THE KAISER.*

list his very interesting study of the character and history of . the German Emperor, Mr. McCabe starts from the fact that his left arm is useless. With many men this defect would have hindered their career; it is the initial cause of William IL's success. He has set himself to show the world that though he Las only one sound arm, he can do more than most men with two. He has conquered the difficulty in all the sports that develop strength, and "by these exercises and a sober way of living he has built up a splendid constitution." There can be no question as to the will or energy of a young man who can do this. A third element is his romantic imagination, which has shown itself especially in the building up of a legend .about his grandfather. William I., says Mr. McCabe, was "a sober, sensible, healthy, genial, and entirely mediocre Teuton." His one claim to eminence was that be knew how to use abler men than himself. He chose Bismarck to shape his policy and Moltke to organize his Army. But William IL passes over these instruments and gives all the credit of their achievements to his grandfather, The middle-Class Public School which was chosen for the Kaiser had no influence on him beyond giving him a hearty dislike to the German system of education. The life he led there was thoroughly unsuited to the training of a future Emperor. To prevent him from associating too much with the other boys, he and his tutor were placed in a separate house, though this precaution did not hinder him from bringing a young Jew to Potsdam on one of his holidays. But he had no companion with whom be made any real friendship, and when at eighteen be passed to the University of Bonn and became a member of the ]3ornesia Corps, which was composed almost exclusively of Junkers, he naturally made most of their opinions his own. There were exceptions, however, to this process. He was never an Anti-Semite, and in a letter to Cardinal Hohenlohe he expresses his delight that " the unhappy Kulturkampf is over." By this time he had exchanged his early dislike of Bismarck for a modified admiration of him ; but when he was twenty:five he sent e photograph of himself to the Chancellor with the words "Cave, adsum " on it. Six weeks before his accession to the throne he dined with the Chancellor and made the speech which ended : "May he lead us. We will follow him. Long may he live !" Two years later be insisted on "dropping the Pilot" and began governing Germany for himself. The policies as well as the natures of the two men were irreconcilably different. Bismarck had elements of greatness which William wanted, and though he bad no love of peace for its oWn sake, three great wars bad satisfied his ambitious for Germany, and be was fully alive to the dangers that might be in store for her if the military element were allowed to overrule the political. To get rid of him was indispensable to William's designs, and the Chancellor's action after his forced resignation lost him much of the sympathy which was rightly his due.

William IL came to the throne, says Mr. McCabe, with a "massive and varied ambition." Bonn bad given him

"joy in German history and achievement, the delight of life in

The Kaiser:JjPersonality and Career, Dy Joseph MeCabo. London: T. Fisher II:min, [Sc. not.] the saddle and on the water, great animal vitality, and a feeling that this now German Empire was a survival of the mediaeval Empire which had straddled Europe. . . . It was a great dream, and chrtainly the energy which he threw into its realization for twenty-five years commands admiration."

Mr. McCabe attributes the disastrous results which this dream brought about to three fundamental mistakes. In their origin they were mistakes of the mind. "He has been all his

life an early riser, sober liver, and hard worker." But he thinks himself wiset than anybody else; his imagination set up a false ideal of the State; and when he found Germany "prepared to listen to only one, and that the very worst, part of his mediaeval ideal, its militarist and Imperialist part, he sur- rendered his better principles and followed this." This is the best case that can be set up for him. There is another which makes him determined upon war from the first, and regards the wishes for peace which he so often expressed as lasting only so long as Germany was not ready for a war with France and Russia, with "the possibility of having England's enormous fleet on their side." Mr. McCabe thinks that "we cannot be sure on this point." Plans and the ambitions which suggest them change greatly in a quarter of a century, and the desire for peace which may have been genuine in the first instance may have disappeared when be saw the Army and the Fleet which he had raised with so much difficulty and such untiring persistence. For it must be borne in mind that William II. has never defied the Reichstag, He has often been in advance of it, but when he has sent it to the country it has always come back converted.. He talked from time to time of "smashing the opposition," but, for the most part, he got what he wanted by flattery and a liberal distribution of honours. Only once was he seriously defeated, and even then he altered the form of his policy rather than the substance.

In the autumn of 1894 Cairiel resigned, the Chancellor- ship was given to Prince Hohenlohe, and in the spring

of the following year the Kaiser was "personally and publicly reconciled with Bismarck." He gave up the attempt to conciliate the Poles., "Posen," he said, "is a Prussian province, and wherever the Prussian eagle has fixed its talons the land is German and will be German for ever." This was not said till 1910, but the fixing of the talons—the proscription of the Polish language, the flogging of school-children who

spoke it, the importation of German farmers and peasants— began in 1894. For some little time he had been showing a desire to stand well with England rather than with Russia.

