Tl MEN AROUND THE KAISER 3 ■JOT « * • • • • •/ • • . ' • « • < < c < * _ « . ' « C ( •■ , I V « c « r Uti^inalau/nahiite] \von E. Bieber, Hetltn. MEN AROUND THE KAISER • THE MAKERS OF MODERN GERMANY By FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1913 Printed in England « « ^O^'^- K^ ?. TO LORD NORTHCLIFFE INTRODUCTION William II., German Emperor and King of Prussia, is about to commemorate his Silver Jubilee. Twenty-five years of eventful sovereignty have brought his Empire to the pinnacle of national greatness. Under his dynamic leadership the Father- land has advanced to front rank in the peaceful arts of commerce and trade, made herself the world's first military power, and become Britain's formid- able rival for the mastery of the sea. No reign, medieval or modern, records a more inspiring story of a people's vault to affluence and might. Wondrous and eloquent are the statistical revelations of Germany's bounding growth in population, of Imperial Berlin's rise to metropohtan splendor, of the Empire's colossal foreign trade, of the amazing expansion of national wealth, of the development of the merchant marine, of the transformation of the Navy from a fleet of frigates into an Armada of Dreadnoughts, of triumphs countless in the realms of science, art and industry, which combine to make the German name synonymous with pro- gress and power. vii INTRODUCTION Vigorous and virile at fifty-four, his Silver Jubilee finds the Kaiser still the world's model of an aggressively able and ambitious monarch. Posterity alone can decide whether he is the sinister figure portrayed by detractors, a prince who preaches peace and plots war, or whether his strength and talents, as he is fond of assuring Europe with mystif^dng eloquence, are sincerely and inviolably dedicated to the cause of international amity. Back of William II., at any rate, lies a reign of unbroken peace. Whatever laurels Mars may still have in store for him, the Kaiser has ruled for a quarter of a century, rich only in the achievements of an enhghtened and industrious civilisation. The world at large, fascinated by his kaleidoscopic and picturesque personahty, is prone to accord the Kaiser almost exclusive credit for the Fatherland's magic leap into Weltmacht. As Managing Director of Germany, Ltd., Emperor William has been called upon to play a heavy rSle, and has played it with eminent success ; but Germany's develop- ment has not been a one-man show. There have been many Makers of Modern Germany. Their identities and personalities, with rare exceptions, have escaped notice abroad amid the paeans of praise so indiscriminately showered upon the gifted Kaiser. To sketch the careers and characters of some of these latter-day Teutonic Knights is the purpose of this volume. For permission to reprint extracts from articles which originally appeared in their columns, I am viii INTRODUCTION indebted to the proprietors of the Daily Mail and New York Times, which it has been my privilege to represent at the Capital of the Kaiser during the past seven years. F. W. W. Berlin, May, 1913. ^' * ix CONTENTS CHAP. ^^^^ I. Admiral von Tirpitz : Creator of the i Navy, II. Alfred Ballin : Merchant of Hamburg. lo III. Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg : The 19 Philosopher-Chancellor . IV. Prince Furstenberg : The Man Behind 27 the Throne. ■^/V. Arthur von Gwinner : Banker and Rail- 35 way Builder. VI. Prince Henry of Prussia : Sailor and 45 Sportsman. ^^^^ VII. Count Zeppelin : Commander of the Air. 54 VIII. The Crown Prince : The Kaiser of 63 To-morrow. IX. Emil Rathenau : Engineer, Electrician 71 and Financier. X. August Bebel : The Red Napoleon. 80 XL Max Reinhardt : Stage Reformer. 89 XII. Ernst von Heydebrand : " The Un- 98 crowned King of Prussia." XIII. Richard Strauss : Composer and Re volu- 106 tionary. XIV. Hans Delbruck : The Professor in 115 Politics. xi CONTENTS CHAP, PAGE XV. August Scherl : Pioneer of the Press. 124 XVI. Prince von Buelow : Statesman, Diplo- 132 mat and Sphinx. XVII. Admiral von Koester : President of 141 the Navy League. ^XVIII. Marschall von BiEBERSTEiN : The Giant 149 of the Golden Horn. XIX. August Thyssen : Iron King. 158 XX. Max Liebermann : The German Millet. 167 XXI. Bernhard Dernburg : A Business Man 177 in Politics. XXII. Count von Bernstorff : A Democratic 185 Diplomat. XXIII. I^^RU PP von _ Bohlen : The Master of 193 Essen. XXIV. Maximilian Harden : Journalist and 202 Matador. XXV. Von Jagow : Foreign Secretary. 210 XXVI. Von der Goltz: Organiser and Strate- 217 gist. XXVII. Gerhart Hauptmann : Poet and Play- 227 wright. XXVIII. Prince Lichnowsky : The Peace-Keeper 237 in London. XXIX. Von Kiderlen Waechter : The Man of 246 Agadir. XXX. Paul Ehrlich : Fighter of Disease. 254 XXXI. Count von Posadowsky : Social Re- 263 former. Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The German Emperor Frontispiece Admiral von Tirpitz to face p. 2 Alfred Ballin 10 Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg . 20 Prince Furstenberg . 28 Arthur von Gwinner . 36 Prince Henry of Prussia . . 46 Count Zeppelin . 54 The Crown Prince . . 64 EiMIL Rathenau 72 August Bebel 8o Max-Keinhardt 90 Ernst von Heydebrand 98 Richard Strauss io6 Hans Delbruck Ii6 August Scherl 124 Prince Buelow 132 Xlll Admiral von Koester Marschall von Bieberstein August Thyssen Max LlEBERMANN Bernhard Dernburg Count Bernstorff . Krupp von Bohlen ) Frau von Bohlen 3 Maximilian Harden . Von Jagow Von der Goltz Gerhart Hauptmann Prince Lichnowsky Von Kiderlen-Waechter Paul Ehrlich Count von Posadowsky to face p. 142 150 158 168 178 185 194 202 210 218 228 238 245 254 264 XIV VON TIRPITZ When the history of Germany's mighty naval development comes to be written one name will stand out in boldest relief — Von Tirpitz. To this giant, fork-bearded sailor-statesman, a mag- nificent specimen of Teuton physique of the old school, must fall the lion's share of credit for the persistent aggressiveness with which the Father- land has rushed to front rank as a sea power. He is the real creator of the Kaiser's fleet. " Tirpitz the Eternal," they call him in Berlin. For nearly fifteen years he has been unbrokenly at the helm. No other German Minister but Bismarck ever survived the vicissitudes of politics so long. Imperial Chancellors have come and gone. War Ministers, Foreign Secretaries, Chancellors of the Exchequer, Home Secretaries and Postmasters- General have appeared and disappeared by the half- dozen. But the man who designed and launched the Naval Law has gone on for ever — an enduring embodiment of the Fatherland's determined and consistent bid for power at sea. A fulsome " semi- official " book recently off the press, " Kaiser K. B T MEN AROUND THE KAISER Wilhelm II. and the Navy," acclaims the Supreme War Lord as the architect-in-chief of the German Armada. At the risk of lese-niajeste, I make bold to bestow the laurels where they belong — on Grand- Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Secretary of State for the Imperial Navy since 1898. A commoner by birth, with little at his back except indomitable energy, will and ambition. Von Tirpitz has advanced, through sheer force of ability and zeal, from a naval cadetship to the supreme direction of the Empire's sea forces. He is the world's only Minister of Marine who incorporates the rare combination of seamanship, executive talent and statesmanship. Because he is a great politician, report periodi- cally associates Von Tirpitz's name with the Im- perial Chancellorship. Germany is not rich in strong men of premiership rank. Von Tirpitz is one of them. His work at the Admiralty may be said to be finished. He has not only hewn the way, but trod it for a decade and a half, and he has bred a school of able subordinates who make the master hand no longer indispensable. A Von Tirpitz Chancellorship would mean but one thing — a German Government with " full steam ahead " as its naval policy. He is the man who conceived the naval programme. It is he who abetted and promoted the " supplementary " legislation which has raised the Fatherland's Fleet expenditure by steady stages from ;f6, 000,000 in 1898 to £23,000,000 in 1913. His is the astute 2 J J* J « > J Ho/photograph ] [^. Bieber, Berlin. yf. VON TIRPITZ diplomacy which has so successfully played upon the passions of people and Parliament for the purpose of incessant naval expansion. Von Tirpitz's career is an inspiring contradiction of the theory that birth and caste are essential to advancement in German Government service. Born far remote from salt water, at Kiistrin-on- Oder, in the Mark of Brandenburg, as the son of a Prussian K.C., there is nothing in his origin to suggest the future admiral and naval statesman. At sixteen, at the end of a gymnasium education, he became a cadet in the modest aggregation of frigates known as the Prussian Navy. Four years later he had won a lieutenancy, and at twenty-five he had attained the coveted rank of a lieutenant-commander. It was while in this comparatively unimportant position that Von Tirpitz first revealed his amazing capacity for initiative, and his ability to impose his ideas on superior and inferior alike — talents which supply the keynote of his character and which were to prove the foundation of his career. He developed a marvellous habit of thinking and seeing far ahead of comrades afloat and ashore. When he had unfolded his ideas he proceeded to win adherents, who found themselves championing Von Tirpitz and his projects with even more enthusiasm than he did himself. He seemed predestined to create and to lead. A practice which rallied around the enthusiastic young officer the keenest minds in the service was his disregard of the ethics of mere seniority and other relics of Prussian militarism B 3 Q MEN AROUND THE KAISER still latent in the budding Imperial Navy. He laid down the principle that merit was the only claim to real seniority, and that any other kind did not count. In 1891 Von Tirpitz had carved his way to the chiefship of staff at the Kiel station, the head- quarters of the Fleet, a position which gave him rich opportunity for his inexhaustible powers of initiative and organisation. With far-seeing eye he first turned his attention to the creation and perfection of the torpedo service. The German Fleet's acknowledged strength in that branch of naval warfare is essentially and primarily Von Tirpitz's achievement. It was he who mapped out and mobilised the torpedo-boat division, which, when he took hold of it, consisted of a handful of insignificant mosquito craft. He dis- covered officers peculiarly adapted to the needs of torpedo tactics, and by dint of restless example and enthusiasm, welded them into an aggregation of experts who now form the backbone of the Empire's sea-fighting forces. Having founded the torpedo school. Von Tirpitz now dedicated himself to bringing order out of administrative chaos at the Kiel station. He criticised fearlessly and irresistibly. He attacked as archaic the system of co-ordinate authority at the Admiralty in Berlin and the water's edge on the Baltic. It was reserved for him a year and a half later to be elevated to the heights at which he had himself hurled so many vigorous broadsides — the State Secretaryship of the Admiralty at Berlin. 4 VON TIRPITZ He was to be given a chance to prove his theories in practice. It was a glorious opportunity to fail. There were many ready to trip him. His advance from the quarter-deck to the Cabinet had not left him unscarred by rivals and critics. But Von Tirpitz had acquired the art of succeeding, and so many scalps were dangling at his belt before he had been at the Admiralty two years, that the honour of a vice-admiralship fell to him at the end of that period. He was already known through- out the service by the hardly less flattering unofficial title of " Der Meister " (the master). Von Tirpitz was already peering sagaciously into the future. Having accomplished the herculean task of administrative reorganisation, he began to busy himself with the paramount question of a fleet worthy of the name. Germany's industrial development was in full swing. Her oversea trade and merchant marine were attaining gigantic pro- portions. Von Tirpitz found the moment propitious for spreading the gospel of a great Navy. Then, in the autumn of 1899, came the historic Bundesrat incident. The seizure of a German mail-packet by an English man-of-war was exploited with Napoleonic skill as an ocular demonstration of the constant danger confronting the unprotected German merchant flag. The Naval Law of 1900 was born in Von Tirpitz's brain amid a wave of patriotic fervour which the Bundesrat affair sent rolling across the Fatherland. Its passage earned him 5 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the honour of hereditary nobiHty, the coveted von. The launching of the first big battle- ships under the new Bill, the 13,000-tonners of the Braunschweig class, in 1902 brought hini still another distinction, the rank of full admiral. In 1907, after Von Tirpitz had induced the Reichstag, through skilful preparation of public sentiment, to pass the Supplementary Naval Bill, raising the displacement of battleships and battle-cruisers to Dreadnought proportions at the rate of four to six launchings a year, the grateful Supreme War Lord conferred upon his able administrator the Order of the Black Eagle, the highest German reward for distinguished merit. It would libel Von Tirpitz to stigmatise him as Anglophobe. He is anything but that. He is a profound admirer of everything British. All his children have been educated in England. English naval traditions command his reverential respect. He has never ceased to hold them up to German sailormen as a model and inspiration. When he designed the Naval Law, he had little idea of entering the lists with Britain as an active competitor. British mistakes — the opportunities offered Germany to catch up with the Mistress of the Seas — gave him his chance. He took it, being a wise man and a statesman, and as often as suc- ceeding events provided fresh opportunities he seized them too. Manifold and versatile as Von Tirpitz's services have been, they have been pre-eminent on the 6 VON TIRPITZ administrative side. Till he took hold of the Admiralty, German naval conditions were more or less chaotic. They lacked the continuity and system of the Army. The conception of the programme was his first achievement. Then he was con- fronted with the task of popularising it and of manipulating public sentiment from time to time, whenever the moment was ripe for extending the ramifications of the original project. The triumphs of the Navy League and of the Admiralty Press Bureau — the conversion of the nation to a religious belief in its " bitter need " of sea-power and in its " future on the water " — are the triumphs of Von Tirpitz. He may himself disavow them, as he does so persuasively and adroitly from his place in the Reichstag on recurring occasions, but the laurels are his for all that. The pamphlets and Press polemics and periodical campaigns which always precede and accompany German naval increases bear far too plainly the earmarks of a directing genius to be identified with anybody but " Tirpitz the Eternal." Iron resoluteness is Von Tirpitz's dominating characteristic. It has been the making of him and of the German Fleet. He is the one minister of his imperious master who is not accustomed to yield. He has a will of his own and knows how to enforce it. It has been my privilege on occasion to discuss Anglo-German naval policy with Von Tirpitz. He is suavity and frankness incarnate. He con- fesses unreservedly that his idea of German sea- 7 MEN AROUND THE KAISER power is that the Fatherland must prepare itself as soon as possible to throw decisive weight into the political scales wherever its vital interests are con- cerned. If the balance of power is altered to a degree which threatens Germany's capacity to exercise such influence, Von Tirpitz is ready instantly to demand fresh sacrifices from his countrymen. Specifically, he favours the two-to-three standard as the only goal compatible with German necessities, as far as Great Britain is concerned. He believes that the possession of a fleet two-thirds as powerful in offensive units as the British Navy, would effectually prevent combined Anglo-French military operations against Germany, besides making naval warfare, in the spirit of the Fleet Law's preamble, a grave risk for Britain. He believes religiously in the invincible superiority of German guns — that they will decide the issue to Germany's imperishable glory on the day when the Kaiser's Trafalgar is to be fought and won. He denies Germany's culpability for the ruinous competition in naval armaments. He avers the author of the Dreadnought is alone guilty. He disclaims persuasively the notion that the German Fleet is built for aggression, and he is irrevocably opposed to limiting its development by agreements of any kind. These are the ideals Von Tirpitz has im- planted in his subordinates at the Reichsmarmeamt. They will live on, long after he evacuates the Secretaryship of State for the Navy, whether for more exalted surroundings in the Wilhelmstrasse 8 VON TIRPITZ or for a life of retirement after eminent national service. Imperial Germany will be well guided if Von Tirpitz is ever called to the bridge. Sound, sane and sagacious, still young at sixty-three, a fearless, broadminded patriot, a bluff sailorman who presides over an ideal family life, he is a statesman in every fibre. Germany would lose in him a great naval adminis- trator to gain a great Chancellor. II BALLIN Over the portal of a massive granite office- building on the shores of Hamburg's placid Alster rests a tablet inscribed " My Field is the World." It is the fitting emblem of the Hamburg-American Line, a private corporation almost as dear to the heart of the Kaiser and his people as their Navy itself. It is, indeed, a national institution, the " Hapag," as current custom in Germany abbre- viates the title of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft, which was founded in the wooden-ship era of " Milestones." With its great confrere of Bremen, the North German Lloyd, it has blazed the way for German trade and com- merce to the uttermost corners of the earth. What Von Tirpitz has done for the German Fleet, Albert Ballin, Director-General of the Hamburg- American Line, has done for the German mercantile marine. He has made it. Historians of the German Empire of to-day, when they write of the race which gloried in battalions, battleships and business, will give high place, if they have read the signs of the times aright, to the unassuming Hamburg Jew, who has renounced titles, honours and office, but not his creed. 10 p 'i o , , ,« J J » 5 , > !> O > * ' i ^ n ^ ^ J * J J J > a 3 4 » • « BALLIN " Who is the greatest German ? " was the poser once fired at a young Pomeranian giant undergoing a peremptory cross-examination in history with his fellow-recruits at a Prussian garrison. " Ballin ! " was the flashing reply. That is what several million perspicacious Germans think about it. No other man in the country, King or commoner, has a stronger claim to membership of the immortals of Emperor William's day. He is one of the real Makers of Modern Germany. Ballin of Hamburg stands in the same relation to the Kaiser as did those coun- sellors of another generation to their sovereigns and governments — Rothschild of Paris to Napoleon IH., and Bleichroeder of Berhn to Emperor William I. and Bismarck. Having tried and failed repeatedly to make him a Cabinet Minister, WilHam II. advises with the Director-General of the Hapag. BalUn always insists he can be of more service to the Fatherland on the Alsterdamm than in the Wilhelmstrasse. He would be ludicrously out of place in a bureaucratic environment. On one of the various occasions when the Kaiser sought to saddle a Ministership on Ballin, or tack von on to his plebeian name, or give him hereditary member- ship in the Prussian House of Peers, Ballin com- promised by accepting His Majesty's photograph. The Kaiser inscribed it : "To the far-seeing and tireless pioneer of our commerce and export trade." That is a title of which Albert Ballin, long the uncrowned king of his native Republic of Hamburg, is prouder than Von, Excellenz, Staatssekretar, II MEN AROUND THE KAISER Geheimrat or any of the other elongated tags, to the acquisition of which the average Teuton devotes his hfe. BaUin is a thoroughly self-made man. He was born into the trade in which he was one day to be a world- figure, as the son of a humble Hamburg emigrant agent. Following the practice still in vogue among ambitious young Germans, Ballin went to England as a lad to serve his commercial apprenticeship. The irrepressible Hamburg " volunteer " went in to master the most infinitesimal details of the naviga- tion business, and speciahsed in emigrant traffic, the gold-mine from which Transatlantic lines extract their richest gains. On his return to Germany BaUin entered the employ of the Carr Line, and was presently entrusted with the minor duty of conducting emigrant cargoes from Gahcia, Poland and Hungary to Hamburg, and embark- ing them for the Land of Promise oversea. His eminent organising talent and sleepless zeal speedily made his superiors see that he was fitted for far more important work. They appointed him manager of their entire emigrant service. He was barely twenty-five when these, the first honours of his chosen career, came to him. It was not very long before the Hamburg-American Line began to take notice that for some mysterious reason the Carrs were getting the cream of the emigration business. Somebody, or something, was causing the pilgrims from Southern and Eastern Europe to flock to the smaller rival's steamers. It was dis- 12 BALLIN covered that a certain Ballin was the culprit. The only way to suppress him, it appeared, and to annihilate the competition, was to buy out the Carr Line bodily. In 1886 it passed into the Hapag's possession, and BalHn with it. The history of the Hamburg-American's development dates from the hour it annexed the young man who had cornered the emigrant market. Figures talk. In 1886, when BalHn joined the Hapag, its capital was ^^750,000. To-day it is £7,500,000- Its gross profits were £125,000. In 1912 they were £2,825,000. In 1886, twenty-six ocean-going steamships flew the Company's blue- and- white pennant. To-day it flutters from the peaks of 180. In the ante-Ballin era the Hapag's total tonnage was 60,000. This summer a single vessel of 50,000 tons, the peerless Imperator, is in her maiden season. With a sister ship and other leviathans under construction, the Hamburg- American's gross tonnage will aggregate roundly 1,500,000 — a total which dwarfs the merchant fleets of half a dozen European States. The secret of Ballin's greatness lies in his card- index mind. He has an incorrigible habit of laying stress on the unconsidered trifles, and storing them up systematically. When he was a shipping clerk in England, at nothing a week, he worked overtime absorbing the quips and tricks of the business. He was a stickler for the httle things. Nothing escaped him. He developed a fabulous memory. As soon as he learned a thing, he numbered, labelled and 13 MEN AROUND THE KAISER filed it away in the well-ordered archive which serves him as a brain. When he meets the shipping mag- nates of Britain, America, France, Holland and Scandinavia in conference nowadays, he staggers them with his first-hand knowledge of what others mistakenly consider the bagatelles of the game. When the Hamburg-American Line acquired Balhn, along with some minor assets in the shape of emigrant steamers and goodwill, he brought to them, ready-made, the far-reaching plans which were to make the German merchant flag famihar and formidable on the high seas. The new director, not yet out of the impetuous twenties, did not find it easy to impose his progressive ideas on the Hanseatic patricians in control of the Hapag. His demand for twin-screw steaniers shocked them. His insistence that the day had come to give ocean-travellers luxuries instead of mere comforts sent cold chills down their con- servative spines. Seven-day boats seemed to them as visionary as flying-machines. Ballin anticipated all that. He bided his time. By degrees, almost before they knew it, the greybeards of the directorate found themselves succumbing enthusiastically to the indomitable will and inexhaustible initiative of their colleague of the fiery spirit, restless energy and overweening self-confidence. They saw he was predestined to lead. Gradually they gave him full sway. In 1900 he was appointed Director-General of the entire organisation. Since then his power has been autocratic. 14 BALLIN Ballin's plans for developing the Line were separated into two distinct divisions. As the elementary essential, he equipped it with a fleet of modern vessels and replenished it periodically with newer ships. He saw from afar the approach of the luxury age and met it more than halfway. He recognised the moral value of the conquest of the blue ribbon of the Atlantic and built the Deutschland, which captured it on the New York- Plymouth route in 1900, with a passage of five days, seven hours and thirty-eight minutes. The North German Lloyd snatched the record three years later, but it remained in German keeping until the Lusitania re-won it for England in 1907. Ballin's next move was to extend the services of the Hapag until they literally spanned the earth. His latest project in that direction is about to be inaugurated — a service between the Eastern and Western coasts of the United States via the Panama Canal. The material accoutrements of a world-wide maritime organisation having been provided, Ballin now occu- pied himself with the no less important question of strategy and tactics, with that phase of business known as policy. In this realm, too, he was destined to display acumen and capacity of a high order. He early proclaimed himself an adherent of the pool system, and helped to found the North Atlantic Union, which still regulates Transatlantic traffic. ConciUatory by nature, he has always opposed rate fights and other forms of ruinous competition, but, being in them, has not shrunk from making war to 15 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the knife, as Liverpool and Southampton know. He was prompt to identify himself with Mr. Pierpont Morgan's Ocean Trust in 1901, and has effected numerous working agreements with English, Dutch and Scandinavian competitors. Of the left-handed comphments Lord Pal- merston was fond of paying Germany, none ever left a more burning sting than his famous taunt that though the Germans might till the soil and build castles in the air, they had never, since the beginning of time, had the genius to cross the high seas or even navigate narrow waters. Before Palmerston's century ended, Britain was to recognise her mightiest rival in despised Germany, both in the merchant trade and in the naval realm. Ballin will tell you that the Lusitania and Mauretania themselves were Made in Germany. He means to say that Great Britain, in order to regain the pre-eminence which German shipping had usurped, resorted to the pohcy of subsidising or semi-subsidising the Cunard Line and enabhng it to build a class of vessels which no unassisted navigation company could afford either to construct or operate. Ballin is an uncompromising foe of subsidies in whatever form garbed. He calls the Cunard giantesses "hot-house plants." He considers State subsidies insidious, because of the impulse they must inevitably give the nations to outbid one another. He says they spell demorahsation. BaUin strongly advocates the assembhng of a conference to abolish shipping subsidies by International agreement, as was done 16 BALLIN in the case of sugar bounties. He makes a reserva- tion with regard to the United States. Ship- building is 33 1 per cent, dearer there than in England or Germany, and he thinks the United States Government could justify a sane policy of temporary subsidies. Since the Deutschland, Balhn has built no fast ships. He was frankly sceptical of the virtues of the turbine, but acknowledges its unquahfied success in the Cunard flyers. He still inchnes to the behef that six or seven days on the Atlantic is not too much for any globe-trotter, but Balhn is not the man to rest content indefinitely ^vith second place, and it is safe to predict that one of these days he will again take up the British challenge for the speed championship. In his private life Balhn is modest to the point of shyness and seclusion. Small of stature, his bearing and ways are always unobtrusive. He is at his office punctually every morning at nine and presides daily over a noon-hour conference of his managerial board. He is a managing director who manages and directs. He is usually the last to leave after a full day's work. Audiences of the Shipping King are granted reluctantly. More people fail than succeed in seeing him. The Kaiser seldom \ comes to Hamburg without visiting Balhn's unpre- tentious suburban villa and showing some fresh mark of his esteem. All doors are now open to BaUin — some were once slammed and barred — but his happiest hours are spent at work or in the K. C 17 MEN AROUND THE KAISER bosom of his home. Herr and Frau BalHn have only an adopted daughter, married to an ex-naval officer, now in the Hapag service. While she Hved, BaUin's aged mother was the idol of his affection. He is a devout but not a bigoted Jew. None of his co-rehgionists has a position of conse- quence in his organisation. He does not beheve in rehgious nepotism. He has resolutely refused to follow the fashion of plutocratic German brethren who embrace Christianity for social revenue. It annoys many German aristocrats that the Kaiser consorts so freely with a man who is proud of his origin. Still on the sunny side of sixty, he has many years of usefulness before him. Two years ago was the silver anniversary of Balhn's connection with the Hamburg-American Line. Germans of all classes are accustomed to celebrate jubilees with pomp and circumstance. Hamburg would have dehghted to honour its favourite son. A week before June 2nd, which marked the twenty-fifth anniversary, BaUin went cruising in a yacht. He left no address, and he did not return until people had forgotten all about his " jubilee." Then he drove up to his office one day and went back to work. 18 Ill VON BETHMANN HOLLWEG Imperial Germany has had five Chancellors. Bismarck, the incomparable, was a statesman ; Caprivi and Hohenlohe, respectively, soldier and courtier ; Biilow was a diplomat ; Bethmann Hollweg, since 1909 the steersman of the Empire's destinies, is a philosopher. Four years hardly afford an adequate basis for historical judg- ment of a Premier's capacity ; but Dr. Theobald von Bethmann HoUweg's Chancellorship has been uncommonly barren of promise ever of emerging from egregious mediocrity into the inspiring light of an epoch. Of him it can well be said, as Mr. Roosevelt remarked of Mr. Taft during the late unpleasantness in the United States, that he is a man who means well feebly. It has not been given to him to accompHsh. During his tenancy of the palace hallowed with memories of blood and iron, the reign of William II. has not taken on fresh lustre. Before the present Kaiser had outgrown the age of precocity, Bismarck opined in a famous prog- nostication : " This young man will be his own Reichskanzler." The Empire-builder was doomed himself to experience the relentless accuracy of his > ^2 19 MEN AROUND THE KAISER own prophecy ; but never since his first pilot was dropped has WilUam II. been so much his own Chancellor as during the administration of the cultured and agreeable bureaucrat who is now the responsible head of the German Government and Prussian Ministry. There is no manner of doubt that Bethmann HoUweg enjoys the Kaiser's "con- fidence." Were Dr. von Bethmann HoUweg's career to be terminated to-day — the mercies of the German Constitution, which make Chancellors responsible to emperors and not to Parliaments, alone prolong it — the friendliest chronicler could review his Premier- ship only in negligible terms. It has been a quad- rennium of innocuousness. The " strength " which the world associates with the name of the German Government has been in no sense derived of him. In the realm of foreign affairs his regime has been distinguished by the fiasco of the wrecked raid on Morocco. At home, the philosopher-Chancellor has been beset by poUtical disaster and national dis- content. The ancient foe of German Governments, Social Democracy, thriving on popular revolt against semi-autocratic rule and archaic electoral laws, has grown to unprecedented dimensions and become the most powerful party in the land. With Roman Catholicism, the next strongest of political organisations, Bethmann liollweg is on terms of open hostility. Conservatism, the traditional prop of Throne and Government, is ready to give the fifth Chancellor the happy dispatch the moment he 20 } n » o ' s o J » Hofplwtograph\ {E. Bieber, Berlin. '{:Z/J¥ * • • • * * VON BETHMANN HOLLWEG dares to assail its vested interests ; and Liberalism, or such as remains of that once virile element, when not in conflict makes common cause with him reluctantly. Politically, he is reduced to a state of miserable isolation. Yet it would be far beside the mark to charge the Sage of Hohen-Finow with utter lack of states- manUke qualities. Modest and retiring by nature, there is nothing of the flamboyant in his make-up. He has undoubtedly achieved many a victory by methods more spectacular contemporaries at home and abroad are accustomed to shun. He is, above all, thoroughly sincere and honest. His influence is always on the side of moderation. The tricks and traits of the professional politician and diplo- mat are beneath him. He is what in America is known as safe and sane. The Agadir adventure, which brought Europe to the brink of war in 191 1, never originated with Bethmann Hollweg. He fathered it, as was his Constitutional duty, but nobody who knows him doubts but that he rued it, too. Robber-baron politics are no part of his equipment. He is an earnest apostle of peace and friendship with England. His hand was never meant to clench a mailed fist. One cannot con- ceivably imagine him in the Bismarckian role of thundering forth to a cowering Europe that " We Germans fear God, and nothing else in the world ! " One finds him in a more natural and congenial atmosphere when hurling philosophic shrapnel like " God- willed dependence " at a Prussian Diet 21 MEN AROUND THE KAISER minority clamouring impotently for suffrage reform. Germany lost a great schoolmaster when Bethmann Hollweg chose politics for a career. He has been called the incarnation of passionate doctrinarianism. When Bethmann Hollweg was elevated to the Imperial Chancellorship, his appointment was hailed as that of a "Kaiser man" — the type of official supposed to be peculiarly after the heart of William of Hohenzollern. They had been at university together at Bonn, and the sentimental ties which have always united the Kaiser to his fellow- students kept the young bureaucrat fresh in his Sovereign's memory. As Prince Billow's Vice- Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg had long been a logical candidate for the Chancellorship. His selection became a foregone conclusion from the moment Prince Biilow, in response to the Kaiser's invitation, nominated him as his suc- cessor. The new Chancellor had had a distinguished official career, and had risen by legitimate steps to Prime Ministerial rank, but was a little-known personality. The type of a Prussian bureaucrat, who began as assessor, rose to county supervisor, became a provincial president, then a Prussian Minister, and later an Imperial Secretary of State, his advance through the stereotyped grades of German official- dom was steady and characteristic. Self-effacing by temperament, he never intruded himself into the glare of public notice. His administrative career was marked by a studious restriction to routine 22 VON BETHMANN HOLLWEG duties. His speeches in the Prussian Diet and House of Peers, and in the Reichstag were distinguished for nothing but straightforwardness, sincerity and thoroughness. He was never once known to electrify the country or ParHament. But he won a reputation in the governing set for honesty, con- servatism, and loyalty, and those are qualities which have gone far to compensate the Fatherland for the brilliancy of Prince Biilow. Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg's official career has lain far remote from the paths of diplomacy and foreign affairs. His have been the prosaic problems of local government and home administration — fields in which he is almost without a peer among his countrymen. He approached the task of directing Germany's Weltpolitik, therefore, an utter novice. Before he was Chancellor a year the Kaiser prac- tically withdrew foreign affairs from Bethmann Hollweg's hands, to transfer them to the experienced control of Herr von Kiderlen-Wachter. The Chancellor is a born Brandenburger, a native of Hohen-Finow, a village in the Mark, three-quarters of an hour west of Berlin. He is fifty-seven years old. His family, ennobled in 1840, is an old-time Frankfort merchant and banking dynasty, pre- eminent in finance in the ante-Rothschild era. Originally it consisted of two branches, Bethmann and Hollweg, which became united under a single name through intermarriage. The founder of the Bethmann branch was driven from Holland in the seventeenth century on account of his 23 MEN AROUND THE KAISER religion. Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg's grandfather was the first of the family to identify himself with public life. An excellent la^^yer, he became a professor of jurisprudence at Bonn University, receiving the patent of nobility as a mark of distinction for his learning. As a member of the Prussian Legislature in the 'forties, he was in the thick of the constitutional struggles which had their culmination in 1848, and ten years later he became Minister of Education in a Liberal Cabinet. From this hardy stock, a sterling mixture of traders, bankers, scholars and politicians, the Kaiser chose his fifth Chancellor. After leaving Bonn L^niversity young Von Beth- mann Hollweg took the State examination for the Civil Service, mounting the first rung on the bureau- cratic ladder, that of an " Assessorship," in 1885. In 1899 the Emperor promoted his college friend to the high post of President of the Government of Bromberg, and within three months advanced him still another grade by making him President of the province of Brandenburg, with headquarters at Potsdam, where he was once again to enjoy the comradeship of his imperial patron. The Presidency of Brandenburg is a stepping-stone to Ministerial honours in Prussia, and 1905 brought Von Beth- mann Hollweg the traditional distinction in the shape of appointment as Prussian Home Secretary. Two years later the Kaiser promoted him to a place in the Imperial Government as Secretary of the Imperial Home Office, the position which carries 24 VON BETHMANN HOLLWEG with it the additional rank of Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President of the Prussian Ministry. In all these offices Von Bethmann Hollweg dis- tinguished himself by zeal, industry, and capacity. His devotion to Prince von Biilow was a marked feature of his Ministerial career. The late Chancellor was accustomed frequently to entrust Von Bethmann Hollweg with his representation in critical parlia- mentary and political situations, and their personal relations were intimate and confidential. As a parliamentary figure Von Bethmann Hollweg is not striking, but always impressive. He is far less showy than Biilow, but more convincing and thorough. Germany misses Billow's raillery, but gets in its stead plain speaking and the wit that springs from brevity. Amiable and philosophic, immensely tall and gaunt, with lofty forehead, bespectacled, and professorial in manner. Von Beth- mann Hollweg never fails to dominate when on his feet, though he commands attention not by fire and force so much as by soundness and lucidity. Modern Germany is ripe for a statesman capable of leading its aspirations for true political liberty. To his standard would flock supporters as fervent as those who rallied round Bismarck, when he per- ceived and proceeded to gratify German longings for national unity. It is a strange phenomenon that a man of Bethmann HoUweg's singular high- mindedness and rugged integrity, who has so deep a sense of personal injustice as to be melted to tears by heartless Opposition caricatures, should 25 MEN AROUND THE KAISER remain blind to the signs of the times in the pro- gressive age of his progressive people. He entered office as the heir of a humiliating Government defeat at the hands of the Conservative-Catholic oligarchy, which still holds the reins of parliamentary power in Germany. Whether through inability or disin- clination, Bethmann Hollweg has signally failed to emancipate himself from the shackles of the " Black and Blue " alliance which dethroned Prince Biilow and stands for reaction. Meantime, public opinion identifies him with the caste which stubbornly withholds from enlightened Germany that great ideal of all genuinely liberated nations — parliamentary institutions and truly repre- sentative government. It has been said that they will not be attained until the streets of Berlin have run red with proletariat blood. In that dread hour, if Bethmann. as he is called, be still at the helm, history will not acquit the philosopher chancellor of the consequences. 