Chapter XXX Browbeating the War Lady
A Letter from Count Metternich—Scaring the Kaiser—Bertha Offends the War Lord—Using the Secret Code—For “The Day”—An Awful Oath—The Kaiser Wins
“I can almost forgive Metternich for allowing himself to be bested by Sir Frank, for that last yarn he sent me is not to be sneezed at. Bertha and Krupp are on the point of a momentous quarrel. Some pacifist idiot—a woman, probably—put a plea in her ear about ‘trade in murder,’ ‘profit in man-killing,’ and that sort of thing, and the baby did the rest.
“She sits on the Huegel, befouling the machinery for conquest-making below her windows.
“‘Some of the ordnance we are sending to China to-day may kill my unborn child,’” she writes, “and things have come to such a pass that Krupp had to instruct the coachman to avoid certain roads where Bertha’s carriage might meet with ammunition and other transports.
“And ever since, all day long and half the night, she accuses Krupp of using her money to forge guns and bullets that, by and by, may seek the heart or limbs of his own son.
“‘Don’t I know when war will break out?’ he retorted angrily the other day. ‘Long before that our boy will be on a journey round the world.’ Think of a Prussian officer forced to indulge in such damnable stuff!” cried the War Lord.
“I submit, Your Majesty, that one has to temporise with women, especially with a young mother,” suggested Prince Bülow.
“Silly sentimentalities,” sneered the War Lord; “I want none of them. Bertha has to be broken of her freak—broken,” he repeated, gritting his teeth. “Why,” he continued, “she even refuses to take joy in her charities now, because, she says, ‘money made out of armaments is tainted and no good can come from it.’
“If I allow that sort of thing to go on there will be a Kladderadatsch” (fatal dénouement), “one fine day. She may attempt to wrest from Krupp the power of attorney under which he acts as my agent, and there is such an abomination as divorce, you know—oh, mille pardons, you do know. And, worse luck, my courts deal in it as well as the Vatican.” (The War Lord referred to Princess Bülow, whose first marriage to Count von Donhoff was dissolved by the Holy See in 1881.)
Bülow reddened under the insult. “I am wholly unsuited to interfere in other people’s family affairs,” he blurted. Then, frightened at losing his temper, added: “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon.”
“My ward’s affairs are my own,” declared the War Lord haughtily. “I’ll settle with Bertha myself, make her eat out of my hand—take my word for it—and this will help.”
He showed the Chancellor a long, handwritten letter, with the imprint of Carlton House Terrace, marked “Private and Confidential,” and asked him to read it aloud. The address was that of the German Embassy at the Court of St. James’s, and Count Wolff von Metternich, His Majesty’s Ambassador, was the correspondent. He had been permanently in London since 1901, previously serving his diplomatic apprenticeship there, off and on, between 1885 and 1890. His naïve complaint in the Joseph Chamberlain affair has been noted. As he was the War Lord’s confidant while in the service of the Berlin Foreign Office, Count Metternich could not have been altogether without knowledge of Wilhelm’s treacherous conduct in and toward England. The War Lord claimed British hospitality time and again to combine espionage with all too successful attempts to hoodwink the English Sovereign and his statesmen about his real intention toward Great Britain. King Edward was not too blind, though, to what was going on; he is credited with the remark that the War Lord was not a gentleman.
“Important, if true,” said Prince Bülow, handing back the letter.
“Just as important if it isn’t true—for my purposes,” quoth Wilhelm. He walked up and down the room for several minutes, mumbling things, then suddenly confronted the Chancellor: “A belated answer to my letter to Tweedmouth—can it be that?”
Prince Bülow was surprised beyond words. The War Lord referring to his clumsy attempt (in the early part of the year 1908) to throw dust in the eyes of a British Minister of State in regard to his responsibilities, by an act of unprecedented condescension!
Wilhelm’s personal letter to the First Sea Lord had caused considerable excitement in Germany, but there had been no discussion of it at the Chancellery. The subject was too ticklish for that—particularly its aftermath, with its references to “foolish stratagems,” “unintelligent attempt to deceive,” “refusal to be perturbed by such little incidents,” and last, but not least, England’s avowed determination to thwart Wilhelm’s plans to be supreme upon the sea, since “there is nothing for Great Britain between foreign sea supremacy and ruin.”
