Germany under Kaiser William the Second Von Bulow introduction

Germany under Kaiser William the Second
was a three volume encyclopedia published in 1914.
The first chapter was written by former Chancellor von Bulow,
and discusses some of the issues of Germany before the first
world war from a German point of view.Show more

In the mid-nineties in Rome, where I was ambassador at the time, my English colleague, Sir Clare Ford, said to me with a sigh: “How much more comfortable and convenient it was in politics when England, France and Russia formed the European Areopagus, and at most occasionally Austria needed to be consulted. ”Those good old days are over. More than four decades ago, the High Council of Europe was increased by one voting member who not only has the will to have a say, but also the strength to take part.

State rebirth of Germany.

A great piece of work was completed in the history of the world with the masterpiece of Prince Bismarck. The persistent heroism of the Prussian army and the unshakable devotion of the Prussian people had supported the purposeful will of the Hohenzollern for centuries under changeful fates, until the Brandenburg March became the Prussian great power. Twice the wreath that had already been won seemed to slip away from the state of Prussia. The devastating defeat of 1806 plunged Prussia from the admired and feared heights of Frederician fame. Those seemed right who had never wanted to see more than an artificial political structure in the proud state of the great king, which stood or fell with the monarch's unique statesmanlike and warlike genius. The uprising after the avalanche of Jena and Tilsit proved to the astonished world what unspoilt and indestructible power lived in this state. Such a willingness to sacrifice and such heroism on the part of an entire people presuppose a deeply rooted national self-confidence. And when the people of Prussia did not rise in a random uprising, like the much-admired Spaniards and the valiant Tyrolean peasants, but naturally submitted to the orders of the king and his advisors man by man, one saw in astonishment how national and state consciousness in Prussia were such that the people had been brought up to be a nation through the hard school of the Frederickian order. The reorganization of state life under the direction of creative men in the period from 1807 to 1813 won the state the conscious love and obedience of its subjects. The liberation struggle from 1813 to 1816 earned Prussia the respect of all and the trust of many non-Prussian Germans. It was a rich legacy that left behind the great times of uplift and liberation. But due to the retroactive effect of a dull and lackluster external policy and an internal management that neither knew how to give at the right moment nor how to refuse, this legacy was largely ruined over the next few decades. Towards the end of the fifties of the 19th century, Prussia lagged behind, as it had emerged from the wars of freedom, in internal attitude and external validity. The national unity movement had probably received its first solid foundation through the Prussian customs policy. But the day of Olomouc destroyed the hope of the German patriots, who expected Prussia to fulfill national wishes. Prussia seemed to be on its world historical mission, to renounce the power-political continuation of the unification value, which it had begun consciously in terms of economic policy. The transition of state life to constitutional channels had freed up new forces for national life. This state would have gained an infinite amount of inner vitality and national impetus if this loyal people had been called to political cooperation at the right time, as Stein and Hardenberg, Blücher and Gneisenau, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Boyen, and Yorck and Bülow-Dennewitz had wished. When the great step was taken thirty-three years too late, the trust between the people and the authorities was already too deeply eroded, the reputation of the government in the course of the revolutionary uprising had been too severely damaged for the modern forms of government to be able to bring immediate blessings. The course of Prussian politics was inhibited internally by a suspicious and doctrinal representation of the people, and externally by the undefeated resistance of the Austrian claims to supremacy. Almost in the twelfth hour Bismarck, appointed by King Wilhelm at the decisive moment, reached into the faltering wheel settings of the Prussian state machinery.

The insightful patriots of those years were well aware that a normal historical development had to lead to the state unification of Germany under Prussian leadership, that the foremost aim of Prussian statecraft was to accelerate and complete this development. But all the paths that had been trodden to achieve the goal had proven impassable. The longer, the less seemed to be expected of the initiative of the Prussian government. The well-intentioned but impractical attempts to induce the German people to take control of their own destiny failed because the decisive driving force of the governments in Germany was lacking more than in any other country. In “Wilhelm Meister” the experienced Lothario replies to the melancholy Aurelie, who has a lot to criticize about the Germans, that there is no better nation in the world than the German, as long as it is led properly. The German, whatever tribe he may be, has always been able to achieve the greatest under strong, steady and firm leadership, rarely without such leadership or in opposition to his governments and princes. Bismarck himself told us in his “Thoughts and Memories” that he was in no doubt about this from the start. With brilliant intuition he found the way on which the hopes of the people would have to meet the interests of the German governments. More than any other statesman, he had penetrated the history of the nation whose leadership was in his hands. Behind the external context of the events he sought and found the driving forces of national life. The great time of the liberation and uprising of Prussia, that was born in Waterloo and consecrated by Schleiermacher in the Trinity Church in Berlin, never faded from his memory; at the beginning of his world-historical work it stood in full vividness before his eyes. He felt that in Germany national will and national passion are ignited not in friction between government and people, but in the friction between German pride and a sense of honor and resistance and claims of foreign nations. As long as the question of German unification was only an internal political problem, a problem about which the parties and between the government and the people quarreled, it could not generate a powerful, compelling national movement that would sweep princes and peoples. When Bismarck presented the German question as what it was at its core, as a question of European politics, and when the non-German opponents of German unification soon began to stir, he also gave the princes the opportunity to take the lead in the national movement to deliver.

