The colonial chapter in his Chancellorship is, therefore,
of deep interest, for it reveals all the secrets of his statesman-
ship--his eye for realities, his extraordinary mastery of his
own peculiar technique, his recognition that a genuine
and deep-seated German public opinion must not be
ignored, together with an inflexible determination to
maintain his Continental system and not to push the anta-
gonism with Great Britain to measurable distance of a
rupture. Great Britain could be harried and badgered;
she must understand that international relations were the
result of bargains; she must make concessions that could
be represented as diplomatic victories for Germany; but
she must not be driven into the enemy's camp. And as
the situation developed from 1884 to 1890, Bismarck
relaxed or increased the pressure on the successive Cabinets
in London, not thinking so much of the Colonies them-
selves, as of the prestige- of his government, German
relations with France or Russia, and the Triple Alliance,
in which Italy's continued inclusion was not too certain.
The more clearly that the Anglo-German negotiations
are studied in detail, the more clearly stand out those
methods which this biographical study has continuously
emphasised as truly Bismarckian. The German demand
for colonies and the German movement towards expan-
sion outside Europe were not intrinsically indefensible and
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 445
were the product of forces beyond the control even of an
Iron Chancellor. The supposition which underlay much
1884-90 that Great Britain could have peremptorily vetoed
all German colonial acquisitions, and could have done so
without sacrificing British interests in Egypt or in the
Middle or Far East--in a word, that Great Britain was
strong enough between 1884 and 1890 to defy France,
Russia, and Germany, or should have embarked on a
which can be sustained by a careful study of a very compli-
cated and critical European situation, combined in those
years with a very critical situation at home. Great Britain
had to choose between France and Germany, and France
was practically under German direction. In these pages
we are not primarily concerned either with explaining
the origins and development of British policy, or with
drawing up a balance-sheet based on a critical survey of
mistakes, alternations and successes; for the complete
British balance sheet cannot be adequately set out here,
nor the verdict based on the necessary cross-examination
of the very copious evidence.
One conclusion, however, seems fully justified. It
would have been easy for Bismarck, had he chosen to do
so, to have picked a very formidable quarrel with Great
Britain. Such a choice could have been made really
popular in Germany. Bismarck, indeed, in a month, could
have lashed Germany into a frenzy over colonies, at any
moment after 1884 to 1890. His prestige savoured of the
miraculous: his knowledge of his countrymen's passions
was unrivalled and Germany's military strength was
beyond question. It would have been no less easy to have
lashed Great Britain and colonial sentiment, particularly
in Australia, into the temper that makes either a complete
diplomatic victory or war the only alternatives. The
Pendjeh incident in 1885 proved the readiness of the
country to respond to a strong lead against Russia. 'The
Colonies' would have been a far more formidabL appeal
to national passion than an obscure place on the Afghan-
violent criticism
Salisbury from
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? 426 BISMARCK
istan frontier. But neither Bismarck nor the successive
British governments embarked on a course so fraught with
peril. Bismarck deliberately refused indeed to push
Great Britain against the wall and the inference from his
refusal is irresistible. For reasons, that may be bad or
good, but to which he attached the greatest weight,
he was ready to badger, even to insult, while insisting
on concessions, but not to 'antagonise' Great Britain.
German critics then and since have questioned the accuracy
of his judgment and the validity of his reasons. In this
country we can appreciate the reason for, and ratify the
wisdom of, his decision. For Bismarck was convinced his
policy secured the best interests of Germany. He was
not concerned with the question whether it also made for
British interests. But it made for peace in Europe--and
peace he held was a supreme German interest in those
years. That it was also a British interest, not lightly to be
sacrificed, is demonstrable.