Now the two countries changed places and Russia once more became the favourite. But, with the want of acuteness that marks so many of his actions, he celebrated the twenty- fifth anniversary of the Franco-German War with a aeries of "oratorical bonfires" intended to magnify German victories over a country which bad lately become an ally of Russia. The contrast between his professed and his real feeling towards England was shown by his enthusiastic welcome of the English Fleet at Kiel on June 21st, 1895, and the telegram to Kruger just six months later, which was composed in the presence of the Kaiser "by the Foreign Secretary and three naval chiefs." This was the first of " the only three occasions in his career when the Kaiser has evoked the general and clamorous enthusiasm of the German people "; the second being in 1905, when he defied England and France about Morocco, and the third in 1914, when he declared war. At first sight it may

seem strange that he should have sent a message of this kind at a moment when he must have known that he would be obliged to climb down. The German ships were ordered to Delagoa

Bay only to leave it, and five years later the Kaiser offered suggestions on the conduct of the South African War, not to the Boers, but to Queen-Victoria. Yet these two incidents, se different in appearance, were really part of a single plan. The

telegram to Kruger was designed to show the impossibility of making Germany the greatest Power in the world without

her becoming as great at sea as she already was on land. It was not easy to bring his own people round to this view. Their military burdens were heavy enough, and the military party had no wish te see a rival expenditure set up. But the nation already hated England more than they bated either France or Russia; and the telegram made them understand that without a great navy England could not he really injured. The Kaiser bad to bear great unpopularity when the telegram seemed to have no results, but this was only the price he was

forced to pay for bringing the nation round to his own estimate of German needs. He "wanted to show the army and the country how powerless Germany was, especially in the face of the most hated rival, England, without a fleet." By 1898 the majority of the Great Powers had grown some- what weary of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, and William II. seized the opportunity to make him his special friend. The German Mission at Jerusalem was not of much religious importance, but it was largely subsidized from Berlin, and the Kaiser saw in the building of a new church there an occasion for a visit to Palestine in company with the Empress. In an address to the little German colony in Jerusalem he defined the object of their visit to be "the greatest good of all, the salvation of our souls"; but a few days later he telegraphed to the Sultan from Damascus an assurance of his true friendship for the three hundred million Mohammedans "who venerated him as their Caliph." He also secured the right to construct the Baghdad railway, a project which in case of war, and in the event of Turkey joining the Triple Alliance, would, as some German writers pointed out at the time, greatly help her to mobilize her Army. A year before this a large naval policy was definitely adopted. Admiral

Tirpitz became head of the Navy, the Navy League "began to educate the country," and in March, 1898, the Reichstag consented to build seventeen new ships. These naval projects were helped by various accidents. German industry had grown with great and increasing rapidity ; the cession of Kiao-chau had made it natural for the Kaiser to assure his countrymen in China that "the protection of the German Empire in the shape of the German Navy" would always be given them ; Admiral Dewey had maintained the blockade of Manila, which a German Admiral had tried to ignore ; the Caroline and Pelew Islands had been bought from Spain ; and the German possessions "in the Samoa group, and even on the mainland of Africa, were consolidated by agreements with England and America." Here was the beginning of a Colonial Empire to be defended against all the world, and it could not be defended without ships. In 1899 it was proposed to double the Fleet. The minority in the Reichstag offered an obstinate though hopeless resistance, but in January, 1900, the Bill was carried, and Germany "entered upon a twenty-five years' programme of construction." On the ocean and beyond it, no great decision should henceforward be taken without Germany and the German Emperor.

It is at this point that Mr. McCabe stops to inquire whether his hero was for many years a sincerely peaceful Sovereign, only " dragged into Chauvinism by his people," or "an ambitious and hypocritical adventurer" who in time in- fected a nation naturally peace-loving. He decides at once that William II. was not hypocritical. He really wanted peace, but be did nothing to discourage the war temper in the nation as he only wanted peace so long as Germany was not ready for war. It is nearer the truth to say that the nation cor- rupted the Kaiser than that the Kaiser corrupted the nation. " The bulk of the Germans always applauded his worse acts and utterances, and quarrelled especially with his more temperate or more humane declarations." The one occasion on which he was forced to bow to public opinion was when " serape of his conversations" on his holiday in England in 1906 were published two years afterwards in the Daily Telegraph. When the nation read his assurances that he had stood between England and German hostility for twenty years, had refused to see Kruger on his mission to Europe, and bad told Queen Victoria how Lord Roberts was to end the South African War, "the storm of anger was terrible," and the Chancellor was directed by the Reichstag "to see the Kaiser, and, with whatever courtesy he could, tell him that this kind of thing must cease. On November 17th a grim and determined crowd saw Prince Billow, pale and nervous, take the train to Potsdam." In the Chamber he had severely blamed his master's conduct, and now be had to bring that master to confirm what he had said, and to assure him of the continuance of his confidence. "Even in personal matters a change began at once. Expenses were reduced, festivities ant down, speeches prepared by Billow and quietly read by the Kaiser." From that time he ceased to hold the nation back. Prince Billow was soon replaced by Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, a man of much vigour, little subtlety, and still less statesmanship, but, as the world has learned,• a pliant instrument for an evil olie',