In Frankfurt, in Petersburg, in Paris, Bismarck had seen the powers of Europe in the cards. He had recognized that the unification of Germany could only remain a purely German-national matter as long as it was the pious wish and unfulfillable hope of the Germans and that it had to become an international matter the moment it reached the stage of realization. The struggle with the resistance in Europe was in the way of solving the great task of German politics. In such a struggle, however, the resistance in Germany itself could hardly be resolved. National policy was thus integrated into international policy, and the completion of the German work of unification through incomparable statesmanship and boldness was assigned to the inherited weakest abilities of the Germans, the political ones, and the innate best ones, the warlike ones. It was a fortunate coincidence that Bismarck found a general like Moltke, a military organizer like Roon at his side. At the same time, it was secured by the armed forces that had regained our European position as a great power. They took away the desire of the great powers to wrest from us the place in the European college that we had conquered in three victorious wars. Even if we were reluctant to have this place, it has not been seriously contested since then. With the exception of France, the whole world would have gradually made friends with Germany's position of power if our development had ended with the founding of the empire. State unification did not end our history, but the beginning of a new future. In the forefront of the European powers, the German Reich regained its full share in European life. For a long time, however, the life of old Europe had only been a part of the entire life of the people.

Germany as a world power.

Politics became more and more world politics. The world political paths were also opened for Germany when it gained a powerful and equal position alongside the old great powers. The only question was whether we should tread the new paths that lay before us, or whether we should shrink from further ventures in fear of the power we had just gained. In Kaiser Wilhelm the second, the nation found a leader who, with a clear vision and a firm will, led the way on the new path. With him we embarked on the global political path. Not as conquistadors, not under adventures and traders. We moved slowly, didn't dictate the pace let go of the impatience of ambition, but of the interests and rights that we had to promote and assert. We did not jump into world politics, we grew into our world political tasks, and we did not exchange the old European politics of Prussia-Germany for the new world politics, but we still rest today as before with the strong roots of our strength in old Europe.

“It is the task of our generation to simultaneously maintain our continental position, which is the basis of our world position, and to look after our overseas interests in such a way, to conduct a prudent, sensible, wisely restrictive world policy in such a way that the security of the German people is not endangered and the future of the nation is not impaired.” With these words I tried on November 14, 1906 towards the end of a more detailed presentation of the international situation to formulate the task that Germany has to fulfill now and according to human judgment in the future: world politics as the solid basis of our European great power position. In the beginning voices were heard which criticized the treading of the new world political paths as a stray from the tried and tested paths of Bismarckian continental policy. It was overlooked that Bismarck in particular showed us new ways by leading the old to their goals. His work actually opened the gates of world politics for us. Only after the unification of the state and the political strengthening of Germany was it possible for the German economy to develop into a world economy. Only after the Reich saw its position in Europe secured could it think of standing up for the interests that German enterprise, German industrial diligence and commercial daring had created all over the world. Certainly Bismarck did not foresee the course of this new German development or the tasks of this new era in detail and could not foresee them. In the rich treasure trove of political knowledge that Prince Bismarck left us with, nowhere can we find the generally applicable sentences for our global political tasks, as he coined them for a large number of possibilities in our national life. We look in vain in the resolutions of his practical policy for a justification for the resolutions which our global political tasks demand of us. This new, different time was probably also prepared by Bismarck. We must never forget that without the gigantic achievement of Prince Bismarck, who made up in years with a mighty jolt what had been wasted and neglected in centuries, we would not have been able to experience the new era. But even if every new epoch of historical development is conditioned by the previous one, its driving forces more or less thanks to the past, it can only bring progress if it leaves the old ways and goals behind and moves on to others of its own. If we move away from the European politics of the first chancellor on our new world-political paths, it remains true that the world-political tasks of the 20th century are the proper continuation of the continental-political tasks that he fulfilled. In that speech of November 14, 1906, I pointed out that the succession of Bismarck was not an imitation, but demanded an advanced training. "If the development of things demands it," I said at the time, "that we go beyond Bismarckian goals, we must do it."

The development of things, however, has long since driven German politics out of the narrowness of old Europe into the wider world. It was not ambitious unrest that urged us to emulate the great powers who had long been following the paths of world politics. The forces of the nation, rejuvenated by the state rebirth, expanded beyond the boundaries of the old homeland, and politics followed the new national interests and needs. To the extent that our national life has become world life, the politics of the German Reich became world politics.

In 1871 the new German Empire gathered forty one million inhabitants within its borders. They found food and work in their homeland, better and more easily than before, under the protection of increased national power, under various conditions of traffic that were facilitated by the founding of the Reich, under the blessings of the new general German legislation. In 1900 the population was over fifty six million; today it has grown to more than sixty five million. This huge mass of people could no longer feed the empire within its borders in the old way. The increase in population posed a huge problem for German economic life and thus also for German politics. It had to be resolved if the surplus of German strength, which the homeland was unable to maintain, did not benefit foreign countries. Around 171,000 Germans emigrated in 1885, 116,339 in 1892, only 22,921 in 1898, and this last low number has remained average since then. In 1885, Germany was therefore able to provide a population twenty million smaller with less favorable living conditions than its sixty six million members at present. In the same period, German foreign trade rose from around six billion marks to over nineteen billion. World trade and people's nutrition are unmistakably connected. Much less, of course, from the imported foods themselves than from the increased employment opportunities which industry connected with world trade is able to provide. The development of industry, first and foremost, has solved the problem posed to national life by the population increase, without prejudice to the disadvantages initially caused by the surprisingly rapid pace of development in older areas of economic life. The enormous increase and enlargement of the industrial establishments, which today employ millions of workers and employees, could only be achieved by the fact that industry seized the world market. If they were still dependent today on the processing of the raw materials that the continent supplies and on the European market for the sale of their products, then there would be no question of the modern giant companies, and there would be millions of Germans who today directly benefit from having an industrial livelihood without wages or bread. According to statistical surveys, raw materials for industrial purposes to the value of 5,393 million marks were imported in 1911 and finished goods to the value of 5,460 million marks were exported. In addition, there is an export of raw materials, especially mining products, to the value of 2,205 million. Nutritional and luxury goods are imported for 3,077 million marks and exported for 1,096 million marks. These dead numbers gain life when it is considered that a great deal of German well-being depends on them, the existence and work of millions of our fellow citizens. World trade mediates these enormous masses of goods. They only go to a small extent on the land and waterways of the mainland, mainly over the sea on the vehicles of German shipowners. Industry, trade and shipping have won the old German economic life the new world economic forms, which have also politically led the empire beyond the goals that Prince Bismarck had set for German statecraft.

