September 11, 1894. [5]

Amongst the list of surprises with which the Emperor of Germany is pleased to supply the makers of small-talk in Europe, one often finds, since the journey of the Empress Frederick to Paris (although that was hardly to be called a success) that he is by way of making advances to France. From time to time William II, in a carefully premeditated pose (as, for that matter, all his poses are), extends towards us, across the frontiers of Alsace-Lorraine, the hand of generous friendship. Sometimes, for an entire day he will be good enough to forget that he is heir to the victories won from us in 1870. Next day, it is true, we shall find him celebrating in splendour our defeat at Sedan; but none the less he will have satisfied his great soul by thus inviting us to forget the past. Why is it that William II wearies not in thus renewing his attempts at reconciliation with France? The reason is, that he has nothing to lose by continual failures, whilst he has everything to gain if he succeeds, even for a moment, in deceiving our vigilance, and in diverting us from those feelings which alone can honour and raise the vanquished, that is to say, fidelity to the brothers we have lost, and the proud belief that, sooner or later, we shall re-enter into possession of the conquered territory.

Last on the list of the intermittent advances which William II has made to France, there appeared lately the following in the Allegemeine Norddeutsche Zeitung, official organ of the German government:—

"There is no reason for misunderstanding, or for failure to appreciate, the increasing signs which go to show that public opinion in France is favourable to reconciliation with us, and that this opinion is growing, not only amongst the higher classes in France, but amongst the people. It is beginning to be recognised that it is to the interest of both nations to shake hands, as is fitting between neighbours, no matter what may have been their former differences. On the part of Germans the tendency towards an entente has gained in strength since we have noticed the tendency of the French to judge impartially a personality like that of our Emperor, as befits a nation so cultured and richly endowed as the French."

What say you, veteran soldiers, who fought in the Terrible Year? What say you, Parisians of the Siege, Frenchmen who have seen the Prussian conqueror dragging his guns and booty along the roads of our France? What say you, men of Alsace-Lorraine, heroes all? (No matter whether, like some, you have sacrificed situation, home and your little fatherland, so as not to forsake the greater, or, like others, you have consented to become Prussians in order that the land you worship may remain in hands that are still French.) What say you, when our dreadful defeat, our piled-up ruin, and the spoliation of a portion of France, become for a German official organ our former differences? What words are these in which to speak of 1870-71, of that unforgettable and tragic invasion, of the terrible anguish of our ravished provinces, and what a proof they afford of the great gulf which separates the mind of Germany from that of France!



September 26, 1894.

The German Emperor does not forget that he is before all things a Prussian. Having administered a reprimand to the nobility, he proceeds to give to the five new fortresses at Koenigsberg, the five greatest family names of the Prussian nobility.

At Thorn he declared—

"Only they can count upon my royal favour who shall regard themselves as absolutely and entirely Prussian subjects." The Germans have not yet realised that the German Empire will be Prussian, before ever Prussia consents to lose herself in a united Germany.



October 28, 1894.

The German Emperor, King of Prussia, with that love of peace for which even Frenchmen are pleased to praise him, is now chiefly occupied in displaying his passion for militarism. In the case of William II, it will be necessary to modify a hallowed phrase, and to say to him: "Seeing you in uniform, I guessed that you were no soldier."

The Emperor, King of Prussia, insists on continually reminding the German peoples that he is the commander-in-chief of the armies of the Empire, and he never misses an opportunity of emphasising the fact. At the presentation of flags to the 132 new battalions created by the new military law, (and doubtless with a view to peace, as usual) the Emperor with his own hand hammered 132 nails, fixing the standards to their flag-staffs. This sort of thing fills me with admiration, and if it were not for my stupid obstinacy, it might convert me to share the opinion of M. Jules Simon, who holds that we should entertain the King of Prussia at the Exhibition in 1900, and welcome him as the great clou[6] on that occasion. But I should not jest about those feelings which transcend all others in the heart of the French people. Germany owes us Alsace-Lorraine; she has every interest in trying to make us forget the debt. What would one think of a creditor who allowed the debtor to persuade him that the debt no longer existed? A nation which reserves its rights against the victor, and maintains its claims to conquered territory, may be despoiled but is not vanquished. Would Italy have recovered Lombardy and Venice had she not unceasingly protested against the Austrian occupation? Excessive politeness towards those who have inflicted upon us the unforgettable outrage of defeat is not a sign of good manners, but of culpable weakness, for it inflicts suffering upon those who have to put up with the material consequences of Germany's conquest, and might end in separating them from their old and unforgotten mother country.

When William II conducted the Prince of Naples to Metz he was only acting in accordance with his usual ideas as an insolent conqueror. But if we were to receive the German Emperor at the Exhibition of 1900—if at that time he is still master of Alsace-Lorraine—we should be committing the base act of a people defeated beyond all hope of recovery.



December 12, 1894. [7]

As day by day one follows the proceedings of William II, one gradually experiences a feeling of weariness and of numbness, such as one gets from watching the spectacle of waves in motion.

Before his speech from the throne, and in order to prepare his public for a surprise, William II had directed the King of Saxony, on the occasion of a presentation of standards, to tell France to her face that she had better behave, that the Saxon heroes of 1870 had sons worthy of them, and that the glorious, triumphant march from Metz to Paris might very easily begin all over again. Whereupon, general alarm and feverish expectation of the speech of William II, which of course, turned out to be pacific. The following sentence should suffice to prove it:

"Our confidence in the maintenance of peace has again been strengthened. Faithful to the spirit of our alliances, we maintain good and friendly relations with all the powers."

One can discern, however, a little trumpet note (of which he would not lose the habit), in the speech which he made at the opening of the new Reichstag building, whose construction was begun at the time of the Prussian victories: "May this building remind them (the deputies) that it is their duty to watch over that which their fathers have conquered." But this is a pure and simple melody compared to the war-march of the Saxons.



January 12, 1885. [8]

William II, in search of a social position, has become lecturer. At his first lecture, he announced to the whole world that our commercial marine no longer holds the second place, that this second place belongs to Germany, and it is now necessary that Germany's Navy should also take our place. And in his usual chameleon way, the German Emperor, who until quite recently refused to admit that there lay any merit whatsoever in the Bismarckian policy, now adds: "And Prince Bismarck may rejoice, for the policy which he introduced has triumphed."



March 12, 1895. [9]

On a certain day, in 1871, the defenders of Paris and its patriotic inhabitants learned from the silence of our guns, that the Prussian enemy's victory over them was complete. And now it seems we are going to Kiel, to take part in the triumphant procession of H.M. William II, King of Prussia, and to add the glory of our flag to the brilliant inauguration of his strategic waterway. Why should we go to Kiel? Who wanted our government to go there? Nobody, either in France or Russia. The great Tzars are too jealous of the integrity of their own splendid territory, to refuse to allow that a nation should remember its lost provinces. We were indignant when the Prince Royal of Italy, the ally of Germany, went to take part in the German military cavalcades, and now we ourselves, whom Prussia defeated, are going, in the train of the despoiler of Schleswig-Holstein, to assist at the opening of a canal, which penetrates and bleeds Danish provinces, annexed by the same conqueror who took from us Alsace-Lorraine. Will Denmark, whom William II has had the audacity to invite, go to Kiel? No, a thousand times no! and neither should we go there ourselves, to applaud this taking possession of Danish waters. Denmark, though invited, will not go to Kiel; yet we know what are the ties which bind her Sovereigns to Russia. It has been said, in order to reassure consciences that are easily quieted, that our war-ships will go to Kiel sheltered by those of Russia, and, so to speak, hidden beneath their shadow. Our dignity is at stake, as much in the truth as in the falsehood of this news. The French Government is not a monarchy. By declining this invitation of our conquerors, it would have placed the whole question on its proper footing, which should be that of the situation created by the Treaty of Frankfort. We should have said to Germany, France desires peace. Our Chauvinists will remain quiet, so long as the German Government gives us no provocation. If we refrain from going to Kiel, it is in order to maintain the peaceful condition of our relations. Germany's chief interest is to lead Europe to believe that we have come to accept the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and to make the people of those provinces believe that we have forgotten them.