26 IV PRINCE FORSTENBERG His Serene Highness Prince Maximilian Egon zu Fiirstenberg, a German- Austrian grand seigneur and multi-millionaire, is the power behind the German throne. No man rivals his influence in exalted quarters. Few have ever enjoyed the confidence of William II. to even an approximate extent. Him- self of ancient noble lineage, Prince Fiirstenberg is the one subject whom the Kaiser treats as an equal, and his counsel has been known to prevail over that of Chancellors and Ministers of State. Prince Fiirstenberg is far removed from the stereotyped wirepuller of royal romance, spinning sinister plots behind a puppet-monarch's throne. He is the Kaiser's boon companion, the partner of his joys and comrade of his sorrows, the friend to whom the Sovereign turned in the darkest hour of his reign, when Germany rocked with indignation during the " personal regime " crisis provoked by the Daily Telegraph incident of November, 1908. Repeatedly the Kaiser has urged his plutocratic crony to become his Imperial Chancellor, to exchange the rdle of best friend for that of the Crown's first 27 MEN AROUND THE KAISER and responsible adviser. With a realisation of his limitations which does him credit, Prince Fiirstenberg has steadfastly refused to accept the burdens of office. His only official rank is the august, but purely decorative and ceremonial one of Colonel-Marshal of the Prussian Court, a title invented in his honour. He could call himself Court Brewer besides, if he desired, for an advertising legend spread far and wide relates that " Fiirstenberg Beer " — the product of His Serene Highness' brewery in the Black Forest — ^is " the special table drink of His Majesty the Kaiser and King." The Kaiser's fondness for Prince Fiirstenberg is sometimes ascribed to the fact that the Prince is a captain of industry on a gigantic scale. In association with a distant cousin of His Majesty, Prince Christian Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Oehringen, Prince Fiirstenberg heads a combination disposing over resources aggregating £100,000,000 of capital. The partnership has been christened " The Princes Trust," for its octopus-like ramifications are com- parable to the colossal communities of interest which the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan and the other money-kings of Wall Street have made famous. The Princes Trust is a force in the German finan- cial world, and its exalted connections make it a power to be reckoned with when it inaugurates one of its periodical campaigns of conquest. Prince F first enberg's personal fortune has been estimated at £20,000,000 ; Prince Hohenlohe-Oehringen's at £10,000,000. Five years ago their various interests 28 * >-, » » » ) . ., ' . ' ) 1 > • • • • *, r • • •" PRINCE FURSTENBERG were pooled and have since expanded to incal- culable dimensions. To-day the Trust owns or controls hotels-de-luxe, department-stores, theatres, restaurants and omnibus lines in Berlin and Hamburg, vast coal-briquette, zinc and potash mines in Rhineland and Silesia, sanatoria and gambhng- palaces in Madeira, tens of thousands of acres of farming and forest lands in Germany and Austria, and a great realty and building syndicate in Berlin. Overseas, the Trust's activities find outlet in the\ ownership of the German Palestine Bank, with important railway and commercial concessions in | the Holy Land, and it wrested control of the German ' Levant Line from influential shipping interests at Hamburg. The first check encountered by the Princes Trust in its all-conquering career was its recent failure to secure a charter for converting Emden, on the North Sea, into a great emigrant harbour, from which it was proposed to establish a Transatlantic steamship service to rival the rich business long monopolised by the Hamburg-Ameri- can and North German Lloyd. The hand of Herr Alfred Ballin, the Shipping King, another friend of the Kaiser, was seen in the rebuff adminis- tered to the Princes' designs on Emden. For the nonce it looked as if Fiirstenberg's influence with his Imperial chum was no longer omnipotent. Prince Fiirstenberg owns allegiance to no fewer than four different monarchies — Prussia, Austria, Wiirtemberg and Baden — and holds hereditary seats in the House of Peers of each of them. Fifty 29 K MEN AROUND THE KAISER ^ years old and a Roman Catholic, his unique inter- national status, colossal wealth and royal connections make him one of the most remarkable and potent figures in contemporary Europe. A striking mixture of romantic medievalism and modern progressiveness, Prince Fiirstenberg is very much a man after the Kaiser's heart. Soldier, poet, artist, musician, sportsman and archaeologist, he presents the kaleidoscopic nature surest of endearing itself to the versatile William. Unknown to the country at large ten years ago, the Prince, still called " Max " by his comrades of former days in Prague and Vienna, has made his blunt personality and unselfish counsel so invaluable to Emperor William that there is now hardly an important act of statecraft to which the Kaiser commits himself without the advice of the friend with whom His Majesty exchanges the intimate and affectionate German greeting of Du. It speaks volumes for Prince Fiirstenberg's astuteness and qualities of self-effacement that he has succeeded in remaining effectually behind the scenes. No one ever catches a glimpse of him in the limehght. His strength with the Kaiser is based primarily on his incor- rigible habit of telUng His Majesty the brutal truth, and dealing with him in a spirit of frank outspokenness no mere subject-counsellor would dare employ. Prince Fiirstenberg was born at Lana, in Bohemia, in 1863, the scion of an ancient noble house which proudly traces its lineage back to the twelfth 30 PRINCE FURSTENBERG century and to one of Emperor Charlemagne's paladins. The Fiirstenbergs of the early Middle Ages lived in the Black Forest. They received the rank of Princes from Emperor Franz I. in 1753. Generation after generation of them produced bril- liant statesmen and soldiers, so that the present Prince is not departing from family traditions in serving at the confidential elbow of a Kaiser. Graduated from the aristocratic Rhine university of Bonn, where Emperor William studied, Prince Fiirstenberg passed his early life in Vienna and Prague, and on the family's various estates, gratify- ing a passion for hunting and other tastes of his caste. Inheriting seats in the upper chambers of Austria, Prussia, Wiirtemberg and Baden, the Prince interested himself actively in politics before he was thirty. In 1892 he attracted attention to himself by a stirring speech in the Reichsrat advocating German nationalism in Austria. Later he became vice-president of the Austrian House of Peers and one of the recognised political leaders of the monarchy. As head of the Constitutionalists or German- Austrian Liberals, he never misses an opportunity of espousing the claims of Austro- Germans, especially the Bohemian element, from which he himself is sprung. In 1896, through the death of his cousin, Karl Egon, Prince MaximiHan Egon became the titular head of the House of Fiirstenberg and holder of its enormous estates. Comparatively poor before, the Prince was now enabled to play 31 MEN AROUND THE KAISER a glittering role in aristocratic society in both Germany and Austria. His castles at Lana and Prague, his town houses in Vienna and Karlsruhe, and his wondrously magnificent and extensive shooting preserves and estates at Donau-Eschingen, in the Black Forest, at the source of the Blue Danube, became the scenes of sumptuous hos- pitality, outrivalling the entertainments of Kings and Emperors. Several sojourns a year at Donau- Eschingen figure regularly in the itinerary of the Kaiser. It is there he likes most to seek rest and relaxation. There he interned himself, surrounded by his nearest and dearest, while the Fatherland was fuming over the indiscretions of the Daily Telegraph interview. There, comforted by the sympathetic counsel of Prince " Max," he remained in congenial seclusion till the storm of the nation's wrath had spent its force. Prince Fiirstenberg usurped in the Kaiser's esteem the place of honour formerly held by Prince Philip zu Eulenburg, the deposed and disgraced courtier-diplomat who formerly headed the " inner round table " of William II. When Prince Eulenburg's sun had set, in consequence of the Harden exposures, and the Squire of Liebenberg was banished from the Imperial entourage, Prince Fiirstenberg stepped naturally into the fallen favourite's place. His rise in power and influence from that moment forth was meteoric. In November, 1907, while the Kaiser was recuperat- ing in England, the German newspapers published 32 PRINCE FURSTENBERG the laconic announcement that Prince Fiirstenberg had left for Castle Highcliffe at the Emperor's telegraphic summons. German political life at the moment was electric with fear and trembling as the result of the Moltke-Eulenburg scandals. Prince Billow's Chancellorship was tottering under dis- tracting parliamentary difficulties. Fiirstenberg was heralded as the coming man. It was asserted with positiveness that the Kaiser had invited him to Highcliffe, to urge him to hurl himself into the breach and take the Chancellorship from which Biilow was threatening to resign. The Prince resisted all entreaties, but returned from England an irrevocable factor in German high politics for all time. Since Highcliffe, Prince Fiirstenberg has seldom been missing from the Emperor's entourage on im- portant occasions. He helped the Kaiser christen the new German Navy at Wilhelmshaven in March, 1908, when His Majesty's first Dreadnought, the Nassau^ was launched. A week later Fiirstenberg accom- panied the Emperor to Heligoland to inspect the initial preparations for converting that crumbling isle into a Teuton Gibraltar. A fortnight afterwards the Prince joined the Kaiser at Corfu, which they visit together almost annually. Each year, after the Ionian sun has browned the Imperial countenance for a few weeks, it is at Prince Fiirstenberg's glorious shooting-box at Donau-Eschingen that William 11. tarries before resuming Imperial duties at Berhn. In addition to his other endearing qualities. Prince Fiirstenberg is a capital story-teUer and keen wit. 33 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Some of the Kaiser's happiest hours are spent Hstening to " Maxchen's " inimitable yarn spinning, amusingly interlarded with Austrian and South German dialect. In his wife, who was a Countess von Schonborn- Buchheim, one of a trio of Austrian sisters cele- brated for their beauty, Prince Fiirstenberg has an able lieutenant in the unofficial but responsible post of the Kaiser's best friend. 34 GWINNER It is natural that the race which produced the Rothschilds should be richly endowed with financial genius. Germany of to-day is generously supplied with men worthy of the traditions of the Five Frankforters. Berlin is not the world-money Mecca the South German metropolis was in the Napoleonic era — the Kaiser's capital has latterly been almost more of a borrower than a lender — but her importance in the universe of high finance is great and growing. The firmness or weakness of the Berlin money market and Stock Exchange, though not yet of the barometric influence of Wall Street, is nevertheless a factor which London, New York and Paris require increasingly to take into account. It would no longer be possible for the Bank of England, J. P. Morgan & Co., and the Credit Lyonnais to parcel out the earth between them. Wherever they turned, they would find a solid, assertive German institution in the field, demanding a place in the financial sun. Its name is the Deutsche Bank. Germany has nine great banks with capital ranging from £3,000,000 to £10,000,000 apiece, and several private concerns of international renown and «^ 35 MEN AROUND THE KAISER immense resources like the Mendelssohns and Bleichroeders. The hst of financial luminaries of the first magnitude include such men as Carl Fiirstenberg, Paul von Schwabach, Paul Mankiewdtz, Baron Oppenheim of Cologne, the Speyers of Frank- fort, the Warburgs of Hamburg, Eugen Gutman and Arthur Salomonsohn, each a host in himself, and the representative of enormous interests. The leadership, however, belongs by common consent to the Deutsche Bank. It is from its vast count ■ ing-house in Berlin that the conquering march of German capital in two hemispheres is mainly directed. It is the Reichsbank, Imperial Germany's central bank of issue, which regulates the discount rate and keeps the currency mobile and liquid, but it is the Deutsche Bank which pioneers and finances German enterprise oversea. At home its power is comparable only to that of the Govern- ment itself. With an annual turnover which has risen since the Bank's foundation from ;fi2, 000,000 to £6,500,000,000, it has come to wield a mighty influence over German economic life. Though he himself denies it, Arthur von G winner, the type of the German financier of the period, is the presiding genius of the institution. It seems more than an alphabetical coincidence that his name heads the list of the Deutsche Bank's directors. Once in a while a new directoi is elected, but there is apparently an unwritten by-law providing that nobody should ever be chosen whose name begins with a letter in advance of G. G winner describes himself as 36 O .» it, > ' *,»* ♦*»,»•» « • . > I » ♦ GWINNER " a simple member of the managerial board." Germany and the world, nevertheless, associate his name with most of the big strokes the Deutsche Bank periodically accomplishes. When the Kaiser, as he has more than once done, tries to per- suade Gwinner to enter the Cabinet and assume either the Prussian Ministership of Finance, or the Secretaryship of the Imperial Treasury, His Majesty directs his appeal to the man looked upon as the premier banker of the realm. Gwinner is an ardent patriot, but, like Ballin, he thinks he can render the Fatherland more effective service by sticking to his last than by taking office. The Deutsche Bank may be called twin to the Empire. It was established in 1870, almost at the very hour Bismarck and Moltke went to war with France. No other institution's rise has been so coincident with the economic development of Germany itself. The Deutsche Bank's year-by-year growth from small beginnings to its present dimen- sions is Germany in composite. Industry in the Fatherland is more intimately allied to, and inter- woven with, banking capital than anywhere else in the world. To an inordinate extent the industrial fabric rests on credit. In many cases the banks exercise autocratic domination over the manu- facturing, mining and shipping trades. Vast blocks of their capital are tied up in purely industrial undertakings. Foreign financiers are sceptical of the soundness of this interlocking alliance between banks and industry, but it has justified itself to 37 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the extent of making possible Germany's present- day formidableness in the vvoild's markets. The founder of the Deutsche Bank was the late Georg von Siemens, whose name will be indelibly inscribed in the inspiring story of Germany's vault to weltmacht. He was a member of the family which has given the German electrical industry international fame. It was vouchsafed Siemens' far-seeing policy to make the Deutsche Bank the first institution to carry German capital abroad and stake out Germany's ambitious claims for a share of oversea commerce. It was he who secured the concession for the Anatolian railways in 1888, which were to blaze the way for German supremacy in what now remains of the Turkish Empire. Arthur Gwinner was his pupil and understudy. When Siemens was removed from the scene in 1901, \ Gwinner became his successor. In March, 1903, ' Gwinner obtained the Baghdad Railway concession from Sultan Abdul Hamid, and, in the capacity of President of the Anatolian and Baghdad Railway Companies, assumed supreme control of both pro- perties. To-day they represent a German invest- ment of ;f 16, 000, 000. The Anatolian lines begin at Haidar Pasha, on the Asiatic side of Con- stantinople, and run to Eskishehir, where there is a bifurcation eastwards to Angora — Ankyra of the Ancients. St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians was . addressed to Ankyra, the capital of Galatia. From Eskishehir the railway runs south-easterly to Konia — Ikonium of the Ancients, capital of the Seljuk 38 GWINNER djoiasty which preceded the Osman house now enthroned at the Golden Horn. It was from Konia that Cicero, banished, wrote to a Roman friend that there were more asses in the country than men. Some day, if Gwdnner has his way, there will be more Germans there than Turks. The Anatolian lines have a total length of 650 miles. The Baghdad system, which begins where the Anatolian Railway ends, is to extend from Konia across country to the Persian Gulf. Three hundred and fifty miles of it are already built and opened to traffic ; something over 625 are under construction, or to be constructed, as far as Baghdad. A branch is to be built to Alexandretta, on the Mediterranean, where Alexander the Great overwhelmed the Persian Emperor in the battle on the banks of the River Issus, 333 B.C. Construction between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf is not yet commenced. It is this strip which is the bone of contention between Germany and Great Britain. Germany's insistence on the right to construct and control the terminal undoubtedly contains the seeds of a grave conflict. Englishmen may be excused for not relishing the spectre of a short cut to India over a trans-European-Asiatic trunk-line, German- owned and German-operated, which reduces the sea-route to India ten days, and might conceivably bring German armies to the gates of Delhi before British Dreadnoughts could reach Bombay. Gwinner, it may be assumed, is not building the Baghdad Railway for the purposes of the German 39 MEN AROUND THE KAISER General Staff. What chiefly keeps him awake of nights is how to extract dividends from it for the Deutsche Bank, and how best to promote the golden opportunities which await the strategists of the German trading army in the Near East. He made a poetic confession of the prophetic ideals he cherishes at Baghdad by quoting Faust at the conclusion of a striking article in the Nineteenth Century for June, 1909 : — " To many millions space I thus should give. Though not secure, yet free to toil and live ; Green fields and fertile ; men, with cattle blent, Upon the newest earth would dwell content. Settled forthwith upon the firm-based hill, Uplifted by a valiant people's skill ; Within a land like Paradise." Like all the big captains of German business, Gwinner believes that the £75,000,000 or ;f8o,ooo,ooo a year which Germany spends on the upkeep of her Army and Navy — she is spending over ;fii5,ooo,ooo in 1913 — is not too high a price to pay for the defence of national honour or for an insurance premium on a foreign trade aggregating roundly £1,000,000,000 per annum. If Gwinner were Chancellor of the Exchequer, it seems fairly clear that German finances would not be dis- tinguished by the chronic chaos in which they have long wallowed. His maiden speech in the House of Peers, to which the Kaiser elevated him in 1910, consisted of a fearless and sweeping attack on the administration of Prussian finances. He 40 GWINNER advocated the policy of State Railway loans as the most obvious and legitimate source of extraordinary national revenue. Taking the Pennyslvania Rail- way as an example, he declared that if that great system were conducted on the Hues of Prussia's richly productive State railways, it would long since have gone into the hands of a receiver. Baron von Rheinbaben, the Prussian Minister of Finance, retired from ofhce shortly after Gwinner's onslaught. Gwinner sniffed banking and finance from the cradle, for his birthplace was Frankfort-on-the- Main, at the time — 1856 — still very much of an international money centre. His father was a distinguished jurist and intimate friend of Schopen- hauer and was the executor of the philosopher's estate, as well as his biographer. He is still alive, and in 1909 received from the Kaiser the patent of hereditary nobility. It is popularly understood that the distinction was meant to be conferred in reality on the son, who became entitled simul- taneously to be known henceforth as von Gwinner. The year 1884 found young Gwinner in Government service as German Consul at Madrid. In 1885 he \ contracted a matrimonial alliance with one of the leading financial houses of Europe and America by marrying the daughter of Philipp Speyer of Frankfort-on-the-Main. Three years later he estab- lished the private banking-house of Arthur Gwinner & Co., in Berlin, remaining at its head until 1894, when he was invited by Georg von Siemens to join 41 / MEN AROUND THE KAISER the directorate of the Deutsche Bank. He had early opportunity to prove his capacity, when in 1896 the Deutsche Bank undertook the reorganization of the Northern Pacific Railway on behalf of European shareholders. That astutely executed transaction, from which investors eventually emerged without loss, was carried out by Siemens and his able young lieutenant, in conjunction with Henry Villard of New York. It was the first feather in Gwdnner's cap, destined to be garnished with many. Gwinner's talent is essentially for big things. He is a banker of large conceptions. The Deutsche Bank o\\'ns the Berlin underground and elevated railway system, but it is not in Gwinner's depart- ment. He deals only with railways calculable in thousands of miles, like the Northern Pacific and Baghdad systems. His latest project in monumental finance is the scheme to create a State monopoly in petroleum to break the autocratic power of the Standard Oil Company in Germany. The Deutsche Bank is interested in oil properties in Rumania, and Gwinner is assisting the Imperial Government to effect a nationalization of the traffic in petroleum as the only effective means of crushing Rockefel- lerism in the Fatherland. Gwinner is an uncom- monly plain speaker. Such truths as he hurled at the Minister of Finance in the Prussian Herren- haus were unique in German parliamentary practice. He had no compunction once in saying to the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, in the 42 GWINNER presence of the American Ambassador and a dozen captains of American industry gathered round a banquet board, that the United States currency system bordered on a travesty. He is the type of the ideahst and scholar in business, a class more numerous in Germany than anjrwhere in the world. Gwinner speaks English, French and Spanish with the utmost fluency. He can joke in our language with the extempore facility of Mr. Plowden or Chauncey M. Depew. He has a marvellous memory and quotes Shakespeare and Moliere with the same ease as Goethe and Schiller, whom he knows by heart. Once he returned a document to a subor- dinate at the Deutsche Bank with a marginal reference to Polonius' homily to Laertes on the relative advantages of borrowing and lending. " We don't borrow too much," he once declared in the Prussian Parliament. " We borrow too little. The thing is to borrow right. Talent is necessary for everything, but borrowing requires genius." The great Bank in which this art connoisseur music-lover and book-devourer plays a dominating rdle is capitalized at £10,000,000 and has a reserve fund of £5,500,000. Its deposits total between £75,000,000 and £80,000,000. It maintains branches in London, Constantinople and Brussels and in eleven German cities outside Berlin, as well as agencies in all the principal centres of the world. Its staff exceeds 6,000. World-wide are its ramifica- tions. It owns the Banco Aleman Transatlantico, with a sphere of influence embracing the Argentine, 43 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Chile, Peru, Bolivia, the Brazils, Mexico and Spain, and controls the German Overseas Electric Company of Buenos Aires, which furnishes light and power in the leading cities of the Argentine, Chile and Uruguay. As for Germany itself, there is hardly a single important industrial corporation in which the Deutsche Bank is not heavily interested. In dozens of them it exercises a dominating voice. From the date of Herr von Gwinner's connection with the institution, now a matter of nineteen years, the Deutsche Bank has never paid less than lo per cent, dividend. Most of the time it has distributed II and 12 per cent., and for the last four years 12^ per cent. 44 VI PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA To fill the rdle of a monarch's brother is frequently a thankless part. It has been known to be nebulous and decorative, besides, and few have played it worthily. Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of the Kaiser, is a striking exception to the general rule. No man of the reign has rendered his country more effective service than the Sailor Prince, who, as Inspector-General of the German Navy, is the ranking officer of the proud Armada which flies the Hohenzollern battle-flag. If Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz may be described as the creator of the Kaiser's fleet, Grand-Admiral Prince Henry may be called its trainer. Commander-in-Chief of the Active Battle Fleet, as the High Seas Fleet of to-day was formerly known, at the moment when it was undergoing conversion into a navy of Dreadnoughts, Prince Henry was in supreme charge of Germany's sea forces at the most critical moment of their existence. The arrival of the all-big-gun and Dreadnought -displacement era had effected a com- plete revolution in the naval practices of the world. Stereotyped canons of construction, strategy and gunnery required to be overhauled and remade. 45 MEN AROUND THE KAISER It was under the personal supervision of the Kaiser's brother that the German Navy rose to the emergency with promptitude and thoroughness and made itself ready, as if overnight, to hold its own in the new conditions of sea warfare. That is why the Admiral Royal, whose pictures so often make him look like a twin of King George or the Czar, holds a place in the affections of his Fatherland almost second to none. Germans have had few national idols since Bismarck. Prince Henry is one of them. Thoroughly imbued with the democracy of the sea, with an active career of more than thirty years to his credit, Prince Henry is a sailor-man through and through — an admiral first and a Prince after- wards. He has had little time, and less inclination for the luxurious pastimes of his royal estate. The fashions and frivolities of Court life have never appealed to him. His hobby is the sea, and he is happiest when cultivating it. Naval cadet at sixteen, when the fleet was little more than a flotilla of nondescript frigates ; battleship-captain at thirty, and rear-admiral four years later, 1906 found Prince Henry commander-in-chief of the homogeneous squadrons which the German Admiralty keeps assembled in home waters as one great sledge-hammer entity, steam up and eager to deUver the decisive blow at the psychological moment. An apostle of the " Ready, aye ready ! " policy of perpetual preparedness for war, he was fitted both by temperament and training for the leadership of the Empire's battle forces afloat. 46 t * ■* i 5 » » > y, •> •".'. :'« 5 - 1 > JO » ». ».»'»: 9 J ' ■> ■> » » ' » ^ • •> {Biel'er, Ha)nbjc7-g. PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA Only the most urgent diversions, such as important foreign missions on behalf of the Kaiser, enticed him from his flagship at Kiel, where, too, he has long had his home. A stickler for discipHne, his indomitable energy and devotion to duty were at once the marvel and inspiration of the entire Fleet. German naval officers are notoriously the hardest- working — and hardest-worked — in the world. They had a constant example in Prince Henry. He took a deep interest in the men behind the guns and the unseen heroes of the hold. Regardless of personal comfort he participated regularly in the long practice cruises of the High Seas Fleet in and out of season, and he is to-day given chief credit for the strategic and tactical skill which the Kaiser's battle squadrons have attained. After Prince Henry hoisted his farewell signal as Commander-in- Chief of the Fleet three years ago, he was rowed ashore from his flagship by a crew of heutenants — a pretty and affectionate tribute to the esteem in which the Navy cherishes him. Prince Henry is a firm disciple of his brother's celebrated creed, that Germany's future lies on the water. A man of initiative and fearless indepen- dence, he has on more than one occasion had lively disagreements with the Kaiser on naval affairs. But on the big essential idea of the " bitter need " of Teuton sea power, they, like the rest of modern Germany, are indissolubly one. As the protector of the Navy League, Prince Henry has been actively identified with the propaganda by which the inner- 47 MEN AROUND THE KAISER most recesses of the Fatherland have been converted to naval enthusiasm. The Sailor Prince, now in his fifty-first year, is the Kaiser's junior by three years and a half. They were at school together in Cassel between 1875 and 1877, the Emperor proceeding to the University at Bonn, and Prince Henry to the Naval Academy at Kiel. Prince Henry was a favourite of his lamented parents. Emperor and Empress Frederick. An American ambassador, during the fateful loo-day-reign, once spoke to Emperor Frederick in admiration of Crown Prince, now Kaiser William, to whom the diplomat had been presented the day before. " Yes," responded the lovable Frederick, " Wilhelm's a fine lad, but you should see my boy Heinrich ! " It has been said that Prince Henry inherits his Liehenswurdigkeit from his father, and his love of the sea from his English mother. When, as a cadet of sixteen, he was sent on a two-year trip around the world in the frigate Prince Adalbert, his mother, then Crown Princess Victoria, was much concerned for his safety. Entirely against the cadet's will, the Crown Princess begged the old Emperor to excuse her sailor-boy from the long cruise aboard the frail frigate. Emperor William I., with his uncompromising ideas of soldierly duty, would not listen to the maternal appeal. He declared that the Sailor Prince must face the ordeals of his appointed career like the humblest middy in the Fleet. Before he reached home shores, two years later. Prince Henry had weathered a typhoon in 48 PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA the Bay of Bengal, and received his baptismal experience of the trials and terrors of his life profession. Prince Henry's first important flag assignment came when he was sent to the Far East in 1897 as admiral in command of the Second German Cruiser Division. On his departure from Kiel the Kaiser delivered an amazing bon voyage speech, " If any- one dares," he said, ** to interfere with our good right, ride in with the mailed fist ! " The depth of Prince Henry's veneration for his brother — a marked trait of his many-sided nature — was manifested by his hardly less remarkable reply. " Neither glory nor laurels attract me," he declared. " My one desire is to proclaim the gospel of Your Majesty's sacred person in foreign parts." Prince Henry's flag was destined to flutter amid stirring times in Eastern waters. Germany's occupa- tion of Kiau-Chau, the price China had to pay for the murder of missionaries engaged in converting the benighted sons of Confucius to the creed of Martin Luther, took place under the Prince's auspices. American acquisition of the Philippines soon followed, and after Admiral von Diederichs' tactlessness at Manila nearly embroiled Germany in war with the United States, Prince Henry inherited his command with the rank of vice-admiral. America's ruffled susceptibilities gave the Kaiser's brother opportunity to reveal diplomatic talent of a high order, which has meantime often been invoked by the German Government. He had not been MEN AROUND THE KAISER back from the troubled East long when he was dispatched on his famous mission to the United States in 1902. Sent there ostensibly to oihciate at the launch of a racing-yacht for the Kaiser, Prince Henry's trip had for its underlying object the inauguration of what has since been known as the Kaiser's " American policy." Germans, who constitutionally view with alarm too intimate con- tact of the ermine with the homespun, were filled with trepidation as to how Hohenzollern dignity would emerge from shoulder-brushing with American democracy. Prince Henry himself had few qualms on that score. At a banquet in New York he toasted the leaders of the American press as men who hold the rank of commanding-generals in his own country — a strong dose for Prussian Junkers, who look upon journalists as intellectual microbes. When a Chicago newsboy, as His Royal Highness of Germany drove through the streets of the Windy City, yelled at him, " Hello, Hank ! How are you ?" the brother of the Supreme War Lord smiled from ear to ear, and replied : " I'm all right ! How are you ? " That was the spirit in which the Sailor Prince met unconventional Uncle Sam. That is why his visit was a success, and why it laid deep and well the foundations of the Kaiser's " American pohcy." On semi-diplomatic visits to the Courts of England, Russia and Japan, and on minor missions to half a dozen European Courts and Governments, Prince Henry has signally distinguished himself. Next to the sea, sport is Prince Henry's ruling 50 PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA passion. He has been a pioneer in almost every form of outdoor activity, a cult comparatively new to Germany, but one in which she is already making heroic efforts to shine at the Berhn Olympiad of 1916. Prince Henry is huntsman, skater, swimmer and golfer, plays a strong game of tennis, is a daring tobogganist and sails his own schooner with the skill of an America Cup skipper. He has been the chief ally of the Kaiser in elevating Kiel Week to the dignity of one of the world's premier regattas. One of the early adherents of motoring in Germany, he has himself long been an expert driver, and competes in the annual *' Prinz-Heinrich " cross- country run of the Imperial Automobile Club, of which he is honorary president. He knows his car from top to bottom, and is a convincing figure, rubber-clad, tinkering at his own engine, or fitting a tyre like a chauffeur-mechanic born. He finds time to further the cause of the German motor trade, too, and has latterly made personal propaganda for the exclusive use of German petrol, and for the increased use of motor cars. He discovered that while there was a car to every 249 inhabitants in England, and one to every 441 in France, only one out of 927 of his own countrymen was an auto- mobilist. He preached a persuasive sermon on the joys and advantages of motoring, which is destined to have tangible effect. Always up to date, Prince Henry is an enthusiastic and practical airman. He was the first German royalty to sail in an airship, having cruised in a 51 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Zeppelin when aerial travel was in its infancy, and been at the helm for part of the voyage himself. When aeroplaning took tardy hold of the German imagination, the Sailor Prince was among the first to go in for it. He is the Fatherland's older aviator in point of actual age, and one of the most zealous. The thirty-eighth qualified pilot's licence issued in Germany was awarded to him, and he has since flown repeatedly in his own biplane. Much of his time and thought nowadays are given to the develop- ment of " the fourth arm " in the German Army and Navy. Prince Henry's wife, nee Princess Irene of Hesse, is a sister of the trouble-stricken Czarina. The family relationship has brought about intimate comradeship between the Prince and the Czar. The Kaiser's brother rounds out his talents as a complete man of the world with delightful conversational gifts, and he is a witty and ready after-dinner speaker in both German and English. Next to his own fleet. Prince Henry admires and loves best the navies of Great Britain and America. He knows them both thoroughly, and with many of their officers, with whom he has fraternized throughout the seven seas, he maintains ties of cordial friendship. Destined in the dread event of an Anglo-German Trafalgar to be in the thick of the fight, he has no patience whatever with that section of his countrymen who find pleasure, or see profit, in villifying Britain and the British. He has more than once seized opportunities of 52 PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA rebuking super-patriots, who have the temerity to insinuate that the descendants of Drake and Nelson and Wellington could never be a foe worthy of meeting men of the martial past of Germany. A comradeship in arms, not a clash, with England is, without doubt, the ideal which makes the most moving appeal to Germany's gallant Sailor Prince. 53 VII COUNT ZEPPELIN " The greatest German of the Twentieth Cen- tury." Such is the proud title conferred on Count von ZeppeHn by Emperor WilHam II. in a burst of impulsive eloquence five years ago, when the septuagenarian aeronaut aUghted at His Majesty's feet from a Zeppelin airship. At first, men read Imperial hyperbole into the Kaiser's exclamation, in the same spirit as they had scoffed for sixteen years at all Count Zeppelin's dauntless attempts at the conquest of the air. To-day, with a fleet of Zeppelins in being, carrying passengers serenely and safely to and fro across the country, com- prising an integral part of the Fatherland's military " Watch on the Rhine," and serving as the eagle- eyes of the Navy on the North Sea, the sceptics have quit their sneering and arrived at the con- clusion that Zeppelin, indeed, has taken his place among the Immortals. Count ZeppeHn will be seventy-five years old in July, 1913. He was seventy when Fame, tardily and reluctantly, shook him by the hand and said " Well done ! " He had wooed her long and desperately before her smiles were lavished upon 54 « « > « t it [Bieder, Hamburg COUNT ZEPPELIN him irrevocably. The scroll of the world's inventors holds many a tale of blighted hopes and indomitable aspirations, but none of its drama outrivals the story of Count Zeppelin's triumph over failure and disaster. No man ever climbed to greatness over obstacles more relentless. Few have survived such blows as Fate rained on his snow-white head mercilessly for twenty years. Those were the con- siderations which moved the Kaiser to ordain Zeppelin a national idol. To-day one no longer risks a reputation for con- servatism by opining that Zeppelin airships are only on the threshold of their ultimate possibilities. They have already given Germany the command of the air. The feats of aeroplanes, in point of speed and spectacular achievements, are still unrivalled, but heavier-than-air craft in other respects is as far behind Zeppelins as the dragon-kite of Lilienthal was inferior to the biplane of Wilbur and Orville Wright. To travel a day and a night without intermediate landing, through rain and snow and wind, with two score passengers and crew, is child's play for the Imperators and Dreadnoughts of the heavens. Fifty miles an hour in favouring weather has become only an average speed ; the carry- ing of 4^ tons of burden — explosives, if necessary, mere freight of peace, if desired — a demonstrated possi- bility. Zeppelins have crossed and re-crossed the North Sea and the Baltic in single non-stop flights, much of the time in the teeth of hostile blasts. Equipped with searchlights, wireless telegraphy, 55 MEN AROUND THE KAISER bomb-tubes and machine-guns, the aerial leviathans which carry the battle-flags of the German Army and Navy have executed a dozen flights, the equiva- lent of trips of recognizance along the entire frontier of France or the coasts of Great Britain. The enactment of Germany's first Aerial Fleet Law, which provides for a regular building programme of Zeppelins for the Army and Navy, is the Empire's crowning acknowledgment of Count Zeppelin's greatness. Born at Constance, on the placid inland sea which washes the shores of Germany and Switzerland, and which was destined to be the scene of his triumphant labours, the son of a Wiirtemberg Court official, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin devoted his early manhood to the profession of his caste, the Army. A lieutenant of cavalry, 1863 found him, at the age of twenty-five, doing duty as Wiirtemberg's military attache with the Union Army in the American War of the Rebellion. Proceeding directly to the army of the Mississippi, where he found a German " 48-er," the late Carl Schurz, commanding a brigade, Lieut, von Zeppelin evinced an irresistible fondness for get- ting into the fray in some capacity more thrilling than that of an innocent bystander. A few months later, at the sanguinary engagement of Fredricksburg, the young German cavalryman narrowly escaped falling into the enemy's hands as a consequence of a too eager determination to be where the sabres were thickest. A swift mount and daring horsemanship were all that saved him from a Confederate prison. 56 COUNT ZEPPELIN It was his service with the United States Army which gave Count Zeppelin the first chance to gratify his inborn longing for aeronautics. His initial ascent was made in a captive balloon sent up by the Federal corps to which he was attached, for the purpose of spying upon the Confederate lines beyond. He alighted enthusiastic over his exhilarating experience, and received permission to make regular ascents. Germany's " future in the air " was born in Dixie. Count Zeppelin returned to his Fatherland just in time for another war — the Prussian campaign of 1866 against Austria. He went through that short, sharp and decisive struggle from start to finish. But it was not until the cataclysmic struggle against France that the intrepid young balloonist-trooper was destined to carve his name indelibly in German history. On July 24th, 1870, a few hours after the declaration of war. Count Zeppelin, with four other young officers and seven horsemen, was detailed to make a brazen reconnoitring dash into French territory, which had not yet been invaded by German soldiery. With that devil-may-care determination which has proved the keynote of his life, Zeppehn led his httle column boldly into the enemy's country. The news of their invasion spread like wildfire through the region in which French troops were massing to meet Moltke's oncoming legions. Orders were given to take the German riders dead or alive. Tearing like mad through a frontier village, Zeppelin's horse was wounded by 57 MEN AROUND THE KAISER a lancer, who " tackled " him while both were riding at full speed. Zeppelin cut his antagonist down with a sabre, and, leaving him prostrate, jumped on his assailant's horse and made off. Through Wiessen- burg, Worth and a dozen other towns and hamlets the little German column flew. At Reichshof a squadron of chasseurs barred the way. Lieut. Winsloe was shot down — the first German to fall in the great campaign. Then two other officers and all seven of ZeppeHn's dragoons were surrounded and compelled to surrender. Only Zeppelin himself escaped — again with the aid of a captured French mount. For hours troops scoured the countryside for trace of the dare-devil young cavalryman, only finally to convince themselves that he had reached German soil again safe and sound, the bearer of vital information concerning the enemy's dispositions. Count Zeppelin emerged from the Franco-German campaign a Colonel, and advanced by successive stages to the commandership of a brigade. Later, he commanded a fortress, represented Wiirtemberg in the Federal Council at Berlin, and in 1891 attained the rank of a general of cavalry, with which he retired. Count ZeppeHn, long a theoretical student of the science of airmanship, began to devote himself actively to its pursuit in 1892. Though no longer young, he proceeded to equip himself ^\ith practical knowledge by courses of apprenticeship in aero- nautics, mechanics, electricity, sailmaking and meteorology. Peering sagaciously into the distant 58 COUNT ZEPPELIN future, he described his aims at that time in these prophetic terms : " I intend to build a vessel which will be able to travel to places which cannot be approached — or only with great difficulty — by other means of transport ; to undiscovered coasts or interiors ; in a straight line across land and water where ships are to be sought for ; from one fleet station or army to another carrying persons or dispatches ; for observations of the movements of hostile fleets or armies, not for active participation in the operations of actual warfare. My dirigible balloon must be able to travel several days without renewing provisions, gas or fuel. It must travel quickly enough to reach a certain goal in a given number of hours or days, and must possess sufficient rigidity and non-inflammability to ascend, travel and descend under ordinary con- ditions." This was a pretty tall order, in the estimation of the military and scientific experts. A roar of benevolent mirth, mingled with pity for the vagaries of a once stable mind, reverberated over the country. " Zeppelin's in his dotage," said his friends. '* A crank, a crazy inventor," was the less charitable observation of foes. " I never pay any attention to hare-brained appeals from visionaries," wrote a milhonaire American newspaper-owner, to whom Zeppelin, in his desperation, once offered practically to mortgage his future for a loan of ^^5,000. But the Count kept on plodding, mindless alike of ridicule and indifference. His fortune and his family's gradu- 59 MEN AROUND THE KAISER ally vanished. He built, destroyed and re-con- structed an acre of models and actual ships, which seemed all right in theory but would not fly. Then his credit, even with admirers and long-time backers, ceased. The Government's aeronautical experts turned him the cold shoulder. He issued vain appeals through the newspapers, assuring the nation he knew he was on the right track. But the little man who had cut his way through a French army corps was never daunted. Disappointment and failure were habits now. They only spurred him on afresh. By hook and crook, he finally con- trived to scrape together enough money to build Zeppelin III., and with it in the summer and autumn of 1907 he made six successful flights — the last one a sensational, epoch-making trip of nearly eight hours, in which over 200 miles were covered. The anti-Zeppelin party at Berlin now subsided. Their plight became utter confusion when the Government, convinced at length that Zeppelins had a future, agreed to purchase No. 3, and grant Count Zeppelin an additional £25,000 for further experiments. The Reichstag passed a law per- mitting the Count to conduct a national lottery for the raising of still further experimental sinews. Then began a fresh period of bouts with fate, in which Zeppelin was doomed to be worsted times without number. His crowning disaster came in August, igo8, when the great new Zeppelin IV., en route to Lake Constance across country from the north, was wrecked on the plains of Echterdingen, 60 COUNT ZEPPELIN in Wiirtemberg. Germany, now passionately aroused to the limitless significance of Zeppelins grieved over Echterdingen as if some great national catastrophe had torn the nation's heartstrings. An amazing exhibition of public generosity was the result. Within six weeks the Fatherland placed a fund of ^^300,000 at Count Zeppelin's disposal in order that he might be freed for all time of the financial nightmare which had dogged his career without compassion so many years. The Zeppelin " dockyard " at Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, sprang into being. To-day it is a plant capable of turning out Zeppelins of the biggest dimensions at the rate of one a month. Since Echterdingen, half a dozen Zeppelins have suffered the fate of the immortal IV. ; but no life has ever been lost in Zeppelin wrecks, which have been due in every case to external causes, frequently carelessness. In the spring of 1909, Zeppelin II., the second of a new type, established for all time the miraculous possibiUties dormant in the craft by a continuous thirty-eight-hour journey from Friedrichshafen to Saxony and back again to Wiirtemberg — a circuit of roundly 1,000 miles. Of medium height, snow-haired and military in every feature of his well-knit frame. Count Zeppelin, like all men who have fought their way through adversity to glory, is modesty personified. He has been a victim of hero-worshippers for the better part of six years, but they have not turned his head. He Uves unobtrusively at Stuttgart when not 61 MEN AROUND THE KAISER superintending affairs at Friedrichshafen, frequently takes the helm of new ships on trial flights, and, like " Bobs," he does not advertise. The Count was at the wheel last October during the famous maiden cruise of the naval Zeppelin over the North Sea, and still calls the clouds his natural element. Berlin, which would lionise him, seldom sees him. His infrequent visits are strictly on business, for confer- ence with the War Office or Admiralty. He has one child, a daughter, who is married to a Berlin army officer. She has been an active helpmate of her widowed father through the long years of his heart- breaking vicissitudes. Herself an intrepid aeronaut, she possesses practical knowledge of Zeppelins both from the construction and operating stand- points. In the evening of his life, so full of restless achieve- ments. Count Zeppelin dreams of still another field of conquest for his wonder-ships. He means, he says, before he grows old, to explore the unknown regions contiguous to the North Pole. Government and popular support in plenty is behind the project, which has already advanced beyond the preliminary stage. As for merely crossing an ocean, those of us who have experienced the incomparable thrills of cruising in a Zeppelin, would book our passage to-morrow if we could. And before another decade of our pell-mell history is written, I verily believe we shall. 