The Secret Memoirs
of Bertha Krupp
From the Papers and Diaries of Chief
Gouvernante Baroness D’Alteville
By
HENRY W. FISCHER
Author of “The Private Lives of Kaiser William II.
and His Consort,” “Secret History of
the Court of Berlin,”
etc.
Si Krupp nobiscum, quis contra nos?
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1916
Copyright, 1916, by Henry W. Fischer.
Copyrighted in England, France, Austria, Italy, Switzerland,
and all foreign countries having international copyright
arrangements with the United States; also copyright ad interim
in the United States.
All rights reserved, including those of translation, Cinematograph
rights, Dramatic rights, and so forth.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
THE SECRET MEMOIRS OF
BERTHA KRUPP
Si Krupp nobiscum, quis contra nos?
CHAPTER I
UNDER THE WAR LORD’S THUMB
The Real War Lord—Putting on the Screw—The Kaiser’s
Plot Revealed—Disinheriting the Baroness—A
Startler for the War Lord—Bertha to be Sole
Heiress—Frederick Makes His Will—The War Lord
Loses his Temper—A Base Suggestion
On a bright August day of 1902 the neighbourhood
of Villa Huegel, overlooking the forest of
smoke-stacks, cranes, masts and other erections that
silhouette the town of Essen, was like an armed
camp. Its master, Frederick Krupp, cannon
king and war promoter, while not entitled to
household troops, has an army of firemen as large
as the contingent of the mighty potentate of
Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, and this was
pre-eminently the season and hour of military display.
The Krupp warriors resemble Prussian infantry
in dress. In discipline and aggressiveness they
are second to none serving under the eye of the
“All Highest,” as the Kaiser fondly calls himself.
Give their master a dark look as he passes, and
one or more of them will pounce upon you and
pound you to jelly before you can say Jack Robinson;
reach for your handkerchief or pencil in your
back trouser-pocket, where a revolver might be,
and they will spit you on their fire-axe.
To-day Krupp firemen were everywhere. They
lined the roads, guarded crossings and bridges,
looked up at every window, sentinelled gates and
doors. They were posted, too, in the tree-tops
and on telegraph and signal posts, while indoors,
along the corridors of the villa, you met them at
every turn. Right royal arrangement that! Yet
why at Huegel?
On this particular day Essen was alive with
colour. Hussars in green and silver—the
Düsseldorf brand—galloping round and round the villa
circuit, kept their eyes keenly alert for suspicious
characters; in Essen, indeed, every stranger is
looked upon as a double-crossed suspect. Dragoons
were there, too, from East Prussia, to watch the
hussars, for one never knows, you know. And, of
course, there were bodyguards—white tunic and
breeches, black cuirass and silver helmet,
surmounted by the “bird of poisonous glare,” as
Heine described the Imperial eagle. Many other
uniforms, too—uhlans, chasseurs, mounted
infantry for the War Lord likes to strut abroad to
the tune and clank of a variety of arms. He would
have horse marines if he were not so deadly afraid
of Mr. Punch.
Before the library door of the Villa Huegel two
giant cuirassiers, sabre in hand, revolver in belt,
dull men and dangerous, of the sort that always
do their duty not as they see it, but as their
superior officer sees it.
Suppose that earthling orders a death-dealing
blow for anyone attempting to enter the room
under guard. It follows, as a matter of course,
that the person is a dead man or dead woman, or
maybe a dead child—militarism rampant, but
discipline triumphant! Who cares for a corpse
more or less?
A much-bedizened personage is standing in the
centre of the high-ceilinged, wainscoted room. A
gewgawed War Lord; but how unimposing he
looks on foot and unprepared to meet the gaze of
admiring multitudes! He is not much taller than
the average grocer’s clerk, and until Father Time
sprinkled his straight, wiry hair with grey was a
decided red-pate.
The War Lord’s clothes are Berlin pattern: all
straight and right angles, like the tunics of the
impossible marbles that spoil his Avenue of
Victory. He wears jewellery of the kind the late
mad King of Bavaria used to decorate his actors
with: a watch-chain thick and strong enough to
hold a two-year bull, a timepiece bulging like
an alarum clock, and a profusion—or confusion—of
gold-mounted seals and medals. But the
finishing touch: sky-blue garters, set with rosettes of
diamonds and pearls alternating.
We know his public face—stern, haughty,
cast-iron, forbidding—and his official demeanour
has been brought home to us a thousand times and
more in statue and photograph, in colour and
black and white, throned, on horseback, or
standing alone in Imperial self-glory under a purple
canopy—he knows how to stage-manage himself
in uniform.
The London tailor who skimped his coat in
front, he hates with a deadly hatred, for padding,
plenty of it, is essential to his mise en scène. See
him on his well-trained, high-stepping horse, and
you have the ideal camera subject: broad shoulders,
prominent chest (laden with seventy-odd medals),
strong limbs, jingling spurs, bronzed face,
skyscraping moustachios and all.
But in the drawing-room, and in mufti—what
a difference! Heavy set, somewhat short-limbed,
and the face that looks strong when framed in
military cap or helmet now seems to possess only
brute force.
At this moment his left hand sought the seclusion
of a trouser-pocket, while his right, studded
with gems like a chorus-girl’s, sawed the air with
coarse assertiveness.
“My dear Frederick,” he addressed his host,
balancing himself on his right foot, “while you
are here to execute my orders, all’s well. But
suppose something happened to you. You are not
in the best of health and”—lowering his voice—”a
careless boy. Don’t deny,” he added quickly
when Frederick Krupp ventured to protest.
“Both my Roman ambassador and our envoy at
the Holy See heard about your peccadilloes in the
island.” The speech, begun in a bantering tone,
terminated shrilly.
The Ironmaster alternately blushed and
blanched. “I hope you do not believe all you
hear,” he faltered.
“Never more than a third of what I’m told,”
replied the War Lord, softening his voice; “but,
even so, things must not be left too entirely to
chance.”
Frederick Krupp went to the window, marking
each step for the benefit of possible listeners, then
tiptoed to the great folding doors. He opened
the off wing suddenly and looked out. “All’s
safe,” he said, returning; “and what fine brutes
those outside.”
“Fancy them?” laughed the War Lord
jovially, for he knows how to unbend when he
wants to carry a point. “Now to business. We
are all liable to die almost any moment, and you,
dear Frederick, are no more an exception to the
rule than I am—or those brutes.”
Frederick Krupp looked uncomfortable, and to
hide his embarrassment or gain time dropped
into courtly jargon. “And what may be your
Majesty’s pleasure?”
“Make a satisfactory last will, sir—a last will
guaranteeing the Krupps’ goodwill for ever and a
day—likewise satisfactory dividends—for the chief
stockholder, if you please.”
Frederick Krupp bowed low. “Please?” he
repeated. “Why, I lie awake nights planning
wars for your benefit. If there were not a Persian
Gulf, I would have invented one to pave the way
for the little scrap with England you are aching for.”
“Hold your horses!” cried the War Lord.
“That Bagdad railway must be finished first.
What I want is a guarantee, and a most binding
guarantee, that the Krupp works be conducted in
all future as now, according to my Imperial will
and pleasure, in the interest of the Fatherland
and—our pocket,” he added flippantly.
Frederick Krupp surveyed himself in the glass.
“You talk as if I had one foot in the grave,” he
said in the careless manner of addressing a boon
companion, or like one intimate putting things
pleasant, or the reverse, to another. Frederick
Krupp died in the odour of eccentricity. There
was certainly something eccentric in his relations
with the War Lord. But the latter tolerates
familiarity only so long as it suits him; and,
presently observing the clouds gather on his guest’s
brow, Frederick Krupp changed his tone.
“At your Majesty’s commands, I am all ears,”
he murmured, as, obedient to a sign from the
Emperor, he drew up an arm-chair for him.
“Sit down yourself,” the Emperor ordered
curtly, pointing to a tabouret. Then, sneeringly:
“Your idea was——”
“To leave everything to my wife.”
The War Lord slapped his knees hard, as he
always does when excited.
“So would Herr Müller and Herr Schulze,”
he cried, without attempting to conceal the insult.
“Her Ladyship—chief of the Krupp works—of
what use would the Baroness Marguerite be to my
interests?”
Mrs. Frederick Krupp was née von Ende, and
the War Lord, always eager to use titles of
nobility, chose to call her by her maiden name and
style.
Frederick Krupp, who, despite his irregularities,
was genuinely fond of his wife, moved
uneasily on his low chair. “Your Majesty is
pleased——”
“To have his head screwed on tightly and in
the right place,” declared the War Lord, bringing
his fist down on a table at his elbow and making
the Chinese ivories jump. “Now then, without
further palaver, I don’t choose to see the Baroness
heiress of the Krupp works. She shall not control
my interests, do you hear? nor those of the Fatherland.”
The War Lord talked as if addressing a parcel
of raw recruits. His withered left hand had
pulled from the trouser-pocket, and was making
spasmodic attempts to clutch the lapel of his coat.
He has the curious taste to give this poor hand a
liberal coating of rings, and his enormous emeralds
seemed to gleam more poisonously than usual
upon the cringing form of poor Frederick.
“Willy,” gasped the Ironmaster pleadingly.
The War Lord was not to be cajoled.
“As I said, her Ladyship gets a pension.
Leave her as big a share of your fortune as you
please,” he added on second thought. “Yes, the
larger the better; it will avert suspicion—I mean
forestall criticism, of course.”
“But,” remonstrated Frederick, in a weak
way, “Marguerite and I have an understanding.”
“Understanding,” scowled the War Lord,
brutality written all over him as if he were
rehearsing his pretty phrase: “Those opposing me I
smash.”
He contemplated Frederick for a while as a
big mastiff might a King Charles before mangling
and killing it. At last he remembered there are
two ways in most things. “Of course,” he began
rather soothingly, “understandings among
subjects are null and void when opposed to the
Imperial will. Explain to Lady Marguerite with my
compliments, if you please,” the last phrase
emphasised three times by hand cutting the air
vertically.
Frederick Krupp, thoroughly cowed by this
time, nodded assent. This man, used to bull-dozing
Governments the world over, a terror before
his board of directors, and a demigod to his
workmen, felt a mere atom with the eyes of the War
Lord flashing wrath and contempt upon his
yielding self.
“I will; but what may be your Majesty’s
precise commands?” he stammered meekly.
The War Lord perceived that his victim had
become like wax under the lash of his tongue. He
could afford, then, to be magnanimous. “You
forget etiquette,” he replied, with a half-smile;
“since when is it customary to question a majesty?
Still, I am no Eulenburg” (referring to the Grand
Marshal of the palace), “and will overlook your
faux-pas this time. Listen, Frederick.” He
softened his speech with a “dear Frederick,”
and then issued his mandate: “The Baroness
eliminated——”
Herr Krupp raised his eyes supplicatingly, but
the War Lord paid no attention. “Eliminated,”
he repeated, accentuating each syllable. Then, in
pitying style: “Too bad you haven’t got a son.
However, the Salic Law does not apply to commoners.”
The Ironmaster made bold to show annoyance
at the word. “Commoner by my own free will,”
he protested. “Haven’t I declined Earldoms and
Dukedoms even?”
“More’s the pity that you remain plain
Krupp, like a grocer or the ashman, when you
might be Prince of Essen,” cried the War Lord,
jumping up. The Ironmaster rose as well.
Courtly usage, of course, but also a measure
of precaution. He meant to be on hand in case
his august guest suffered a fall, and there is always
a possibility of that when the War Lord labours
under excitement, for his whole left side, from
ear to toe, is weak and liable to collapse if the full
weight of the body is thrust suddenly upon it. As
a rule, the War Lord remembers, but when carried
away by passion, or for other reasons loses control
of himself, he is prone to forget or even fall in a
heap with no warning. Such a contretemps
happened once at Count Dohna’s, when Frederick
was one of the house party, and long remained in
his memory.
Visiting at Proeckelwitz in the summer of
1891, the War Lord had deigned to be pleased
with a pair of blacks. “Buy two more of them
for a four-in-hand, as befits the Sovereign,” he
said to his host.
The hint, dropped with charming German
delicacy, was a command, of course, and a year
later, in June, the War Lord started for the castle
in right royal style; but he did not get far that
way, since the four-in-hand shied and bolted when
the villagers burst into patriotic song, to the
waving of a thousand and one flags. As an
eye-witness put it: The leaders rose on their hind legs,
the cross pieces came loose and began knocking
against their pasterns, and off they were at a
furious rate. Count Dohna let the reins of the
runaways slip, and hung the more heavily on to
those of the shaft horses, who were trying to follow
the others. He let the blacks run for a while but
without losing control, and as they were about to
plunge into a bed of harrows he succeeded in
checking them.
Then, for a mile or so, he gave them a run on
freshly ploughed ground. After that they went
steadily.
The War Lord had put his arm around his
host’s shoulders when the horses started off, and,
the danger past, pressed the Count’s hand, but did
not say a word. Then came the collapse. He had
to be helped down from his seat, and took no notice
of the greetings of the ladies awaiting him.
Leaning upon his chasseur and Adjutant Von Moltke
(now Field Marshal), he crept to his room, his face
pale as death and lips compressed.
Dinner was set back an hour, but the War
Lord had not recovered his speech when, with
difficulties, he put his feet under the mahogany.
His body physician, Doctor Leuthold, was sitting
opposite the august person, and upon a sign from
the medical man the War Lord rose from table
after vainly trying to swallow a spoonful of soup.
Nor did he come down to breakfast, but attended
luncheon, still looking pale and haggard. Then,
for the first time, he greeted the ladies of the
house, and spoke a few words to his host; but when
a forward young miss referred to the accident he
bade her keep silent by an imperious gesture,
while a tremor seemed to run through his body.
He would not hear of hunting, and left next day
without having fired a shot.
Frederick Krupp, remembering Proeckelwitz,
moved as near to his Imperial guest as politeness
permitted, ready to catch him in his arms if need
be, but the War Lord no sooner perceived his
intention than he became more infuriated than ever.
“For Heaven’s sake no heroics, Frederick!” he
roared, sitting down again. “Draw up a stool and
listen.”
“One second,” pleaded the Ironmaster, “I
will set the miniature orchestrella going.” He
pressed a button, and almost simultaneously a
music-box near the door, sheathed in tortoise-shell
and gold bronze, began trilling out melodies, so as
to confuse, if not obscure, conversation to possible
listeners if it waxed overloud again.
The War Lord nodded. “Not half bad. You
may send me one of those things to put in Bülow’s
office. There are always some Italians lurking
about—to report to Madame la Princesse, I
fancy—and put the W.I.R. on the box.
“Well, let’s get back to things,” he added,
quickly changing his tone to drill-ground clangour.
“Madame eliminated and there being no son——”
“Your Majesty desires me to leave the
business jointly to Bertha and Barbara?” asked
Krupp.
“Are there six crown princes or one?” inquired
the War Lord in his turn, with affected
calmness.
“I don’t follow,” said Herr Krupp.
The War Lord could hardly master his impatience.
Still more raising his voice, he demanded
abruptly: “Is Prussia to be divided into six petty
Kingdoms when I die because I happen to have
six sons, and a small principality besides for my
daughter?”
Herr Krupp opened his eyes wide: “Your
Majesty wants me to disinherit one of my
children?”
“I want you to proclaim my godchild Bertha
Crown Princess of the Kingdom of Cannon.”
“But my other daughter——”
“Bertha is my goddaughter!” (with the
emphasis on the “my”).
“Can I ever forget the honour conferred upon
my humble house?”
“I trust not,” said the War Lord, who is
careful not to let people forget any small favours he
may bestow.
His brain works in fits and starts, in bounds
and leaps, and when he wants a thing it jumps at
once to the conclusion that his fancy is a fait
accompli. Persuading Frederick had been easy
with its bits of browbeating and flashes of cajolery.
Now, flushed with the triumph gained, he launched
forth the details. “Bertha, Crown Princess, trust
me to find the right consort for her.”
“She is only a child.”
“The very age when she ought to be taken in
hand and moulded.” The War Lord illustrated
the intended process by kneading the air with
grasping fingers, his “terrible right” alternately
pushing and squeezing, attacking, relaxing and
coaxing, with the father looking on, terror-stricken.
Such, then, was to be the fate of his little girl:
a vice round her white neck, spurs to her sides.
The man before him came into the world accoutred
to ride, and seventy millions of people his cattle!
The jewels on the War Lord’s ring-laden hand
flashed and threatened. That twenty-carat ruby
on his little finger meant blood, and the emerald,
linked to it, might denote the poison-tongue eager
to corrupt the childish mind into an instrument
of high politics. Diamonds stand for innocence.
There were diamonds galore. Oh, the farce of it!
Opals, too, a rare collection, but the stone sacred
to October tells at least an honest tale—tears.
The War Lord stripped off a gold hoop with a
large turquoise. “Wear it in remembrance of
this hour, dear Frederick,” he said. “The
turquoise signifies prosperity, you know.”
He walked towards one of the windows and,
standing within its deep embrasure, pointed to the
towering chimneys. “My brave guardsmen,” he
exulted, half to himself, “outposts of my Imperial
will, avant-guard of my seven millions of warriors;
it will be great fun, old fellows, to make you dance
as I whistle!”
Then, with a broad smile to Frederick: “That
being settled, the Minister of Justice shall draw
up your testament at once. I brought him to
Essen for that. Now, don’t look frightened,
boy. ‘Last will’ does not mean ‘last legs.’ You
will outlive us all, I bet. Let’s think of a Prince
Consort now.”
“But, as said, Bertha is much too young,”
faltered Frederick.
“Herr,” staccatoed the War Lord, “I already
had the honour to inform you that Bertha is my
godchild—m-y g-o-d-c-h-i-l-d. Do you hear?”
he yelled, while startled Frederick looked anxiously
towards the door.
The War Lord took the hint and resumed
conversational tone. “Come now,” he ordered, “roll
call. Some of our dear friends are still in the
marriage mart.” (Reflectively): “Too bad;
Fritzie got married.” Bertha’s father shuddered
at the mentioning of a certain Count, who, though
brother-in-law of a reigning Grand Duke, was
prisoner Number 5429 at Siegen jail, in Rhineland,
a few years later for crimes unspeakable. In 1902,
however, the dashing Colonel of Horse had not
yet been publicly disgraced, and the War Lord
launched into a panegyric of his friend. “Yes,
indeed, Fritz would have made a first-class master
here. Not overburdened with brains, but knows
enough to obey orders. No humming and
hawing for him when the War Lord has spoken.
But the Suien girl caught him. The kind of
son-in-law you want, Frederick.”
Krupp shook his head.
“I respectfully beg to differ; none of these for
my little girl.”
“These?” The War Lord again raised his
voice, but dropped into a hoarse whisper when he
heard the officer de jour address the sentinels in
the corridor. “One can’t say a word without
being overheard,” he grumbled; “nearer, Frederick,
still closer.” As he continued speaking he
laid his massive right hand on Frederick’s knee and
hissed between his teeth: “These? You forgot
that you were referring to my friends.”
“I did not, most assuredly I did not,” returned
the Ironmaster, disengaging himself by a swift
movement and jumping up.
“You dare!” hissed the War Lord, again
losing control of himself.
“I dare anything for my child!” cried Krupp,
his face livid with rage; “and I tell you to your
face none of your free-living friends for my
Bertha!”