The King of Prussia, German Emperor, just to keep his hand in, stimulates the military virtues of his recruits, and for the hundredth time presides over the taking of the oath of fidelity. He teaches the recruits that the eagle is a noble bird, which soars aloft into the skies and fears no danger; also, that it is the business of the said recruits to imitate the eagle. He adds that the German navy is the only real one, that all others are spurious imitations, and he concludes by saying that "the German Navy will achieve prosperity and greatness along paths of peace, for the good of the Fatherland, as it will in war, so as to be able, if God will, to crush the enemy." William II never speaks of conquering the enemy or being superior to him; it is always "crush." It is this crushing German navy that our sailors are to go and salute at Kiel.

It looks as if our artists were lending a hand to William, and gratifying this passion of his for crushing people. An Alsatian friend of mine, who knows his Germany well, said to me the other day that, in sending their pictures for exhibition at Berlin, our painters are likely to ruin their own market. For a long time the King of Prussia has wanted to have a salon at Berlin, and he looks to French painters to give it brilliancy and to attract those foreign artists who are accustomed to French exhibitions. Once it has become the fashion to go to Berlin, French artists will find that they have helped to ruin their own business. How can anybody suppose that William II really wishes to do honour to French art? Do not let us forget that Frederick III said "France must have her industrial Sedan, as she has had her military Sedan."



March 28, 1895. [10]

It seems then, that Germany's proudest ambitions are about to be realised at the fetes at Kiel. That patriotic hymn of theirs, which up to the present has been a dead letter for those peoples who have not yet been incorporated in the Prussianised Empire, will now become a living thing. Henceforward all Europe must hear and accept the offensive utterance which the Germans shout: "Deutschland ueber Alles!" Yes, Germany over all things.

That her Emperor should have willed it, is enough to bring together in his triumphant procession all the following—

Russia, despoiled of her triumph at Constantinople by the Congress of Berlin, and exposed on her flank by the Baltic Canal.

England, tricked at Heligoland and at Zanzibar, and whose power is threatened by the very fleet which she is going to salute.

Spain, threatened in the Carolines, who has only been protected from Prussian presumption by her own indomitable pride.

Denmark, cynically robbed of Schleswig-Holstein.

Italy, from whom the German navy, when it has become the equal of the German army and fulfilled the dream of William II, will take Trieste. It is true that, to make up for Trieste, diplomacy at Berlin is putting Salonika in pickle with a good deal of English pepper, intending to offer it as a hors d'oeuvre to Austria, Germany's advanced and submissive sentinel in the East.

France, the most deeply injured and despoiled, whom the German conquest has plundered to the utmost, she also will take part in the procession, and in order that our humiliation be the more complete, so that the French army may be unable to forgive the French navy for it, our Flag, our beloved colours, will doubtless salute one of those Prussian vessels which carry the name of one of our defeats, for instance, the Woerth!

After that, William II, King of Prussia, will be unable to descry a single cloud on the German horizon. And Germany, Germany will be above and over all! The glory and the splendour of the Hohenzollerns will shine upon the entire universe, and the German Emperor, Emperor of Emperors, like the King of Kings, will have nothing to fear until the Heavens fall.

And we, who have forgotten nothing of the Terrible Year and what it took from us, we, who can see under the left breast of our beloved France, her bleeding heart, ravished Alsace-Lorraine, we shall lift our eyes unto Heaven, our last hope, beseeching it to strike down the presumptuous one, since men are afraid of him.



April 10, 1895. [11]

It has always been a dream of mine to see a newspaper founded under the title Foreign Opinion, a sheet confined to information, in which would be presented, clearly, simply, and held together by an intelligent sequence of ideas, quotations from the principal organs of those countries in which we have interests, either identical or opposed. Statesmen and Members of Parliament would be compelled to read such a paper. A knowledge of foreign opinion would render the greatest services to public opinion in this country, for it would compel our somewhat self-centred mind to take into consideration the judgment of others, to determine the justice or the harshness of the criticism directed against us, and to draw, from the study of these things, warnings and rules of conduct.

To take an immediate instance, let me give my readers an extract from the Muenchner Nachtrichten, a newspaper, which as a rule does not share the brutal harshness of the Berlin Press with regard to our feelings and their expression in French newspapers—

"These foolishly vain Frenchmen, sitting in their meagre little thicket of laurels, contemplate with evident displeasure the stirring of the winds in the great forest of German oaks, and their discontent finds expression in ways that are frequently comical. The Figaro for example, has expressed it in an article which is particularly silly (with a kind of foolishness not often found even in a French newspaper, which is saying a good deal). It denies to Germans the right to remember the glorious years of 1870 and '71, for the reason that French people might thereby be hurt. Does it mean to say that the French would threaten us with war if we continue to celebrate our victories over them? Well, if these gentlemen are of that opinion, we will answer them that Germany is peacefully inclined, but that, if the French are not satisfied with the severe lesson that we gave them in 1870-71, we are quite prepared to begin it all over again."

And these are the people, mind you, who would have said that we were trying to provoke them if, faithful to the memory of our defeat, as they are to the memory of their victory, we had abstained from going to Kiel to sing the glories of the conqueror. Like William II, their Sovereign and Lord, Germany will never admit that our actions should be a counterpart to their own, even though such actions should include recognition of their former victories. They wish to impose upon us, not only the acceptance of defeat, but a definite recognition of their conquest, a final sacrifice of our ancient rights, together with unlimited scope for their new ambitions. The German Emperor, King of Prussia, has never made two consecutive speeches in which one did not contain some threat for us, long or short-dated. If one were to add together all the words of peace which William has spoken and all his war-like utterances, the mass of the latter would irretrievably swamp all the rest.



October 28, 1895. [12]

His Majesty the German Emperor, King of Prussia, seems to be quite incapable of understanding that, in love as in hate, it is wisest not to be overfond of repeating either the word "always" or the word "never." It is the intention of William II, that Germany should for ever and ever remain the gate of Hell for France, and he has continued to din into our ears his lasciate speranza every year for the last twenty-five. He never misses an opportunity of showing us France humiliated and Germany magnified and glorified. The monument at Woerth has been unveiled with such a noisy demonstration, that it has for ever banished from our minds the figure, softened by suffering, of that Emperor Frederick, who had made us forget "Unser Fritz" of blood-stained memory. William II noisily recalls to our mind the conqueror, when we wished to see in him only the martyr. This is what the German Emperor now tells the world at large: "Before the statue of this great Conqueror, let us swear to keep what he conquered, to defend this territory against all comers and to keep it German, by the aid of God and our good German sword."

To do him justice, William II has rendered to us patriots a most conspicuous service. At a word he has set us back in the position from which the luke-warm, the dreamers, and the cowards were trying to drive us. By saying that Alsace-Lorraine is to remain Prussian for ever and for ever, he has compelled France either to accept her defeat for centuries to come, or to protest against it every hour of her national existence.



November 2, 1895.

William II suffers from a curious kind of obsession, which makes him want to astonish the world by his threats, every time that his recruits take the oath. On the present occasion he said, that the army must not only remember the Watch on the Rhine but also the Watch on the Vistula.



