zollern family pride rose up. It was now necessary to force the old pighead (Trotzkopf) to obedience or to bring about a separation; for now the question was whether the Emperor or the Chancellor was to remain on top. I had him once more asked to send in the revocation of the order and to accommodate himself to my wishes and requests previously expressed to him, which he flatly refused. With that the drama was at an end; the rest is known to you. The man whom I had idolized all my life, for whose sake I had endured veritable hell torments of moral persecution in my parents' house; the man for whom, after grandpapa's death, I alone had flung myself into the breach in order to keep him; for whom I had brought down upon myself the anger of my dying father and the unquenchable hatred of my mother-he had no thought whatever for all that, and stepped over me because I would not do his will. What a dagger-stab for my heart! His boundless contempt for human nature, which he had for all, even for those who worked themselves to death for him; played him a nasty trick when he also regarded his master as nothing and wanted to humiliate him to the position of his henchman. When he took his leave, and accused me of having driven him away, I kept silent and said nothing; and when he was outside, I broke down-I am ashamed to say it-in a convulsion of tears. From this long opus you can estimate what sort of a Winter I have behind me and whether I have acted wrongly. As a gallant and faithful friend the Grand Duke of Baden stood by me during the last difficult days, and my attitude secured his complete approval. The successor is, after Bismarck, the greatest German that we have, devoted to me, and in character as firm as a rock. You will be when delighted with him you see him. Your true friend, WILHELM R. I. A LATER EPISODE Further correspondence between the Kaiser and his Austrian royal cousin relative to a projected trip by Bismarck to Vienna and his contemplated interview with the Emperor Franz Josef was published in the same periodical subsequently. This correspondence consists of two letters-the one written by the Kaiser asking Franz Josef not to receive Bismarck and the Austrian Emperor's reply. The Kaiser's letter reads as follows: Potsdam, June 12, 1892. My Dear Friend: My firm confidence in your friendship and affection, which have so often been shown me, occasion me to submit to you a matter which is very near to my heart. At the end of the month Prince Bismarck will arrive in Vienna, firstly to marry his son, and secondly to receive the ovation which has been ordered in advance by his admirers. (You know, too, that one of his chef d'oeuvres, the Secret Treaty-a double fonds-with Russia, which was concluded behind your back, was dissolved by me.) Since the time of his retirement the Prince has, in the most perfidious manner, carried on war against me, Caprivi, my Ministers, and so on, in the press and in foreign countries. In doing so he is supported by many bona fide admirers and many enemies of Caprivi. Quite unintelligibly he throws his strongest bombs at the Triple Alliance, his own work, of which he was so proud, and above all against our firmer solidarity and co-operation with you and your splendid people. His positively disgusting attitude toward you on the question of the commercial treaty is already too well known to be worth wasting words over. But now that all his attacks and attempts to cause a commotion appear to be paralyzed, he has let loose the "longing for reconciliation " with me, and with this is once more stirring up dust and feelings. It is no longer necessary to assure you that this is merely a fresh "swindle' of his, which is only counting on the love of sensation and the curiosity of the imbecile (blöde) masses. He has not made the faintest attempt of an indication to me that he wishes to approach me and say "peccavi," and with all his cunning and art tries to make out that I should be the one to give way and so appear before the world. The chief point of his program in this affair, he intends to be an audience of you. Most impudently, ignoring my Court and the Empress, he goes to Dresden and Vienna, in order to present himself there immediately and play the part of the faithful old man. In conversation with a personality who pointed out to him the tactlessness of this enterprise, and emphasized your attitude toward him since the changes, he replied deprecatingly, “Ah, Kalnoky will soon bring him round." I should like, therefore, in my own interest and in that of my Government, to beg you as a true friend not to make the situation in my own country more difficult for me by receiving this disobedient subject before he has approached me and said "peccavi." I have told those people who are ever ready to mediate that I expect from the Prince an unambiguous letter, in which he makes the request once more to be regarded with favor, and that before this is done I will take no step. He has not