But if Bismarck's ends were and remain defensible, his
methods were and remain' quite indefensible. British
ministers must plead guilty to lack of vigilance and errors
of judgment; the Colonial governments cannot escape
severe criticism; but whatever their mistakes, our Foreign
and Colonial Offices acted in a straightforward and honour-
able manner; and in the beginning they credited, quite
wrongly, the German government with similar intentions
and methods. It would be, on the facts before us, im-
possible to pronounce but one verdict on German diplo-
macy. From the negotiations about Angra Pequena to
the annexation of part of New Guinea, Bismarck's methods
were marked by duplicity and a demonstrable intention
to deceive the British government as . to the true aims of
the German government, to present our government
with faits accomplis, snatched in defiance of soothing
assurances or virtual pledges, and thus to make the whole
situation doubly difficult. The German White Books
were an incomplete, misleading, and, in places, positively
inaccurate version of the negotiations; our Blue Books,
which threw a very different light on what had happened,
roused Bismarck's deepest wrath, and we can understand
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 447
the reasons for his anger. The Chancellor utilised his
unique position in Germany to work up carefully prepared
explosions in the Reichstag, even publicly to suggest that
the British government was hostile to, and jealous of, any
German colonial acquisitions--which he knew was not true
--and to make charges against both Lord Granville and
Lord Derby which he was quite unable to sustain. 1 The
public statements of the Chancellor were intended for a
credulous German public opinion and an invitation to draw
its own (and quite false) conclusions; the withdrawal of
the charges was either privately made or slurred over, after
the poison ha*d been allowed to inflame German feeling.
The missions of Count Herbert Bismarck, whose reception
in England by ministers and society deeply gratified a
sensitive father's heart, were intended to do more than
effect an amicable settlement. 'Count Herbert Bismarck,'
wrote Sir C. Dilke, 'came over again. If at his former
visit he had only tried to get us to dismiss Lord Derby,
on this occasion he wanted us to dismiss Lord Granville
and Lord Derby. ' He failed. So gross and unwarranted
an interference in our home politics, thoroughly Bis-
marckian in character, was calculated to produce precisely
the opposite effect to that which Bismarck desired. All
through this trying period Lord Granville, who acted as
an honourable gentleman towards a great statesman, who
in his diplomacy was never a gentleman, suspected that
the cession of Heligoland was at the bottom of Bismarck's
tortuous and dishonest methods. The possibility of the
concession had been confidentially mentioned more than
once to Lord Granville, but no formal or open suggestion
on the subject was made, though Lord Granville was
1 I. t. the charge that Lord Granville had betrayed confidential communica-
tions of . Bismarck's to the French government (Granville's Life, ii. p. 370), and
that the British government had failed to reply to an important dispatch of
May 5, 1884, when as a matter of fact the dispatch had, by Bismarck's instruc-
tions of which he was well aware, not been communicated to our Foreign Office.
'I had a talk with Munster,' Lord Granville wrote privately to Mr. Gladstone,
'he was frightened out of his wits. He found the famous dispatch, but a
telegram not to act upon it. He begged me to keep this secret. ' And this
our government did, to their honour (op. at. , ii. p. 428). Munster was grate-
ful. But Bismarck never repudiated his statement, and to this day it is believed
in Germany--along with many other innuendoes and allegations, derived from
Bismarck's speeches which were untrue in fact.
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? 428
BISMARCIt
aware ' it was the intention of Germany to open a canal
into the Baltic . . . for the security of which it would be
necessary to give a good and fortified harbour to Heligo-
land. ' The concession was ultimately made by Lord
Salisbury on July I, 1890, as part of the general Anglo-
German agreement of that date.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Bismarck
threw away a great opportunity between 1883 and 1885,
and threw it away deliberately. Had he frankly and
openly approached the British government in 1883 with
an explanation of the difficult position the German
government was in, placed all the cards loyally on the
table, invited our goodwill while emphasising the neces-
sity of concessions on grounds of policy, and his readiness
in return for such concessions to support us against Ferry
and the French government, whose policy was to em-
barrass Great Britain everywhere by subservience to
Germany, all that Germany subsequently obtained might
have been gained and more, without endangering the good
relations of both countries. Bismarck pursued a very
different course: partly because such methods were not
his idea of diplomacy, partly because he could not resist
this opportunity to utilise the difficulties of Great Britain,
partly because he conceived it necessary to mislead Ger-
many by representing Great Britain as hostile, while
representing that her hostility was only broken down by
the skill and force of an invincible German diplomacy.