“Insolence!” roared the War Lord. “Take
a care that I don’t send you to Spandau.”
“I would endure Schlusselburg rather than
suffer my child to marry one of these,” insisted
the Ironmaster doggedly.
The War Lord gazed at the speaker for twenty
or more seconds, then said in a tone of command:
“You can go. Send in Moltke” (referring to his
adjutant, later chief of the general staff).
With the latter he remained closeted a quarter
of an hour—quite a long space of time for a person
of the War Lord’s character—and it is said that he
tried to persuade the blond giant (Moltke was
blond and blooming then) that Krupp was a
madman, as crazy as the Mad Hatter. Otherwise he
would never have dared oppose his plebeian will
against that of the supreme master. Of course
not!
Of Moltke’s counter-arguments we know
naught, but the War Lord’s visit to Essen wound
up with a grand banquet of sixty covers, and in the
course of it host and Imperial guest toasted each
other in honeyed words.
* * * * *
Less than two months later Frederick Krupp
died by his own hand, and Bertha Krupp—sixteen,
homely and already prone to embonpoint—mounted
the throne of the Cannon Kings, as the
War Lord had willed.
And, as he had insisted, she became automatically
a pawn in his hand, his alter ego for
destruction and misery.
Ever since his intimacy with Frederick, the
War Lord had looked upon the Krupp plant as the
power house for the realisation of his ambition—the
conquest of the world; and to a very considerable
extent Frederick had aided and abetted his
plans by employing his genius for invention and
business to commercialise war, and making it fit
in with the general scheme of high finance.
“Want a loan?” the Cannon King used to ask
governments. “May we fix it for you? But first
contract for so many quick-firing guns.”
The loan being amply secured, and the quick-firers
paid for, then the suggestion would come
along: “Have some more Bleichroder or Meyer
funds on top of our latest devices in man-killers.” And
so on, and so on; an endless chain.
Yet, while so eager to provide death with
new-fangled tools wholesale, Frederick could not, or
would not, divest himself from the shackles of
business honesty—and his inheritance.
He wouldn’t play tricks on customers. The
steel and work he put into guns for, say, Russia
or Chili were as flawless and expert as in the guns
bought by his Prussian Majesty. And that was
the “besetting sin of Frederick,” the damning
spot on the escutcheon of their friendship, as the
War Lord viewed it. It followed, of course, that
when one hundred of the Tsar’s Krupp guns faced
one hundred Krupp guns of the Government of
Berlin, they would be an even match so far as
material went—a thing and condition in strict
contradiction to the Potsdam maxim: “Always
attack with superior force.”
How often the War Lord had argued with
Frederick: Soft lining for enemy howitzers; a
well-concealed, patched-up flaw in the barrel of
quick-firers.
“I know no enemy, only customers,” was
Frederick’s invariable rejoinder, garbed in politest
language.
Customers! Decidedly the War Lord wanted
customers—plenty of them, since, as we know, he
had invested largely in Krupp stock; but to take
customers’ money was one thing, and to provide
them with means for spoiling the War Lord’s game
was another.
When that pistol-shot startled Villa Huegel on
November 22nd did it portend the death-knell
of what the War Lord called “Krupp molly-coddledom”?
Even during Frederick Krupp’s lifetime—just
as if his early demise had been a foregone
conclusion—technical experts of the Berlin War Office
had been instructed to make extensive experiments
with steel on the lines ordered by Wilhelm the
War Lord.
The test would be the Day!
CHAPTER II
WEAVING THE TOILS ROUND BERTHA KRUPP
“Your Play Days are Over”—The Baroness Speaks
Out—In the Grip of the Kaiser—A Room Apart
“The makings of the true German heifer,” that
astute Frenchman, Hippolyte Taine, would have
said of the young girl who was busy in her garden
behind Villa Huegel on the 24th of November,
1902. For her blooming youth was full of the
promise of maternity—broad shoulders, budding
figure, generous hands and feet, plenty of room
for brains in a good-sized head. Pretty? An
Englishman or American would hardly have
accorded her that pleasing descriptive title, but
comely and wholesome she was, with her air of
intelligence and kindly eyes.
An abominable German custom makes scarecrows
out of children at a parent’s death. So
Bertha Krupp was garbed in severest black,
awkwardly put together. Her very petticoats, visible
when she bent over her flowers, were of sable
crepe; not a bit of white or lace, though it would
have been a relief, seeing that the young woman’s
complexion was not of the best.
“Bertha—Uncle Majesty——” cried a child’s
voice from outside the house, “wants you,” it
added, coming nearer.
“To say good-bye?” called Bertha in return.
One might have discerned an accent of relief in
the tone of her voice.
“Not yet,” replied her sister, running up, as
she tugged at Bertha’s watering-can. “Adjutant
von Moltke said something about a con-con——”
“Conference, I suppose,” completed the older
girl. “Will you never learn to speak, child?”
“Uncle Majesty uses such big words,” pleaded
little Barbara. “Hurry, sister, he is waiting, and
you know how crazy he gets——”
“But what have I got to do with him? Let
him speak to Mamma. Tell them I am busy with
my flowers.”
“Bertha!” cried a high-pitched voice from the
direction of the villa.
“Mamma,” whispered the younger girl;
“hurry up, now, or you will catch it.” At the
same moment one of the library windows in Villa
Huegel opened, disclosing the figure of the War
Lord, accoutred as for battle—gold lace, silver
scarf, many-coloured ribbons, metal buttons and
numerals. His well padded chest heaved under
dozens of medals and decorations, his moustachios
vied with sky-scrapers. With his bejewelled right
hand he beckoned imperiously.
“My child, my goddaughter,” he said with
terrible emphasis when Bertha entered the room,
breathing hard, “once and for all you must
understand that your play-days are over; at this moment
you enter upon the service of the State.” He
turned abruptly to Bertha’s mother, adding in
tones of command: “You will put her into long
dresses at once, Baroness. It isn’t fitting that the
heiress of the Krupp works shows her legs like a
peasant girl.”
“But I don’t want to wear long dresses, Uncle
Majesty,” pouted Bertha.
The War Lord took no notice of the childish
protest, but looked inquiringly at Bertha’s mother.
“Surely in matters of dress, at least, the child’s
wishes should be consulted,” said the Baroness half
defiantly.
“But I insist,” fumed the War Lord.
“And I respectfully submit that your Majesty
must not meddle with matters of toilette in my
house.”
The War Lord pulled a high-backed, eagle-crowned
chair of silver-gilt up to the late Cannon
King’s desk and pushed Bertha into it. It was the
fauteuil he had once designated as “sacred to the
All Highest person”—meaning himself, of course.
As a rule its gold and purple upholstery had a
white silk cover, which was removed only when
the War Lord visited the great house.
“Cardinal fashion,” he said to the astonished
child, without taking notice of his hostess’s remark.
“Cardinals, Bertha, are princes of the Roman
Church, and each has a throne in his house. While
the See of St. Peter is occupied, the emblem of
power is turned to the wall. So, heretofore, this
throne of mine was obsolete while I was away from
Essen, but since your father, as his testament
shows, appointed you his successor under my
guardianship, you shall have the right and privilege
to sit in my place. A throne for the War Lady
while the War Lord is away!”
The bewildered child was slow to avail herself
of the grand privilege. Shoulders bent forward,
she wriggled to the edge, hardly touching the seat,
while her eyes sought her mother’s with mute appeal.
However, the War Lord was determined to do
all the talking himself. “As I pointed out, under
Papa’s will, you are sole owner of the Krupp
business and mistress here,” he declaimed, with a
disdainful glance at the child’s mother. The
Purple-born did not scruple to exult over his
victim before her daughter.
Happily, the young girl did not observe his
ruthlessness, nor would she have understood her
godfather’s motive.
“Mistress here,” repeated the War Lord;
“responsible to no one but God’s Anointed.”
Bertha, now thoroughly frightened, burst into
tears. “Don’t cry,” ordered the War Lord
brusquely. But Frau Krupp jumped to her feet,
and, placing herself in front of the child, exclaimed
with flaming eyes: “Such language to a little girl
and on the day of her father’s burial!”
The War Lord saw that he had gone too far.
“Come, now,” he said soothingly, “I meant
your Uncle Majesty, of course. Uncle has always
been kind and considerate to his little Bertha,
hasn’t he?”
He asked the Baroness to be seated, while
he patted Bertha’s shoulder and hair. “God-daughter,”
he said softly, “be a brave girl and
listen.” And, with the child’s eyes showing
increasing bewilderment every moment, he burst
into a panegyric of himself and his sublime mission
on earth, such as even his dramatic collaborators,
von Wildenbruch and Captain Lauff, had never
conceived in their most toadying moments.
He was on the most elaborately intimate terms
with God, and every act of his was approved by
“his” God beforehand. “His” God had
appointed him vicar on earth, instrument of His
benevolence and of His wrath.
“My child,” he sermonised in accents of
fanaticism, “think of the honour, the unheard-of
honour in store for you; you, the offspring of
humble parents, shall do my bidding as my God
directs.”
Bertha was stiff with astonishment, but the
Baroness moved uneasily in her chair and was
about to speak, when the War Lord, who
had paused to observe the effect of his words,
resumed:
“The Krupp business, your business, my dear
Bertha, is unlike any other in the world. All other
manufacturers and merchants cater to the material
welfare of man, more or less; the Krupp works
alone are destined to traffic in human life for God’s
greater glory and at His behest.
“For fourteen years God has listened to my
prayers for peace; for fourteen long years I have
beseeched Him, morning, noon and night, in every
crisis that arose throughout the world to permit me
to keep my sword sheathed—God’s sword. But
all these years myself and your father, Bertha,
have kept our powder dry, never relaxing armed
preparedness, doubling it rather, to be ready for
God’s first bugle-call.”
And so the blasphemous vaingloryings went on.
The War Lord strode over to the long wall
of the room, dragging his sword over the marble
floor and giving his spurs and medals an extra
shake. He pushed a button, whereupon an
illuminated map of Europe shot into a frame
where, a second before, a Watteau shepherdess
had impersonated les fêtes galantes du Roi.
Drawing the sword, he delineated with its point
the Central Empires, the Italian boot-leg, and
Turkey’s European possessions. Then he
double-crossed France, Russia and Great Britain. “The
enemy!” he cried. “Enemies of German
greatness, of German expansion, of German
kultur—therefore, enemies of the God of the Germans and
of mine.
“But with your help I will smash them, pound
them into a jelly, Bertha.”
As if overcome by horror, the child glided from
the impromptu throne of the self-appointed Godgeissel
(the Lord’s scourge) to the rug, and buried
her face in her mother’s lap.
“Uncle Majesty,” she sobbed, “you mean to
say that I must help you make war? The
Commandment says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.'”
“But the Lord also said, ‘Vengeance is
mine,'” quoted her Uncle Majesty; “and God
wreaks His vengeance through me, His elect, His
chosen instrument.
“Still, these matters you will understand better
as you grow older,” he continued. “For the
present remember this: under your father’s will,
I am your chief guardian, and you must obey me
in everything. While nominally, even legally, you
are sole proprietress of the Krupp works and their
numerous dependencies, you hold these properties,
as a matter of fact, in trust for me. It follows,
my child, that you must leave the direction of the
works to your Uncle Majesty and his subordinates,
the directors and business managers. Do you
agree to that?”
There was something hypnotic in the War
Lord’s delivery. As the Baroness explained
afterwards, he talked like one possessed. Add to this
his necromantic manoeuvring, his Machiavellian
gestures, his grandly weird eloquence—inherited
from an uncle who died in a strait-jacket—small
wonder he prevailed upon the grief-stricken child,
when, alternately, he threatened, cajoled and
flattered.
As a matter of fact, the War Lord’s words
seemed to have a peculiar appeal to the richest girl
in the world, who neither divined nor imagined
their sinister purpose. What pierced her
comprehension appealed to a youngster’s love of
independence, of shaking off mother’s leading-strings.
In the avalanche of phrases that assailed Bertha’s
ears this stood out: “Your mother doesn’t count;
you are mistress in your own right.” Very well,
she would put the promise to the test. “I don’t
quite understand,” said the Cannon King’s heiress;
rising from her knees, and without looking at her
parent, added, “but I leave it all to you, Uncle
Majesty—everything.”
“Do you hear?” cried the War Lord, addressing
Frau Krupp.
“I have heard, and Bertha will go to her room
now,” replied the Baroness firmly; and though the
War Lord made an impatient gesture indicating
that he meant the child to remain, she conducted
her daughter to the door, kissed her on the
forehead, and let her slip out.
When she turned round she saw the War Lord
in the Godgeissel chair before the desk, resting his
right arm on the blotter, his left hand on the hilt
of his sword.
“Any further commands for the mistress of
the house?” she queried in no humble tones.
The War Lord, seemingly absorbed in a document
he had taken up, replied without looking at
his hostess: “Send in Moltke,” whereupon the
Baroness retreated backward towards the door.
She was about to drop a curtsy to signify her
leave-taking, when the War Lord cried out:
“One thing more, Madame la Baronne. From
now on this room is my room, and none but
myself or the Krupp heiress has the entrée. My
goddaughter may see my representatives here, but
no one else—no one.”
CHAPTER III
A MOTHER’S REFLECTIONS
The Baroness and Franz—The Power-Drunk War Lord—A Pawn
in the Game—The Sweets of Power—Germany Above
All—The War Lord’s Murder Lust—Fighting the
Frankenstein—At the War Lord’s Mercy
The Baroness’s boudoir in Villa Huegel is a
spacious apartment, hung in blue and silver, the
colours of her noble house. Everything that riches,
mellowed by refinement, could command enhanced
its luxurious comfort. In the home of Baroness
Krupp are trophies of her visits to foreign
shores: cut glass, coins, bronzes and curios of all
kinds. Silver-gilt caskets hold royal presents,
precious stuffs and monstrous ornaments from
German kings and kinglets—articles of jewellery
for the most part, too big for a woman of taste.
All are crowned and initialled, but few
hall-marked. Since a prince is supposed to give away
the real thing, why bother about carats? Numerous
paintings, English landscapes, French and Italian
decorative art and figures. An English grand
piano in one corner. Britishers prefer German
makes, but the much-travelled Baroness wouldn’t
tolerate the home product.
She is seated before a spindle-legged table with
a crystal top over a velvet-lined drawer, where
Madame’s royal orders and decorations repose—crosses
and stars, quadrupeds and birds of various
outré forms and degrees. Pointing to one of
them bearing the name of a queen famous for her
beauty and misfortunes, she murmured: “How
proud I was when he gave it to me! At that time
I thought him chivalrous and believed him sincere
in his religious professions. Since he intrigues to
make my little girl the accomplice of his murderous
desires, never more will I wear it.”
“Master Franz desires to speak to your
ladyship,” said a manservant from behind the
portières covering the doorway.
“Show him up.”
Franz was a distant relative who had lived much
in the Krupp household after he finished his studies
at the late Frederick Krupp’s expense. At this
time he was chief electrical engineer of the
establishment, destined for still higher honours, for
experts held that the mantle of the great Edison
had descended upon Franz’s broad shoulders. He
was like a big brother to the Krupp girls, and
looked upon the Baroness as a mother, having
never known his own.
Tall and good-looking, Franz, as a rule, dressed
like an Englishman of distinction, but to-day he
had chafed under the obligation of wearing
evening dress for breakfast, lunch and tea, because of
the War Lord’s presence. Even now his nether
garments belonged to the ceremonial variety, but
he wore a jacket tightly buttoned over the wide
expanse of his shirt-front.
“So it is proposed to make two kinds of steel
in future,” he whispered, after closing the door
and drawing the curtains. “Has that your
approval, Frau Krupp?”
The Ironmaster’s widow heard only the first
part of the sentence; she was too amazed to listen
further.
“What is that you say, Franz?”
The young man kissed the Baroness’s hand.
“Acting without your leave or consent—I
thought so,” he said. “I would have staked my
life on it that you would permit no such infamy.” Seeing
the Baroness’s questioning eyes focused on
his, he explained:
An hour before the War Lord left the
Director-General had sent for him—”to explain
certain technical details,” ran the message. He
had to wait a considerable time in the ante-room
of the conference chamber before being admitted,
and while there could not help overhearing what
was going on inside, as the War Lord was arguing
in drill-ground accents.
This was the gist of his peroration, defended
with consummate sophistry: It was a crime against
the Fatherland to supply possible enemies with
arms that at one time or another might be used
against the War Lord’s Majesty. That sort of
thing—treason, to call it by its proper name—had
been permitted long enough, too long, in fact;
and now that the life-long defender of misguided
business honesty had been removed by God’s
Hand—G-o-d-‘s H-a-n-d—there must be an end of it.
He (the War Lord), ever on guard against the
Fatherland’s enemies, had instructed his scientists
to discover a substitute for hard steel with which
to line enemy guns and armour. These substitutes
were forthwith to be experimented with, and, if
the results were satisfactory, must be employed,
instead of the real steel, whenever the War Lord so
directs.
“And Frederick hardly cold in his shroud!”
gasped the Baroness.
“But you,” cried Franz, “you can prevent
this fraud, this disgrace! You must, you will, I
am sure of it!”
The Baroness had risen and stared vacantly into
the fire.
“God punish me if I would hesitate a moment
to do as honour dictates, Franz, but Frederick
Krupp left his widow bound hand and foot,” she
replied bitterly.
“You mean to say that you submit to the
power-drunk War Lord? Abdicate your sacred
trust? Make your children and your workpeople
accomplices of fraudulent practices?”
“Haven’t you heard about the stipulations
which were made in your Uncle Frederick’s last
will and testament?”
“Not a word,” replied Franz.
“I thought Bertha would tell you.”
“I was busy all the afternoon, and then came
the Director-General’s order, which prevented me
from saying good night to the children.”
“Sit down then and listen,” said the Baroness.
“As Uncle Frederick often told you, the War
Lord has tried for years to obtain control of the
Krupp works. In particular he was for ever
preaching against the policy of business integrity,
the proudest of the Krupp inheritances; but
though my husband allowed himself to be dominated
by him in many respects, in this, the Krupp
honesty, he remained adamant, partly thanks to
my advice and strenuous opposition, I dare say.
Up to now the Krupps have never played any
government false, as you know.”
“But, Uncle Frederick dead, the War Lord
is moving heaven and earth to flog the firm into
submission.” There was suppressed rage in the
tone of the young man’s voice.
“Let me finish,” demanded the Baroness.
“Convinced that I would refuse to be the tool of
his ambition, the War Lord persuaded your Uncle
to ignore me as his legitimate successor, and the
testament appoints Bertha sole heir and, again
ignoring me, the War Lord her guardian and
executor.”
“Gott!” cried Franz.
The Baroness went on: “His position as
supreme overlord of the Krupp business he made
perfectly clear to us.”
“Us? You mean the heads of the business?”
“I referred to the child and myself. He talked
to the directors afterwards.” The discrowned
Cannon Queen told Franz the story of the Imperial
interview. “He is the master,” she said in
conclusion, “Bertha his pawn, myself nobody.”
“And we, the heads of the business, and our
workmen, his slaves,” added the chief electrician
gloomily.