[1] La Nouvelle Revue, April 1, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[2] La Nouvelle Revue, April 16, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[3] Ibid., May 1, 1894.

[4] La Nouvelle Revue, August 1, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[5] La Nouvelle Revue, September 15, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[6] A pun on the word clou, a nail.

[7] La Nouvelle Revue, December 15, 1894, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[8] La Nouvelle Revue, January 15, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[9] Ibid., March 16, 1895.

[10] La Nouvelle Revue, April 1, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[11] La Nouvelle Revue, April 15, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[12] La Nouvelle Revue, November 1, 1895, "Letters on Foreign Policy."



CHAPTER V

1896-1897

Telegram from William II to President Krueger—The Emperor Nicholas II visits France—William II and Turkish affairs; he becomes Protector of the Sultan—Why the condolences of William II preceded those of the Tzar on the occasion of the fire at the Charity Bazaar—"Germany, the Enemy": Skobeleff's word remains true—We have been, and we still are, gulls—Peace signed between Turkey and Greece.

January 11, 1896. [1]

As the result of his telegram to President Krueger, William II has recovered the popularity of the early days of his reign. The German Emperor had undoubtedly very powerful reasons for making a chivalrous display on behalf of the Transvaal, from which he anticipated deriving the greatest advantages. He expected to produce a moral effect by undertaking the defence of the weaker side (a role that once belonged to France). He saw a way to flatter Holland, deeply touched by these manifestations of German sympathy for Dutchmen, who were represented by others as barbarians. He saw also an opportunity for acquiring and keeping admirable outlets into the Transvaal, which had threatened to become for ever closed to German emigrants. Finally, he expected to produce a feeling of admiration for his magnanimous attitude, which would divert the German people from socialism and make them forget the Hammerstein affair. Truly, the Transvaal is for William II one of those lucky finds from which all sorts of good things may spring.

The educated classes in Germany, as well as the lower orders, were beginning to get very weary of the everlasting celebrations in memory of 1870-71, which continually fed the flames of French hatred. A Silesian journal had just informed us that the 25th anniversary of the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles would be celebrated by a great fete in all the German schools. The German artillery of the Siege of Paris had arranged for a commemorative banquet, to be held in Berlin on January 5. The senate and the bourgeoisie of Hamburg had made a gift of nearly 200,000 marks on behalf of the regiment of Hanseatic infantry which fought at Loigny on December 2, and for distressed veterans of that regiment.

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, Wuertemberg 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 asserted 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 lust 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 entitled 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-assembling, 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 Ambassador, 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 constitute 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. . . .



April 28, 1897. [6]

William II, the God of war and of force, is in every way responsible for events in the East. Only his friendship, and the many consequences of that friendship, have given to Abdul Hamid the courage of his massacres, of his resistance to all efforts at reconciliation, and of his military proceedings in Greece. The German Emperor had been able to persuade the simple-minded Government of France of his peaceful and humanitarian intentions. It only needed a few of us to revolt and to express our indignation, to unmask him, and to show in its true, lurid light, the real nature of his actions, so as to enable the nations to know him for what he is. To-day he is the master of Europe; but let the power of the Kaiser be what it may (and it is a power no more capable of honesty than that of Bismarck, who lied without ceasing, forfeited without ceasing his honour, and accepted responsibility for crime), whatever conquests hereafter William II may achieve, even should we be defeated again, we shall be able to stand up before him and to his face to say, "You will never achieve greatness!" Material greatness turns again to dust, like all matter, but moral greatness is eternal, an intangible thing, which surrounds men, invisible, and which emanates from the best amongst them.

We will leave to history, which shall surely record it, the judgment of human men, of real peace-lovers, concerning William II, concerning this protector of the Red Sultan, this renegade and denier of his faith, who has sold his soul in order to govern the world through evil, through trickery, through force and through war. You have only to read the German legends, to analyse the souls of the traditional heroes of Germany, to see that they are indeed much more closely allied to the Turks (who have only understood Islamism under its aspects of conquest) than they are to the traditions which Europe has inherited from Greece and from her daughters, Rome and Byzantium.

The struggle of to-day lies between these two spirits: one the barbarian spirit, the spirit of conquest, which knows no other law but force, the spirit which subdues and kills, represented by Turkey and by Germany; the other, the spirit of civilisation, of love, which knows no other law than the right, the spirit which emancipates and vivifies, the spirit of Greece, from which European civilisation is drawn, excepting always that of the Germans and Turks. Either the East will resist the Turks, and Europe will resist Germany, or else both will relapse into barbarism, and be condemned to war without ceasing, to butcheries, to the brutality of force and all its works.



May 27, 1897. [7]

At all events they have not yet won their bet in Berlin that they would make us look ridiculous and hateful. Those very wise and well-bred people, who have been advising us to revise our national education, so as to welcome the Kaiser in 1900, have had but meagre success. As to the golden stream, which brought us the 8000 marks of the King of Prussia,[8] thank Heaven, it has not been able to drown our patriotism. Brother Frenchmen, it is still lawful for lunatics and ill-bred people like ourselves to remember Sedan, Metz, Strasburg and Paris, as well as Kronstadt and Toulon. Then let us not forget either the first rays of sunlight which reach us from Russia, or the darkness of 1870. [9]

There is not a single German journalist (and I wish to emphasise this fact most clearly), even in the ultra-Prussian party, who would have dared to put his signature to such an article as one of our greatest newspapers has published concerning William II, whom it describes as "a humanitarian thinker, a gentle philosopher, thinking only of the happiness of the human race, of appeasing ancient hatreds and removing old grudges. How joyfully would he not have restored Metz and Strasburg had he not been prevented in performing this act by the historical necessities of his position." In proof of all which things, this article cites his telegrams of sympathy, the splendid bouquets which he has sent to our illustrious dead, his wish to pay homage to France in 1900, etc., etc.

The journalist grown old in harness, who has dared to write such monstrous things as well as such nonsense, will no doubt be greatly astonished when I inform him that no foreign reporter, however inexperienced, of any nation great or small, is ignorant of the fact that William II is relentlessly determined to achieve the re-establishment of absolute autocracy as it was conceived by certain Emperors of Rome and Byzantium. His motto is Voluntas Regis Supremo Lex, which, on the occasion of his first visit to Muenich, he wrote there with his own Imperial hand. On the first occasion of the opening of the States of Brandenburg, he declared that he counted on their fidelity to help him to crush and destroy everything that might oppose his personal wishes. Is it necessary to say once more for the hundredth time that he never has the oath taken by his recruits without telling them that "they must ever be ready to fire on those who oppose his rule, even though they should be their own fathers, mothers and brothers"? The other day, did he not make his brother Prince Henry read a letter to the sailors of his war-ship the Wilhelm Imperator (the vessel appointed to attend the Jubilee of Queen Victoria), in which letter he held up to the execration of the army and navy those "unpatriotic" Germans who refused to provide him with millions for his wild scheme of increasing the navy, that is to say, about nine-tenths of the Reichstag? There is in Germany one institution which commands very general respect, and enjoys traditional liberty, viz. the University. For the last year William II has opened a campaign against the liberties of University education, and the scandalous manner in which he has attacked the professors at Berlin because of the dignity with which they have defended their rights of scientific research, are known to every one except "this brilliant Chronicler of the Boulevards."

From one end of Germany to the other they go into ecstasies whenever, either before, during, or after his acts of politeness to France, William finds some new pretext for humiliating, humbling, or threatening us. [10]

A German pamphlet published two years ago, entitled Caligula; a Study of Caesarian Madness, by Mr. Quidde, achieved such a success, that hundreds of thousands of copies were bought up in a few days by the faithful subjects of the German Emperor. This pamphlet, ingeniously compiled by means of quotations from Suetonius, Dion Cassius, Philo, etc., gives a marvellous analysis of the character of William II. I cannot resist the pleasure of giving a few extracts from this little work, for it would appear that William II is endeavouring, since its publication, to emphasise the resemblance between himself and Caligula and Nero.