With its 19 billion foreign trade, Germany is now the second largest trading power in the world, behind Great Britain with 25 billion and ahead of the United States with 15 billion. In 1910, the German ports saw 11,800 own and 11,698 foreign ships arriving, 11,962 own and 11,678 foreign ships leaving. The German shipping companies hire an average of 70 steamers and 40 sailing ships every year. In rapid development, we Germans have won our place in the forefront of the seafaring and maritime trade peoples.

Necessity of the navy.

The sea has become more important to our national life than ever before in our history, not even in the great times of the German Hansa. It has become a strand of life for us that we must not allow to be cut if we do not want to turn from a blossoming and youthful people into a withering and aging nation. We were exposed to this danger as long as our world trade and our shipping lacked national protection on the sea against the overpowering navies of other powers. The tasks that the armed forces of the German Reich had to carry out had shifted significantly since the continental protection that our army ensured us was no longer sufficient to shield domestic industry from disturbances, interference and attacks from outside. A navy of war had to stand by the side of the army so that we could enjoy our national work and its fruits.

When, in the spring of 1864, the English ambassador in Berlin drew the attention of the then Prussian Prime Minister to the excitement that Prussia's action against Denmark had caused in England and dropped the remark that if Prussia did not stop, the English government would take military action against it Mr. von Bismarck-Schönhausen replied: “Yes, what are you actually going to do to us? In the worst case, you can throw a few grenades at Stolpmünde or Pillau, but that's all. ”Bismarck was right about that time. At that time we were as good as invulnerable to the ruling England, because we were not vulnerable at sea. We had neither a large merchant navy, the destruction of which could hurt us, nor an overseas trade worth mentioning, which we feared to have interrupted.

Quite different today. We have become vulnerable at sea. We have entrusted Billions in value to the sea and with this value the weal and woe of many millions of our compatriots. If we do not ensure the protection of this precious and indispensable national property in good time, we are in danger of one day having to watch defenselessly as it is taken from us. But then we would not have sunk back economically and politically into the comfortable ex world's first sea and trading power.istence of a purely landlocked state. Rather, we would have been able to neither employ nor feed a considerable part of our millions of people at home. The result would have been an economic crisis, a crisis that could develop into a national catastrophe.

Construction of the navy.

The construction of a fleet sufficient to protect our overseas interests had become a vital question for the German nation since the end of the 1880s. It is to his great historical merit that Kaiser Wilhelm the second recognized this and applied the full power of the crown and the full strength of his own individuality to the achievement of this goal. This merit is further increased by the fact that the head of the Reich advocated the building of the German navy at the moment when the German people had to decide about their future and when, according to human calculations, the last possibility existed, for Germany to forge the sea armor it needed. The navy was to be built while maintaining our position on the continent, without colliding with England, which we had nothing to oppose at sea, but with full preservation of our national honor and dignity. Parliamentary resistance, which was still considerable at the time, could only be overcome if public opinion exerted sustained pressure on parliament. Public opinion could only be set in motion if the national motive was emphatically emphasized and national consciousness aroused in the face of the uncertain and discouraged mood that prevailed in Germany in the first decade after the resignation of Prince Bismarck. The pressure that had weighed on the German mind since the break between the bearer of the imperial crown and the mighty man who had brought this crown out of the depths of the Kyffhauser could only be overcome if the German people, who were in need of unity at that time and whose hopes and goals were unclear, had a new path set by their emperor and were shown the place in the sun to which they had a right and to which they had to strive. The patriotic sentiment should not, however, overflow and disturb our relations with England in an irreparable way, against which our defensive strength at sea was still quite inadequate for years and before which we were, as in that year, a competent judge in 1897 once put it, at sea like butter in front of the knife. To enable the construction of a sufficient fleet was the next and greatest task of post-Bismarckian German politics, a task which I, too, was primarily faced with when I was on the "Hohenzollern" in Kiel on June 28, 1897 on the same day and in the same place that 12 years later I asked for my release from His Majesty the Emperor.

On March 28, 1897, in its third reading, the Reichstag accepted the proposals of the Budget Commission, which made considerable cuts in the government's demands for replacement buildings, reinforcement and new buildings. On November 27th, after the previous State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt, Admiral von Hollmann, had been replaced by a first-rate force, Admiral von Tirpitz, the government published a new naval bill, which included the construction of 7 ships of the line, 2 large and 7 small Kreuzern, and demanded that the time for the completion of the new buildings be set at the end of the accounting year 1904 and that replacement buildings be carried out in good time by limiting the lifespan of the ships and determining the formations to be kept permanently in service. The draft said: “While fully respecting the rights of the Reichstag and without recourse to new sources of taxation, the allied governments are not pursuing an endless naval plan, but rather the sole aim of establishing a patriotic navy of such limited strength and strength within a reasonable period of time To create efficiency that it suffices to effectively represent the maritime interests of the Reich. ”The proposal pushed the naval policy on a completely new track. So far, individual new buildings had been requested and in some cases approved from time to time, but the navy had lacked the solid foundation that the army had in the nominal inventory of its formations. It was only through the determination of the lifespan of the ships on the one hand and the number of serviceable ships on the other hand that the fleet became an integral part of our national armed forces.

The building of the German fleet, like other great tasks in our patriotic history before it, had to be carried out with an eye on foreign countries. It was to be foreseen that this momentous increase in our national power would arouse unease and distrust in England.
The traditional politics of England.