62 VIII THE CROWN PRINCE It was a distinguished English writer who once remarked that when the Crown Prince ascends the throne Germany will breathe easier and enjoy a rest. What the cynic meant to say was that the boyish, light-hearted heir to HohenzoUern sovereignty has inherited little of his brilliant father's ebullient energy, and that the Crown Prince's accession will, in all probability, inaugurate an era of national repose as compared to the restless atmosphere which the world associates with the Kaiser. Years ago, before the Crown Prince became a husband and father, Germans used to have but one reply when asked what manner of boy and man he was. They called him an unbeschriebenes Blatt, which is less libellous than it looks, for it means an " unwritten page " — a totally unknown quantity. With a parental stage-manager predisposed to monopolise most of the speaking parts, the present Heir- Apparent was condemned to play even a muter rdle than falls to the lot of most eldest sons of monarchs. But Crown Prince WiUiam is by no means to-day the unknown quantity he used to be. A full-fledged colonel of the Army at thirty-one, 63 MEN AROUND THE KAISER he has made numerous occasions in recent times to convince the country that he has a mind and a back- bone of his own. He has shown that he is no more of a colourless respecter of mere authority than was his father and other Hohenzollern Crown Princes before him. His popularity has increased along with his periodical demonstrations of high-spirited independence. A chip of the old block in but few respects, he has, nevertheless, won a warm place in the nation's heart, and when his time comes Germans will acclaim him with unfeigned affection and pin on him genuine hopes of a safe and sane reign. Crown Prince William's first notice to all concerned that he had emerged from the personally-conducted stage was the manner in which he went about the important business of choosing a wife. It is not of official record that the Kaiser cherished for his heir an alliance of such obvious political value, for example, as the marriage of Princess Victoria Luise, his only daughter, to Prince Ernest Augustus of Cumberland. At any rate, when the Crown Prince went consort-hunting he decided to obey exclusively the mandates of his own inclinations and to marry for love and beauty. No royal romance in any age was more purely ideal than that which culminated in the wedding of the future German Emperor and Cecelie, Duchess of Mecklenburg- Schwerin, in the summer of 1905. The lithe brunette Princess, who is half Russian, and more French than German, took Berlin by storm when she made her State entry into the Imperial capital. She has 64 1 •> ■> > J Ho/photograph] [Bleber, Berlin. W '\|W J J\ s/J^ '^/w^/0 THE CROWN PRINCE nobly lived up to Hohenzollern traditions by bearing her consort four sturdy sons within eight years. In the spring of 1907 the Crown Prince gave the country another striking exhibition of his uncon- strained character. Maximihan Harden's Ziikunft for months had bristled with innuendoes that all was not for the best in the personal entourage of the Kaiser. William II. is said to derive most of his worldly information from selected press-cuttings. Zukunft's vitriolic shafts at Prince Eulenburg, His Majesty's great friend, and General Count Kuno von Moltke, His Majesty's aide-de-camp, had not come to the Kaiser's attention. The sparrows of Berhn, in Harden's own picturesque idiom, were shrieking from the housetops the scandal of which the allerhbchste Person alone remained in blissful ignorance. The Crown Prince conceived it to be his patriotic and filial duty to bring the facts, however unappetising, to his father's attention. The banishment of Eulenburg and Moltke from the Imperial " round table " ensued, and six months later the Harden trial brought forth the public exposures which annihilated for ever the influence and reputation of the Eulenburg-Moltke clique, Germans would fain have been spared the ignominy of those revelations, but in their hearts they were grateful to Crown Prince William for precipitating them. Probably no more flattering light was ever thrown on the Crown Prince's character than by his letters K. F 65 MEN AROUND THE KAISER to his ex-comrade, Count von Hochberg, which came to public knowledge four years ago in an American lawsuit. The letters were never intended to reach the world, yet the Crown Prince could have wished for no better means of proving to his future subjects that he is every inch a man. Germans will not soon forget the splendid spirit of personal loyalty which the letters breathed, nor the almost plaintive happiness the Prince expressed over the fact that " Papa talks politics with me once in a while, and I like it." That was interpreted as a longing for serious occupation that did His Imperial Highness credit. It was not long after that an accident, which temporarily put the Kaiser's right hand out of action, induced him to transfer to the Crown Prince for the first time the right of signing State documents. Crown Prince William's supreme revelation of rugged independence, or impetuosity, which is sometimes the same thing, came to pass during the season of national indignation which swept over Germany following the Moroccan fiasco of 191 1. The Reichstag was debating what large sections of the country considered to be the Government's pusillanimity in face of British " interference." Spokesman of the militant class, which would have mobihsed the German Army and Navy to avenge Agadir, was Herr von Heydebrand, leader of the Conservative Party. The Crown Prince was in the Royal box. Von Heydebrand's stinging attack on Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg's conduct of the 66 THE CROWN PRINCE Moroccan affair went straight to the Crown Prince's heart. Ostentatiously, so that all in the crowded house might see, he applauded each belligerent indictment which fell from the lips of the little Junker who is known as the " uncrowned King of Prussia." It was an amazing demonstration and unblushing act of revolution against his father's Government. The Imperial Chancellor, replying to Von Heydebrand's thrusts, pilloried him as a warrior who carried his sword in his mouth. The retort applied equally to the Heir to the Throne ; but the Crown Prince unquestionably gave vent, how- ever tactlessly, to the sentiments gnawing at his angry country's heart, and he left the Reichstag with his hold on the popular imagination even more secure than it was before. All these varied exhibitions of courageous and high-minded initiative were expressions of a tempera- ment which the Crown Prince had manifested all his life. He was long famed in the Army for dare- devil horsemanship. He had to his credit the freak of leading his squadron of dragoons up the terraced steps of Sans Souci Palace at Potsdam, and holding high jinks with them at the crest. Arrest in quarters was the penalty, and a similar fate overtook him a couple of years later when the Kaiser heard that his heir had ridden and won a perilous steeplechase at Karlshorst, the German Newmarket. Risk and adventure make an irresistible appeal to this vigorous HohenzoUern. He sailed in a Zeppelin without asking anybody's consent, and did not tell F 3 67 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the Kaiser of an aeroplane flight with Orville Wright at Potsdam, till after he had the exhilarating experience behind him. In Ceylon and India, in the winter of 1910 — 191 1, the Crown Prince's hunts in the jungle provided ample evidence that through his veins courses the blood of a true and fearless sportsman. The zeal with which His Imperial Highness devotes himself to sport of all kinds sometimes makes his countrymen think the Crown Prince does not take his royal heritage and future responsibilities seriously. The charge has little basis of fact. Being a Hohenzollern and the son of his father, he is first of all a zealous soldier. For two years he has been immured in a provincial garrison, Danzig, far remote from Berlin and Potsdam — exiled, it has been whispered, because of the Kaiser's alleged jealousy over the Crown Prince's growing popularity — and the Death's Head Hussars have never had a more earnest commander. He has a weakness for leaves of absence, for he likes to ski and flirt and sleigh at St. Moritz, and sail his yachts at Kiel in the blithe summer time, and attend theatre in Berlin, but he regards his military profession as serious business, and has advanced through all the successive grades to his present rank of colonel, by dint of hard work and meri- torious service. His enthusiasm for sport is far remote from time-wasting. Germany needs shining examples in the realm of games and outdoor play, and the pioneer work the Crown Prince and his 68 THE CROWN PRINCE royal uncle, Prince Henry of Prussia, have done for golf, tennis, rowing, hockey, football, polo, yachting and boxing, is destined to redound to the glory of Young Germany when she meets the world in athletic combat at the Berlin Olympic Stadium in 1916. Tall and narrow-chested, conveying the impression of physical weakness and only ordinary mental calibre, the Crown Prince belies all his external character- istics. Outwardly there is nothing of the typical Hohenzollern about him. You trace his physi- ognomy in vain for indications of martial virility. Instead of the stern features of his father, accentu- ated by the upturned moustaches, the Crown Prince's face is oftenest wreathed in a boyish smile. It betokens kindliness of heart, which is one of his most highly developed characteristics. He has the Liehenswurdigkeit of his much-loved grandfather. Emperor Frederick. He is fond of music and plays the violin well. Modesty and democracy are inborn in him. Not long ago he took part in the golden wedding feast of an humble Potsdam cobbler. " The day will come," he once said, " when Social Democrats will go to Court." He dotes on violat- ing the speed limit in his 90-h.p. motor car, but he has been known to stop to pick up a peasant found prostrate on the highway and drive him to hospital. The Crown Prince's most passionate object of admiration, next to his wife and boys, is the great Napoleon. Pictures, statuettes, busts, medallions, engravings and other mementoes of the Corsican conqueror are to be seen in profusion in the Prince's 69 MEN AROUND THE KAISER study at the Marble Palace in Potsdam. The oppressor, the liberation from whose yoke a century ago all Prussia is now commemorating, and who divided up this Hohenzollern's own realm into French provinces, is said to be the Crown Prince's model of what a great leader and strong ruler ought to be. He is the idol of the German army almost to a greater degree than his father. The Kaiser's periodical panegyrics on the blessings of peace do not appeal to the military party. The Crown Prince's martial ebullitions make his brother- officers think he is much more of a man of war than William II., and it is he on whom their fondest hopes are pinned. " Who knows," a French writer once asked, " whether it may not, perhaps, be the secret dream of this young man to be a surviving and triumphant Duke of Reichstadt, and to take up the wonderful inheritance ? " In a moment of reverie during the chase in India, the Crown Prince peered ahead to the time when he will rule. He records his soliloquy in " My Hunting Diary." " I believe," he said, " in the dictum of my sainted ancestor, Frederick the Great, and agree with him that people should be allowed to pursue happiness and salvation, each in his own sweet way." The Fatherland's destinies ought to be safe in the keeping of a Supreme War Lord of such ideals. 70 IX EMIL RATHENAU " A.E.G." Wherever you go in Germany, a trio of initials is constantly hitting you in the eye and striking the ear. You encounter them in your newspaper and find them cropping up in conversa- tion. They are as ubiquitous as the Liberie, Egalit6 et Fraternite of France. Before you cease wondering whether they, too, may not be a national emblem, you learn that they are the popular form given to the name of Germany's foremost industrial under- taking, the Allgemeine Electricitats Gesellscha/t — General Electric Company. The home address of the A.E.G. is Berlin, but its interests and influence comprehend the globe. Its flag flies in Russia, France, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, South Africa, the Argentine, Uruguay, Chile and the Dutch East Indies. In its own country it is almost as much of an institution as the Army or any of the other big national establishments, with- out which Germany would not be what it is. The company is a youngster, as great businesses go. It is not the product of four generations, like Krupp's. It was founded only thirty years ago by the man who still heads it, Emil Rathenau. It 71 MEN AROUND THE KAISER began with a capital of ;f250,ooo. To-day the A. E.G. disposes over interests valued at £200,000,000, which is exactly the amount of the war indemnity Germany extorted from conquered France. Like Ballin of Hamburg, Rathenau is a Jew and utterly self-made. The three outstanding figures of Business Germany — Ballin, Thyssen and Rathenau — are types of the men with whom the new Father- land was providentially endowed at the psycho- logical moment of its crowning necessities. Bis- marck had accomplished in the creation of the Empire a political achievement of such all-embracing magnitude that there was no longer either place or occasion for great deeds of statesmanship or towering personalities to perform them. The work of conquest still to be done was essentially economic. The brains of the Grunderjahre turned naturally to business. That explains why modern Germany possesses a surplus of mercantile and industrial genius and suffers from a dearth of political talent. The giants of the post-Bismarck era were called upon to perform deeds as Trojan as the Unification. The stupendous industrial fabric they were to evolve had to be wrung from a soil comparatively barren of natural wealth. Against the bountiful resources of an America, they had to match organiz- ing skill, scientific methods, daring enterprise and grinding toil. And they had to fight for their lives against the hampering traditions of a regime steeped in bureaucracy. Emil Rathenau has probably done more than any 72 ^^•^s^^W^S^ EMIL RATHENAU other one man to precipitate Germany to the front rank industrially. He brought in the telephone and the incandescent light. He established the first electric light " plant." He blazed the way for the transmission of electric power for manufacturing purposes. He made possible the development of electric tramways. He was the pioneer of the turbine. He devised countless new uses for applied electricity and manufactured the apparatus for them. Above and before all, he originated the system of creating a demand for that which he desired to supply, and invented the principle of financing people or communities which wanted and needed what he had to give them, but lacked the ready money to buy it. He became engineer, merchant, manufacturer and banker rolled into one. It takes but a paragraph to catalogue Rathenau's achievements ; it would require an encylopaedia to record the epoch which they inaugurated. Rathenau is a born Berliner, like his father before him. He manifested early symptoms of wanderlust, and before emerging from the 'teens was an appren- tice in overalls and blouse at a machinery foundry in Silesia. There he spent four years of grimy toil, later to invest an inheritance of ;£75o in courses of training at the Polytechnical colleges of Hanover and Zurich. England was then the unchallengeable mistress of the mechanical univeise, and Rathenau's next occupation was as a volunteer draughtsman in the ship-engine building firm of Messrs. John Penn & Co., of Greenwich. He returned to Germany 73 MEN AROUND THE KAISER with his own design for a i,ooo-h.p., expan- sion engine, and presently went into business on his own account as the proprietor of a small foundry in Berlin. His plans and ambitions speedily outran his means and credit, and he eventually sold the foundry with nothing gained except an experience which was to prove the foundation of his career. He laid down for himself forthwith the principle of never engaging in an enterprise before the capital was in sight. The colossal transactions of the A.E.G. of to-day, representing annual business of over £15,000,000, are all based on the lessons of Emil Rathenau's luckless venture of callow days. He never forgave the banking fraternity for leaving his little foundry in the lurch. Nowadays he is one of the few captains of German industry who dictate terms to the financiers. It is usually the other way about. For the succeeding ten years Rathenau was practically idle. Germany was in the throes of the economic crisis which followed the Franco-Prussian War. With that almost superhuman power of divination which is his distinguishing characteristic, Rathenau realized the time was not yet ripe for launching the ambitious schemes surging and matur- ing in his restless brain. He contemplated impatiently from afar the triumphs of labour-saving machinery in the United States. He tried and failed to induce the German War Office, which wanted to reconstruct 800,000 captured French Chassepot rifles, to let him carry out the work with American machinery, which 74 EMIL RATHENAU enabled him to tender for the work at a third of the price asked by rivals. Labour-saving machinery was still excoriated in Germany as " American bluff." The virus of doing things on a colossal scale was implanted in Rathenau's system by his visit to the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876. He returned bubbling with enthusiasm over the dimensions of everything Transatlantic. He had been fascinated most of all by the telephone on public exhibition for the first time at the Centennial. It electrified his soul, as he has since epitomized his emotions. For a while he considered acquiring the right to manufacture telephone apparatus, but finally decided to apply for a franchise to furnish telephone service in Berlin. Bureaucratic opposi- tion almost shattered his plans. The Postmaster- General said a telephone exchange in Berlin would secure at the most twenty-three subscribers, but it was not long before the postal authorities were asking Rathenau to superintend the installation. Rathenau did not really strike his gait until 1881, when Edison's incandescent light was on display in Europe for the first time at the Paris Electricity Exhibition. Rathenau's intuition told him instantly that the future of illumination belonged indisputably to the little pear-shaped bulb. He determined to dedicate his energies to acquiring the light for Germany and exploiting it to the uttermost degree. In short order he formed the German Edison Company for Applied Electricity, which was to become the nucleus of the A. E.G. 75 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Thenceforth Emil Rathenau's career was a series of engineering, financial and commercial triumphs. Each outstripped its forerunner in bold- ness of conception, magnitude and success. In 1887 the Edison Company was transformed into the General Electric Company, which now undertook the manufacture of electric apparatus on a huge scale. There was not enough electric light being consumed in Berlin to suit Rathenau, so he evolved the idea of creating a demand for it. Hitherto it had been a luxury. He decided to make it a commodity. His ambition was to make it a necessity. He organized the Berlin Electricity Works, secured by municipal charter the right to use the streets for transmission of current far and wide, and proceeded to deliver electricity to the consumer at an attractive price. To-day, the Berlin Electricity Works, which controls the light and power supply of a vast metropolis, represents a £6,000,000 property. The City of Berlin, which in 1889 derived £750 annual compensation from the Rathenau franchise, now draws £300,000 a year from the same source. Rathenau, having by this time thoroughly intro- duced the Electric era, next turned his attention to tramways. The old firm of Siemens & Halske, which in the past had fairly monopolized the electrical industry, had now to reckon with a dan- gerous antagonist. Rathenau's scheme of inducing communities to build and operate their own power- plants seemed unethical to Siemens & Halske, who 76 EMIL RATHENAU entered without reluctance into an apparently inno- cent arrangement proposed by Rathenau, whereby they should enjoy non-competitive advantages in the carrying out of business which came to them voluntarily from States, cities or private individuals, while Rathenau's A. E.G. should be undisturbed in the pursuit of concessions and in their execution. Messrs. Siemens & Halske had never looked with favour on the ultra-modern tactics of the " industrial banker," who made a pernicious practice of looking for orders instead of waiting for them. It was not long before they assented to the annulment of the agreement into which they had so cheerfully entered. They found that the Rathenau principle of creating consumption was not only sound, but irresistible. Rathenau was now recognized as a sagacious and resourceful financier. The electrical industry was expanding at such a break-neck pace that he fore- saw the urgency of extraordinary methods of financ- ing it. To that end, in 1895, he founded the " Bank for Electrical Undertakings " at Zurich, which was intended to be a " holding company " on the American model. Its primary purpose was to promote electrical enterprises of all conceivable sorts and to control their operations in the interests of the A. E.G. Since then he has founded two other " holding companies," to supervise the technical management of the numerous daughter concerns which the A. E.G. has brought into existence at home and abroad. In 1902, as a count erstroke to the acquirement of the important Schuckert works 77 MEN AROUND THE KAISER at Nuremberg by Siemens & Halske, the A. E.G. took over the Union Electrical Company of Berlin. In 1910, his passion for expansion still ungratified, Rathenau annexed the electric and cable works of the great firms of Lahmayer at Frankfort and Felter-Guilleaume at Miilheim. The secret of Emil Rathenau 's success is twofold : divination and market creation. The underlying object of every undertaking he ever launched was the creation of a wider consumption of electricity. He has his eye fixed on electrification of steam railways as the next great goal of the industry. Bureaucratic old-fogeyism, his ancient foe, has again intrenched against him, but he hopes to live to dislodge it. If he could have his way, he would buy up the most important line in the country, that running between Berlin and Hamburg, and electrify it at his own expense merely to illustrate the practicability of his idea. Together with Siemens & Halske, he spent £125,000 a few years ago for the purpose of demon- strating that an electrically propelled railway carriage could travel at the rate of 125 miles an hour. Rathenau is not what is ordinarily called smart or clever. He does not understand the art of haggling. He is almost thick-headed. He has no talent whatever, and less patience, for complicated things. Nothing appeals to him which cannot be made plain enough for a child to comprehend. He has accomplished all his great strokes by reducing problems to the proportions of utter simplicity and 78 EMIL RATHENAU plausibility. When he lays a million-pound scheme before a bank or submits an electrical project to a town council, it is as transparent as his own incan- descents. He is sincere and open to the point of na'iveti. He thinks at least ten years ahead of the ordinary man. All his triumphs have been the feats of a seer. He predicted the German commercial crisis of 1901 almost to the day. The Electric King has no hobbies. He eats, sleeps, drinks and thinks business. His only interest outside of it is a generous philanthropy. No worthy appeal is ever directed to him in vain. Rathe nau is seventy-four years old and in indifferent health, but the hand on the throttle of the A. E.G. is still his. 79 X BEBEL If Germany boasted of a Parliament instead of a mere debating society, August Bebel would have a title. It is probably the only one the Red Napoleon would ever consent to wear. He would be the leader of the Kaiser's Loyal Opposition. He is that now in all but name. Social Democracy is the one potent and consistent Opposition force in German politics, it accepts the monarchy pretty much as an accom- plished, if undesirable, fact, and Bebel is the party's omnipotent Commander-in-Chief. He has just ^\Titten an autobiography. It is called " My Life." He might well have paraphrased Mr. Roosevelt and named it " My Strenuous Life," for the great old Democrat has been protesting and fighting for the better part of half a century. To-day, aged seventy-three, he is white and bent, and the doctors compel him to look after his heart, but he is still the active generalissimo of his militant army of 4,250,000 supporters — far and away the strongest political party of the realm — and his lust for battle is no less incorrigible than when first he dedicated himself to the people's cause as a stripling of twenty-one, a decade before the Empire was born. 80 > > ' > > J 5 \_Halberstadt, Havihiirg. BEBEL August Bebel is not only the leader of the Social Democratic Party. He is the Party. No other living member of the organisation was born with it, as he was, or lived through all its vicissitudes and shared in all its triumphs. The idol of his followers, he is the all-round most popular politician the Fatherland has ever known, with the sole excep- tion of Bismarck. To the German proletariat he is what the Kaiser himself is to ultra-monarchists — a demi-god. They would follow him to death and glory as faithfully as the Supreme War Lord's most devoted guards. Not so long ago the sudden removal of Bebel would have threatened the solidarity, if not the existence, of German Social Democracy. To-day, thanks to the magnificent organisation built up under his direction, the party would survive its supreme vicissitude. Its paying members number roundly 1,000,000, of whom 150,000 are women. It has nearly 5,000 local organisations scattered throughout the Empire. It publishes eighty-six daily and three weekly newspapers, with a gross circulation of 1,500,000 and advertising and subscription revenue of £800,000. Vorwarts, the great central organ of the party, goes to 170,000 subscribers daily. The party's balance- sheet for 1912 showed totals of nearly ;f 100,000, of which £45,000 was spent on campaign expenses at the previous General Election. No other party in the country disposes over such resources. The size of the Socialist war chest, the fund drawn upon for emergency purposes, nobody knows. It is the K- o 81 MEN AROUND THE KAISER one figure never revealed. But in 191 1 the sum of ;f25,ooo was added to it in one lump, which may be taken to indicate that the reserve fund runs easily into six figures, if not seven. At the election of 1912, Social Democratic candi- dates for the Reichstag polled more than one-third of the entire number of votes cast in the Empire. That does not mean that 4,250,329 German electors out of a total of 11,891,617 are subscribers to the dogmas of Karl Marx. Hundreds of thousands of Germans " voted red " because Socialism is the one positive, effective organ of protest at the disposal of German malcontents. Bebel was returned to the Reichstag \\ith 109 men at his back — fifty-eight more than he had before — because they are the only unterrified, tooth-and-nail foes of reaction, insensate mihtarism and class rule, the one voice which cries out insistently, fearlessly, implacably, against the injustices which, in the opinion of many patriotic men, are retarding the moral progress and sapping the vital resources of the German nation. One's butcher, baker, candlestick-maker, one's house porter, plumber, locksmith, even one's char- woman, and doubtless one's postman, too, are Social Democrats, as a matter of course ; but I know financiers and merchants, lawyers and doctors, who " vote red " habitually. They know, no less posi- tively than the working-folk, that when, and as often as occasion arises, August Bebel will mount the rostrum of the Reichstag and tell Bethmann Hollweg and Tirpitz and the War Office in 82 BEBEL unambiguous language, exactly what the people of Germany are saying and thinking, and what they insist upon having. Bebel's speciahty is calling spades, spades. It used to be the fashion for Ministers osten- tatiously to desert the House when a Socialist took the floor. Things are different now that more than one-quarter of the seating-space for 397 Deputies is usurped by the despised " Reds." A few weeks ago, when Socialist members were firing broadsides at the stupendous Army and Navy estimates, the Secretaries for War and the Navy remained in their places, attention personified. Providence traditionally endows great crusaders with iron constitutions, and Bebel, who began life as a journeyman turner in Saxony, was no exception to the rule. But fifty years of hand-to- hand struggle with the existing order have not left him bodily unscarred. Though his spirit is unbroken he is required to spare himself all unnecessary effort and exertion. Nowadays he flings himself rarely into the breach as his party's Parliamentary spokes- man. Oratory in the Reichstag is correspondingly mediocre. Bebel has drained the bitters of Oppo- sition to the dregs. He was battling for the right in the days when Bismarck's iron hand closed down relentlessly on " enemies of the State," and five years in prison and fortress are, as he puts it, to his credit. It was the era when German statesmen essayed to crush the Social Democratic movement by repressive laws and summary punishments. Bebel and his G» 83 MEN AROUND THE KAISER confederates were arrested and gaoled for high treason — anti-mihtaristic propaganda, incitement to public disorder, and the like — a dozen times. They were expelled from the place of their abode or from the country, harried and shadowed by the police, and excoriated by Society as revolutionaries and anarchists. Those were the days, along in the early years of the Empire, when Social Democracy polled a paltry 350,000 votes, and had nine members in the Reichstag. Meantime much water, mostly crimson of hue, has flowed beneath the bridges of the Rhine and Spree, the Moselle and the Elbe. The Social Democracy which will give August Bebel a conqueror's escort to the grave is not the Social Democracy which he, Marx, Engels, Liebknecht and Hopner founded in the early sixties. It is a twentieth-century Socialism which holds sway to-day. Republican still at heart and in principle, few traces of old-time stalwartism are any longer visible. Bebel himself has progressed. He and the other veterans continue to form the bulwark against the rising tide of Revisionism, as the moderate and modern wing of the party is known, but they have been compelled to surrender position after position to younger men like Frank, Bernstein, Heine and Siidekum, who stand for opportunism as opposed to unyielding doctrinarianism. Frank, a brilliant Jewish barrister of Mannheim, is looked upon as the inheritor of Bebel's mantle. His accession to the leadership will denote the definite passing of the old guard. 84 BEBEL I have said that Bebel has progressed. The old lion remains the incarnation of hostility to most features of the existing order, but, as regards its chief institutions — the Monarchy and the Army — he is by no means the fire-eater of earlier days. He no longer hankers to upset the throne and place the Kaiser among the unemployed. He delights in declaring that the moment the Fatherland is invaded by an aggressor, he and every other Social Democrat will shoulder his rifle with enthusiasm. His present-hour ideal is the democratisation of governmental institutions. Reform of Prussia's medieval election laws, which disfranchise the working-classes in the kingdom making up three- quarters of Germany's population, is Socialism's chief battle-cry at the moment. A German Emperor who would be satisfied with the prerogatives of the King of England could undoubtedly form a gigantic army corps from among Social Democrats, and call it His Majesty's Own. Bebel would simply reorganise the Empire in accordance with principles which recognise that modern Germany has ceased to be a military and agrarian state and become a nation of manufacturers, traders and artisans. He insists that the industrial forces, employers as well as working-men, should have that share in the control of the Empire to which their position and power entitle them. He demands that the aristo- cratic army caste and land baron gentry should relinquish the monopoly of Government which they have so long usurped. He seeks the abolition of 85 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the police regime, which holds forth in Prussia. He wants the administration of justice tobe characterised by a wider spirit of enlightenment and impartiality. Along with all these things, of course, Social Democracy, at its annual congresses, reaffirms its adherence to the traditional 'isms of the fathers — the socialised state, the establishment of a republic and the conversion of the conscription army into a national militia on the Swdss model — and re- dedicates itself to uncompromising warfare on war and armaments. But Bebel, deep down in his wise old heart, knows that these ideals, however potent for electoral agitation, are impracticable in the Germany of 1913 to the point of Utopianism, and will be for generations to come. That is why he is only apparently doctrinaire, and has become in reality a shrewd, practical politician. Bebel more than once has placed Socialist votes in the Reichstag at the Government's disposal. The Bill to grant Alsace-Lorraine a constitution could not have been passed without them. Bebel would have made a great field-marshal or General Staff chief. He imbibed organisation and discipline from the cradle, for his father was a Prussian non-commissioned officer at Cologne. German Social Democracy, being made up over- whelmingly of men who have served ^^•ith the colours and experienced the rigorous routine of barrack life, is very much of a military organisation itself. No army scheme in the world, not even the model one of Germany, excels in thoroughness and 86 BEBEL intricacy of detail the far-flung ramifications of Bebel's legions. To observe them marching to and from great open-air demonstrations on Sundays is to see the best-drilled, best-dressed and most orderly body of working-men to be found anywhere in the world. That Bebel and his fellow-strategists are no amateur Moltkes was proved on a historic occasion, when they caused the Police-President of Berlin to mobilise his entire force of 15,000 sleuths in the region of the Tiergarten, while 100,000 Socialists converged unobserved on Treptow Park, far out on the south-eastern periphery of the capital, and "demonstrated" to their hearts' content. Bebel is a born tactician, cool and calculating to a degree. The right thing occurs to him intuitively, whether leading stormy party sessions or fencing wdth the Government ana rival politicians in the Reichstag. He ranks with Prince Biilow as one of the few great orators and debaters of the day. Their forensic duels were notable Parliamentary events. Biilow trusted no other member of the Government to parry the blows of the Socialist leader. At the annual Socialist congresses, where the fight between Stalwartism and Revisionism has raged with increasing fury from year to year, Bebel's influence is always for moderation. More than once his conciliatory intervention has warded off impend- ing schism in the party's warring ranks. His power over his people is magnetic. They look upon his counsel as oracular. Bebel has been called a tyrant and a dictator. 87 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Never was there a gentler or sweeter-tempered Nero, ne\'er a stranger blend of fire, amiability and poise. He has had many private sorrows in the evening of his career. His wife, the long-time partner of his struggles, was taken from him only a year or two ago. Then his chief lieutenant, Paul Singer — Bebel used to be called the brains and Singer the fists of the party — died. Then his heart went back on him, and he had to submit to the regimen of an invalid. Dependent for years on income from books and writings, of which he has been a prolific producer, a ray of sun- shine came into his life when an unknown admirer, an ex-army officer, bequeathed to Bebel his entire fortune, aggregating £15,000 to ;f20,ooo. Eventu- ally only half of it came to him, as the testator's heirs contested the will. Fifty per cent, of what he finally got Bebel gave to the treasury of the Socialist Party. With the rest he bought a modest villa near Zurich, in order for a few weeks each summer to have a quiet retreat in which to recuperate from the heat of battle in Berlin. Bebel does not hate the Kaiser. He merely despises the profession the Kaiser adopted. He once described William II. as cin ganzer Mann (every inch a man). In the summer of 1910, after His Majesty's picturesque reaffirmation of his Divine Right at Konigsberg, I asked Bebel what he thought about it. He replied : " I can only say that the Hohenzollerns never change." 8S XI MAX REINHARDT When Herr Otto Brahm, the late Nestor of the German stage, was on a periodical still-hunt for talent in Austria one day in the early 'nineties the pupils of the School of Acting at the Vienna Con- servatorium were put through their paces for his edification. His attention was speedily riveted upon a young actor who was giving a moving im- personation of an old man. Brahm made a mental snapshot of his impressions and adjured the director of the Schatispielschule to keep an eye on the stocky stripling who had played with such appealing realism. His name was Max Reinhardt. It is to-day beside the mark to speak merely of Reinhardt's influence on the German stage. It is sheer domination he now wields. Detractors and imitators alike have failed to arrest his progress. He has marched from triumph to triumph; not only at home, but abroad. London capitulated to the sublimity of his art in Siimurun, then in The Miracle and King (Edipus. Paris, New York, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vienna, Buda- pest and Stockholm have in turn acclaimed it. The gifted Austrian of thirty-nine is the great world-figure of the twentieth-century stage. 89 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Max Reinhardt's distinguishing characteristics are energy, modesty, concentration and restless ambition. His gluttony for work approaches the superhuman. A well-knit frame of somewhat less than average height, surmounted by a leonine head and sturdy shoulders, denotes the physical power within him. Spirituality and strength of character shine forth no less eloquently from his dark grey eyes, which illuminate a smooth-shaven countenance ringed by a wealth of upstanding, blackish-brown hair with a distinct tendency to curl. To watch Reinhardt at work is to see a human dynamo in motion, but a noiseless one. He " hustles " without making a fuss about it. He is imperturbability itself. He is said not to know the art of losing his temper. His foes — Berlin is full of them — assure one that Reinhardt finds his keenest delight in remaking and mutilating the masterpieces of the immortals. His methods are beyond all question essentially revolutionary. Every piece he produces, be it comedy, farce, drama or tragedy, is approached with the firm determina- tion to obliterate the stereotyped and to stamp it with vivid individuality. He has proclaimed that the eye has equal rights in the theatre with the ear. He lives boldly up to his artistic Decalogue, especially when the old-time classics engage his attention. Then is when the blood of his critics threatens to boil over. The liberties he takes, the abandon with which he lops off whole scenes from original texts, the brazenness with which he rele- 90 ; . » » ' ' J 1 * ■) » 1 •> ' ^ J 1 1 , » 1. MAX REINHARDT gates tradition and establishes precedents, the rich- ness of his settings, make his detractors gasp and scoff. They cry that A Winter's Tale and A Mid- summer Night's Dream, as done at the Deutsches Theater, may be magnificent, but are not Shake- speare ; that Kdtchen von Heilbronn is brilhant, but not Kleist. When The Robbers is put on, the oppo- sition complain that they are regaled with Reinhardt instead of Schiller, and last season when the Deutsches Theater revived the second part of Faust, the croakers shrieked : " This is not Goethe !" Like Richard Strauss, Reinhardt waves a magic wand over abuse and turns it into encouragement. He hoists higher and higher upon his banner the heretical doctrine that the theatre is neither ex- clusively a moral nor a literary institution ; that its mission is not essentially to guide human conduct, nor to be the medium of giving expression to writings devoid of theatrical merit. " The theatre belongs to the theatre " is his motto. He has decreed that his stage shall hold the mirror up to nature re- ligiously, even mercilessly, and that his repertoire shall be as kaleidoscopic as life itself — " Where the whole scale of Fate, from the depth of its horrors to the dizziest heights of its joys, shall be played upon ; where men and women shall sob and laugh ; where colour, now dull and dismal, now bright and joyous, shall alternate ; where orchestra and chorus shall sometimes revel, sometimes mourn ; where actors shall play the tragedian to-day, to-morrow the clown." 91 MEN AROUND THE KAISER These canons make up Reinhardt's theatrical bible. Ideals and innovations are his daily bread. He never stands still. He resorted to the revolving stage because the stationary boards of the the- atrical fathers had outgrown their usefulness for his restless purposes. In conjunction with masterly scenic artists, Ernst Stern and Roller, Reinhardt evolved the secret of stage heavens and clouds of convincing naturalness. He set about to reorganise lighting schemes, and drew lavishly upon the wonders of modern electricity. He banished all make-believe from his stage-pictures. Books, doors, windows, bric-a-brac, flowers, everything, however insignifi- cant, had to be actual. " Property " counterfeits of all kinds vanished. When the action requires the reproduction of a Kaffee-Klatsch, the aroma of genuine coffee floats out over Reinhardt's footlights and makes you thirsty. Richness incomparable, wherever in place — Spartan simplicity where it belongs — were adopted as the broad general lines of his scenic policy. You come away from the Deutsches Theater and the Kammerspiele feeling always that you have communed with the real thing. Upon his players Reinhardt imposes the same relentless thoroughness. His actors and actresses are given plenty of latitude for assertion of individuality, but they understand that they are there for the play, not the play for them. He never produces pieces for the exploitation of stars. His successes are wrought from painstaking 92 MAX REINHARDT drilling of entire casts. The personal note is remorselessly subordinated to the artistic, compact whole. If Reinhardt is dominated by any one single ideal more than another, it is his theory of inti- mate contact between players and audience. He ventilated it in his first managerial venture, the Ueberbrettl, that fantastic form of theatrical enter- tainment which marked the birth of the new century in Germany. Stimurun, the Oriental pantomine of exquisite beauty, The Miracle, the colossal "wordless play" which fascinated England, and King (Edipus were all in the line of logical development of Reinhardt 's intimacy ideal — the placing of the play and players at the very feet of their audience, in order that spectators may become an integral part and parcel of the performance, living its joys, enduring its horrors, utterly wrapped up in what is going on round about them. Reinhardt would restore the drama in other words to the ancient Grecian environment, which is the mainspring of another of his cherished ideals — the creation of what he expressively calls The Theatre of the Five Thousand. When he is able to produce Euripides and Sophocles and Shakespeare and Schiller with casts of 2,000 in the literal midst of an audience of 5,000, or even 10,000 — the " intimacy " idea exploited to the w-th degree — Reinhardt will have approached the zenith of his ambition. A monu- mental production of Julius CcBsar, which is now in 93 MEN AROUND THE KAISER rehearsal, is to inaugurate this most gigantic of all Reinhardtian conceptions. Reinhardt began his career as an actor-manager at the Kleines Theater in Berlin, and achieved an initial triumph in Strindberg's Drunkenness. About this time a German production of Oscar Wilde's Salome was wrecked by the Censor. Reinhardt produced it privately, himself playing a pious Jewish mendicant. Salome was an artistic hit. Richard Strauss was inspired by it to write his opera of the same name. Salome, later relinquished for public performance, established Wilde in German favour. Having popularised Strindberg the Swede, Wilde the Englishman, and Frank Wedekind, a young German of their intellectual ilk, Reinhardt now took up Maxim Gorki, the poet of Russian revolution. Gorki's Night Asylum crowned Rein- hardt's reputation not only as a producer, but as a player, for his representation of the venerable pilgrim Luka was an epoch-making characterisation. Night Asylum achieved a German record of 500 per- formances. Then Reinhardt took a second and still larger establishment, the Neues Theater, where he scored heavily with a scintillating production of Maeterlinck's Pelleas and Melisande, and later with the most beautiful version of A Midsummer Night's Dream ever seen on any stage. Bernard Shaw's fame had now crossed the Channel, and Reinhardt's thirst for novelties led him to introduce Arms and the Man and Candida, both successfully. When the Deutsches Theater, where Reinhardt 94 MAX REINHARDT had begun his career less than twelve years previously, was looking for a new master in 1905, the choice fell naturally upon Reinhardt. In the autumn of that year he took formal possession of the famous playhouse in the Schumann-strasse, where he now reigns supreme. One of his introductory productions there was The Merchant of Venice, which revealed afresh his resourcefulness as a stage wizard. Germany, which considers Shakespeare, to quote a piquant epigram of Sir Herbert Tree, a literary Heligoland, had seen many " Merchants," but none to match the beauties of Reinhardt's pastelles and portraits, and the glorious fidelity to detail with which he caparisoned each and every scene, Presently Reinhardt inaugurated his latest idea, the theatre intime. For it he built the Kammerspiele, next door to the Deutsches Theater. He meant it to be dedicated exclusively to literary hors d'ceuvres. It has only 300 seats — deep, upholstered arm- chairs. Its walls are of red mahogany, and its aisles richly carpeted with rugs — a temple where the select few bent upon quiet enjoyment of a theatrical morsel may devour it in immediate proxim- ity of the players and amid charming privacy. The Kammerspiele, before its conversion into a theatre, had been a midinettes' dance-hall, and Reinhardt's detractors, with heavy irony, ridiculed the notion of a temple of art on a spot enshrined with the traditions of Emberg's ; but Ibsen's Ghosts, with which Reinhardt dedicated the Kammerspiele, was an instantaneous success, and the little play- 95 MEN AROUND THE KAISER house's foundation was vindicated in a night. Then followed in rapid succession more " intimate " pro- ductions which the pecuharly secluded atmosphere made both possible and plausible — Frank Wedekind's Awakening of Spring, an inexpressibly bold grapple with the sexual problem, which Fraulein Camilla Eibenschiitz endowed with a poetically realistic creation, and Maeterhnck's Aglavaine and Selysette, to mention the most daring of many. Reinhardt is a behever in youth. He has had little to do with finished players. He prefers to catch them young and infuse them with his own ideals. He educates eight young people, gifted with extraordinary talent, free of charge every year at the Deutsches Theater. His collaborators are a staff of young field-marshals, whose loyalty and devotion another Napoleon might have envied. Stern, the alchemist who designs costumes and decorations of surpassing beauty ; Hollander, Gers- dorff, Kahane, Held, Winterstein, and Ordynski — a talented Austrian Pole, who is Reinhardt's minister for foreign affairs — are all men still on the sunny side of the philosophic age. And there is Edmund Reinhardt, the professor's brother, as much a genius at the administrative and business end of the theatrical profession as Max is in the domain of art. They form a matchless combination, these poets, playwrights, stage managers and advisers of Reinhardt, who would be himself the first to say that they, not he, are the real architects of his greatness. 