"The dominant feature in the actions of Caligula lies in a certain nervous haste, which led him spasmodically from one obsession to another, often of a self-contradictory nature; moreover, he had the dangerous habit of wanting to do everything himself. Caligula seems to have a great fondness of the sea. The strolling-player side of his character was by no means limited to his military performances. He was passionately devoted to the theatre and the circus, and would occasionally take part himself on the stage, led thereto by his peculiar taste for striking costumes and frequent changes of clothing. He was always endeavouring to shine in the display of eloquence; and was fond of talking, often in public. We know that he developed a certain talent in this direction, and was particularly successful in the gentle art of wounding people. His favourite quotation was the celebrated verse of Homer—

There is only one Master, only one King.

Sometimes he loved the crowd, and sometimes solitude; at other times he would start out on a journey, from which he would return quite unrecognisable, having allowed his hair and beard to grow."

Just as the names of Caligula and Nero are daily affixed in Germany to the name of William II, Herr Hinzpeter is called Senecus, General von Hahnke is known as Burrhus; there is also an Acte and a Poppea at Berlin. Frederick III is Germanicus and Prince Bismarck is called Macro, after the powerful prefect of the praetorium in disgrace. Like Nero, William II has been cruel to his mother; he is cruel to his sister, the Princess of Greece. He hates England, just as Caligula hated Brittany. With a mind like that of Nero, William II derives the greatest pleasure from the thought of degrading the French people by making them receive him with acclamation. What a triumph it must be for this grandson of William I (who defeated us but left us our honour) thus to bring us to dishonour: us, the descendants of the France of 1789, republicans in the service of a Prussian Caesar!



June 10, 1897. [11]

It should have been to the interest of France and, of Russia, and a policy of skilful strategy, to oppose Turkey when supported by the Triple Alliance, and to create around and about her, in Greece as in the Balkans, such a force of resistance as would have put a stop to her schemes of expansion, resulting from those of the Powers of the Triple Alliance. By so doing, France and Russia might have taken them in the rear and upset their plans. We were already in a position of considerable advantage, in that we could leave to the King of Prussia, the German Emperor, all the responsibility for the crimes of the Sultan, observing at the same time all those principles which would have maintained, in their integrity, the moral and Christian traditions of France and Russia. But our policy has been that of children building castles in the sand. Confronted by a triumphant Turkey, leaning on the Triple Alliance, and by a Sultan suffering from the dementia of blood-lust, certain of the faithful friendship of William II, and confident in his victorious army (already 720,000 strong, and commanded by a German General Staff); confronted by such fears and threats, we have chosen to place all our hopes upon the balanced mind of William II, the generosity of the Sultan, and the loyalty of oriental statecraft! I have said it so repeatedly that I may have wearied my readers, but I say it again; "To their undoing, France and Russia have sacrificed their policy to Turkey, protected by Germany." They are now confronted by German policy, evasive and at the same time triumphant, that is to say, in full command of the situation which it has brought about. William II is at last revealed, even to the blindest eyes, as the instigator and sole director of everything that has taken place in the East since his visit to Constantinople. He takes pleasure in advising the Sultan day by day, for he makes him do everything that he himself is prevented from doing, and he enjoys the satisfaction of being a tyrant in imagination when he cannot be one actually.



June 25, 1897. [12]

The Sultan's million of armed men, organised under a German General Staff, in a country where Germany is making every effort to possess herself of every kind of influence and every source of wealth, is not this the chief danger which Russia has to fear, and whose imminence she should clearly foresee, in dealing with a Sultan like Abdul Hamid, a man of nervous fears and bloodthirsty instincts, bound to furtherance of the sudden or premeditated schemes of William II?



July 27, 1897. [13]

Although Germany has commemorated her victories for the last twenty-five years, and will doubtless continue to commemorate them for the next six months and then for evermore, it seems that we are to be compelled, in deference to "superior orders" revealed at the Council of Ministers, to postpone the official consecration of a monument intended to prove our devotion to our mutilated country, and our incurable grief at the defeat of Sedan. It seems that we have not the right, a free people, to give to sorely oppressed Alsace-Lorraine (which never ceases to give proofs of her fidelity to France) a proof in our turn, that we remember the disaster which has separated us, that we lament this disaster, and hope one day to repair, if not to avenge it. Our pride is being systematically humiliated in every direction! The nature and consequences of victory have indeed been cruelly modified, if one must submit to the law of the conqueror after having been delivered from him for twenty-five years. The glorious resistance of the past thus becomes an ignominious surrender and makes us shed tears of shame, even more bitter than those which we shed over our saddest memories.

Gentlemen of the Government of France, I would ask you to read the German newspapers; go to Berlin, go wherever you like in Germany or in Alsace-Lorraine, and you will find there hundreds and hundreds of monuments which have been inaugurated by the Imperial German Government. For these, the smallest event, ancient or modern, affords sufficient pretext. [14]

In all things and in every direction we yield today to the authority of a monarch who emphasises our defeat more severely than those who actually conquered us. Our strict national duty towards him who did not overcome us with his own sword, was to hold ourselves firmly upright before him and to protect our brethren, victims of the war. Alas! we have been obedient to Bismarck, and we shall be submissive to William II. But why, and to what end? Had we met the liar and cheat with honesty, had we remained calm in presence of this nerve-ridden individual, we should have been able to recover, morally at first and then actually, all the advantages that Prussia gained by her victory.

The Imperial victim of restlessness, whose nerves are so unhealthily and furiously shaken when he goes abroad, has a craving for disturbing the nerves of others; this in itself makes him the most dangerous of advisers. William II never allows to himself or to others any relaxation of the brain; like all spirits in torment, he must needs find, forthwith, to the very minute, a counter-effect to every thing that confronts him. With him, even a sudden calm contains the threat of a storm, excitement lurks beneath his moods of quietness. The bastard peace which he has authorised Turkey to conclude, conceals a new revolution in Crete: such is his will. No sooner is there evidence of an improvement in our relations with Italy, than he invites King Humbert to be present at the German military manoeuvres, in order to create dissension between the two countries. And so it is in everything. He makes it his business to inspire weariness and vexation of spirit, to destroy those hopes and feelings which restore vitality to the soul of a people. He is for ever stretching out a hand that would fain control by itself the rotation of the globe, and he sets it all awry.

The glorification of William II at Kiel is founded upon shifting sands. Schleswig remains Danish and resists the Germanising process with a force of energy at least equal to that of Alsace-Lorraine. The Danes of Schleswig are still Danes, they have not bowed the knee in admiration of German Kultur, any more than the Alsatians, Schleswig says: "Let them ask us by a plebiscite and they shall see what we want, what civilised men have the right to ask: light and air and the right to dispose of themselves." The people of Alsace-Lorraine say: "If you would know what Alsace-Lorraine, which was never consulted, thinks of the Treaty of Frankfort, ask her."

I blush, and my soul is filled with shame, when I think of the degradation of French patriotism contained in the utterances of . . . ., of those words which, to our lasting sorrow, evoked in the Centre of the Chamber an outburst of enthusiasm. May our patriots never forget this cowardly session of the French Parliament! Thus, then, twenty-seven years after the war, when we have spent countless millions on the remaking of our army and navy, when every Frenchman has bled himself to the bone to make France so strong and independent that she might cherish the brightest hopes, a President of the French Council has the unutterable weakness, from the tribune, to threaten France with the German cane, should she dare to follow any other policy than that desired by Berlin!

