Chapter XXIX Some More Secret History
Deluding Rathenau—Callous Experiments—What Lord Palmerston Said—The Kaiser’s Aims
“What is this I hear?” demanded the War Lord, having scantily acknowledged Herr Krupp von Bohlen’s low obeisance. “I want you to understand once and for all that your wife is my ward, and that any offence to her spells disrespect to Majesty.”
The Overlord of the Krupp works was confused with surprise. He attempted to make answer, but did not get further than a formal: “May it please Your Majesty.”
“I have no further commands for you at the moment,” he was cut short. “Wait in the Adjutant’s room until called.”
“A.E.G.,” cried Wilhelm to the adjutant of the House Marshal’s office, opening the door for Krupp.
“My dear Rathenau,” he said, when an old man, stout and stockily built, with a philanthropic chin and a complexion denoting indifferent health, walked in. “My dear Rathenau, being credited with seeing ahead, perhaps you’ll tell me what this means?” And he pointed to half a dozen entries topping his daily calendar.
“Asafoetida,” read the electrical end of the Jewish triumvirate of self-made men—Ballin, Thyssen, Rathenau. “Does Majesty want me to create a corner in the reverse of eau de Cologne?”
“Yes and no,” said Wilhelm. “But like Ziethen did before Frederick, sit down. And so you may not fall asleep like the great cavalry leader when visiting the king in his old age, I will tell you a story.”
He retailed the yarn about the meeting between Franz Ferdinand and Cardinal Schlauch, the Secret Service man in the bed, and what No. 103 wished he had placed under the bed before the interview.
“It gave me an idea,” he continued, “an idea, I confess, strengthened at Essen. Why not bottle the noxious gases set free in the furnaces, and let them loose on the enemy?”
“What, kill them wholesale?” cried Rathenau, moving uneasily in his chair. Philanthropy is one of his hobbies, and underhanded methods go against his grain. The War Lord knows this, and clapped the silencer on his savage bluntness.
“Kill them? No. Wholesale? No, too. There is to be no gale of these gases—just a breeze to knock out, or knock over, offensive or defensive. I figure this way: Maybe the enemy, entrenched, has to be dislodged at any price to gain some given point. We can’t get at them with the ordinary style of weapon; they won’t come out even to be hand-grenaded. In such cases, I hold it good strategy to smoke them out.”
“Asphyxiating gas,” mumbled Rathenau half to himself.
“A good name—something suspending animation—suspending it while we take the coveted place. We won’t lose a man, and the enemy is mulcted out of prisoners only, for all placed hors de combat by our chemicals will be cared for by the Red Cross.”
“Majesty does not intend to have the gases absolutely poisonous?” inquired Rathenau.
“Now, would I have asked you, whose humanity all Berlin admires, if I did?” cried the War Lord; “if I was signing death warrants, I would not have applied to you, but to Krupp. He is a natural born butcher, I tell you. Krupp devises means to destroy life with the gusto of an American barkeeper mixing cocktails. They blamed Nero for saying he wished the Roman people had but one head that he might knock it off. You should see Krupp gloat over my new howitzers.”
“And those noxious gases, the workings of which Your Majesty observed at Essen, do not inflict permanent injury?”
“In the majority of cases black coffee suffices to make the men fit for work again; in a minor number of cases mild palliatives are required. I advised free distribution of milk for those suffering from a weak stomach. Hypodermic injections are resorted to once or twice a week. So you see our ‘gassing’ will be quite harmless.”
When the President and Owner of the “A.E.G.” (German for General Electric Company) still refused to wax enthusiastic, the War Lord tried a new tag. “It’s the charitableness—I almost said the Christianity—of the thing that mainly attracts me,” he lied. “You remember Valentina’s husband in The Huguenots. He was murdered during St. Bartholomew’s night, at the side of my ancestor, Admiral Coligny. The Comte de Nevars had been asked a little while before to join in the massacre of the Protestants, but refused, pleading that his family contained a long list of warriors, but not a single assassin. So am I trying to curtail killing by the proposed new method of attack. Prisoners, yes; the more the merrier; but deaths and wounds as few as possible.”
“Hydrochlorine, with the accent on the hydro, might possibly serve Your Majesty,” said Rathenau, after thinking hard for a few seconds.
“Very well, write it down,” ordered the War Lord. “Besides Krupp, who can furnish this chemical?”
“The Ruhr Chemical Works and the Ludwigshafen Aniline Factory might.”
Rathenau was dismissed with scant thanks, and Krupp was readmitted to listen to the substance of Wilhelm’s conference with the President of the A.E.G., the latter’s philanthropic objections being carefully marked as the War Lord’s own, while the diluting advised was dismissed as namby-pamby.
Krupp, after listening respectfully, said: “May it please Your Majesty, I have had a little experience with asphyxiating gas. We used it to destroy a number of consumptive cows, thinking it the more humane method. They were to be benumbed before slaughter.
“God forbid that Bertha, who is very much attached to the animals on the estate, ever learns what really did happen. As for myself, I had an inkling, but where experience is to be gained charity must take a back seat.”