96 MAX REINHARDT Reinhardt is one of the world's busy men who finds time for a full and ideal home life. His wife is a gifted actress, who plays under the stage name of Else Heims, and they have two bonny boys to whom father and mother are passionately attached. Reinhardt's home in the Kupfergraben in Berlin breathes the artist in every nook and corner, revealing a strong predilection for antiques in porcelain, bronze and oils. He is a hard smoker, a good Jew, and the affectionate son of a widowed mother. He takes his vacations in the Bavarian Tyrol, and his hobbies are swimming and reading. He is approachable and affable, and if you are calhng at the Deutsches Theater for the first time, look for the most unassuming and best-humoured man on the premises, and it will be Max Reinhardt. K. H 97 XII VON HEYDEBRAND Each recurring February Berlin is invaded by a host of florid-faced giants, wearing jaunty Tyrolean hats and whiskers redolent of the soil, who transform the throbbing capital into a bucohc metropolis. They are the masters of Germany, these sturdy emissaries of the Empire's landowning and agri- cultural interests, assembled in annual conclave to review their mighty cohorts, and proclaim afresh the paramountcy of Agrarianism in shaping the destiny of the Fatherland. That is the aim and end of the yearly pow-wow of the Bund der Landwirte. Originally instituted as a parliament for the discussion of purely farming questions, the " w^eek " has become a political event of the first magnitude. Its raison d'etre is to hammer home the iron fact that, although Agrarians represent only 28-6 per cent, of the population, the reins of government are firmly in their grasp. It is not an inspiring spectacle, this yearly feast of gloating over Minority Rule. It calls forth violent protest from the downtrodden majority, and fervid demands for liberation from Agrarian tyranny. As yet no Samson has arisen capable of breaking the power of the agricultural 98 > ' > > .,•>;'' "^ [£". Bieber, Berlin. Hofphotog raph ] fi/ A A VON HEYDEBRAND autocracy. Finance, commerce and industry, in consequence of the Government's surrender to Agrarian dictation on the occasion of the Finance Reform Bill in 1909, organised the Hansa League as a bulwark against the unceasing encroachments of the Farmers' Alliance, but the Junkers still sit enthroned. It is small wonder that Dr. Ernst von Heydebrand, the leader of the Agrarian element, whose political label is Conservative, is known as the Uncrowned King of Prussia. Though its numerical strength neither in the Imperial Parliament nor the Prussian Diet is formidable, Conservatism's influence on Government is paramount. Chancellors challenge it at their peril. Billow risked it and perished. Beth- mann Hollweg trembles when Jove Heydebrand frowns. The Kaiser himself is constrained to consort publicly and ostentatiously with the Biind- ler. In recent years he has made it a practice to attend their annual congress in Berlin and, describing himself as one of them, participates actively in their deliberations. A speech from the Throne once expressed the Royal will to reform Prussia's archaic electoral laws. Heydebrand said no, and the three-class voting system remains, a travesty on Government conducted under a Constitution. Heydebrand, like many German politicians, is a member of both the Prussian Diet and the Reich- stag. He leads the Conservative forces in both Houses. Individually almost the most powerful H 2 99 MEN AROUND THE KAISER man in German politics, he is physically the most diminutive. He stands barely five feet in height, and when slouching in his seat, hands imbedded deep in his trousers pockets — his favourite attitude in repose — he is almost hidden by the portfoHo of papers which adorns his desk. In conversation with the elongated Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg he looks almost a dwarf. Von Heydebrand's whole bearing is in keeping with his exterior, unpretentious to a degree. A faithful attendant of sessions in a House which must frequently adjourn for lack of a quorum, he rarely intrudes himself on the Reichstag's attention. Listening and thinking are his forte. A forceful orator and debater, he speaks only on extraordinary occasions. When his appearance is known of in advance, both House and galleries fill up. Von Heydebrand, as becomes a King, is unac- quainted with fear, and hits straight from the shoulder when he has something to say. Although Conservatism and Government are boon com- panions and traditional bedfellows in Germany, the party takes the powers that be unhesitatingly to task when necessity demands. Von Heydebrand is the man who applies the lash on these occasions. He seems to expand to the stature of a grenadier as he advances to the fray, and you cease to wonder that words of such power and invective of such incisiveness can spring from so demure and minute a figure. Germany will not soon forget the castiga- tion he administered to the Government in November JOG VON HEYDEBR AND:," 191 1, after the full dimensions of the Morocco fiasco were apparent. In terms of crushing censure Heydebrand assailed Dr. von Bethmann Holl- weg and Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter for having rattled the sabre at Agadir, only ignominiously to sheathe it in craven fear of perfidious Albion. He recalled the glories of Prussia, and reminded the Government that Germans had fought best when they fought alone and against a world in arms. He demanded to know the why and wherefore of the Empire's colossal armaments on land and sea if the Fatherland were to retreat at a critical moment. A young ofiicer in the uniform of the Death's Head Hussars sat in the Royal box of the House, hanging intently on each rasping word that fell from the little Conservative leader's scolding lips. It was the Crown Prince. When Heydebrand finished, the future Kaiser joined spontaneously in the thunder of applause which rolled over the entire House. A Jingo harangue of purest essence, it yet epitomised outraged German public sentiment beyond the shadow of a doubt. Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg's subsequent rebuke of the Uncrowned King as a man " who carries his sword in his mouth " failed to obliterate the impression Heydebrand's impassioned outburst made upon the country. The forces which this Napoleonic personahty commands attained power after the disappearance of Bismarck, who governed principally with the aid of mobile National Liberal majorities. The so-caUed Caprivi era, that of the second Chancellorship, lOI MEN AROUND THE KAISER gave Agrarianism its chance. Count Caprivi, the soldier-statesman, had effected a series of long-term commercial treaties with Germany's neighbours, deliberately favouring the country's then budding industry at the expense of agriculture. He bartered low rates on Russian wheat, Austrian rye, Danish meats and dairy products and Hungarian barley for preferential duties on German manufactures. His treaties were the logical expression of Germany's conversion from an agricultural into an industrial State, Endless warfare between Agrarianism and business ensued. To annihilate the Caprivi treaties at their expiration in 1902 and substitute pacts of genuinely Agrarian flavour became the consuming ambition of the land barons of East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Silesia and Bran- denburg. Prince Billow was to be made to atone for the treachery of Count Caprivi. Atone he did. He donned the Junker yoke publicly at a banquet, at which he declared that his fondest wish was for an epitaph reading : " I was an Agrarian Chancellor." In 1902, under his auspices, an Agrarian tariff was enacted by the Reichstag. On its basis new treaties were concluded which betrayed German industry relentlessly in order that grain, cattle and dairy products might benefit. The position conquered by German industry abroad under Caprivian conditions was almost demolished. Pioneering work of twelve years had to be com- menced all over again. That German exports, almost exclusively of manufactured origin, amount 102 VON HEYDEBRAND to-day to £450,000,000 per annum, is no fault of Herr von Heydebrand and the self-centred patriots whose version of the national anthem is : " Unser Konig absolut, Wenn er unseren Willen tut ! " (We are for an absolutist King, provided he does our will !) Throne and monarchy have always been ear- marked by the Junkers of Prussia as their particular watch and ward. Their bosoms swell several degrees more expansively than the chests of ordinary Germans when the talk is of loyalty to the King. They are the self-appointed guardians of the orthodox creed. The emblem of their official news- paper is a cross wreathed by a motto proclaiming Conservatism's partnership with Deity. Govern- ment, the Army, diplomacy — all the great services of the State except the Navy, where proved efficiency is still the requirement — are practically the monopoly of Conservative Vons. A Simon Pure Agrarian like Heydebrand eats a Socialist alive every morning for breakfast. He frequently makes a dessert of a merchant or a banker. He shares unqualifiedly the Hohenzollerns' behef that they rule by right Divine. Herr von Oldenburg, a paladin of Heydebrand, once gave expression to the typically Agrarian theory that the Kaiser ought to have authority to order " a lieutenant and ten men " to close up the Reichstag any time it grew refractory. When the rest of the country was lampooning Emperor William for his loquacious 103 MEN AROUND THE KAISER confidences to the Daily Telegraph, his only defenders were the land-barons, who are reared in the rehgion that Prussia's King can do no harm. Von Hey de- brand's plaidoyer on behalf of the Kaiser was one of the most striking public utterances of contemporary German history. Likewise, it was the death warrant of Prince Billow. When the Conservative generalissimo is not at work in Berlin, he leads the life of a retired country gentleman at his splendid estate of Klein- Tschunkawe in Silesia. His abode is a rambling, ivy-covered building reconstructed to resemble a feudal castle. Before its portal is a modest monu- ment, an eagle rampant on a sphere of rock, erected in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the family's ownership of Klein-Tschunkawe. The walls of the castle are hung with trophies of the chase, for the lord of the manor, like every German Gutsherr, is a passionate hunter. Throughout the simply furnished house are canvasses of earher members of the Heydebrand dynasty. Restfulness is the dominant note. It is the retreat of a man who returns from the fray eager for the repose of home. Though politics are his forte, pigs and horses and rye-fields are Heydebrand's hobbies, and his friends assert he is far happier running his farm than bossing the Government. Dr. Heydebrand's strength — his full name is Von Heydebrand und der Lasa — is essentially the power of personality. He is not imperious by nature, nor greedy for domination. A barrister by 104 VON HEYDEBRAND profession, he has been in public Hfe for twenty-five years, and was sixty-three years old on his last birthday. Sprung from the soil which has produced Prussia's greatest rulers, warriors and statesmen, he is of the class which regards itself ordained to sway the destinies of Imperial Germany, Bismarck was one of its products, and the career of Heydebrand bears witness that the Agrarians of to-day are men of blood and iron, too. 105 XlII RICHARD STRAUSS Seekers of sidelights on Richard Strauss, the man as distinguished from the musician — on the purely human in him — stumble first and invariably on anecdotes of his parsimony. However niggardly Strauss may be in matters of money, there is nothing stingy about him when it comes to noise. In production of tonal volume he is lavishness per- sonified. He has made the cyclonic diapasons of Wagner seem like whispers, and has out-thundered Thor. In the storm and stress period which followed the humbling of France, when New Germany was more interested in the production of dividends than music, Apollo had no exponents of the first magnitude. With the death of Wagner in 1883 there was destined to be a long interval before German music should again give forth a genius in the person of another Richard. Perhaps the psychology of Strauss' noise lies in his conviction that after so prolonged a period of obliteration, it was necessary for artistic Germany to affirm its musi- cal reincarnation in no uncertain tones. At any rate, when Don Quixote, Hcldenlebcn, Till Eulenspiegel, and the Symphonia Domestica burst upon the world, it 106 5 til [DuhrkooJ), Berlin. J) (f > . ' . » . ». > \ .' ' > , > I 'i » ' > > AUGUST SCHERL have journals which pubHsh more than 160,000 copies a day. Latest Intelligence is not yet as common a commodity as in London^ New York and Paris, but the make-up of the modern German daily is vastly different from the dreary and newsless columns of olden times. Two or three compare favourably in all respects with the " livest " of their metropolitan confreres abroad. For the revolution worked in German journalism one man is primarily responsible, August Scherl, founder and proprietor of the Berliner Lokal- Anzeiger. Scherl, the son of a Diisseldorf book- dealer, arrived in Berlin penniless, but rich in ideas in the early 'eighties. By 1890 he had completely reformed German newspaper standards. He humanised journalism. He thought and proved that the time had come to give the public more news and less views. He found the post too slow for newspaper purposes, and proceeded to harness to them the cable, the telegraph and the telephone. The first daily issue of the Lokal-Anzeiger, which began as a weekly two years previous, burst upon Berlin in August, 1885. It was hailed as "scandalously sensational," and was nicknamed Skandal-Anzeiger . The burghers who had been raised on a newspaper diet of Schopenhauer, Kant and Treitschke rubbed their eyes and shook their heads. They were shocked to find themselves in twenty-four hour, instead of weekly or fortnightly, touch with the great world outside BerHn and beyond Germany. A new era had obviously dawned. 125 MEN AROUND THE KAISER The Lokal-Anzeiger found a "clientele ready-made for it. Its novel political policy — none at all — won instantaneous favour. The pubUc was waiting for a paper which specialised in news and purveyed it, regardless of the stilted and partisan 'isms which hitherto had permeated the columns of the German press. Scherl was doing for Germany what the Bennetts and the Pulitzers were doing for America, and what the Harmsworths were about to do for England. Not only was Scherl 's conception of what a news- paper ought to contain radically at variance with traditions, but he invented the idea of bringing the paper to the reader instead of waiting to have it asked for. Circulation-seeking had been as far beneath the dignity of the German fourth estate as news. Scherl went gunning for subscribers and got them. He organised the first modern system of newspaper-delivery, employing for the purpose women, who are still the " newsboys " of the Father- land. He established neighbourhood branch offices far and wide, in order to lay papers at subscribers' doors with all possible dispatch. He printed special editions during the twenty-four hours preceding the appearance of next morning's paper, and astonished a community unaccustomed to getting anything for nothing by giving away " extras." He added a supplement to the Lokal-Anzeiger, contain- ing help-wanted advertisements, and distributed it gratis in the working-class districts. Separate sheets dealing with news exclusively of interest to 126 AUGUST SCHERL particular sections of Berlin and the suburbs were folded into the regular edition of the Lokal-Anzeiger. A dispatch bureau was opened in Unter den Linden for the display of world-news from hour to hour. Scherl's innovations seemed to know no limits. It was small wonder that the Lokal-Anzeiger s family of readers grew by leaps. People continued to read Aunt Voss, as the classical Vossische Zeitung was known, and the Kreuz Zeitung, the Conserva- tive thunderer, for literature, metaphysics and philosophy, but they took the Lokal-Anzeiger for news. In 1889, four years after its establishment, the Lokal-Anzeiger found it necessary to convert its daily into morning and evening editions, which Scherl, now the recognised Napoleon of the craft, offered to subscribers at the rate of a shilling a month, inclusive of a special Sunday edition. With the appearance of the twice-a-day paper, its news service was expanded afresh. Scherl had long been spending money freely on news gathering. He discovered that 100 marks invested in Latest Intelligence produced better results for him and vastly more interest for his readers than heavy literature dealing with high politics or the higher criticism. He appointed correspondents in all the German towns and cities. He sent representatives of his own to foreign capitals, and cautioned them to spend money on telegraphing news. The special correspondent, an old institution abroad, was practically unknown in Germany. The Cologne 127 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Gazette, the Frankfurter Zeitung, and one or two others had had " specials " at the Franco-German War, but Scherl was the first to reahse that the pubhc had interest in events less catastrophic than war, and dispatched special correspondents broad- cast to report earthquakes, floods, revolutions, political crises, historic functions of State, royal pilgrimages and other world-happenings which to-day are as exhaustively " covered " as used to be the sleepy meetings of the Potsdam town council. Nowadays Lokal-Anzeiger " specials " rush to the farthermost corners of the earth in quest of news. The ablest of them, Otto von Gottberg, has not missed an event of international magnitude in fifteen years. Along with modernisation of news gathering and news vending, Scherl resorted to up-to-date methods in the mechanical department of newspaper pro- duction. The Lokal-Anzeiger was the first German paper to banish hand typesetting and instal linotypes. Scherl introduced newspaper-photo- graphy in his country, and duplicated the success of the Lokal-Anzeiger as a daily with an illustrated weekly. Die Woche, which is still the leading periodical of its class. Then he launched a picture daily, Der Tag, which spread far and wide the fame of the two-colour printing process invented in Germany. Year after year Scherl brought out new publications till he had exploited almost every important field of human activity. To-day he owns five dailies and a dozen weeklies, the latter 128 AUGUST SCHERL including the chief illustrated sporting weekly, Sport in Bild, and Gartenlauhe, the most widely read family periodical, with a colossal circulation. Scherl branch offices are scattered all over the Empire. There are forty-two in Greater Berlin and 250 in the provinces. The Scherl publications, which since 1894 have been the nominal property of a limited company, also include the city directories of Berlin and a dozen other cities. Their home is an enor- mous complex of buildings in the heart of BerUn's business district and the working staff exceeds 5,000 men and women. Herr Scherl is a unique mixture of the sentimental and practical. He has made a huge fortune from his properties, but almost every one of them, beginning with the epoch-making Lokal-Anzeiger , has sprung from an idealistic desire to make the lot of the masses happier and easier. It was from such motives that he founded his popular circulating library, evolved a new system of people's savings banks, advocated communal theatres for the pro- letariat, and launched an ambitious project for rapid transit in cities by means of the monorail, in which he is an enthusiastic believer, as he demon- strated by acquiring the patents for the best system extant. He was one of the pioneers of airmanship in Germany, and organised " flying weeks " in the early days, to educate his countrymen to the importance of the aeroplane. Actively identified as August Scherl has been with the development of modern Germany, there are K. K 129 MEN AROUND THE KAISER probably not a hundred men who know him by sight. Society sees him not at all. He is, in fact, a hermit. He is harder to get to than the Kaiser. Field- Marshal von Waldersee, fresh from the glories of the China campaign in 1900, tried for four weeks to meet the Newspaper King and failed. In recent years Scherl has directed most of the affairs of his vast enterprise from the study of his private dwelling, which is closed hermetically to everybody but private secretaries. Yet no detail of his vast business escapes him. He is still the great producer of ideas for it, and holds all the various reins of its activities in his own resourceful hands. The flashes of genius and enterprise which periodically emanate from Zimmer-strasse, Berlin's Fleet Street, originate with him. He usually thinks and sees months and miles ahead of rival pubhshers. Of course, he has many imitators and worthy competitors now, whom he has forced to spend money and invent novelties, in order to keep the pace he has set them. The Berliner TagehlaU, under the brilliant editorship of Theodor Wolff, is probably the best all-round newspaper in Germany, and Messrs. Ullstein, of Berlin, are in many respects the most progressive newspaper publishers. The Lokal-Anzeiger no longer has the field to itself, but Scherl blazed the way for the successes and fortunes of all the rest. He is sixty-three years old, and still in the prime. English and American readers have long seen the Lokal-Anzeiger described as semi-ofhcial. No other 130 AUGUST SCHERL newspaper is in closer confidential relationship to the powers that be than the leading Scherl organ. The Court and the Government recognise the power inherent in a popular daily of immense circulation, and regularly use the Lokal-Anzeiger for " inspired" news and views, in preference to the North German Gazette, the official mouthpiece and denial machine. ScherFs hobby is the birds. Periodically during the year an appealing line in bold-faced type stares Berliners in the face at a dozen points in their Lokal-Anzeiger. It runs, " Remember the Birds." Scherl once robbed a bird's-nest. Remorse over his youthful pranks haunted him in early man- hood, and he resolved to make the welfare of the birds a feature of his life-work. One of the many Scherl stories has it that he takes keen delight now and then in buying out the entire stock of an aviary and setting the caged creatures free in the sunny Tiergarten. Few of the men around the Kaiser have done more in the making of Modern Germany than the bird-lover of the Zimmer-strasse, whose name has become a household word everywhere where his language is read and spoken. K2 131 XVI PRINCE VON BUELOW Prince Bernhard von Buelow, fourth Chan- cellor of the German Empire, relinquished office on July 14th, 1909, but the actual date of his political demise was November 17th, 1908. It was on that day that he undertook his fateful journey to Potsdam in the midst of the " Kaiser Crisis " provoked by the Daily Telegraph interview, to extort from his Imperial master a pledge of " greater reserve " in the discussion and conduct of the nation's affairs. The Imperial Gazette proclaimed that the Kaiser had assured the man with the muzzle of his " con- tinued confidence," but Buelow actually lay in extremis from the moment he quit his chastened Sovereign's presence. His early disappearance from the place he had adorned for ten years became a foregone conclusion. Throughout his long career the goddess of fortune lavished her capricious smiles on Buelow so faith- fully that he came to be known as Bernhard the Lucky. His rise in the diplomatic service from an humble attacheship to the Foreign Secretaryship, the warm favour of the Kaiser, his extended tenure of the Imperial Chancellorship, his successive elevations 132 » 5 PRINCE VON BUELOW to the rank of Count and Prince, his ParHamentary triumphs, his feat in arresting the rising tide of Social Democracy, his inheritance of a great fortune — all these episodes were hailed by compatriots as evidence that Buelow led a charmed life, and that the pitfalls which ordinarily bring statesmen to earth were but stepping stones for him. Though the " November storm " undid him, fortune's favourite was not to be left in the lurch ; he was vouchsafed an exit from political life which historians will not place to his discredit. Germany's chaotic Imperial finances were to be " reformed " by the imposition of £25,000,000 of fresh taxes to meet the deficits resultant from the Dreadnought era. Prince Buelow insisted that the great landed classes should bear their share of the burden, and proposed an Inheritance Tax as the fairest means of assessing them. The Agrarian aristocracy, the self-anointed guardians of Throne, conscience and patriotism in Prussia-Germany, revolted against the Chancellor's designs on the revenue of Junkers yet unborn. Moreover, Buelow's " treason " to the Kaiser rankled in their monarchial bosoms. Secretly and gnawingly the Conservatives were awaiting their chance to send the Chancellor to the guillotine. The Finance Reform Bill was their opportunity. Locking arms with the Roman Cathohc Centre, against which Buelow had governed precariously since the previous general election, rebellious Blue combined with revengeful Black against the Inheritance Tax, on which the Chancellor MEN AROUND THE KAISER had formally staked his official existence. Unavail- ing was the impressive Swan Song he delivered from his familiar place at the corner of the Govern- ment bench. " My own position," he assured the Reichstag, " is entirely secondary to the prompt adoption of the Finance Reform scheme. If I should be convinced that my person stands in the way, that somebody else can reach the goal more easily, or if things should develop so that I could not, or would not, any longer co-operate, I shall be able to induce the Emperor to see that my retirement is opportune. I hope my successor may do his duty to the Empire as loyally and honourably as I have tried to do." Resignation in more senses than one rang clarion from this simple manifesto. The Inheritance Tax was defeated. Refusing to identify himself with a Finance Reform which shouldered disproportionate burdens on the masses, Buelow asked the Kaiser for his discharge. Of the Sovereign who had been not only master, but comrade, and had surfeited him with the highest honours within his majestic gift, Buelow took leave under unconventional circum- stances in the garden of Berlin Schloss on a mid- summer day, while the gaping populace looked on from across the placid Spree. As the Chancellor, grave of countenance and bearing a huge white envelope containing his resignation, entered, the Kaiser advanced to meet him, shook hands cordially, and, Unking his right arm with the Prince's left, walked up and down the terrace, conversing 134 PRINCE VON BUELOW animatedly for the matter of twenty minutes. Now and then the Emperor punctuated his discourse with characteristic gestures with the clenched fist. When the walk and talk were ended, the Kaiser embraced his old-time friend and counsellor, wrung his hand warmly in farewell grasp, and escorted him to the gate. Chancellors before and since Buelow have been defeated in the Reichstag and survived, proud Bismarck among them. Germany has a ParHament, but no Parliamentary government. There was neither law nor tradition compelling Buelow to respond to the miscarriage of the Inheritance Tax with his resignation. Reahsing that his status with the Kaiser was irreparably shattered, Buelow simply seized upon a casual Reichstag vote of mistrust as a providential parachute to obHvion. His going is officially indexed in German political history under the rubric of Finance Reform. Actually it was born of the implacabiUty of monarchs and men unforgiving both of muzzles and muzzlers. Buelow was not infalHble; yet Simplicissimus' recent jest — " Bernhard, come back ! All is for- given ! " — ^like so much of the wisdom of the German Punch, is unquestionably expressive of prevailing pubhc opinion of the fourth Chancellor and his works. He has been almost greater in retirement than in office. He has preserved a silence which might make the Sphinxes blush. Efforts to draw him on the questions which agitate Germany and Europe prove as abortive as if addressed to a mute. ^35 MEN AROUND THE KAISER He once reminded Mr. Chamberlain that people who cast aspersions on the honour and the humanity of the German Army were biting on granite. Equally impressionless are appeals to Buelow to emerge from the retirement he has imposed upon himself, and unburden his heart on the topics of the day. Whether amid the soHtude of the Roman villa where, with his accomplished Italian wife, formerly the Princess Maria Camporeale, he lives for six months of the year, or at his German country home at Klein-Flottbeck, near Hamburg, or alongside the billows of the North Sea at Nordeney, where he spends his summers, Buelow's lips are hermeti- cally sealed. If he cherishes resentment against any living man, or has a view on any topic of past, present or future importance for his fellow-men, or a thought beyond the dimensions of a meteorological pleasantry, he has kept it magnificently to himself. Two of his predecessors did their talking out of school in memoirs. Bismarck's best ones, those which tell of his dismissal, are still locked up in the Bank of England, to be kept till the last person therein mentioned is no more. Buelow's recollections are stored in the strong-box of his soul. They will make fascinating reading if he, too, some day, like his immortal precursor, is moved to deal with the last phase. Prince Buelow is remembered best by those who know him as the most urbane of men. He is by far the most worldly of contemporary German statesmen. He has the Parliamentary manner, 136 PRINCE VON BUELOW and would be equally at home as Premier or Leader of the Opposition in a country where truly repre- sentative Government prevails. There is none of the narrow-mindedness of the typical German pohtician in his make-up. At the Wilhelmstrasse he was at ease alike with ambassadors of great powers and wirepullers of domestic parties. He is what Lord Morley, speaking of Disraeli, called a master of the tedious art of managing men. Suavity itself, nothing ever ruffled him. He turned the most violent attacks in the Reichstag from a Bebel or an Erzberger into victory by a shrewd retort or timely witticism. He is one of the few real orators of a race which talks much but not well. To hear his dialectics, richly seasoned with quotations which he habitually affected, was not always to hear a straightforward presentation of a given issue, or one that went directly to the point, but it was a treat to an ear which delights in graceful language, repartee, imagery and rhetorical gymnastics. He seldom took his seat without scoring a triumph. And like Mr. Balfour, he caressed the lapels of his frock-coat when on his feet. By the same arts he employed to tame the Reichstag, he won an extraordinarily secure place in the confidence and affection of the Kaiser. " My Bernhard," the Emperor used to call him. No man better understood the psychology of WilUam H. It is related that Buelow used to secure the Imperial assent on occasion between jokes, 137 MEN AROUND THE KAISER which he told surpassingly well. He was a great believer in the efficacy of cooking as an asset in dealing with German politicians, and is said to have overcome the opposition of a certain pompous M.P., who still leads a forlorn hope known as National Miserables, by inviting him to good dinners. Prince Buelow, now sixty-four, traces his ancestry back to the twelfth century. For generations his family has been conspicuously identified with war, religion, diplomacy, politics, literature, music, arts and all the other great movements of Prussia and Germany. Prior to coming to Berlin as Foreign Secretary in 1896, Buelow had a unique international experience at Germany's legations and embassies at St. Petersburg, Paris, Rome and Bucharest. An aristocrat in bearing, tall, broad-browed and erect, with a ruddy face embellished with a white moustache of military cut, and surmounted by snowy hair punctiliously parted in the middle, Prince Buelow is a soldierly and handsome figure. One is not within the orbit of his charm a second before one realises the presence of a cultured gentle- man and sincere host. He must have won many a diplomatic bout with his smile. The Kaiser raised Buelow to the dignity of a Prince of Prussia in June, 1905, on the day Germany accomplished the downfall of M. Delcasse from the French Foreign Ofhce. To his gifted Chancellor, William II. gave chief credit for the deepest humilia- tion put upon France since Sedan. The Morocco campaign, which had been initiated a few months 138 PRINCE VON BUELOW previous by the Kaiser's dramatic visit to Tangier, began under Buelow's regime, but was not essentially of his making. It originated with that unseen autocrat of German diplomacy, the late Baron von Holstein. It may safely be assumed that the Sage of Villa Malta did not covet the laurels Germany eventually reaped in Morocco. Buelow never thoroughly understood England and the EngUsh character. Anglo-German tension developed during his Chancellorship, though it is fair to remember that he inherited the Foreign Secretaryship after the Kruger telegram. He re- jected Mr. Chamberlain's famous overtures for an Anglo-German-American Alliance, and never particularly exerted himself to bring about a relaxation of the strained relations which still constitute the bogey of the European situation. He was, however, no armaments zealot. On the question of unceasing naval expansion he was dragged along by his more forceful colleague. Admiral von Tirpitz. Buelow recognised the danger of piling up armaments. "They can have but one result," he declared once in the Reichstag. ' ' Pressure — counter-pressure — explosion." Bernhard the Lucky he remained to the last. Even as a prophet, his very last role in politics, he called the right colour. In a parting interview with a Hamburg newspaper, his final public utterance, he warned the Black and Blue alliance which drove him from office that " We shall meet again at Philippi." He adjured them they had but unloosed 139 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the red flood. When the votes were counted at the succeeding general election Social Democracy rose from the impotent half-hundred seats in the Reichstag, to which Buelow had reduced them five years previous, to an imposing no and the stature of the strongest party in Parhament and in the country. German traditions and precedents preclude such a possibility, but if Prince Buelow were to be re- summoned to the bridge, many would call, not him, but Germany lucky. 140 XVII ADMIRAL VON KOESTER In the early days of March, 1909, a phenomenon unprecedented in the world's Parliamentary history took place in the Reichstag. German Naval estimates aggregating roundly £20,000,000, the heaviest on record, were passed without a dissenting voice or syllable of debate. Funds for the laying down of three super-Dreadnoughts, a battle-cruiser and a complementary squadron of smaller cruisers, torpedo-boats and submarines, and for the fixed charges of naval upkeep, were voted without a murmur of disapproval or discussion. It suggests a fascinating psychological study to examine the causes which induce tax-burdened Germany, already saddled with a colossal Army budget, which amounts for 1913 to ;f 100,000,000, to shoulder uncomplainingly naval expenditure, which has risen from ;f6,ooo,ooo in 1898 to £23,350,000 in 1913. The explanation is not far to seek. In the amazing propaganda carried on by the German Navy League lies the secret of the conversion of the nation once known as the land of thinkers and poets into a race of naval enthusiasts. It is the Navy League — no mere pusillanimous coterie 141 MEN AROUND THE KAISER of armchair admirals who adopt resolutions and banquet annually, but a militant phalanx of a milhon practical patriots — which has driven the doctrine of sea power so deep into the German marrow that it has become a religion. Such crusades in all ages have had outstanding generalissimos. Admiral von Koester, the Grand Old Man of the German Fleet, is the personality which has made the Navy League pulsate with life and fruitful energy. A sailor for fifty years, with the highest honours of the service to his credit, he became its president six years ago at a critical juncture. Fanatical methods of a predecessor in office had brought the organisation to the brink of disintegration. The Imperial Admiralty was face to face with a calamity. The break-up of the Navy League threatened danger to the whole future of German naval policy. Koester had just relinquished the commandership-in-chief of the High Seas Fleet with the rank of grand-admiral, which corresponds to the highest rank in the Army, that of a field marshal. Though the privileges and emoluments of the retired list were his due, he much preferred to remain at work. No field of usefulness at the moment compared in importance with the task of keeping intact the machinery of the Navy League. He shouldered it. The executive gifts which had distinguished his entire career speedily enabled him to restore harmony in the League's warring ranks. On the wave of enthusiasm which accom- panied the dawn of the Dreadnought era, the 142 > V » > ADMIRAL VON KOESTER FloUen-Verein was launched on a new career of prosperity and power. It was the Kaiser who proclaimed, at the birth of the new century, that " Germany's future lay upon the water " ; that a mighty fleet was " a bitter necessity " ; that " the ocean was essential to Germany's greatness " ; that " the trident must be in Michel's hand " ; that " the more Germans who went to sea, the better for the Fatherland," and the other epigrammatic ukases which fired Teuton imaginations with visions of admiralty. It was Von Tirpitz who piloted ever-recurring programmes through the tortuous waters of party politics. But it is the Navy League which has kept the conscience of the country awake, which has aroused the nation's fears and fanned its passions as occasion demanded. " Record " naval estimates disturb the equanimity of the average German no more than budgets for the State railways. The agitation for naval expansion waged in Germany during the past fifteen years is peerless among campaigns of education in our time. . To-day the League's membership is approaching 1,250,000. Over 3,500 local branches are scattered throughout the country. No hamlet, no matter how tiny or remote from the seaboard, is left uncanvassed. A pilgrimage to an ancestral shrine once took me to a village deep in the heart of Bavaria, 500 miles from Kiel. They had never seen a motor-car in sleepy old Binswangen, but they knew all about Dreadnoughts, and before I quitted his 143 MEN AROUND THE KAISER hospitable board, the Chairman of the parish council, who had helped me unravel a genealogical puzzle, invited me to sign an application for membership in the Navy League. The League's invested fortune is nearly £20,000. Its annual income from membership subscriptions is £17,500. It earns another £7,000 from advertise- ments in the League's excellent official organ, Die Flotte — mostly the announcements of the ship- builders and gunmakers whose dividends are born in the League's sleepless propaganda. Close to £25,000 a year is spent in preaching the Big Navy gospel. Die Flotte spreads it broadcast to 360,000 Germans at home and abroad from month to month. Glib-tongued orators, whose fervour sometimes triumphs over the truth, drive it home at countless meetings in village, town and city. Twenty cinema- picture apparatuses owned by the League are kept moving across the country, telling in the convincing language of the film the stories and the glories of the Fleet. During the summer holidays thousands of schoolchildren and teachers are brought to the ports, war harbours and dockyards to see the Navy at work and in the making, that each may go home a missionary in the holy cause. Still other excur- sions are organised for members of the League as a means of training them to become agitators. The League lays special stress on educating children and people from remote inland regions. The men and women of Hamburg and Bremen, of Danzig and Stettin, in whose nostrils the salt of the sea has 144 ADMIRAL VON KOESTER lodged since the cradle, need no persuasion. It is the farmers of East and West Prussia, the moun- taineers of Bavaria, the mill hands of Rhineland and Westphalia, the peasants of Saxony, the land- lubbers of the cities, whom the Navy League systematically lures to the North Sea and the Baltic, and sends back to workaday existences confirmed enthusiasts. They have made privileged inspections of the floating fortresses which belch broadsides calculable only in tons, and believe for evermore in the " bitter need " of might at sea. When great political crises like Morocco arise, the Navy League puts on extra coats of war paint. Its hand is seldom disclosed, but its influence is easily recognised. No one at such times can place his finger on the point where the " inspiration " of the League begins and ends, but there is far too much homogeneity and synchronism about the press and pamphlet campaigns which rage at psychological moments, to entitle them to be con- sidered either spontaneous or sporadic. If public opinion is excited or excitable, as it was after Agadir, the League's henchmen proceed to excite it still more. The slogan of " The Fatherland in Danger ! " is vociferously hoisted to the ramparts. The bookshop windows fill up, as if by magic, with inflammatory prints depicting Germany on the threshold of catastrophe. Brochures clamouring for fresh Dreadnoughts rain on offenceless Members of Parliament. " England, the Foe 1 '' " Perfidious Albion ! " "The Coming War ! " "The British K. L 145 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Peril ! " " England's Plan to Fall on Us in 1911 ! " — a random and slender selection of titles from the literature which paved the way for the latest, but probably not the last, great increase in the German Fleet. Nobody subscribes more unreservedly to the doctrine that the end justifies the means than the Deutscher Flotten-Verein. One of the mildest-eyed and gentlest of men is the presiding genius over this mighty engine of pubhcity. In his place in the Prussian House of Peers, of which the Kaiser made him a life member in 1905 as an additional mark of recognition of his services to the Empire, Von Koester might be mistaken for the Procurator-General of the Synod. A fine, erect, broad-shouldered figure, he has the geniality of the sea, and when he talks of the German Navy, conciliation, not belligerency, is the leitmotif. Like every other man in the Kaiser's Fleet, Von Koester is a profound admirer of British naval traditions, and an advocate of cordial relations with the Mistress of the Sea ; but he believes that genuine international friendships rest on mutual esteem. Unprovided with imposing strength at sea, he declares, Germany can never command adequate respect from a naval power. This is the line Von Koester espouses eloquently when he himself plays the role of agitator at important Navy League meetings throughout the country. He particularly combats the theory that Germany has armed in stealth, or gone beyond the limits originally contemplated by her Naval Law. " We 146 ADMIRAL VON KOESTER have always laid our cards on the table," is one of his favourite assertions. At present the Navy League's " programme " is the creation of a flying squadron of battle-cruisers for service in foreign waters, in order that the Kaiser's flag may be able to assert itself on short notice wherever and whenever German oversea interests are menaced or attacked. If there were real virtue in heredity Admiral von Koester should have been a bard instead of a sailor. He was born at Schwerin in 1844, of a father who was a poet and a mother who was a Schlegel, a kinswoman of the famous scholar who made the standard German translation of Shakespeare. The shores of his native Mecklenburg are washed by the tempestuous Baltic, and something of their virus must have early infected Von Koester, for before he was fifteen he was a cadet in the budding Prussian Navy. At thirty he was a captain and made his first journey around the globe in command of his own brig. In 189 1, now a rear-admiral, he began the work which was to earn him the proud title of teacher of the German Fleet. By successive stages of service ashore and afloat, he attained in 1903 the commandership-in-chief of the Active Battle forces. During the three years of his leader- ship the Fleet reached the high-water mark of fighting efficiency. It fell to his lot to command it during the principal period of transition from old to new naval ideals. His path at Kiel was not always strewn with roses, but he proved a diplomat as well as a disciplinarian, and when he made way for MEN AROUND THE KAISER Prince Henry of Prussia, to become Inspector- General of the Navy, the High Seas Fleet was a radically different organisation than the one he had inherited. Von Koester has been compared by his fond pupils among the younger generation of officers to Admiral Jervis, instructor of the British Navy at the close of the eighteenth century, who blazed the way for Nelson and Trafalgar. If Germany's fate is some day to be decided off the dunes of Heligoland or farther west in the North Sea, the Navy will cherish in grateful recollection the ideals implanted by its teacher, Grand Admiral von Koester. 148 XVIII MARSCHALL VON BIEBERSTEIN Development of German sea-power was pre- destined to make relations with Great Britain the predominant foreign question of WilUam II. 