done this, but, on the contrary, has said to third persons that he would only have a formal "reconciliation," since, as in the past, he reserved the right to criticise me. Therefore, in accordance with this state of things, I beg you not to receive the Prince. With one thousand greetings to the Empress, your true friend and cousin, WILHELM. FRANZ JOSEF'S ANSWER To the foregoing letter Emperor Franz Josef made the following reply: Vienna, June 15, 1892. My Dear Friend: In your valued letter of the 12th of this month, which I hasten to answer, I see a fresh proof of confiding affection and friendship, which I reciprocate with all my heart, and am very glad to put into action. With regard to the occasion for your letter, the impending arrival of Prince Bismarck in Vienna, you know that, in spite of many experiences with the Prince, which were difficult to forget, my intercourse with him down to his leaving your service was always open and friendly. His attitude in Friedrichsruh, especially toward Austria, would not have been enough to decide me to refuse an audience asked for as a simple act of mutual courtesy. As, however, in view of the circumstance that the audience, if granted, would render the position of yourself and your Government more difficult in your country, you attach so high an importance to my not receiving the Prince, it goes without saying that I at once accede to your wish. Congratulating you on the gratifying course of the Kiel meeting, and begging you to lay me at the feet of the Empress, and to accept the best thanks and the best greetings of my wife, I remain in sincere devotion, YOUR TRUE FRIEND AND COUSIN. HAL Bismarck's Side of the Story By HALL CAINE ALL CAINE, the novelist, upon reading this correspondence, contributed to The London Telegraph the following brief summary of the very different version of the resignation episode as it stands recorded in Bismarck's autobiography and in Charles Lowe's monograph on Bismarck: On the morning of Saturday, March 15, 1890, (eighteen days before the letter to Franz Josef,) the Emperor, in a state of considerable excitement, drove to Bismarck's palace to ask why the Chancellor had received and entered into negotiations with a certain party leader without his permission. Bismarck refused to explain, saying that he could not subject his intercourse with Deputies to any constraint, or allow any one to control the entrance to his house. " "Not even I, your sovereign? asked the Emperor. "The commands of my sovereign," said Bismarck, "end at my wife's drawingroom door." "I see," replied the Emperor, you can receive any one you like, but I mustn't receive my own Ministers without your permission," referring to a Cabinet order made ten years before, whereby Ministers of the Crown were primarily accountable to the Chancellor, not the Kaiser. On the following Monday, March 17, the Emperor sent his military secretary to the Chancellor to say that he expected his resignation, and would be prepared to receive him for this purpose at the Imperial Palace at 2 o'clock that day. Bismarck did not go. Having "liberated his soul" to the secretary on the Emperor's ingratitude and his own duty to the nation, he summoned a meeting of the Cabinet to explain the situation. The Emperor was not to be put off. He now sent his private secretary to demand the Chancellor's resignation by a stated hour, offering at the same time a dukedom and a gift of money to maintain it. Bismarck replied that he required time to consider the request for leave to resign; that he could have become a Duke long ago if he had been so minded, and that as for the money which the Emperor had offered him, he was 44 not a letter carrier who went around begging for gratuities on Boxing Day." Next day, the 18th, Bismarck, bowing to the Emperor's right to dismiss him, prepared an elaborate document, which was at once a resignation and a defense, and at noon of the 20th dispatched it. Hardly had the Emperor received this enforced resignation when, on the same day, and within a few hours he returned a reply in which he said: "" 'My Dear Prince: With deep emotion I have seen from your request of the 18th inst. that you are resolved to retire from the offices which you have held with incomparable success for so many years past. I had hoped not to be forced to meet the need of our separation during our lifetime. If, however, I, fully conscious of the immense purport of your resignation am now obliged to accept this idea, I do so with a sad heart. * of these thanks, and I shall send you my life-size portrait. This letter, a stupendous monument of imperial insincerity, conveying a totally false impression of the circumstances of the Chancellor's resignation, was hurriedly gazetted on the evening of the same day, together with the announcement of the name of Bismarck's successor-the person referred to in the Franz Josef letter as devoted to me, and in character as firm as a rock." Such are the facts as we