their resignation; but the effect of this was largely counteracted by the presence of Prince Henry of Prussia and the king of Württemberg at the annual congress of the League at Stuttgart in May, while at the Colonial Congress in the autumn the necessity for a powerful navy was again one of the main themes of discussion. That the government was, in fact, at one with the League as to the expediency of pushing on the naval programme was proved by the revelations of the first lord of the admiralty, Mr McKenna, in the debate on the naval estimates in the British parliament of 1909. From these it was clear that the German government had for some time past been pressing on its naval armaments with little regard to the ostensible programme, and that in the matter of the newest types of battleships, Great Britain had to reckon with the fact that, before the date fixed for the completion of the programme, Germany might establish at least an equality.
The same determined spirit which characterized German naval policy was evident also in her relations with the other powers. The suspicions as to the stability of the Triple Alliance produced, indeed, for some years a kind of nervousness Foreign policy. in the attitude of the government, whose determination to assert for Germany a leading international rôle tended to isolate her in Europe. This nervousness was, in 1903 and 1904, especially evident in the efforts to weaken the Franco-Russian alliance by the policy of what Bebel denounced as Germany “crawling on her stomach before Russia.” Germany not only backed up Russian policy in the East, and at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War took up towards her an attitude of more than benevolent neutrality, but the cabinets of Berlin and St Petersburg entered into an agreement under which political offenders against either government were to be treated as traitors to both. This arrangement, which made the Prussian police the active allies of the Third Section in the persecution of The Königsberg trial. political suspects, created vast indignation among all shades of Liberal opinion in Germany, an indignation which culminated with the famous Königsberg trial. This was a prosecution of nine German subjects for sedition, conspiracy and lèse-majesté against the Russian emperor, and for the circulation of books and pamphlets attacking him and his government. The defendants were poor smugglers from the Esthonian border marshes, who in the course of their ordinary avocations had carried bales of revolutionary tracts into Russia without troubling as to their contents. The trial, which took place in July 1904, excited widespread attention. The prosecution was conducted with all the force of the government; the defence was undertaken by some of the most brilliant Liberal advocates of Germany and developed in effect into an elaborate indictment, supported by a great weight of first-hand evidence, of the iniquities of the Russian régime. The verdict of the court was a serious rebuff for the government; after a preliminary investigation of nine months, and a public trial of a fortnight, the major charges against the prisoners were dismissed, and six of them were condemned only to short terms of imprisonment for conspiracy.
The progress of the Russo-Japanese War, however, soon relieved Germany of all anxiety as to the safety of her eastern frontiers, and produced a corresponding change in her attitude. The Russian disasters in Manchuria at the beginning of 1905 were followed by an extraordinary demonstration of the emperor William’s ideas as to “the world-wide dominion of the Hohenzollerns,” in a sort of imperial progress in the East, made for the purpose of impressing the Mahommedan world with the power of Germany. In 1904 the German attitude towards Great Britain had been in the highest degree conciliatory; the Anglo-French agreement as to Egypt was agreed to at Berlin; a visit of King Edward VII. to Kiel was reciprocated by that of the German squadron to Plymouth; in July a treaty of arbitration was signed between the two countries, while in the Reichstag the chancellor declared that, Germany’s interests in Morocco being purely commercial, the understanding between France and England as to that country, embodied in the convention of the 8th of April 1904, did not immediately concern her. This attitude was now changed. On the 31st of March 1905 the emperor William landed at Tangier, and is reported on this occasion to have used language which in effect amounted to a promise to support the sultan of Morocco in resisting French control. His visit to the Holy Land and the solemn pilgrimage to Jerusalem were, in the same way, a striking coup de théâtre designed to strengthen the influence won by Germany in the councils of the Ottoman empire, an influence which she had been careful not to weaken by taking too active a part in the concert of the powers engaged in pressing on the question of Macedonian reform.
Meanwhile pressure was being put upon France to admit the German claim to a voice in the affairs of North Africa, a claim fortified by the mission of Count von Tattenbach, German minister at Lisbon, to Fez for the purpose of securing from the sherifian government special privileges for Germany. This aggressive policy was firmly resisted by M. Delcassé, the French minister of foreign affairs, and for a while war seemed to be inevitable. At Berlin powerful influences, notably that of Herr von Holstein—that mysterious omnipotence behind the throne—were working for this end; the crippling of Russia seemed too favourable an opportunity to be neglected for crushing the menace of French armaments. That an actual threat of war was conveyed to the French government (through the German ambassador at Rome, it is said) there can be no doubt. That war was prevented was due partly to the timidity of French ministers, partly to the fact that at the last moment Herr von Holstein shrank from the responsibility of pressing his arguments to a practical conclusion. The price of peace, however, was the resignation of M. Delcassé, who had been prepared to maintain a bold front. Germany had perhaps missed an opportunity for putting an end for ever to the rivalry of France; but she had inflicted a humiliation on her rival, and proved her capacity to make her voice heard in the councils of Europe.[1] The proceedings of the conference of Algeciras (see Morocco) emphasized the restored confidence of Germany in her international position. It was notably the part played by Austria in supporting the German point of view throughout at the conference that strengthened the position of Germany in Europe, by drawing closer the bonds of sympathy between the two empires. How strong this position had become was demonstrated during the crisis that arose after the revolution in Turkey and the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria in October 1908. The complete triumph of Baron von Aehrenthal’s policy, in the face of the opposition of most of the European powers, was due to German support, and Germany suddenly appeared as the arbiter of the affairs of the European continent (see Europe: History). German nervousness, which had seen British intrigues everywhere, and suspected in the beneficent activities of King Edward VII. a Machiavellian plan for isolating Germany and surrounding her with a net of hostile forces, gave way to a spirit of confidence which could afford to laugh at the terror of Germany which, to judge from the sensational reports of certain popular British journals, had seized upon Great Britain.
The great position gained by the German empire in these years was won in the face of great and increasing internal difficulties. These difficulties were, in the main, the outcome of the peculiar constitution of the empire, of Internal difficulties. the singular compromise which it represented between the traditional medieval polity and the organization of a modern state, and of the conflicts of ideals and of interests to which this gave rise; these being complicated by the masterful personality of the emperor William, and his tendency to confuse his position as German emperor by the will of the princes with his position as king of Prussia by the grace of God.
In general, Germany had passed since the war through a social and economic revolution similar to that undergone by Great Britain during the earlier half of the 19th century, though on a greater scale and at a much accelerated pace. A country
- ↑ The elevation of Count Bülow to the rank of prince immediately after the crisis was significantly compared with the same honour bestowed on Bismarck at Versailles in 1871.