's reign. It was inevitable that sooner or later he should call upon the greatest diplomat in his service to help in its solution. Baron Marschall von Bieberstein was sent to the Court of St. James early in the summer of 1912. Death struck him down almost before he had entered upon what he described as his " steep and stony path.'* But his place in history is secure. German para- mountcy in Asia Minor, which will survive the collapse of Turkish power in Europe, is his imperish- able monument. Baron von Wangenheim, Baron Marschall's successor at Constantinople, has just proclaimed that " neither to-day nor in the future will anyone be able to lay a hand on Anatolia, where we have vital interests." If the day ever comes when the legions of the Kaiser must back up this " Hands Off ! " warning with their bayonets, they will leap to action to safeguard the sphere of influence secured to Germany primarily by the diplomacy of Marschall von Bieberstein. 149 MEN AROUND THE KAISER A blue-eyed, slightly stooping giant, with intellectual force clearly marked on his scarred face ; fearlessness and resource incarnate ; a manner which could swerve from irresistible bonhomie to icy reserve ; an amazing gift for adaptability to conditions ; a German of Germans, who beUeved to the depth of his being in the righteousness and eventual realisation of his Fatherland's am- bitions — such was the Ambassador entrusted in the evening of a long career with the mission of bargaining for peace and friendship with Britain. No one probably more than Marschall himself — so was he popularly known — resented the silly reputation variously imputed to him, that the statesman who inspired the Kruger telegram went to England an Anglophile to the core, deter- mined to cement Anglo-German amity at all costs. Baron Marschall's luggage, when he arrived at Carlton House Terrace, contained parapher- nalia much more like an ultimatum than an olive-branch. Not a Government's last word as customarily spoken, but an ultimatum in this sense — that the dispatch to London of the Kaiser's most virile diplomatic personality was Germany's final effort to reconcile her aspirations for more world-dominion with conditions held fundamental for the security of the British Empire. Baron Marschall is understood to have coveted the mission just because of its " steep and stony path." Before leaving Constantinople he publicly pledged that all his strength would be placed at the disposal of his 150 ^ ■ ^^^^^K" 1 ^^^^^^^R .^^■^^^^"l^^^^^^^^l ^H ^^^^^K ^H 1 ^^^^^^^^^^^ '^^^^^^^1 ^^^^^^^^^^H ^■■N,, jM ^^^B 1^^ 3 ^^^^^^^^^f .-fi-^fc ^73B ^^H 1 I^Iofphotograph\ {E. Bieber, Berlin. MARSCHALL VON BIEBERSTEIN Emperor in the task he had undertaken. Had he failed to master it, there would have been a dis- position in Berlin to banish Anglo-German relations to the realm of the incorrigible. Bismarck's dogma that Ambassadors have but to wheel about in obedience to orders, like a file of Prussian infantrymen at drill, never applied to Baron Marschall. He was sent to England because his chief stock-in-trade was resolute initiative. Marschall was a diplomat who acted, and reported afterwards. He was, moreover, essentially what is known in his country as a Reaipolitiker. A Realpolitiker is a statesman who, eschewing the chase for the chimerical, concentrates on the pursuit of the practical. When the time came for him to tell Downing Street what it was that Germany " wants," there would have been little beating about the bush, and a minimum of diplomatic blarney. He was an apostle of brutal directness. At the Hague Con- ferences he supported stubbornly the German pohcy of unrestricted armaments on land and sea. The doctrine of territorial expansion as a German imperative claimed his wholehearted loyalty. For fifteen years he devoted himself to the exploitation of that policy ; for while German enterprise in Turkey and Asia Minor and her designs on the Persian Gulf may not be officially indexed under the category of aggrandizement, they amount to that. The Bagdad Railway is German for penetra- tion pacifique. All the items in the calendar of 151 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Teuton aims and ambitions had a convinced ad- herent in the Giant of the Golden Horn. His whole political and diplomatic career was steeped in hos- tility to British policy. He fought it in South Africa, he opposed it at The Hague, and he combated it in Turkey. Details of circumstance differ, but there is now agreement on the essential fact that Baron Marschall while German Foreign Secretary in 1896 inspired, if he did not actually formulate, the Kruger telegram. It is certain that he was the author of the Circular Note which apprised the Powers that the continuance of Boer independence was " a German interest," When the Emperor William arrived at the Foreign Office for the first time after the Jameson Raid to counsel with his Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe ; with his Foreign Secretary, Baron Marschall ; and with the Secretary of his Navy, Admiral Hollmann, the Kruger dispatch lay ready for the imperial signature. The Kaiser was opposed to the whole idea of burdening the cable with that fateful message. Baron Marschall insisted. He represented that the telegram was demanded, and would be cordially approved, by German public sentiment. The Kaiser yielded, but it was not until after His Majesty had radically " edited " the Foreign Office draft that the telegram was permitted to go on its illstarred way. Baron Marschall remained an ardent member of the group of Continental statesmen who advocated a coalition to defeat British purposes in South Africa. 152 MARSCHALL VON BIEBERSTEIN It was not surprising that the Foreign Secretary during whose administration Anglo-German relations were at the breaking-point should be assigned only a year later to take up the struggle against British supremacy in Turkey. With what teUing effect he dedicated himself to the task is a commonplace of contemporary diplomatic history. Baron Marschall is given somewhat more personal merit for the rise of German power at Constantinople than is actually his due. The foundations of the work he was sent to do were laid deep and well several years before his entrance on the scene. The Kaiser had long since paid personal homage at the Yildiz Kiosk to the " great assassin." The newly arrived Colossus from Berlin was not the first to bring Abdul Hamid proofs of German friendship and disinterestedness. What the Ambassador set himself to do, and did, was to reduce the Sultan to a state of practical sub- jugation to German ambitions in Turkey. Wholly unskilled in the arts of professional diplomacy at a foreign capital, it was not many months before Baron Marschall dominated the perspective. His influence was enthroned both at Yildiz Kiosk and at the Sublime Porte. Nobody, Turkish or foreign, could withstand him. He became a sort of unofficial Grand Vizier. German authority throughout Turkey rose as surely and as irresistibly as the sun itself over the placid Bosphorus. By a process of auto-suggestion, people came to regard the German Ambassador as omnipotent and invincible. He exploited his power to the full, and often with a 153 MEN AROUND THE KAISER high hand. A gang of Turkish dock navvies who refused, during the anti-Austrian excitement over Bosnia, to unload a perishable cargo from a German ship, cowered when the captain brought the broad- shouldered representative of Germany to the quay- side. A word of command from Marschall sent the mutinous dockers scampering back to their work in the hold like a pack of beaten dogs. If Baron Marschall's career in the last decade of the Hamidian regime was a story of incessant triumph, his record during the four years following the overthrow of the autocracy was still more remark- able. It is within the memory of all students of contemporary European events how soothsayers chanted the funeral dirge of German power at Constantinople after the revolution of 1908. But they failed to reckon with the amazing adaptability to new conditions, which was one of Baron Marschall's marked attributes. He completely reversed the tactics which had raised him to the pinnacle in ante-revolution days. He bided his time. He let Young Turkey come to him. Then he proclaimed that as the Old Turkey was an autocracy, pure and simple, he had necessarily cultivated relations exclusively with the despot ; but now that Turkey was become a constitutional monarchy, his services were as freely at its disposal as they had been at the disposal of the discredited regime. No tribute to Baron Marschall's diplomatic skill could be higher than the mere statement that, despite Abdul Hamid, despite Bosnia and Tripoli, he left 154 MARSCHALL VON BIEBERSTEIN German influence in Turkey as strong as it was in the heyday of the autocracy. Baron Marschall was a native of the South German Grand Duchy of Baden and was sixty-nine years old at the time of his death. After a dozen years of practice as State Prosecutor, he entered pohtics and was elected to the Reichstag. Always a favourite at the Karlsruhe Court, he was sent to Berlin in the eighties as Baden's diplomatic repre- sentative, with a seat in the Federal Council. Von Holstein, that long-time sinister and all-powerful figure in German politics, was then at the zenith of his power, and Baron Marschall became one of his votaries. The Baden " State's Attorney," as Bismarck came contemptuously to call him, aligned himself with the group which successfully plotted for the overthrow of the Iron Chancellor, and when the latter's son. Count Herbert Bismarck, retired from the Foreign Secretaryship, Herr von Holstein handed over the office to his Baden protege. There was much opposition among the professional diplomatic clique to the appointment of the untrained " State's Attorney " to the direction of the Empire's foreign affairs, and his tenure of Wilhelmstrasse, No. 76, was destined to be a period of stress and storm. It became an era of depart- mental scandals, litigation, duels, intrigues and exposures, from which the forceful Foreign Secretary did not escape unscathed ; but his record there on the whole was creditable. The Triple Alliance was renewed during his regime, and Russo-German 155 MEN AROUND THE KAISER co-operation in the Far East, after the Chino- Japanese War, took place under his auspices. His experience as a special pleader at the Bar and his forensic skill proved valuable assets when he had to face the Reichstag in debate. When the implac- able Bismarckians finally accomplished his fall from the Foreign Secretaryship in 1897, he was sent to Constantinople. A physical giant, Baron Marschall was amiable and gentle of temperament, with an ample supply of reserve force. He was never hail-fellow-well-met, but could be taciturn without becoming austere. He did not make the impression that he was almost a septuagenarian. He spoke English quite fluently, French indifferently. A graduate of Heidelberg, he carried on his left cheek the unfailing sign of university education in Germany, a series of Schmissc inflicted by sabres in student duels. Considerably over 6 ft. in height and broad in proportion. Baron Marschall looked every inch the strong man, an impression not lessened by his habit of walking with the suggestion of a stoop. His hobbies were chess, music, and gardening. One was surest of finding him in leisure hours at the Teutonia Club in Constantinople manipulating the little wooden men, or playing Beethoven sonatas on his own piano, or perhaps trimming rose bushes under a spreading umbrella in the lovely Embassy gardens overhanging the Bosphorus. Baron Marschall's sudden exit from the Euro- pean stage came in time to spare him what would 156 MARSCHALL VON BIEBERSTEIN have proved almost a personal humiliation — the break-up of Turkey and her German-trained army before the invincible hosts of the Balkans. Marschall, who had helped to develop it, was a firm believer in Ottoman power. Its ignominious decay would have torn the heartstrings of the once uncrowned autocrat of the Bosphorus. ^57 XIX AUGUST THYSSEN "If I rest, I rust." In these five words are encompassed the philosophy and the pohcy of August Thyssen, Captain-General of German indus- try. He has formally adopted them as his watch- word. If he affected a coat-of-arms, they would be its slogan. " King Thyssen " is the title his supremacy in the steel, iron and coal trade has won him. " The German Carnegie " is another of his sobriquets. By universal consent he is the dominat- ing figure of the Fatherland's throbbing industrial life. No other man so thoroughly incorporates the aggressiveness and magnitude of the German busi- ness age. No one's life-story so typifies the New Germany's fabulous rise to power and wealth in the interval since the Franco-Prussian War. In the twenty-five years between 1885 and 1910, to select the segment of principal growth, Germany's production of pig-iron increased from 3,688,000 to 14,794,000 tons, an advance of 301 per cent. In the same period production of coal and lignite mounted from 73,675,000 to 222,375,000 tons, an increase of 201 per cent. In the production of iron ore, and of iron and steel, Germany has come 158 > ■> » o » • > > , J , J » » • 'j*>*»3»»»» AUGUST THYSSEN far to outstrip Great Britain, which led her by wide margins a quarter of a century ago. These were the totals for 191 1 : — Germany. England. Iron Ore, 29,888,000 tons 15,769,000 tons Pig-iron, 15,572,000 ,, 9,875,000 „ Steel, 15,019,000 ,, 6,565,000 „ German mining production in general — coal, lignite, iron, potash and other salts, zinc, lead and copper — is six and one-half times its volume in 1871. In money it represents an annual value of over ;£ioo,ooo,ooo. Barring America, which is far in the van, Germany's supremacy in steel, iron and coke is unapproached. In Europe her lead is indisputable. She is now behind the United Kingdom only in the production of coal. Among those who have directed this Brobdig- nagian development, August Thyssen of MiiUieim- on-Ruhr is the towering personality. In the coal and iron trade of Germany he has been what Rockefeller was in oil and Carnegie in steel — the master-builder. The history of all three, who may be bracketed as the commercial geniuses of their age, has been much alike. Each grew from nothing. Thyssen's career is more comparable to Rockefeller's than to Carnegie's. Like the Petroleum King, he is still at work. He has not gone in for peace, libraries and philanthropy like the American Thyssen, but, a hardy septuagenarian, still derives his joy in life from mining coal, puddling iron and rolling steel. He intends to die in harness. The 159 MEN AROUND THE KAISER emblem on Bismarck's escutcheon — Patriae inser- viendo consumor — would fit Thyssen precisely, if rendered to read that he is consuming himself in the cause of labour, instead of country. He is a restless workman. He has been known to tire out three secretaries in one day. Much of his time is spent travelling about the country on his own business. His home, a feudal castle, is really a branch office of his firm. Adjoining his bedroom is a workroom. He believes that neither men nor iron should grow rusty. The pioneer of Americanism in German industry, Thyssen's career has been typically transatlantic in its origin and development. The Standard Oil Company was the outgrowth of an original in- vestment of £14,500 by the firm of Rockefeller & Andrews. August Thyssen inaugurated his career about the same time, in the early sixties, with a capital of £1,200, with which he built a rolling-mill employing sixty workmen. To-day he employs 50,000. His largest property, the Deutscher Kaiser Colliery at Hambom, has a pay-roll of 26,000 and mines over 5,000,000 tons of coal a year. His fortune is variously estimated at £10,000,000 and £20,000,000. It is probably more than the former and less than the latter. His interests long ago outgrew merely local dimensions. To-day, in addition to vast coal-mines, blast-furnaces, rolling- mills, by-product factories, salt and potash mines, harbours and docks at Hambom, Duisburg, Miilheim and other points along and contiguous to the Rhine 160 AUGUST THYSSEN and the Ruhr, Thyssen's influence extends around the globe. From Caen, in Normandy, he imports iron ore taken from his own mines, and from Montigny half-finished products founded and cast in his own mills. They are loaded into his own steamers from his own docks — a genuine German base on French soil. At Nikolaieff, on the Russian coast of the Black Sea, he has warehouses and docks for the storage and shipment of ore for his devouring furnaces on the far-off Rhine. In Brazil and India, the German flag flies over Thyssen wharves and harbours. His dominating ideal is to insure German industry in general, and his own properties in particular, sources of raw material supply which will render them for ever independent of foreign influence. It is a little-known fact that August I Thyssen was the father of the idea which eventuated in Germany's ill-starred Moroccan venture. Several \ years ago he planned to make Sultan Abdul-Aziz a loan in exchange for a monopoly of Morocco's incalculably rich iron-ore deposits. The German Government frowned upon the enterprise, only later to threaten Europe with war in defence of mining rights meantime secured by another group of Rhenish industrialists, the Brothers Mannesmann of Diisseldorf and Remscheid. From America Thyssen borrowed the idea of concentrating capital and amalgamating allied industries. He founded the Rhenish- Westphalian Steel Syndicate, the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate, the Pig-iron Syndicate, and practically K. u i6i MEN AROUND THE KAISER all the important " Cartels " now existing in Ger- many for the control of output and regulation of prices in the industries allied to the steel, iron and coal trades. He is a firm disciple of the despised Trust idea as an effective means of preventing crises caused by over-production or price cutting competi- tions. For his own purposes he improved on the Transatlantic pattern by forming a Trust in which a single person should be board of directors, execu- tive committee and shareholders all rolled into an- autocratic one. The Standard Oil Company, the United States Steel Corporation and other octopuses dispose over assets which reduce Thyssen's properties to comparative insignificance, but their stockholders' meetings are not nearly so harmonious as his. The Thyssen Trust belongs to Thyssen. He is monarch of all he surveys. A brother and an eldest son are nominal partners, but the King of Miilheim wields a sway no American Trust magnate ever enjoyed. He is the only German industrialist who has no entangling alliances with Banks. " Interlocking directorates," which the United States Government is fighting, are a recognized and integral feature of German financial organization. On the boards of all great industrial corporations sit representatives of the banks, usually with all-powerful voices and votes. Representatives of the Dresdner Bank, Germany's second largest concern, are on the Boards of 200 companies with an aggregate capital of £130,000,000. No bank has controlling fingers in King Thyssen's pies. He has no shares to list on the 162 AUGUST THYSSEN Berlin Bourse. Speculation is never carried on in his name. He brags that he does not understand the A. B. C. of the Stock Exchange. Thyssen's declared income for tax purposes is a paltry ;f 150,000. The actual revenue derived from his enormous interests is admittedly in excess of that figure, but as his policy is immediately to re- invest profits in extension of plant, the bulk of them is not subject to income taxation. From his humblest days he has adhered to the principle of incessant expansion. Every thousand marks he has earned has gone back into the business. He cares nothing for money as a mere possession. Its only attraction to him is as an instrument for acquisition of fresh power. His consuming ideal is a steel, iron and coal autocracy subject to one indisputable will. Such an industrial empire this Rhenish Caesar has built, and he remains its absolutist ruler. He mines his own ore, owns and navigates the ships which transport it, built the docks and harbours where they unload it, and himself digs the coal for the furnaces, mills and foundries which are to turn out coke, sheet-steel, armour-plate, ingots, billets, tubing, rails, ammonia, tar and the other dozen by-products of his trade. Uppermost always in Thyssen's mind is the reduction of the cost of production. That, he says, is the beacon-light on which industrial energy must rivet its gaze. Devotion to that principle has as much to do with the development of German industry as any other single thing. It accounts for the fact that German works are full 163 U 2 MEN AROUND THE KAISER of technical experts. For every ten artisans in a mill or factory there will be at least one technical man or engineer. Avoidance of waste is their great speciality. They will devote years to evolving processes for cheapening production or creating by-products. In the Chicago stockyards, as all the world knows, the pork-packers utilize all of a pig except the squeal. Down August Thyssen's way they make use of everything except the smoke. And even now he has Charlottenburg graduates at work on a process of converting that into a marketable commodity. The German Government paid an extraordinaiy tribute to Thyssen two or three years ago by inviting him to overhaul the business end of the Admiralty at Berlin. Dockyard scandals at Kiel had revealed a woeful lack of purely commercial acumen in the department otherwise so ably administered by Admiral von Tirpitz. Conscience- less tradesmen were pulling the wool over the Navy's eyes in lamentable and costly fashion. A master of buying and selling was needed to lick things into shape. The Admiralty did the natural thing and invoked the aid of the greatest merchant-mind in the country, August Thyssen, to put the Navy on a business basis. Recently, it came to light that the Vulcan Shipbuilding Company of Stettin and Hamburg, the biggest in Germany, delivered Dread- noughts to the Admiralty in 191 2 at a loss of £100,000. The company had to wipe out its entire building reserve to cover the deficit. Things have 164 AUGUST THYSSEN changed since the days when the rag-merchants of Kiel could bamboozle the Navy. It is King Thyssen who taught Tirpitz how to drive a bargain. Like Mr. Chamberlain, Thyssen thinks inter- national politics in this day and age are business politics, pure and simple. He attributes the strain in Anglo-German relations to British envy of German competition — a myopic theory widely held in the Fatherland. He believes diplomacy ought to be taken out of the hands of courtiers and transferred to engineers, merchants and manufacturers. Trade relations are so internationally interwoven, Thyssen declares, that political relations ought to be adjusted on the basis of reciprocal interests. Approached from that standpoint he thinks England and Germany could soon discover the groundwork of an entente cordiale. He favours international treaties for regulating prices of world commodities like coal, and is persuaded they would do more to cement friendships than defensive and offensive alliances dependent on battleships and army corps. Thyssen is seventy-one years old. Passion for work, rugged independence, almost sullen silence, and democratic simplicity are August Thyssen's outstanding qualities. He cares nothing for titles, society, or external honours of any kind. He is a Roman Catholic who says he is old fashioned enough to be religious. His hobby is the welfare of his workmen, for which he provides liberally. He wears three-guinea suits. He apologizes for an incorrigible inability to over-estimate his fellow-men. 165 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Only one of three sons has inherited the sturdy traits of their father, Fritz, the eldest. The one outward trapping of great wealth about August Thyssen is his home, the beautiful Castle Landsberg, a glorious old Gothic Schloss high up on the wooded ramparts of the Ruhr, near Diissel- dorf. He acquired it in 1903 and like everything else he ever owned has " extended the plant " by reconstruction. Castle Landsberg, rich in moss and memories of the Middle Ages, is a fitting abode for a king. To-day it shelters a monarch whose proudest boast is that he is a workingman, who intends to keep on labouring as long as there is life within him. 166 XX MAX LIEBERMANN It is small wonder that Germany's most eminent living painter. Max Liebermann, should be a revolutionary. He came into the world in 1849, while his own native Berlin was still reverberating to the echo of the cannonade which compelled Frederick Wilham IV. to grant rebellious Prussia a constitution. The spirit of sedition imbibed with his mother's milk has remained with Liebermann through life. After the wave of revolt which had long since engulfed the French Art School lapped over into South Germany and submerged Munich, then, as now, the hub of the Fatherland's painting universe. Max Liebermann carried the crusade into North Germany and founded the Berlin " Secession." That was fourteen years ago. Time, the incorrigible chastener, has sobered the tempes- tuous ideals of 1899, but Liebermann still wears the title of Anarchist, bestowed upon his school from Imperial quarters, as a stigma of honour. Art in official Germany, like the Army, is largely ordered 167 MEN AROUND THE KAISER from on high. Liebermann is uncompromisingly at war with the goose-step regime. It despises him with a cordiahty no less profound. Never was there antipathy more mutual or more whole- heartedly reciprocated. Ask Liebermann the state of the score between him and the Kaiser, and he will lead you to the windows of his house abutting Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's ^ re de Triompke, and point to the snow-white marble counterfeits of the Emperor and Empress Frederick glittering at the entrance to the sylvan Tiergarten across the way. If you have artistic tears to shed, Liebermann will bid you prepare to shed them now ; and then he will assure you that the Kaiser, by planting such " art " where it must offend a painter's gaze every time he seeks sun, light and air, which are Liebermann's Gods, has wreaked revenge for the sins of Secessionists for all time. " All I can do," says Liebermann, "is to wear blue goggles ; but it is a life-sen- tence." An arrival in Berlin in the benighted first years of the new century was taught to regard the Secession, then in the heyday of militant leadership under Liebermann, as something hardly mentionable in polite artistic society. One went to the annual exhibition in Kurfiirstendamm as to a Museum of Misapplied Arts, and talked of Secessionists in terms nowadays reserved for Cubists, Futurists and Post-Impressionists. Of the Liebermannites of 1901 and 1902 people sang as the music-hall 168 J • 5 » ^ //i^fUy^L^^^^ MAX LIEBERMANN comedians of New York satirised the " new art ** recently exhibited there : I beheld a pile of brickbats underneath a cellar stair, Which was labelled " Spanish dancer with the limelight on her hair." I remarked a slab of limestone on a dingy rubbish heap, And was told it was the portrait of *' An Indian child asleep." Seven lengths of cedar scantlings were " My Lady's Easter hat." I don't hanker for the future if it's going to be like that. As far as Liebermann was concerned, the future of the Secession was not to be " Hke that/' With Leistikow, Ury, Slevogt, Corinth and the other toreadors who raUied round his standard in the early days, he was doomed to be excoriated as conservative to the point of reaction by the rising generation of hotspurs. To-day Liebermann is looked upon as old-fogeyish by " Secessionists," because he refuses to identify himself with their extravaganzas. He found the movement getting out of hand several years ago, and laid down the presidency of the Berlin Secession. Since then he has been merely its decorative Honorary President. But he has lived to see his ideals become the ruling force instead of the seditious intruder clamouring vainly for a hearing. His own artistic reputation is second to none among German artists of the era. For twenty years a senator of the Academy, his Alma Mater, the University of Berlin, has conferred on him the title of Professor and the Honorary Doctor's degree. 169 MEN AROUND THE KAISER He is a member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux- Arts, of the Societe Royale Beige des AquareUistes, and of the Cercle des AquareUistes at The Hague. Specimens of his works adorn the walls of the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden, the Pinakothek of Munich, the National Gallery and Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, and the Municipal Art Museums of Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort and half a dozen other German cities. Hardly a private collection of note in Germany is without its Liebermann. His etchings are to be found in the leading print cabinets of the Continent. The foremost apostle of the school once stigmatised in exalted quarters as " gutter art " is content to rest on the laurels already his. He cherishes no ambition to hang between the serried apotheoses of Mars which make the galleries of Prussian royal castles look like museums of war. A partisan of plain-speaking and reahstic expres- sion — by preference in his own unlovely Berhn dialect — he will tell you that the Kaiser considers a Liebermann picture akin to an emetic. Lieber- mann returns the compliment by ranking His Majesty's taste with the passion of Louis XIV. for the purely massive and decorative as the quin- tessence of greatness in art. Some of the Kaiser's sons, charmed with a Liebermann painting, once had the temerity to vent their enthusiasms in the parental presence. They were not encouraged to repeat the experiment. Liebermann was the ideal man to inject a true 170 MAX LIEBERMANN spirit of innovation into German art, because of his uniquely cosmopolitan training. Though French realism is his pronounced note, the modern Dutch and Flemish Schools were of hardly less influence on him. Manet and Degas are apparently his Buddhas, especially the former, to judge from the works with which the walls of Liebermann's home are crowded. Liebermann's first great canvas, " Women Plucking Geese," now a prized gem of the Berhn National Gallery, was produced in 1872. It depicts homely toil with such dismal faithfulness that it earned the artist the epithet of " Apostle of Ugliness." The great Menzel thought differently about it. He sent for Liebermann and said : "So you are the perpetrator of that picture ? Well, you know, you ought to have your ears boxed with it. It's excellent. But a man doesn't paint that sort of thing until he's fifty." Liebermann was not yet twenty-five when he set all Germany talking about " Women Plucking Geese." Its relentless simplicity was a striking departure from the academic conventionalities then prevailing, but Liebermann's emancipation from the dinginess which had hitherto characterised his colour schemes did not take place until his association with Millet, the idealiser of labour, in the summer of 1873. At Barbizon, alongside Millet, Liebermann studied Corot, Troy on and Daubigny, and, overcoming the spell of Munkacsy, under which he had produced earher pictures in Paris, brightened his palette corre- spondingly. 171 MEN AROUND THE KAISER The compelling power of his subsequent specialisa- tion in labour themes was to make Liebermann known as the German Millet. He was the first of German painters to find the dignity of work worthy of the artist's brush. Labourers in the fields and factories, cobblers, weavers, spinners and lace-makers merited his attention and inspired some of his most striking work. He never strove to force a story into them. The note of romance was almost always lacking. His ambition was to portray workaday folk as they are, absorbed in toil and not as if posing before a camera. " The Cobbler's Shop," in the Berlin National Gallery, is a brilliant specimen, and is one of the productions in which Liebermann's talents as a wizard of light effects are exemplified. When the picture was first exhibited in Paris, the French critic, M. Hochede, addressing Liebermann's friend and co-worker, Manet, made it famous with these words : "If you have discovered the secrets of plein air, my dear Manet, Max Liebermann has learned how to catch light within a room, I would gladly give up 500 square metres of all the paintings in the Salon for the possession of ' The Cobbler's Shop.' " Rembrandt and Franz Hals had long lured Liebermann periodically to Holland, but nothing was of such paramount personal influence on him as his acquaintance and friendship with Jozef Israels, the Nestor of the modern Dutch School, on whom Liebermann has written a masterly monograph. It 172 MAX LIEBERMANN was particularly the atmospheric environment of the Netherlands which incited the young German painter to revel in the myriad effects of inter- minghng sunhght, mist and haze which give Dutch landscapes a tinge all their own. " The Dunes of Noordwyk," a favourite haunt of Liebermann, and a score of other pictures of Dutch land, sea, streets, fields and buildings, tell of the profound impression made by Liebermann's many wander- ings in the Netherlands. It was the inspiration of Israels, immortaliser of the aged, which generated Liebermann's fondness for painting old people. His " Old Men's Home in Amsterdam " won him the Gold Medal of the Paris Salon in 1881, and was the first distinction conferred on a German artist since the Franco-Prussian War. Another Dutch picture which fortified Liebermann's fame in France, " Courtyard of the Orphanage in Amsterdam," was a triumph of light reproduction. An admiring Parisian critic, who saw it at the Salon of 1882, declared that Liebermann had stolen some of the rays from the sun and utilised them as if he were Phoebus himself. That distinguished Enghsh critic, Mr. P. G. Konody, writing of how Liebermann's fame " had to be echoed back from France, Belgium and Holland before reluctant compatriots awarded him the eminent position which is his due in the history of German art," says that the secret of Liebermann's art is that his pictures " hold the fragrance of the soil and the breezes of the heavens. His people move in their proper atmosphere, and 173 MEN AROUND THE KAISER their life is stated in all its monotonous simplicity, without artificial pathos or melodramatic exaggera- tion." To-day Liebermann devotes most of his energies to portrait-paintings. They reveal distinct traces of the Franz Hals influence. Many of the contem- porary great of Germany have sat for him — Prince Billow, Gerhart Hauptmann, Professor Koch, Prince Lichnowsky, Emil Rathenau, Paul Ehrlich and Dr. Bode, to mention a few of the best known. Liebermann's portraits live up to his cardinal artistic ideal — photographic reality minus retouch- ing. His famous " Burgomaster Dr. Burchard, of Hamburg," by which he is represented at the Kaiser-Jubilee Exhibition of Modern German Art now being held at the Royal Academy in Berlin, was so startlingly faithful that the burgomaster's family first refused to allow it to be exhibited. Burchard sat for Liebermann in 191 1. " I saw the death pallor in his face, and I painted it," says the artist. Burchard died in 1912. " Art is the only true religion," opines this great Secessionist, who will not admit that he is an atheist. God to him does not mean dogma. Art is his creed, because the only religion he considers worth while is an expression of something within you which you can prove. He is almost savagely jealous of his Judaism. " Nothing in the world — absolutely nothing," he avers, " will ever persuade me to renounce the nativity of my fathers." He calls himself an aboriginal Berliner because there 174 MAX LIEBERMANN are a half-dozen or more generations of Berliners behind him, and, when he looks on his own portraits of himself, has no compunction in claiming that the blood of royalty must course in his veins. He insists that no such strongly accentuated physiognomy as his — high-arched eyebrows, a hawk-like nose, a bull-dog jaw — could be aught but the badge of descent from a race of Babylonian, Assyrian and Phoenician kings. When you ask Liebermann about the future of Art, he tells you that it rests in the hands of artists, and not of Providence. " God fights on the side of the biggest talents," is one of his pithy epigrams. His dachshund, " Manne," plays a great role in the painter's daily life. Like Schopenhauer, he says he would not care to live if there were no dogs. " They are the best companions," he explains. " They neither talk back nor contradict. Can as much be said of a woman ? " He says the raison d'etre of Secessionism was a bread-and-butter desire to materialise idealism. " Nowadays," he adds, " the order of things is reversed. The world idealises materialism." Liebermann cares nothing for music or drama. He will only hear Mozart operas. Though a modern of moderns himself, he regards Wagner " Germany's crowning misfortune," complains that he cannot fathom Richard Strauss, and foresees the eventual return of wayward twentieth-century musical ideals to Mozart. Lieber- mann invented a new tax in Germany, the classic land of imposts — a tariff on autographs. 175 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Admirers who covet his signature receive the fol- lowing printed notice : Autograph Tax. Herr Liebermann does not derive any more satisfaction from sending autographs or packing up autograph- albums. Any- body who wants his signature must first furnish evidence that he has given at least twent^^ marks to charity. It was well that Max Liebermann revolted even against his parents and went in for painting surrep- titiously. Had they had their way he might to-day have been nothing but a great business man ; but the world of beauty would have been incalculably the poorer. Liebermann cherishes his parents in pious reverence. The luxurious home in which he lives is that in which they raised him, and the only specimen of his own craftsmanship on the whole artistic premises is the life-size portrait of his mother and father. 176 XXI DERNBURG Seven years ago this coming autumn, the Kaiser tried a bold experiment. He made a Cabinet Minister out of a business man who had nothing to recommend him but sheer abihty. Though Germany is the vaunted land of efficiency, the experiment failed. Bernhard Dernburg, commoner- banker of Jewish origin, summoned to clean the Augean stables of muddled German colonial administration in September, 1906, was already in June, 1910 a thing of the political past. His career had lasted less than four years. There was no place for mere capacity in a Government saturated with bureaucracy, and Dernburg had to go. Hailed at home and abroad as the German Joseph Chamberlain, because of his singular resem- blance to the greatest of colonial secretaries in antecedents and methods, Herr Dernburg com- mitted the revolutionary and fatal blunder of applying business ethics to the conduct of Germany's colonies. His ultimate downfall was as inevitable as the grave. He was not the first to strike his colours to the system into which he had been so uncon- ventionally pitchforked, and he will not be the last. K. N 177 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Germany's oversea possessions, embracing in square miles an area very many times that of the Empire in Europe, were irreverently and variously known, prior to the Dernburg era, as sand-wastes and graveyards for subsidies. Hardly any Germans, except officials and soldiers, ever went to them. Togoland, Kamerun, German South-West and East Africa, Kiau-Chau and the dependencies in the far Pacific, in and about the Samoan Islands, figured relentlessly on the wrong side of the Imperial ledger. The Fatherland's cup of colonial misery finally overflowed when to the ordinary burdens of Empire were added the heavy sacrifices in blood and treasure of a stubborn rebellion in South- West Africa. The able gentlemen of the green-table system found, less to their indignation than to their astonishment, that bureaucracy and colonising do not go hand in hand. Half a dozen Geheimrate and Herren Doktoren had been tried at the Colonial Office. All had failed. The last to be found want- ing was a kinsman of the Kaiser himself. Prince Ernst von Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Dernburg, was relied upon to do for the colonies what he had made a reputation for doing as a rejuvenator of industrial and financial lame-ducks — to put them on their feet. Patriotism of a high order induced Dernburg to desert business for office. He gave up the managing- directorship of a great bank worth ;f 10,000 a year, and a dozen company directorships netting him half as much again, for a paltry Cabinet salary of ;fi,250 and a glorious opportunity to fail. But the 178 i 9 » > 3 > » - - » J {Diihrkoop, Berlin. DERNBURG Kaiser was looking for a specialist in obstacle-smash- ing, and when Dernburg's record as a financial life saver was laid before him, William II. declared he had found the man. The dramatic appointment of the self-made young son of the people, whose father was a working journalist on the staff of a Berlin newspaper, speedily followed. His presence on the Government bench in Parliament infused new life into that galaxy of bureaucratic efficiency. Before he had been in office three months his aggressive personahty was all-pervading. In the passionate Reichstag electoral crisis which he himself provoked, he was the dominating figure. The campaign was fought singly on the issue Dernburg raised — the preservation and development of the colonies. Taking the hustings as chief spokesman for the Government, he toured the country, north and south, east and west, preaching everywhere in glowing terms the gospel of Germany's future oversea. He developed remarkable powers as a campaigner and political fighter. Over night he became the strong man of Prince Bulow's Govern- ment, achieving within four months of his entrance upon official life renown and meteoric popularity. When the votes were counted, the unholy alliance of clericalism and socialism, which had defied Dern- burg's Colonial Estimates and precipitated the general election, found itself shorn of power. Dernburg's name now meant energy, daring and success. The wise men and grey beards of the ante- diluvian System mopped their spectacles, aghast. MEN AROUND THE KAISER His enemies became numerous and industrious. They declared he could not, and would not, last. The aristocratic caste, which monopohses high office in Germany by inherited tradition, regardless of merit, bitterly resented the all-conquering pro- gress of a commoner of Semitic ancestry. They called him unmannered. They chided him for his awkwardness in Court dress. They said his whole bearing in his new surroundings was manifestly insufferable. But he went on doing things at the cobwebbed Colonial Office. Anybody familiar with Dernburg's banking career could have told the gilded popinjays, whose sus- ceptibilities he so grievously offended, that his distinguishing characteristic is Rucksichtslosigkeit — cold-blooded, unrelenting disregard of anything but his objective. Prof. Bergmann, Germany's great surgeon, asked once by a wounded soldier in a field hospital what could be done for him, replied : " Decapitation." Decapitation had been Demburg's guiding principle when some desperate financial project was brought to his operating room at the Darmstadter Bank. He tackled the moribund German colonies in the same spirit. Diseased organs, administrative scandals, red tape, old fogeyism and incompetence were lopped off merci- lessly by this political surgeon, who cared nothing for rank and title, and developed an annoying habit of insisting on proved merit as the price of connection with the colonial service. Shirt-sleeves administration, as Americans call it, was the regime i8o DERNBURG installed by the fearless innovator who learned to " hustle " in the frenzied din of Wall Street. Dernburg is in his fiftieth year. Stocky of build, square-shouldered, with a grizzly brown beard framing a set of heavy jaws, determination and force are writ large across his physiognomy, which bears distinct traces of Hebraic extraction. He is descended from a long line of Hessian-Rhenish ancestors, so famed for intellectual attainments as scholars, rabbis, lawyers and writers, that bright men in the region were described as having " Dernburg heads." As a lad of nineteen, Dernburg was sent to study banking methods in New York, where he served a three-years' apprenticeship. Returning to Berlin as a clerk in the Deutsche Bank, young Dernburg speedily revealed the organising ability which was, at forty-two, to call him into the councils of the Empire. About this time the Deutsche Bank founded the first trust company in Germany for the purpose of salving wrecked financial and industrial concerns. Herr Dernburg was made managing director. He had conducted its affairs only a few months when he attracted national attention by skilful resuscita- tion of some practically defunct mortgage-banks which wiseacres had abandoned as hopeless cases. The economic crisis of 1900, which drove the Leip- ziger Bank and other staunch German commercial craft into dry dock to repair leaks, gave Dernburg his great opportunity. He was summoned to the chief directorship of the Bank fur Handel und 181 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Industrie, better known as the Darmstadter Bank, where he enjoyed full scope for the exercise of his daring strokes of financial genius. They were admittedly harsh, revolutionary and staggering in their audacity, but almost always effective. Herr Demburg was in the midst of his banking career, when asked to bring his sledge hammer and axe to the Colonial Office. He responded to the call on the express condition that he should be permitted to continue swinging them in his new field of use- fulness. He did not forthwith convert the colonies into El Dorados. They continued to reveal an insatiable appetite for subsidies, but they ceased to be mere playgrounds for civilian and mihtary martinets, and began to attract the attention of genuine colonisers — bankers, shippers, merchants, farmers and traders. " Colonial fatigue," an old-time German malady, grew less. The sand-wastes of Africa and the Pacific were no longer looked upon merely as so many millstones around the Imperial neck. Having brought a semblance of order out of chaos at the Colonial Office itself, Dernburg gave Wilhelmstrasse traditions another jolt by going to Africa in his first year of ofhce to study the colonies on the spot. Predecessors had been content to know about them from perfunctory reports of military and civil governors. While fellow Ministers were hoUday-making at the seashore or in the mountains, Dernburg was trekking in ducks and helmet across the sun-baked veldt of East and South- West Africa, 182 DERNBURG making the face-to-face acquaintance of sub- ordinate administrators, studying the ravages of the Herero rebelHon and learning by personal observation exactly what was needed to improve the lot of each particular community. He scan- dahsed bureaucratic functionaries at home by pro- claiming the heretical doctrine that Africa was a black man's country, and that natives had to be treated from some other than the BerUn barrack- yard point of view. He returned to Germany to give his countrymen an entirely new conception of their mission and opportunities as a colonial power. In 1908, still insatiable for firsthand know- ledge, Demburg went to Africa again, this time extending his travels to the Transvaal, Cape Colony, Natal and Rhodesia, to study British colonial practices at work. Shortly after his second trip across the equator, Dernburg established the budding diamond industry in German South- West Africa on an admirable basis. Intent, above all else, on developing the economic importance of the colonies, Demburg chose as his next field of exploration the United States, where he spent eight busy weeks investigating the cotton belt, with a view to applying American plantation methods to cotton culture in Togoland and East Africa. During all these strenuous months of loyal and effective service, Dernburg's foes were remorselessly at work. The Roman Catholic Centre party, which he had humbled at the very outset of his career, had long coveted his scalp. Through the years they had 183 MEN AROUND THE KAISER gathered many an ally outside their own ranks, for Dernburg the Ruthless had the gentle art of making enemies. Prince Billow, under whom the Colonial Secretary had taken office and enjoyed much latitude, was no longer Chancellor. Cleri- calism had again become the power behind the Governmental throne. Dernburg's head was one of its first demands. Since the summer of 1910 he has been what a distinguished United States Senator once described himself to be — a states- man out of a job. Report periodically associates Dernburg's name with the managing-directorship of some great commercial or financial organisation. If he hankers to return to his first love, business, he has apparently not yet found anything quite to his liking. A year ago he was suggested for the post of Chief Burgomaster of Berlin ; but Dernburg's thirst for the joys of public office may be considered effectually quenched. The loss is decidedly not his. 184 XXII COUNT VON BERNSTORFF No single department of Germany's foreign relations lies closer to the heart of the Kaiser than his " American policy." Not even an Entente with his British kinsmen, to which William II. has aspired passionately since the Kruger telegram, has claimed more of his devotion than the attainment of a close and cordial understanding with the world's greatest Republic. If George Washington's embargo on entangling foreign coalitions were not holy writ for Americans, an alliance with Germany w^ould be theirs for the asking — if the Kaiser could have his way. The enthusiasm for a German-American Zweihund might be less pronounced in the Fatherland at large ; the United States is still called and considered " DoUarica " by many contemptuous Germans, who would look upon political partnership with " a race of money-grabbers " as beneath their Imperial dignity. No such prejudices are cherished by William the Hustler, who is himself often more Transatlantic in his methods and viewpoint than Teutonic. Times without number and in countless respects he is said to resemble Colonel Roosevelt. Nobody is ever prosecuted in Germany for com- paring the Kaiser to the most typical of Americans. 