The German Emperor as Shown in His Public Utterances

Alfred Krupp and the Socialists

November 26, 1902

The present speech and the one which follows it, to the working men in Breslau, may conveniently be taken together, as they both concern the Emperor’s attitude toward the Socialists. Of all his policies, his attempt to destroy this political party has been least successful. It had increased from 763,000 in 1887 to 4,250,000 in 1912, when it numbered more than twice as many voters as its nearest competitor, the Centre party, 1,996,000. The Emperor had tried to introduce repeatedly subversion acts which would have made for the persecution of this the largest political party in his empire. When, on October 13, 1895, a manufacturer was murdered in Mülhausen by a workman who had been repeatedly convicted of theft, William II telegraphed to his widow: “Another sacrifice to the revolutionary movement engendered by the Socialists.” This hostile attitude was unavailing and aroused the criticism of the greatest German historian, Mommsen:

“It is unfortunately true that at the present time the Social Democracy is the only great party which has any claim to political respect. It is not necessary to refer to talent. Everybody in Germany knows that with brains like those of Bebel it would be possible to furnish forth a dozen noblemen from east of the Elbe in a fashion that would make them shine among their peers.

“The devotion, the self-sacrificing spirit of the Social Democratic masses, impresses even those who are far from sharing their aims. Our Liberals might well take a lesson from the discipline of the party.” And again, only about a week after this speech of the Emperor’s Mommsen wrote:

“There must be an end of the superstition, as false as it is perfidious, that the nation is divided into parties of law and order on the one hand and a party of revolution on the other, and that it is the prime political duty of citizens belonging to the former category to shun the labor party as if it were in quarantine for the plague and to combat it as the enemy of the state.”

The Emperor has had many friends among the leaders in the industrial world. Alfred Krupp had stood in close relation to his sovereign and had been one of the founders and prime movers in the German Navy League, which, more than anything else, had made possible the realization of the imperial naval policy. The Emperor is altogether mistaken in ascribing the stories circulated about Krupp to the malignity of Social Democratic editors. Very ugly rumors, whether true or false, had long before this time circulated about this industrial leader; they could have been heard in other countries of Europe, especially in Italy, and most particularly in Tiberius’s island of Capri, where he is said to have had a villa.

The address was delivered in the waiting-room of the station at Essen on the day of Krupp’s funeral.

I feel the need of expressing to you how deeply my heart is moved by the death of this man. Her Majesty, the Empress and Queen, wishes me to express to you her grief also, and she has already expressed it in writing to Frau Krupp. I have often, with my wife, been a guest in the Krupp house and have felt the charm of his lovable personality. Our relations have become so well established in the course of the years that I dare call myself a friend of the deceased and of his house. On this account I have not wished to deny myself the privilege of appearing here to-day at his funeral, and I hold it to be my duty to stand at the side of the widow and daughters of my friend.

The peculiar circumstances which accompanied the sad event also make it incumbent upon me to be here as the head of the German Empire, to hold the shield of the German Emperor over the house and the memory of this man. Whoever knew the deceased intimately knows with what a sensitive and delicate nature he was endowed and that this was the one vulnerable point through which to deal him a death-blow. He was the victim of his unimpeachable integrity.

An event has occurred within the German countries so degrading and low that it has aroused all hearts and must bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of every German patriot, because of the disgrace brought upon our entire people. The honor of a man, German to the core, who lived only for others, who had in his mind only the welfare of the Fatherland, but above all that of his employees, has been assailed.

This deed, with its consequences, is nothing less than murder; for there is no difference between him who mixes a poisonous drink and offers it to another and him who from the safe ambush of his editor’s office destroys the honorable name of a fellow man with the poisoned arrows of his slanders and kills him through the torment of soul caused by them.

Who was it that began this shameful attack upon our friend? Men who up to the present have been counted as Germans, but who are now unworthy of this name, who sprang from the classes of the German working people, who have such a tremendous amount to thank Krupp for and of whom thousands in the streets with tearful faces waved a last farewell to the bier of their benefactor.

You, Krupp’s workmen, have ever held faithfully to your employer and have clung to him; gratitude is not wiped out of your hearts. With pride I have seen everywhere abroad the name of the Fatherland honored through the work of your hands. Men who wish to be the leaders of the German workmen have robbed you of your dear master. It remains for you to shield and protect him and to preserve his memory from disgrace.

I trust, therefore, that you will find the proper means of making it clear to the body of German working men that it is important hereafter to make it impossible for good and honorable working men to have any community of interest or close relationship with the perpetrators of this shameful deed; for it is the honor of the working man that has been besmirched. Whoever will sit at the same table with these people deliberately lays himself open to a charge of moral participation in the crime.

I have sufficient confidence in the German laborers to believe that they are conscious of the extreme seriousness of the present moment and that, as German men, they will find a solution for this difficult question.