And those “wretched Temps articles” (Majesty’s description was stronger), admonishing England not to put faith in the War Lord’s protestations, but strengthen her navy and double her army.
The War Lord seemed to divine what was going through his Chancellor’s mind. He changed the subject. “Edward and Nicki have been talking it over; they are afraid of me, despite boasted Anglo-Russian and Anglo-French propositions, and want to give me a good scare!” he cried. “But I will show them that I don’t care a fig for their Entente. The Mediterranean trip is off. My purple standard shall fly at Cowes, and Wedell shall arrange for a little trip into France. Yes, France,” he insisted. “I have long wished for a view of the strategical passes of the Vosges, and you must persuade Fallières to invite me to see the Schlucht.4 Less than an hour’s motor trip from the frontier, you know.”
“I will leave no stone unturned to execute Your Majesty’s commands,” said Prince Bülow, indulging in a profound bow to hide his face and avoid betraying an astonishment bordering on perplexity.
“Wonder if Edward can be persuaded to meet me in the Solent,” mused the War Lord. “I would love to tell him about my trip to Heligoland, our coastal defences there, and preparations for aerial invasion. Of course, the details will be Greek to Uncle, since he knows less of military matters than my two-year-old fillies at Trakehnen, but my tale may possibly induce him to be more careful in matters of his amours impropre: Russia and France. Don’t you think so, Bülow?”
“The Quadruple Alliance, Your Majesty? I can only repeat the conviction previously expressed—that it is entirely pacific, a defensive measure absolutely. As to King Edward, his political strategy is certainly superior to his military talents, but I was under the impression that he introduced Your Majesty to the Maxim gun.”
“He happened to be my guest on the day set for the trial of that incomparable man-killer, and I took him to Lichterfelde to show him how I would annihilate his vest-pocket army if he wasn’t as careful as his Mamma. Strange to say, he seemed to be quite au fait. I had bet Moltke a dozen Echte that Uncle couldn’t distinguish a Nordenfeldt or Gardner from the old-time Gatling; but he did. ‘Confound your impudence,’ I said to Moltke, when I paid the price; but Helmuth convinced me that I got off dirt cheap. The Maxim gun, he persuaded me, must have undreamt of possibilities if even Edward recognises its importance as a war machine.
“So the empty echte-box taught me that every copper invested in Maxim guns means one dead—an enemy—hence, that I can’t have enough Maxims. I want fifty, no, a hundred thousand.”
Wilhelm smiled sardonically as he added: “I told Krupp he would lose his job unless he improves on Maxim and gets up a machine-gun as light as our army rifle and as easily fired. But that reminds me. I will go to Essen to-night to impress Bertha with her patriotic duties. You’ll keep Krupp here.”
“Frau Krupp,” said Wilhelm, as he retired with the War Lady to the library of Villa Huegel.
“Bertha,” she pleaded.
“Bertha is treating her Uncle Majesty very badly.”
“May it please Your Majesty to say in which way I have offended?”
“In every way, in the surest way, in the most traitorous way!” cried the War Lord, trying to stab the floor with the point of his sheathed sword—a pitiable sight, since his poor left hand was powerless to move. “You are thinking of diverting the works from their sacred purpose: The Fatherland’s defence.”
Wilhelm struck a sentimental pose. “That’s my reward for the love and care I bestowed on Frederick’s child,” he half monologued. “I educated her, exalted her above all women in her station of life, treated her like a child of my own, like my own sons and daughter. I have bestowed as much thought on Essen as on my army and navy; made her business and fortune the grandest of their kind; selected for her loving husband a man of surpassing capacities and gave her wedding the éclat of a royal function. Emperors, sultans and kings have bedizened her with courtesies and high decorations for my sake—the legend of ‘the richest girl’ has melted into ’the happiest woman in the world’—semper fidelis, and Madame, satiated and ungrateful, turns me the cold shoulder.”