The politics of no state in the world moves as firmly in traditional lines as the English one, and England owes its grandeur not least to this tenacious consistency of its foreign policy, which has been independent in its final goals and basic lines of the change of party rule, not least of all to this tenacious consistency of its foreign policy world political successes. The be-all and end-all of English politics has always been the attainment and maintenance of English naval rule. All other considerations, friendships as well as enmities, have always been purposefully subordinated to this point of view. It would be foolish to want to dismiss English politics with the hounded word of "perfidious Albion". In truth, this alleged perfidy is only a healthy and justified national egoism to which other peoples, as well as other great characteristics of the English people, can take an example.

During the second half of the 18th and the first of the 19th century stood England at the side of Prussia, especially in critical times of Prussian history during the Seven Years' War and in the age of Napoleon the First. It was less comfortable sympathy with the bold and laboriously rising blood-related state in the German north that determined the English attitude. For its purposes England stood by the side of the most capable opponent of the strongest European power and left Frederick the Great in a difficult hour, and cold-bloodedly abandoned Prussia at the Congress of Vienna when she saw her aims had been achieved. During the shackling of the French forces in the Seven Years War, England brought her North American possessions to safety. In the great years from 1813 to 1815, the stormy bravery of Prussia finally and finally smashed Napoleonic world domination. When Prussia had to grapple bitterly for every square kilometer of land in Vienna, England had won her world power and, after the defeat of the French enemy, could see it as secure for the foreseeable future. As the enemy of the strongest continental power, we were friends of England; through the events of 1866 and 1870, Prussia-Germany became the strongest power on the European mainland and gradually moved in the English imagination into the place which the France of the Sun King and the two Bonapartes had earlier taken. English policy followed its traditional direction of taking the front against the respective strongest continental power. After the fall of Habsburg Spain, the France of the Bourbons was England's natural opponent, from Marlborough's outstanding participation in the War of the Spanish Succession to the alliance with the victor in the Battle of Rossbach, which was celebrated in London like a triumph of British arms. After decades of jealous distrust of Russia, which had grown stronger under Catherine the second, British policy turned again and with full energy against France when Bonaparte led the armies of the republic to victory over all the states of mainland Europe. In the wrestling match between the First Empire and England, England remained victor, certainly primarily thanks to the unshakable and grandiose steadfastness of its policy, the heroism of its blue jackets at Abukir and Trafalgar and the successes of its iron duke in Spain, but also because of the tenacity of the Russians and Austrians and the impetuosity of our old Blucher and his Prussians. When, after the fall of Napoleon, the military preponderance seemed to pass from western Europe to the east, England turned its political front. England played a prominent part in the unfortunate outcome of the Crimean War for Russia and in the failure of the lofty plans of the proud Emperor Nicholas the first, and Emperor Alexander the second also found English politics not infrequently on his political paths, most noticeably in the Near East, the old hopes of Russian ambition. The English alliance with Japan emerged from considerations similar to the entente cordiale with France, which has a decisive influence on contemporary international politics.

The interest that England takes in shaping the balance of power on the European continent is of course not only directed towards the well-being of those powers which feel oppressed or threatened by the superior strength of one.

Such philanthropic sympathy seldom exerts a predominant influence on the political resolutions of the government of a large state. The repercussions of the European balance of power on English naval rule are decisive for the direction of British policy. And every shift of power which could not have such an effect in the wake has always been rather indifferent to the English Government. If England traditionally, that is, in keeping with its unchangeable national interests, is unfriendly or at least suspicious of the strongest continental power, the main reason lies in the importance that England attaches to superior continental power for overseas policy. A major European power which has so drastically demonstrated its military strength that it need not be prepared to attack its borders in the normal course of events is in a way gaining the national conditions of existence through which England became the world's preeminent sea and trading power. England, with her strength and her daring, could go out to sea with no worries, because she knew that her home frontiers were protected from enemy attacks by the surrounding sea. If a continental power possesses precisely this protection of the frontiers in its dreaded, victorious and superior army, it gains the freedom to pursue an overseas policy, which England owes to its geographical position. She becomes a competitor in the field in which England claims rule. English politics is based here on the experiences of history, one could almost say on the lawfulness of the development of nations and states. Every people with a healthy instinct and a viable state system has pushed to the seashore when nature has denied it. There has been the most persistent and bitter struggle for stretches of coast and harbor places, from Kerkyra and Potidea, about which the Peloponnesian War was ignited, to Kavalla, about which the Greeks and Bulgarians struggled in our day. Peoples who could not win the sea or were pushed out of it, tacitly dropped out of the great world historical competition. Owning the seashore means nothing more than the possibility of overseas development of strength and, ultimately, the possibility of expanding continental politics into world politics. The peoples of Europe who did not use their coasts and ports in this way could not do so because they needed all their national strength to defend their borders against their adversaries on the mainland. So the far-sighted colonial-political plans of the Great Elector had to be abandoned by his successors.

The world's political avenues have always been most freely open to the strongest continental power. But England kept watch on these routes. When Louis the fourteenth suggested a Franco-English alliance with Charles the second, this English king, who was otherwise very friendly to the French, replied that certain obstacles stood in the way of a sincere alliance, and of these the most distinguished was the trouble that France took to become a respectable maritime power.

For England, which could only be of importance through her trade and her navy, this was such a reason for suspicion that every step France took in this direction inevitably led to jealousy between the two peoples.
After the Treaty of Hubertusburg, the elder Pitt expressed his regret in Parliament that France had been given the opportunity to rebuild her navy. Primarily as an opponent of French overseas policy, England became the enemy of France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which dealt the first sensitive blow to French supremacy in Europe, England with Gibraltar brought the key to the ocean and the core area of Canada, which was hotly contested by France. In the middle of the eighteenth century Lord Chatam said: "The only danger that England has to fear arises on the day when the French see France as a great naval, commercial and colonial power." And before the Crimean War, David Urquhart wrote: “Our island location only allows us to choose between omnipotence and powerlessness. Britannia will be the queen of the sea or be devoured by the sea."

