The German Emperor as Shown in His Public Utterances

The Salt of the Earth

Bremen, March 22, 1905

The following address was delivered at the Rathaus in Bremen on the occasion of the dedication of the monument to Emperor Frederick III. The Emperor here presents his views on the mission of Germany in much the same spirit in which it is expounded in a number of his addresses of this time. He has become increasingly conscious of her “manifest destiny” in the decade which had passed after the celebrations of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Franco-Prussian War. Germany had entered upon a period of great prosperity and had begun to possess the sense of latent power. The Emperor gives us here the purely historical reasons which have led him to refrain from pretensions to world-dominion. It is significant that his next address will be delivered at Morocco. The question naturally arises, what hopes or aspirations were in the minds of the audience before whom the Emperor made this gran rifiuto. It was in a time of insistent agitation by the Navy League and the Colonial party.

My Honored Burgomaster:

Will you allow me first, with a heart deeply moved, to perform the duty of a son and thank you sincerely for having transmitted to me the wish of your countrymen that I should participate in this festive day and be present at the unveiling of the unique and splendid statue which the free Hanseatic city of Bremen has erected to my father?

I can assure you that it stirred me deeply to-day as my eye wandered over the masses of people to think that the former Prussian Crown Prince, subsequently the first Crown Prince of the German Empire, and, finally, second Hohenzollern Emperor, should be fêted in a free German city just as though this were his home. It is a proof that his figure, as well as that of his great and illustrious father, has become a common possession of the entire German people.

I sincerely thank the city of Bremen that it has honored my father and his memory in such a magnificent manner. You have created a work of art, the like of which is not often seen in German lands. And I am convinced that in later generations his powerful personality, which will have become surrounded by the glamour of legend, will through this statue be brought nearer to the hearts of the people. And I am sure that the generations of Bremen which are to follow, from father to son, will never forget the second Emperor, whose noble Siegfried figure led the German army to victory and whom we have to thank for our unity.

And so, now, beautiful statues of both my father and my grandfather stand in this loyal German city and furnish mile-stones for the history of our Fatherland as well as for the city of Bremen.

Truly, the historical retrospect which you have been good enough to present us shows magnificently the leadership of God and the grace which Providence has bestowed upon our people and our country. The portion of time which is represented by both of these two noble leaders who stand here in bronze has, like a foundation-stone, been firmly laid in history. It remains for later times and their generations to build upon the foundation which these great rulers have set down.

You have had the goodness to express the thoughts which stirred you upon a former occasion in this same place. They correspond entirely to what I myself thought at that time. When, as a lad, I stood before the model of the Brommy40 ship, I bitterly felt the disgrace which our fleet and our flag had been forced to suffer. And perhaps, since on my mother’s side a bit of sea blood flowed into my veins, this was the thing which was to give me my cue for the manner in which I would envisage the tasks which henceforth were to confront the empire.

I swore to the colors when I came to the throne, after the mighty time of my grandfather, that, so far as in me lay, the bayonet and cannon would have to rest, but that bayonet and cannon, however, would have to be kept sharp and effective in order that jealousy and envy from without should not disturb us in the development of our garden and our beautiful house. I have made a vow, as a result of what I have learned from history, never to strive for an empty world-dominion. For what has become of the so-called world-empires? Alexander the Great, Napoleon I—all the great warriors—have swum in blood and have left subjugated peoples behind them who at the first opportunity have risen up again and brought the empire to ruin.

The world-empire of which I have dreamed shall consist in this, that the newly created German Empire shall first of all enjoy on all sides the most absolute confidence as a quiet, honorable, and peaceful neighbor; and that, if in the future they shall read in history of a German world-empire or of a Hohenzollern world-ruler, it shall not be founded upon acquisitions won with the sword but upon the mutual trust of the nations who are striving for the same goals. To express it briefly, as a great poet has said: “Limited outwardly, but with no limits upon inward development.”

You have mentioned the ships which here hang memorially from the ceiling of this beautiful old hall. The time in which I grew up was, in spite of the great war, not a great and glorious one for the seafaring part of our nation. I, too, have here drawn the logical conclusions from what my ancestors have done. In a military way much had been done within, as was necessary; now the equipment of the navy had to be brought forward.

I thank God that I do not have to make a desperate appeal here in this town hall as I once did in Hamburg.41 The fleet is built and is on the seas; we have material for crews. The eagerness and the spirit are the same as those which filled the officers of the Prussian army at Hohenfriedberg, at Königgrätz, and at Sedan; and every German war-ship which leaves the slips is one more guarantee for peace on land. We are correspondingly more powerful as allies, and our opponents will be correspondingly less willing to offer us any aggression.

To-day, as I scanned the citizens of Bremen, I saw the old and the young standing next each other—the old with their medals and their crosses, comrades in battle and in deeds under both the great leaders whose statues stand in this city, and before them stand the youth who shall grow up to the new empire and its tasks.

What will these tasks be? To develop steadily; to shun strife, hate, division, and jealousy; to rejoice in the German Fatherland as it is and not to strive after the impossible; to hold fast to the conviction that our God would never have taken such great pains with our German Fatherland and its people if he had not been preparing us for something still greater.

We are the salt of the earth, but we must also be worthy to be so. Therefore must our youth learn to give up and deny themselves what is not good for them, to put far from them the things which have slipped in from foreign peoples, and to preserve their morals, good conduct, reverence, and religion. Then some day may we write over the German people the motto on the helmet of the 1st Regiment of my guard: “Semper talis”—“Ever the Same.” Then we shall be looked upon from all sides with respect and in a measure with love as a safe and trustworthy people and can stand with our hand on our sword-hilt and with our shield grounded before us and say: “Tamen, come what will.”

I am sure that my words will fall upon good ground here in Bremen. Earnestly I hope that the golden peace which up to the present with God’s help we have maintained we may preserve still further and that under this peace Bremen may grow green, may bloom, and prosper. That is my innermost wish. Long life to Bremen—Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Notes

40 Bromme (called also Brommy) was a German seaman who served in the Greek navy and who was later placed in charge of the Naval Commission by the German National Assembly in 1848. He organized the first modern German fleet and as admiral drove off the three Danish ships blockading the Weser. This navy was considered merely a passing necessity, and in 1853 Bromme was retired, after the little fleet had been sold at auction.

41 The appeal referred to is the speech delivered at Hamburg on October 18, 1899, with its famous “Bitterly do we need a powerful fleet.”