“Well said,” commented the War Lord. “Go on!”
“We tethered the cattle in an enclosure, their heads over a furrow from which the poison gas was rising. It had a sharp, bitter smell, and as it caught the animals’ throat they gasped and choked. Some attempted to breathe deeply and could not, and all went giddy, it seemed, but did not lose consciousness.
“The chief vet. had predicted that the intense irritation of the bronchial mucous membrane would fill the tubes with a fluid which the animals could not expel, and this is what did happen.
“We let them suffer for experience’s sake, then gave them salted water. This cleared their lungs and forestalled complete suffocation.”
“You have gathered the technical information from the medical report?” asked the War Lord.
“Partly from that, partly from observation,” replied Krupp. “When the vets. stated that the animals were on the point of slow suffocation—drowning, we killed them by the quicker method. But one cow was allowed to die by poison gas, to give necessary clues to the medical men. They stated, after investigation, that the gas had had a corrosive action, destroying the mucosa.”
“Very interesting,” said the War Lord, who had seemingly forgotten about his pretended motives of philanthropy. “Your chief vet. shall report in full to my Ministry of Cult. I shall order that from now on condemned animals shall be delivered to the concerns manufacturing this kind of gas for scientific experiments.”
The red disc on the War Lord’s desk went up. Wilhelm looked at the clock. “Delbrueck.” Then, turning to Krupp: “You shall wait and hear what he has to say.”
The successor of Professor Treitschke was bringing the War Lord an essay on “Germany as the Land of the Chosen People,” a sort of theological-political tract, suggested by Wilhelm and partly formulated by Court Chaplain Dryander. Its present form had been decided on by Professors Harnack, Schiemann, Meyer and the editor of the Prussian Annals (Preussische Jahrbuecher Magazin).
“Typed,” said the War Lord approvingly. “I wish you would instil that modern idea into those of your colleagues, who annoy me by their handwriting. The worse it is, the more scientific they deem it. I will read it presently. Now tell Krupp how you view the situation with regard to England.”
“The United Kingdom they call it,” sneered Delbrueck, the most loquacious of “that damned band of professors,” to quote Palmerston. “Well, there will be one less in the quartette when war comes—Ireland. The Green Isle will join us when the first shot is fired by a German battery. Further, there is every reason to believe that the title of Emperor of India will be as obsolete as that of King of Jerusalem before hostilities are under way a month, while New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Canada will certainly not miss the chance for gaining independence.”
Herr Krupp looked at His Majesty in quite bewildered fashion. Evidently he had not reckoned on such far-reaching eventualities, but the War Lord had.
“Miss their chance for independence? Not likely! Go on, Delbrueck. Tell him about the Boers.”
“I needn’t assure you, Herr Krupp, on which side the defeated of 1901 will fight. It is self-evident,” said Delbrueck.
“And Egypt?” ventured Herr Krupp, to show his patriotism.
“German industry and discipline shall fructify the land of the Pharaohs like the Nile itself. We will drive out the English of course,” cried the War Lord.
“The arming of India will be a tremendous task,” he continued. “As you know, I am sending the Crown Prince to India, and the military experts accompanying him will furnish all missing links.”
“May I suggest that His Imperial Highness sound the Indian Princes,” interpolated Professor Delbrueck.
“All that is provided for,” retorted the War Lord.
But Delbrueck would not be discouraged in his optimisms. “In addition,” he went on, “Krupp guns will bark forth the declaration of independence by South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the rest of the British dominions, territories and Island Kingdoms. Quite an undertaking, eh?”
At this point the War Lord came to Delbrueck’s relief. “Finally there is that beggar Turkey. You mustn’t be hard on Abdul Hamid, Krupp. Bad pay, of course, but he never hesitates about pulling chestnuts out of the fire for me, and I like him. Besides, since we pay China a subsidy of a million per year for getting ready to wallop Nicholas, why not treat Constantinople with liberality?”
Krupp bowed and promised to talk the matter over with his board of directors, but the War Lord scarcely listened. He had deigned to express a wish—woe to the person, or persons, not interpreting the wish as an All Highest command.
He turned to the professor. “Delbrueck,” he said, “I had a letter from Francis Joseph. He has set his heart on Bosnia, and wants me to support him. Is there any way of arguing with Russia from the historic point of view?”
“I will look into the matter for Your Majesty at once.”
“Very well. If you do not succeed, Russia will get a glimpse of my shining armour, which is the best argument, after all.”
“Now you know my friends, official and otherwise,” concluded Wilhelm, again addressing Krupp; “about my aims I have talked to you before. Always bear in mind that I am German Emperor—an expansive title relating to all lands and peoples of the Germanic family, no matter what name they may go under.
“We must have German Holland and German Belgium, German Tyrol and German Switzerland, and, of course, German Austria. As you know, I have a good title to the whole of North-Eastern France, too, but I will waive that for the Continental Channel coast.”
“Your Majesty must have Trieste,” said Delbrueck.
“I must have and mean to have all the naval outlets and outposts necessary to German trade and my protection,” said Wilhelm in most Olympian style.