English policy has remained true to itself to the present, because England is today, as it was once, the ultimate sea power. The greater diplomatic conflicts have taken the place of the great conflicts of earlier times. The political purpose is unchanged.

Germany and England.

When Germany, after solving its continental political tasks, after securing its European position of power, showed itself neither willing nor able to forego embarking upon the world-political path, existence had to become uncomfortable for England. The consequences of this change could be lessened in their effects by diplomacy, but they could not be prevented.

But if we can understand the traditions of British politics, such an understanding by no means implies that England has reason to expand the German economy into a world economy, German continental policy into world politics and, in particular, the construction of a German navy with the to encounter the same distrust that might have been appropriate in earlier centuries towards other powers. The course of our world politics is fundamentally different in the means and in the ends from the attempts at world conquest by Spain, France and at the time of Holland and Russia in the past. The world politics, against which England opposed so emphatically in the past, was mostly aimed at a more or less violent change in international conditions. We merely take account of our changed national living conditions. The world politics of other countries, often opposed by England, was offensive, ours was defensive. We wanted and had to become so strong at sea that every attack on us was associated with a very considerable risk for every sea power, and we were thus freed from the influence and arbitrariness of other naval powers in the protection of our overseas interests. Our powerful national development, primarily in the economic field, had pushed us across the ocean. For our interests as well as for our dignity and honor, we had to ensure that we gained the same independence for our world politics that we had secured for our European politics. The fulfillment of this national duty might be made more difficult by any British resistance, but no resistance in the world could relieve us of it.

With an eye on English politics, our fleet had to be built - and that's how it was built. My efforts in the field of great politics had primarily to be directed towards the fulfillment of this task. Germany had to make itself internationally independent in two respects. We were not allowed to allow the law of our decisions and actions to be dictated by a policy directed fundamentally against England, nor were we allowed to become dependent on England for the sake of English friendship. Both dangers were given and more than once they were approaching precariously. In our development to maritime power, we were unable to achieve the desired goal either as England's satellite or as England's antagonist. The unreserved and secure friendship of England could ultimately only have been bought by sacrificing the very world-political plans for the sake of which we would have sought British friendship. If we had gone this way, we would have made the mistake that the Roman poet meant when he said that one should not propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. As England's enemy, however, we would hardly have had the prospect of getting as far as we did in the end in our development to become a sea and world trading power.

Germany and England during the Boer War.

During the Boer War, which strained the strength of the British Empire to the utmost and led England to great difficulties, there seemed to be an opportunity to touch the silent adversary of our world politics. As in the rest of Europe, the waves of Boer enthusiasm went up in Germany. If the government undertook to fall into the arms of England, it was certain to be applauded by public opinion. To many, the European constellation seemed favorable to a momentary success against England, and French aid in particular seemed secure. But the European community of interests against England was only apparent, and the value of a possible political success against England in the Boer question would still have been more apparent for us. The attempt to take action under the impression of the pro-bourgeois mood at the time would soon have resulted in disillusionment. In the French nation, the deep-seated national resentment against the German Reich would have quickly and elementarily suppressed the current resentment against England as soon as we had committed ourselves to England and a fundamental change of front in French policy would have been within reach. No matter how annoying the fresh memory of Fashoda might be for French pride, it weighed as light as a feather against the memory of Sedan. The Egyptian Sudan and the White Nile had not pushed the thought of Metz and Strasbourg from the French hearts. The danger was that we would be pushed forward by France against England, while France refused to cooperate in the psychological moment. As in Schiller's beautiful poem “Die Ideale”, the companions would have lost each other on the way.

But even if we succeeded in thwarting England's South African policy through European action, nothing would be gained for our closest national interests. Our relations with England would of course have been thoroughly poisoned from that hour and for a long time. The passive resistance of England to the world politics of the new Germany would have turned into a very active opposition. It was precisely in those years that we set about establishing German naval power by building our navy, but England, regardless of a possible failure in the South African war, had the power to nip our development into a naval power in the bud. Our neutral stance during the Boer War arose from weighty national interests of the German Reich.

We were not strong enough at sea to forcibly pave the way for us to gain sufficient naval power over and above the interests of England. In the wake of English politics, the British goal of curtailed development of German power at sea was just as difficult to achieve.

Press discussions about the possibility of an Anglo-German alliance.

The idea was obvious that the English resistance to German world politics and above all, to German naval construction could most easily be overcome by an alliance between Germany and England. The idea of an Anglo-German alliance has in fact been discussed in the press in both countries. Bismarck was already preoccupied with this idea, of course, only to elicit the resigned remark from him: "We would love to love the English, but they don't want to be loved by us." To enter into a contractual relationship with England on the basis of full parity and equal ties, stipulations which England could have cast off in the event of a change of government or the occurrence of other events independent of our will, while we would have remained bound by them, would not have served German interests. Nor could it have been enough for us that only this or that minister seemed inclined to a German-English agreement. In order to make an agreement sustainable, the entire government, and above all the Prime Minister, had to work towards it. Bismarck has pointed out how difficult it is to establish a stable relationship with England because long-term alliances do not correspond to English traditions and the opinions expressed by British politicians, even in leadership positions, or the current moods of the English press, are not worth unchanging promises. France, to which for many reasons British public opinion is more inclined than us, in which England no longer sees a rival and especially no serious competitor at sea and in world trade, England is in a different position than we are. Only with absolutely and permanently binding British obligations would we have an Anglo-German bridge in the face of the jealousy of broad English circles against the economic progress of Germany and, above all, against the growth of the German navy, and be allowed to enter into alliance. We could only bind ourselves to England on the assumption that the bridge that was supposed to lead over the real and supposed contradictions between us and England was actually sustainable.