“Oh, Uncle Majesty, how can you say such things?”
“Bertha,” cried the War Lord, laying his hand on her knee, “if you were not Frederick’s daughter, were not rich beyond the dreams of avarice, I would ask: How much—how much did England pay you for deserting me and the Fatherland?”
Frau Krupp slipped from the chair, and on her knees implored her terrifying visitor to show mercy.
“The King of Prussia never pardons traitors.”
The word awakened Frau Krupp’s self-respect. “Traitor!” she cried; “I would be a traitor to humanity if I continued making faggots to set the world afire.”
The War Lord broke into wild laughter. “So that’s the melody,” he shouted, “echoes of the gutter Press in London, Paris, Petersburg, Tokyo! It’s well you mentioned it, Frau Krupp; I know now exactly how we stand, you and I, the benefactor and the unworthy object of my magnanimity.”
Bertha lay on the silken rug sobbing her heart out, but for Wilhelm the quivering form of the girl for whom he professed a father’s love was mere air.
Sitting down at the great desk, he shouted: “I command” into the speaking-tube sacred to his All Highest person, and, Adjutant Baron Dommes responding, he ordered: “Prepare for a confidential message to the Chancellor by secret code. Have the line cleared. You will attend to the wire in person.”
He grabbed a block of paper and began to write, tearing off sheet after sheet with partially finished sentences, rejecting his own words as fast as he wrote them, and talking to himself in tones considerably above a stage whisper.
“Would suit the Austrian Baroness to turn Krupps into an ironmongery for household and farm goods,” he sneered savagely, “but the mollycoddles shall know presently that they haven’t got a silly girl to deal with.” He paused, giving a furtive look to the prostrate Bertha; then began scribbling again and reading his hasty scrawl to himself:
“Bethmann-Hollweg shall consult with Kuentzel and Harnier about condemnation proceedings against—— Never mind, I will give names by ’phone after receipt of message is acknowledged. Must be kept a profound State secret. Anyone mentioning it even in the presence of his secretary will be dismissed cum infamia. Remember, the best legal talent only.” (The persons named were high officials in the Ministry of Justice.)
Excitement would not let Wilhelm be seated long, and he began pacing the floor, dragging his sword.
“Preposterous!” he alternately mumbled or hissed. “A mere slut foiling my plans, interfering with my life’s work! Stop making implements of war: the great Alexander held up on the road to India by a blacksmith!” He laughed hysterically, lunging forth to both sides with his clenched fist as if striking at imaginary enemies.
“But the maw of death will be glutted with or without your assistance, Frau Krupp—glutted to nausea!” he cried, pausing before the trembling girl. “There will be an accumulation of anguish such as the world has never witnessed, despite thee, ingrate that thou art.”
The War Lady raised her hand and looked at him with ghastly, tear-stained eyes.
“Don’t—oh, don’t!” she breathed.
“The more you plead the quicker the catastrophe will come! You mean to keep me in a state of unreadiness, but my enemies are even less ready—time to strike!”
“Even Your Majesty can’t make war without pretext,” wailed Bertha.
“I can’t, eh? I can’t? And there are no pretexts, either? What about Morocco? If I seize the smallest harbour of that —— country, isn’t that tantamount to invading Algiers? I tell you in such event France and Great Britain must fight whether they like or not. And their blood upon your head, Bertha, the blood of France and Great Britain and Russia, and of the German people, too.”
He affected to shudder. “A thing of horror such as even Dante could not have conceived!” he exclaimed pathetically.
“And I the cause?” faltered Bertha.
“Who else, since you are driving me to war! Can I, dare I wait until Le Creusot, Woolwich and the Putiloffs have finished their preparations? I be —— if I will!” he added rudely, “so I propose to seize the Krupp plant and manufacture my own war material until ‘The Day’ and after.”
The War Lady, trembling with amazement, half raised herself from the floor and, balancing on her right arm, stared wildly.
“Seize my plant?” she gasped; but the War Lord paid no attention. Kicking his sword aside, he once more seized pencil and writing-block.
