The Secret Memoirs of Bertha Krupp
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In the summer of 1905 the proverbial Bülow luck was still in full swing. At the moment it sent Phili Eulenburg to the rescue, for the ex-ambassador, still undisgraced, was, as usual, in attendance upon the War Lord.
"Fine chap, that," said Phili, pointing to one of the sentinels who guarded the inner court of the Chancellor Palace; "may I put him through the paces just to show I did not get my epaulettes for form's sake?"
"Anything as long as you don't make me ridiculous, Phili." Maybe the War Lord was curious to see whether his friend had any military talents. Perhaps he remembered that Bismarck, talking to Maximilian Harden or Moritz Busch, let drop a remark to the effect that persons of the Eulenburg type made great generals – sometimes, vide Alcibiades, Cæsar, Peter the Great, Frederick, etc. – good diplomats never!
"Advance," "retreat," "right," "left," "charge," "about face," crowed Phili, repeating the last order several times.
"Pack ein" ("Cheese it!"), said the War Lord, "if these are the only commands you remember." However, when the pair entered through the glass doors, Bernhard, to his intense satisfaction, was resplendent in a frock-coat, with the ribbon of the Red Eagle in buttonhole, Majesty missing the chance to scold him for a sybarite. To Wilhelm's mind, male humanity is "nude" when unaccoutred with knapsack and bayonet, or else unshrouded in evening dress at nine a.m. Bülow had flatly refused to array himself en fracin daytime, and in his hussars' breeches he always fidgeted "in a nerve-racking way." So he must be allowed a Prince Albert coat – Chancellor's exclusive privilege, of course! Bismarck used to ride to the old Kaiser's palace in a fatigue cap, but at the door donned the steel helmet. But let none of lesser rank and importance imitate these worthies.
"Here's a pretty kettle of fish," said the War Lord, acknowledging Bülow's respectful greetings by a wave of the hand. "Phili tells me that Victor will require pretty strong proof it's defensive before he joins our war. And Udo has secured tell-tale correspondence to the same effect, which will be sent to you presently."
"Italy making demands before she has even lost a battle?" cried Phili, without indicating quotation marks.
Bülow knew of course that the bon mot was Bismarck's, but the War Lord thought it original. "Don't repeat that to the Princess, please," he said to Bülow, "lest she put our Phili on her index. As to Victor, what do you think of the ingrate?"
"With Your Majesty's permission, I rather think that the information" (Bülow looked straight at Eulenburg, then thought better of it) "of – Count Wedell is not well founded. Your Majesty knows how such rumours arise. Maybe King Victor has, at one time or another, expressed himself to the effect that he meant strictly to adhere to the stipulations of the Triple Alliance, whereupon some person in the secret found out that the Triple Alliance obliges Italy to take up arms only in case Germany or Austria are attacked. Presto, the mischief-maker concludes that King Victor is not in sympathy with Germany's world politics, etc. etc."
"Maybe, but Udo's and Phili's reports must be sifted to the bottom," commanded the War Lord. "I told Wedell to put a man of pronounced political instinct on the work – an Italian, of course; there shall be a wrestling match between Dago cunning and German political shrewdness."
Up to then the War Lord had spoken quite to the point. Now he indulged in one of those saltomortales of uncontrolled thought that tends to incoherency.
"We must get rid of Otto," he said abruptly, pounding his knee with his terrible right.
Prince Bismarck's Christian name had been Otto, and Wilhelm got rid of him. Count Bülow, perceiving no connection with matters discussed, wondered whether the War Lord had reference to the former occupant of the Chancellor Palace, or maybe to a dog or horse. So, to be on the safe side, he smiled broadly and asserted: "Precisely, Your Majesty."
"Of course, there is that Schweinhund (pig-dog) Ruprecht."
Bülow began to scent a connection; however, the War Lord saved him further cogitation by doing all the talking.
"A madman, this Ruprecht; thinks his petty State an Indian Empire. Period: Thirteenth century, or thereabout. Dwells longingly on such scenes as Mohammed Toghlak enacted, having hundreds of rebels tossed about by elephants on steel-capped ivories, and then trampled to death to the sound of trumpets and beating of drums. 'I would like to treat our Socialists that way,' he told me time and again."
"Using wild boars instead of elephants, I suppose," said Phili. The sally caused the War Lord much merriment.
"Egad," he laughed, "your mileage from Liebenberg is not thrown away; you liquidate the bill by bons mots every time."