These two people, suddenly confronted by
the unexpected—a wife shorn of her rights and
wounded in her holiest maternal sentiments; an
honest man commandeered to debase his genius
and become an accessory to murder most foul—sat
for a while in silence, brooding over their
misfortune and the disasters threatening mankind as
a consequence.
At last the Baroness roused herself. “And
what did they want with you at the conference,
Franz?”
“I was admitted after the War Lord had
left to be closeted with the Director-General,”
replied the engineer, “and the directors seemed
to me extraordinarily perturbed—far more than
the master’s death warrants among equals. Herr
Braun acted as spokesman. He said the War
Lord wanted the firm to experiment with a new
steel lining for guns intended for foreign countries.
“‘Foreign countries! What does that
mean?’ I asked, as if I had not been an
involuntary listener to the War Lord’s speech.
“‘Majesty’s orders—it behoves subjects to
obey, not to ask questions,’ said Herr Braun, with
unusual severity. ‘To the point, sir, acting upon
the War Lord’s orders to entrust the business to
expert hands, we have decided to turn over the
job to you.'”
Franz stopped short, then burst out: “What
am I doing, Frau Krupp? You just told me that
you are not the head of the firm, and I am about
to reveal matters of the gravest importance
confided to my keeping. I made a mistake—I was
led away by filial reverence for my benefactor’s
widow. Pray forget what I have said.”
Franz was about to withdraw, when a voice
outside called: “Mamma, can I come in?”
“You said good night once. I thought you
were in bed and asleep, Bertha.”
The door opened, and a hand rustled the
portières.
“Are you alone?”
“Only Franz.”
“Oh!”
Bertha’s blonde head thrust itself through the
centre of the curtains, while she paused on the
threshold. Then a naked foot in a blue velvet
slipper with a golden heel: a vision in floating
white rushed in and nestled childishly at the
Baroness’s feet.
“Howdy, Franz?” said Bertha, drawing her
kimono tighter over her bosom. And to her
mother: “I couldn’t sleep after what Uncle
Majesty told us to-night. So I came down. You
are not angry, Mamma? Don’t scold, Mamma,”
she added, observing her mother’s stern face.
Frau Krupp patted the child’s head. “Fate!”
she said to Franz. “Voilà, the head of the Krupp
firm. Continue.”
The engineer bowed. “With your permission,
my chief,” he said, addressing Bertha.
“Anything you please, you big booby,”
laughed the child. Then, seriously: “I am your
chief, indeed I am. Think of bossing a big chap
like you and that arrogant Herr Braun, too!” She
motioned Franz to bend down, and whispered in
his ear, “Wouldn’t it be fun to sack him?”
“No nonsense, child, if you want to stay up,”
Frau Krupp was very much in earnest, and to
Franz she said: “Go on; I am impatient to hear
the rest.”
“I was telling your mother about some business
Herr Braun wants to entrust me with,” explained
Franz, looking at the child.
“How very interesting,” yawned Bertha;
“but you can’t get me to listen. Ah, there, I see
one of Barbara’s dolls. I will play with it till you
get through; then supper. I didn’t eat dinner
with Fraulein,” she added, looking at her mother,
“and there’s such a goneness here,” touching her
abdomen. The greatest force for destruction in the
world, yet a child to all intents and purposes!
“Proceed,” said the Baroness to Franz.
“With the chief’s permission,” began Franz
formally; then, as if trying to make his disclosure
as indefinite as possible: “You heard about the
order from King Leopold, secured by the War-Lord’s
Brussels ambassador?”
The Baroness nodded, and Bertha took her
eyes momentarily from her plaything. “Big, big
guns,” she said, describing a circle in the air by
turning the doll’s arm and hand round and round;
“my apanage, poor Papa said. Glad you reminded
me. I must tell Herr Braun about it. All the
profits are to go to my children’s hospital.” She
sat the doll astride her knee, bobbing her up
and down, then burst out laughing. “See that
head-dress, Franz, and her gown and apron—the
Belgian colours. Looks like a coincidence,
doesn’t it?”
Bertha embraced the doll tenderly. “Thank
your King for me, Dolly. The more guns he
orders, the better for our little children here.
German interests first,” laughed Bertha, looking
up. “Uncle Majesty told me so ever so often.”
The “Germany-above-all” spirit, spelling
moral and physical ruthlessness, spoke out of the
child. The Fatherland first, second and third;
perdition for the rest of the world, if Germany’s
interests be served thereby!
Whether the heiress had an inkling of what
the War Lord really intended, it is impossible to
decide; neither can there be any positive
knowledge as to the attitude she might have assumed if,
perchance, she did understand Franz’s pregnant
words.
Pupil of the War Lord, firmly believing in his
preachings, saturated with his theories, and
over-awed by his claims of Divine mission, his
vapourings were gospel to her, and “Germany-above-all”
was one of the commandments, even though it
conflicted with all the others.
A monstrous case of folie à deux, “deux”
standing for the German nation. Here we have
a man decked out in ornate regimentals travelling
about his country telling four millions of men:
“You must die for Me,” and immediately each
man says to his wife: “I wonder if there is a
special heaven for patriots like your husband?”
And to a certain class of persons he points out
that science is but the handmaiden of wholesale
murder, and that they must employ their God-given
inventive genius, all their brains, all their
time, to devise new ways and means for killing as
many men, women and children as there are in
the world outside of the German Empire. And
they do.
And to a woman he says: “You were born to
suffer. Give me your husband; I want him for
the fighting.” And she forthwith tells her man
to make one more for the shambles.
And to the golden-haired girl he says: “A
truce to your vanity, off with your locks, that I
may buy more rifles; and your lover I want, too.
His manly breast will make an excellent scabbard
for a French or Russian lance.”
And the golden-haired one raves that she is
thrice happy to be allowed to sacrifice her beauty
and the idol of her dreams for the War Lord.
“I want your fathers,” he says to a playground
full of children, “and your uncles and big brothers
and cousins.” And the little ones cry: “Hurrah!
Long live the Emperor!”
“Would ye live for ever?” he queries of men
between fifty and sixty-five. “To the barracks
with you, even if you are but good for cannon
fodder.”
Someone tells him of a bunch of boys playing
marbles in an alley; not one of them has finished
his education. The War Lord examines them
critically and sniffs. “You are big enough to stop
a bullet somehow,” he allows, and they are led to
slaughter.
The All Highest looks upon the earth and
boasts of his winged legions of man-killers. He
declaims that Englishmen and Frenchmen and
Italians and Belgians have turned out to fight
God’s Anointed; but adds with a sly smile they left
their women at home and their brood, that he may
out-Herod Herod. In his mind he feels the earth
trembling under the heavy tread of his armed
millions and the weight of his artillery.
This Dancing Dervish of universal slaughter,
this man given over to murder-lust is the object of
veneration not only of those whom he addresses in
person, because of their mistaken sense of duty and
patriotism; a whole nation, seventy millions strong,
acclaim him Saviour—Messiah of the Fatherland’s
destinies.
One can understand individual sacrifice, but
seventy millions of people, every mother’s son
and daughter, turning beasts of prey! It
baffles psychological speculation. Everywhere the
“Evangelium of German superdom,” as the War
Lord sees it, is loud.
Small wonder Bertha, born of man-killer stock
and suckled on the breasts of militarism, which
nourished her kith and kin and their hundreds of
thousands of dependents, believes unconditionally
in the doctrines pronounced by her godfather, to
her the God-head of power infinite, omniscience
incarnate!
Hence the implied rebuke to Franz: “German
interests first.” After that she returned to the
nursery—her Belgian doll.
Frau Krupp looked significantly at Franz.
“You were going to say——
“My orders are to experiment with the War
Lord’s new formula for steel on those guns for
Liége.”
Franz buried his head in his hands, elbows
planted on knees, leaning forward heavily, while
the Baroness sat looking at him, her nimble mind
weighing the pros and cons. At last she reached
out a hand and touched the young man’s shoulder.
“Franz,” she said solemnly.
The young man’s head shot up and he stared
at Frau Krupp as if she was a ghost. Answering
the question in her eyes, he almost shouted,
“Never!” holding up his right hand as if under
oath.
The Baroness placed his hand on Bertha’s head.
“Swear that you will stand by this child.”
“I swear, with all my heart, so help me, God,”
pronounced Franz, with severe emphasis.
A peculiar look came into the Baroness’s eyes,
half satisfied, half cunning, as with a sort of
imperious finality she said: “It is well.” Then,
turning to the child: “Bertha, run along now and
tell them to serve in the small dining-room in five
minutes.”
“Make it ten, Mamma, so I can put on my
new negligée.”
“All right, ten; but hurry,” agreed Frau
Krupp, looking at the pendule.
When the curtain had fallen behind Bertha the
Baroness turned a white, severe face upon Franz.
Then, abandoning all pretence of loyalty to the
Grand War Lord, she told the terrible secrets long
locked in her bosom, secrets imparted by her late
husband or gathered from his lips during long,
sleepless nights while he tossed on his pillow.
“It’s the Frankenstein we have to fight,” she
said, “the pitiless, heartless, soul-less Evil One,
intent upon setting the world afire through my
child’s inheritance. The plotting has been going
on ever since the crowned monster was enthroned.
Almost the first communication he made to
Frederick, as head of the Empire, was: ‘Now we
must bend all energies to get ready. And when
we are, I will set my foot upon the neck of the
universe, Charlemagne redivivus!’
“Previous to that, Frederick and myself had
agreed gradually to drop cannon- and ammunition-making.
The Krupps were to create, instead of
facilitating destruction. No longer was Essen to
be a place upon which a merciful God looked with
abhorrence. Engines of death had made us rich
and powerful; henceforth the coined results of war
were to be employed to make waste land arable,
to drain morasses, to dig canals, to prosecute every
peaceful endeavour promising to enhance the
German people’s chances of happiness and prosperity.
The old saw of turning swords into ploughshares
was to be enacted by the firm that had made war
thrice deadly. Then the tempter came. ‘I rely
upon you, Frederick! You are the Fatherland’s
only hope, for Germany can achieve its destinies
only through blood and iron.’
“‘One more supreme effort, Frederick, then
the War Lord will turn husbandman, making you
manager-general of his great farm stretching from
the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean, from the
Atlantic to Siberia.’
“As you know, the War Lord is an insinuating
talker,” continued Frau Krupp, “and his autocratic
manner, enhanced by occasional flurries of
condescension and persuading Frederick to join in
his social relaxations. Ah!” she cried, striking the
table with her hand, “it was these that forged the
bullet which killed my husband!”
There was a shrill tone of rage and defiance in
the last words. Then emotion mastered Frau
Krupp’s strength. She tottered, swayed, and
would have fallen had not Franz caught her. He
knew what she had suffered through her husband’s
intimacy with the War Lord and his cronies, and
shuddered.
“Mother,” he said unconsciously, as her head
touched his breast. The Baroness let it rest there
a moment; here was a tower of strength, of reserve
force.
“Alas!” she continued, after a tense silence,
“in the long run they ensnared Frederick. He
succumbed to their ensnaring wiles as a foolish
man might to the flatteries of a flirt. My counsel
was no longer sought; the promises he had
made—which I had exacted in happier days—were
forgotten or denied. The very ploughs and
ploughshares we were manufacturing then were thrown
into the melting-pot for guns.”
She picked up a book lying on the mantel.
“‘Vital Statistics of the German Empire,'” she
read aloud; “‘Steady Increase of Population.'” She
flung the volume on the hearth. “Multiply
like the Biblical sands; it only means that
Essen works the harder to put you under the sod.”
Frau Krupp dropped her voice and went on in
a whisper: “Do you understand now what your
threatened retirement would mean? It would
mean that, excepting France and Great Britain,
the whole of the world, all the smaller nations,
would be practically at the War Lord’s mercy,
because their guns wouldn’t shoot, their swords
and lances wouldn’t pierce.
“Such is the goal he has been striving for, the
goal he wants to attain through my little girl.
‘Have them all inadequately armed, and it will be
a walk-over for German arms,’ he calculates.”
“And how can I prevent the world’s debacle?”
“By fighting fire with fire. You cannot fight
the War Lord openly—pretend obedience, fall in
with his plans apparently, be an enthusiastic
faker, as far as he can see; but don’t smirch my
little girl’s business honour and submerge the
world under a tidal wave of blood by making other
nations defenceless. I have your promise, Franz?”
“It’s a vast prospect,” answered the young
engineer, “but I have sworn to stand by
Bertha——”
“I thank you,” said the Baroness, as the
portières were noisily pushed aside and a child’s
voice cried: “Supper’s ready.”
CHAPTER IV
BERTHA KRUPP, WAR LADY, ASSERTS HERSELF
Science Steps In—Franz Incurs the Kaiser’s Wrath
Six months of feverish activity in the Essen works,
of tests and measuring velocities, of experimenting
with ingots, hardening processes, chilled iron
castings and compound steel—who knows or cares for
the technique of murder machinery save generals
of the staff? As Mark Twain at one time labelled
a book, “There is no weather in this,” so the
present author will not burden his pages with
figures and statistics of any sort. It would be a
tantalising undertaking at best, for the War Lord
himself was directing, and insisted that his every
misunderstood, mis-stated and often wholly
untenable whim be immediately gratified by the ready
servility of Krupp employés—”his people.”
Up to the time under discussion the Emperor
Wilhelm had devoted nearly all his energies to drill,
political intrigue and uttering platitudes. To
dabble in formulary details, with nobody to dispute
his opinion or correct his errors, flattered him in
the proportion as his judgment about ordnance
construction became more and more fantastic.
He was always going about with a half-dozen
professors at his heels, losing no opportunity of
propounding nebulous and remarkable theories to
their startled but complaisant ears.
At the beginning of the present century the
German professor was a hundred years behind the
times in his dress, manners and social habits. The
German Punch had rudely caricatured him into a
new habitat, where soap and water, clean collars,
unfrayed trousers and non-Cromwellian headgear
held sway. Up to that period, he had bathed
occasionally, had curled his hair now and then,
and thereafter relapsed into that state of
slovenliness which is labelled scientific preoccupation
by the German mob, and stands in awe of learning,
be it ever so badly digested and wrongfully
applied.
The War Lord had an English mother; he is a
Barbarian fond of the tub. He perceived that
professors might be made useful to him. But how
make them presentable?
A visit to England gave him the clue.
And forthwith the new order of Court dress
was launched: short clothes and pumps, silk stockings
and jabot-shirts; and the official Press rudely
informed those “entitled to the uniform” that
bathing was imperative before getting into it.
The brotherhood of science furthermore
received hints to patronise the War Lord’s own
barber in regard to their flowing beards. “But
Admiral von Tirpitz wears a forked beard too,”
pleaded some. “No precedent, Herr Professor,
his Excellency has Majesty’s special permit!”
With the superfluous hair, the professors
likewise had to shed their accustomed hyperbole.
“Don’t speak until spoken to.” “Answer in
as few informatory words as can be managed.” “Invariably
make your answer meet the Imperial
wishes.” “Never contradict,” were the Grand
Master’s instructions, and the scientific men
abiding by them soon found themselves in clover,
because they were “useful,” while the rest were
discarded.
In particular, experts in chemistry were
exploited by the War Lord. “They must help to
feed my army and people”—in case war lasts
longer than expected. “They must invent new
weapons of destruction”—for while powder and
lead are well enough in their way, they do not
spell the end of things.
German scientific men are very fond of power
and have an enormous idea of their own importance,
but their notions are subject to fits of
extravagant humility if policy, or personal
advantage, can be served by Uriah Heepisms. The
keener ones in the Imperial entourage found that
it would pay to cater to the mobility in the War
Lord’s ideas while there was a certain degree of
logic. And if, perchance, he happened to drop
into incoherency or extravagance, was it the
professor’s business to set him right? Court usage
registered an emphatic negative.
Such were the beginnings of the partnership
between War Lordism and the perversion of
German science into an instrument of destruction.
“Science to the rescue of the lame and halt”—an
out-of-date notion. Science makes them by the
hundreds of thousands.
The professors were powerful assistants to the
War Lord in maintaining his grip on the Krupp
throat and acquiring further business concessions
from the firm; but, of course, as to realising the
technical chimeras of the War Lord’s mind with
respect to new-fangled war machinery, there was
more pretence than activity, for dividends had to
be considered, and the War Lord would have been
the first to make an outcry if his earnings were
reduced by the fraction of a per cent.
Franz maintained his position as chief experimenter,
and, his expert judgment in gunmaking
as well as in electricity being unquestioned, he was
able openly to frustrate some of the War Lord’s
most bloodthirsty plans by proving them impracticable
to the satisfaction of the board of directors,
which put a stop to their execution for the time
at least.
“Uncle Majesty is very wroth with you,” said
Bertha to her relative one evening, when the War
Lord had returned to Berlin after one of his
unofficial visits to the Ruhr metropolis. He was in
the habit of coming to Essen every little while now,
unheralded and incog. Likewise in mufti; and
what discarding of regimentals and associated
fripperies meant to him few people can imagine.
His uniforms are built to make him appear
taller and more imposing, while affording a ready
background for all sorts of decorative material—ribbons,
scarfs, stars, crosses and medals galore.
“Wroth with me?” queried Franz.
“Yes, with you,” replied the child; “and I
heard him dictate a long letter, giving you a terrible
talking to. I just signed it,” added Bertha with
a satisfied grin.
“And why am I hauled over the coals?” asked Franz.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied the child.
“‘One of the things little girls cannot
understand,’ said Uncle Majesty. But I do know that
you must—I said must—not do it again. I won’t
let you, do you hear? I mean Uncle Majesty won’t.”
Franz raised his hat and knocked his heels
together, military fashion. He was about to
withdraw when Bertha caught him by the arm. “You
are not angry with me, Franz?” she pleaded.
“No, my chief.”
“Say ‘no, liebe Bertha.'”
“No, liebe Bertha.”
At this moment a messenger caught up with
the two young people on the road to Villa Huegel
and handed Franz an official-looking envelope.
The engineer looked inquiringly at Bertha. “May I?”
Instead of answer the Krupp heiress picked up
her skirts with both hands and ran towards the
house.
Her letter informed Franz that the task of
completing the Belgian guns had been entrusted
to other hands. Secondly, that, in future,
communications about experiments ordered by the
War Lord must be addressed to the heiress direct,
not to the board of directors.
CHAPTER V
HOW THE WAR LADY WAS CAJOLED
An Intoxication of Vanity—Barbara’s Plain
Words—A Shameful Memory
The Imperial Chief-Court-and-House Marshal, Count
Eulenburg, has the honour to command Fraulein Bertha
Krupp to attend upon their Imperial and Royal
Majesties, His Majesty the Emperor and King, and
Her Majesty the Empress and Queen, during the
Christmas and New Year’s festivities at the Schloss,
Berlin.A royal equipage will await Fraulein Krupp’s
pleasure at the station, meeting the early morning train
of December 22nd.Dress: Silks, Velvets and Laces.
Attendance: Wardrobe mistress and maid; A footman.
The invitation, copperplated on an immense sheet
of rather cheap paper and sent through the mail
free, created much excitement in Villa Huegel, the
more so as it was wholly unexpected, the War
Lord never having intimated that an honour of
that kind was in store for his godchild.