The world situation back then, when the alliance question was ventilated, was in many respects different than it is today. Russia had not yet been weakened by the Japanese war, but was willing to fortify and expand the position it had just gained on the east coast of Asia and especially in the Gulf of Pechili. Relations between England and Russia were tense at the time precisely because of the Asiatic questions pending between the two empires. The danger was that a Germany allied with England would take on the role against Russia, which Japan would later assume alone. Only we should have carried out this role under conditions which cannot be compared with the favorable conditions which Japan found for its clash with Russia. The Japanese war was unpopular in Russia, and Russia had to wage it over immense distances as a colonial war, so to speak. If we allowed ourselves to be pushed against Russia, we would find ourselves in a much more difficult position. Under such circumstances the war against Germany would not have been unpopular in Russia; it would have been waged on the Russian side with the national vigor that is characteristic of the Russian in the defense of his native soil. For France, the case foederis would have existed. France could have waged its war of revenge under not unfavorable conditions. England was then facing the Boer War. Her position would have been eased if her great colonial political enterprise had been supported and accompanied by a European entanglement such as had served England well in the mid-18th and first decade of the 19th century. In a general conflict, we Germans would have had to face a serious land war on two fronts, while England would have had the easier task of further expanding her colonial empire without great difficulty and profiting from the mutual weakening of the mainland powers. At last and not least, during a military engagement on the mainland and for a long time afterwards, we would not have found the strength, means and leisure to promote the development of our war fleet in the way we could. So we had only the option of bypassing English interests, as it were, of avoiding enemy clashes and docile dependency in the same way.

England and the German fleet.

So we have indeed succeeded in creating that power at sea, unmolested and uninfluenced by England, which gives our economic interests and our world-political will the real basis, and which to attack must appear a serious risk even to the strongest opponent. During the first ten years after the introduction of the naval bill of 1897 and the start of our shipbuilding, an extremely determined British policy would have been able to forcefully prevent the development of Germany into a naval power, to render us harmless before our claws had grown at sea. In England such action against Germany has been repeatedly called for. On February 3, 1905, the Admiralty's civil lord, Mr. Arthur Lee, declared in a public speech that one had to keep one's eyes on the North Sea, gather the British fleet in the North Sea and, in the event of war, “strike the first strike before the other party could find time to read in the newspapers that war has been declared”. The Daily Chronicle underlined this omission with the words: “If the German fleet had been destroyed in October 1904, we in Europe would have had peace for sixty years. For these reasons, we consider the statements made by Mr. Arthur Lee, assuming they were made on behalf of the Cabinet, to be a wise and peaceful declaration of the unchanging purpose of the Lady of the Seas. ”In the fall of 1904 the Army and Navy Gazette had stated how It was unbearable that England should be compelled, simply by the presence of the German fleet, to take precautionary measures which otherwise would not be necessary. “We have,” it said in this article, “at one point or another have had to blow the life out of a fleet that we had reason to believe could be used to harm us. In England, as on the mainland, there is no shortage of people who consider the German navy to be the only real threat to the maintenance of peace in Europe. Be that as it may, we content ourselves with pointing out that the present moment is particularly favorable for our demand that this fleet not be enlarged. "At the same time a respected English review wrote:" When the German fleet is destroyed, the peace of Europe would be secured for two generations; England and France or England and the United States or all three would vouch for the freedom of the seas and prevent the building of new ships which are dangerous weapons in the hands of ambitious powers with growing populations and without colonies. ”Just about this time, in the autumn of 1904 France was preparing to snub us in Morocco. A few months earlier, in June 1904, a French publicist had told me that the construction of our navy was causing great and growing unrest in large English circles. It is not yet clear there how the continuation of our shipbuilding is to be prevented, whether through direct ideas or by favoring the chauvinistic elements in France. Today England allows us to be regarded as a sea power, as the strongest sea power after itself. When, in the winter of 1909, an English speaker in parliament stated the fact that England would not need to arm so feverishly at sea if the arrival of German maritime power had been prevented ten years earlier, he expressed a thought that is understandable and perhaps correct from the standpoint of pure power politics. The opportunity to nip a nascent fleet in the bud, which England repeatedly used in earlier times and against other countries, could not have been employed against Germany, since we did not offer the flank.

The peacefulness of German world politics.

The fleet that we have created since 1897 and that makes us the second sea power on earth, admittedly at a great distance from England, ensures us the possibility to lend political power to the representation of our German interests in the world. Its primary task is to protect our world trade, the life and honor of our German fellow citizens abroad. German warships have fulfilled this task in the West Indies and East Asia. It is certainly a predominantly defensive role that we assign to our fleet. It goes without saying that this defensive role could expand in serious international conflicts. If the Reich were to be attacked willfully, no matter from which side, the sea as a theater of war will gain a completely different and increased importance than in 1870. That in such a case the navy and the army, true to the Prussian-German tradition, will take on the attack would see the best parade, there is no need to say a word about it. Completely irrelevant, however, is the concern that accompanied the construction of our fleet that Germany would like to awaken the aggressiveness with the strengthening of Germany at sea.

Of all the peoples on earth, the German is the one that has been the least likely to attack and conquer. If we disregard the Roman journeys of the German emperors of the Middle Ages, whose driving force was more a great, dreamlike political error than an unbridled lust for conquest and war, then we will look in vain for wars of conquest in our past, similar to those of France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 18th and 19th centuries, those of Habsburg Spain, Sweden in its heyday, and those of the Russian and English empires in the course of their fundamentally expansive national policy should be set alongside. In centuries we Germans have never striven for anything more than the defense and security of our fatherland. Just as the great king did not lead his undefeated battalions to adventures after the conquest of Silesia and the securing of the independence of the Prussian monarchy, so little did Emperor Wilhelm the first and Bismarck think about doing new things after the unprecedented successes of two great wars. If a people can boast of political self-restraint, it is the German one. We have always limited our own successes and have not waited for a limit to be set by the exhaustion of our national resources. Our development therefore lacks the epochs of blinding sudden ascent and has been more of a slow, undaunted forward work and progress. The restless way of other peoples to draw the incentive for new, greater ventures from the successes achieved, is almost completely lacking in the German. Our political style is not that of the daringly speculating merchant, but rather that of the thoughtful farmer who patiently awaits the harvest after careful sowing.