Tactically he succeeded. The incompleteness of the
German success was concealed from the German public:
the embittered controversy was left to rankle in the
German mind. Strategically, the campaign failed. There
can be little doubt that Bismarck desired to draw
Great Britain into the German net and the German
system--to establish a general entente which would have
placed the Triple Alliance beyond question and left
Germany completely master of the European situation
and of British policy, and put the British fleet under
German direction, objects all the more desirable when
the fall of the Ferry Ministry (April 1885) freed our policy
from the continuous onslaught of a French premier,
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 429
'determined to stir up trouble for Great Britain in every
quarter of the globe. '1 The whole colonial episode left
a deep impression on the minds of Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Granville, and Lord Derby, and deepened Mr. Gladstone's
distrust of any general understanding with Germany while
her policy was directed by Bismarck and pursued by such
Bismarckian methods.
Lord Fitzmaurice, for whose judgment and knowledge
all who have worked over the same material must have a
profound respect, is of opinion that 'the Berlin Act,' of
February 24, 1885, ' may some day be considered the most
remarkable event in Lord Granville's long tenure of the
Foreign Office. ' That Act finally defined and established
under international guarantees the Congo Free State;
it also defined the relations between Germany and the
new state and the claims of Portugal and France; it pro-
vided for the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade,
and for religious liberty; ana it was the first international
document formally to recognise ' spheres of influence ' as
distinct from territorial acquisitions. In a word, it went
a long way towards solving some of the acuter problems
of the Partition of Africa--and to solve them by a European
Concert.
The Anglo-German Agreement of July 1, 1890, com-
pleted the negotiations begun in 1883, and laid the
foundation of German East Africa. It was concluded
by Bismarck's successor Caprivi. Bismarck criticised
the agreement of 1890 with characteristic bluntness:
'Zanzibar,' he told Busch, ' ought not to have been left to
the English. It would have been better to maintain the
old arrangement. We could then have had it at some later
time when England required our good offices against France
or Russia. In the meantime our merchants, who are
clever, and, like the Jews, are satisfied with smaller profits,
would have kept the upper hand in business. To regard
Heligoland as an equivalent shows more imagination than
1 'Ferry,' wrote Lord Granville,' is certainly no loss to us. He arrived at
the Quai d'Orsay quite ignorant of foreign affairs; and the more he learnt of
them, the more subservient he became to Bismarck, and the more tricky to us. '
--Life, ii. p. 435 ; see also Lord Lyons's Life, passim.
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BISMARCK
sound calculation. In the event of war, it would be
better for us that it should be in the hands of a neutral
Power. '
The criticism contains in a nutshell Bismarck's ideas
and methods. The embarrassments of Great Britain
were to be utilised, as opportunities arose, to extract
concessions which would strengthen the prestige of the
government at home, consolidate Germany's position in
Europe and satisfy powerful sections of public opinion.
German trade would succeed in and for itself, under the
benevolent and careless aegis of the British flag, without
committing the German government to a systematic
colonial policy. Without a fleet adequate to protect the
German colonies, those colonies would simply be exposed
to British attack: and it was a profound mistake to put
Germany in a position in which she might require the good
offices of Great Britain, instead of having her own good
offices to bargain with in a British competition with
France or Russia.
Hence, from the first, Bismarck declined to incur Im-
perial responsibility for the administration or develop-
ment of the territories acquired. His principle was to
adopt the time-honoured British method of development
by chartered companies, with assistance, not readily
granted, of a subsidy to a steamship line. The Imperial
government did not incorporate the acquisitions, a step
which would have raised very difficult constitutional
and financial problems. Were the colonies, for example,
to be Imperial Territories (Reichsliinder)? What were
to be their administrative relations to the Imperial
government and the Reichstag? Who was to be re-
sponsible, and to whom for their government? How
were they to be financed during the long period when
they could not be self-supporting or policed, and so
forth? Technically during the Bismarckian regime they
were simply 'Protectorates' (Schiitz. - Gebiete), i. e. the
Imperial government undertook to 'protect' them from
foreign aggression--a definition of a 'Protectorate' much
narrower than that commonly accepted. But even, in
Bismarck's day, this guarded and limited liability broke
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 431
down. The Arab Revolt in East Africa of 1888 proved
that the German East African Company (Die Deutsche
Ost-Africa Gesellschaft), mainly financed by the German
traders interested in the vast district, was unable to
'protect' the 'Protectorate' from native attacks or re-
bellions. Direct Imperial assistance had to be given.