In the meantime Bertha had risen to the dignity
of opening her own letters and using her discretion
as to divulging their contents, or not, as she saw
fit, or rather as the War Lord saw fit. This was
strictly opposed to native custom; but isn’t the
King above the law? And certain reports, such
as those ordered to be addressed to Bertha
direct—Franz’s for instance—All-Highest wouldn’t have
communicated to any save himself, not even to
Frau Krupp. Hence his command that the Krupp
heiress keep her own counsel in regard to her
correspondence.
Bertha broke the great seal of the Court
Marshal’s office and her eyes became luminous as she
read the printed words and angular script. She
sat staring at the latter for a minute or two, while
the Baroness, chafing under her impotency,
pretended to be busy with an orange. Finally
Barbara tiptoed behind her sister’s chair and looked
over her shoulder. The fourteen-year-old girl
being well up in Court lore—having seen dozens
of such letters addressed to her late father—applied
herself to the essentials, skipping the merely
decorative lines.
“Christmas and New Year’s festivities at the
Schloss, Berlin,” she read aloud. Then higher up:
“Fraulein Bertha Krupp.”
“Oh, Mamma!” she cried, “we are not
invited, you and I. Isn’t that mean of Uncle
Majesty?” She stamped her foot. “But he
shan’t kiss me when he comes again—see if I let
him kiss me.”
“Hold your tongue, naughty child.”
Bertha spoke with an air of unwonted
authority. She folded up her letter.
“Just see how high and mighty we are!”
mimicked Barbara. “‘Naughty child,’ and what
are you? I shouldn’t wonder if Uncle Majesty
spanked you sometimes, when you are alone with
him; you always come away full of humility to
him and of arro—arro—” (she couldn’t find the
word) “the other thing to us—to Mamma and me,
I mean.”
The Baroness put out her arm as if she expected
the children to resort to fisticuffs. “Barbara,”
she called half pleadingly.
“She will go to her room,” insisted Bertha,
ringing. The butler responded so promptly that
there was no doubt he had been listening behind
the portières.
“Fraulein Barbara’s governess,” Bertha
ordered. And as the man was going out: “My
secretary shall report at once in my council
room.”
“Are you mad?” cried Frau Krupp, when the
curtains had dropped behind the servant. Bertha
seemed so unlike herself—unlike what her child
ought to be.
The Krupp heiress disdained to answer.
“Since I am to be their Imperial and Royal
Majesties’ guest, I must prepare for the honour,”
she deigned after a little while; “in half an hour
I’ll leave for Cologne. You may accompany me,
if you like, Mother.”
The Baroness grew white under the lash of
Bertha’s patronising tone. “You shall not go,”
she said hotly.
“If you will come to the council room you
can see in black and white my authority to go
where and when I please,” replied Bertha, going
out.
Barbara and her mother looked at each other
in blank amazement, the child not understanding,
the mother understanding but too well. Bertha
was lost to her; the supreme egotist had gained a
strangle-hold on her flesh and blood.
With the strange intuition that often moves
children to do the right thing at the right time
when grown-ups are at their wits’ end, Barbara
seemed to divine what passed in her mother’s mind
and, burying her face in the Baroness’s lap, she
sobbed out convulsively words of consolation, of
endearment and unbounded affection. Frau
Krupp bent over the child’s head and kissed her
again and again. “My little girl, my Barbara,
won’t discard Mother, will she?” she said in broken
tones.
“Not for ten thousand Uncle Majesties,” cried
Barbara fiercely; and, as if the words had freed her
from a spell, she rose of a sudden and planted
herself in front of Frau Krupp.
“—— Uncle Majesty,” she said, clenching
her little fists.
Then, overcome by her breach of the conventions,
she ran out of the room and into the arms of
her governess.
Frau Krupp would not have had the heart to
scold Barbara even if she had not run away. “——
him!”—her own sentiments. With such reflections
she leaned back in her great arm-chair,
undecided whether she should follow Bertha to the
council room or not. Her motherly dignity said
“No,” while anxiety for her child urged her to go
to her.
“To think of him playing the bully in my own
house,” she deliberated; “the coward, setting a
child against her mother! But I know what it’s
done for. He wants her like wax in his hand—the
hand getting ready to choke the world into submission.”
The butler entered with soft step.
“Fraulein begs to say that she will leave for
Cologne at 10.30 sharp, and she desires your
ladyship to get ready.”
“Thank you, my maid shall lay out the new
black silk costume. Did you order the horses?”
“Fraulein’s secretary is attending to everything,”
said the butler in a hurt voice. “I don’t
know by what authority he assumes my duties,”
he added.
“He shall not do so again, Christian,” promised
the Baroness.
Three hours later Frau Krupp and Bertha were
going the rounds of Cologne’s most exclusive
shops. The Hochstrasse is too narrow to permit
the use of a carriage; the ladies were followed,
then, by a train of commissionaires laden with
boxes, for Bertha was buying everything in the
line of frocks, costumes and millinery that was
pretty and expensive. Consult her mother? Not
a bit of it. The Court Marshal’s instructions were
silk, velvet, laces; nothing else mattered.
The shopkeepers, of course, knew Frau Krupp;
they had known Bertha familiarly ever since she
was in short frocks. The girl of seventeen had
blossomed into the richest heiress of the world, yet
it would have been almost indecent not to consider
the elder woman first.
So the best chair was pushed forward for the
Baroness, and man-milliners and mannequins fell
over each other trying to win her applause for the
goods offered. The widow of the Ironmaster
smiled and talked vaguely about their merits, but
announced that Bertha was to do her own choosing.
Bertha went about her task like an inexperienced
country lass suddenly fallen into a pot of
money. The girl seemed to be working under a
sense of assertiveness, tempered by responsibility
to a higher power. That higher power regarded
her mother of no consequence. Though of a
naturally dutiful and kindly nature, Bertha
assumed an air of independence unbecoming to so
young a woman.
Indeed her want of respect was of a piece with
her “Uncle Majesty’s” behaviour in a little
Italian town, when his father lay dying there. The
War Lord, then a junior Prince, had crossed the
Alps as the representative of his grandsire, head
of the State, and instantly presumed to lord over
his mother, who was the Princess Royal of an
Empire, compared with which his own patrimony
is a petty Seigneurie.
He arrived on a Saturday night, and at once
ordered divine service for seven o’clock next
morning, an hour suiting his restlessness and most
unsuited to his parent, worn out with night vigils
and anxieties.
However, to humour him, and also to gain more
time to spend with her ailing husband, the Imperial
Mother acquiesced in the arrangement; but
imagine her surprise when in the morning she learned
at the last moment that, at her son’s behest, the
House Marshal had not provided carriages as
usual, and that she was expected to walk
three-quarters of a mile to the chapel.
Meanwhile the official procession of church-goers
had started. At the head a platoon of
cuirassiers, followed by the Prince’s Marshal and
staff. Next, his adjutants and a deputation of
officers from his regiment; his personal servants in
gala livery; finally, himself, walking alone, the
observed of all observers.
The father’s own household was commanded to
fall behind. So were his mother and sisters; the
Prince was not at all interested in them. His
Royal Mother might lean on the arm of a footman
for all he cared.
Here we have an exaggeration of the most repulsive
traits of egotism, self-indulgence, callousness,
coarseness, cruelty and deceitfulness, for, as
intimated, Wilhelm had been careful to keep his
parent in ignorance of the affront to be put upon her.
Small wonder that a person so constituted, having
vested himself with full charge of a girl’s soul
and mind as she approached mental and physical
puberty, upset her filial equilibrium, while her
actions reflected the impress of his own arrogance.
CHAPTER VI
FRAULEIN KRUPP INVITED TO COURT
The Virtue of a Defect—Bertha’s Reception—A
Disappointment
There is a streak of malignity in the best of
women. Maybe the younger girl has nothing but
praise for another a few years her senior, but she
will add that naturally “age” inspires respect.
Helen has the most beauteous eyes, the daintiest
figure, the most transparent complexion, the
softest colour, the most exquisite feet, the
sweetest smile and the most delightful air of
superiority, and when her friend tenders her a box
at the Play she will invite some girl conspicuously
deficient in most of these excellences—human
nature, or just plain, ordinary devilry. So
Bertha’s mother took a sort of grim satisfaction in
the poor taste Bertha displayed in selecting her
Court gowns.
“He taught her to ignore her mother even in
matters of dress; serves him right if her
appearance jars on his sense of beauty,” she said to
herself more than once when superintending the
packing of Bertha’s many trunks.
The Baroness had never visited the Berlin
Court, and her conception of its splendours resided
in her own imagination.
As a matter of fact, the Berlin Court is the
home of bad taste; plenty of fine shoulders, but
draped with ugly and inappropriate material.
Some few petite feet against an overwhelming
majority too large and clumsily shod. Some fine
arms and hands, since such are subjects of the
War-Lord’s appreciation, but faces broad, plain and
uninteresting.
The taste of a man who allows his wife to keep
a bow-legged attendant is necessarily deplorable;
a king permitting that sort of thing, despite
prevailing fashions, is inexcusable.
An anecdote in point.
When, in the ‘nineties, the Medical Congress
sat in Berlin, the learned gentlemen were
commanded to a reception at the Palace, and in their
honour the whole contingent of Court beauties
was put on exhibition.
“Did you ever see an uglier lot of women?”
asked a Russian professor afterwards, addressing a
table full of colleagues. All shook their heads
sadly, depressed by the remembrance of what they
had witnessed.
Into this milieu of hallowed ugliness and
organised ennui dropped the Krupp heiress like a
pink-cheeked apple among a lot of windfalls.
As we know, she was not pretty from the stand-point
of the English-speaking races. Her complexion
was good, but it lacked the Scottish maid’s
transparency; her hair was fair to look upon, but
there are a thousand English girls travelling on the
Underground daily whose glossy tresses are to be
preferred; her figure was a little too full, like that
of Jerome Napoleon’s Queen, Catherine of
Würtemberg, whose finely chiselled bosoms scandalised
the Tuileries when she was scarcely sixteen. She
had the heavy gait of the German woman, and the
vocabulary of them all: “Oh Himmel,” “Ach
Gott,” “Verdammt,” and so forth, a dreadful
inheritance, which even the “Semiramis of the
North” could not shake off after fifty and more
years’ residence in Imperial Russia.
Her Majesty’s maid of honour, Countess von
Bassewitz, went to the station with Count Keller,
a minor gold stick, to receive and welcome Bertha.
Bassewitz was young and pretty—”the only happy
isle in an ocean of inelegancy,” as Duke Gonthier
of Schleswig used to say. Her sole perceptible
defect was indifferent hands, but, strange to say,
this very blemish got her the position at Court.
The War Lord had declared that he wouldn’t
have more of the “hideous baggage” (meaning
Her Majesty’s ladies) that “made his house a
nightmare,” and that the next Dame du Palais to be
appointed was to be good-looking, or must wear a
bell, so that he could keep out of her way. His
Queen, who regards all women through the jaundiced
lorgnette of jealousy, was in despair. In her
mind’s eye she saw the Schloss peopled with
Pompadours, Du Barrys and Dianes de Poitiers.
The War Lord had instructed the Court Marshal
to demand photographs of applicants for the
vacant post, and Countess von Bassewitz’s he
considered the most promising. “Wire her to report
to-morrow morning at eight,” he ordered. She
arrived while the War Lord was busy lecturing his
Council of Ministers on international law, and Her
Majesty saw the candidate first. She couldn’t help
admitting to herself that Ina was comely in the
extreme, and that it would require a vast deal of
intrigue to induce her husband not to appoint the
young girl forthwith. Then a happy thought
struck her. “You may remove your gloves,” she
said condescendingly.
Countess Ina blushed and grew pale in turn;
conscious of her weak point, she was afraid it would
work her undoing.
But, instead, Her Majesty smiled benignly
upon those unlovely hands.
“His Majesty!” announced the valet de chambre.
“Be gloved, my child; hurry.”
The War Lord didn’t know what to make of it
when “Dona” approved of his selection.
“She is mysteriously confiding,” he said to his
crony, Maxchen (the Prince of Fürstenberg). But
he changed his mind when, a week or two later,
he had induced Ina to take off her gloves in his
presence.
The War Lord had instructed Bassewitz and
Keller to treat Bertha “like a raw egg,” saying:
“Her income is bigger per minute than that of all
you Prussian Junkers per annum”—a gratuitous
slap, the more ungenerous since the old Kings of
Prussia gobbled up a goodly part of their landed
possessions, as Bismarck once pointed out to
Frederick William IV.
Berlin pomp and circumstance! Three flags,
paper flowers on lanterns, a much-worn red carpet
leading from the spot where Bertha’s saloon
carriage was to draw up to the royal reception room
in the station.
As Bertha, though Grand-Lady-Armouress-of-the-World,
has no place in the Army List, she must
be content with walking through lines of royal
footmen in black and silver, on which account the War
Lord sincerely pitied the girl. “Twenty marks
for a precedent to endow her with a uniform,” but
even the obsequious Eulenburg failed to discover
an excuse.
Inside the Royal waiting-room: red-plush
furniture, with covers removed, in garish glory; a
bouquet of flowers from the Potsdam hothouses;
a silver teapot steaming; on a silver platter four
bits of pastry, one for each person and one over to
show that we are not at all niggardly—oh, dear, no!
The stationmaster enters in some kind of
uniform, a cocked and plumed hat above a red face,
toy sword on thigh. “The train is about to draw
into the station, Herr Graf, and may it please Her
Ladyship.”
Countess von Bassewitz starts for the door.
“One moment, pray,” admonishes gold stick,
“the noblesse doesn’t run its feet off to greet a
commoner even if she is laden with money.”
Courtiers suit their vocabulary to their lord and
master. Countess Bassewitz is young and hearty.
Never before had she reflected on the sad fact that
Bertha lacked birth, but now that a gold stick had
mentioned it, a mere maid of honour must needs
bow to superior judgment.
So the richest girl in the world was left
standing in the doorway of her saloon carriage for a
good half-minute before their Majesties’ titled
servants deigned to approach. “Will take some
of the purse-pride out of her,” observed Count
Keller.
Then, hat in hand and held aloft, three bows,
well measured, not too low, for high-born
personages’ privileges must not be encroached upon.
“Aham, Aham” (several courtly grunts, supposed
to be exquisitely recherché), “Fraulein
Krupp, I have the honour—Count Keller—Countess
von Bassewitz, dame to Her Majesty. Had a
pleasant journey I hope,” delivered in nasal
accents. In Germany, you must know, it is
considered most aristocratic to trumpet one’s speech
through the nose after the fashion of bad French
tenors chanting arias.
Countess von Bassewitz, amiable and enthusiastic,
spouted genuine civilities. “Fraulein looks
charming!” “What a pretty frock!” “I will
show you all around the shops,” and more
compliments and promises of that kind.
Childlike, Bertha had expected a coach-and-four.
Another disappointment! The carriage at
the royal entrance was of the most ordinary kind—a
landau and pair of blacks, such as are driven about
Berlin by the dozen.
“If you please,” said Count Keller, bowing
her into the coach. She planted herself boldly in
the right-hand corner, facing the horses. Bassewitz
looked horror-stricken at the heiress’s cool
assumption of the gold stick’s place, and to smooth
him over attempted to take the rear seat; but
Bertha pulled her to her side. “Don’t leave me,”
she whispered, with a look upon the ruffled face of
the Count, who marvelled that there was no
earthquake or rain of meteors because he was obliged to
ride backwards, with a “mechanic’s daughter” in
the seat of honour.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE CROWN PRINCE’S PRIVATE ROOM
A Talk with the Crown Prince—Matrimonial
Affairs—Bertha Discussed—The Empress and Her Sons
The War Lord had not taken any notice of
Frederick the Great’s injunction against “useless
beggar princes.” At the time of Bertha’s visit
six of them, ranging from twenty-one to thirteen
years of age, were roaming the palace, and there
was a little girl of eleven besides. Only the eldest
boy was provided for, by the Crown Prince’s
Endowment Fund; the rest were booked to live by
the grace of their father’s munificence and such
moneys as could be squeezed out of the public in
the shape of military and administrative perquisites,
unless they contracted advantageous marriages; for
while the Prussian allows himself to be heavily
taxed for the Civil List, that jolly institution,
grants for His Majesty’s sisters, cousins and aunts
has no place in his catalogue of loyalty.
Talking one day to his heir, the War Lord
broached the subject of a money-marriage.
“But mother didn’t have any money,” the
bête noire, Crown Prince William, had the
temerity to interpose.
“No cash, it’s true; but our marriage
quasi-legitimatised our acquisition of Schleswig-Holstein,
and those provinces are worth something.”
“Perhaps I had better marry Alexandra or
Olga Cumberland,” suggested young William,
“so that the possession of Hanover can no longer
be disputed. These girls have coin besides.”
“Don’t speak of them—there are reasons.”
“Or a Hesse girl of the Electoral Branch.”
“And turn Catholic like Princess Anna,” cried
the War Lord furiously. “Shut up about that
Danish baggage. I myself will get you a wife.
Trust father to find you the comme il faut
wife—comme il faut in every respect: politics, family,
religion and personal attractiveness, for we want
no ugly women in our family.”
The Crown Prince opened his mouth for a pert
reply, but William forestalled him by an imperious
gesture.
“I am preparing a message for the Ministerial
Council.”
In the evening William invited his younger
brothers—Eitel, Albert, Augustus and Oscar—to
his rooms, providing a bottle of beer and two
cigarettes per head. Having attained his majority and
consequently succeeded to the Dukedom of Oels,
the Brunswick inheritance, he might have offered
the boys a real treat, champagne and tobacco ad
lib., but such would have been against Prussian
tradition, which stands for parsimony at home and
display where it spells cheap glory.
“Joachim wanted to be of the party,” said
Augustus.
“And tell Mamma all—not if I know myself.
It’s time the kid was in bed anyhow,” said the
Crown Prince with fine scorn, for Joachim was
only thirteen years old at the time.
“He will tell all the same,” suggested Albert.
“And will get a thrashing for his pains.
Besides, I shall withdraw my allowance of three
marks per week. Tell him so; that will settle the
mamma-child.”
“He shall have it straight from the shoulder;
you can rely on that, Duke of Oels,” said Eitel.
“Oels,” repeated Eitel, “why didn’t you inherit
Sibyllenort too? The idea, giving Sibyllenort
to those sanctimonious Saxons.”
“Rotten, to be sure. But old William was
eccentric, you know, like his brother, the Diamond
Duke,” said the Crown Prince.
“The Diamond Duke; wasn’t he the chap who
made some Swiss town erect him a monument,
omitting the proviso that it must not tumble
down?” asked Albert, who sets up as a scholar.
“Precisely so, and the monument is dust.”
Prince William shook with laughter. “But
that’s not the question before the house.” Willy
assumed the oratorical pose favoured by Herr
Liebknecht, the Socialist. “Boys,” he continued,
actually using the German equivalent for the
familiar term, “what do you think? Father
presumed to find me a wife—me!”
He repeated the personal pronoun three or four
times with increasing emphasis, while beating the
board with his clenched fist—a very good imitation
of the War Lord himself.
“I am not beholden to him financially like you,
not at all,” cried the Crown Prince. “He can
keep his miserable fifteen thousand thalers per annum.
“No,” he added quickly, after reflection; “it
will be the greater punishment to take his money.”