After the Franco-German war, the world was full of fear of Germany's new war-like ventures. No plan of conquest of any kind was foreseen at the time. More than four decades have passed since then. We are richer in people's strength and material goods, our army has become stronger and stronger. The German fleet came into being and developed. The number of major wars fought since 1870 has been greater rather than fewer than earlier in the same period. Germany did not seek participation in any and coolly resisted all attempts to be drawn into warlike entanglements.

Without pride or exaggeration it can be said that never in history has an armed force of such superior strength as the German served to the same extent for the maintenance and security of peace. This fact is not explained by our love of peace, which is beyond doubt. The German has always loved peace and yet had to take up swords again and again because he had to defend himself against foreign attacks. In fact, the peace was primarily preserved, not because a German attack on other nations was not carried out, but because other nations feared the German defense against any attack of their own. The strength of our armaments has proven to be a protection of peace that the last turbulent centuries have not known. A world-historical judgment lies in this fact.

The addition of the fleet to our armed forces means an increased and strengthened guarantee of peace if German foreign policy is properly managed. Just as the army prevents the willful disruption of Germany's continental political path, so the navy prevents the disruption of our global political development. As long as we did not have the fleet, our vastly growing world economic interests, which are at the same time inalienable national economic interests, were the open target that the German Reich offered its adversaries. When we covered this nakedness and made the attack on the Reich at sea a risk for every enemy, we not only protected our own peace, but also with it the European peace. Our task was to obtain means of protection, not means of attack. After joining the ranks of the naval powers, we calmly continued on the paths we had previously trodden. The new era of boundless German world politics, which was often prophesied abroad, has not materialized. However, we now have the opportunity to defend our interests effectively, to counter attacks and to maintain and expand our position everywhere, especially in Asia Minor and Africa.

The network of our international relations had to expand to the extent that we grew into our global political tasks. Far-away overseas empires, which we had little to worry about in the era of pure continental politics, became of greater and greater importance to us. Maintaining good, if possible friendly, relations with them became an important duty of our foreign policy. First and foremost, these were the two new great powers of the West and the East, the United States of North America and Japan. Here as there it was necessary to overcome certain temporary cloudings before the initiation of friendly relations could be thought of.

Germany and the United States.

During the Spanish-American war, strong sympathies for Spain had emerged in a section of German public opinion, which was not found to be pleasant in North America. Also, the way in which part of the English and American press portrayed incidents that had taken place off Manila between our squadron and the American fleet, clouded German-American relations. This disgruntlement reached its climax in February 1899, so that it seemed advisable to speak out emphatically about the initiation of more favorable relations between the two blood and tribe-related peoples. What I said in this direction in the Reichstag at the time has since proven to be true: “From the standpoint of a sensible policy, there is no reason whatsoever why Germany and America should not have the best relations with one another. I do not see any point where German and American interests met in a hostile manner, and in the future I do not see any point where the lines of their development would have to cross hostile one another.

We can put it calmly, in no other country has America found better understanding and fairer recognition than in Germany during the last century.”
Kaiser Wilhelm the second brought this understanding and recognition of America more than any other, and the establishment of a good and secure relationship with the United States is primarily due to him.

He gradually won over the Americans through a kind treatment that was as consistent as it was understanding. He had good personal relationships with President Roosevelt. The dispatch of Prince Heinrich to America had the full hoped-for success. He made a major contribution to reminding both peoples of how many common interests they have in common and how little real contrasts separate them. It was also a happy thought of our emperor to shape the spiritual connection between the two Germanic peoples even more firmly and intimately through the exchange of well-known university teachers from German and American universities. Nowhere in the world have German intellectual life, German poetry, philosophy, and science found such sincere admiration as in the United States. On the other hand, in no other country have the wonders of American technology been studied so eagerly and so joyfully recognized as in Germany. This intimate exchange of intellectual and scientific achievements gained its external expression through the establishment of the exchange professors. The increasingly intimate relations between peoples and heads of state also fostered our political relations with the United States. Not only did we get on friendly terms with the Americans about Samoa, America also never stood in our way during the critical period which our policy had to go through at the beginning of the new century. There is hardly an empire, apart from Austria, where there are such natural prerequisites for lasting friendly relations with us as North America. About 12 million Germans live in the United States. Since the founding of the “German-American National League” in 1901, the endeavor has been growing in them to maintain and revive the connection with their old German homeland while remaining fully loyal to their new fatherland. As long as politics here and there are led by steady hands, exaggerated expressions of friendship are avoided as well as nervous moods in relation to the occasional friction that can always arise in the economic field, we need for our relations with the United States have nothing to worry about. Respect for one another on the basis and within the limits of self-respect will also be most conducive to friendship between us and the United States.

Germany and Japan.