know them. It is probably quite immaterial at this distance of time whether it was Bismarck's or the Kaiser's lust of power which led to their separation, and whether the Chancellor was envious of the Emperor, or the Emperor of the Chancellor. But for its illuminating value as evidence of mind and character it is at this moment of some consequence that in the letter to Bismarck of March 20, compared with the letter to Franz Josef of April 3, and coupled with the incidents of March 15 and 17, the Kaiser (making allowance for the suave insincerities which may sometimes be necessary to diplomatic language) stands convicted of deliberate untruthfulness. German National Assembly in 1848 and in 1919 By CHARLES SEIGNOBOS TRANSLATED FOR CURRENT HISTORY FROM THE REVUE DE PARIS OF FEB. 15, 1919 Professor Seignobos, the French historian, in this article traces the history of Germany's first Constituent Assembly of 1848 from its beginnings to its disastrous end, and points out the essential differences between the conditions on which it depended and those that are shaping the course of the Weimar Assembly of 1919. Germany, he says, has always received her revolutions from abroad; from France in both 1830 and 1848, from America in 1918. In the present crisis she is faced by a choice between the French formula, the National Assembly, delegated by the sovereign people, and invested with full power to create a Constitution, and the new Russian formula, the Council of Soldiers and Workmen perpetually transformed by renewal of delegations. The Germans have hesitated between this choice; the partisans of the socialistic proletarian revolution, supported by the sailors and disbanded soldiers, have sought to adopt the system of the Russian Soviets; the Deputies and officials who have taken possession of the reins of government, supported by organized troops, have pronounced for the National Assembly, which a great majority of the nation, in the interests of peace and order, desire. Summing up M. Seignobos continues: I T seems easy to us today to understand the failure of the German National Assembly of 1848, and the nonfulfillment of that dream of German unity which, after having awakened in the hearts of German patriots vast hopes, resulted finally in bitter disillusion. The Frankfort Assembly faced an insoluble problem, and it had at its disposal no practical means to resolve it. The political unity of Germany could be established only by a German Federal Government to which Austria refused to submit, and without Austria no German unity was possible. The Assembly voted decrees, but it possessed no means of securing their execution. The revolution of 1848 in Germany was only a semirevolution; it assured the people liberty of revolutionary manifestations, but it left intact the material power of its Princes. The (1848) Assembly, although its title of 66 Constituent" gave it the illusion of sovereignty, possessed only a provisional and precarious power, depending on the tolerance of the confederated Governments; its power of action was confined to the time and the limits which these Governments imposed upon it. Though it seemed to be a Parliament elected by the nation, it was only a Congress of learned men assembled to present its wishes for the political régime of Germany. Its only practical decision was the creation of a provisional Federal Government; none of its final resolutions was executed; the constitution which it voted was never applied. The Assembly would have been able to exercise only a moral authority; and in order to acquire and preserve this it would have had to impose respect by unanimous agreement on those practical solutions necessary to satisfy public opinion in Germany. This agreement could be based only on the abstract theory of the rights of citizens in an ideal society; it was made impossible by the rivalries between countries and individuals that sprang up as soon as it was sought to delimit the territory of this society, to define its government and to designate its head. The Assembly found no common ground between the irreconcilable demands of the old confederation and the new ideal of German unity. It could realize neither the Federal State reserved for Germans and also opened to foreign confederates nor a Federal territory exclusively German, yet inhabitated by people of other blood, nor a Federal monarchy governed at one and the same time by two monarchs. The German Princes looked on the Assembly's sterile activities with hostility, keeping in hand their irresistible weapon, an army intact, disciplined, which had remained aloof from the revolution, and commanded by officers of noble rank, filled with contempt for lawyers and bourgeois professors. As soon as they saw fit to employ this weapon, the Assembly was dispersed, and the sovereignty of the people vanished. Of the work of Frankfort nothing remained but the memory of a great disillusion. As in 1848, a National Assembly is now convoked to give a Constitution to Germany. But how different is the situation now! As in 1848, Germany has effected a revolution under foreign impulse, and her political evolution, determined by the "realistic " education received from Bismarck, leaves her, as in 1848, destitute of experience and powerless to take the initiative. But despite these exterior resemblances, how dangerous it would be to seek in that record of seventy years ago any indication of the future! Such profound differences separate that time from ours that they forbid every argument based upon analogy. 