The Crown Prince continued: “And if father
dares propose wife-finding for me, what will he do
to you, boys? If he has his way, you won’t marry
the girl of your choice, but some political or
military possibility. There is only one way to
prevent it,” insisted the Crown Prince. “We must
all stand together, declaring our firm determination
to do our own wooing without interference
from father. He will plead politics, interests of
the Fatherland. But for my part, I won’t have
father impose a wife on me, even if the alliance
gained us half of Africa or Persia.”
“And I won’t marry a Schleswig,” said Eitel.
“Nor I a Lippe, no matter how much Aunt
Vicky cracks up Adolph’s family.”
“Now then, all together,” declaimed the
Crown Prince. “We, Princes Wilhelm, Eitel,
Albert, Augustus and Oscar of Prussia, solemnly
swear not to have wives imposed upon us for
reasons of State or politics, father’s threats,
entreaties and personal interests notwithstanding.”
The boys repeated the impromptu troth word
for word. “Shake on that,” said Wilhelm,
holding out his hand. And the agreement was so
ratified. Then another round of beer on the Duke of
Oels.
As the Princes were draining their Seidels—conspicuous
for the emblem of the Borussia Students’
Club of Bonn University on the cover—a low
whistle was heard outside.
“The mater,” whispered Oscar.
“Push the Seidels into the centre,”
commanded the Crown Prince, helping vigorously.
He pushed a concealed button and the centre of
the table with its contents disappeared through an
opening in the floor, while another set with glasses
of lemonade and cakes shot into its place, the floor
likewise filling up again.
The Princes were petrified with amazement.
“Duplicate of the Barbarina table de confiance,”
explained the big brother; “had it secretly copied
and installed without my Grand Master being the
wiser.”
This sort of table was invented by Frederick the
Great for tête-à-tête confidences with Barbarina,
the famous Italian beauty.
The sight of the lemonade made the Empress
radiant. “And I had been told that you were up
to all sorts of tricks,” she said apologetically. And
to the Crown Prince: “I am so glad you are
setting your younger brothers a good example.”
“Always, mother, always,” vowed Wilhelm.
“Believe me, if these boys were as abstemious as
I, they would save fortunes out of their lieutenant’s
allowance.”
“I came to prepare you for our visitor, Fraulein
Bertha Krupp,” began the Empress.
“A mere kid, isn’t she?” cried Eitel in his
most blasé air.
“Don’t let your father hear that,” said the
Empress severely; and again addressing the Crown
Prince, she continued: “She is quite a young lady,
well educated and excellently well brought up.
Father wants us all to be particularly nice to his
ward—treat her as one of the family.”
“I say, mother,” interrupted Eitel, “is there
to be anything in the way of a matrimonial alliance
between a Hohenzollern and the granddaughter of
the Essen blacksmith? If so, mark me for the
sacrifice. Judged by her photos, Bertha is a
bonnie girl, with plenty of life; wouldn’t I have a
thousand and one uses for her money. To begin
with, I would buy myself a hundred saddle horses
and a gold wrist-watch, such as English officers
wear, also a yacht.”
“Not a word about mésalliance!” The Empress
had grown red in the face, and Eitel made
haste to apologise. Putting his arm around his
mother’s shoulders, he kissed her on the cheek and
pleaded: “Mother, fancy his Royal Highness,
Prince Eitel Frederick of Prussia, marrying
anyone not of the blood royal! Of course I was joking.
Just tell us, Willy and me, what ought to be done
about that little commoner due to-morrow, and
big brother and I will see to it that your commands
are obeyed to the letter.” This with a threatening
look upon the younger boys.
“I thought father’s injunction to treat her like
one of the family would suffice. It means that you
must not let her see the gulf between such as she is
and Royalty. Show her the sights, but don’t boast
of anything we’ve got. Father says she can
duplicate the Schloss and Neues Palais, all our palaces
with all they contain, without considerable damage
to her purse.”
“But if none of us is going to marry the little-big
gold mine, and as papa is her guardian and can
do as he likes with Bertha, what’s the use of
truckling to her?” asked Augustus, who has a logical
mind.
The Empress who, as a rule, is not good at
repartee, immediately replied as if she had foreseen
the question. As a matter of fact, the War Lord
had thoroughly coached her in what to say.
“Augustus,” she replied, “of course your
father’s will is law with Bertha as with everybody
else; but in this case he would rather coax than
otherwise, for in a few years, you see, she will attain
her majority, and might insist upon taking the
bit between her teeth, if in the interval she had
been driven too hard.”
“Eminently correct,” said the Crown Prince.
“I endorse every word you say, Mother, and if
these youngsters don’t want to understand they
needn’t. They will be made to do as you
suggest.”
CHAPTER VIII
STORIES OF COURT LIFE
Musical Honours for Bertha—Bertha in a
Temper—Luncheon at Court—A Tantalizing
Procedure—A British Experience
“Call out the guards when Fraulein Krupp drives
up,” ‘phoned the War Lord to the officer du jour
from the Council Room between writing a treatise
on a scrap-of-paper policy and making an outline
of his speech, “An Appeal to Royalism,” later
delivered at Königsberg.
To have fifty men under a lieutenant exercise
their feet on a given spot to the tune of fife and
drum for the benefit of a person not born to the
purple seems to William the highest honour
conferable, a delusion bred by militarism. In the same
spirit, the War Lord of Bismarck’s time sent
his Chancellor the patent of lieutenant-general.
“That won’t buy me a postage stamp,” remarked
Bismarck.
The Iron One would have preferred a pipe of
tobacco, while his War Lord went about for three
days patting himself on the back for his act of
generosity and telling everybody within reach of
the good fortune which, thanks to his grace, had
befallen Bismarck, “really a mere civilian.”
Bertha was too young to see the absurdity of
the gratuitous manoeuvre, “the sausage intended
to knock the side of bacon off the hook,” as they
say in Hamburg. It cost the War Lord nothing,
made healthy exercise for the soldiers, and Bertha,
still a child in experience and mode of thought, was
impressed when Count Keller, pricking up his ears
at the sound of the drum like an old army horse in
a tinker’s cart, shot out of his seat, raised his hat
and bowed low.
“Signal honour, upon word, Fraulein;
unprecedented—almost,” he added in an undertone.
And Countess von Bassewitz, rolling her eyes
in loyal ecstasy, squeezed Bertha’s arm. “Majesty
must be exceeding fond of his godchild to treat you
like an equal—almost,” she too added.
Drum and fife still made for ear-splitting
discord when Count Keller handed Bertha out of the
carriage. His lordship, by the way, was now
congratulating himself on having been deprived of the
seat of honour. Small doubt, if he had taken it, it
would have been reported to the War Lord, and
Majesty, bent on showering Royal honours on the
commoner, would have been furious.
Two lackeys at the door, more at the bottom
of the stairs, still more on the first
landing—men-servants seem to be the only commodity lavishly
provided at the Berlin Court.
“Kammerherr, the Noble Lord von ——”
(mentioning some Masurian village) “commanded
to the sublime honour—Fraulein Krupp’s service”
(long intervals between half-sentences to show that
the speaker was really a Simon-pure Prussian
aristocrat) “beg to submit—with Fraulein’s
permission—I will conduct Fraulein to her apartments.”
Bertha did not understand half the titled
personage trumpeted in nasal cacophony, but a
word or two from little Bassewitz explained. Then
ceremonious leave-taking, as if it was for years;
assurances of “unexampled pleasure experienced,”
of “more in store,” and “Majesty is so graciously
fond of Fraulein—she ought to be so happy”; in
fact, there wasn’t a girl “in the wide, wide world
so favoured,” and more polite fiction of the sort.
Up two flights of stairs; corridor thinly and
shiningly carpeted; electric bulbs few and far
between. Ante-room, saloon and bedchamber. In
the first threadbare, red plush furniture. The
bedchamber was hung in cretonne of doubtful
freshness.
“I trust Fraulein’s slightest wishes are
anticipated. Princess von Itzenplitz last had these
apartments, and was graciously pleased to express
her highest satisfaction,” boasted the kammerherr.
Her Grace of Itzenplitz may have done so, but
the richest girl in the world was not inclined to
put up with such third-class hotel accommodation!
When the kammerherr had bowed himself out
Bertha sat down on the edge of the bed and had
a good cry. Received like a princess, and housed
like a charwoman! But she wasn’t going to stand
it, not she, Bertha Krupp.
Her assertiveness, newly acquired, but all the
stronger for that, made her give a vicious pull to
the bell-rope. She hardly noticed that it came off
in her hand when a lackey, scenting baksheesh,
responded.
“My servants, quick!” she ordered.
“Beg Fraulein’s pardon, they haven’t yet
arrived from the station.”
“Didn’t Count Keller provide a conveyance
for them?” she demanded peremptorily, hoping
that her words would reach that worthy. “They
must be sent for instantly.”
There were sounds of carriage wheels in the
courtyard below.
“Wait,” cried Bertha; “there they are at
last!” She handed the servant a small gold coin.
“For the driver; let him keep the change.”
The footman withdrew with a broad smile. No
doubt he robbed the cabman of half the generous tip.
Torrents of “Ohs!” and “Ach Gotts!” when
the Essen contingent came in. They had waited
more than half an hour for the expected royal
carriage, and then in despair took the only public
vehicle available.
Bertha’s tirewoman inspected the apartment
while giving vent to her outraged feelings.
“Darling Fraulein can never sleep in that bed. It’s as
hard as rocks.”
“I know,” said Bertha. “But what is to be done?”
“I will send Fritz to fetch in the car your own
bed, all except the frame,” decided the tirewoman
after reflection.
“But wouldn’t that be an insult to my hosts?”
Bertha asked.
“Rubbish! The late Queen Victoria always
carried her bed along, even when she came to visit
her own daughter in Berlin. Besides, we can plead
doctor’s orders,” said Frau Martha; and when the
heiress still seemed doubtful she added: “On my
own responsibility, of course; you don’t know
anything about it. The Baroness will back me up,
I’m sure.”
The Krupp footman was accordingly dispatched,
and returned two hours later with the
bed-furnishings.
Meanwhile Bertha, all in white silk—according
to the Court Marshal’s command—was waiting
upon Her Majesty, who fondly kissed her and
inquired most affably after her mother—a regular
set of questions afterwards repeated by the War
Lord, all his sons, and daughter. They are not
very original, these Hohenzollerns.
The Krupp heiress, who, as intimated, was first
inclined to be rather proud that the guards were
called out in her honour, loathed herself for that
weakness ten minutes after penetrating the Imperial
circle, for the incessant reference about that
piece of pomp made by the royal family and their
titled attendants was simply maddening.
“Unheard-of honour”; “Must remember it to the
end of your days”; “Most unique spectacle in
Europe”; “How thoughtful of Majesty”; “Too
bad madame, your mother, didn’t witness it,” were
among the least stupid comments assailing Bertha’s
ears on all sides. The War Lord himself went into
raptures of delight, being as pleased with his
surprise, as he called it, as a schoolboy with a new top,
and then forestalled possible further speculations
on the matter of his dispensations of honour by
announcing that, in honour of Bertha, he would
partake of the family luncheon.
More effusions of delight, more congratulations
showered on Bertha: “He must love his godchild
very dearly”; “He wouldn’t have done that for
the Emperor of China.” …
Luncheon at Court! Bertha had pictured to
herself a grand function: courtiers in gold lace,
swords at their side; ladies in grand toilettes;
swarms of servants in showy liveries; a dozen or
more courses, under the direction of the Lord
Steward of the Household; golden dinner service
à la American multi-millionaire; “heavenly
music,” and so forth.
Alas! And Bertha had brought her appetite
along, the appetite of a growing, young, country
lass from a food-worshipping household!
The ladies were dowdy, the gentlemen in
ordinary uniform or dressed in abominable Berlin
taste; over-loud music, with which the War Lord
persistently found fault with both time and
execution. The average Kapellmeister “had not the
shadow of a perception” of the composer’s artistic
intentions. His views were “plebeian,
necessarily—maybe his mother was a washerwoman, poor
wench”; and, after all, the War Lord himself
must conduct to “get proper results.” Of course,
everybody was “convinced” of that.
“Majesty” was too “lenient.” It was “truly
heartrending” to hear music so “butchered,” etc.
“En famille,” they called it, and Bertha sat
at the end of the table between two cadets, younger
sons of a principality not much larger than
Richmond Park.
“Fraulein,” whispered one, forgetting, under
the impetus of youthful confidences, to speak
through his nose; “Fraulein has dined
beforehand, of course?”
“Why, no,” she replied innocently, “and I
am powerfully hungry.”
“Then you will stay so”—this from the
loquacious petty prince.
At that moment the soup was put before the
War Lord, and he fell to demolishing it at starving
bricklayer’s rate. When he had about half finished,
the family and guests were served, and when he
was through, his plate was removed and so were
the rest. Bertha had had two spoonfuls, and the
petty prince, who had gulped down four or five,
grinned broadly.
Fish, entrée and fowl were offered, and
ruthlessly yanked away in the same rapid gunfire
fashion. To an empty stomach this teasing with
coveted food was uncanny!
“I hope you have dined well,” said the
Empress, after the party adjourned to the “Cup
Room” for coffee. “Was the service satisfactory?”
“Excellent,” lied Bertha.
The coffee had an abominable oily taste.
“From my colonies,” explained the War Lord.
“Mighty good, when one gets used to it.”
But Bertha noticed that while his guests were
served en bloc, he brewed coffee for himself and
wife in a silver Vienna machine.
Desultory conversation: church building, social
reform, Bismarck, orphans, knitting socks for
soldiers’ children. Ill-concealed yawns. The
War-Lord would have a game of billiards, and then
off to the park on Extase (his favourite saddle-horse).
“Ride or drive, which do you prefer, Bertha?”
he said to the Krupp heiress, going out.
“As Uncle Majesty commands,” lisped the
young girl, very much embarrassed.
“I promised Louise a sleigh ride. Perhaps she
would like to go with her,” suggested the Empress.
“All right. Two horses and outrider.”
An outrider—something, to be sure, but going
to the park “with that kid.”
Princess Victoria Louise was eleven then, and
intellectually no more advanced than a child of
four. Poor child! her father’s ear trouble seemed
only one of the dreadful inheritances that stamped
her a sufferer from Hohenzollern disease. And
Bertha had fondly imagined that she was to be
classed with grown-ups!
“Did Fraulein enjoy her lunch?” asked the
motherly Frau Martha, when summoned to help
her young mistress change for the outing.
“Plenty to eat, but no chance to eat it,”
replied the Krupp heiress sullenly. “Get me a
sandwich or two, or I shall faint.”
“We were told,” wailed Frau Martha, “that
lunch was dinner for servants, and this was the
menu: half-bottle of small beer each, yellow peas in
the husks, three inches of terribly salt boiled beef,
three potatoes each, two carrots, and no bread.”
The Krupp servants, it seems, were no better
treated than those of the Prince of Wales (afterwards
King Edward) and the untitled attendants of
other royal highnesses and majesties, those of the
King and Queen of Italy, for instance.
In the ‘nineties it was common report in Berlin
diplomatic circles that the Prince of Wales kept
away from Berlin because he “could not induce
any of his favourite servants to be of the party,”
these favourite servants being the same whom
the then Court Marshal, von Liebenau—a drill
sergeant with a gold stick—designated “as the
hungriest and most impudent set of menials” he
ever had the misfortune to encounter in the
exercise of his duties.
Why the epithets?
His Royal Highness’s valet and his grooms had
politely asked for eggs and bacon for breakfast, and
they would not have cold pork and potato salad
for supper, even though that be the Empress’s
favourite menu to go to sleep on.
And those “impudent Englishmen” had the
temerity to ridicule the solitary bottle of small beer
graciously allowed them by His Prussian Majesty;
and about this and more the first groom of His
Britannic Highness and the Berlin excellency had
an exciting passage of words, memorised,
rightfully or wrongfully, as follows:
The Englishman: “The other attendants and
myself cannot possibly worry along on the breakfasts
furnished, rolls and bad tea; and salt pork
and lentils for dinner is not what we are used to.”
The Prussian Bully: “Nor do you seem to be
used to household discipline. But I will have no
more of your English impudence. I will inform
the Prince of his servants’ unruly behaviour.”
The Chief Groom: “Thank you. His Royal
Highness will then engage board for us at a hotel,
and there will be an end to starvation diet.”
On another occasion pease pudding, pork, roast
potatoes and beer were sent to the rooms of Queen
Marguerite’s chief tirewoman for dinner, at the
Neues Palais, a couple of hours before she was
expected to dress Her Majesty for a State banquet.
The dame refused it, and sent for the Empress’s
chief titled servant, Baroness von Hahnke, stating
in plain terms that, unless she were furnished with
food suitable to her rank and station, she would
drive into town to dine, even at the risk of being
late for Her Majesty’s service.
The Baroness, frightened out of her wits, told
the Empress the facts, and the Imperial lady gave
Count Puckler (responsible for the sins of the
kitchen) a terrible talking-to before her other titled
servants. At the same time she ordered a suitable
dinner for the Italian lady from her own cuisine—a
dinner the extras of which upset the budget for
some weeks to come.
CHAPTER IX
WHAT THE MAID SAW AND HEARD
Revelations—Sauerkraut and Turnips—What the
Dachshunds Did
FRAU MARTHA to FRAU KRUPP,
née BARONESS VON ENDE.
BERLIN, SCHLOSS, Christmas.
GRACIOUS LADY,—May it please the Gracious
Lady, we arrived safely and sound, and Fraulein
just started off on a sleigh ride with the little
Princess, who is as foolish as the poor Mueller
orphan in our hospital, but, mind, she had
something warm before I let her go.
Fraulein don’t want me to say nothing, but
duty compels me. Gracious Lady, I must
tell you that Fraulein got up still hungry from
table and ate four ham sandwiches, three
doughnuts and a cream tart, which I bought for her
with my own money (no matter about that) ere I
let her go. After I made her warm inside, I made
her warm underneath, and put on her the beautiful
sables the late Gracious Gentleman, God rest his
soul, got given to him in Russia. With all respects
to Majesty, the little Princess, in her cheap iltiz
(patois) garment, looked like a mere rag doll
compared with our Bertha, please excuse me, Gracious
Lady.
Gracious Lady will forgive an ignorant girl, but
the three of us, Fritz and Lenchen and me, call
the Schloss Starvation Hall.
Except Fraulein and Fritz and Lenchen, I
haven’t heard a decent word since we left home.
They just snarl and hiss. Because Fraulein is called
the richest girl in the world, they fetch and carry
for her, like the mealy-mouthed menials they are;
but if it wasn’t for the tips, I don’t think they’d
do a thing for her.
Fraulein won’t tell you, so I do, that the three
of us rode to the Schloss in a hired coach, because
Uncle Majesty was too mean to send a carriage for
us—and to think of what at home we always
provide for his twenty and more attendants and the
fine time we give them!
I see now why they are always so greedy in
Essen. They never get such meat and vittel as we
give them, in Berlin or Potsdam; they hardly have
enough peas in the husks and potatoes in the
jackets.
Gracious Lady can’t imagine their meanness in
the Schloss. I am told there isn’t enough linen to
give Majesties a daily change. And how the
hundreds of menservants keep clean, with only two
bathrooms, and hot water which must be carried
up four flights of stairs, I can’t make out. As to
the maids, they don’t.