And French deputies have applauded these shameful words, that are reproduced, with such joy as may be imagined, by the whole German Press! That Press has every reason to be delighted and to find in these words clear proof that the official class in France has always looked upon the Russian Alliance as a show-piece, never relying upon it, and that since the Berlin Congress (how often have I said it!) this official class has never ceased to gravitate towards Germany.

And I, a Republican, a fanatic for the Russian Alliance, such as it might and should have been, a Frenchwoman, blind worshipper of my vanquished country—how can I hold my head up in the face of such a shameful collapse!

In placing his services at the disposal of the Grand Turk for the persecution of Christians, in supporting those in Russia whose policy it is to urge their country into war with Japan and China and to divert it from its natural sphere of action in Europe, our Minister for Foreign Affairs has ruined one of the finest political situations in which France has ever found herself. If the conduct of our foreign affairs had been entrusted to a real statesman, France might have recovered her position in Europe instead of going, with giant strides, down the path of hopeless decadence.

Are not the intentions of Germany plain enough now and sufficiently proved? They must be stupidly foolish who cannot see that a great German war is being prepared against the Slavs and Gallo-Latins, under most disastrous conditions for us and for Russia. It needs all the blindness of King Humbert, of Leopold II and of the Hungarian Centralists, to believe that if and when it comes, a German victory would confer any benefits on anything that is not German.



September 8, 1897. [15]

The mind of Germany is everlastingly concerned with the toasts proposed by William II. We know the toast proposed after his review of the 8th Army Corps. First of all, come his remarks on the subject of foreign policy. "It rests with us to maintain in its integrity the work accomplished by the great Emperor and to defend it against the influences and claims of foreigners." On such an occasion, after the remarks on "justice and equity," which he made on board the Pothuau, the hot-headed Emperor was bound to deliver himself in some such strain.

The next toast was that which he proposed at Hamburg in honour of King Humbert and Queen Marguerita. This one is emphatic and at the same time gracious, for William II cultivates every style and all the arts. On this occasion the King of Prussia, Emperor of Germany, referred as usual to the solidity of the Triple Alliance and to the mandate which it has assumed for the preservation of peace. He spoke as the grandson of William I. King Humbert replied as the grandson of Victor Emmanuel (sic), skilfully gliding over the question of the indissoluble nature of the Triple Alliance and reminding his hearers that Germany has no monopoly in the pursuit of peace, but that all the Governments of Europe are equally concerned in endeavouring to attain it.

A movement is taking shape in Italy, full of danger and of promise, as events will prove. The clericals and the republicans have sketched the outline of an understanding, which looks as if it might be approved by Leo XIII. The danger of this union between the parties will lead King Humbert back to a more national, a more peninsular, policy. The strong opposition that it has to face is useful, in that it will oblige the country's rulers to pay more attention to home affairs and to the nation's interests than to the glorification of the dynasty.



September 28, 1897. [16]

"Germany is the enemy," Skobeleff used to say at Paris in 1882, speaking to the younger generation of Slavs in the Balkans. These prophetic words were inspired in the hero of Plevna by Germany's intrigues at the Berlin Congress, intricate intrigues, full of menace for the future of the East. They should have haunted the spirit of every chancellery ever since, and become the formula around and about which European diplomacy should have organised its forces to resist Prussia's invading tendencies.

Until 1870 the liberal, philosophic, learned and federalist genius of Germany, was spreading all over the world through its literature, science, poetry and music, a genius whose attitude and equilibrium were the fruit of an equal fusion of the mind of North Germany with that of the South. By the victories and conquest of 1870, this genius became suddenly and entirely absorbed in Prussian militarism, and has now grown to be a force hostile to all other races. The power of the intellect in all its forms, recognises reciprocity and scientific research; the power of brute force only recognises the idea of predominance and the subjection of others. The genius of Prussianised Germany to-day combines the lust of conquest and power with the shopkeeping spirit, but even in this last, there is no idea of reciprocity but only of exclusive encroachment. Her international misdeeds are past all number; she saps and undermines all that has been laboriously built up by others. Germanisation carries with it the seeds of disintegration; it is a sower of hatred, proclaiming for its own exclusive benefit the equity of iniquity, the justice of injustice.

Only less extraordinary than the audacity of Prussia is Europe's failure to realise these truths. In 1870 Napoleon III was deluded, fooled and compromised, led into war by means of lies. Nameless intrigues set our generals one against the other. At a moment when victory was possible, the treachery of Bazaine made defeat inevitable for France, whom the so-called genius of Moltke and Frederick-Carl would never have vanquished. Having overthrown the Empire, the King of Prussia, who had declared that he was fighting against it alone, made war on France, well aware that sufficient vitality remained in the broken pieces to enable them to come together again, and that, under the threat of a French revanche, Prussia would be able to keep Germany exercised in such a state of mind as would reconcile her to remaining under the military yoke of the Hohenzollerns. And Europe, without protest, accepts this condition of things, fatal to her interests and security, created for the sole profit of the lowest of nations. By her self-effacement, indeed, she increased fivefold the influence and power of that nation.



September 31, 1897. [17]

You and I, all of us, we French people in particular, who think that we were born clever, we are all a pack of credulous fools. Let any one take the trouble to put a little consistency, a little continuity, into the business of fooling us—especially about outside matters whose origins we ignore, or people whose history we have not closely followed—and we will swallow anything!

All of us Republicans, all the Liberals of the Second Empire, Edmond Adam, our friends, our group,—great Heavens! how we swallowed German republicanism and liberalism! With what brotherly emotion did we not sympathise with the misfortunes of those who, like ourselves, were the vanquished victims of tyranny! We, Frenchmen and Germans alike, were defending the same principles, the same cause; we were fighting the same good fight for the emancipation of ideas, for the levelling of intellectual frontiers, etc., etc.

How well I remember the friendly abandon of Louis Bamberger in our midst! Truly these Prussian Liberals and ourselves held the same opinions concerning everything, far or near, which bore upon intellectual independence, upon progress and civilisation. And since we were united by such a complete understanding, such identity of ideas, it was our duty to work together: our German friends for the triumph of liberalism in France, and we, for the triumph of liberalism in Germany. As to such questions as those of territorial frontiers, or the banks of the Rhine, Bamberger used to ask, "Who thinks of such things in Germany? No one! They had other things to think about!" The heart's desire of the sons of the German revolution of 1848-49 was a universal republic, universal brotherhood, and nothing else. We believed him, but for what an awakening! Hardly were the Germans in France, than all the orders dictated by Bismarck were translated into French by Louis Bamberger.

A book by Dr. Hans Blum, which has just been published in Berlin under the title of "The German Revolution of 1848-1849," throws even more light on the "brotherly" sentiments of German republicans. In this book Dr. Blum recalls a speech made in the Palatinate on May 27, 1832. This is what the orator said: "There can only be one opinion amongst Germans, and only one voice, to proclaim that, on our side, we would not accept liberty as the price of giving the left bank of the Rhine to France. Should France show a desire to seize even an inch of German territory, all internal dissensions would cease at once and all Germany would rise to demand the retrocession of Alsace-Lorraine, for the deliverance of our country."

That is how German Republicans thought, as far back as 1832. In 1868-69 they made us swallow once again ideas of brotherhood from beyond the Rhine, by lulling our perspicacity, by enervating the courage we used to display towards foreigners, and it was several weeks before we realised in 1870 that all Germany, from one end to the other, was of the same type of honesty, the same character as the Ems telegram.