But even without the coercion of internal danger the
Bismarckian policy was bound to fail. Behind the
colonial movement worked the forces of a public opinion
that demanded the full status of German sovereignty for
the German 'colonies,' and the creation of n Germany
beyond the seas, to become as essentially and integrally a
part of the German Empire as Alsace or Mecklenburg.
But the later development of German colonial policy,
which led in 1907 to the establishment of a Colonial Office
in the central executive, and the gradual transference of
all the colonies to direct imperial administration fall
outside the Bismarckian period. How far the develop-
ment since 1890 has borne out Bismarck's original reluct-
ance to embark on a systematic colonial policy, and how
far it inevitably led to the one result that Bismarck feared
from the first--an irreconcilable antagonism between
Great Britain and Germany, spreading from the Atlantic
and the Pacific to the North Sea and the heart of Europe
--and how far colonial policy has been the main cause of
the creation of a German fleet, sufficiently powerful to
rival that of Great Britain, are questions of the profoundest
significance to all students of the European State system
in the quarter of a century that followed Bismarck's fall
from power. But they can neither be discussed with
advantage, still less adequately answered, by the student
of Bismarck's statecraft alone.
The colonial movement, as a phenomenon in the revo-
lution of the German Empire, does indeed enforce, with
the same clearness that the history of Social Democracy
brings out, one great truth, salutary alike for the pure
historical student and the political researcher into the
springs and causes of national development. The in-
dustrialism of Germany, with its concurrent features of a
rapid increase of wealth and a marvellous expansion of
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BISMARCK
population, was not Bismarck's work, nor did he deliber-
ately at any time in his career make it his task to promote
it, in and for itself. He endeavoured in 1862, and still
more in 1879, to utilise the economic ambitions and ex-
panding material resources of Germany in achieving his
main political object; he checked from time to time its
energies or directed them into channels approved by
himself. His success was certainly very limited even in
this limited programme. The forces were too vast,
too ubiquitous, and too complex to be controlled
within the mould of a policy which had originated
and attained a successful issue in a very different field of
action. And by 1890, when Bismarck departed, the
economic and industrial elements that made the new .
Germany were beyond the power of any statesman to say
--' thus far and no farther; this we will have, but not
that. ' Had Bismarck held his place until 1898 this con-
clusion would be more apparent than it was in 1890.
The Chancellor was, in short, experiencing the lesson that
eighteenth-century British history drives home. Neither
a Chatham, nor a Clive, nor a Warren Hastings could
prevent the ' expansion of England' from taking a form,
a volume, or a direction which their policy had not con-
templated; and when the industrial revolution was
superimposed on the originally narrower colonial and
imperial movement, the government at home was obliged
to follow where the nation, mastered by its own internal
vitality, unconsciously led. England, often reluctantly,
was driven by forces within and without, which were like
the propulsive forces of life within a healthy and growing
human individual. So thin and obscure is the partition
in the lives of individuals and nations between appetites
and ideals. British policy in Europe was gradually
coerced by the colonial expansion into a new orientation
and a re-definition of the ends and methods of British
action in Europe.