But the poor things can’t help it; all they get
is two marks fifty (half a crown) a day for from
twelve to sixteen hours’ work, and not a cup of
coffee or a spoonful of soup in this fierce, cold
weather. And think of it, they don’t get their
wages weekly, as the law allows, but on the third
day of the month. The poor wretches haven’t even
got a place to eat.
I won’t say a thing about Fraulein’s rooms.
Thought Gracious Lady would be pleased to
know that I am looking after the child, trying to
keep her in good health, no matter what trouble
and expense, and I remain, with respects from
Lena and Fritz, the Gracious Lady’s most obedient
servant,
MARTHA.
P.S.—I had to send for towels to the car, for
the ones given to Fraulein were as hard as boards
and there were only two, and the maids said they
would be changed every second day; and I beg the
Gracious Lady’s pardon, but myself and Lenchen
and Fritz were given two small huckaback towels
to last through the week, and a tin wash-bowl no
larger than those we feed the Great Dane out of at
the villa, and no pitcher or foot-tubs. What are we
going to do?
MARTHA.
Letter from FRAU MARTHA to HERR L——,
Superintendent of the Household, Villa Huegel.
BERLIN, SCHLOSS, Christmas.
HONOURED HERR L——,—This Schloss is a
big pigsty, excuse the hard words, and I can tell
Gracious Lady only half our troubles. There is
no bathroom for Fraulein, no running water—our
poorest cottagers in Essen are better off. It takes
about half an hour to get a cupful of lukewarm
water from the kitchen, and the maid looks daggers
if you don’t tip up the tin every time.
If we could only get Fraulein’s car into the
courtyard (there is plenty of room) and live in it,
we would be all right, for Fraulein’s meals I could
cook on the new-fangled kitchen range, which
makes no smoke, and she could have her bath
regularly.
Gracious Lady will have told you about Fraulein
eating at Uncle Majesty’s table. What do I
say—eating? Fraulein comes back every time half
dead of hunger. Bertha says it’s the quick serving,
but I had a talk with the stewardess last night,
and she told me things. The allowances even for
Majesty’s table, she said, are cut so fine, there is
never enough for all, family, officials and guests;
and, to cover up the shortness, the courses are
served quickly as if shot from the new machine-gun
I have heard Herr Franz talk about. Some
of the guests get skipped, others are given just a
mouthful, and part of the food is carried out again
for the hungry wolves of lackeys.
Mean, now, isn’t it, Herr L——? But we,
I mean Fraulein, has to put up with it while here.
As to grub allowed to Fritz, me and Lenchen, it’s
sauerkraut and turnips and herrings and black
bread; but we don’t mind, as we can buy outside.
But I can’t take Bertha into eating places, and
make up for what she goes short at the royal table;
she has to live on sandwiches and cake for the most
part. Other arrangements as bad. I would be
ashamed to tell you of the servants’ accommodations:
back-stairs, rotten-smelling oil lamps. We
won’t be comfortable until we get back home once more.
For Fraulein’s bed I got the linen from our
car, but as we took just enough for a night’s run
and back you must send some more. I wanted to
save you the trouble, and asked the housekeeper
to have some washed. Not here, she said; too
few in help, no extra tubs, no place to dry.
When I offered to pay for the soap, that seemed
to tickle her immensely, but she had to refuse in
the end.
Honoured Herr L——, tell the servants at the
Villa they don’t half know how well they are off.
I never did until coming across all this
high-sounding stop-a-hole-in-the-sieve business.
You cannot imagine, worthy Mr. Superintendent,
too, what funny things there are too—the
War Lord’s dachshunds, for instance, all jaws
and stomach. They look like those yellow-skinned
truffle Leberwursts held up by Frankfurters,
and—what do you think?—have been taught to
snap and nibble the calves of people of quality
only.
Mine they leave severely alone, thank God;
but I told Fraulein not to put on too many “lugs,”
lest they mistake her for a “von.”
Of course I can’t swear to it, but they do say
that “Uncle Majesty” has a way, by a mere look,
of setting the dachshunds on people he dislikes;
they must be as smart as Herr Director-General’s
French poodles, I reckon. Anyhow, they seem
to know when “Uncle Majesty” is cross with
someone and go for him.
I heard you tell Herr Franz of meeting Count
Posadownk in Bielefeld and what a great man he
was. And surely he is a man with a lot of
authority, but here no one is bigger than a ten-pin
before “Uncle Majesty.”
George, the chief Jaeger who stands behind his
chair at table and knows everything and
everybody, has become quite friendly-like with me.
Well, George says Count Posadownk “gets the
War Lord’s goat” every time he reads those
long-winded reports of his. But the War Lord
must listen, says George; “part of Majesty’s
business to hear the ministers’ gab.” And listen
he does—the Lord knows how he manages—but
ten minutes is his limit; after hearing someone
else talk approaching a quarter of an hour, he is
“ready to explode,” says George.
By that time the Count is just warming up,
and you would think nothing short of an
earthquake could stop him. But the dachshunds are
as good as the fire-spitting mountain we saw in
Italy—or was it Switzerland?
A wink from “Papa”—”raising or wagging
an ear,” says George—shows the dachshunds that
Posadownk ought to make himself scarce, and in
a twinkling they get ready for attack round the
short clothes and silk stockings.
While the Count talks his head off, first one,
then the other bowwow sets up a dismal howl.
Posadownk raises his voice, the dachshunds yelp
more loudly, and Majesty, pretending to call them
off, makes the hullabaloo worse still.
Just the same the Count is crazy to finish, and
the dachshunds go on inspecting his legs. Maybe
he gets in a good kick or two, but the hounds are
experts in pulling at silk stockings without drawing
blood. Once or twice his Excellency went away
with stockings in ribbons.
The same thing happened to others having
business at the palace; the wonder is that no one
poisons the beasts. If they bit me—a dose of
something strong for them, you bet.
Remember, nothing about Bertha-and-nothing-to-eat
to Her Ladyship.—The Herr Superintendent’s
very humble servant,
MARTHA.
CHAPTER X
THE ENTANGLING OF ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND
Discussing the Archduke—”Intoxicate with Promises”—A
Look at the Map—The War Lord’s Miscalculation
“What do you think of number one?” asked the
War Lord, when the door had closed upon Bertha
at the old Chancellor’s Palace.
The diplomat performing the duties of deputy-head
of the Empire is tall, inclined to corpulence,
grey moustached and bright eyed. He knocked his
heels together like a recruit trembling before the
drill-ground bully. “Majesty refers to Fraulein
Krupp?”
“Quite correct.”
“She has the benefit of Majesty’s personal
guidance—there’s no more to be said,” declared
von Bülow, with conviction. “But who may
number two be?”
“Not quite the figurehead of number one.
I refer to the gentleman coming to see you.”
“The Archduke? I was going to beg your
Majesty for instructions concerning His Imperial
Highness.”
“Plain Franz Este, if you please; his incognito
must be taken very literally.”
“At your Majesty’s orders.”
“He is number two,” emphasised Wilhelm;
and while pretending to look out of the window
replaced his left hand, which had slipped, upon the
hilt of his sword. Then, fully accoutred, he
resumed: “Number one furnishes my arms—
“And those of the world,” put in the
Chancellor.
“That’s where you and all of you are
mistaken. My gun works arming my enemies? As
intimated, number one helps to disarm my
enemies.”
When he saw blank amazement on the Chancellor’s
countenance, he added: “Don’t ask how,
for in this case purpose sanctifies the means.
Number one, then, is my right arm, while number
two I intend to make one of my men-at-arms.”
Another pause for effect.
“I am all ears, Your Majesty,” said von Bülow.
“Well, then, bear this in mind: Franz Ferdinand
has to be indulged despite his marriage to
the little school marm. He is a fool, of course.
Well, the Chotek being an encumbrance to
Franz Ferdinand, we must make her into a quarry
for our own good. What do you think?”
“I am afraid I lack capacity to follow the
trend of Your Majesty’s grand ideas this
morning,” replied the Chancellor, remembering that
he had been chosen, not to think, but to carry out
orders.
“Well, as you know, I persuaded Francis
Joseph to wink at the Chotek indiscretion. The
decree elevating the ex-governess, and making her
brats of princely estate, ought to have been dated
from Berlin instead of Ischl, for it was I who placed
that plum in Her Ladyship’s pie, the Olympian
Emperor notwithstanding. Hence Prince
Hohenberg—for Franz Ferdinand is more or less his
wife’s husband—is beholden to me for such
recognition as his marriage received, and Sophie will
not let him forget it either. Accordingly, I call
him ‘number two’ in my combination.”
“If the children of this union——”
“Disunion,” interrupted the War Lord,
applauding his irony with a loud guffaw.
“Disunion,” von Bülow obediently repeated,
“lay claims to the throne, is it Your Majesty’s
intention to support them?”
“All Archdukes look alike to me,” replied
the War Lord with fine disdain; “all fools, bigots,
or both. Rudolph was an exception. At all
events, it is to our interest to give Herr von Este
to understand that, if he is determined to make
Sophie both Empress of Austria and Queen of
Hungary, Germany will support his mad scheme.”
“Your Majesty thinks Hungary will accept
her as Queen?”
“She has to, for a morganatic marriage is a
real marriage according to Hungarian law.”
“Which suggests the possibility of grave
internal dissensions,” said the Chancellor.
“Quite so; to Pan-Germanism this little
governess is worth five army corps. If her
marriage causes a split in the Dual Monarchy, why,
we will annex German Austria and leave the
Hungarians to die, if they choose, ‘pro Regi nostro,
Sophia.’ But that’s quite a long way off. What
concerns us at present is getting solid with that
chap. I know what you want to say: A brute, a
beast. But so long as the Chotek is satisfied, I am.”
The latter in response to an indication on von
Bülow’s part that he meant to put in a word or two.
“When I come to think of it,” continued the
War Lord, “neither Alexander, nor Charlemagne,
nor Napoleon were what you call gentlemen
overflowing with the milk of human kindness.
As I see it now—my plans are not quite matured,
of course—but this is certainly beyond question or
dispute: As my ally in the conquest of the world,
a namby-pamby partner would be of confounded
little use. Besides, for sentiment I have
Victor—darling fellow!”
Saying this, the War Lord gripped his sword
so hard that the point of the scabbard threw a
statuette of the King of Italy off an étagère,
smashing it.
“There he goes,” he sneered, kicking at the
broken china; “uncertain commodities at best,
these Dagos. Always fishing outside the three-mile
limit, and everlastingly ogling with England
and France.”
“Majesty is pleased to under-estimate King
Victor’s devotion to German interests,” ventured
von Bülow warmly.
“When you were in Rome you used to sing a
different tune,” said the War Lord severely.
“But revenons à nos moutons: Franz Este is a
bit of a mutton thief himself”—Wilhelm laughed
heartily at his quibble—”very fond of Hungary
and Bohemia. We must intoxicate him with the
promise of great things to be accomplished by the
union of German arms—German-Austrian, of course.”
“May I remind Your Majesty that Franz is
rather a fanatic in religious matters?” suggested
the Chancellor.
“I was coming to that,” snarled the War
Lord—it simply maddens Wilhelm to find that
someone, beside himself, has an idea in his head.
Whether the religious aspect had occurred to him
before we don’t know, but he pounced upon it
with vulture-like gusto, adopting it in toto as it
were.
“You will say to him: ‘Brothers in arms and
in faith—the Protestant and the Catholic Church,
or the Catholic and the Protestant,’ I don’t care.
Remind him that Prussia offered the Pope an
asylum before the invasion of Rome by the
Italians.
“Yes,” he continued, “curse the Italians as
much as you like; promise him Venice and the
Balkans up to the gates of Constantinople.”
The War Lord pressed a button underneath a
large table fronting the Chancellor’s desk,
whereupon the mahogany top disappeared and another
marked off in geographical divisions, representing
the map of Europe and part of Asia, replaced
it—the Kriegsspiel; Europe in battle-array.
The Kriegsspiel—War Game—shows the military
strength of each country in plain, movable
figures, horse, foot and artillery, navy and aircraft—the
figures liable to correction from time to time;
the exact location of the forces is apparent at a
glance too.
The same applies to fortresses, letters designating
the origin of the artillery equipment.
Above each country wave its colours in the
shape of a tiny silk flag, fastened to bead-headed
pins, easy to stick in anywhere.
The War Lord pulled out a drawer and took
a handful of German flags, but before using any a
new thought struck him.
“Send for Kast,” he commanded curtly.
Adjutant Baron Kast appeared as if catapulted
into the room.
“I forget the lettering combination—I want
‘k’ for Belgium. You are sure the other
equipments are marked according to latest reports.”
“At Your Majesty’s service.”
The adjutant fixed the ‘k’ as required and
stood at attention.
“I will call in case I need you further.”
The officer was drawing backwards towards the
door when the War Lord stopped him.
“One second. I want a cross fixed to letter ‘k.'”
Kast, a martinet without ideas of his own, a
mere mannequin moving on the strings of
discipline, looked blank astonishment.
“If it can’t be done, send for the mechanic;
he shall fix the new combination overnight.”
“May I try, Your Majesty?”
Kast succeeded in quick order.
“Why did you hesitate, if it’s so easy?”
demanded the War Lord.
“With Your Majesty’s permission, I was
wondering whether it was your pleasure to have a
cross placed against all the ‘k’s’ on the map.”
The War Lord looked at von Bülow, who
dismissed Kast by a look.
“Out of the mouths of fools and sucklings,”
misquoted Wilhelm under his breath, while a
cruel sneer played about his lips. Then, to the
Chancellor, aloud: “Inborn stupidity or low
cunning?”—referring to Kast.
“The first, Your Majesty, the first. Your
Majesty will agree, when I say that I myself do
not see the significance of the cross.”
“You will—in time,” said the War Lord
brusquely. “But to continue.”
He took a German flag and placed it on the
spot marked Rome. “The Holy Roman Empire
of German nationality,” he said.
“Which Voltaire designated as neither holy,
nor Roman, nor an Empire,” remarked von
Bülow drily.
“Time’s passed, time was, time is,” quoted
the War Lord, “or rather will be.” For awhile
he remained in silent reverie, then turned upon the
Chancellor suddenly. “You asked the other day
how to mark the English Channel. Gott! it’s
worth five million men to Edward. No, don’t
mark it at all; for if the distance between Calais
and Dover can be bridged only half-way by our
guns—no impossibility, you know—that strip of
water won’t amount to more than a few army corps.”
Again the War Lord remained in deep
thought. “Noah’s ark,” he demanded after a
while.
The Chancellor pulled out a drawer at the side
of the Kriegsspiel table. “At Your Majesty’s
service.” The War Lord picked figure after
figure, dropping them on the floor, until he got
hold of a small white object.
He held it between two fingers, eyeing it
curiously; then moved it deliberately across the
Channel, holding it aloft, and planted it on the
spot marked “London.”
“The Dove of Peace,” he said; “for in
London we will dictate peace to the world. Tell
Franz.”
CHAPTER XI
THE CROWN PRINCE ON A LARK
A Gallop with the Crown Prince—On the Way to Surprise
Letter of BERTHA KRUPP to FRANZ.
BERLIN, SCHLOSS.
DEAR FRANZ,—When I promised to write, I
expected to put a school-girl’s ability at composition
to the test, being half afraid that my description
of Berlin and the Court might not pass muster
with so severe a critic as my dear half-brother.
But something has happened that makes living in
the shadow of the throne and royal intimacies and
reviews and State balls, even the Grand Council
of the Knights of the Black Eagle, look
insignificant.
Listen! Yesterday after luncheon the Crown
Prince came to me with a mysterious air.
“Bertha,” he said, for he is quite familiar, “you
look like a good, sporty girl; let’s fool those fogies,
and have a lark all by ourselves.”
You may be sure, Franz, I was frightened, and
looked it I suppose, for he added quickly: “Upon
my word as an officer, your Mamma may know
about it.” And then he unfolded his plan.
“I am tired to death of the baggage that
attends our rides, watching with as many eyes as
a centipede has feet; this afternoon I will lend you
one of my swift English hunters, and I will ride
Circe, a devil of a horse that can outdistance
father’s Extase any day. Flottwitz—you know
he is Master of Horse—promised to give the others
the slowest plugs in the stables, and we will humour
their dog-trot as long as the public gaze is upon us.
But once beyond the dear public’s reach, off we
are, rein and spur. Don’t be afraid; the grooms,
too, will be mounted on grandmothers; they won’t
catch us.”
I felt quite relieved. “It will be jolly,” I said.
The Crown Prince laughed immoderately.
“What a little innocent you are,” he cried;
“running away is only the beginning. As soon as we
are out of sight, we will turn and gallop to Castle
Bellevue. There we will dismount, and I will punt
you across the river. It is but a stone’s throw to
the gipsy’s cottage, and that is where I will take you.”
I became apprehensive again. “I am afraid
of gipsies,” I faltered.
“Afraid in my company?” cried Wilhelm. “I
forbid you to be afraid of the very devil when I am
around. I am your cavalier,” he added; “you
must do as I tell you.” Then his tone became
coaxing again. “Don’t you like to have your
fortune told, Bertha? She is a ‘bird at it’—makes
your flesh creep and all that sort of thing.”
“But does Auntie Majesty approve?”
“Bother, Mother; I am not under her thumb,”
he answered, and I thought it very horrid of him.
Well, Franz, everything came off according to
programme. For a young girl from Essen to ride
down The Linden with the Crown Prince, masters
of horse, maids of honour, chasseurs and grooms is
lots of fun, and I don’t know that I ever enjoyed
anything so much as the throngs of people in the
streets and on the sidewalk cheering and waving
hats and handkerchiefs. But, of course, they
thought me a Royal Highness or some sort of
princess, the very least.
“Can’t you ride astride?” whispered the
Crown Prince as we passed through the
semi-shadows of the Brandenburger Thor.
“What is that?” I asked, and somehow got
the feeling that his question was not the correct
thing. So I touched my horse with the spur and
cantered away. Wilhelm joined me quickly.
“Dog-trot now,” he said, and we jogged along
like Herr Director-General’s family on their old
brown mares.
After passing Castle Bellevue, promenaders
became few and far between, and then the
long-legged hunters increased the distance between
ourselves and the rest of the party very considerably.
Suddenly Wilhelm—he asked me to call
him by his first name, but I always prefix his
title—whispered: “Now, ventre à terre.” Setting
the example he jumped a hedge, I after him—a fine
race we ran for the next ten minutes.
Then back to Bellevue. We galloped right
through to the water’s edge, and were half across
the river before the stablemen had caught the
horses.
Lieber Franz, you must excuse; I can’t write
a word more. Too tired and too excited. So good
night for to-night and pleasant dreams.—Always
your good sister,
BERTHA.
CHAPTER XII
THE FORTUNE TELLER SEES BERTHA IN A HAZE
OF BLOOD
Mother Zara Speaks—Ghosts of Infamy—What the
Blackbird Foretold—The Crown Prince Stands Aloof
BERTHA to FRANZ.
DEAR FRANZ,—The gipsy Wilhelm and I
visited is not at all like the ones that occasionally
come to Essen at fair-time or by way of caravans.
