Part 14 (2/2)
Germany was in great need of something to distract her attention by a stroke of exotic brilliancy and by the creation of some new object of hatred. Enmity for ever directed against France, was beginning somewhat to pall. This continually living on the strength of one's old triumphs, made Germany to appear like some much-dyed old dandy, seeking to gain recognition for past conquests by means of art and cosmetics.
The time had come to create a diversion. The German Emperor, King of Prussia, has found it with his usual headlong impetuosity, the quality which impels him always to seize things on the wing, to display alternately the capacity of a genius, and that of a stupid blunderer. . . .
March 1, 1896. [2]
German opinion persists in expressing its severe criticisms on the subject of the Transvaal business and continues to display its sympathy for the Boers. There is every reason to expect that German interests will now be able to create for themselves numerous outlets in the Transvaal.
William II has made another speech on the subject of the war of 1870; in this he is like the tide, which the waves carry away only to bring it back. Lord, Lord, deliver us from this torture! I, for one, can bear it no longer. My eyes are filled with tears of rage as I listen and listen again, for ever, unceasingly and without end, to the tale of our defeat and to the glorification of the army which conquered us, to the tale of the German Empire born of these Prussian victories. Will it ever be finished, this tale? When will they have done, once and for all, with inscribing these cruel records of theirs in the golden book of Germany, and shut the clasp upon it?
We know that William II either painted himself, or had painted, a picture, which was all the rage in Germany and which represented Europe invaded by the Chinese. It would look as if William II really believed in the danger of this impending invasion, to judge by the inscription on the engraving of this picture, reproduced by the thousand; ”Nations of Europe, take care for your most sacred treasures!--WILLIAM I.R.”
But if this be so, how comes it that the German Emperor is sending hundreds of military instructors to the Chinese, who are supposed to be threatening his country?
June 1, 1896. [3]
William II believes that the victories of 1870 were due to Prussia alone, and that it was she who made the Empire; and this explains why he takes such complete possession of the Empire, and makes the celebrations of these victories so personal a matter. The people of Bavaria, Wurtemberg and Saxony are herein exposed to humiliation of a kind which they decline to accept. There is no doubt that all Germans hate us with an equal hatred, and all have united with the same enthusiasm to crush our unfortunate France; nevertheless, we may derive some profit from the antipathy inspired in them by Prussia's grasping claims to glory and authority.
September 1, 1896. [4]
Do you remember, my faithful friends, and you, my earliest readers, what were the sentiments of hatred, love and fidelity, that inspired the letters which I addressed to you nearly eighteen years ago--the violence of my hatred for the most tyrannical, and at the same time, the most dangerously vindictive, of European statesmen, viz. Von Bismarck?
Have you not often smiled, when I then denied the strength of the Colossus and a.s.serted his fragility, when I used to say: ”He must not die with a halo of glory; let him witness rather the bankruptcy of his moral estate and give proof of the pettiness of his character and evidence of his unbridled l.u.s.t for power. Let the effrontery of his lies return to him in bitterness?” And together, you and I, we have now seen Prince Bismarck, not hurled down, but slowly crumbling to ruin; there has been nothing great about his fall, neither the shout that he gave, nor his way of falling, nor the words which he said when he picked himself up.
And at the same time when I showed you, in the far distant future, this idol of blood-thirstiness broken, I preached to you the love of Russia.
I saw her freeing herself from German influence and drawing closer to us. Hardly had the Emperor Alexander III come to the throne, than I said to you: ”He will be a popular Emperor, and the more he loves his own people the more he will love ours.” For a long time you thought that my hatred of Prince Bismarck was blind, but from the outset you regarded my love of Russia as enlightened. How many strengthening and encouraging letters have I not received from you?
And now, Nicholas II, son of Alexander III, the well-beloved Emperor, who represents in his own person the highest expression of great, holy and mystical Russia, is coming to Paris officially, as the ally of France, so that all the ambitions of our patriotism, all our dreams of the last twenty-five years, are coming true together. Am I not ent.i.tled to say to you, dear readers, ”I have fulfilled the mission that I set before myself, my work amongst you is accomplished”? But there remains still a tie between us, our common fidelity to Alsace!
How could we forget those who have not ceased to remember? Shall it be said that we failed those who rather than yield have suffered every form of torture? Let us endeavour together to prove in a more active manner our devotion to the brethren who are separated from us. Now that Prince Bismarck has one foot in the grave, now that the Russian Alliance is in the hands of the Government of France, let us devote all our strength and all the resources of our advocacy, all our love of justice, to the cause of Alsace-Lorraine. . . .
William II is sick, nervous and irritable. He has lost all patience with the question of the reform of military organisation; he did not raise that question, it would seem, and has plenty of other things to worry him. He is going to ask Parliament, on its re-a.s.sembling, to vote large sums for the increase of the navy, his own particular care.
After all, he received the army triumphant from the hands of Moltke and of Bismarck, but the navy is his own personal achievement; he believes this, and says so repeatedly. But the German navy has no luck. This year, besides the _Iltis_, the _Frauenlob_, and the _Amazone_, which swallowed up a large number of junior officers of the Prussian navy, it has lost the _Kurfurstin_ (as the result of an error of navigation) with 300 sailors, also the _Augusta_, the _Undine_, and other vessels.
February 22, 1897. [5]
William II has announced himself as the enemy of Greece, and the prop of the Ottoman Empire. At the subscription ball given at the Opera in Berlin, did he not walk arm-in-arm with Ghalik Bey, the Turkish Amba.s.sador, and authorise him to telegraph to the Sultan that, under existing conditions, he might count upon his sense of justice and his good-will? Does not this const.i.tute an insolent challenge to the decision which the Powers are supposed to have taken for the observation of neutrality?
When William II is insolent, he does not do things by halves; now, he repeats to all concerned: ”One does not argue with Greece, one gives her orders,” and on every occasion that has offered, he has displayed sentiments hostile to Greece and favourable to the Sultan. For these reasons, Abdul Hamid is devoted to William II. He is tied to him, and bound by all his sentiments, by all his admiration and his fear, to the Germans. Messrs. Cambon and de Nelidoff believed that they had detached the Sultan from Germany, but illusions on that score are no longer possible. Germany possesses his entire confidence. Did not he, the most nervous and suspicious of men, allow on one occasion the German military mission to take _effective_ command of his troops, whereas no other military mission has ever been allowed anything more than the right to put them through their drill? Germany, which in case of need can count upon the Turkish army, is fundamentally interested in preventing Turkey from being either weakened or divided up. A war in the East, in which Germany might get Russia deeply involved, at the same time that she kept her busy in Asia, is too great an advantage to risk losing, without doing everything possible to protect it. . . .
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