The Schemes of the Kaiser by Juliette Adam (classic novels for teens TXT) 📕

news, the German Emperor, seized with one of those sudden outbursts of rage which throw him into convulsions, swore to avenge in torrents of blood the insult thus suffered by the ever-victorious banner of Prussia. Are we, then, to see the Reichstag in its turn, like the French and Italian Parliaments, wasting its millions and its men in colonial adventures?

At Muenich, William II has declared that the wretched condition of the artillery in the Austrian army, the lack of cohesion in its infantry, and the inexperience, not to say incapacity, of its officers, render it unfit for war in the near future, and that no hope of its improvement is to be entertained, so long as it shall have as its head a man so completely worn out as Francis Joseph. Germany's armament is to be completely changed and renewed, and it is even said that William will go down in person to the Reichstag during the autumn session to demand the enormous credits which the situation requires. The _Neue Muenchen Tageblatt_ has been seized at Muenich for having published an attack upon "the mania for armaments and for military pomp which possesses William II, a mania which is exhausting Germany and will leave her completely ruined after the next war."


November 12, 1891. [15]

The unfortunate Constitution of the German Empire, like the Emperor himself, doesn't know which way to turn. Legislation, administration, the army; the universities, the Church and the administration of justice: everything is being passed through a sieve, and transformed, first in order that it may retransform itself and then become more readily accessible to the rising generation. Anything that savours of a ripe age is extremely displeasing to William II. Ripeness is a thing which he disdains to acquire. All that is youthful finds favour in his eyes, with the sole exception of a class of youth with which he is disposed to deal severely, viz. the _souteneurs_. Against them the _summus episcopus_ is extremely wroth. Here the virtue of chaste Germany is at stake, and he proposes to cauterise the disease with a red-hot iron. For the future, the scandalous discussion of these things will be forbidden to the Press, and thus, even if private morals continue the same, public morality will not be offended. Hypocrisy, at least, will be saved.

There is much talk at Vienna of a plan whispered at headquarters in Berlin, which has to do with converting the capital of Austria into an entrenched camp, so that an army driven back from the Austro-Russian frontiers might there be re-formed. William means to throw Austria against Russia, and to take his precautions in case of defeat, precautions which would at the same time, safeguard the rear of the German Empire.


November 29, 1891.

Germany is becoming uneasy; she has heard the rustling of the wings of defeat. Accustomed to victory, she is suffering, as rich people suffer under the least of privations. Bankruptcies, one after another, are spreading ruin in Berlin. Bismarck and William, united in a very touching manner on this subject, conceived the idea of bringing about Russia's financial ruin, and of importing into the Prussian capital the vitality of the Paris market. The fall in Russian securities was unlucky for the German Bank, and all the scrip that the Berlin Bourse so greedily devoured, for the sole purpose of preventing Paris from getting it, does not seem to have been easily digested. The middle class is suffering from the bad condition of the market, and the increase of taxation; the lower classes are hungry.

Impassive in his majesty, the Emperor contemplates himself upon the throne. Now you will find him copying Louis XIV and writing in the golden book of the city of Muenich _Regis volontas suprema lex_. And again he will imitate St. Louis, but not finding any oak tree within his reach, he administers justice on the public highway, as in the Skinkel-Platz. He is having his own statue made of marble, to be placed alongside of his throne. Great Heavens! If some day, this were to be for him the avenging Commander's statue! [16]

But no, it cannot be, for has he not been converted? Is he not the _summus episcopus_, who conducts the service in person? Has he not composed psalms? Could anybody be more pious, a more resolute foe of those vices which he pursues with such energy? Could any one be more determined to be a pillar of the Church? In his interviews with the delegates of the synod of the United Prussian Church, has not the _summus_ said that the Reformation drew its strength from the hearts of princes? True, you may say, that this does not sound very like a humble Christian; but then humility had never anything to do with William.

At the administration of the oath to new recruits, after having held forth to them on the subject of the hardships at the beginning of a soldier's life, he added, "It shall be your reward when you have learnt your trade, to manoeuvre before me."


December 13, 1891. [17]

The nations of Europe desire peace, and it has been so often proved to them that they also desire it, who have been accused of furbishing their weapons unceasingly, that it would be dangerous even for William II to seem to be preparing for war, or rather that, having made ready for it, he should be working to let it loose. And so it comes to pass that the fire-eating Emperor and King of Prussia himself is compelled to play the part of a bleating sheep "admiring his reflection in the crystal stream," and that he cannot even have recourse to the expedient, now exhausted, to make it appear that either France or Russia are ravening wolves in search of adventure. But the role of a sheep sits badly on William, and the _mot d'ordre_, which he dictates is so evidently opposed to the condition of affairs for which he is responsible, that Messrs. Kalnoky and Caprivi, in spite of their appearance of rotund good nature, have shown distinct signs of intractable irritation.