We are nothing but fools, credulous fools, if we believe that any German can think otherwise than as a member of united, that is to say Prussianised, Germany, or if we imagine that Prussia is anything but the complete, total, unique, fully accepted, assimilated and admired expression of German patriotism. Prussia is the fine flower, the ripe fruit of German unity. A few Bavarians, a few so-called German liberals, may pretend to be restive under the despotism of the King of Prussia, but they accept unreservedly the authority of the German Emperor. And what is more, it is just as he is, that they wish their Emperor to be, thus they have imagined, thus they have made him. He is like unto them in their own image, he governs them according to their own mind. There may be some who, as a matter of personal inclination, might prefer to have more liberalism, but whenever Germanism is in question it is personified in William II, King of Prussia. Berlin is the capital of all the Germans upon earth.

During these past few days, in the Vienna Parliament, whilst an orator on the Government side was singing the praises of the Emperor Francis Joseph, a German Austrian exclaimed—an Austrian, mark you—"Our Emperor is William II."

The credulous fools of the moment in France are the Socialists. Just as we believed in the liberalism of German Liberals before 1870, so French Socialists now believe in the internationalism of German Socialists. With greater sincerity than anything displayed by the old German Liberals of before 1870, the Socialists of Hamburg have taken the trouble to enlighten their French brethren with regard to their real sentiments. Herr Liebknecht himself has explained their attitude; his words may be summed up as follows: "The Socialists of France are our brothers, but if they wanted to take back Alsace-Lorraine, we should regard them as enemies."

There is nothing more remarkable than these German Socialists and their congresses, these fellows who always preach to other nations against patriotism, and never come together except to make speeches about the Fatherland. At the Hamburg Congress, Auer, the socialist deputy, looked into the future and saw "the Cossacks trampling underfoot all the liberties of Western Europe." What tyranny of barbarians could be more cruel than the tyranny of Germany which, wherever it extends, oppresses the racial instincts of mankind, ruins and absorbs a people, reducing it to servitude by the assertion of the rights of a superior race over its inferiors.

Has the Hamburg Congress disabused the minds of French Socialists on the brotherhood of their German brethren? Let us hope that it will not be necessary for them, as it was for us, to hear the thunder of German guns to understand that all parties in Germany are included in the German party, and that those who believe anything else are nothing but poor deluded dupes.



October 26, 1897. [18]

Those amongst us who, hour by hour, have devoted their lives to the service of our mutilated country, have for their object, each within the humble limits of his individual efforts, the glorification of France and that of Russia, the greatness of the one being dependent on the greatness of the other. This twofold devotion, and dual service keep our fears perpetually alert in two directions; how great are those two commingled sources of fear when patriotic Frenchmen, like patriotic Russians, come to consider the bewildering development of Prussian power—a veritable process of absorption.

German policy knows no laws except those of which Prussia is sole beneficiary. Only that which is profitable to Prussia is good; the rest, all the rest, is a negligible quantity. Moral precepts, religious brotherhood, higher education by force of example, a sense of justice applied to the fair apportioning of influence, vested rights, and a reasonable idea of reciprocity—all such things are moonshine for Prussia. The sole object that Prussian Germany pursues is brutal conquest in all its forms. By all conceivable means to get a footing for herself, here, there and everywhere; by the most energetic and methodical diplomacy possible, by military science, by trade and manufactures, by emigration and the race-spirit, and at the same time by subterranean methods of allurement and by insolent threats; these are her purposes and she accomplishes something of them every day. When one reflects what Germany's objects were, and what she has achieved in the Eastern question, to what humiliations and cross purposes she has exposed and reduced Europe, to what contempt for her own interests, what bewilderment and impotence, then, I repeat, the stoutest heart may have good cause for fear.

Turkey, galvanised by Germany, has become a force to inspire terror amongst Christians in the East and throughout the whole range of European civilisation, where it comes into contact with Mussulmans, in all parts of the world. All the slow-moving patience of Russian and French diplomacy for centuries, all the long struggles of the Crusades have been robbed of their garnered fruits in a few months. German policy has overthrown all their influence, destroyed all their approach works, released Europe's vassal from all his promises and obligations. The Sick Man, cured by a quack who holds his health in pawn, has bound himself body and soul to his healer.

Greece, frequently hesitating in her policy between British and French sympathies, has nothing to hope for in the future from Turkophil Germany. William II will make her recovery a matter of limitations and bargaining. And who knows but that the strange proceedings of Prince Constantine and of the royal princes, his brothers, may not be explained by secret promises for the future—promises made by the German Emperor in return for blind submission to his will?

William II holds Turkey in the hollow of his hand. Byzantium and Rome are vassals of a German monarch. If Rome is threatened with ruin by her alliance with the King of Prussia, Byzantium is restored by a new Caraculla. William II is, therefore, twice entitled to wear the sphere with the Imperial crown atop, as the emblem of his sovereign power and as the imitator of the Roman Emperor. And notwithstanding the Anti-Christ protection which he extends to the infidel, he can also affix the Cross to his sphere. Is he not about to take possession, in theatrical fashion, of the Holy Places?

Turkey has been restored by the Kaiser of Berlin. He is her Emperor, her Khalif, Master of the Holy Places, for the reason that his most humble servant is Emperor, Khalif and Master of the Holy Places. So long as all these titles and powers lay in weak hands, the dangers of Turkish policy, if not the anxieties it created, might be disregarded. But today the military strength of Turkey is firmly established and it is supported by another tremendous Power. Russia and France have never committed an act of graver imprudence than to allow these two forces to unite. Germany, Germany, ever and ever greater! The German song is no longer a dead letter.

It was by guile that simulated liberal and democratic ideas, that Bismarck prepared public opinion in the German Confederation for union with Prussia. We, too, believed in the liberalism of Germans and of Bismarck before 1870, and herein we proved ourselves to be just as easily gullible as French socialists are to-day, who believe in the genuine internationalism of German socialists.

For those whose interest lies in this direction, the Imperial Statistical Bureau of Berlin provides information of an astounding kind. Germany's exports in 1896 reached the value of 3754 millions of marks. German exports to England and her colonies amounted to 808 million marks, whilst England and her colonies supplied Germany with produce to the amount of 931 million marks. [19]

Henceforth William II knows that he has at his command the tools with which to bite into England, industrially and commercially. He has already had a large bite, and he looks forward to eating up proud Albion, slowly but surely.



November 26, 1897. [20]

We must always remember and incessantly repeat: Germany's paths throughout the whole world are widening and lengthening horribly. The latest Roman invader profits at the same time by all the headway that Carthage and Athens lose. England and France, alike responsible for their spoliation, are the more to blame in that they allow themselves to be smitten with blindness at a time when they are not yet smitten with impotence. In the East, both might have done what they liked, with the help and the interested support of Russia. But what have they done? Less than nothing, since they have worked in servile fashion—one for the greater glory of her military conqueror, the other for the glory of her commercial conqueror. The European Concert, whether it retreated or advanced, whether it took up a question or discussed it, has done all things under the exclusive direction of German interests.

With a haughty contempt and disdain for the dignity of all Europe outside the Triple Alliance, which should have been met by emphatic protests, William II has compelled Russia, England and France to give public sanction to the crimes of the hyena of Stamboul, to build up with their own hands the supremacy of Prussia in the East and that of Austria in the Balkans.

Baron Marshal von Bieberstein, Germany's new Ambassador, has been welcomed at the Court of the Grand Turk as the envoy of his chief counsellor, his only friend, as the sacrosanct representative of the Emperor-King, over-lord of the East. Thus all the delays, evasions and subterfuges of the Sultan are sanctioned by William II.

