Hearing of this, I called on the literary society to do likewise, pointed out that we didn't drink or make night hideous for quiet citizens in the morning hours, and finally three of us were selected to go to Berlin and call upon Bismarck, and see if we could not win him to the cause of freedom. Next day, my friend, von H-, and a man whose name I've completely forgotten, and myself started for Berlin. Von H-, we agreed, was to be the spokesman, and he recited to us an excellent speech.
All went happily at first: I drafted a letter to Prince Bismarck, begging him to hear us for a few minutes as students of his old university. We got a letter from his secretary: the Chancellor would see us at eleven next morning in the Wilhelm Strasse. Needless to say, we were punctual, but when the door opened and Bismarck rose before us at his desk, the courage of my companions oozed away: they both stood bowing like automata with heels together, for all the world as if they had hinges in their backs.
"Begin!" I whispered to von H-, but he bowed again and again, and said nothing. I saw I'd have to speak or be shamed, so I stepped forward and simply said that we had come as members of a literary society; we were not idlers, but students, intent on improving ourselves: we didn't drink or annoy peaceable citizens by howling songs in the small hours, so we hoped he'd order the civic authorities in Gottingen to leave us alone. The closing time seems reasonable," Bismarck replied curtly.
"Why shouldn't we talk all night, so long as we don't annoy anyone?" I countered.
"You come into the category of student societies (Verbindungeri)," he said.
"It's difficult to differentiate."
"Good laws shouldn't oppress the well-behaved," I objected. "I'm sure there's a student behind the Chancellor!"
"Richtig!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up. "But," the thought came: "the well-behaved don't feel laws as oppressive. You can surely say all you have to say before one o'clock in the morning!"
"Why shouldn't we talk all night if we want to and don't annoy others? As a student Prince Bismarck would not like to have been coerced by soldiers, and we were told that we should be shot down like dogs if we resisted."
"Richtig!" he barked again. "The soldiers had their orders-scharf geladen!"
"It's mere despotism," I cried, "indefensible and intolerable tyranny; the Gessler hat sort of thing." He shrugged his shoulders, smiling, and I turned, bowing, and went to the door, for I feared that I had been too bold, while my companions went on bowing like wooden automata. At the door Bismarck called me back: "Are you a German?" he asked.
"An American," I replied.
"So…" he interjected, smiling as if at length he understood my boldness. "So!
The Declaration of Independence stops at the frontier," and he laughed genially.
When we got outside, my companions congratulated me; but I turned angrily on Von H-: "Had you told me you were going to say nothing, I'd have prepared something: as it was, I was beaten!"
"I would never have believed it," said Von H-, "but I could not have spoken to save my life; the discipline, the pigtail nature- zopfwesen-of us Germans since Frederick the Great has got into our blood! But you did splendidly."
"I did very badly," I said.
If I force memory and recount this unimportant little Incident, it is just to emphasize the fact that no one I have ever seen in this world had a greater magic of personality than Bismarck-an authentic great man.
No one in Europe at the time realized the disastrous consequences of Bismarck's fall. Every one knew that as far back as '79 he had formed an Austro-German alliance, directed practically against Russia. He was the inspirer too of the French occupation of Tunis in 1881. His object was to create ill feeling between France and Italy, and he succeeded.
In 1882 he won the adhesion of Italy to the alliance and so strengthened Germany against France, as well as against Russia. But even this Triple Alliance did not satisfy him. He knew how to play on imperial rulers. In 1884 he concluded with Russia a secret treaty behind the backs of both his Allies-a treaty by which it was arranged that if Germany or Russia were attacked, the other would come to her ally's assistance.
It was the failure of the Emperor William, and of his Chancellor, the Count von Caprivi, to renew this secret treaty in 1890 that first weakened Germany's position in Europe.
In 1891 the Russian Government invited a French squadron to Kronstadt — which should surely have warned even the Emperor William of his blunder.
And in 1893 the Russians sent Admiral Avellane to return the visit to Toulon.
Thus the Russian-French alliance was set on foot, if not at once concluded.
Bismarck's diplomacy was more cunning even than that imagined by Machiavelli. French colonial enterprise everywhere, and especially in Africa, was favored by German diplomacy, with the intention of separating France and England. And in this Bismarck's diplomacy continued to be effective after he himself had fallen from power; for the greater part, indeed, of the last decade of the nineteenth century! Fashoda in 1896 almost brought about war between the two countries.
Immediately after the fall of Bismarck, his policy that had made Germany the first of European powers was abandoned. The extraordinary commercial prosperity that had resulted from it continued and blinded the German people to the dangers of the new diplomacy that was, in truth, little more than the erratic impulses of William II. I can never think of William II without recalling the great phrase of Vauvenargues: Les pros-perites des mauvais rois sont fatales aux peuples.
As soon as I heard of Bismarck's dismissal by the Emperor, I felt sure that William II was a small fish.
"We Germans," said Bismarck later, "fear God and nothing else." He would have been much greater if he had feared God enough to play the game of life quite fairly. He did his best to embroil England with France. His want of moral scruple was his besetting sin.
But, if one can find fault with the inflexible selfish purpose of Bismarck, the policy that succeeded his was devoid of any virtue. William II not only brought France and Russia into a close alliance, but, with inconceivable stupidity, he estranged Italy and exasperated England without winning a single friend, unless, indeed, Turkey could be called a friend.
My private judgment of him, derived chiefly from the Prince of Wales and a casual meeting with the War-lord, as he loved to be called, I will give in due time: but for the moment I can only say that his famous speech, addressed to the Brandenburg Diet in this year, 1892, filled me with unutterable contempt. He talked about God as the "Supreme Lord" and "his unmistakable conviction that He, our former Ally at Rossbach and Dennewitz, will not leave me in the lurch. He has taken such infinite pains with our ancient Brandenburg and our House that we cannot suppose He has done this for no purpose. No; on the contrary, men of Brandenburg, we have a great future before us, and I am leading you towards days of glory."
There was one man in Germany, Maximilian Harden, who foresaw the ruin of Germany as soon as William II abandoned Bismarck and his successful international policy; perhaps I ought to say a word about him here.
Harden came to Berlin during the Bismarckian era, an ardent admirer of Bismarck and the great Chancellor's strictly national theories, a boy of nineteen who had just finished college.
His name then was Max Witkovski-a Jewish boy. A Jew had a hard time of it in Germany in those days. Public recognition seemed impossible. His journalistic career proved to him that a German name would be more advantageous. The English periodicals of the late eighties and early nineties, with their frankness and love of truth, became his ideal of journalism. In vain he tried to persuade publishers to follow the English lead, treating royalty and the aristocracy of birth as boldly as the British.