185 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Emperor William's " American policy " was initiated in 1902 when he dispatched his brother, Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia, on a yacht- launching commission to the United States. The Prince's visit became the forerunner of a decade of conspicuous and unceasing courtesies to America and Americans, all aimed at laying the foundation , of a broad political friendship. A dispatch-boat in the German Navy was christened " Alice Roosevelt." The University Exchange Professor- ship between Berlin, Columbia, and Harvard was instituted. American millionaires began to crowd natives at drawing-rooms of the German Court. A statue of Frederick the Great was presented to the United States Government. Morgan and Carnegie became honoured guests at Kiel Regatta week. American universities and colleges began to get presents of Germanic museums with the Kaiser's card attached. There was inaugurated, all along the line, what somebody dubbed the era of smiles and bouquets. To introduce it at Washington itself, the Kaiser sent there as his ambassador the best-fitted diplomat in his service, Baron Speck von Sternburg, who had lived long in the United States, knew President Roosevelt well, and possessed an American wife. Sternburg died in harness in 1908, in the midst of brilliantly effective furtherance of his Sovereign's designs on American favour. His successor was a man of the same stamp, Count Johann von Bernstorff, who not only took to shirt-sleeves diplomacy as gracefully as Sternburg 186 > » » ) ' '» , 1 > 1 > > ) ' {Dilhrkoop, Berlin. ,/QQa^o COUNT VON BERNSTORFF had before him, but even excelled him in the arts of which an ambassador, desirous of serv- ing his country well at Washington, must be a master. Count Bemstorff may be called the highest type of modem German diplomat. With one or two notable exceptions, all the other aristocrats wearing gold lace and dining out on Germany's behalf abroad, are diplomatists of the old school, paragons alike of formality and the circumlocutory niceties of international intercourse. The Fatherland had had many ministers and ambassadors of that ilk at Washington before the days of Sternburg and Bernstorff, and German-American relations for a generation were periodically strained. Bemstorff, by temperament and training, is the kind of envoy who believes in laying his cards on the table. There is nothing Machiavellian in his methods. He does not transact diplomatic business with a dark lantern. He is not afraid to talk. Directness is the cudgel by which he lays the most store. He thinks the sage who said that tarriers in Rome ought to do as the Romans had ambassadors especially in mind. He began cutting his cloth to the American measure from the hour he set foot in Massachusetts Avenue. That accounts for the fact that Count Bernstorff, who was born in London, and talks English more gracefully than a good many natives, is often spoken of as a " better American " than three- quarters of the inhabitants of the United States. 187 MEN AROUND THE KAISER He is an intense admirer of its institutions and people, and preferred a daughter of Uncle Sam for a wife to a lady of his own noble caste. Toadying, however, is no part whatever of his professional make-up. When German interests need to be advocated at the State Department or the White House, Count Bernstorff is prompt and resolute, and he has an incorrigible habit of getting what he wants. Pan-Germans and industrial magnates at home want more than Bernstorff does, because he knows just how much is to be had. They account no German ambassador at Washington a success who fails to annihilate the Monroe Doctrine, annex South America and inaugurate free trade in the United States. Bernstorff, being an optimist, dreams occasionally of the Millenium, and would not prove helpless if he should run across it ; but until it is within hailing distance he believes in con- centrating on the pursuit of the attainable. Trade relations are the bedrock of diplomacy in the twentieth century, and German-American political intercourse concerns them almost exclu- sively. Count Bernstorff 's greatest diplomatic triumph at Washington had to do with the unromantic question of potash. Germany has a world monopoly of that queen of fertilisers, and has long laid heavy tribute on dependent foreign customers. Americans buy enormous quantities of it and, having become tired of what they con- sidered extortion, bought some German mines in 1910 and essayed to import their own potash. 188 COUNT VON BERNSTORFF The German Government is a mine-owner itself and a potent factor in the Syndicate — the German for Trust — which arbitrarily controls potash output and prices. If the Americans succeeded in coming into the German market and mining their own potash the Syndicate's halcyon days were numbered. To prevent such a disaster the Kaiser's Government came to the rescue with a set of laws which practically made it prohibitive for foreigners to extract potash from the bowels of the German earth. America protested against the violation of the private property rights of its nationals by Act of Parliament. For a while the German-American political horizon was cloudier than at any time since Manila. There were mutterings and veiled threats of a tariff war. Bernstorff was firm, but smiling. He succeeded eventually in making the United States Government believe — sense of humour is one of his chief assets — that Germany's action was based primarily upon an internal policy of conserving natural resources and also upon a corrective policy with respect to Corporation activities. Expressed thus in terms of " live issues " within the United States itself, Bernstorff 's presentation of the case seemed plausible and legitimate to President Taft and Secretary Knox, and the potash incident was closed. The spirit of broad-gauge statesmanship which induced them to accept Count Bernstorff's argument reflected vastly more credit on the Washington administration than their acceptance of the " resignation " of Dr. David Jayne Hill, the accomplished American 189 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Ambassador at Berlin, who left office under suspicion of having compromised his country in the potash negotiations. It may be set down here that it was the Pittsburg diplomacy, singly and alone, which caused America to withdraw from the controversy so ignominiously. Bernstorff was cradled in diplomacy, for his father was Prussian Minister at the Court of St. James when Count Johann was born in 1862. English became his mother-tongue. He served as an officer in the Artillery Guards at Berlin from 1881 to 1889, having meantime married on his twenty-fifth birthday in 1887 Miss Jeanne Luckemeyer, of New York. His diplomatic career began as an attache of the German Embassy in Constantinople. Successive periods of service in the Foreign Office at Berlin, the legations of Belgrade, Dresden and Munich, and the embassies at St. Petersburg and London, filled sixteen busy years. Equipped with this wide cosmopolitan experience. Count Bernstorff received his first Ministerial appointment as diplomatic agent and consul-general at Cairo in 1906. For four years previous he was Councillor of Embassy in London, where he was an effective factor in reconstructing Anglo-German relations after the bad blood engendered by the Boer War. In 1908 he became German Ambassador at Washington. Count Bernstorff has always found himself peculiarly at home in the American environment, because of his extreme amiability and frankness. 190 COUNT VON BERNSTORFF He has met the Yankee on his own ground as a story-teller, after-dinner speaker and master of repartee. Asked once, shortly after his arrival in Washington, at a dinner notable for the presence of many Wall Street financiers, if he played poker, Bemstorff replied : "It's the only game I know.'' " How eminently fitting for the Kaiser to send you to the United States," was the magnate's rejoinder. In his caUow days Bernstorff was addicted to tennis. A superior. Count Wolff-Metternich, remarked that tennis smacked of the " dancing age," and recom- mended golf. Bernstorff forthwith foreswore the racquet for the driver. He was obviously the right man for the Taft era. He cultivated a fondness for baseball, too, hitherto an achievement only of Chinese diplomats at Washington. An ambassador who knows the value of a straight flush, and under- stands the psychology of a sacrifice hit, is assured a place in the affections of the American people, which no mere alliance between their rulers and governments could possibly strengthen. Bernstorff also left behind him in Germany his caste and countrymen's contempt for the press. He found that newspapermen in America were not only worth knowing, but the real wielders of power. He shocked the flunkeys who guard the door of the Kaiser's Embassy, by giving orders that the Washington correspondents were to be shown in when they called. Bernstorff was quick to grasp, too, that Americans are a speechmaking and speech-loving nation. He found it was quite 191 MEN AROUND THE KAISER compatible with the dignity of the HohenzoUerns* Minister Plenipotentiary to appear at public dinners and respond to toasts. He saw opportunities to break lances for his Kaiser's cause, by addressing the faculties and students of colleges and universities. No foreigner in so brief a period has received so many honorary degrees as Bernstorff, who is an LL.D., of nine leading American institutions of learning. Bernstorff's political ideal is unity and friendship between Germany, England and the United States. He does not preach it publicly, but he advocates it earnestly on all possible occasions. Some day he may be called to higher service at Berlin. If he is, the English-speaking race will have a zealous friend at the German Court. The armour-plate patriots of Rhineland, West- phalia and Berlin, which hanker to hang James Monroe in effigy, and the export Jingoes, who hate tariffs in every country but their own, look upon Count Bernstorff as an egregious failure. At regular and explosive intervals, they demand his recall. The Kaiser is a man who knows his business, and that is why he keeps Bernstorff at Washington. 192 XXIII KRUPP VON BOHLEN When the invincible hosts of the Balkans were pushing and pounding the Turk back into Asia, Europe and the world were fed with the legend that the primary cause of the Ottoman rout was the lamentable failure of Krupp artillery. There is room for difference of opinion on that point. What is absolutely sure is that no single aspersion cast on things German by captious critics in contemporary times ever wounded German susceptibilities more poignantly. The house of Krupp is a national institution in the Fatherland. Its name is almost as revered as that of the Hohenzollems itself. To slander it is to affront the nation. The firm's prestige is certain to weather the storm of recent events, which for a while threatened to under- mine it. If the omniscient experts are right, who assert that Lule Burgas and Kirk Kilisse were lost on the target-fields of Meppen, fifty-two war offices and general staffs throughout the world have been blundering for half a century. To that many different governments Krupp guns have been supplied, more than 30,000 in all. Twenty-three K. O 193 MEN AROUND THE KAISER States in Europe are among them, eighteen in America, six in Asia, and five in Africa. Germany herself, of course, heads the hst of the deluded. Since the great exhibition at London in 185 1, when an obscure Rhenish steelmaker from Essen electrified the military universe with a six-pounder of flawless cast steel, the German Army and Navy have bought 29,000 Krupp guns. Those of them which will bark to-moiTow from the turrets of the Kaiser's Dreadnoughts and the ramparts of Metz and Konigsberg will thunder forth a different story than the cannon of the terrified and untrained Turk. When Armageddon descends there will be men behind the guns of Germany's artillery. On the recent anniversary of Emperor William's birthday, the brains of Essen — the two or three thousand department-chiefs and engineers who conduct the Krupp works — foregathered for their annual celebration. A scholarly-looking man, youth- ful and of modest bearing and courtly manner, was the orator of the occasion. " Much has been written and talked of late," he said, " about the inefficiency of Krupp guns and Krupp workmanship. Is there anyone among you who believes these fables ? Is there a man here who would not be ready any time, like myself, to take the field against all comers with Krupp guns and Krupp armour ? I know you all think as I do — that each and every man of us has the utmost confidence in these things which are of our very selves ! " The speaker was Dr. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, husband of the cannon 194 > » ' . ' \ , • » • * ^ 1 ■) 1 > > 1 > ' ■» » ■> i Z z KRUPP VON BOHLEN queen, nee Bertha Krupp, and managing director of the vast arsenal of which she is the sole owner. Dr. Krupp von Bohlen — he is best known in that abbreviated style — is no longer merely Bertha Krupp's husband. He has ceased to be simply the man who married the greatest fortune in Germany, and has become the master of Essen in reality as well as title. Taken suddenly from diplomacy, a career which he inherited and was successfully pursuing, he has made himself within seven brief years a worthy leader of the greatest industrial organism the world has yet seen. He has proved that he is not an accident. The 75,000 members of the Krupp staff, and the community of 300,000 souls whom they represent, look up to Krupp von Bohlen with the same spirit of reverential loyalty which inspired three generations of workmen to regard the Krupps as their liege lords. They, too would be ready to follow where Krupp von Bohlen leads, behind the guns and impenetrable armour they themselves have forged. Travellers across the dreary panorama of Western Prussia from the North Sea to Berlin are familiar with the endless forest of chimneys and smoke-stacks which dot the landscape in that heart of industrial Germany. It is at Essen, in the valley of the Ruhr, that the chimneys and the smoke are thickest. It is as if Sheffield and Pittsburg had miraculously been transplanted and rolled into one throbbing area of 1,200 acres, 235 of them under roof, which comprises Messrs. Krupp's Essen works alone. ° ^ 195 MEN AROUND THE KAISER There and at the three neighbouring fifteen-mile-long gun ranges of Meppen, 39,000 men are employed. At Krupp collieries in Rhineland-Westphalia and Silesia 10,000 miners dig coal for Krupp branch works at Annen and Gruson, where armour-plate is made, and for Krupp blast furnaces at Rheinhausen, Duisburg, Neuwied and Engers, which between them keep another 15,000 hands busy. At Kiel 6,100 shipwrights build battleships, torpedo- boats and submarines in Krupp's fifty-five-acre Germania dockyard. In Germany and far-away Spain 5,000 miners are disembowelling ore from Krupp iron mines, to be shipped, in the case of the foreign product, in Krupp steamers, which unload their burden at Krupp docks in Rotterdam, there to be transhipped down the Rhine, to emerge some day as armour, Dreadnoughts, siege guns and murderous shell, " Made in Germany." The Krupp pay-roll totals £5,000,000 a year. /' Dr. von Bohlen und Halbach — one is never quite sure whether he ought to be called by his original, double-barrelled name, or Krupp von Bohlen, as the Kaiser gave him and his male heir per- ; mission to call themselves the day the young diplomat married Bertha Krupp — was Secretary of the Prussian Legation at the Vatican when he \ met, wooed and won the cannon queen. Previously he had served at the German Embassy in Washington, and at the Legation in Pekin through the trying days of the Boxer siege. He is forty-two years old and was bom at The Hague, while his father 196 KRUPP VON BOHLEN was the diplomatic representative of the Grand Duchy of Baden at the Netherlands Court. A native of Holland, Dr. Krupp von Bohlen has American blood in his veins, for his parents were both bom in Philadelphia. His maternal grand- father was a general of the United States Army, and lies buried in a soldier's grave in Virginia. His engagement to Fraulein Krupp was an ideal love match. They became acquainted while she and her mother and sister were passing an Easter holiday in Italy. In October, 1906, they were married at the Krupp mansion, " On the HiU," a beautiful but unpretentious home set high on one of the wooded peaks which envelop Essen. The Kaiser attended the wedding and toasted the couple in the name of the Empire, for whose defence and development the name of Krupp denotes so much. Friedrich Alfred Krupp, the third proprietor of the business, who died in 1902, aged only forty-eight, had no sons, and the gigantic properties passed into the sole possession of his eldest daughter. Bertha, at that time a minor. Her mother, acting as guardian and carrying out a testamentary provision, turned the firm into a joint-stock company in 1903, with a capital of £8,000,000, divided into 160,000 shares of £50 each, all but four of which went to Fraulein Krupp. For the mother and younger sister, Barbara, the late Herr Krupp provided independently and generously, but they are poor compared to the fortune of the cannon queen, which to-day is estimated at close to £15,000,000. 197 \ I MEN AROUND THE KAISER She draws lo per cent, dividends from her shares in Knipps, Ltd., now capitaHsed at £9,000,000, and with other incomes is beheved to be in the enjoyment of an annual revenue which equals, if it does not exceed, that of the Kaiser, which is £1,100,000. The next richest person in Germany, Prince Henckel von Donnersmarck, a Silesian coal and iron magnate, has an income of only £657,000. Germany's richest family is one of its very simplest. Thousands of middle-class households live more pretentiously. Both Frau von Bohlen and her husband look upon the inheritance of the Krupp business as a sacred trust. They are far more interested in the development of the firm's great fund for invalid employes, to which they are con- stantly adding, or in their splendid working-men's colonies, or in the extensive homes for aged, incapacitated and pensioned workmen, than in de- feating Schneider-Creusot, Vickers-Maxim or the Bethlehem Steel Company in a competition for foreign gun and armour orders. The castles of kings are open to them, but it is seldom they are persuaded to desert the homely family life of Villa Hiigel for the glittering joys of high society. In Berlin, when the aristocrats and plutocrats of the realm foregather for the Court season, Herr and Frau von Bohlen are rare guests. When they come, they live unobtrusively at an hotel. Their travelling at other times is mostly confined to a brief " cure " outing at some German spa. They are old-time 198 KRUPP VON BOHLEN frequenters of Kiel for the June regatta week, their speedy schooner Germania being an ancient foe of the Kaiser's Meteor. Yachting is their keenest hobby. But the vast bulk of their time and thought is devoted to their home, their three children and their workpeople. Their domestic and philanthropic activities by no means debar them from maintaining a lively and highly intelligent interest in their gigantic business. Herr Krupp von Bohlen, since 1908 the Chairman of the Company's board, is at his office in the big new administration building, in the centre of the Essen plant, every morning at nine. He devotes the entire forenoon to conferences with subordinate directors and department-chiefs. The reins of the colossal undertaking are always in his hands. He is said to have mastered the mysteries of steel to an astonishing degree. Many important extensions of plant have taken place under his direct supervision. His wife has known about ingots and guns and armour for a long time. Her late father grounded her thoroughly in the elementary principles of the trade which the Krupps have followed for over 100 years. She goes regularly to the administrative offices, sometimes three or four times a week, and is accustoming her five-year-old son, the future owner of Krupps, to the rumble and roar of rolling-mills by taking him along on occasion. Sometimes Frau von Bohlen attends meetings of her board of directors — she is seldom outvoted — and has been known more than 199 MEN AROUND THE KAISER once, with a flash of genuine genius, to suggest ideas and pohcies of far-reaching import. Though brought up to be a cannon queen by her father, Frau von Bohlen's education at the hands of her mother was essentiall}^ that of a girl in whom the homely virtues of the German Hausfrau are incul- cated as those which most adorn womankind. Like all of her class, she is an accomplished mother, besides being a mistress of the minor talents of language, music and equestrianism. She is neither a suffragette nor a butterfly. She is vastly more absorbed in the A.B.C's of her children than in votes for women or the latest intelligence from the Rue de la Paix. Her public appearances, even in Essen, are extremely infrequent. Almost always they are confined to the recurring philanthropic or com- memorative festivities of the works. She never fails to preside over the annual celebration of her father's birthday, which is the occasion for bestowing money and other golden mementoes on employes who have completed twenty-five years of service. The number averages 400 annually, and Frau von Bohlen insists on a kid-gloved handshake with every one of her homy-fisted veterans. That is one of the little reasons why the 16-inch gun makers of Essen love their 27-year-old mistress, to whom their weal is a religion. Villa Hiigel, the Krupp home, is a capacious dwelling-place, designed to dispense much and comfortable, but never ostentatious, hospitality. Its guest-chambers are almost always occupied. 200 KRUPP VON BOHLEN English and American friends who visit Herr and Frau von Bohlen invariably come away charmed with the unaffected personalities of their hosts and unable to recall a word, a thought or a bit of environment which suggested anjrthing but sim- plicity and complete domestic felicity. The Krupp von Bohlens are inspiring reminders that the age of luxury and splurge is still adorned by folk to whom great riches can never be a curse. 201 XXIV MAXIMILIAN HARDEN Emperor William's reign has been singularly devoid of scandal. The private lives of himself and his large family are an unblemished record of exemplary living. The tongue of gossip has never busied itself with the Kaiser in an unworthy con- nection. In one momentous instance he proved unfortunate in the choice of his friends. That is as near as William II. 's name has ever come to being dragged in the mire. It emerged from the unlovely affair untarnished. To discuss Maximilian Harden's crusade against Prince Eulenburg is a thankless task in a review of the men who have made the Kaiser's reign notable, but the review would be incomplete without it. Tlie upheaval caused by Harden's revelations was the most striking victory wrought in the name of public opinion which Modern Germany has yet witnessed. Journalism, which had still to conquer in the Fatherland a position commensurate with the one it has long commanded abroad, was a power when the Moltke-Harden-Eulenburg trials were ended. How much of a power was not recognised at the time, nor is fully realised even now, though 202 ' B » » » >,>,*» O > • I ^? I ^»% \ \ MAXIMILIAN HARDEN the " November crisis " a year later was designed to bring it vividly home to the most reluctant circles of German society. Vilified and ostracised by super-patriots as an outcast, traitor and slanderer, stoned by a large section of his own colleagues in sheer envy or myopic conception of his epoch-making achievement, Maxi- milian Harden is to-day indisputably the com- manding figure in the field of German polemics. No man now writing in the language of Goethe and Schiller has so large a personal following, or so influential a voice. An incurable iconoclast, affecter ? of stylistic flourishes far above the head of the | average reader, a literary futurist who revels in the staccato and the cryptic, the editor of the Zukunft, whether writing or talking — he does both equally well — is assured attentive hearing from countless and sympathetic ears. He has the fascination of Horace Walpole and the sledge hammer incisiveness of Cobbett. He believes heads were made to be hit. If they bear a crown, or wobble on the shoulders of pedantic Chancellors, he hits them all the harder. He is a fierce patriot, but not a jingo. No pubhcist, \ past or present, ever dipped his pen into the vitriol , more fearlessly. Shining marks are the targets at which he tilts most gleefully. He has served two terms of imprisonment for what he describes as " alleged lese-majeste/' and spent the periods of his incarceration at Fortress Weichselmiinde — six months each — sharpening his lance for fresh jousts. For the purposes of this sketch I asked Harden to 203 MEN AROUND THE KAISER supply his own version of the episode with which history will chiefly identify him. He summarises it with characteristic lucidity. " In the affair of Eulenburg and Company," he says, " the gentlemen whom I had fought openly, and from purely political motives, tried to hold me to the indefinite and casual intimations I had made, and which were then intelligible only to themselves. They thought my insinuations incapable of substantiation before a court of law. This finally compelled me, after sparing them more than enough, to come forward with the proofs. I did it reluctantly, having warned them often. The rest you know." It was a distressing concatenation of events which were to ensue ; the incriminating articles in the Ziikunft, hinting vaguely at unspeakable conditions in the entourage of the Kaiser ; the boldness of the Crown Prince in bringing them to his father's attention ; the summary disappearance of Prince Philip zu Eulenburg — poet, musician, diplomat and wirepuller — from the circle of the Emperor's intimates ; the enforced resignation of General Count Kuno von Moltke, Commandant of Berlin, and Count Wilhelm von Hohenau, cousin and aide-de-camp of His Majesty ; Moltke's private action against Harden for libel, with its painful disclosure of moral laxity in the aristocracy and the Army ; Harden's acquittal ; the succeeding action against him, this time a Crown prosecution, with Harden in the dock, which was to " vindicate " Moltke and ended in a gaol sentence for the editor, 204 MAXIMILIAN HARDEN which he has never served ; XHarden's merciless revenge in the form of proceedings for perjury against Eulenburg, aheady a social vagrant and physical wTCck ; the broken favourite's tragic appearances as a prisoner on a stretcher, who is still under indictment and surveillance as an invalid awaiting trial. Such was the apparently endless reign of terror in which Harden' s campaign against the Inner Round Table of the Supreme War Lord engulfed the country. Germans eradicated its nauseous memories from their nostrils as speedily as possible. Moltke and Hohenau vanished as if obliterated. Where they are even at this hour nobody knows or cares. Eulenburg, ruined and disgraced, was permitted to retire to his feudal castle of Liebenberg, formerly the scene of annual sojourns by the Kaiser. Count Johannes Lynar, another of the clique, was cashiered from the Army and sent to gaol for a year and a half. France removed from her Embassy in Berlin a Charge d' Affaires who had been Eulenburg's friend. The camarilla, which had for a generation been one of the dominating forces in politics and Court life, which had helped to overthrow Bismarck, and was plotting for the downfall of Prince Biilow, was annihilated beyond resurrection. Germany had been made to blush before the world, but Harden's work was done. Harden had opportunity to ring all the changes of his versatile personality during his first trial. An actor for a brief period of his callow days, he played 205 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the part again in those fateful days at Old Moabit in the autumn of 1907. Trim, unafraid, alert and relentless, he practically conducted his own defence. German legal practice permits a litigant wide declamatory latitude. Harden smiles and bows to acquaintances, betokening confidence and eagerness for the fray. Before the trial is an hour old he has manoeuvred its course so that the pale Count von Moltke seems the real defendant, cowering under the lash of some merciless Public Prosecutor. Harden enters his plea of justification. He staggers the Court with a forecast of the damning evidence in his ammunition-chest. The Judge intervenes, as is his duty under the Prussian code, to propose a compromise. " In the interests of our whole country," he beseeches the editor to consent to a settlement out of court. Tense, defiant. Harden rises. In accents of splendid disdain he snarls he would rather go to prison than recede or compound. " Between me and that man," he thunders, levelling an accusing finger at Moltke, " there is no possibility of compromise on this earth ! " The trial must proceed. Four days it continues, a forensic struggle of surpassing bitterness, with no quarter the slogan of both prosecution and defence. No court scene ever staged by Booth or Irving rivals it in dramatic grimness. Moltke's attempts at rehabilitation crumble pitiably. Theatrical to the tips of his fingers, Harden, who has thrown Court and nation into hourly consternation with revelations of 206 MAXIMILIAN HARDEN State secrets come straight to him " from above," plays his trump card last — the Kaiser's own indict- ment of the three figures whose names have been bandied all the week. " Away with Eulenburg, away with Hohenau for ever ! There is nothing definite against Moltke, but he must remain on half-pay. Let him prove his integrity ! Purified or atoned 1 " An impassioned plea of self-defence by the defendant, and the curtain falls on the first act of the most harrowdng tragedy New Germany has yet faced. Then, two days later, proclamation of Harden's acquittal, and a welcome by the populace such as a conqueror might envy. Harden, who was born and educated in Berlin, is approaching his fifty-second birthday. Thirst for freedom and family bickerings drove him from home when a mere lad, to pursue for a spell the career of an itinerant actor. Though he decided that his- trionics were not his forte, his early courting of the Muse saturated his whole being, for his bearing and tactics always smack of the footlights. After a more or less breadless season as literary and dramatic critic, he wrote his first book, a series of political satires, under the pseudonym of " Apos- tata." In October, 1892 he issued the first number of Zukunjt. Harden's talents as a pungent commentator on current events attracted the attention of Bismarck about a year after the Iron Chancellor's dismissal. The dropped pilot invited the young editor to visit him, and until Bismarck's death he was a frequent 207 MEN AROUND THE KAISER and welcome guest at Friedrichsruh. No living man knows as much of Bismarck's unpublished history as Harden. Diagnosticians of the pathology of his uncompromising warfare on most of the events and institutions of the present reign ascribe it to Harden's veneration for Bismarck and a vow to avenge the ignominious manner of the empire- maker's retirement. Ztikunft, the little weekly in which Harden pours out his heart, has come to be the megaphone through which discontented Germany roars. People look upon it as an unterrified tribune which will expose shams and air grievances plausibly and forcibly. Information drifts to Harden in the most miraculous fashion, from the lowest and the highest in the land. Cabinet Ministers, men of affairs and plain sons of the people come to him with their woes and wrongs, often with their intrigues, confident that his tren- chant pen is the surest means of ventilating the one and righting the other. Zukunft has an immense circulation, and produces Harden a handsome income. He is in as great demand as a public speaker as his writings. During the \vinter he lectures occasionally in Berlin and outside, and sometimes responds to calls from abroad. His theme is always political. A natural orator, his style suffers only from staginess. He is fond of breaking off in the middle of a phrase or sentence, to accentuate the effect of a statement or idea. His lecture public is so large that a mere announcement of his appearance means a sold-out house within twenty-four hours. He 208 MAXIMILIAN HARDEN minces words on his feet even less than at his writing desk. Harden closely resembles Josef Kainz, the late Viennese tragedian, in looks, mannerisms and stature. Slight, though muscular of build, ascetic and stern, his external appearance is not found prepossessing by people who meet him for the first time. Their initial impression is that of a crabbed figure with an oblong head, crowned by a wealth of curly dark hair fringing an intensely intellectual face. Out of it flash two deeply penetrating eyes. But Harden captivates on five minutes' acquaintance. He proves to possess a winning smile, a wonderfully receptive mind, a temperament which is both modest and fiery, and an arsenal of information about the great events, the big men and the undercurrents of German life. You come away from his picturesque villa in the sylvan Grunewald, understanding why his enemies fear him, and no longer wondering why he counts powerful friends by the score. You hear him called a common scold in Berhn, but Germany would be the poorer without him. 209 XXV VON JAGOW For the fifth time ^vithin ten years the manage- ment of German foreign affairs has been placed in new hands. Herr Gottheb von Jagow — pronounced Yah-go — was summoned from the Ambassadorship in Rome at the beginning of 1913 to become the successor of the late Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter as the nominal director of the Fatherland's external relations — nominal, be it noted, because the feai is cherished that the appointment of a diplomat of stereotyped and limited experience denotes a return to the conditions under which German Foreign Secretaries were mere clerks to more exalted superiors. Forceful Kiderlen broke ^^dth that tra- dition. Von Jagow's record and antecedents, though untarnished, hardly justify the behef that he, too, will insist upon being chief of the Aus- wdrtiges Amt in more than name only. I have said that Herr von Jagow was " summoned " from Rome to succeed Kiderlen. " Dragged " is really the word, for it is an open secret that he came with a reluctance which almost bordered on insubordina- tion. The German Foreign Secretaryship is, without 210 ».T O > t '.>• ' N ' ' 4 » , Ho/photog roph ] \Bieber, Berlin. VON JAGOW doubt, the least coveted portfolio in the whole Imperial Government. None offers so brilliant an opportunity to fail. None is so incessantly in the fierce Hmelight of carping criticism. It has been the graveyard of more than one reputation. Of no Minister of the Kaiser are such herculean deeds expected. On him rests the burden of gratifying the gnawing ambition of Germany for a place in the sun. Two Foreign Secretaries within a decade died in harness, overworked and nerve-shattered. Will Von Jagow succeed where Von Richthofen, Von Tschirschky, Von Schon and Von Kiderlen- Waechter failed ? Will he, too, in the pursuit of his country's ardent desire for territorial expansion, accomplish nothing better than the addition of thousands of square miles of Congo swamp to the Kaiser's realms ? Will he win another Heligoland for the flag in one of the seven seas — in Walfisch Bay, or on the Persian Gulf ? Will he extend Germany's colonial frontiers in the Dark Continent till they envelop Portuguese Africa ? Can he gratify her longings for a sphere of influence to be called Asia Minor ? Can he cajole America into acquiescence in a German coaling-station or naval base somewhere in the Western Atlantic ? These are the questions his compatriots, and not alone fire-eating Pan-Germans, are asking. They wonder, with undisguised scepticism, whether the forty-nine year old bachelor, whose diplomatic career has been confined to attache posts at Hamburg, Munich, The Hague and Luxemburg, and four years of Fa 211 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Ambassadorship in Rome, will prove equal to the task his Imperial master has set him. Von Jagow was indubitably the Emperor's personal choice, and, moreover, his insistent choice. The sentimental in the Kaiser's kaleidoscopic make-up is not the least distinguished of his attrac- tive traits. He has an incorrigible weakness for Bonn Borussians, as the members of the famous Rhine University's historic and exclusive student Corps are called. William II. is a Borussian, and his new Foreign Secretary is therefore his " brother." From the Borussians the Kaiser has chosen his best friend, Prince Fiirstenberg. With a Kaiser Foreign Secretary and Man-behind-the-Throne who are all old boys of Borussia, the Bonn Corps may be said to be in partial command of the ship of State. A dozen other high officers of Govern- ment owe their eminence, among other qualities, to the fact that they are entitled to wear the peaked Sturmer and black-white ribbon of the Corps. At the opening of an exhibition in Berlin this spring the Kaiser was observed conversing familiarly with a somewhat diminutive figure of a man, whom nobody recognised, but whom His Majesty addressed in the form of Du (thou), in Germany the high- water mark of intimacy and affection. It was Von Jagow, the Corpshruder of Bonn, whom his Imperial college " chum " had just made German Foreign Secretary. The Kaiser was so anxious that Herr von Jagow should take up the reins in the Wilhelmstrasse, that 212 VON JAGOW he even induced the diplomat to renounce objections to North Germany as an abode for unrobust con- stitutions, and exchange the salubrious atmosphere of Rome for the climatic caprices of Berlin. So the newest maker of history in the rambling shack of a building which still does service as Germany's Foreign Office at least starts out on what Baron Marschall would have called a " steep and stony path," in a fine spirit of loyalty to his sovereign. For the rest, his deeds must tell. Herr von Jagow is the diametrical antithesis in physique and temperament of his blunt and aggres- sive predecessor. Kiderlen was big and girthy. Jagow is slight and attenuated. A description which doubtless does him injustice pictures him as misanthropic. Kiderlen's characteristic note, apart from bluffness, was bubbling good nature. He had a splendid disregard of the little niceties on which the professional diplomat lays stress. Jagow has a distinct predilection for such proprieties, coupled with a natural charm which promptly introduced a new atmosphere into the Ambassadorial reception-room at Wilhelmstrasse 76. He feels a bit strange and nervous in his fresh surroundings. He has a habit of glancing about him furtively, as if not quite sure of his ground. He is punctihously well-dressed, and is most at home, one gathers, in the drawing-room or at the dinner table. He is a book-lover and has a cultivated artistic taste. If he has inherited ancestral virtues, he should prove a statesman. Many of his forbears have played eminent 213 MEN AROUND THE KAISER rdles in Prussian political history, especially in their native Mark of Brandenburg. In the Avenue of Victory, that sepulchral open-air Walhalla which the Kaiser has hewn through the Tiergarten for the inculcation of patriotism, and to the horror of sculpture connoisseurs, is a bust of a Von Jagow flanking the statue of one of the electors whom he served. The new Foreign Secretary is following in the footsteps of his progenitors in becoming a paladin of the Crown. Von Jagow has been in the diplomatic service seventeen years, but only the Ambassadorship at Rome, which he occupied for four years, gives a hne on his capacities. He represented Germany in Italy at a dehcate period. Austria-Hungary and Italy, the Fatherland's partners in the Triple AlHance, have for years been on cat-and-dog terms. A pohtical divorce court would long ago have severed the union between Vienna and Rome on grounds of incompatibihty. Berlin itself thinks Rome could easily be convicted of infidelity because of what Prince Buelow^ used to call her fondness for extra dances with France and England. Von Jagow 's mission was to act the part of mediator between the " aUies," one of whom owns, the other covets, Trieste. The Triple Alliance was expiring in two or three years, and Austrian-Itahan differences needed to be smoothed over, if not composed, if the pact were to be worth rewriting. It has already been formally announced, far in advance of the expiration date, that the Dreihimd is to be prolonged 214 VON JAGOW for another term of years. Von Jagow undoubtedly did his full share to bring about an atmosphere in Rome which made it possible for the Marquis di San GiuHano to declare, in tones which did not lack sincerity, a few days ago, that the Triple Alhance was still the keystone of ItaHan foreign pohcy. The Turco-Italian War made another call for consummate tact and diplomatic skill on the part of Germany's representative at Rome. Jagow's detractors at Berhn — every German Ambassador has armchair critics at home who would do things infinitely better — blamed him for not anticipating the outbreak of hostihties in TripoU, and in not inducing Germany's ally to spare the susceptibihties and respect the territory of Germany's friend. German public sentiment was almost unreservedly on the side of the Turks. Even in official estimation, there is reason to beHeve, Italy's war in North Africa savoured, both in conception and execution, of a freebooting expedition. Itahans reahsed that Germany was on the side of their enemy. That Jagow nevertheless kept his country's diplomatic prestige at a high point during that strained time may be regarded evidence of ability of no mean degree. But Herr von Jagow will be judged by what he will accompHsh — not by what he has hitherto done or failed to do. His field of usefulness is world- wide, for the sun never sets on what the German Empire would like to be. His subordinates and colleagues at the Foreign Office, who have known 215 MEN AROUND THE KAISER of his previous career from the inside, bespeak for him a first-rate future. He does not look as if there were a Bismarck within him, but he has all the vir- tues which count in modern diplomacy — urbanity, industry and loyalty. His first public utterances have appropriately concerned Germany's paramount foreign issue — relations with England. He has told the Reichstag that matters with Britain are taking a more than ordinarily friendly course. He described them as " a delicate flower," whose growth ought not to be hampered by premature touching. Von Jagow himself is a paragon of conciliation. Externally he seems almost inoffensive. The mailed fist having failed grievously to make John Bull and Michel he down together, there are surface indications that the velvet glove is now to be tried. That is the only sort of gauntlet, one imagines, into which the new German Foreign Secretary's hand will ever fit. But you never can tell. Kiderlen came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. Perhaps Jagow will reverse the order. 