So with Bismarck. He had taught his nation the
Bismarckian gospel of power and proved its efficacy. The
industrial revolution in Germany, superimposed on
unification and victory, inspired new concepts and a new
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
and deeper meaning in the principles of power as the end
and justification of organised State action. The colonial
movement in Germany was at once both the expression
of the new interpretation of power--of which the German
nation was becoming more and more conscious--and a
demand for the realisation of that new power by the old
methods by which Bismarck had taught Germany the
gospel of the State that stood for Power. Bismarck
felt, indeed, intuitively, that the German demand could
not be ignored. What he refused to admit was that
the satisfaction of the demand must in the end result in
a re-interpretation of German policy in Europe and re-
sult in a new attitude to the problems of international
relations. And until he fell he was really wrestling
with an insoluble dilemma. He insisted on maintaining
the Bismarckian conception of Central Europe, with its
strategic and political conceptions, its delicate equipoise
of European State relations, derived from the Europe of
1848 to 1870, and its theory of alliances and preventive
combinations, directed chiefly against France. But, as the
next two decades conclusively indicated, the colonial and
industrial movement in the civilised States of Europe, the
'armed peace ' resting on ' nations in arms,' more or less
Prussianised in their military machinery, and the new ideas
of power in conflict with the new ideas of political liberty,
law and right, had produced a deadlock in Europe by
1890. The struggle had been shifted from the chancel-
leries with their obsolescent political conceptions to the
Europe beyond the seas, reacting on the new industrial
basis at home, and in turn influenced by it. Hence in
1890 Europe as the result of forces, at best only indirectly
created by Bismarckian principles, was on the eve of an
effort to readjust the whole European State system and
the international relations of the armed nations to the
new ideas of power, and of empires based on a modern
colonial mercantilism. Colonialism and industrialism
were destined to produce a new Europe and a new world;
and for Germany w particular they were shortly not to
supersede, but to re-write, the meaning and value of the
fundamental conceptions of German hegemony, and to
B. 2 E
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? 434
BISMARCK
re-interpret Central Europe in terms that Bismarck re-
garded as a departure, and a blundering departure, from
sound policy.
The Chancellor, however, to the end adhered with im-
pressive tenacity to his fundamental conception, and the
final decade of his career witnessed a resolute effort to fit
Russia into the system embodied in the Triple Alliance.
The new Tsar, Alexander m. , had not the same dynastic
connection with the royal house of Prussia that had so
materially influenced the relations of Alexander n. and the
Emperor William. He was torn between the desire to
represent a powerful Russia in Europe and his fear of
Nihilism, which by the assassination of his father had
brought him to the throne. Liberalism and all its works
were in his eyes only the inclined plane to democracy and
anarchy. Liberal Great Britain and the democratic
French Republic changing its ministries every few months
were a public danger. The solidarity of the Conservative
interest and the monarchical principle demanded the
formation of a 'monarchical international 'to comKat
the Socialist international--so formidable in Germany.
Bismarck could work on this line of thought. Lord
Granville openly recognised from 1881 to 1885 that a
Liberal ministry, because it was a Liberal ministry,
would be harassed, and that Bismarck would enjoy
harassing it, because the German system required that
the destruction of Liberalism in Germany should be
followed by the destruction of it elsewhere. The world
could have peace, but only if it first made a Conservative
solitude. Accordingly Bismarck 'got at' the Tsar in the
autumn of 1881 in Denmark. The Emperor William, so
sincere, straightforward, -and so eminently admirable in
his simplicity, could be persuaded to employ the hypo-
dermic syringe for ' doping ' the Tsar into sanity. That
autumn there was much discussion in exalted circles about
the desirability of saving a perishing world by an inter-
national anti-Nihilist and anti-Socialist league. Great
Britain was the trouble, of course, as Great Britain had
been the trouble under Castlereagh in the earlier form
of the Holy Alliance. Even a Conservative Great Britain
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
was never at any time ready, at the dictation of Berlin,
Vienna, or Petersburg, to wreck the constitutional system
and to abolish its freedom of the press or abandon
the right of asylum to political refugees. Fortunately
for Germany Great Britain was in cruel difficulties and
Alexander in. was amenable to influence. When the
Tsar replaced the anti-German Ignatieff by de Giers
(June 12, 1882), and when Skobeleff died, Katkoff lost
influence, and it was clear the German wind was once
more blowing steadily along the repaired wires from the
Wilhelmstrasse to Gatchina and Tsarkoe Seloe. The
Austrians were restive, for they suspected treachery at
Berlin. They had not learned, even in 1882, that Bismarck
refused alliances or conventions in which he did not sit
on the longer arm of the lever. In the spring of 1884
(March 24) Bismarck could rejoice, for he had made his
first 'reinsurance' (Ruckversicherungs) treaty. In the
autumn of that year, at a meeting of the three Emperors
at Skierniewice, a verbal endorsement was given to the
written compact of March 24. But, unless the evidence
available is absolutely untrustworthy, there was no written
understanding at Skierniewice. The convention in writ-
ing had already been made in the spring, and there was
no adequate reason either for writing it out again or
altering its terms.