You know we always thought them impostors and,
small doubt, they were, for the same yarn had to
do for everybody: the tall, dark man, that would
come into one’s life, was conjured up even for
little Barbara at the rate of ten pfennigs.
Mother Zara is a hundred years old if she is a
day; a face the colour of an old green-back
American bank-note crumpled up—thousand and one
crow’s-feet to the inch. Dress: rusty black silk,
edged with moth-eaten sable; sugar-loaf hat,
filigreed with zodiacal signs; white mice following
her wherever she goes.
This much I observed while waiting. She was
in an adjoining room and, as I observed through
the glass door, in no hurry to meet her visitors,
even though the servant had recognised the young
master of Bellevue Castle.
Meanwhile the Crown Prince was walking up
and down, smacking his high boots with the
riding-whip. I believe he was looking for a mirror—vain
boy—and was furious at not finding one. Young
Wilhelm affects to be as nervous and impatient as
Uncle Majesty, and won’t sit down a second if
there is room to move about.
At last the door opened and the stooping figure
of the clairvoyante appeared on the threshold, a
blackbird perching on her left shoulder and half a
dozen white mice circling round her feet, or riding
on the train of her dress.
“Mother Zara,” cried Wilhelm advancing,
“I brought my cousin——”
She shut him up with an imperious gesture.
“Hold your tongue, young braggart, for this is
serious business.”
She spoke in a high-pitched, authoritative
voice, and I tell you, Franz, I was all a-tremble
when Zara fixed her eyes upon me—eyes that
looked you through, like the eyes of a sorceress
you read about in the story books.
“What do I see?” she murmured to herself,
drawing figures on the sanded stone floor.
“A deuced pretty girl,” remarked the Crown
Prince gallantly.
The clairvoyante shook her stick at Wilhelm.
“Leave us alone,” she cried; “I want no interference.”
When the door had closed Zara turned upon
me like some wild thing, and I tell you, Franz, I
wished myself at our little bower at Villa Huegel,
playing dominoes with you or Mamma.
“Who art thou?” she cried. “So young, so
gentle, so kind of aspect, yet I see thee in a haze of
blood.”
She walked around me in a circle, dragging her
terrible crutch, the mice capering and vaulting.
“I can’t make it out,” she kept mumbling;
“looks the German, but here men do the ruling,
and her power for destruction—— Where does it
come in?”
Of course I was too frightened to utter a word.
I merely gazed upon my tormenter and trembled.
The soothsayer drew her garments around her
bones and settled down on a low stool before the
hearth. With her crutch she stirred the ashes,
separating them from live coals and addressing each
heap in turn as if they were human beings. As I
perceived with horror, poor me was the subject of
her monologue.
“Keep to your hell-hole, Mother Toffana,”
she muttered, sending a half-dead coal into the
corner (I ought to tell you, Franz, that I have
been reading Alexandre Dumas of late, otherwise
I wouldn’t have understood half the things she
said). “Toffana, you are not in it with this child,”
she continued. “And Joanna of Naples, husband-killer
and warrior, the number of men and women
and children that died by you and for you is
nothing compared with the hosts she will send to
slaughter.”
“Madame la Marquise de Brinvilliers,” she
said to a live coal, drawing it nearer, “come and
feast your eyes on this girl. You did your work
all right for undertakers, but were a pitiful slacker
just the same.”
She rose and bowed ceremoniously.
“Your Majesty,” she mumbled, pointing with
her crutch to a glowing ember, one of several
detached from the rest. “You once waged war for
seven years on a stretch, yet the number of
Prussians you killed, added to that of your own people
that perished in battle and by disease, may be
expressed in six noughts. And,” turning to other
debris, “your record, Catherine of Russia, is quite
as inadequate as Maria Theresa’s compared with
the prospects for manslaughter held out by this
young lady!”
After an ominous silence: “Sheba, Elizabeth,
Semiramis, aye, ye furies of the White Terror who
dined off Lamballe’s liver, miserable failures all of
you——” She did not finish, but the end of her
crutch continued to poke fire and ashes, separating
and piling up, moving and sweeping along larger
and again smaller quantities like figures on a
chessboard.
She seemed dissatisfied, and as the minutes
passed, her speech, or rather her mumbling,
became more and more disconnected. Suddenly
she drew her stick across the piles, levelling the
lot. “No use,” she cried, turning round and
addressing me; “I can’t get anything out of them.
Are they holding back, or is Zara losing her
cunning? But I will know,” she added fiercely.
“Who art thou, girl?”
I was speechless with fright, and all engrossed
with her combinations as Zara was, she scarce
noticed my silence and lumbered on regardless.
Maybe, too, no reply was expected.
“Not the War Lord’s wife,” she mused.
“Augusta is the mother of many children, they
tell me, nor——.” (I didn’t catch the rest, it was
a jumble of mumblings.)
After she became articulate again, I heard her
say: “Oceans of blood have been poured out.
But what am I saying? She is only a child.”
Then out of her black silk mantle she drew a
pack of cards, threw them on the table, and,
resting her right hand heavily on the crutch,
studied the pasteboards anxiously for a while.
“Cursed mystery,” she whispered. Then to
the bird: “Jezebel, help!”
The black thing hopped on the table and scattered
the cards with his feet. Then he picked up
one with his beak and presented it to his mistress.
“A town in flames,” said Zara after scrutiny.
More cards offered by the bird!
“A thousand baby-hands raised above the waves!
“A tumbling cathedral!
“Bodies piled mountain high!
“Women, children and old men for breastworks!
“A graveyard-ditch a hundred miles long!
“Death lying in wait on the floor of the ocean!
“Fire from the heavens,” read Zara, and
again and again her shrill voice rang out, recording
horrors even more dreadful.
When the bird of ill-omen had offered the last
pasteboard, Zara shook my arms with a fierce
gesture. “Fiend incarnate, thy name and
station!” she yelled.
Probably Wilhelm had been listening. “How
dare you touch Fraulein Krupp,” he demanded,
as, running in, he stepped between me and the
sorceress.
At the mentioning of my name, a look of
triumph came into Zara’s face.
“My cards never lie, nor do the embers,” she
proclaimed. “The burning towns, the wails of
babies rendered fatherless by your works, the waste
of centuries of culture, the smoke, the fire, the
calling upon all resources of nature for the
wholesale annihilation of life—five letters cover it:
K-R-U-P-P.”
The feelings setting my head awhirl must have
been pictured in my face, for eventually even this
fury of wrath was moved to mercy; yet like the
spirit that ever denies, Zara’s pity took a cruel
turn.
“Never fear,” she said, with a profound
curtsy; “it is written that the oceans of blood you
will help spill will not even soil the hem of your
dress.
“A world in arms, every mother’s son turned
upon every other mother’s son, shooting, stabbing,
bombing, suffocating. Cities laid waste,
countrysides desolated, brave men changed to vultures,
honest men to thieves—your work, Bertha Krupp!
But the War Lady remains scathless!
“Blood’s a peculiar liquor—means death to
those from whom it flows, and profits to her that
forges the bullets!
“Chimborazos of dead bodies: fathers, brothers,
nephews and uncles; excellent manure, and your
dividends, little girl, going up by leaps and
bounds!
“Towns in ruins—your ruins, Bertha, but they
will have to be rebuilt. More millions in your
coffers!
“Ten thousands of miles of railways destroyed.
Look out for big orders, Bertha!
“The world groaning under unheard-of loads
of debts—debts created that Essen might flourish.
Splendid opportunities for investment, eh?”
She continued a while longer in the same cruel
vein, her basilisk eyes glued upon mine—I couldn’t
get away, try as I might—while Wilhelm, my
self-proclaimed cavalier, did naught to help me.
Indeed, I had to endure her abuse till Zara herself
became tired of hurling invectives, and turned
upon the Crown Prince with: “Twenty marks,
please. I have wasted enough time.”
Then, like an imprisoned wild thing, seeing the
open gate, I fled.
Oh, Franz, what does it all mean?
BERTHA.
CHAPTER XIII
“WE WILL DIVIDE THE WORLD BETWEEN US”
Dazzling the War Lord—Bartering Kingdoms—Juggling
with the Church
Franz Este, masquerading for incognito purposes
as Duc de Lorraine, was a tall, closely-knit
man, no more at home in mufti than a gorilla in
pyjamas. A bronzed face, disfigured by the
Habsburg lip and an air of disdain, one would have
picked him out of thousands as a person to avoid!
His speech was a cross between a military
command and the snarl of an angry dog when addressed
to persons beneath his rank, and against such the
physical advantages he boasted were ruthlessly
exploited. Franz was impervious to heat or cold,
hence the officers of his household and his servants
had to endure both in the extreme without proper
protection.
“If the master can do without an overcoat, or
wear a close-fitting uniform when it is a hundred
in the shade, why not you, menials?”
He had a passion for drill and for slaughter. A
day on the parade ground, meddling with the mere
outer film of things, seemed to him the pinnacle of
military achievements. He never stalked, or took
risks in the chase; the proud deer and the
miserable hare alike were driven before his gun in vast
numbers that he might pump lead into them,
turning forest or plain into shambles.
He went to visit their Prussian Majesties with
the fixed intention of dazzling the War Lord with
a programme of petty regulations about military
customs and appearances to be introduced at his
enthronement. A slanting row of buttons was to
be set in a straight line; another was to be lopped
off altogether. Yes, indeed, he was considering,
too, a new movement in the goose-step. And
those Hungarians! They had little respect for the
essentials of military obedience; but, with His
Majesty’s advisory help, he would pound it into
them—yes, pound it!
Gentle methods might do for women when
they are decidedly pretty, but not for the people
as a whole, etc.
Music to the War Lord, who feeds on regulations
and petty tyrannies as a boa constrictor—if
the whole can’t be masticated at a gulp, why, leave
the rest for another “try.”
Brothers in spirit and in arms!
“Franz,” said the War Lord after luncheon,
enlivened by French champagne with a German
label—the Court Marshal’s way of encouraging
home industry to the naked eye: German products
only for German Imperial palates, but beware lest
a certain august taste be displeased! A bit of
unpatriotic deception, rather than face such an
eventuality!
“Franz,” said the War Lord, after that fruitful
and thought-quickening luncheon, “some day
we will divide the world between us—pope-kaisers
both of us.”
“Pope?” gasped Franz, his mind tugging at
the Jesuit swaddling clothes that he never really
outgrew.
“You know,” insinuated the War Lord-tempter,
“there is but one way to re-establish
rulership by divine right as on a rock of bronze:
impregnate it with sacerdotal authority. I am
already Chief Bishop of Prussia; the Lutheran
popeship of the world is my game, as yours should
be the Roman Catholic popeship.”
“What about the Holy Father?” suggested
the Jesuits, using Franz as a speaking-tube.
“Holy fiddlesticks,” laughed the War Lord.
“As one of the English Henrys put it: ‘I will be
damned ere an Italian parson dictates to me in my
own realms.'”
The War Lord bowed ceremoniously. “Hail
thee, spiritual and mundane lord—true Emperor
of Slavs, Czechs, Magyars, Poles, Russians,
Servians, Bulgarians and Montenegrins.”
“But Italy—you promised me Italy,” muttered Franz.
“Correct, in exchange for German Austria!”
said the War Lord.
“Do I have to give up Vienna?”
“Rome is a more celebrated place, and if it gets
too hot in August, Petersburg will make a splendid
summer resort. There is Prague and Budapest
besides. I thought you liked the Hradschin?” he
added gaily.
When Franz still refrained from entering into
the spirit of the proposals, the War Lord opened
a miniature safe on the top of his desk.
“Have a ‘genuine,’ same as Edward smokes.
Have to keep them in a burglar-proof safe—those
thieving lackeys, you know. You have the
same trouble at Bellevue” (the Austrian heir’s
Vienna town house) “I suppose.”
“God punish the scoundrels—yes,” replied the
pious Franz, and, accustomed to the cheap and
nasty output of the Austrian tobacco monopoly
with its endless stogies, helped himself eagerly.
“A mark apiece,” boasted Wilhelm, like a
Jew commenting on early strawberries.
“Italy being a sort of apanage to the Emperor
of the Slavs”—more bowing and scraping—”you
wouldn’t care to have a rival court on your hands,
would you? And that’s what the Vatican will
always be so long as it is allowed to exist.”
“You would abolish it?” cried Franz, alarmed.
“Not completely; I would retain the Holy
Father as a sort of Christian Sheikh-ul-Islam,
yourself to be the real responsible head of the
Church.”
“The Pope is not a married man.”
“Alexander VI. was, and also some others.
Besides, the Tsar whom you are to succeed as
orthodox pope never was a stickler for celibacy.”
“Orthodox pope?” echoed Franz, his Jesuit
blood a-tingle.
To his pietist understanding the mere mention
of a rival Church was as a red rag to a bull, and no
one realised that condition of his mind more fully
than the War Lord. But would he allow the even
tenor of these pourparlers to be disturbed by the
conscientious scruples of the surly individual
smoking his echte? Not he!
Conscientious scruples, indeed, and in world
politics too! He had not previously given the
subject any thought, but on his desk lay a letter
marked: “On the Service of the Holy See”—a
happy coincidence and a suggestion.
The papal breve dealt with nothing more
momentous than the shifting of the protectorate
over the Christians in Turkey, but the mysterious
word State-secret covers a multitude of lies.
“My dear Franz,” said the War Lord, weighing
the Pope’s letter in his hand, “the problems
you seem to approach with fears and trepidation
are fully treated in this document. However,
without the Holy Father’s consent, I dare not
reveal his intentions. But this much I can say on my
own responsibility: after we get through with
Russia, there will be no orthodox question. The
orthodox Church will have to unite with the
Catholic——”
The late Whistler would have loved to draw
Franz’s face while the future Emperor of the Slavs
listened with covetousness and fanaticism, the
zealot’s ardour and the brute’s vindictiveness
written large in his usually stony face.
“Will have to make submission to Rome,” he
interrupted, pounding the table.
“As you like, King of Rome.” To offset the
Duke’s holy fervour, the War Lord affected a tone
of calmness utterly at variance with his ideas.
“The coming union of the Catholic and
Orthodox Churches——” he continued.
“The absorption of the schismatic Church by
the only true Church,” insisted Franz.
“Will make it particularly important for you
to have the office of Pontifex Maximus in addition
to that of Emperor and King,” said the War Lord.
“I’ll let Bülow talk details.”
“After consultation with my father confessor?”
asked Franz anxiously.
“Why not unfold our plans to a council of
Archduchesses and the whole priest-ridden pest?”
cried the War Lord, momentarily forgetful of his
rôle. “I beg your pardon,” he added quickly;
“I was quoting Bismarck. What I meant to say
is: that our pourparlers are strictly confidential—not
a word to any one, confessor, Francis Joseph,
or the Princess herself. I have your word as an
officer?”
Never was a word of honour more reluctantly
forthcoming than that of the prospective Emperor
of the Slavs.
CHAPTER XIV
GETTING EVEN WITH THE WAR LORD
The Hungarian Nero—The Episode of the Mouse
Emperor of the Slavs, King of Rome, Avenging
Angel of the Schism and its Grand Lord
Destroyer—Pope even—though he had misgivings as
to the propriety of the latter title—what prospects
for the son of the degenerate Karl Ludwig—and
the War Lord footing the bill! A Protestant,
true enough, but his friends, the Jesuits, held that
the purpose sanctifies means, whatever their
character.
How they would rejoice at the news!
But his word as an officer! Pshaw! The War
Lord calling himself “all-wise,” “all-seeing,”
etc., had been fooled for once by the
simple-minded Bohemian, for Franz’s left hand was on
his back when parole d’honneur was demanded,
and he lost no time gripping his thumb with the
other fingers and pressing it hard.
Mental reservation! That little matter was
settled, and in most approved style. Honi soit qui
mal y pense.
A while later Franz asked to be confessed.
“Not while your soul is in the state of
disgrace,” pronounced Father Bauer with impressive
solemnity.
Franz’s bold front melted away like butter
before a blast furnace. “Pray confess me, your
reverence!” he cried, terror all over his face.
“After due reflection,” was Bauer’s niggardly
consent. “Your Highness will retire to the
oratory now.”
And like a schoolboy ordered to bare his skin
for a birching, the Emperor of the Slavs—so
proud, so adamant, so haughty before the
War-Lord—went into his bedroom, where his prie-Dieu
stood in front of the miniature travelling altar that
accompanied His Highness wherever he went.
In respect to absolute submission to the clergy,
Franz rivalled Charles and Ferdinand of Spain; he
retained, too, the utmost respect for the persons
of the reverend gentlemen who dominated him by
virtue of their priestly office.
On his part, Franz came from the oratory a
much chastened Prince. Bauer was waiting to
hear Franz’s report of his interview with the War
Lord—or as much of it as the heir thought well
to divulge at the time being, for the breach of faith
he had been absolved beforehand. After all,
while Bauer had full charge of Franz’s personal
conscience, so to speak, the real powers behind
the proposed Slav throne was the Cardinal
Archbishop of Vienna, the Papal Legate and the Czech
black aristocracy.
The latter, indissolubly wedded to Franz’s
interest by his marriage with the Chotek, was his
chief support in the Dual Monarchy. Hungary
had labelled him Nero, the Germans regarded him
as a renegade, while Trieste and the Trentino
suspected him of harbouring treachery against the
Motherland.
That he was wedded to the idea of the restoration
of the States of the Church was a foregone
conclusion, and the re-establishment of the
Austrian Archdukes—who forfeited their Italian
thronelets under Victor Emmanuel II.—would be
the logical sequence.
“Of course, there is the Triple Alliance,”
faltered Franz.
“Not at all binding,” decided Bauer, “since
one of the signatories is under the ban of the
Church, and the other” (with a mock bow before
a painting of the War Lord) “a heretic.”
Franz reverently kissed the Jesuit’s hand. “A
relief, a priceless relief of grave conscientious
scruples,” he said warmly. “Thank you, Father
Bauer.” Then, giving his voice quite an Olympian
intonation: “We have no further commands for
you to-night.”
Franz Este swore lustily when he discovered a
red silk nightgown under his pillow. After a
Vienna haberdasher had told him that Alexander
of Servia had worn a night garment of this colour,
he had banished them from his wardrobe, intending
to use the supply on hand for presents.
Franz tugged viciously at the crystal knobs of
the rococo chest of drawers, pulling one to the
ground and dislocating the handles of others.
“Confound it! All red, Alexander-red—red as blood!”
An ill omen? A thorough fanatic, Franz was
the most superstitious of men. However, as
subsequent events showed, in this case superstition
was the mother of horrors unparalleled. Alexander’s
fate had been sealed eight months before,
when the red-nightgowned King and his Queen
were slaughtered in their bedchamber; but
somewhere among the Balkan principalities the plot
that eventually did away with Franz and his
Duchess might have been hatching even
then—who knows?
The taciturn, soured, cruel Franz forgot about
the Alexander-hued nightgown when he prepared
to report the day’s events to his wife, for he loved
Sophie. He used a small table at the foot of the
big rococo couch for a writing-desk, and as he sat
there, facing the silvered canopy with China silk
curtains falling from a crown held aloft by cupids,
his face recalled the features of a French soldier
who had been condemned to death for a series of
crimes, and who, to his judges and fellow-men, had
boasted of his utter lack of feelings.