The King of Prussia, Emperor of Germany, takes pleasure in a self-contradictory policy, whereby he misleads and confuses the world. He is the same to-day as he was when, as prince heir to the throne, he declared that he "would never have any friends, only dupes." Through him the Sultan, whom he delights to honour, becomes a conqueror, his crimes are condoned and cynically absolved before the outraged conscience of all Europe. Yes, all these things have been done by William II; Abdul Hamid looks upon the German Emperor as the main pillar of the temple of his glory!

One cannot speak of the East without feelings of shame and heartfelt indignation. In Turkey's stolid resistance to reform, in her massacres, in the Cretan revolt, and in the war between her and Greece, William II has seen only an opportunity of gain for himself. He has cynically pursued his policy of profit-snatching. Just as certain quacks demand a higher fee when they prescribe for a patient whose life is in serious danger, so William II exacts heavier payment from his client. His demands are exorbitant: trade, finance, armaments, concessions, sale of arms, renewal of munitions of war, rebuilding of the fleet, etc., etc.

The King of Prussia continues, without ceasing and at his own sweet will, to utter defiance to common sense and to the general direction of civilised opinion. Whilst by his policy he supports the foul murderer of Christians and prepares the way for fresh butcheries on the return of the victorious Turks from Thessaly, William II has addressed these astounding words to the recruits of his Royal Guards: "He who is not a good Christian, is not a brave man, nor a worthy Prussian soldier, and can by no means fulfil the duty required of a soldier in the Prussian army."



December 10, 1897. [21]

Germanism, which up till 1870 had a certain sense of decent restraint, and took the trouble to disguise itself skilfully under Bismarck, no longer knows either limitations or scruples. It displays itself without shame, secure in the hesitancy of the Slav and the weakness of the Latin peoples. Who could fail to be roused to indignation by the display of German fanaticism which has taken place at Vienna? To think that in the capital of an ally of William II, a faction, relying on advice publicly given in Berlin should shout in the Reichsrath, overthrow a ministry, disturb the public peace in the streets, and accompany these manifestations with Prussia's national song, "Die Wacht am Rhein," and the display of the German flag! If scandalous proceedings such as these make no difference in the relations of the Triple Alliance, why wonder at the audacity and pride of the Teutons?

Everything is a matter of exclusive right for the German. There are no other rights but German rights, and when Germany claims the exercise of a right, neither numbers, nor nationalism, nor races have any existence, confronted by the individuality, the nationalism, of the German race. Mommsen, the leading historian of Prussian Germany, wrote in the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, "Pummel the heads of the Czechs with your fists," whereat all the Austrians of German race applauded, loudly declaring that if it came to a question between the Germans of Prussian Germany and Austrian subjects of Slav extraction, their sympathies would not be in doubt, for they, although Austrians, saw on the one side their brethren of a superior Kultur, and, on the other, barbarians only fit to remain for ever oppressed.

On another occasion, Mommsen wrote: "We are twin brothers; we became separated from you in former days, but soon we must be united again." The linguistic map of Germany, widespread wherever German is spoken, reveals very clearly what are the ambitions of "Alt-Deutschland." The lion's maw of the "Slav-eaters" is always wide open. Sometimes the devouring beast walks delicately, at others he hurls himself savagely on his prey.

The opening of the Reichstag has provided us with a very important speech from the throne by William II, for it emphasises the lack of agreement which prevails between Sovereign, Parliament and people. The Emperor-King has announced his plan for a seven-years' period for naval service, similar to that in force in the army. The Bill will come before the Reichstag during its present session. As William has declared more than once, he intends that the naval strength of Germany shall equal that of her army. As for the German people, while ready to accept all the sacrifices required to maintain the supremacy of its military forces, it has no hankerings after naval supremacy. Its proudest hopes lie in the direction covered by the "Drang nach Osten" formula. It wants to advance upon Austria, while retaining the ground already won. Mommsen and the Duke of Baden between them sum up Germany's ambitions.

In Germany at the present moment, public opinion would appear to be satisfied with preserving the work of William I and pushing on towards the East; but how little will these things satisfy William II! It is the will of the German Emperor, King of Prussia, to be a law-giver to the East, to dispute with England the sovereignty of the seas, to take bites out of China, to display the ever-victorious flag of Germany all over the world. It is true that, to accomplish this will of his, will require an additional 500 millions, and it will require, in particular, that the Reichstag should vote them in one lump sum. William II is like his teacher Bismarck in the matter of dogged obstinacy. Like him, he will present his scheme in a hundred different guises, until its opponents become weary and give in.

Germany has just been giving the European Concert a lesson in the policy of energy. She displays as much bluntness in her sudden claims as she displayed skill in having the Concert brought to ridicule by Turkey. Haiti and China have yielded on the spot to her direct threats. If they reflect, will not the Powers of the Concert realise that Germany's every act is either a challenge or a lesson? The German expedition to Kiao-chao, 4000 strong, is so greatly in excess of the requirements of her claims to compensation for injuries suffered, that it reveals a definite intention on the part of William II to take advantage of the first plausible pretext to acquire a naval station in China.

Peace has been signed between Turkey and Greece, but let us not regard it as a settlement of outstanding questions, for the Ambassadors were only able to come to an agreement by eliminating questions in dispute, one by one. Germany now appears to dominate the Eastern question to such a degree that, in his Speech from the Throne, William II did not even allude to it. What would have been the good? Turkey is already a province of Germany! William II and his Ambassador are the rulers there and govern the country as sovereigns. The flood-gate of German emigration, secretly unlocked, will soon be thrown wide open; 200,000 Germans will be able to make their way into the Ottoman Empire every year. Before long their numbers will tell, they will assert their rights, and the Slav provinces in the Balkans and in Austria will find themselves out off by the flood.

Is Russia beginning to realise that it would have been better for her to protect the Christians against Turkey rather than to allow them to be slaughtered—that it would have been a more humane and far-seeing policy to defend Greece and Crete instead of abandoning them to the tender mercies of Turco-German policy? It is over-late to set the clock back and to challenge the pre-eminent control which William II has established over everything in the East.



December 25, 1897. [22]

None but the author of Tartarin and his immortal "departures" could have described for us the setting-forth of Prince Henry of Prussia for China. The exchange of speeches between William and his brother makes one of the most extravagant performances of modern times, when read in conjunction with the actual facts, reduced by means of the telegraph to their proper proportions, which may be summed up as follows: Taking up the cause of two German missionaries who have suffered ill-treatment in China, the Emperor of Germany sends an ultimatum to the Son of Heaven, who yields on every point and carries his submission so far that he runs the risk of compromising his relations with other Powers. Consequently, there is an end of the dispute. The facts, you see, are simple. But Prince Henry has made him ready to receive his solemn investiture at the hands of his brother, the Emperor, by going to kiss Prince Bismarck on his forehead and cheek ("forehead and cheek," as Prince Henry unctuously remarks, "so often kissed by my grandfather, William I"). Next Prince Henry goes to seek the blessing of General Waldersee; then he has himself blessed by his mother, and by his aunt, and later he will go and get blessed by his grandmother, Queen Victoria. Slowly and solemnly each act and formality is accomplished in accordance with the rites prescribed by William. The Imperial missionary, the sailor transformed into a sort of bishop, sets forth. The quest of the pirate-knight is to conquer all China, to become its emperor, to fall upon it, inspired by the God of battles. What matters it that the Chinese will not resist, that they will fall prostrate before him? The grandeur of Tartarin's setting forth has nothing to do with his getting there.