"I dare you tell the Reichstag," cried Phili.
"Bülow shall," said the War Lord; "but" – facing the Chancellor once more – "those muttons! With Italy a possible quantité négligeable, we must make doubly sure of Bavaria's unquestioned and enthusiastic support of Berlin. Now, Phili, who has been living there many years, tells me that the Bavarian people as a whole – "
"The great unwashed," put in Phili, who will live up to his reputation as a wit or burst – in Germany one need not be a Mark Twain to succeed.
"The Bavarian unwashed," repeated the War-Lord, "do not like Prussia. The only means of gaining national support for our war in Bavaria, then, is by favour of the Crown. Otto's is a harlequin's cap, and you can't ask people to rally around a War Lord more beast than man, and certainly as crazy as a march-hare. It follows: we need a sane man in Munich, Bülow – nothing short of a sane man will serve our purpose. I understand that Maximilian Joseph, 'the creature of that upstart, Napoleon,' had a royal diadem built which has never been used. Pull it from the vaults of the Munich Hofburg, Bülow, and place it on Luitpold's head, and if he persists in his silly refusal, on Ludwig's."
"Majesty knows these gentlemen's objections: 'There can be no real king in Bavaria, they say, until the constitutional incumbent is dead,'" spoke the Chancellor gravely.
"Then kill Otto," cried the War Lord. "What, miss our place in the sun for a madman! Not if I know Wilhelm, Imperator Rex. Briefly, Bülow, as there is no king in Bavaria, we must make one – one who recognises that he is Rex Bavariæ par la grace de Roi de Prusse and, accordingly, is willing to do the King of Prussia's bidding."
"But the people, will they rally to a standard bearer of that kind?" asked the Chancellor.
"The mob," cried the War Lord. "What has the mob to do with it? We show him a puppet in ermine and purple with Maximilian Joseph's unused crown on his silly pate, and 'hurrah,' 'Heil Dir im Siegeskranz.'"
"With the aid of the loyal Press," suggested Phili.
"Of course, the Press bandits are part and parcel of the plebs; let Königgrätzerstrasse see to them at once. And, Bülow," continued the War Lord, "the Norddeutsche Allgemeine– not a word!"
"That's where Majesty shows his wisdom," said Phili, nearly doubling up in a profound bow. And as the War Lord seemed to enjoy the compliment, he added: "I am not the bird to befoul his own nest; but if it be true, as the London papers sometimes assert, that Germany produces no real diplomats, I point to Your Majesty and say: Here stands the greatest of them all, greater than Cavour and Bismarck, Talleyrand and Wotton."
"Talleyrand was a great liar," mused the War Lord.
"And preserved Prussia." This from the Chancellor.
"My motto," said Wilhelm, "is: 'Keep a silent tongue where one's own interests are concerned, lest the itch of controversy produce a scab that even the unknowing may perceive.' He was boldly plagiarising Wotton, but if his auditors noticed the theft they were wise enough to keep it to themselves.
"Your Majesty's idea is that, in case Italy prove disloyal, Bavaria must act the buffer, the people offering stubborn resistance."
" – stubborn!" cried the War Lord, striding toward the great wall where a series of maps were displayed on rollers. Of course Phili got ahead and pushed the button. " – stubborn!" repeated Wilhelm. "Look at the Bavarian frontier – as naked of fortresses as a new-born babe of a dinner dress – no defensive works to speak of. If the Italians make good their threats against Austria and reach Innsbruck, good-bye Munich! The whole of Bavaria would be at the mercy of the Dago dogs of war! Bülow," cried the War Lord, "Phili brought documents to show that the Italian General Staff is mapping out a road to Berlin via Munich, Leipzig, Potsdam. That idiot Bismarck," he added, with an oath, "the question of collars and epaulettes was not the only one he decided in favour of the Bavarians. Four years previously he failed to squeeze Bayreuth out of them – Bayreuth, one of the Hohenzollerns' earliest possessions. With small pressure he might have regained the principality in 1866 in place of the miserable few millions of thalers as war indemnity that the Bavarians had to pay. We could have made Bayreuth-land an armed camp, a second Heligoland, as it-is-to-be!"