The compact apparently was to hold good for three
years: and provided that if one of the three contracting
parties made war on a fourth Power, the other two were to
maintain a benevolent neutrality; that in the problems of
the Balkan peninsula the contracting parties would consult
their own interests, but in cases of disagreement between
two Powers there was to be a casting vote with the third;
Turkey was to come under a kind of joint Protectorate
which would be responsible for the execution of the terms
of the Treaty of Berlin; while the occupation of the Balkan
principalities was forbidden to all the three signatories. 1
For Bismarck the treaty was a triumph. It is very
1 See Appendix B for a further discussion of the Treaty of 1884-87, and the
questions arising out of them. The Treaty of 1884 had been preceded by a
treaty (dealing with the Near East) in 1881.
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? 436
BISMARCK
difficult to see, if the terms given above broadly represent
the contents of the convention, why Alexander in. should
have consented to become a party to such an undertaking.
He gained on the face of it nothing, while he lost every-
thing, including his independence of action. It is true
that in the struggle, now approaching a crisis, in the
Middle East between Great Britain and Russia the Tsar
was freed from the fear of German and Austrian attack,
should it come to war with Great Britain, but cool re-
flection should have convinced the Tsar that it was in-
conceivable that Germany or Austria would ever attack
Russia to enable Great Britain to win a victory that
would consolidate British power in the Middle or Near
East. Bismarck was not likely to sacrifice the bones of
Pomeranian grenadiers in the interest of a Liberal Great
Britain. And had he been so inconceivably foolish, he
would at once have brought about an alliance between
France and Great Britain, which he feared even more than
an alliance between France and Russia. A Franco-British
Alliance meant that Italy would at once desert the
Triple Alliance. Russian diplomacy from 1862 to 1890 (to
proceed no further) is indeed a mysterious and fearful
thing--so bristling with patent miscalculations, glaring
blunders, and the inconsistent idiosyncrasies of mediocre
autocrats, that the student is driven to suspect some
rational but hidden explanation, the nature of which has
never been revealed, to account for the mistakes. The
truth, probably, is that in Bismarck's hands Alexander in.
was a hypnotised stripling. Lord Ampthill's last letter
to Lord Granville (August 16, 1884), however, repeats a
familiar theme: 'the progress of democracy in England,'
he wrote, 'is the cause of very serious alarm to the sove-
reigns and governments; and they purpose to meet it by
consolidating the Monarchical League. ' If the Tsar was
so impressed with the danger to his person, throne, and
principles from the progress of democracy, led by a pestilent
Great Britain, as to sacrifice his political independence and
initiative and tie himself up in the meshes of the Compact
of 1884, no sovereign ever made a' more unjustified and
foolish sacrifice to Conservative principles.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
The Tsar interpreted the compact as giving Russia
a free hand in Central Asia; and certainly as the result of
it he was enabled to conduct, under continuous German
inspiration, the negotiations over the Pendjeh affair in a
way that he could not have done, had he not been assured
of German neutrality. But in so doing he was playing
Bismarck's game to perfection. The diversion of Russia
to Central Asia, a continuous and rasping antagonism
with Great Britain, the diversion of Great Britain in
Egypt or the Middle East, the alienation of Russia from
France, and of France from Great Britain, the with-
drawal of Russia from Europe and the Balkans, and the
elimination thereby of a conflict between Austria and
Russia, together with the weakening of Russian and
British influence and the increase of German power at Con-
stantinople, were results that in the glades of Friedrichs-
ruhe and by the cigars smoked in serene reflection by the
Chancellor's hearth seemed to be the gifts of Providence to
the wise. There is every reason to believe that Bismarck
supported (for adequate considerations) Great Britain in
Egypt against France, and urged Russia to increase her
Asiatic Empire. It was Great Britain not Bismarck who
suffered from 'Mervousness,' and it is practically certain
that in 1885 Bismarck used all his unrivalled influence and
skill to keep open the breach between Russia and Great
Britain, while dexterously suggesting to both parties that
Codlin was the friend, not Short. He did not want an
Anglo-Russian war; but he wanted the highest tension
possible short of war, and if both governments in conse-
quence lost prestige, or felt they must secure German
goodwill in a political world in which they had no friend
but Germany, the Wilhelmstrasse more demonstrably
than ever became the central exchange of European
rivalries. The 'honest broker' meanwhile took his com-
mission in West Africa or New Guinea, best of all in
shutting the doors of the Quai D'Orsay to all but the
German Ambassador. A Liberal Great Britain, as the
disturber of the peace of the world and the jealous foe of
every one's prosperity, was an effective theme alike at Paris
and Petersburg, and most effective of all in the Reichstag.