216 XXVI VON DER GOLTZ Germany is spending £52,500,000 on increasing the striking force of her Army. The bulk of this vast new tribute to the Moloch of militarism is to be devoted to strengthening the position in the East. The Kaiser's " year of sacrifice " has in mind the struggle which Germans rehgiously believe to be inevitable — the supreme clash which is to decide forever whether German or Slav is to prevail in Europe. Reduced to naked essentials, the paramount necessity, in Teuton estimation, is the immediate consolidation of the miUtary resources of Germany and Austria-Hungary for war against the allied armies of Russia, France, Bulgaria, Greece, Servia and Montenegro. Before the rise of the youngest Great Power, the Balkan Confederation, Austria was relied upon to lend Germany such help in a war against Russia that the mass of the Kaiser's Army would be free for operations in Western Europe. But events have so radically altered the balance of power in South- Eastem Europe that Austria's mihtary worth to her German ally, it is asserted, has been reduced by at least 40 per cent. Germany expects now to 217 MEN AROUND THE KAISER have to deal with Russia and France almost single- handed. If Deutschtum and Slaventum were to come to grips to-morrow, Germany's main armies operating against Russia would in all probability be com- manded by Field-Marshal General Baron von der Goltz. It will no doubt strike the non-German reader as incredible that the organiser of the worst- beaten army in modern history is looked upon as a prospective German generalissimo. Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas are assumed abroad to have buried Goltz Pasha's reputation. Many of the slanderous anonymous postcards addressed to him during and since the Balkan War indicate that some of his own countrymen are of the same mind. But there is reason to believe that a different opinion prevails at the German General Staff. Von der Goltz remains Inspector-General of the Second Army Inspection. The Guards, the flower of the Army, have just been added to his Inspection. William II. is not the man to tolerate the retention of a discredited soldier in so vital a position, especially bluff, outspoken Goltz, who is not a personal favourite of the Supreme War Lord. Goltz Pasha — the title of which he is still proud — will lead the Germans across the Vistula, as they beheve they eventually will be led, because he is almost universally con- sidered the Fatherland's greatest living soldier. Field-Marshal von der Goltz' reputation as an organiser rests in his own country on his work as general of the First Army Corps — the Russian border 218 1 > J Ho/ph otogj-aph ] \.E. Bicber, Bc^-lin. VON DER GOLTZ legions — at Konigsberg, which he commanded between 1902 and 1907. The assignment to*the command of the corps of his native East Prussia was particularly agreeable to him and to the material with which he had to work. Just what Goltz accomplished in his district is the well-kept secret of the Staff at BerHn ; but it is known to have been of a superlatively effective character. He is dis- tinctly a soldier of imagination and initiative, and the peasant-farmers of East Prussia could unfold, if they dared, a scheme of defensive arrangements mapped out by Goltz, the originality and scope of which, they say, are destined some day to open the eyes of both friend and foe. At Konigsberg Goltz had full play for his tactical genius. He devoted his energies to developing the strategic training of the First Corps, which will be called upon to bear the brunt of the early fighting with Russia. He incul- cated relentlessly in officers and troops the doctrine that soldiering is all work and no play, and himself served as a tireless example of the theory. His critiques of manoeuvres were extraordinarily instruc- tive. New points of view were constantly being revealed by him. An officer who served in Goltz' corps was looked upon as having studied the arts of war at the fountain-head. Goltz is seventy years old, and has been writing, fighting and working for more than fifty years of the time. Another great German soldier who is still living, Field-Marshal Count von Haseler, is described by Goltz as his model of the workingman- 219 MEN AROUND THE KAISER soldier. Haseler, who was pounding the Sixteenth Army Corps on the French frontier into invincibiHty about the same time Goltz was hammering his East Prussians into shape, was Goltz' superior at the headquarters of Prince Frederick Karl during the Franco-Prussian War. " Well," ran Haseler 's greet- ing to the young officer, " you'll at least learn here what men and horses can do, and it won't do you any harm." At the headquarters of the Red Prince, Goltz had expected to move in a paradise of magnificent strategic operations. " Not until later," he has written, " did I come to understand how much more important it is in war than all theories, to recognise what men and horses are capable of accomplishing. I had the notion that if an officer had done four hours' service in the forenoon and two or three hours in the afternoon, he had a legitimate right to seek diversion. I soon found myself asking when Count Haseler rested, ate and drank, not to mention diversion or pleasure, and I began to realise that a soldier has only done his duty when at any given moment he cannot find a single thing to do — which is seldom the case." Goltz confesses that the thoroughness and Spartan simplicity of Haseler, his uncompromising frankness, his almost unnatural contempt of difficulties and exertion, " gave my whole military life a different direction than it would otherwise have taken." Field-Marshal von der Goltz' fame would be secure if he had never done anything but write. He revealed literary talent during precocious days 220 VON DER GOLTZ as a cadet at Gross-Lichterfelde, romance then being his forte. His first books were novels, which he sold to help support his widowed mother. Goltz' initial work of an important character, " Leon \ Gambetta and His Armies," brought him both fame 1 and trouble. It espoused the reduction of Germany's / three-year period of military service to two years, a reform earnestly advocated by the Liberal and Socialist parties. Von der Goltz was suspected of " radicalism " unbecoming an officer wearing the King's coat. By way of disciplinary punishment he was transferred to a line-captaincy at Gera. The Gambetta book, pubHshed in 1877, aroused national attention. Pilloried as heresy bordering on insubordination, it paved the way for the adoption of two-year service sixteen years later. Goltz' best-known literary production, " A Nation in Arms," appeared in 1883. It is a brilliant and unanswerable apotheosis of obligatory military duty. Englishmen who hesitate to identify themselves with Lord Roberts' crusade for National Service will find food for grave reflection in " A Nation in Arms," and a wealth of argument applicable to Britain's present-day ignominious military position. The book has been translated into a dozen languages and has helped many a Government to over- come opposition to the citizen-army theory. Recently Von der Goltz was placed at the head of \ the " Young Germany League," a new movement designed primarily to counteract the anti-militaristic propaganda of the Social Democracy. His selection 221 MEN AROUND THE KAISER was a recognition of the fact that he incorporates, as no other hving German, the idea of compulsory service for national defence. " Campaigns of Frederick the Great," " Army Leadership," and " The War History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century," are Goltz' best-known subsequent works. In the last-named he reveals himself a confirmed apostle of the theory that arms and war are the sole source of German greatness. " Through the sharp- ness of our sword," he declares, " not through the sharpness of our mind, was the dream of all Germans finally realised. Our material development is taking place on so rapid a scale that it must cause mis- givings, for it increases the sense of security and lust for enjoyment. Both have invariably proved perilous to a nation. Only so long as the cultivation of the warlike spirit keeps pace with general cultural development has a nation been able to maintain its place in history." All of Goltz' writings are marked by a picturesqueness and lucidity which stamp him a master of literary style. Though a believer in strong armaments, Goltz does not agree with Napoleon that God fights on the side of the biggest battalions. He would rather lead a single regiment of efficients into battle than a corps of mediocrities. He is not a victim of rage des nomhres. Goltz was summoned to reconstruct Sultan Abdul Hamid's military establishment in 1883. He remained in Turkey until 1895. He found the Ottoman troops a disjointed body of raw fighting 222 VON DER GOLTZ men and turned them into an army. When one hears of the incessant opposition, intrigues and suspicion which dogged Goltz' footsteps from the hour of his arrival in Constantinople, one wonders that he accomplished, even at the end of twelve years of patient effort, as much as he did. Abdul Hamid surrounded him with spies, who blocked him at every stage. Goltz once succeeded in extorting permission from the Sultan to hold manoeuvres faintly resembHng war. They were prohibited at the eleventh hour because the minions of the Caliph had made his Majesty believe that a conspiracy against the throne was the real object of the opera- tions. The nerve-wracked and superstitious auto- crat never allowed ball-cartridge to be fired by his troops. His artillery was not once permitted to practise with ammunition. Mauser rifles bought in Germany lay unpacked at Constantinople for six years. Those were typical of the conditions under which Goltz worked. Yet, by dint of herculean labour and consummate patience, he left Turkey in possession of an organisation worthy the name of an army, with a cohesive staff and inspection system, with a reserve, Landwehr and Landsturm, with a military school, with a topographical archive and with a comprehensive recruiting scheme. He rearmed the infantry and artillery, and worked out plans of campaign for every contingency except war against Montenegro. In 1909, after the Revo- lution had enthroned the Young Turks, they invited Von der Goltz to return to Turkey and reorganise 223 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the new army, but he dedined. In 1910 he spent two months among his former pupils, and came away with the impression that Turkish mihtary destinies were now in competent hands. In the events of the autumn of 1912, he was doomed to be bitterly disappointed. Turkey's disasters have been called Germany's defeats, with httle actual basis of fact or reason, as unprejudiced observers now agree. The troops which crumbled before the gallant legions of Bul- garia, Servia, Greece and Montenegro were not the army which Goltz trained and organised. They were an unready, underfed and demoralised rabble. An army into whose marrow German teachers for thirty years had drilled offensive as the first and last law of war threw that dogma to the winds and remained stubbornly on an impotent and wretched defensive. It was not Goltz who taught Turkish artillery to mount their guns on the sky-hne, of which even a near-sighted enemy might find the range. Bulgarian officers tell of an engagement wherein there was one Turkish position which had a concealed battery. It was in command of German officers and it was not dislodged. Sixty German officers participated in the gallant defence of Adrianople, and it is safe to assume their rdle was not a passive one. It seems as unfair to charge Goltz and German training with the miserable fiasco of the Turkish Army as it would be to blame Admiral Gamble and British training for the sorry showing of the Turkish Fleet, or French training for 22.4 VON DER GOLTZ the fact that the war was lost under Nazim Pasha, who studied at St. Cyr. Committee poHtics, Kismet and degeneracy were the elements which combined to conquer the Turk. Von der Goltz himself has not abandoned faith in the inborn military virtues of Islam. He calls the resistance of Adrianople, Scutari, Tchatalja and Janina glorious, and declares it shows that the blood of the men of Plevna, despite Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas and Kumanowa, still flows in Turkish veins. Germany and the Kaiser have showered their richest honours on the bespectacled soldier who looks more like a schoolmaster than a general. From his rank of junior lieutenant in the Austrian campaign of 1866, in which he had his left shoulder smashed by shell fire, Goltz has risen to the dignity of the ranking Field-Marshal of Prussia and a Knight of the Black Eagle. He traces his ancestral line to a Goltz who was ennobled and made a Marshal of France by Louis XIV. A man of gentlest exterior, he has a heart of oak and an iron will which is respecter of neither rank, precedent nor tradition. His speciality is stiff-neckedness to superiors and kind-heartedness to subordinates. He cares nothing whatever for the dress-parade atmosphere of his caste. His military rank requires his presence at Court on spec- tacular occasions of State, when one of his privileges is to carry the Supreme War Lord's sword. He looks upon such a function more as a bore than a prerogative, and refers to the decorative figure one cuts on such occasions as that of an oleander. K. Q 225 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Germany's new Army Bill, which is designed primarily to strengthen her military independence, interprets what Von der Goltz regards the basis of all true schemes of national defence. He believes the Fatherland must be armed for war on all fronts. He does not think any country ought ever to depend on anything but its own resources. It would be fatuous to contend that Von der Goltz' professional star is as irresistibly in the ascendant as it was before the Balkan War. It is not. The myth of the invincibility of German training has unquestionably received a staggering blow. But it is a woefully misguided foreign General Staff which imagines that Germany can be rolled up as Turkey was. Armageddon, no matter on whose banners victory eventually perches, will tell a different story. 226 XXVII GERHART HAUPTMANN Among the good wishes all Germany extended to Gerhart Hauptmann on his fiftieth birthday in November, 1912, a hope which found frequent and fervent expression was that he would take a long rest before putting hand to fresh literary effort. Nothing cynical or ironical was father to the thought. In twenty-three years Hauptmann had turned out exactly twenty-four plays and novels. The last ten of them, covering a period of as many years, were all failures. The producer of The Weavers and The Sunken Bell seemed to have lost his creative cunning. His admirers besought him to undergo a period of prolonged intellectual convalescence lest the deca- dence into which they considered him to have fallen became chronic. Many attribute his gluttony for work, as well as the decay of his genius, to the semi- luxurious life he has affected in recent years, and to the commendable desire to finance it out of revenue. By such diagnosticians of Hauptmann's latter-day powerlessness the bestowal of the Nobel Prize for Literature on his fiftieth anniversary is looked upon as almost providential. They cherish the hope that he may now find it meet to slow down his Q 2 227 MEN AROUND THE KAISER overworked mental machinery until he is able to give again of his old-time self. His " Complete Works " — poems, social plays, novels and tales — were recently published in six stately volumes. His wellwdshers devoutly trust that it will be at least a decade before another can be added to the collection. Hauptmann, despite the fact that his fame at the moment is more stationary than in the ascendant, is by almost universal consent the most gifted poet and dramatist now writing in the German language. Sudermann and Wedekind, and Schonherr, Schnitz- ler and Bahr, the leaders of the Austrian School, all have their worshippers, but the Silesian bard, the revolutionary of the productive 'nineties, the real Hauptmann, ranks as the most German, the noblest of them all. Nothing has altered his compatriots' belief that the eras of German literature which deserve to be recorded as epochs are still denoted by Schiller, Goethe, Grillparzer, Hebbel and Haupt- mann. We live in a material age, when literary successes are appraised in terms of vogue. Measured by that standard, Hauptmann stands high among the "best sellers" of all countries. The Simken Bell has reached its eightieth German edition — German editions sometimes run to 2,000 or 3,000 copies ; of translations in English, French, Russian and Italian no figures are available. The Weavers has gone to forty-three German editions, and Hannele and Poor Henry have each attained a twenty-third edition. 228 * • ^ . -I ^ I, Ho/photograph] [E. Bieber, Berlut. \\ ^«-V/^^vVX* -WW, GERHART HAUPTMANN In an autobiographical sketch a few years ago, Hauptmann, dwelling on the accusation that he was not a playwright, replied : " If I have not the qualities of the dramatist, I have at any rate his weaknesses, and one of them is the inability to let any single voice speak from the many-voicedness of my spirit, even if the voice be my own ! As it is to-day, so it has always been. In the depth of my being many voices have always clamoured for a hearing, and I saw no other possibility of bringing a semblance of order out of chaos except in the form of verse and prose, which spoke many sentiments — in other words, to write drama. I shall have to continue doing this, as it has been my highest spiritual form of life and expression of personality." The " many-voicedness " of Hauptmann's soul turned his early life into that of a rolling stone. He was twenty-six before he found himself — a period extraordinarily late in Germany, where youths select their careers long before attaining manhood. I have known Gymnasiasten of sixteen who spent sleepless nights of indecision as to whether the Church, the law or the State had prior claims on their budding talents. Hauptmann tried his hand at many things before the right one manifested itself. Born in 1862, the son of an innkeeper at the little Silesian watering-place of Salzbrunn, he was notoriously backward in his lessons at the primary schools, and his father sent him to Breslau, the capital of the province, in the hope that a Gymnasium education would drag him out of his dreams and 229 MEN AROUND THE KAISER make him study and learn like other boys. But he seemed predestined to remain at the foot of his classes, and left Gymnasium without passing into the higher form. He was sickly besides, and developed symptoms of consumption. Then his parents sent him to relatives who were farmers, hoping that life in the open would put fresh air into his lungs and ambition for a useful career into his heart, but farming did not appeal to him, and he soon wended his way back to Breslau, this time to try his hand at sculpture in the local school of art. He was a wilful pupil, who had often to be sus- pended for insubordination, and in 1882, a stripling of twenty, he left the institution, with failure again written across his papers. The zeal to write creatively was already burning fiercely within young Hauptmann. He had per- petrated considerable poetry of a highly idealistic colour in his callowest youth, including drama in blank-verse and an epic poem. Now, together with his brother Karl, who was also to become a dramatist of some note, Hauptmann wandered to Jena, where the brothers put in a desultory year dabbling in philosophy and natural science at the feet of Haeckel. Then the two companions in restlessness went to Hamburg, where an elder brother was in business, thence to wend their aimless way to Spain and the Mediterranean, ending up with a visit to Italy and a prolonged sojourn in Rome. Here Gerhart tarried alone, to dedicate himself once more to sculpture. In 1885, now married, he moved to Berlin, where 230 GERHART HAUPTMANN intimate association with the stormy petrels of the revolutionary era dawning in German literature finally landed him in the sphere which was at length to prove his long-sought natural element. In 1889, mainly under the inspiration of the path- breaker, Arno Holz, Hauptmann blossomed forth as the bright particular star of the new school of literary thought, whose gods were Ibsen, Tolstoi and Zola, and which was to pave the way for realism and naturalism in German dramatic art, as Richard Strauss and Max Liebermann were preparing to do in music and painting. Hauptmann became identi- fied with " The Free Stage," a society founded by the literary Secessionists, and in October, 1889, under its auspices, his first serious theatrical work, Before Sunrise, saw the light of day. A movingly terrible problem play dealing with social conditions in the author's own native Silesia, Hauptmann's relentless indictment of provincial German life, with its sordid atmosphere of greed, inebriety and licentiousness, was naturalism in the w-th degree. " A picture of hell itself would have paled by the side of it ; Zola and Tolstoi would have had to confess ' He can do better than we,' " was the comment of the novelist, Friedrich Spielhagen, on witnessing Before Sunrise. The premiere at the Lessing Theater was a veritable Donnybrook melee between the stalwarts of the old school and the revolutionaries. Heads were broken, faces scratched, and much hair pulled, but a fresh era in German dramatic production was irrevocably inaugurated. 231 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Four years later Hauptmann produced his great labour epic, The Weavers, again under the auspices of the Free Stage, but it was not until eighteen months afterwards that the piece was released by the Censor for public performance. The Weavers, a frankly revo- lutionary tragedy of toil, created a deserved sensa- tion. It assaulted the ramparts of the industrial system with sixteen-inch guns and stamped Haupt- mann for all time as a dramatist of consummate power. His paternal grandfather was a Silesian weaver in the 'forties, and the compelling misery of the play was founded on actual incidents in the life of the author's ancestor. The Weavers is unques- tionably Hauptmann at his best. Sentimentalists and chocolate-and-whipped-cream Backfische prefer The Sunken Bell, with its mystic and romantic symbolism, but in every line and scene of The Weavers there is a vision of red blood and pulsating hfe. If I were August Bebel, I should produce The Weavers at the expense of the Social Democratic war-chest every night in every industrial centre in the land. There has never been so soul-stirring an arraignment of the capitalistic Moloch. Hauptmann's next offering, The Beaver Skin, which he called a comedy of thievery, was a marked departure from anything he had previously attempted, and branded him a brilliant satirist. Nominally a skit on the stealth and devilry of designing womankind. The Beaver Skin was in reality a screaming burlesque on the German bureaucratic system. The autocratic and snobbish provincial 232 GERHART HAUPTMANN administrator, to whom red-tape, circumlocution and blind adherence to the letter of the law are holy writ, was delightfully lampooned. Only a few weeks after The Beaver Skin Hauptmann, executing as lightning a change as he had accomplished in the interval following The Weavers, revealed himself in still another guise in Hannele, " a dream poem." Many consider this tragedy of a dying child's fantastic vision of her ascent to Heaven Haupt- mann's greatest creation. The German Emperor hailed it as the authentic beginning of a genuine modern Christian drama, a distinction the Kaiser has since transferred to the Tyrolean Schonherr's Faith and Home. The Sunken Bell is Hauptmann's deepest plunge into romanticism. It set all Germany by the ears after its production at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, in December, 1896. Controversy over its merits raged furiously for months, and made the play Hauptmann's greatest success both at home and abroad. The author's detractors aver that it was Josef Kainz, the young Viennese tragedian, whose untimely death a year ago robbed the German stage of its greatest luminary, who " made " The Sunken Bell with his poetical inter- pretation of the bell-caster. But the story of Heinrich, the emotion-torn, and Rautendelein, his Circe, is quaint and moving. Tens of thousands who never saw Kainz' Heinrich have been charmed by the sublimity and beauty of the tale. A stanza, which Hauptmann puts into the hero's mouth, 233 MEN AROUND THE KAISER epitomises the psychology of the piece : " Open the window ! Let in Light and God ! " Hauptmann has written — emitted is, perhaps, the better word — new works incessantly since his Bell, but, with the single exception of Poor Henry, a German legendary tragedy (1902), has done nothing to amplify, or even sustain, his earlier fame. His newest play. The Rats, a tragi-comedy of modern Berlin, the same theme, strangely enough, to which Hermann Sudermann has just dedicated himself in A Good Reputation, was an utter failure two years ago. Hauptmann's very latest hterary output, a novel of the sea, " Atlantis," his fiftieth birthday offering to his admirers, scored only a moderate success. Hauptmann's creed is set forth in this striking introduction to his " Complete Works " : — " All thinking is based on one's special cast of thought, one's philosophic attitude towards the facts of life. All thinking is moreover a kind of wrestling between opponent thoughts, and therefore dramatic. Every philosopher who puts before us a system of logical syntheses has built it up out of decisions which he has arrived at after listening to this combat of opinions argued out at the bar of his own soul. Thus it is that I consider the drama to be the expres- sion of original thinking, thinking at a high stage of development. But the dramatist is concerned with decisions other than those which the philosopher specially aims at. From this special way of looking at the universe of life, then, are born whole series of deductions whereby the sphere of the drama, as 234 GERHART HAUPTMANN compared with that of the dramaturgies now in vogue, is infinitely widened. Nothing, therefore, that presents itself either to the external or the inward senses can be excluded from this thought- form, which transmutes itself into an art-form." Hauptmann does not look unlike Goethe. He is a tall, stately figure of a man, smooth-shaven, high- browed and broad-shouldered, with the same head of bristling, upstanding hair which adorned the creator of Faust. His favourite gesture in conver- sation is to run his fingers nervously through his fast-silvering locks. Like Goethe, too, Hauptmann complains that he is sorely misunderstood by his contemporaries. His most striking physical charac- teristic is the penetrating brightness of his piercing blue German eyes. He looks one squarely in the face when speaking, talks slowly and distinctly, and plainly weighs every word before uttering it. His features are exceptionally mobile and expressive. Occasionally a far-away look steals into his face, and you imagine him in one of the reveries from which The Sunken Bell must have sprung. Hauptmann is something of an egoist, and many think him arrogant. People say, for example, he has never given adequate credit to his great patron, the late Otto Brahm, of the Lessing Theater, who practically " made " Hauptmann as a dramatist, and, in a spirit of devoted self-sacrifice unusual in this box- office age, forced Hauptmann plays on the theatre- going public year after year, notwithstanding that they frequently were performed to empty houses. 235 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Salzbrunn, Hauptmann's birthplace, ostentatiously declined to honour its most famous son on his fiftieth birthday, claiming the author had been too much consumed with self ever to waste time or thought on his native town. The gravest charge levelled against Hauptmann is that he has been treasonable to the ideals which first gave him renown. When he went to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, he pleaded eloquently against the accusation that Socialistic blood once flowed in his veins. One is told nowadays that the man who wrote The Weavers has become a poet-prince who is enamoured of the dolce far niente of luxurious living in a palatial country house and an Italian villa. His detractors, an army corps in size, declare he has forgotten that he was once the bard of toil, and has become the poet of high finance. Hauptmann has had a somewhat unconventional matrimonial history. You will hear that Rautendelein of The Sunken Bell was not wholly an imaginary creature. But friend and foe alike agree that what Hauptmann needs most is a rest, if he is to augment his fame by fresh creations. Perhaps the Prussian Centenary drama he has written for production in his native province this summer — a symbolical epic of war, revolution and peace — will again permit him to come forth laurel-crowned. 236 XXVIII PRINCE LICHNOWSKY Peace or war with England is the Fatherland's question of questions. Treitschke adjured his countrymen that, having settled their scores with Denmark, Austria and France, the Germans' reckon- ing with Great Britain would be the last and the greatest. To-day its inevitability is circumstantially heralded by a lesser Treitschke, General von Bern- hardi, whose trenchant " Germany's Next War " has been compressed into a popular edition, in order that even the man in the street may be taught to anticipate history intelligently. A clash with England is Kismet to immense sections of the German people. There are millions of Germans who disavow the thought of war with Britain as a hideous and unthinkable crime against civilisation. They are to be found, unfortunately, not among the ruling caste, but mainly among the commercial and industrial fraternity, which is more interested in business than battle, and looks upon anything designed to arrest Germany's vast economic pro- gress as felonious and reprehensible. But they constitute a chorus in the wilderness. If their MEN AROUND THE KAISER voices could prevail, the menace of an Anglo- German conflict might be relegated to obhvion for all time. Amid conditions such as these, it may be accounted an asset for the world's peace that Germany is represented in London by a diplomat of common- sense and clear-headedness, Prince Karl Maximilian Lichnowsky, appointed Ambassador in October, 1912, to succeed the late Baron Marschall. Prince Lichnowsky has not had time to demonstrate his agility in treading " the steep and stony path," but he has made a good beginning. He is burdened with no fatuous illusions concerning the imponderabilia of the situation. He knows that a rapprochement cannot be built up on intellectual sympathies or considerations of sentiment. He recognises that naval rivalry is the paramount issue. He realises that until it is adjusted, settled or reconciled, Anglo- German relations can never rest on a foundation of permanent security or genuine trust. He admits that the problem bristles with difficulties, both of a political and technical nature, but he is optimist enough to consider its solution witliin the realm of possibilities. He admits Great Britain's necessity to be supreme at sea, and con- tends that those of his countrymen who dispute it are an uninfluential minority. Prince Lichnowsky has not always been as sound or open-minded on naval politics as he is to-day. As recently as four years ago he cherished a strangely myopic concep- tion of the underlying motives of Britain's demand 238 i) 5 > Hofp hotog raph ] [£". Bieber, Berlin. PRINCE LICHNOWSKY for sovereignty of the sea. Writing in October, 1909, in the Deutsche Revue, he advanced the following theories : — " British antagonism to Germany is primarily the artificial creation of British statesmen, who require a bogey to awaken modem England from the decadence so vividly described by Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw. " It was realised by British statesmen that the conversion of the United Kingdom into a Capitalist State had brought certain evils in its train. The Puritan spirit that founded the British Empire had vanished. Its economic power, like the fecundity of British mothers, was on the wane. Statesmen were compelled, therefore, to devise some means of arousing the nation to a new effort. " Knowing that fear was the best weapon with which to achieve this end, they seized upon Germany both as an example and a scarecrow. They exploited it for Imperial defence and colonial federation and fiscal policy. " As the supremacy of the fleet had long been the great British tradition, the naval authorities did not hesitate to misuse the German fleet for the furtherance of their own political fortunes. They would be loth to declare war and destroy the German fleet and commerce, because they would thereby annihilate the bogeys with whose aid they were chiefly enabled to perpetuate their existence and popularise Imperial schemes.'' By the summer of 1912 a new light had dawned 239 MEN AROUND THE KAISER on Prince Lichnowsky. Writing in Professor Stein's Nord und Sud, he said : — "It is Great Britain's right to possess a mighty fleet. Our duty on the other hand is not to be defenceless. It must give us cause to think when we find Great Britain always against us. We have to realise that Great Britain, which sees in us her most important, and, therefore, her most dangerous rival, is as little likely to take our side in the future as she did over Morocco. Great Britain will regard a German fleet strong enough to render us independent as a national danger. We build a fleet in order not to fall into a position of dependence. At all events, a more friendly attitude in British policy towards us must precede any limitation of our armaments, which sprang from the effects of British policy on the public mind in Germany. A solution lies in a compromise restricting Anglo-German competition to the paths of peaceful industry and moderate armaments, which would give Great Britain, as champion of the world, an opportunity to match herself in peace against a partner worthy of respect. After we have copied her manners, sports, and games. Great Britain should not take it amiss that we copy her fleet." Prince Lichnowsky's ideal of the feasible in Anglo- German relations is an entente cordiale based on " mutual confidence and common aims," a modus Vivendi which, while excluding war, would avoid the sacrifice of vital interests and safeguard national honour. He has so far kept clear of the thin ice 240 PRINCE LICHNOWSKY of the Navy question. None of his several public utterances in London has touched it. To Mr. Churchill's latest proposal for naval peace — a *' holiday year " in shipbuilding — the German Government turned a deaf ear, as it has done on all other similar occasions in the past. If the British Government is ever constrained to make a formal tender of a naval understanding to Berlin, it will undoubtedly become Prince Lichnowsky's pain- ful duty to trudge across St. James's Park to Downing Street with the message that Germany looks upon the project as Utopian and undebatable. Not that he himself is a zealot of the Navy League mould. He is, indeed, on record as saying that a " slowing down in the rate of construction," along lines repeatedly broached from the British side of the North Sea, " is the only attainable thing." But Germany's naval policy is made in Leipziger Platz, not Carlton House Terrace. Like his compatriot and confrere at Washington, Count Bernstorff, Prince Lichnowsky is essentially a diplomat of modern method and point of view. The German Embassy at London, under his predecessors. Prince Hatzfeldt and Count Wolff- Metternich, was almost a hermitage. For years it was socially non-existent. Count Metternich, ambassador during the strained decade following the South African War, was a bachelor who abhorred the role of either host or guest. He lacked social qualities almost utterly. Many students of the psychology of Anglo-German tension ascribe it to K. R 241 MEN AROUND THE KAISER the fact that the wire between the German Embassy in London and the great thought-moulding circles of British life and society has long been out of working order. Prince Lichnowsky, finding the wires down, proceeded to put them up. Forthwith he set himself the task of moving about and of seeing and knowing people. Public opinion rules in England, and he conceived it his business to keep in touch with those who make it. He accepted invitations to address public dinners of the Royal Society, the Lord Mayor and the Chambers of Commerce, and embraced the opportunity of the Kaiser's birthday dinner of the German " colony " in London to dis- cuss his mission and the ambitions he cherished for it. Supported by a particularly brilliant consort, the Princess Mechthilde Lichnowsky, nee Countess Arco von und zu Zinneberg, he caused it to be known that the all-important social phase of diplomatic life was to him a thoroughly congenial obligation, and that he purposed living up to it. He is tremendously fond of sport and hunting, and lost no time in letting Englishmen know that in him they had a kindred spirit. It was no insignificant tribute to the security and rapidity with which Prince and Princess Lichnowsky won their spurs in exclusive London that they were honoured, within four months of their arrival, with the presence of the King and Queen at their dinner-table. Into Prince Lichnowsky's half-year in England has been crowded more diplomatic experience of the first magnitude than in all his previous career. Britain's PRINCE LICHNOWSKY leadership of the Concert of Europe in the liquida- tion of Turkey gave responsible opportunities to Ambassadors accredited to the Court of St. James. That England and Germany found it possible throughout the tortuous progress of the Balkan settlement to co-operate under truly intimate and confidential conditions proved that the Kaiser is represented in London by an Ambassador of dis- tinguished capacity. It is hardly mere chance that at least an external improvement in the highly- charged Anglo-German atmosphere has ensued during Prince Lichnowsky's brief residence in England. The Prince is fifty- three years old, and is the head of a Silesian family of ancient aristocratic lineage, with large estates at Kuchelna and Gratz. His mother was a Princess of Croy. The son of a Prussian General of Cavalry, he himself began life as a soldier, and was a brother-officer of the present Kaiser in the Life Guard Hussars. William II. has always taken a lively interest in the careers of men who were with him at the University and in the Army. The former Red Hussar of Potsdam, whose military rank is that of a major, claims a particularly warm place in the affection of his ex-colonel whom he now represents in England. The Emperor, recognising the exceeding good birth of the Lichnowskys, frequently addresses the Prince with the appellation of equality, du. During " Chancellor crises " Prince Lichnowsky is always mentioned as a logical possibility for the Premiership. He was a boon friend of Prince R 2 243 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Billow and, contrary to the example of others, remained loyal to the fallen Chancellor after the latter's totter from grace. Prince Lichnowsky, strangely enough, began his diplomatic career as an attache in London twenty-eight years ago. When he was appointed Ambassador, he said he felt, in returning to England, like a man going back home. After serving in London the Prince was stationed successively at Stockholm, Constantinople, Dresden, Bucharest and Vienna, and then became a depart- ment-chief at the Foreign Ofhce in Berlin, where he remained with the rank of a Minister Plenipotentiary until his retirement in 1904. The eight years' interval of his diplomatic inactivity was employed mainly in superintending the extensive properties inherited from his father, though he found time to participate in domestic politics as a hereditary member of the Prussian Upper House. Although a Roman Catholic, Prince Lichnowsky has never identified himself with the Clerical Centre Party or its ultramontane politics. Nominally a Conservative, he revealed distinct traces of Liberalism during the bitter controversy over Prussian Franchise Reform in 1910. Iii_ vigorous speeches in the Herrenhaus he put himself on record in favour of a sane revision of the Suffrage system, declaring that " the necessity to make timely concessions to the Democracy is imperative and can no longer be avoided." He declined to be associated with any reform which did not accede to justifiable demands for more truly popular 244 PRINCE LICHNOWSKY government in Prussia. Perhaps Prince Lich- nowsky's insistence on the rights of the proletariat sprang from recollections of the terrible fate of his paternal uncle, Prince Felix Lichnowsky, who was foully lynched by the Democratic mob outside Frankfort in the frenzied days of the Revolution of 1848. Unprepossessing of exterior, with a head of somewhat pentagonal mould and a stooping figure. Prince Lichnowsky looks the Polish aristocrat of another generation, with all the distingue of the Grand Seigneur of that type. He has a strongly accentuated artistic nature. His knowledge of the English language is faultless. He sometimes con- veys the impression of loquacity, but can be enig- matic and phlegmatic when it is useful. His wife, who is predestined to make a deep impress on London society, is, like her husband, a clever writer. Only recently she has published a charming book, " The Land of the Pharaohs," dealing vividly with impressions of trips through Egypt. With their wealth, bonhomie, personal prestige, predilections for the best things in English life, and natural social gifts, Prince and Princess Lich- nowsky fit ideally into the charmed circle of London diplomacy. Neither of them is likely to fall a victim to its seductive pitfalls. 