“Cum infamia,” he read, as if for Bertha’s benefit. Then his pencil flew rapidly over the paper: “The plant to be taken over by the act of the Sovereign, Gwinner and Emil Rathenau to look to the financial end, Dernburg and Thyssen to examine the business end.” (Arthur von Gwinner, German railway magnate; August Thyssen, mine owner and merchant prince.) He was grabbing the speaking-tube, when Bertha took hold of his shoulder.
“Uncle Majesty,” she whispered softly.
“If you please, Frau Krupp, no familiarities,” barked the War Lord. “You are interfering in business of State.”
“Listen, Uncle,” pleaded Bertha.
“No, you listen to your King,” said the War Lord coaxingly, “that is, if you will be once more my good little girl, and not presume to mix in my affairs, in affairs of the State.”
“I am at Your Majesty’s mercy,” sobbed Bertha.
“You ought to have thought of that before.”
“Forgive me, forgive me, Uncle Majesty.”
“On one condition: that never again you lend ear to outsiders in matters affecting the Krupp works, whatever may be their character or claims to recognition.”
“I promise, Uncle Majesty.”
The War Lord leaned back in his chair and motioned to Bertha to sit down.
“The most terrible War Office secret has just been communicated to me by Metternich,” he began, “and I would be unworthy of the trust imposed upon me by the Almighty if I did not use every preventive to undo this new dreadful peril to the Fatherland. Prevention spells: ‘Increase of armaments on land and sea and, indeed, above the sea.’ That’s why I am forced to seize the Krupp works if you dare oppose my will——”
“But I don’t, Uncle Majesty. I swear I don’t!” cried Bertha.
The War Lord sunk his penetrating eyes into Bertha’s as if trying to read the War Lady’s very thoughts. “Ring for the baby,” he said; and when the child was brought in he whispered to her to dismiss the nurse.
“Swear on the life of your child that you will not attempt to wrest the control of the Krupp works from my agent, or agents, and that your factories and shipyards shall ever be at my exclusive disposal, your Uncle Majesty to control the output and mode of manufacture absolutely, and decide on all measures deemed essential for the success of the works and the armament and defence of the Fatherland.”
For a few moments the War Lady stared at the speaker, then allowed him to take her right hand and place it on the baby’s head.
“I swear,” she said in a hardly audible voice.
“On the life of your child,” demanded Wilhelm. There was a scarcely concealed threat in his tones.
“Mercy, Uncle Majesty!”
“Mercy begins at home. There are thirty thousand families depending upon you—all told, about one hundred and fifty thousand people are living in Essen and suburbs. Do you want to see them all wiped off the face of the earth?”
“I don’t follow, Your Majesty.”
“I asked a question; I am not after argument. Once more I ask: Would you rather see Essen, my fortress of Cologne, Düsseldorf, the whole Rhine and Ruhr valleys blasted out of existence than say these eight words: ‘I swear on the life of my child’?”
“I can’t conceive the meaning of Your Majesty’s words; but I love my people, and I would much rather die myself than have them suffer on my account,” said the War Lady. She kissed the child, and, with tears streaming from her eyes, pronounced the fatal words.
“In the name of the Fatherland I thank you,” said Wilhelm, touching Bertha’s forehead with white lips cold as ice. Then, striking a theatrical pose, he added: “Si Krupp nobiscum, quis contra nos?” (If Krupp is with us, who can stand against us?) He rang the bell. “Dommes,” he whispered into the ‘phone, adding a word of the secret code. Presently there was a knock at the door. The War Lord himself opened it. Dommes was standing at attention, naked sword in hand. A few more words in the secret code. The door closed, and Dommes began patrolling the corridor.
Notes
4 The proposed motor tour across the French frontier was actually “arranged,” as suggested by the War Lord, and was billed to come off in the first or second week of September (1908). However, at the last moment the War Lord showed the white feather, having been informed that he would never leave French soil alive, a number of patriots having vowed to kill him. Previous to this there had been much irritation in France and talk of “impudence,” “cynicism,” and “espionage.”