1. The revolution of 1848 had left the reigning Princes in possession of their power and their material strength, for their armies remained intact. The revolution of today, however incomplete it may seem to us, has swept away all the dynasties of Germany, and if the army subsists, much more numerous even than it was then, since the whole nation has been incorporated in it, it is an army that has been exhausted by unheard-of losses, that has undergone the strain of an interminable war, that has been demoralized by defeat, that is longing for repose, an army which has lost respect for its officers and wishes only to be disbanded. No other rival authority remains, no material force to dispute with the Assembly the exercise of power; it will be supreme in very fact, if it so desire. 2. German unity in 1848 was still only a dream to be realized, the dream of an intellectual élite which interested the mass of the nation but little. It is today a threatened reality, to which the whole of Germany is passionately attached. The Assembly elected to save this unity, and also to obtain peace, secure the raising of the blockade and reorganize labor, will find in public opinion the support which failed its predecessor of 1848. 3. The Republican Party, the only one which finds in its very principle the power of exacting the effective sovereignty of a Constituant, and of imposing it over the resistance of officialdom, was in 1848 only an impotent and inexperienced minority, devoid of contact with a nation composed above all of peasants and people of the lower middle class. Half a century of electoral campaigns and discussions in political assemblies has given rise to strongly organized parties, trained to deal with the masses and accustomed to debates and intrigues, while the rapid increase of large-scale industry, which has covered Germany with great cities and mining enterprises, has created a new urban and industrial population. The Socialist Party, continuing the tradition of the Republicans of 1848, has enrolled the working classes in the Democratic opposition, and though its Republican allegiance may seem to us lukewarm, it has functioned, none the less, as a Re publican Party. Its powerful organization has given it the strength to seize the ascendency from the hands of the princes; it is this party, master of the Government, and served by the officials of the former monarchy, which has prepared the elections to the Assembly and is directing its inauguration. 4. The most important difference, perhaps, is the following: The Germany of 1848 was at peace, free of all foreign pressure. The Assembly of 1919 is assembling in a conquered country, a country invaded, subjected to foreign occupation, and its principal duty is to obtain the peace imposed by the victor. It is an international principle recognized by all modern States that one people should not intervene in the internal politics of another people. But when a domestic revolution coincides with foreign invasion, and when two parties dispute the Governmental power, the conqueror, whether he wish it or no, by choosing the party to which he addresses himself for the negotiation of peace, determines the Government of the conquered and chooses his political régime. Thus, in 1848, the Allies, by concluding the armistice with the Count d'Artois and by aiding Talleyrand to organize the comedy of a consultation of the Chambers, decreed for France the Bourbon Monarchy. Similarly the King of Prussia, by refusing in 1870 to treat with Bazaine, and by concluding in 1871 the armistice with the Government of National Defense, decided between the Empire and the Republic. So also Germany, by its negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, instead of awaiting a Russian Constituent Assembly, placed in the hands of the Bolsheviki the Government of Russia. So the Allies, by refusing to recognize the Councils of Soldiers, prepared the way for the Constituent Assembly. The peace accorded by the Entente will determine the fate of the German Republic. And once again, the political progress of Germany will have been the result of foreign creation. Fearless Knights and Flawless By EDWARD S. VAN ZILE Not as the laureled legions who slew for regal Rome, March they who come from battle, keen for the joys of home; They passed, but there's no wailing of women on the air. Heed ye the babes of Flanders, the agèd of Lorraine- |