People have been asking what can be the meaning of all these pacific assurances, so hopelessly at variance with everything that one sees and knows, at a moment when the Monarch of Berlin is furious at the visit of the Tzar to Kronstadt? Well, the truth is out, and it is M. de Kalnoky who, by proxy, shall reveal it to you.

"The reception at Kronstadt and its consequences have effected no change in the situation." There you have the secret. It is necessary to prove that the diplomacy of the Triple Alliance has not been checked at any point or in any way; that the "excellent impression," to quote the words of M. de Caprivi, left in Russia by the visit of William II did not allow the Tzar any alternative; he was compelled to show attention to some other country than Germany. Moreover, the appearance of Alexander III on the _Marengo_ was nothing more than a simple desire for a sea trip; France, going like Mohammed to the mountain, bore in her flanks nothing larger than a mouse. Finally, that Peace never having been threatened by the Loyal League of Peace, there could be no possible reason left to France and Russia for wanting to defend it, etc., etc.

William II is working hard to control and direct the diplomacy of the Triple Alliance. Nevertheless, all his scaffolding work is liable to sudden collapse, overthrown by the most insignificant of events. Regarding his speech to the recruits, the German Press has pluckily voiced its condemnation by the public. It is impossible to deny that his observations on that occasion were a perfect masterpiece of self-glorification. This is what he said--

"You have just taken the oath of fidelity to myself. From this day forward there exists for you one order and one order only, that of my majesty. Henceforth you have only one enemy, mine, and should it be necessary for me some day (which God forbid) to order you to shoot your own parents, yes, to fire on your own brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, on that day remember your oath."

Those who wish to form an accurate idea of William's loquacity and self-conceit should read a few passages, selected haphazard from "The Voice of the Lord upon the waters," a sermon by His Majesty, the Emperor-King, for use in polar voyages. There they will find a strange hotch-potch of all sorts of ideas, religious, political and heathen, all half digested. But the dominant note in the sermons preached by William II lies in his tendency to diminish the Infinite, to hold it within the measure of his own mind, to bring down God to his own stature. All his comparisons tend to show God as an Emperor, built in the image in which William sees himself. When he draws you a picture, in which he brings God face to face with himself, there is about him a certain splendour of pride, something in his utterance that suggests an Imperial Lucifer. But beyond these relations between God and the German Emperor, his utterances reveal nothing beyond commonplace self-conceit. In his perpetual and personal contact with the Divinity, William's morality becomes more exacting than even that of God Himself towards His saints, who have long enjoyed His sanction to sin seven times a day. William II will not allow of a single sin. Everywhere and in everything he must interfere. Well may his subjects say, who have just received their catechism: "He is on heaven, on earth, and within us."


January 1, 1892. [18]

I, who have so long been devoted to the Franco-Russian Alliance, have followed with acute distress the intrigues of Bismarck in Bulgaria (intrigues of which the _Nouvelle Revue_ revealed one proof in the letters of Prince Ferdinand of Coburg to the Countess of Flanders). I have known that William, in spite of his actual dislike for the proceedings of his ex-Chancellor, is pleased to approve the impertinences of a Stamboulof. Nevertheless, I confess I am seized with anxiety at seeing France enter into diplomatic proceedings with the so-called Government of Bulgaria. It is very often more dignified to despise and ignore the enterprises of certain people, then to endeavour to obtain satisfaction from them. There are certain complicated circumstances in which the manifestation of a sense of honour or loyalty becomes a weakness: at all costs one should avoid being led into it.

The Emperor of Germany possesses a special talent for adding new complications to a difficult situation, so as to render it impossible of solution. He has now so completely tangled up the parliamentary skein, that in a little while it will be impossible for Parliament to govern. Can one conceive of a majority of the Chamber rallying around the Catholic centre, or the socialists, for the same reason, increasing in number at the bye-elections? In such a case William II, equally unable to surrender in favour of the clericals or to submit to the socialists, will find himself, as others have been before him, driven to adopt the ultimate remedy of war.


February 12, 1892. [19]

If the States of Germany, in joining themselves on to Prussia, have thereby increased in power, they have gained very little in humanity. The circular, secretly issued by Prince George of Saxony, commanding the 12th Army Corps, reveals