The "collars and epaulettes affair," to which the War Lord referred, cropped up in November, 1870, during the pourparlers for the Bavarian-Prussian treaties. King Ludwig insisted that Bavarian army officers should continue to wear the badge of their rank on their collar, while King Wilhelm said their shoulder straps were the correct place. The Chancellor, Bismarck, saved the situation by arguing: "If in ten years' time, perhaps, the Bavarians are arrayed in battle against us, what will history say when it becomes known that the present negotiations miscarried owing to collars and epaulettes?"
No wonder Prince Pless (Hans Henry XI., late father-in-law of Princess Mary, néeCornwallis-West) said to the Iron Chancellor: "Really, if at the time we were discussing the criminal code we had known what sort of people these Sovereigns are, we should not have helped to make the provisions against lèse-majesté so severe."
"Now if Bayreuth were in our hands," continued the War Lord, "the Italians could whistle for the new road to Berlin, as the English can for the promenade to Hamburg, since Salisbury, good old man – God rest his soul – presented us with that little islet in the North Sea."
"Maybe Bavaria could be induced to fortify her frontiers on the Austrian border," suggested the Chancellor.
"And I postpone my war until half a dozen Liéges and Namurs and Metzs and Strassburgs are built – man alive," thundered the War Lord. "Life is short, and the longer England and France are left in possession of the best colonies, the harder it will be for us to Prussianise them when things are being adjusted to our liking."
"Prussianise England and France, excellent idea, très magnifique!" crowed Phili the irrepressible.
"Not quite so fast," said the War Lord. "I was thinking of India and Ceylon, of Cochin China and Tonking, of Algeria, Hongkong, the Straits Settlements and the French Congo, of Madagascar and Natal, of Rhodesia, Gibraltar, the Senegal and other dainties in the colonial line."
"Even so – a jolly mouthful for Prussianisation, Majesty."
"You don't suppose I would tolerate the loose discipline encouraged by Downing Street and Quai d'Orsay," cried the War Lord. "Subject peoples and tribes must have a taste of the whip and spur. Where would Poland be without them – yes, and Alsace-Lorraine! But those Bavarians, Bülow. I hope I made it perfectly clear that Otto must go and that severest pressure must be brought on Luitpold."
"Together with the Italian problem, the matter shall have my closest attention," said the Chancellor.
"And don't forget that they are a crazy lot at best, and hand and glove with Franz Ferdinand's black masters."
"Matters can't be hurried, though," ruminated Bülow, "and I am afraid there is little store to be set by Luitpold."
"His ambition is to go thundering down the ages as the man who refused a crown," sneered Phili.
"Thank Heaven he is eighty-four," said the War Lord piously.
"And Ludwig tickled to death with the idea of becoming king," added Eulenburg.
The War Lord was making his adieux, when he suddenly turned upon Bülow. "What are you going to do with Ruprecht?"
"Promise him a field marshal's baton in our war."
"The right bait," assented Wilhelm, "but I pity the country under his supreme command. Do you know," he added, "that the lowest of his subjects would not permit him to cross his threshold?"
CHAPTER XXII
PAYING THE PRICE
What Edward VII. Thought – No Room for Art – A Vision of Threadneedle Street
Bülow, who loved being Chancellor, hated Phili Eulenburg.
However, the Imperial ex-Ambassador at the Hofburg was then in the zenith of his ill-gotten empire over Majesty, and to incur his displeasure spelt disgrace or enforced resignation.
At the moment the grand old man's thunderbolts were under lock and key in Harden's Grunewald villa, and the exalted personages marked for lightning carried things with a high hand, using the German Empire like an entailed estate.
Pretty evenly parcelled out this fidei commissumfavoured by the Prussian Constitution, which makes suffrage a mockery. Phili, of late enriched by Hertefeld, the Rhenish domain that guarantees him an independent income of £5,000 sterling a year and by a couple of millions cash, which Baron Nathan Rothschild, of Vienna, left him. Phili was practically the overseer of the Government personnel, and of the diplomatic corps in particular. His card index of prominent men and women, reinforced by reams and reams of correspondence, characterised each person – diplomats, deputies, ministers, councillors, governors, politicians, commanding generals and aspirants for high honours in the army or navy – according to his own viewpoint, the avowed object being to people the highest offices within the gift of the Crown with people like-minded with himself.
And it must be admitted that Phili pretty thoroughly succeeded, since the War Lord, seeing everybody through Eulenburg's eyes, selected in the main only persons of mediocre intellect, or plain bullies, as his representatives abroad and at home. The reference to Eulenburg's optics, by the way, recalls another Bismarck sally: "One look at Phili's eyes is enough to spoil the most elaborate dinner for me!"