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? 438
BISMARCK
'Bizzimarck here, Bizzimarck there, Bizzimarck, Bizzi-
marck everywhere,' said Punch in a famous cartoon--and
it was so true. Moreover, what an appropriate moral
for sovereigns shivering in panic at Socialism--' To what
impotence and embarrassments will not Liberalism bring
deluded nations and ministers! ' Gambetta, Ferry,
and Gladstone compared with de Giers, Taaffe, and
Bismarck.
The entente of 1884 was, as usual, primarily directed
against France. The compact provided for the neutrality
of Russia if any of the three partners came to war with a
fourth Power (France). But it did much more than dis-
solve the possibility of a Franco-Russian Alliance (with
the war on two fronts for Germany); it constituted
Bismarck the arbiter and mediator between Russia and
Austria. A quarrel between Russia and Germany in the
Balkans was very unlikely; but a quarrel between Russia
and Austria was always on the horizon. Bismarck, by
the compact of 1884, could decide whether he would
support Russia or Austria, and the choice of the alter-
native gave him just the leverage he required to keep both
his 'friends' in order. The absorption of Russia in
Central Asia immensely facilitated the task. But what
Bismarck desired above all was to secure the requisite
degree of control over Austrian policy. If Austria was
'in hand ' the diversion of Russia or the coercion of Italy
was easy, and it is a fair inference that the compact of
1884 tightened, and was intended to tighten, the control
of the Wilhelmstrasse on the Ball-Platz.
The unscrupulous ingenuity and dexterity of Bismarck's
diplomacy may easily conceal the real source of his success
---German strength. Germany could secure allies, not
because her minister was a master of the technique of the
higher direction, but because she was a State of such
organised power. The Prussian sword was a permanent
weight in the scales of the international Balance of Power.
Europe in these days was steadily going to school in
Germany. In German universities the foreigner could
learn what organised work really meant, and it was a re-
velation that inspired justly a profound admiration and
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 439
a no less wholesome fear. From 1870 onwards the mighty
preparation of, and sacrifice by, trained brains from 1815
to 1870 was bringing its harvest safely home; and surely it
deserved to do so. German science in its broadest sense
had its origin in the universities, but by 1880 it had gripped
the whole nation. The German mind might be un-
political--which is very doubtful--but in commerce as in
the professions it understood, as no other national mind
in Europe understood, the meaning of science and the
vital difference between amateurism and expert know-
ledge. The most demonstrable manifestation of that
national science was the German nation in arms--the
German army as a political organ of the State that repre-
sented Power. That army was neither a luxury nor a
profession for the well-to-do and the rank and file who
could not be fitted by an individualistic rule of thumb into
the civil life of trade or agriculture. The foreign soldier
who studied at Berlin became acquainted with a great
national machine, the education and training of which
was based on the severest science co-ordinated to political
ends. Foreign soldiers in Europe realised that the German
army was not merely large in numbers or well-equipped
with guns and ammunition, but was trained for war.