Like our relationship with America, our relationship with Japan went through a period of resentment towards the end of the 19th century. Up until the early 1890s, we had served the Japanese as role models and were considered friends. Our military facilities, our warlike past found ardent admirers in the East Asian warrior people, and after the defeat of China the Japanese fancied and proudly called themselves the Prussians of the East. Our relations with Japan took a great shock when, in 1895, together with France and Russia, we forced victorious Japan to cut back its demands on the conquered China. When we fell into the arms of Japan, we lost many of the sympathies that had been accumulated there for decades, without reaping any special thanks from France or Russia. A picture drawn up by the German Kaiser around this time, which was only intended to serve ideal peace efforts, had been eagerly and successfully used by our opponents and competitors to destroy us in Japan. Years of diligence gradually made room for a better mood against Germany in Japan. We have no interest in opposing the excellently capable and brave people. Of course, we are also not there to take the chestnuts out of the fire for the Japanese. It would have been a considerable relief not only for Japan but also for England if we had allowed ourselves to be pushed against Russia for the sake of their East Asian interests. It would have served us badly. As unfortunate as it was the thought of annoying Japan for the beautiful eyes of France and Russia and of alienating us, so little could we be concerned with dividing us with Russia on account of the East Asian interests of other powers. Towards the end of the 1880s, Prince Bismarck once said to me, referring to Russia and Asia: “It is fermenting and rumbling in the Russian barrel very worryingly, that could lead to an explosion one day. It would be best for world peace if the explosion did not take place in Europe, but in Asia. We just have to not stand in front of the bunghole so that the peg doesn't hit us in the stomach. ”If we had allowed ourselves to be pushed forward before the Russo-Japanese war against Russia, we would have come to stand in front of that bunghole during the explosion. Occasionally I have heard Prince Bismarck say: “If Mr. N. suggests something that is useful for him but harmful to you, it is not stupid of N. But it is stupid of you if you accept it. "

Continental and world politics.

If, after having achieved the great goal of her European policy, Germany can reach into the wider world with her increased and constantly increasing forces, that does not mean that the whole sum of our national force has now become free for Business outside of mainland Europe. The transition to world politics means to us the opening of new political paths, the development of new national tasks, but not abandoning all old paths, not a fundamental change in our tasks. The new world politics is an expansion, not a transfer of our political field of activity.

We must never forget that the consolidation of our European superpower position made it possible for us to expand the national economy into a world economy, and continental politics into world politics. German world politics is based on the successes of our European politics. At the moment when the firm foundations of Germany's European position of power begin to shake, the global political structure will no longer be tenable. It is conceivable that a world political failure would leave our position in Europe untouched, but it is unthinkable that a significant loss of power and validity in Europe would not result in a corresponding shaking of our world political position. We can only conduct world politics on the basis of European politics. The preservation of our strong position on the mainland is today, as in the Bismarckian period, the beginning and end of our national policy. Even if we have gone beyond Bismarck in terms of world politics, following our national needs, we will always have to assert the principles of his European politics as the solid ground under our feet. The roots of the new age must rest in the traditions of the old. Here, too, the guarantee for healthy development lies in a reasonable balance between old and new, between preservation and progress. The renunciation of world politics would have been tantamount to a slow and secure withering of our national vital forces. A policy of world political adventure without taking our old European interests into account might initially be attractive and impressive, but would soon lead to a crisis, if not to a catastrophe, in our development. The healthy political successes are not won much differently from the commercial successes: in a quiet journey between the Scylla of fearful caution and the Charybdis of daring speculation. Since the day when I took over the business of the Foreign Office, I have been firmly convinced that there would be no clash between Germany and England, which would be a great misfortune for both countries, for Europe and for humanity. If we one, built ourselves a fleet that would be associated with an excessive risk for any enemy to attack. Two, we did not engage in any aimless and excessive building and arming, no overheating our naval boiler beyond that. Three, did not allow any power to get too close to our respect and dignity, Four, also put nothing between us and England that could not have been made good. That is why I have always repudiated indecent attacks, which offend our national sentiments, from whatever side they might come from, but I have resisted any temptation to interfere in the Boer War, for such an attack would have inflicted a wound on the English self-esteem that would never have closed again. Five if we kept calm nerves and cold blood, and neither snubbed nor ran after England.

"The basis of a healthy and sensible world policy is a strong national home policy." I said that in December 1901, when the Member of Parliament Eugen Richter wanted to construct a contradiction between the policy on which the new customs tariff was based, the protection of domestic work, in particular the agricultural, purpose, and the new world politics, which followed the interests of trade. The apparent contrast was actually a compensation, for the German world economy had emerged from a national economic life that had developed to its peak. The connection between politics and economics is more intimate in our modern times than in the past. Modern states react directly with their internal and external policies to the fluctuations and changes in highly developed economic life, and every significant economic interest soon presses for political expression in some way. World trade, with all the vital interests that depend on it, has made our world politics necessary. The domestic economic life demands a corresponding domestic policy. A balance must be sought and found back and forth.

Seven years after the tariff negotiations, the then economically controversial balance between German world and home politics came into play on the occasion of the Bosnian crisis in 1908. This event is perhaps better than any academic discussion, the right real relationship between our overseas ones and to clarify our European policy. Until the Bosnian question was raised, German politics was predominantly dominated by considerations for our world politics. Not due to Germany orienting its foreign relations to its overseas interests, but because of England's displeasure with the development of German overseas trade and especially with the strengthening of German sea power which had an impact on the grouping of powers and their position in relation to the German Reich. The public opinion of the otherwise so level-headed and intrepid English people at times abandoned themselves to a completely unfounded, even senseless and therefore almost panic-like fear of a German landing in England. This concern was systematically nourished by no small part of the widely ramified and powerful English press.

English encirclement policy.

In English politics from the beginning of the new century the influence of King Edward the seventh, a monarch with an unusual knowledge of human nature and an art of treating people, of rich and varied experience, made itself felt. English policy was directed not so much directly against German interests as it tried to gradually checkmate Germany by shifting the European balance of power. Through a series of entents, for the sake of which many not unimportant British interests were sacrificed, it sought to attract the other states of Europe and thus isolate Germany. It was the era of the so-called English encirclement policy. A Mediterranean treaty had been signed with Spain. France naturally came to visit as the adversary of the German Reich, and the Anglo-French treaty over Egypt and Morocco in 1904 pushed the memory of Fashoda completely into the background. In the aftermath of the heavy defeats it had suffered on land and sea in the war with Japan, and severe internal unrest, Russia had decided to come to an agreement with England on spheres of interest in Asia, and thus brought England closer. Italy was wooed with zeal. Similar occa