Could gourmet-gourmand express himself more emphatically? What the Iron Chancellor thought of ambassadors appointed under that régime has already been quoted; it coincides with the reputation for clumsiness and inefficiency the War Lord's diplomatic servants have in all quarters of the world. In ante bellum days few of them were "honest men sent abroad to lie"; the great majority were liars intent upon bulldozing or deceiving the personages who mistook them for gentlemen. Of course, "like master, like servant." The late King Edward maintained that Wilhelm was vulgar and ungentlemanly; hence Baron H or Count Y might think it presumptuous to be otherwise. Besides, the Berlin Foreign Office will employ nobles only, and we have the authority of Gunther, Count von der Schulenburg, Lord of Castle Oest, Rhineland, for the illuminating fact that every tenth German aristocrat is unspeakable. So much for the German diplomatic service.
General Count Kuno von Moltke presided over another self-gratifying clique – that of the Army; and if Germany had invaded Belgium ten years previous to toying with the scrap of paper, she would probably have been overthrown in short order, for at that time the Commander of Imperial Headquarters held the same sinister sway over the military as Phili did over the civil branches of the Government.
"Lovey," "sweetheart," "my soul," "my all" (Kuno Moltke's epistolary titles for Majesty), "hears as much of affairs as I want him to know, no more," was Moltke's boast, according to the sworn evidence of Frau von Ende, Count Moltke's former wife, in the famous Harden slander case.
Yet though Moltke lost his case, the War Lord declared "there is nothing definite against Moltke, but he must remain on half-pay."
Can you imagine King George V. so flaunting the decisions of Old Bailey and thereafter saddling the British public with a life pension of about £500 per annum in favour of the guilty party?
Can you imagine why such "sweet affection for the All Highest" should make up for lack of military qualities in a general officer slated for supreme command in the field?
For his crusade Maximilian Harden won much praise from English writers, but if he had let it flourish in high places for a decade longer, Great Britain would be richer in blood and treasure.
Another of these coteries of men who dispensed high offices among themselves for their own ends existed in the Imperial Court – aye, it lodged there, not in the Schloss or Neues Palais exactly, but – oh, irony! – in the Princess's Palace, the hideous dependance of the Crown Prince Palais, Unter den Linden, the apartments granted for life to Royal Chamberlain Count von Wedell being its headquarters.
Oh, the jolly tea-parties they enjoyed in the great high-ceilinged rococo chambers, full of discarded furniture and appointments of the Frederick the Great and Watteau period; Louis Quatorze and Quinze, Boule and Chippendale, Empire, here and there – antique regularity and capricious bizarrerie, gems of Art some, also pieces chipped and disjointed.
Carlyle called Frederick "the last of the Kings"; he was certainly the last of Prussian kings possessed of an appreciation of the beautiful. The present War Lord kicked from his palaces – none were built since the eighteenth century – all objets d'art that would please the eye of anybody not a German boor, substituting unmentionables of the goose-step type, square-jointed, clumsy, coarse, and wholly mauvais goût.
What the "majestic" chambers lack, then, those of the Excellencies nolens volens boast. Wedell's rooms in particular contained a variety of eighteenth century chef d'oeuvres selected by the Count himself from heaps of "ancient rubbish" sent from the Neues Palais and Sans-Souci by order of Court Marshal von Liebenau, a corporal dignified by a gold stick.
No doubt the Knights of Wedell's Round Table enjoyed what was "caviare to the general." At any rate, their tea-parties seem to have been a delight to "high and low," for no one admitted to the charmed circle ever sent his regrets.
We find there General of Cavalry Count Wilhelm von Hohenau, son of the War Lord's uncle, the late Prince Albrecht of Prussia, and Sailor Trost, of His Majesty's yacht Hohenzollern; the gentleman already introduced, Count Kuno von Moltke, also Lord of the Cathedral and Private Riedel of the Uhlans; Count Lynar, brother-in-law of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Colonel of His Majesty's Horse Guards, and Gus Steinhauer, midshipman; Count Frederick von Hohenau, brother of Wilhelm, and Court Councillor Kestler, who rose from the ranks to gentlemanly estate and high honours in His Majesty's service; His Serene Highness Prince Philip of Eulenburg, Right Honourable Privy Councillor to the Prussian Crown, member of the House of Lords, etc., and Raymond Lecomte, French chargé d'affaires. These men were regular attendants, under the presidency of the noble-born host, of course, but there was a fair sprinkling of counts and barons and so on in this royal palace connected by a covered archway with the town residence of the Crown Prince and his family!