At Kiel all was prepared. Germany trembled with impatience and this is what she heard:—

"Imperial power means sea power: the existence of the one depends upon the other. The squadron which your ships will reinforce must act and hold itself as the symbol of Imperial and maritime power; it must live on good terms of friendship with all its comrades of the fifteen foreign fleets out yonder, so as energetically to protect the interests of the Fatherland against any one who would injure a German. Let every European over them, every German merchant, and, above all, every foreigner in the land to which we are going, or with whom we may have to do, understand that the German Michael has firmly planted on this soil his shield bearing the Imperial Eagle, so as to be able, once and for all, to give his protection to all those who may require it of him. May our fellow-countrymen out yonder be firmly convinced that, no matter what their situation, be they priests or merchants, the protection of the German Empire will be extended to them with all possible energy by means of the warships of the Imperial fleet. And should any one ever infringe our just rights strike him with your mailed fist! If God so will He shall bind about your young brow laurels of which none, throughout all Germany, shall be jealous!

"Firmly convinced that, following the example of good models (and models are not lacking to our house, Heaven be praised!), you will fulfil my wishes and my vows, I drink to your health and wish a good journey, all success, and, a safe return! Hurrah for Prince Henry!"

Prince Henry's incredible reply was as follows—

"As children we grew up together. Later, when we grew to manhood, it was given to us to look into each other's eyes and to remain faithfully united to each other. For your Majesty the Imperial Crown has been girt with thorns. Within my narrower sphere and with my feeble strength strengthened by my vows, I have endeavoured to help your Majesty as a soldier and a citizen. . . .

"I am very sincerely grateful to your Majesty for the trust which you place in my feeble person. And I can assure your Majesty that it is not laurels that tempt me, nor glory. One thing and one only leads me on, it is to go and proclaim in a foreign land the gospel of the sacred person of your Majesty and to preach it as well to those who will hear it as to those who will not. It is this that I intend to blazon upon my flag and wherever I may go. Our comrades share these sentiments! Eternal life to our well-beloved Emperor!"

Such gems must be left intact. One should read them again and again, line by line. Ponderous eloquence, fustian bombast, and mouldy pathos combine with the display of pomp, to excite world-wide admiration. This play of well-rehearsed parts is given before an audience of generals, high officials and politicians, and the scene is set at Kiel, that moving pedestal which the King of Prussia inaugurated when he made all the fleets of Europe file past him.

William II looks upon history as a vulgar photographic plate designed for the purpose of "taking" him in all his poses and in such places as he may select and appoint.

A crusade is afoot: they go, they are gone, to preach "the gospel of the sacred person of William II." A holy war is declared, to be waged against a people which declines to fight. Never mind, they will find a way to glory, be it only in the size of the slices of territory which they will seize.

The two great conceptions of our Minister of Foreign Affairs are to act as the honest broker in China between St. Petersburg and Berlin, and to put the European Concert to rights. How often have I not told him that all he has to gain by playing this game is a final surrender on the part of France? Alas! my prophecy, already fulfilled in the East, is very near to coming true in the Far East. If it should prove otherwise, it would not be to anything in our foreign policy that our good luck would be due, but to the fact that all Russia has come to realise that she is likely to be Germany's dupe in the Far East, as she has been in the East.

During the reign of the Emperor Alexander III and the Presidency of M. Carnot, the Franco-Russian Alliance possessed a definite meaning, because both these rulers understood that any pro-German tendencies in their mutual policy must have constituted an obstacle to the perfect union of the national policies of their two countries. France had ceased to indulge in secret flirtations with Germany when the latter was no longer Russia's ally. The plain and inevitable duty of our Government was to promote an antagonism of interests between Germany and Russia and to prove to the latter that France was loyally working to promote her greatness above all else, on condition that she should help us to hold our own position. If France had been governed as she should have been, had we possessed a statesman at the Quai d'Orsay, our diplomatic defeats at Canea, Athens and Constantinople, though possibly inevitable, might have found a Court of Appeal; and France would finally have been in a position of exceptional advantage in securing a judgment favourable to our alliance.

Germany's brutal seizure in China of a naval station that the Chinese Government had leased to Russia for the purposes of a winter harbour for her fleet, foreshadows the sort of thing that William II is capable of doing, under cover of an entente, so soon as Japan comes to evacuate Wei-hai-wei, upon China's payment of the war indemnity. Germany's scruples in dealing with "sick men," remind one of the charlatans who either kill or cure, according to their estimate of their prospects of being able to grab the inheritance.



[1] La Nouvelle Revue, January 15, 1896, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[2] La Nouvelle Revue, March 1, 1896, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[3] La Nouvelle Revue, June 1, 1896, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[4] Ibid., September 1, 1896.

[5] La Nouvelle Revue, March 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[6] La Nouvelle Revue, May 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[7] La Nouvelle Revue, June 1, 1897, "Letters on Foreign Policy."

[8] William II had just sent 8000 marks to the fund for the victims of the fire at the Charity Bazaar.

[9] Since Parisian journalists have dared to sing their cynical praises in honour of the German Emperor, no considerations need restrain our pen in defending the Tzars from the charges that have been brought against them. These people ask: How is it that your Emperor of Russia has delayed so long in expressing to us his condolence? Why? Let me explain. The fire at the Charity Bazaar broke out at 4 p.m. on May 4, but the Russian Ambassador in Paris only telegraphed the news to Count Mouravieff on the evening of May 5. The Emperor can only have heard of the disaster on the 6th; it was then too late for him to telegraph a direct message, and it was therefore thought best to send instructions to the Russian Embassy. The blame in this matter falls therefore upon M. de Mohrenheim. It was due to his methods of proceeding that the Emperor learnt the news forty-eight hours late. Le Gaulois, in a somewhat officious explanation, informs us that the Russian Ambassador kept back his telegram because May 5 is the birthday of the Empress, and because there is a superstition in Russia that it is bad luck to get bad news on one's birthday. This explanation is untrue; there is no such superstition. Did they conceal from Nicholas II, on the day of his coronation, the terrible catastrophe at Khadyskaje, which cost the lives of thousands of Russians; and did this disaster prevent the Tzar from attending M. de Montebello's ball that same evening? Moreover, M. de Mohrenheim should have telegraphed on May 4 to Count Mouravieff, leaving to him the choice as to the hour for communicating the information to the Tzar. M. de Mohrenheim is in the habit of doing this sort of thing; when he chooses, his instincts are dilatory. He behaved in exactly the same way, and with the same object, on the day when M. Carnot was assassinated.

As soon as the news of that dreadful event reached the Quai d'Orsay, the Chef du Protocole, (then Count Bourqueney) went in all haste to the Russian Embassy, woke up the Ambassador, and informed him officially of the disaster which had just overtaken France. It was then two o'clock in the morning. Instead of telegraphing the news at once to Alexander III, M. de Mohrenheim only did so at eleven o'clock on the following day. Now, he knew perfectly well that, as the result of this delay, the Tzar could only learn the news two days later because, on the following day in the early morning, Alexander III was starting with the whole Imperial family for Borki, where he was about to open a memorial chapel on the spot where several years before an attempt had been made on his life. The journey takes about forty-eight hours, and as the destination of the Imperial train is always kept secret, the Tzar could not receive the telegram until after his arrival at Borki. It will be remembered that the delay which thus took place, in the communication of the Tzar's sympathy with France in her mourning, created an unfortunate impression, and enabled the German Emperor to get in ahead of him by two days. The explanation of the delay which occurred on that occasion should have been communicated to the Havas Press Agency, and the Tzar's journey mentioned. This was done by all foreign newspapers, but good care was taken that no word of the sort should be published in Paris. It is, therefore, evident that, if the Kaiser has been twice placed in the position which has enabled him to get in well ahead of Alexander III and Nicholas II, the blame must not be ascribed to any indifference, or lukewarm feelings on the part of the friends of France. The most one can reproach them with is to have retained at Paris an Ambassador about whose sentiments both Tzars were fully informed long ago.