245 XXIX VON KIDERLEN'WAECHTER It was a tragic coincidence which willed that the collapse of Turkey, where Germany's politico- economic interests have of recent years been so assiduously cultivated, should synchronise with the almost simultaneous deaths of Germany's greatest specialists on Near Eastern affairs — Baron Marschall von Bieberstein and Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter. Without sinning on the side of triteness it can be asserted that their loss was almost irreparable. At the psychological moment of their departure, when the incalculable possibilities of the Balkan War monopolised Europe's attention, it was as if the German political army had lost its entire Intelligence Department at one blow. Kiderlen — the hyphenated name of the late Foreign Secretary was seldom used — had been in charge of the Auswartiges Ami only two years and a half when stricken down in the early hours of 1913 ; but he had been a positive factor in Germany's foreign affairs for a generation. In the first two great European crises of the present century — the Bosnian annexation of 1909, and the Morocco imbroglio of 191 1 — the bluff, rotund Wiirtemberger, 246 • 3 o " • VON KIDERLEN-WAECHTER whose diplomatic schoolmaster was Bismarck, played the leading role. From the Bosnian incident he emerged triumphant. Morocco added no lustre to his fame, but he survived it brilliantly, and his star was steadily, even rapidly, in the ascendant when his end came. Rapprochement with England was the ideal to which his ebbing energies were being devoted. He did not believe that Anglo-German rivalries must end in Armageddon. " The Enghsh," he said to a friend, only a few weeks before his death, " are much too shrewd business people not to realise, finally, that neither they nor we can profit from the present state of affairs. You may be sure an understanding will come, no matter who is Ambassador in London ! " Kiderlen's last public utterance was a brief, but telling, statement in the Reichstag recording the " gratifying intimacy " which had sprung up between the British and German Governments in connection with the Balkan turmoil. When Herr von Kiderlen was summoned to the German Foreign Office in the summer of 1910, his advent on the scene of contemporary diplomacy was hailed as the arrival of " a new force in Europe." Here and there he was welcomed as " the new Bismarck." He had, and deserved, a reputation for ruthless directness of method which is popularly associated with the Iron Chancellor. That Kiderlen ' was to prove at least a disturbing force, events of the succeeding summer were to show ; for the Moroccan adventure was primarily, if not exclu-^ 247 MEN AROUND THE KAISER sively, of his making. He did not come out of it with his diplomatic reputation enhanced ; but that he remained as Foreign Secretary after detractors had composed his poHtical obituary a dozen times is, perhaps, the highest tribute which could be paid to his skill. The Kaiser is not accustomed to tolerate failures in exposed positions. Kiderlen's power and influence grew to be immeasurably higher after Agadir than they were before. Kiderlen became a truly national figure in Germany under circumstances designed to ruin the career of a merely average politician or diplomat. Germany was still in the tumult of the " Kaiser crisis " of November, 1908, when a fat and florid man in a lurid yellow waistcoat rose from the Government bench in the Reichstag. He was the unrecognised spokesman of the Foreign Office. It fell to his thankless lot to defend the Department against scathing attack from a dozen quarters. " The Foreign Office," he began, " is hopelessly understaffed. We are handhng four times as many documents as ever before in our history. I will match our zealous personnel against that of any Foreign Office in the world." This circum- locutory defence of the Department against crass incompetency caused the House to rock with ironical delight. The Acting Foreign Secretary, Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter, got no further. The remainder of his " speech " was drowned in a Niagara of hilarity. The " man with the yellow waistcoat " — so was he destined henceforth to be 2^8 VON KIDERLEN-WAECHTER known — ignominiously resumed his seat, com- pletely laughed down. Few knew him, but whoever he was, his career w^as considered closed. But people erred grievously in judging Kiderlen from his absurd maiden effort in the Reichstag. Summoned to serve as Foreign Secretary temporarily while the " Kaiser crisis " was raging, he was thrown into the breach at a psychological moment, for a few months later the Bosnian annexation plunged the Austrian-German alliance into the crucial test of its career. Events proved Kiderlen to be the man of the hour. With ten years of experience at the important diplomatic outpost of Bucharest at his back, and intermittent periods of deputising for Baron Marschall at Constantinople, Kiderlen had become an expert on the tortuous affairs of the Near East. In the spring of 1909, when Austria-Hungary and Germany dared Europe say them nay in the destruction of the Treaty of Berlin, it was Kiderlen, still acting as Foreign Secretary, who held the reins of German diplomacy and directed the policy which coerced Russia into sullen recognition of the Bosnian annexation under penalty of war. The Kaiser donned his " shining armour " on that historic occasion at the instigation of Kiderlen. Count Aehrenthal and Prince Biilow reaped the public laurels of the ominous triumph of German diplomacy. To Kiderlen belongs the actual credit. Having snapped his fingers in the face of the Franco-Russian Alliance, it was not surprising that Kiderlen should pick out the Anglo-French Entente 249 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Cordiale as his next object of assault. The French advance on Fez gave him the pretext, and in July, 191 1, the Kaiser's gunboat " Panther " dropped anchor at Agadir. The history of that illstarred expedition is fresh in the public mind. The " Panther " executed its dramatic spring on the Moroccan coast, kept Europe on tenterhooks for more than three months, and then ingloriously withdrew. The Entente. Cordiale proved more impregnable than " the new Bismarck " had calculated. France remained in Morocco at the cost of " compensations " to Germany, which have turned out to be worth, in popular estimation, hardly the coal the "Panther" burned during her stay at Agadir. After serving through the Franco-Prussian War as a volunteer, Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter entered the diplomatic service during the heyday of the Bismarck regime, when the influence of that strange unseen autocrat of German foreign policy, the late Herr von Holstein, was paramount. Between Von Holstein, Prince Philip zu Eulenburg and Kiderlen an intimate friendship existed. Kiderlen, , at the time, was merely head of a sub-division at the Foreign Office, but his comradeship with Holstein / and Eulenburg clothed him with unusual influence and authority. Kladderadatsch, the comic weekly, regularly lampooned the trio of friends. It dubbed Von Holstein "The Oyster Friend," Eulenburg "The Troubadour," and saddled Kiderlen with the nickname of " Spatzle " (Dumpling) in token of his 250 VON KIDERLEN-WAECHTER fondness for that succulent South German dainty. In 1894, Kiderlen, incensed at some particularly bold thrust in Kladderadatsch, challenged its editor, Herr Polstorff, to a duel, and left him on the field of honour with a bullet wound in the right shoulder. Kiderlen's early diplomatic career was spent as secretary or attache at German embassies and lega- tions in St. Petersburg, Paris and Constantinople. In 1888 he was delegated to represent the Foreign Office on State visits which William II. paid to the Courts of Russia, Sweden and Denmark, following his accession. He was destined to ingratiate himself with the Kaiser, who was immensely fond of the young diplomat's unconventional style and talents as a raconteur. It was these very traits, however, which were to bring Kiderlen into disrepute with his Sovereign. At a Cowes regatta a few years later, when he was again in his Majesty's entourage, he ventured to express some advanced opinions on the Kaiser's procedure while in British waters, and the next batch of diplomatic changes gazetted by the Foreign Office contained the announcement of Kiderlen's " banishment " to the legation in Roumania. There he bided his time patiently and effectively till his Imperial master made requisition for his expert services at Berhn. Kiderlen's opportunity came with the appoint- ment to the Chancellorship of Bethmann Hollweg, whose ignorance of foreign affairs was profound. Hitherto, German Foreign Secretaries had hardly been more than amanuenses to Chancellors. 251 MEN AROUND THE KAISER Kiderlen was the first to relegate that tradition. He became Foreign Minister in something more than name. Members of the Berhn Corps Diplo- matique soon found that they had an individuality to deal with, and not always an agreeable one, for Kiderlen's dominant characteristics were brusque- ness of manner and disregard of the Chesterfieldian proprieties which smooth the thorniest of diplo- matic paths. He was rough at times to the point of uncouthness, though his wit and joviality usually saved the situation ; but he could be suave and conciliatory when occasion demanded, and M. Cambon, the distinguished French ambassador at Berlin, with whom the Moroccan duel was fought, found his German adversary, despite his aggressive- ness and tenacity of purpose, at heart a sane patriot and honest antagonist. The summer of 191 1 was torrid in Berlin, atmospherically and politically, and the diplo- matic barometer, which was chiefly in the keep- ing of Cambon and Kiderlen, more than once sank in response to some saving act or word, tactful or jovial, from the good-natured Wiirtem- berger who, for the time being, held German destinies in the palm of his hand. A confirmed bachelor, Kiderlen was an incessant smoker of sturdy cigars, and his hobby was the keeping of owls. He was prodigiously industrious and preferred work to social activity. He put in his spare time, while Foreign Secretary, learning French, which he grew to command. English was beyond his powers. He 252 VON KIDERLEN-WAECHTER was credited with the ambition to succeed Baron Marschall at Constantinople, and when that field of usefulness was closed to him, he dedicated himself with all his iron energy to the giant task of bettering Anglo-German relations. Still virile and ambitious at sixty, he had but entered on the best years of a busy life when gathered to his fathers in the hoUdays of 1912 — 13. 253 XXX PAUL EHRLICH Germany believes in honouring her great sons while they are still alive. That is one of the reasons why one has to drive through " Paul Ehrlich- strasse " in Frankfort-on-the-Main to reach the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapeutics, where the discoverer of " 606 " has his workshop. His great contemporary, Professor Behring, dis- coverer of the diphtheria anti-toxin, has been similarly distinguished by the placing of his statue on one of the bridges spanning the Spree in Berlin. The world at large knows Professor Ehrlich best through the syphilis specific which he discovered in 1909, but before that he had already accomplished immensely important results in the science of immunity and the treatment of sleeping sickness. The Kaiser decorated him in 1903 with the Prussian gold medal for science. Oxford, Gottingen and Chicago, a couple of years later, awarded him honorary degrees for eminent attainments. Ehrlich's latest discovery was named " 606," because it was the six hundred and sixth atoxyl derivative with which he experimented before reach- ing his goal. In the mystifying lingo of the labora- 25^ >, ' " ' 3 ' 9 J :t J /W /^ ^^*^ PAUL EHRLICH tory, the drug is called dioxydiamido-arsenobenzol. In commerce the remedy is known as Salvarsan. The present status of " 606 " is hard to define. The medical universe is not united in its view of the real value of the drug. Many physicians swear by it ; others swear at it. Before announcing its discovery, Ehrlich accumulated records of 10,000 cases, all of which, except a minor percentage, were definitely cured within a miraculously quick period. He attributed the few failures to the fact that he could not at first be sure how large a dose could be safely administered to a human being. " 606 " is not the cure-all hailed so rapturously by the suffering section of an ignorant public four years ago, but it is admittedly a remarkable specific, and invaluable in the treatment of the malady at which it is aimed. It is undeniably efficacious. Whether it cures permanently can only be determined by years of minute observation. Argument over its merits or demerits has grown materially less acrimonious. It is now an accepted drug. Ehrlich himself recognizes its imperfections. At least a third of his time is devoted to probing and eradicating them. Cancer and sleeping sickness are the other subjects on which he is concentrating. Claude Bernard, Helmholtz, Pasteur and Ehrlich have been bracketed by an eminent authority as " the unexcelled prototypes of investigators of life phenomena in medicine." Ehrlich stands out from the rest mainly by reason of his imagination and idealism. A foreign admirer has spoken of " the 255 MEN AROUND THE KAISER uniquely fertile and versatile career of research " which has made Ehrlich " the most original and picturesque of living investigators of medical science." Though Ehrlich's discoveries compre- hend such divergent branches as chemistry, bacterio- logy, neurology, histology, internal medicine, patho- logy, pharmacology, studies of the protozoa and immunity, his life-work, according to his bio- grapher, Mrs. Marguerite Marks, " presents a logical sequence." Writing in McClure's Magazine for December, 1910, Mrs. Marks, whose husband was an assistant in Ehrlich's laboratory, gives an authoritative account of the latter's " basic idea." " Briefly," she says, "it is this : that each and every type of living cell, including bacteria and other parasites, has a specific affinity — an individual taste or avidity — for some particular substance. A given drug, when taken into the body, is not equally distributed throughout the body, nor does it equally affect the different tissues and organs. Thus, morphine and strj^chnine affect the nervous system, digitalis acts on the heart, etc. Stated thus, in general terms, the theory that each tissue has a selected affinity for certain drugs is a common- place of medical knowledge. But Ehrlich elaborated the theory till it took on new meanings. By experimenting along the line of his theory, he has been able, in at least two instances, to discover drugs that will destroy certain virulent disease germs in the human system without injuring the body 256 PAUL EHRLICH tissues in the midst of which the germs lurk. Ehrlich has thus forecast the probably not distant day when a specific and certain remedy for every germ disease to which humanity is heir will be at the service of the medical profession." Ehrlich's work as a young scientist attracted the attention of Professor Robert Koch, who made a place for him in the Koch Institute in Berlin in 1890. For twelve years previous Ehrhch had been laying the foundations of his career as a humble clinical assistant in the laboratories of various noted scientists. His first achievement to attract world-wide attention was that which extended medical knowledge of the cellular elements of blood. In the past science had confined itself to studying fresh blood with a microscope. Quite by accident, Ehrlich found that dried smears of blood, stained with many different kinds of dyestuffs, concealed secrets hitherto undreamt of. As a result of long- time experimentation with the phenomenon across which he had simply stumbled, Ehrlich arrived at a staining solution, still known as the " Ehrlich tri-acid stain," which permits the differentiation of normal white blood corpuscles into five distinct varieties. The now familiar " blood tests," enabling instantaneous detection and diagnosis of different diseases, were largely revolutionized by Ehrlich's discoveries. Later he determined an exact method of distinguishing tubercle bacilli from the other bacteria with which they are commonly associated. Ehrlich next turned his restless and imaginative K, 257 MEN AROUND THE KAISER mind to the subject of immunity. What he was looking for was a sound hypothesis which could explain the commonplace knowledge that a person who has survived infectious diseases like scarlet fever, small-pox or measles, is seldom re-attacked. His discoveries, based as always on extended and patient experimental work, which was chiefly distinguished for merciless disappointments, were finally triumphant and laid the foundation for the practical technique of immunization. Ehrlich also demonstrated that immunity was transferable. Behring's new diphtheria anti-toxin was at this time coming into general use, and Ehrlich set to work to devise a standard which would guarantee the production of non-deleterious serum. Again his labours were rewarded, and he devised a standard which the German Government, and in its wake all other governments, presently adopted. In recogni- tion of his services in standardizing anti-toxins, the State of Prussia placed Ehrlich at the head of a Government institute at Steglitz, near Berlin, founded specially for the purpose of exhaustive research in the anti-toxin field. Both Ehrlich and the field rapidly outgrew the ramifications of the Steglitz establishment, and he was appointed to take charge of the more capacious and newly- founded Royal Institute for Experimental Thera- peutics at Frankfort. Though Ehrlich long ago diverted his personal attention from the anti-toxin branch, serum examination remains the Institute's principal speciality. 258 PAUL EHRLICH Sleeping sickness, the scourge which has devastated sections of British Africa at the rate of 100,000 victims within three years, was the next theme to fascinate EhrHch's attention. He devoted himself to a series of trials which included the inoculation of animals with hundreds of different dyestuffs, in order to ascertain which one of them, combined with arsenic, was the most efficacious. By dint of endless experiments he finally found one — the 418th — which proved to be a specific for sleeping sickness. He called it arseno-phenyl-glycin. One injection cures all animals, even those which seem to be dying. Arseno-phenyl-glycin is the remedy now being administered to sleeping sickness victims in Africa. It must be used with extreme caution, and time will be required to demonstrate its merits. Early results in places like Togo were highly promis- ing. It appears that two comparatively light injec- tions have effected definite cures, though the disease prevalent in Togo is more amenable to treatment than the scourge raging in Central Africa. In the Philippines surra, a horse disease, has been success- fully combated with EhrHch's sleeping sickness antidote. A cancer cure, that gleaming goal on which the medical minds of all the decades have been concen- trated, has long engaged Ehrlich's thought. He is too conservative to prognosticate that he has even approached it, but he has observed important phenomena which have advanced current investiga- tion substantially. He is confident science will 259 MEN AROUND THE KAISER eventually triumph over cancer, though not soon, and he is convinced that the solution lies along the road of tireless experiments on animals. At present he is treading that path, part of the time in conjunction with a now famous pupil, Professor von Wassermann of Berlin, who has attained notable way-station results. Ehrlich's career is an inspiring confirmation of the theory that study at university is a waste of time. At Heidelberg, they say, nobody ever studies. Paul Ehrlich sojourned at the universities of Breslau, Strassburg, Freiburg and Leipzig, but it is not on record that he concerned himself unduly with the pearls of wisdom cast before him by his professors. He " cut " more lectures than he attended. Original work seemed immensely more fruitful to him. He never " studied " chemistry. He has always relied on what he calls his most powerful asset, " a chemical imagination." He gives full rein to his fantasies and uses what he calls a " play chemistry." He says chance figures considerably in the " triumphs " of medical science, and he never considers anything absurd till he has proved it so. With a keenness of perception which did them credit, Ehrlich's official taskmasters of school days let him very much alone. Neither he nor they were at all worried by his failure at the end of the five-year term to pass his examinations. He con- tinued his university studies another year and won his diploma by dint of independent research work of the first order. 260 PAUL EHRLICH Ehrlich, a native Silesian, is still a young man, as scientists go, for he is just fifty-nine. His father was a business man, but he inherited science from his paternal grandfather, who was still lecturing on physics and botany at ninety. Ehrlich is a spare, thin, nervous little man, hardly five feet high, with greyish white hair and beard, rapidly turning yellow from excessive smoking — his ruling passion. He is never even photographed far away from a cigar. Pale, penetrating blue eyes beam from behind heavy, black-rimmed spectacles, over which Ehrlich peers oftener than through, giving him a curiously questioning, half-furtive expression. He has the absent-mindedness and dowdiness of the German professor of tradition. His cigar is the only thing he never forgets, but he almost always overlooks removing its ashes from the particular portion of his clothes on which they chance to alight. His library is as orderly, but no more so, than his personal attire. Tables, chairs, sofa, desk and window-sills are always piled high with books, papers and pamphlets. Nobody ever dares to disturb the systematic chaos of the place. Ehrlich once lent a man some books and received others in return. Neither ever thought of restoring them to their rightful owner. One day, long afterwards, Ehrlich's books came back with a note from his friend, saying he had married, moved and cleaned up his library. Ehrlich replied : "I congratulate you on your marriage, and thank you for sending back my books, but if you think that because you have moved and 261 MEN AROUND THE KAISER gotten married I am going to clear up my library and find your books, you. are very much mistaken." Ehrlich had a habit in his younger days of collecting old linen, with which to clean slides. Cast-off handkerchiefs and shirts were his specialities. Once at a lecture, wanting to mop his brow, he * extracted from his pocket what he thought to be a handkerchief, but which turned out to be a complete nightgown belonging to his wife. Through marriage and the profits of his dis- coveries Ehrlich has become a wealthy man ; but he has never gone in for luxuries. Strong cigars are his sole extravagance, as they are his inseparable companions. The modest salary he earned as a young university professor a quarter of a century ago, he says, used just to keep him supplied with his favourite weed. Ehrlich is the first Jew to receive the coveted title of Excellenz, conferred on him for the discovery of " 606." He is primarily and actually a chemist, but he is in the broadest sense and fundamentally a philosopher. His " basic idea " amounts to a philosophic theory of physical life. Germany expects her greatest living scientist, in the afternoon of his busy career, to accomplish still new wonders on behalf of suffering humanity. 262 XXXI POSADOWSKY In the Reichstag, the parHament of fourteen parties, sits a patriarchal, white-bearded noble- man, the only man in all that heterogeneous assemblage who does not wear a party label. He is Dr. Count Arthur von Posadowsky-Wehner, or Count Posadowsky, as he is best known, M.P. for the Westphalian industrial division of Bielefeld, and Germany's foremost Social Reformer. When the warring factions which pass for Parties in the Fatherland were looking for a candidate to wrest Bielefeld from Socialism at the election of 1912, they decided there was but one personality in Germany strong enough to stem the red tide already engulfing the country constituency by constituency. Conservatives, Catholic Clericals, National Liberals and Radicals, sinking mutual hatreds and opposing views, prevailed on Count Posadowsky to contest the division in their joint name. He consented, on the strict understanding that he was to remain " a free man," both in and out of Parliament, and for the first time in many years Bielefeld turned its back on Socialism. It sent to the Reichstag a deputy who, as a long-time 263 MEN AROUND THE KAISER member of the Kaiser's cabinets, had set the example, unique in Prussia-Germany, of being not only a Minister of the Crown, but a representative of the people. Bielefeld's spokesman in Berlin is in many respects the Fatherland's most popular politician. Only August Bebel, idol of Socialism, can dispute the title with him. A year ago the German " Air Party," bent on outstripping French efforts in the same direction, organised a German National Fund for the promotion of military airman- ship. To insure it enthusiastic support from one end of the Empire to another. Count Posadowsky was asked to become the Honorary President. Within six months, subscriptions aggregating ;f35o,ooo rolled in. The French were beaten almost two to one. Count Posadowsky owes his fame and popularity to his eminent service as administrator and reformer of German Social Legislation. He was not the father of State Insurance, in which realm it has truly been said that Germany is a generation ahead of the rest of the world, but he was the pioneer of the modern idea on which the whole great scheme now rests, viz., that State care of the sick, the injured, the disabled, and the old is not a condescension, but an obligation. It was the Posadowsky era at the German Imperial Ministry of the Interior which first broke with the tradition that Workmen's Insurance was primarily a sop to the proletariat for anti-Socialistic purposes. It was Posadowsky who, abandoning the idea of Patriarchalism, made the 264 POSADOWSKY nation understand that State Insurance was an institution intrenched in justice and right. He caused it to be recognised as a system which formed an indissoluble part of humanity's self-liberating process. It required courage and tenacity to advocate these revolutionary views as an active member of an aristocratic and semi-autocratic Government. The closing hours of the old century were ringing with demands for re-enforcement of Bismarck's anti-Socialist repressive laws. German industry, alarmed at the increasing terrorism of Social Democracy, had accomplished the passage of the so-called " Convict-Prison Law," providing penal servitude for strike-pickets who molested blacklegs. It was the time when the influence of Von Miquel, the shrewd Prussian Chancellor of the Exchequer known as the Finance Sorcerer, was paramount. It was in such an environment that Count Posadowsky made bold to proclaim the doctrine that the Labour movement was not merely something to be tolerated by a quasi-benevolent Government, but was a necessary and commendable development of industrial life. He was the first responsible German statesman to distinguish between Social Democracy and the aspirations of the working classes as such, and to insist that justice must be meted out to Labour on terms of absolute equality with any other section of the community. He consorted freely with Social Democrats, because they were the recognised political leaders of the working class. He found it perfectly natural for 265 MEN AROUND THE KAISER a Minister in charge of the department intimately concerned with the weal and woe of Labour to consult the men to whom Labour looked for guidance and protection. Posadowsky became Imperial Home Secretary in 1897. His debut at the Department of the Interior, which followed four years of effective work as Secretary of the Imperial Treasury, was marked by a speech which denoted a programme for his coming administration. He expressed the belief that the Social Legislation system was burdened with excessive laws and regulations. He declared himself opposed to the policy of piling constantly fresh paragraphs on to the statute books and hampering industry with interfering police measures. " Too much governing," he asserted, " gets on the nerves of the German people. We must not convert the Fatherland into a ' prison state.' " That seditious utterance proved the key- note of Posadowsky's Social Reform policy — simplification and modernisation. He advocated his ideas fearlessly in private and public. It used to be said that he had more backbone than all his Ministerial colleagues put together. He had a lively contempt for the German craze for orders and decorations. His popularity with the masses was achieved at the expense of becoming almost persona non grata " higher up." His tremendous energy and seriousness were regarded a bore by the Court clique, which resented Posadowsky's demo- cratic disregard of traditions and irrepressible 266 POSADOWSKY fondness for speaking plainly to the Emperor. In those quarters originated the amusing story that the Kaiser, fatigued by Posadowsky's prosaic Vortrage, was accustomed to bring them to an abrupt end by causing the Imperial dachshunds to play about the Home Secretary's legs while he was in the midst of a learned disquisition on Workmen's Dwellings or Factory Hygiene. It was said that for many months before his retirement from office in 1907 Posadowsky was so little liked that he was practically blacklisted in Imperial quarters ; but he had earned the reputation of being the ablest, hardest-working, and frankest official adviser Emperor William ever had. No mere list of the reforms which Posadowsky introduced during his ten years at the Department of the Interior conveys an adequate idea of what he did to extend and develop the Social Legislation scheme. Fuller recognition of the inherent rights of the working classes was the keynote of his succes- sive reforms. First to engage his attention was the reorganisation of Invalid and Accident Insurance on lines more considerate of the workman's point of view. He improved the Arbitration Courts in the workers' interest. He revised the provisions of Sickness Insurance so that people left unfit for work should be able at once to avail themselves of aid for invalidity (i.e., disability or incapacity to earn a living), instead of starving until the eighteenth section of Paragraph 9,865-B could be legally invoked in their behalf. He worked out a new set 267 MEN AROUND THE KAISER of laws for the special benefit of the seafaring population. He instituted measures for the restric- tion and eventual abolition of child-labour and " sweating." He created a division of Labour Records in the Imperial Statistical Office, which has been of immense importance in the observation and regulation of the labour market. He established at Charlottenburg the world's only Museum of Workmen's Welfare, a wonderful permanent exhibi- tion of appliances for preservation of health and prevention of accidents in shops and factory. He inaugurated the policy of building and maintaining dwelling-houses for small-salaried civil servants, whose name in Germany is legion. He conferred a boon on the shop assistants' class by passing laws compelling tradesmen to put up their shutters at 9 p.m. German clerks previously often worked till midnight. In 1900, three years after entering office, Posadowsky submitted to Parliament an entirely new set of State Insurance Laws, which, in particular, reconciled the long-standing dis- crepancy between the status of agricultural and industrial workers. His proposals were so manifestly equitable that the Social Democrats found it desir- able, practically for the first time, to support laws submitted in the name of the Emperor. In 1903 the Act was again amended under Posadowsky 's leadership, the outstanding improvement being the enlargement of the maximum period allowed for the receipt of sick benefit from thirteen to twenty- six weeks. Posadowsky 's Insurance Reform policy 268 POSADOWSKY aimed consistently at extending the operation of the law to classes previously excluded, and also at increasing the benefit obtainable. It is a mighty fabric which German State Insur- ance represents to-day. Figures issued officially in 191 1, the latest available, show that the gross income of the system since its establishment thirty years ago is £125,000,000, and ;f8i,75o,ooo has been paid out in benefits. Roundly 15,000,000 persons are insured. The existing capital of the system is ;f75,ooo,ooo, of which £23,250,000 has been lent for construction of workmen's dwellings, £7*500,000 for institutions of public health, £5,000,000 to agriculturists in need of credit, £4,500,000 for hospitals and sanatoria, and £3,750,000 for educational purposes, while £2,800,000 is invested in hospitals, sanatoria, tuberculosis camps conva- lescent homes and invalid-houses which are owned and maintained by the State Insurance Administra- tion itself. It is small wonder that Britain and the rest of the world look upon Germany as their schoolmistress in the field of State Insurance and Old Age Pensions. She was a veteran in it before they ever began to think about it. Her scheme is admittedly not yet perfect. She is even now reform- ing the Old Age department so as to make pensions available to those who have arrived at their sixty- fifth year, instead of their seventieth, as hitherto. German Insurance Reformers will not rest content until the institution embraces protection for widows and orphans and against unemployment. Those 269 MEN AROUND THE KAISER are the problems with which the Posadowskys of to-morrow will have to wrestle. Count Posadowsky is a native of Silesia, and is sixty-eight years old. His family is of ancient, noble lineage, but their title of Count dates from the days of Frederick the Great, who made the head of the house a Count for brilliant services as a cavalry general in the Silesian wars. A graduate of law of Breslau University, Posadowsky entered the Prussian Civil Service, in which he was first to dis- tinguish himself as " Provincial Captain " of Posen, a post ranking with a governorship. His talents as an economist and organiser enabled him to accom- plish wonders with chaotic Posen finances, and his work attracted such favourable notice in Berlin that he was called to the Cabinet, in 1893, as Secretary of the Imperial Treasury. Although the Dreadnought era had not yet dawned, Germany even then was revealing a prodigious predilection for money spending. Posadowsky adhered to the principle of " No expenditure without revenue," and besides being the first Secretary of the Treasury to effect an actual reduction of the Imperial Debt, was the first under whom the rate of increase was materially diminished. In two other fields not directly associated with Social Legislation Count Posadowsky has played a prominent r61e. He is an earnest advocate of Protection and of Temperance. He took a con- spicuous part in the negotiations which enabled Germany to conclude advantageous long-term 270 POSADOWSKY Reciprocity treaties with her neighbours in 1902. He knows the power of the weapon Germany holds in her tariff, but dishkes tariff wars. When Germany and the United States were on the brink of fiscal hostilities, Posadowsky, in whose department tariff affairs were controlled, said : " You don't need me for a tariff war. My office doorkeeper is good enough for that." At the International Anti- Alcohol Con- gress in Bremen in 1903 Posadowsky declared himself a teetotaler. He has always been active in support of the abstinence movement, which has a steep and stony path to tread in Germany, despite the fact that it revolves on two mighty, though widely diver- gent, poles — the support of the Emperor William and Socialism's boycott on Schnaps (brandy). Count Posadowsky, personification of the aristocrat-democrat, is expected to give the country many more proofs of his wisdom and progressiveness from his present eminence as the Independent Member of the Reichstag. He is the first ex- Imperial Minister to face the Government as a Parliamentary critic, and he does not shrink from speaking his mind when occasion demands. Fluent acquaintance with the English language and Anglo-Saxon literature has made him a profound admirer of the liberal institutions of Britain and the United States. They are the ideals he cherishes for the Fatherland, already vastly more modern in many of its conceptions by dint of Posadowsky 's own life-work. 271 INDEX Abdul Hamid, 38, 153, 154, 222 — 226 Agadir, 21, 145, 250 Agrarianism and Agrarians, 98—105 Allgemeine Electricitdts Gesell- schaft, 71 — 79 Alsace-Lorraine, 86 America, Kaiser's relations with, 50 ; Germany's con- flict with, 49 ; Prince Henry's visit to, 50 ; in- fluence of, on German indus- try, 74 — 75, 160, 161, 183 ; Count Bernstorff and, 185 — 192 ; potash controversy with, 188 — 189 ; threatened tariff war with, 272 Anatolian Railway, 38 — 149 Anglo-German naval rivalry, 6, 8, 119 Anglo-German relations, Tir- pitz' view of, 8 ; Bethmann HoUweg and, 21 ; shipping competition, 15, 16 ; Crown Prince's outburst, 67 ; Pro- fessor Delbriick on, 118 — 121 ; Prince Biilow and, 139 ; and Navy League, 145, 146 ; Foreign Secretary von Jagow and, 216 ; Prince Lichnowsky and, 237 — 245 ; Treitschke on, 237 ; Kider- len-Wachter and, 253 Argentine, German interests in, 43. 71 Armaments, Prince Biilow and, 139 ; Socialists and, 82, 86 Army, increase of German, 217, 226 Art, German, 167 — 176 Asia Minor, Germany and, 38, 39, 149—157. 211 Austria - Hungary, Germany and, 71 ; alliance with, 214, 249 Baghdad Railway, 38, 120, 151 Bahr, Hermann, 228 Balfour, Mr., 137 Ballin, Alfred, 10 — 18 Bank of England, 35, 136 Banks and Banking, German, 35—44 Barbizon School of Art, 171 Bebel, August, 80 — 88, 137 Beethoven, 107, 114 Behring, Professor, 254, 258 Belgium, Germany and, 43 Bennett, Arnold, 116 Bennett, James Gordon, 125 Bergmann, Professor, 180 Berlin, Growth of, Introduc- tion, vii. Berliner Tagehlatt, 130 Bernard, Claude, 255 Bernhard, Professor, 116 Bernhardi, General von, 237 Bernstorff, Count, 185 — 192 Bethmann Hollweg, Dr. von, 19 — 26 Bieberstein, Baron Marschall von, 149—157 Bismarck, Count Herbert, 155 K. 273 INDEX Bismarck, Prince, and Wil- liam II., 19 ; memoirs of, 136, 151, 160 ; Round Table and, 205 ; Harden's rela- tions with, 207, 208 Bleichroeders, the, 36 Borussia student corps, 212 Bosnia, annexation of, 246, 247, 249 Brahm, Otto, 89, 235 Brahms, 107 Brazil, Germany and, 44 Billow, Prince, 22, 23, 24, 26, 104, 132—140, 205 Billow, Hans von, 108 Bund der Landwirte, 98 Cambon, Jules, Ambassador, 252 Cancer, Professor Ehrlich and, 259 Capital, Development of Ger- man, 35—44 Caprivi, Count, 19, 102 Carnegie, Andrew, 158, 159, 186 Catholicism, Roman, 20 Centre, Roman Catholic, party, 20, 183, 184, 244 Chamberlain. Mr., 136, 139, 165. 177 Chicago, Prince Henry in, 50 ; stockyards, 164 Chile, Germany and, 44, 71 China, 49, 130 Churchill, Mr., 241 Coal industry, 158, 159 Cobbett, 263 Cologne Gazette, 127 Colonics, British, 183 Colonies, German, 177 — 184 Columbia University, 186 Commercial treaties, 102 Conscription, Military, 221 Conservative party, 120 ; and Agrarianism, 99 ; and Government, 100 Constantinople, Baron Mar- schall in, 149 — 157 274 Corinth, Louis, 169 Cowes regatta. Kaiser and, 251 Credit Lyonnais, 35 Crown Prince, the, 63 — 70, 204 Crown Princess, the, 64 Cumberland, Prince Ernest Augustus, 64 Cunard Line and Germany, 16 Czar, the, 46, 52 Daily Mail, the. Introduc- tion, ix Daily Telegraph, interview affair, 27, 32, 104, 132 Degas, 171 Delbriick, Professor, 115 — 123 Delcasse, M., 138 Delitzsch, Professor, 116 Democratic movement, 25, 26 ; Socialism's part in, 85 Depew, Chauncey M., 43 Dernburg, Bernhard, 177 — 184 Deutsche Bank, 35 — 44 Deutsches Theater, 8g — 97, 233 Diederichs, Admiral von, 49 Diplomacy, German, 149 — 157, 185 — 192, 210 — 216, 237 — 245, 246—253 Disraeli, 137 Divine right. Kaiser and, 103 Donau-Eschingen, Kaiser and, 33 Donnersmarck, Prince Henckel von, 198 Drama, the German, 89 — 97, 227 — 236 Dreadnoughts, era of the, 6, 8, 33, 45 Dresdner Bank, 162 Dual Alliance, 249 Dutch East Indies, 71 Edison, Thomas A., 75 Ehrlich, Paul, Professor, 254 — 262 Eibenschiitz, Camilla, 96 INDEX Electoral reform, 20, 26 ; Socialist fight for, 85 Election, Socialist funds, 81 Electric Industry, 71 — 79 Emigration, German, 120 Emperor William. See Kaiser. England, naval rivalry with, 6, 8 ; Tirpitz and, 6 ; ship- ping competition, 15, 16, 17 ; Bethmann HoUweg and, 21 ; Kaiser's visit to, 33 ; Bank of, 35 ; Baghdad Railway and, 39 ; Prince Henry and, 52, 53 ; and Navy League, 145 ; Baron Marschall and, 149 — 157 ; Prince Lich- nowsky and, 237 — 245 Entente Cordiale, Germany and, 249, 250 Erzberger, Matthias, 137 Eulenburg, Prince, 32, 65 ; scandals in connection with, 202 — 209, 250 Farmers' Alliance, 98 Felter-Guilleaume, 78 Fichte, 115 Finance, power of German, 35—44, 135 Finance reform, 99 Flotte, Die, Navy League organ, 144 Foreign trade, Germany's, 36, 40 France, Germany and, 37, 57, 106, 119, 120, 138, 250, 252 Frankfort-on-the-Main, 35 Frankfurter Zeitung, 128 Frederick, Emperor and Em- press, 48, 69, 122 Frederick the Great, 113 Frederick Karl, Prince, 220 Fiirstenberg, Carl, 36 Fiirstenberg, Prince, 27 — 34 Gamble, Admiral, 224 George, King, 46, 85. 242 German-American relations, 49. 185—192 German Emperor, the. Sec Kaiser. Germania, newspaper, 124 Germany and — America, 49, 50, 74, 75, 185—192 Argentine, 43, 71 Austria-Hungary, 71, 214, 217, 249 Belgium. 43 Brazil, 44 Bulgaria, 217 Chile, 44, 71 China, 49, 130 England, 6, 8, 15, 16, 21, 67, 71, 118, 139, 145, 149—157. 216, 237—245 France, 37, 57, 106, 119, 120, 138, 217, 250, 252 Greece, 217 Italy, 71, 214, 215 Mexico, 44 Montenegro, 217 Morocco, 20, loi, 145, 161, 240, 247, 250 Persia, 39, 120, 151, 211 Peru, 44 Rumania, 251 Russia, 71, 155, 217 Servia, 217 Spain, 44, 71 Sweden, 71 Switzerland, 71 Turkey, 38, 39. 71. I49— 157. 215 Uruguay, 44, 71 Goethe, 91, 203, 228 Goltz, Field-Marshal von der, 217-226 Gorki, Maxim, 94 Gottberg, Otto von, 128 Great Britain. See England. Grillparzer, 228 Griinfeld, Professor Heinrich, III Gutman, Eugen, 36 Gwinner, Arthur von, 35 — 44 275 INDEX Haeckel, Professor, ii6, 230 Haeseler, Field-Marshal von, 219, 220 Hague Conferences, 151 Hamburg, 10 — 18 Hamburg- American Line, 10 — 18, 29 Hansa League, 99 Harden, Maximilian, 65, 117, 122, 202 — 209 Harmsworths, the, 126 Harnack, Professor, 116, 123 Harvard University, 186 Hatzfeldt, Princ©> 241 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 227 — 236. Hauptmann, Karl, 230 Hebbel, 228 Heims, Else, 95, 96 Heinze, Lex, 118 Heligoland, 211 Helmholtz, 255 Henry, Prince, of Prussia, 45—53 Hertling, Baron von, 116 Hevdebrand, Dr. von, 67, 98 — 105 Highcliffe, Kaiser at, 33 Hill, Dr. David Jayne, 189 Hoffmannsthal, Hugo von, 114 Hohenlohe, Prince, 19, 153 Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Prince Ernst von, 178 Hohenlohe-Oehringen, Prince Kraft von, 28 Hollander, Felix, 96 Hollmann, Admiral von, 152 Holstein, Baron von, 139, 155, 250 Holz, Arno, 231 Humboldt, Alexander von, 115 Ibsen, Henrik, 95, 231 Immunity, Ehrlich's work on, 258 Industry, alliance of with banking, 37 ; German brains and, 72 ; growth of, 40 Insurance, Invalid, Old Age, State, Workmen's, 263 — 271 Iron and steel, 158 Irving, Sir Henry, 206 Israels, Jozef, 172 Italy, Germany and, 71 ; alliance with, 214 Jagow, von. Foreign Secretary, 210 — 216 Jameson Raid, 152 Jervis, Admiral, 148 Jews and Judaism, 10, 18, 72, 92, 174, 177, 180, 262 Journalism, German, 124 — 131, 202 Kahane, Arthur, 96 Kainz, Josef, 209, 233 Kaiser, the, role of in modern Germany, Introduction, vii. — ix. ; and the Navy, 2 ; friendship with Ballin, 11 ; and his Chancellors, 20 ; and Prince Fiirstenberg, 27 ; personal regime crisis and, 32 ; and America, 50 ; .and Zeppelin, 54 ; and Crown Prince, 63 — 70 ; and Social- ism, 80, 85, 88 ; and Agra- rians, 99 ; and Richard Strauss, 107, 109, no ; and Daily Telegraph, affair 132 ; and Divine right, 103 ; and 132—134. Navv, 2, 167, '168 ; 177. 179; Prince Biilow, 137, 138 ; and 143 ; and art, and Dernburg, and Harden revelations, 202 — 209 ; and drama, 233 Kammerspiele, Reinhardt's, 95 Kant, 125 Kiau-Chau, 49 Kiderlen-Wachter, von, 210, 211, 246—253 Kladderadatsch, 250, 251 Klcist, 91 276 INDEX Koch, Professor Robert, 257 Koester, Admiral von, 141 — 148 Kohler, Professor, 116 Konody, P. G., 173 Knox, Secretary, 189 Kreuz Zeitung, 127 Kruger telegram, 139, 150, 152, 185 Krupp Works, 193 — 201 Krupp von Bohlen und Hal- bach, Dr., 193 — 201 Lahmayer, 78 Leipziger Bank failure, 183 Leistikow, Walter, 169 Lessing Theater, 231, 235 Liberal Party, 21, loi Lichnowsky, Prince, 237 — 245 Liebermann, Max, 167 — 176 Liszt, Professor von, 116 Literature, German, 227 — 236 Lokal-Anzeiger, 124 — 131 Maeterlinck, 94 Manet, 171, 172 Manila, Germany and, 49 Mankiewitz, Paul, 36 Mannesmann Brothers, 161 Marks, Marguerite, 256 Marschall, Baron, 149 — 157, 213, 246 McClure's Magazine, 256 Medical Research, German, 254 — 262 Mendelssohns, the, 36 Menzel, Adolf, 171 Mexico, Germany and, 44 Meyer, Professor, 116 Military Service, 221 Millet, 171, 172 Miquel, von, 265 Moli^re, 43 Moltke-Harden scandals, 33, 65, 202 — 209 Mommsen, Theodor, 116 Monroe Doctrine, 117, 188, 192 Morgan, J. Pierpont, 16, 28, 35 Morley, Lord, 137 Morocco, 20, loi, 145, 161, 247, 250, 252 Mozart, 107, 113, 175 Music, German, 106 — 114 Napoleon, 70, 115 National Liberal Party, 21, loi, 138 National Service, 221 Naval rivalry with England, 6, 8, 119 Navy, the German, i, 2, 6, 8, 33. 141 Navy Law, 5, 141 Navy League, 7, 47, 141 — 148 Nazim Pasha, 225 Near East, Germany and, 38, 39, 149—157, 246, 249 New York, Hamburg- America Line and, 15 ; and Rein- hardt, 89 ; and Richard Strauss, 109 ; Bernhard Dernburg in, 181 Nineteenth Century Review, 40 Nord und Si'id magazine, 240 Northcliffe, the Lord, dedica- tion to, V. North German Gazette, 131 North German Lloyd, 10, 15, 29 Northern Pacific Railroad, 42 Nietzsche, 116 Newspapers, German, 124 — 131 Nobel Prize, 227, 236 Old Age Pensions, 269 Oldenburg, Herr von, 103 Olympic games, 51, 69 Opera, the, in Berlin, no Oppenheim, Baron von, 36 Opposition, the, in Germany, 80 Ordynski, Professor Richard, 96 277 INDEX Ostwald, Professor, ii6 Oversea Trade, Germany's, 36, 40 Palmerston, Lord, 16, 115 Pan-Germanism, 117, 211 " Panther," gunboat, 250 Paris, Reinhardt in, 189 Parliament. See Reichstag. Parliamentary Government, fight for, 26, 85 ; and Prince Buelow, 135 Pasteur, 255 Pennsylvania Railway, 41 Persian Gulf, 39, 120, 151, 211 Personal Regime Crisis, 27, 32 Peru and Germany, 44 Pfieiderer, Professor, 115 Philadelphia Centennial, 75 Plowden, Mr., 43 Police, German, 86, 87 Politics, German, 19 — 26, 80 — 88, 98—105, 132—140 Portuguese Africa, 120, 211 Posadowsky, Count, 263 — 271 Potash, German-American con- troversy over, 188, 189 Press, German, 124 — 131 Press-Bureau at Admiralty, 7 Preussische Jahrbucher, 117 Protection in Germany, 270, 271 Pulitzer, Joseph, 125 Punch, 135 Rathenau, Emil, 71 — 79 Reichstag, the, 6, 7, 20, 25, 60, 66, 80, 103, 134, 141, 263 Reinhardt, Max, 89 — 97, 114 Rheinbaben, Baron von, 41 Richthofen, Baron von, 211 Roberts, Lord, 221 Rockefeller, John D., 42, 159, 160 Roosevelt, Theodore, 19, 80, 120, 185, 186 Rothschilds, the, 35 Round Table, scandals in connection with, 202 — 209 Rumania, 251 Russia, Germany and, 71, 155. 217 Salmonsohn, Arthur, 36 SaJvarsan, 255 Savigny, 116 Scherl, August, 124 — 131 Schiemann, Professor Theodor, 116 Schiller, 91, 203, 228 Schlegel, 147 Schleiermacher, 115 SchmoUer, Professor, 116 Schnitzler, Arthur, 238 Schon, Baron von, 211 Schonherr, Franz, 228, 233 Schopenhauer, 125, 175 Schumann-Heink, Madame, III Schwabach, Paul von, 136 Secession, the art, 167 — 176 Shakespeare, 43, 91, 93. 95. ^47 Shaw, G. Bernard, 94, 107, 239 Shipping, German, 13, 15, 16 Shipping subsidies, Germany and, 16 Siemens, Georg von, 38, 41, 42 Siemens & Halske, 76, 77, 78 Simplicissimiis, 135 Slav movement, Germany and 217, 218 Sleeping sickness, 259 Slevogt, 169 Social democracy, 20, 80 — 82, 85, 118, 133, 140, 221, 264. 265, 268 Social reform, 263 — 271 South Africa, 71, 151, 183 South America, Germany and, 43. 44 Spain, Germany and, 44, 71 Spielhagen, Friedrich, 231 Speyers, the, 36 Sport, in Germany, 50, 51, 68, Stage, the German, 89 — 97 278 INDEX standard Oil Company, 42, 109, 160, 162 State Insurance, 263 — 271 Steel and Iron, 158 Stein, Professor Ludwig, 240 Stern, Ernst, 96 Sternburg, Baron Speck von, 186, 187 Straus, Oskar, 107 Strauss, Richard, 106 — 114, 175 Strindberg, 94 Suffrage reform, 20, 26, 85, 244 Sudermann, Hermann, 228, 234 Sweden, Germany and, 71 Switzerland, Germany and, 71 Syphilis cure. Professor Ehrlich and, 254, 255 Taft, Mr., 19, 189, 191 Tariff, protective, 270, 271 Temperance movement, 270, 271 Throne, power behind the, 27 Thyssen, August, 158 — 166 Times, The, 124 Times, the New York, Intro- duction, ix. Tirpitz, Admiral von, i — 9 Tolstoi, 231 Trade, German foreign, 40 Tree, Sir Herbert, 95 Treitschke, 116, 117, 125, 237 Triple Alliance, 155, 214, 215 Triple Entente, 249, 250 Tripoli, war in, 215 Trust, the Princes, 28, 29 Tschirschky, von, 211 Turkey, Germany and, 38, 39, 43. 7i> 215 Turkish Army, Germany and, 218 — 226 Ullstein & Co., 130 United States. See America. United States Steel Corpora- tion. 162 University of Berlin, 115, 116, 169, 186 Ury, Lesser, 169 Uruguay, Germany and, 44, 71 Victoria Luise, Princess, 64 Villard, Henry, 42 Virchow, Professor, 116 Vossische Zeitimg, 127 Vulcan shipyard, 164 Wagner, Professor Adolf, 116 Wagner, Richard, 106, 113, 175 Waldersee, Field-Marshal von, 130 Walfisch Bay, 120, 211 Walpole, Horace, 203 Wangenheim, Baron von, 149 W^ar, Balkan, 157 War, Franco-German, 37, 57, 106, 158 ; Balkan, 157 ; Socialism and, 85, 86 Warburgs, the, 26 Washington, D. C, German Diplomacy at, 185 — 192 Washington, George, 185 Wassermann, Professor von, 260 Wedekind, Frank, 94, 96, 228 Wilde, Oscar, 94, 239 William II. See Kaiser. Wolff, Theodor, 130 . Wolff-Metternich, Count von, 191, 241 Workmen's Insurance, 263 — 271 Wright, Orville and Wilbur, 55,68 Yachting, Kiel Week, 51, 68 Young Germany League, 221 Zeppelin, Count, 54 — 62 Zola, 231 Zorn, Professor, 116 Zukimft, Harden's, 65, 117, 202 — 209 BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. 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