That was strange enough – audacity to the point of recklessness, one might call it – but stranger still is the fact that all these men were in the War Lord's good graces, if not on intimate terms with him like Eulenburg.
With the Hohenaus he was on "Willy" and "Freddy" footing; Count Johannes von Lynar he called "Jeanie"; and His Excellency Lieutenant-General Kuno von Moltke was his "Tütü" – with dots over both u's, if you please.
Nor were Wedell and Moltke the only tea-party members admitted to high positions at Court. Wilhelm Hohenau was governor to His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince, and, on Moltke's recommendation, Count Lynar was about to be gazetted personal adjutant to His Majesty – an office giving him apartments at the royal residence – when he was vulgarly "pinched" and lugged off to jail for the crime of – being found out.
Because he was the War Lord's "Jeanie," Lynar would not listen to "Tütü's" and "Willy's" and "Freddy's" hints about the Bank of England as a safe depository.
"Some day," he used to bluster, "a few weeks or a month after 'The Day,' I will ride up Threadneedle Street and straight into the vaults of that venerable pile, and leap my charger over mountains of gold – will be quite a change, don't you know, from jumping fences at Hoppegarten."
As to the others, Sailor Trost and ditto Gustav Steinhauer each enjoyed a meteoric career, rising in quick order to petty officership – impossible to advance them higher, because they were men without education; and whenever and wherever an excuse could be found for employing them in that extraordinary capacity, they were given charge of the Imperial person. Thus Gustav Steinhauer always acted as chief guardian of the War Lord's lodging in Castle Liebenberg when the Majesty visited his beloved Phili.
Kestler was a miserable subaltern, destined to starve on a daily wage of four marks, when Eulenburg discovered and introduced him to Majesty. Under the War Lord's favour, he was transferred to a more lucrative department in the service, and decorated!
Yet why the Pour le Merite for Kestler, and for Eulenburg, Wedell, etc.? What were their peculiar merits? Has anyone ever been able to discover?
To-day Eulenburg, twice tried, is a prisoner for life on his estate; the two Hohenaus are banished from Germany, and dare not come back on pain of arrest; Count Kuno von Moltke is a pensioner of the German people on foreign soil; Count Wedell forfeited the two gold buttons on the tails of his frac and his residence at the Princess's palace.
Why did they get off so easily in comparison when the crash came?
The answer is obvious enough. These persons had been careful to deposit in London, E.C., the letters they had received from a certain exalted party who shall be nameless, and Count Lynar, prisoner No. 5429 at Siegburg Jail, had neglected that simple precaution.
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW VON BOHLEN WAS CHOSEN
The First Step – Prussian Manners – The War Lord Finds His Man – Putting Bülow to the Test – Discussing the Husband to Be – von Bohlen is Chosen
On the morning after the Bavarian debate in the Chancellor's palace the War Lord and Prince Phili met early in Sans-Souci Park for an hour's horseback exercise and scandalmongering. Be sure that chronique scandaleuse was thoroughly discussed, as well as the personnel of Phili's favourites, and if there was anybody at Court and in Society, in high official places and in the royal theatres whose ears did not tingle with the calumnies or malicious tittle-tattle launched, the gossipers' memory was at fault, not their capacity for impertinent innuendo.
These personages were walking their horses in a secluded avenue of the woods beyond Klein Glienecke when they heard galloping behind. "My courier," said the War Lord; "we'll wait." They drew rein, and presently a red-coat shot by them in a parallel road. When some fifty paces ahead, the courier leaped his horse across the intervening ditch, then stopped short at the imminent risk of being thrown, and waited, hat in hand.
"Get the mail bag," commanded Wilhelm curtly, after the style of Napoleon, who thought nothing of ordering a king to see how dinner was progressing. Phili trotted off, and presently returned with a red morocco leather portfolio. A silver-gilt key dangling on the War Lord's bracelet gave access to the contents: two letters, both postmarked Essen.
"From Bertha," said the War Lord, glancing at the bigger envelope, and put it into his pocket. The other he tore open in great haste. "Wonder what the Baroness wants from me?" he muttered.
Phili having returned the portfolio, the courier was dismissed by a wave of the hand, and Wilhelm plunged into the epistle sans cérémonie.