Читать книгу Face to Face with Kaiserism - James W. Gerard - Страница 9

THE IRON CROSS. IN THE EXPECTATION OF A SHORT WAR THOUSANDS OF THESE CROSSES WERE DISTRIBUTED IN THE FIRST MONTHS OF THE WAR AND THE PRECEDENT THUS ESTABLISHED HAS LED TO THE GIVING OF PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE DECORATIONS

Yet while the head of the Great General Staff may fall, the system always remains. An unknown, mysterious power it is, unchanging, and relentless, a power that watches over the German army with unseen eyes. It seeks always additions to its own ranks from those young officers who have distinguished themselves by their talents in the profession of arms. What does it mean to them?

It is January twenty-seventh, the birthday of the Kaiser in a German garrison town. The officers of the regiment are assembled in the mess-hall, the regimental band plays the national air of Prussia, "Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz" (Hail, thou, in the conqueror's wreath). (The music is familiar to us because we sing it to the words of "America." The British sing the air to the words of "God Save the King." This music was originally written for Louis XIV.) The health of the Emperor is proposed and drunk with "Hurrahs" and again "Hurrahs," and then comes a telegram from Berlin announcing the promotions and decorations granted to some of the officers of the regiment: the most envied of all is that younger officer, perhaps the student among them, who receives the laconic despatch telling him that he is detailed to the Great General Staff!

Then commences for the young officer a life of almost monastic devotion. No amusements, no social obligations or entertainments must interfere in the slightest with his earnest work in that plain building of mystery which so calmly, and with such mock modesty, faces the garish home of the Reichstag on the Königs-Platz, in Berlin.

Who decided on the break with America? It was not the Chancellor, notoriously opposed; it was not the Foreign Office, nor the Reichstag, nor the Princes of Germany who decided to brave the consequences of a rupture with the United States on the submarine question. It was not the Emperor; but a personality of great power of persuasion. It was Ludendorff, Quartermaster General, chief aid and brains to Hindenburg, Chief of the Great General Staff, who decided upon this step.

Unquestionably a party in the navy, undoubtedly von Tirpitz himself, backed by the navy and by many naval officers and the Naval League, advocated the policy and promised all Germany peace within three months after it was adopted; unquestionably public opinion made by the Krupps and the League of Six (the great iron and steel companies), desiring annexation of the coal and iron lands of France, demanded this as a quick road to peace. But it was the deciding vote of the Great General Staff that finally embarked the German nation on this dangerous course.

I do not think the Emperor himself, unless backed by the whole public opinion of Germany, would dare to withstand the Great General Staff which he himself creates. They are so much his devotees that they would overrule him in what they consider his interest.

Whatever thinking the Emperor does nowadays is more or less on his own account. There is to-day no shining favourite who has his ear to the exclusion of others. The last known favourite was Prince Max Egon von Fürstenberg, a man now about fifty-four years old, tall, handsome, possessed at one time of great wealth and a commanding position in Austria as well as Germany, with the privilege of citizenship in both countries. The Prince in his capacity as Grand Marshal accompanied the Emperor, walking in his train as the latter entered the White Hall at a great ball early in the winter of 1914. The Emperor was stopping at the Prince's palace in southern Germany at Donnaueschingen when the affair at Zabern and the cutting down of the lame shoemaker there shook the political and military foundations of the German Empire. Prince Max together with Prince Hohenlohe, Duke of Ugest, embarked, however, on a career of vast speculation in an association known as the Princes' Trust. They built, for instance, the great Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, and a hotel of the same name in Hamburg, and an enormous combined beer restaurant, theatre and moving picture hall on the Nollendorff Platz in Berlin. They organised banks, and the name of the princely house of Fürstenberg appeared as an advertisement for light beer. They even, through their interest in a department store on the east end of the Leipziger Strasse, sold pins and stockings and ribbons to the working classes of Berlin. As this top-heavy structure of foolish business enterprise tumbled, the favour of Prince Max at the Imperial Court fell with it. For the Emperor never brooks failure.

During the present war Von Gontard, related by marriage, I believe, to brewer Busch in St. Louis; von Treutler, who represented the Foreign Office; von Falkenhayn, for a while head of the Great General Staff and Minister of War, and the Prince of Pless, and von Plessen with several minor adjutants, have constituted the principal figures in the surroundings of the Emperor. Falkenhayn fell because of his failure in the attack of Verdun, ordered by him or for which he was the responsible commander. Von Treutler probably told the truth; he was against the breaking of the submarine pledges to America; and Prince Pless, who remains still in favour, never took a decided stand on any of these questions. Prince Pless, as Prince Max was, is rich. His fortune before the war, represented mostly by great landed estates in Silesia, mines, etc., amounted approximately to thirty million dollars. His wife is an Englishwoman, once celebrated as one of the great beauties of London, daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Cornwallis-West, and sister of the Duchess of Westminster and Cornwallis-West, formerly married to Lady Randolph Churchill, and now the husband of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the well-known actress. And therefore the position of Princess Pless has not been enviable during this war.

Emperor William does not, like many kings and dictators, confine himself in his search for general information regarding men and conditions to the reports of a few persons. He always has been accessible, seeking even to meet strangers, not merely his own people but foreigners, thus escaping the penalty of those rulers who shut themselves up and who have all their information and thoughts coloured for them by the preferences and desires of prejudiced counsellors.

The chiefs of the army are always in close touch with the Kaiser, but he is consulted on army commands and promotions much less than on civil and even naval promotions.

Always with him is the head of the Civil Cabinet, who advises with the Emperor on all appointments and promotions on the civil side of the Government, helping even to make and unmake Ambassadors and Chancellors. Admiral von Mueller, head of the Marine Cabinet, is constantly in the Emperor's company. He is a shrewd, capable, reasonable man; for a long time Admiral von Mueller was against taking the chance of war with America and perhaps, even to the end, persisted in this course. After the fall of von Tirpitz, von Mueller acquired more real power. But in a sense it is incorrect to speak of the forced retirement of von Tirpitz as a "fall," because from his retirement he was able to carry on such a campaign in favour of "ruthless" submarine war that the mass of the people, Reichstag deputies, the General Staff, and all came over to his point of view and von Bethmann-Hollweg, who had brought about his dismissal, was forced officially to adopt the policy first sponsored by this skilful old sea-dog and politician.