The soldier had never loved anyone, neither
parents nor friends, neither woman nor man,
neither animal, nor money, nor precious things.
He hated them all, and his only aim in life was
destruction. But when he lay in the sands,
bleeding from a dozen wounds, as ordered by the court
martial, a little mouse was seen to emerge from the
sleeve of his tunic, went capering up the prostrate
form, and glued his nozzle to the man’s mouth.
And with his last breath the apostle of hate kissed
the tiny rodent.
Like the trooper, so Franz, the man who
spurned a nation’s love, was not entirely barren
of sentiment. He had a tender spot in his heart
for Sophie, even as Sophie, mouse-like, loved the
man who made a point of being hated. Human
nature: even Nero loved Poppæa once.
CHAPTER XV
“AUNTIE MAJESTY” AND BERTHA
A Royal “Commercial”—Blood and Benevolence
“My dear child,” continued Auntie Majesty,
“you ought to thank God on your knees for
permitting you those grand opportunities to do
good.”
“I hope I am duly grateful, Auntie Majesty.”
“And, of course, next to God, it is your Uncle
Majesty to whom you are most indebted.”
Bertha curtsied with the readiness peculiar to
German girls, whose left knee seems always on
the point of “knixing,” which word signifies an
arrested attempt at kneeling. Since Napoleonic
times kneeling before royalty has gone out of
fashion, even in Spain, where the Prime Minister
was formerly obliged to play chess with the King
while down on his knees, and woe to the excellency
who attempted to sit on his haunches.
Bertha assured Auntie Majesty how much she
appreciated the War Lord’s efforts on behalf of
the Krupp works. Her own father could not have
done more. Truly wonderful orders are coming
in, the Herr Director-General had informed her
this very morning. East, west, north and
south—everybody seemed to want Krupp guns now.
“All your Uncle Majesty’s doings,” insisted
the “crowned auntie.” “His ambassadors and
consuls in all parts of the world have orders to
drum up trade for you, and those that do not
succeed pretty soon find themselves A.D. (retired),
they say.”
“I hope not!” cried Bertha, emphasising the
last word. “I don’t care for people to lose their
positions on my account, and will speak to Uncle
about it.”
To say that Her Majesty was amazed at the
outburst is putting it mildly. She had been given
to understand that Bertha was tractability personified,
and here she was talking in “Majesty’s” own
vein, a thing Augusta had never dreamt of doing
in all the years of her married life.
“Fraulein Krupp,” she said very seriously,
“shall have to report to your mother what you
have said.”
“Mamma has nothing to do with affairs of that
sort. They rest entirely with Uncle Majesty and
myself!” said Bertha.
What language, and to her! And from a mere
child, too! Auntie Majesty opened her mouth for
a sharp rebuke, when she remembered what the
War Lord had said about a certain lady.
“Vulgar,” had been Her Majesty’s estimate.
“Non olet,” corrected Wilhelm. “If her
words are offensive, let the jingle of her millions
drown them; if she insists upon eating peas with
her knife—why, remember that Croesus ate with
his fingers.”
And Count Wedell (Minister of the Royal
House) had only recently told her (with a
thousand apologies, to be sure) that Bertha’s income
was larger than the War Lord’s.
Besides, “Auntie Imperial” had promised a
portion of Bertha’s vast income to “her God.” She
uses the personal pronoun in connection with
the Deity without blasphemous intention, of course,
nor does she allow herself to speculate on the War
Lord’s theory that the Hohenzollerns control a
god of their own, and that another god is keeping
a benevolent eye on Prussian baby-killers.
Augusta Victoria decided, after reflection, to
give the subject a turn favouring her pious
schemes.
“Remember what the fathers of the Church
have said: ‘Women have no voice’—they
certainly should not meddle in administrative
matters.” Her Majesty affected a smile. “Leave
these to your guardian, and, when at times his
measures seem harsh or incomprehensible,
acquiesce nevertheless, for in the end it’s results
that count.”
The Queen of Prussia is a good woman at
heart. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, but a million men
put under the sod roused no squeamish sentiments;
for, of course, if the War Lord makes war, it is for
God’s greater glory, and did he not tell the recruits
the other day that it was inexpressibly sweet to die
for him? So let the million perish.
Auntie Majesty was careful not to mix blood
and iron with her arguments in favour of
gun-making and explosives. If Essen manufactured
Nuremberg toys or Munich honey cake, she could
not have used more innocuous terms referring to
its death-dealing industry. At any rate, it must
be kept up—nay more, its output must be doubled
and trebled to continue the charities and works of
benevolence inaugurated by the Krupp family on
the present grand scale and to extend them
farther, as Bertha had planned.
It all sounded good to the young War Lady.
With Zara’s perturbing admonitions still fresh in
her mind, she welcomed justification of the course
mapped out by Uncle Majesty, and the conference
closed to mutual satisfaction.
Augusta Victoria received the promise of an
annual subscription of 50,000 marks for her
church-building schemes, and Bertha that of Her
Majesty’s hearty co-operation in Essen’s
social-work campaign. More than that, Her Majesty
would come to inspect Bertha’s hospitals, schools,
old people’s homes and asylums.
CHAPTER XVI
HOW FRANZ FERDINAND WAS FOOLED
Vienna’s Opinion of the Kaiser—Afternoon Tea
for the War Lord—Playing Up to Ferdinand—When
Britain Slammed the Door—The Archduke is Not
Satisfied
“There goes our Lady of the Guns,” whispered
the War Lord to Franz Este, as they stepped
from the private gate into the palace yard, where
their entourage, already mounted, was awaiting
their advent.
“The Krupp heiress I heard about? You are
her godfather, are you not?”
“More!”
Franz was so taken aback that he forgot for
the moment to swing his right leg, whereupon
Umberto, objecting to such left-sided proceedings,
reared and would have thrown him, had not two
energetic grooms pounced upon the charger.
“Be careful, it’s Italy you are riding,” chaffed
Wilhelm, when the cavalcade was safely under
way. Quite a stately procession: masters of horse
in scarlet and gold; the adjutants on duty,
outriders, grooms and a platoon of gendarmes.
“How so Italy?” queried Franz.
“Victor Emmanuel’s father used him on his
several visits to Berlin, and he has been reserved
for heavy-weights like yourself ever since. A
wilful beast, even treacherous.”
“Hence well named,” said Franz sententiously,
at the same time locking his thighs more
closely. “As to the Krupp girl, what were you
going to say?”
“First tell me what Vienna thinks of my
connection with Krupp affairs.”
“You won’t take offence?”
“Not a bit.”
“And won’t be annoyed even if it smacks of
lèse-majesté?”
“Rot and nonsense. Go on.”
Franz drove his brute nearer to the War Lord’s side.
“They do say,” he whispered, “that you sort
of kidnapped Bertha against her mother’s will, and
are now conducting the business solely with an eye
to dividends.”
“They think me Leopold II.,” quizzed the
War Lord, alluding to the business methods of
the late King of the Belgians. “Excellent; a lie
to be encouraged! But as a matter of fact—entre
nous, of course; strictly entre nous—I acted upon
the principle of jus primae noctis. In olden times,
when the vassal died, the liege lord assumed charge
of the property for the dead man’s eldest son,
presumably his lordship’s, which action forestalled
wastage of the estate. As liege lord of Prussia I
deemed it my duty to prevent the disintegration
of the Fatherland’s war machinery, and had myself
appointed Bertha’s guardian, with full power to
act. Of course, the Baroness does not like that;
neither did the vassal’s widow cherish the idea of
becoming a chattel.”
“And is she easily managed?” asked Franz,
as he dealt the fractious Umberto a vicious blow
between the ears.
“Not that fashion,” replied the War Lord,
when he had caught up with his guest; “flattery
is the thing with girls. That and a certain amount
of unctuousness, backed by divine right, I found
quite an irresistible combination.”
“You mean to say that you flatter where you
can command?” asked Franz.
“Certainly not,” replied the War Lord, pulling
himself up straight. “I merely insinuate that
my wishes with regard to the running of the plant
are her own; consequently, I do as I like at
Essen.”
The War Lord raised his riding-whip in the
direction of the Master of the Horse, trotting
behind, whereupon that functionary gave spur and
galloped ahead. Thirty seconds later the advance
guard wheeled right and left, drawing up at the
sides of the avenue, and leaving a clear space for
Wilhelm and Franz.
“May they enjoy the dust we are kicking up,”
laughed the War Lord, as they pressed on. When,
on their return to the palace, the General Staff
building was in sight, Wilhelm consulted his
wristwatch. “Gottlieb’s tea hour,” he said quite
incidentally. “Suppose we stop and have a cup!”
He referred to Count Haeseler, sometimes
called the German Galliffet, though as a cavalry
officer in active service his epaulettes never knew
more than two stars. However, subsequently he
won much fame as an administrator and organiser,
and, by catering to the War Lord’s love for
mounted rifles, dragoons, hussars and uhlans,
enjoyed rapid and steady advancement. Still,
having a will of his own and small hesitation to
state it when goaded to opposition, he might never
have achieved the supreme honour of field marshalship
had he not been in his youth the favourite
adjutant of the War Lord’s “sanctified uncle,”
the Red Prince Frederick Charles, father of the
Duchess of Connaught.
In the War Lord’s opinion, Frederick Charles
ranked next to his Herr Grossvater (Mister
Grandfather), and whenever Wilhelm became too
insistent on some strategic madness of his own,
Haeseler had but to say: “That’s one of the
things His Royal Highness was most strenuously
opposed to,” to cause the Imperial nephew to
cave in.
Of course, the meeting with Franz Este had
been prearranged, but Haeseler played the
surprised to perfection: Too bad Imperial Highness
was incog.; otherwise he might run over to Posen
to inspect his regiment, the Tenth Hussars. He
(Haeseler) had just had that pleasure. Schneidig,
grossartig (cutting, immense), and Haeseler
knocked his heels together. “Horses, men,
uniforms, drill, perfect as new-laid eggs.”
“Hard boiled, I hope,” said the War Lord;
and all three shook with laughter.
“And what may my marshal have been
doing?” asked the War Lord.
“Reading up the testament of Frederick the Great.”
“Any relation to the testament of Peter the
Great?” asked Franz anxiously.
“Imperial Highness is pleased to jest,” replied
Haeseler. “Peter the Great’s last will, so called,
was an invention of Napoleon to justify his making
war on his friend Alexander, while the third
Napoleon revived the fraud for purposes of the
Crimean campaign.”
In his surprise the War Lord, who knows
history only as taught in school, dropped a bit of
marmalade on his white cloth tunic.
“Unless you can prove these statements, you
will have to pay for cleaning this,” he said,
looking sharply at Haeseler.
“May it please Your Majesty, I will consult
the card index.” The marshal pulled out a drawer.
“Here it is,” he said: “‘Napoleon Auteur du
Testament de Pierre le Grand,’ and here is another
volume: ‘Les Auteurs du Testament du Pierre le
Grand.'”
“Authentic?” queried the War Lord.
“Abundantly so. Shall I send these volumes
to the Schloss?”
“No; I have no time for reading olle scharteken”
(ancient tomes).
“In that case I’ll want them,” said Franz, who
was of a studious nature. “Have you got
anything more on the subject?”
“Only an essay printed in the Augsburger
Allgemeine Zeitung.”
“Send that too.” The Bavarian town being
a stronghold of Catholicism, Franz evidently
concluded that anything printed there was akin to
gospel.
“But you referred to the testament of
Frederick the Great.” The War Lord’s voice
betrayed impatience, and Haeseler made haste to
explain, i.e. repeat his lesson, as it were.
“May it please Your Majesty and His Imperial
Highness.”
“‘Herr von Este,’ if you please,” interrupted
Franz.
“Herr von Este,” repeated the marshal
obediently, bowing low, “the most precious
inheritance come to us from the hero of the Seven
Years’ War is his admonition that Prussia must
correct her coast line. He had intended doing so
himself, but time and opportunity were unfavourable,
and so his plans for blazing a road to the
oceans are awaiting our initiative. By grasping it
we will carry out the last will of Frederick the
Great.”
“And what were his late Majesty’s plans?”
asked Franz.
“To move Prussian mile-posts up to the
Channel and ocean, to plant ourselves in the sea
area between the English, French and Belgian
coasts, the waters through which most of the
world’s trade must pass,” cried Haeseler
enthusiastically.
“But that would mean annexation of Belgium
and Holland,” demanded Franz.
Count Haeseler, having instructions not to
answer questions of that kind, bent over a series
of maps illustrating the history of Frederick the
Second, while the War Lord, disregarding the
question, commanded curtly: “The strategic
points, please.”
Count Haeseler traced them at the end of a
blue pencil:
“King Frederick planned a quick march from
the Rhine through Belgium, forcing Liége, then
the capital of an ecclesiastical principality, and
pouncing upon Nieuport on the North Sea. Next,
he intended to attack Dunkirk and Gravelines.
Then to Calais. His final objective point was
Paris, of course.”
“Never heard of such a plan,” said Franz.
“Because at Frederick’s time these territories
were an apanage of the Habsburgs,” volunteered
the War Lord. “Proceed, Haeseler.”
“I can only reassert what I have submitted to
Your Majesty more than once—namely, that King
Frederick’s plan is as sound to-day as at the
time——”
“When Prussia presented England with
Canada and made secure her Empire in India,”
interrupted the War Lord. “And isn’t she
grateful for the inestimable services rendered by
us with a generous heart?” he continued,
warming his thighs and his wrath at the gas logs.
“Won’t allow us to acquire coaling stations in any
part of the world. Shuts the door in our face in
Africa, Asia and America, and supports with
treasure and blood, if necessary, any scheme
intended to impede Germany’s progress, territorially
and economically.
“We depend for our very life on foreign trade,
yet England would restrict us to the Baltic and a
few yards of North Sea coast.
“Franz,” he cried, rising and holding out his
hand, “I will turn the Adriatic into an inland lake
for the Emperor of the Slavs if you will help me
secure the French Channel coast line, the
north-eastern districts and the continental shores of the
Straits of Dover. Is it a bargain?”
Franz, too, had risen, and was about to clasp
the War Lord’s hand when his eye lit upon the
field-marshal. “You bound me to secrecy,” he
said doggedly, “yet our private pourparlers seem
to be property of your General Staff.”
“The heads of my General Staff know as much
as I want them to, Herr von Este, no more, no
less,” replied the War Lord in a strident voice.
Then, in less serious mood: “Come, now, the
Kapellmeister does not play all the instruments,
does he? and don’t you think I have more important
things to do than worry over charts and maps
and figures. That is his work,” inclining his head
toward the field-marshal.
When Franz the Sullen still withheld
acquiescence the War Lord continued in a bantering
tone: “He is preparing the way, is Haeseler.
While at Strassburg and neighbourhood, take a
look at his sixteenth army corps, kneaded and
knocked into invincibility by him. If there is a
superior war machine, then our Blücher was beaten
at Waterloo. Let his boys once get across the
French frontier—they will never again leave La
Belle France. Haeseler catechism!”
And more in the same boastful martinet vein,
winding up with the promise of sending to the
Austrian heir de luxe editions of Haeseler’s
contributions to the General Staff history of the
Franco-German War and of his technical writings
on cavalry exercises and war discipline—a sure way
of pleasing Franz. Yet it was patent enough that
the Jesuit disciple was only half mollified.
Desperate means were in order!
“I tell you what”—the War Lord dropped
his voice—”I will lend you Haeseler for a
fortnight or a month. Invite him to Konopischt”
(the Austrian heir’s Hungarian seat) “and find
out everything. What he doesn’t know about
horse, foot and artillery, especially horse, is not
worth knowing.”
At last Franz’s face lit up. “I’ll take you at
your word,” he said warmly.
Franz’s thirst for military knowledge was
insatiable. He had read most of the books, ancient
and modern, on the science of war; had consulted
all living army leaders of the day; was, of course,
in constant communication with his own General
Staff; and knew the methods of the Austrian,
Russian, German and Spanish cavalry, both by
practice and observation, since he took his honorary
proprietorship of the Bavarian Heavy Troopers,
the Saxon Lancers, the Russian 26th Dragoons
and the Spanish Mounted Chasseurs very seriously.
But to have Haeseler for private mentor and
adviser, to be hand and glove with the premier
cavalry expert of the world, at one time apprentice
of Frederick Charles, the Red Prince, was indeed
a priceless privilege.
“Will you come?” he asked Haeseler.
“Oh yes, he is coming, don’t you worry,”
cried the War Lord, even before Haeseler finished
the phrase: “At your Imperial Highness’s
command.”
“His Excellency shall demonstrate to me that
the offensive partnership you propose will be to
mutual advantage,” said Franz quickly, to
forestall possible further arguments on the exchange
of the Italian Adriatic for the French-Belgian-Dutch
Channel coasts.
CHAPTER XVII
DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND
The War Lord’s Secret Staircase—Some Outspoken
Opinions—Royal Fisticuffs—Otto of Bavaria—A
Secret Service Man—More Dreams
The reports of two meetings between exalted
personages, held on the eve of the day memorable
for the conference at the General Staff building,
would furnish a clever editor with “deadly
parallels” of vast interest.
Dramatis personæ of one meeting: The War
Lord and Bülow. Scene: The library of the
Frederick Leopold Palace, nearly opposite the
Chancellory.
Meeting number two: Franz von Este and
Lorenz Schlauch, Cardinal Archbishop of Gross
Wardein, Hungary. Scene: A private parlour in
the Hôtel de Rome, near the Schloss.
The pall of secrecy hung over both trysting
places. Cardinal Schlauch, of his Hungarian
Majesty’s most obnoxious Opposition, would have
lost caste with his followers if seen with the
“Habsburg Nero,” and the latter would have
had a strenuous quart d’heure with Francis
Joseph had “Uncle” known of his intimacy
with Schlauch. Hence the room at the hotel,
and Adolph Muehling, guard of honour, outside
the door.
Why press the old proprietor into service, when
a word to the Commandant of Berlin would have
brought sentinels galore?
Because Count Udo von Wedell, head of the
German Secret Service, occasionally unloads a
uniformed stenographer on an unsuspecting, but
suspected, visitor to Berlin; and, Udo failing,
Captain von Tappken, his right-hand man, might
be tempted to do so. Spy mistrusts spy, you know.
On his part the War Lord was as anxious to
keep his conference with Bülow from Franz, as
Este was to invent excuses for wishing a night free
from social duties or official business. Accordingly
Wilhelm had twice changed the programme.
His first idea was to receive Bülow at the
Schloss. No; Franz might hear of it. His valet
(Father Bauer) was singularly well supplied with
money, and royal lackeys (confound them!) prefer
trinkgeld to medals, even. Again, he might drive
to the Wilhelmstrasse himself, if it were not for
those penny-a-liners at the Kaiserhof, a whole
contingent of them, bent on getting coin out of
nothing. Already vague hints at an incognito
royal visitor had appeared in one or two gutter
journals.
“Augustus tells me that Frederick Leopold
had his Berlin house thoroughly overhauled.
Nothing unusual about inspecting the renovated
lair of the Prussian Croesus?” suggested Prince
Phili Eulenburg. He referred, of course, to the
Grand Master of Ceremony and the Lord of
Klein-Glenicke, the War Lord’s cousin and
brother-in-law.
“By Jove, you are almost too smart for
an ambassador, Phili,” cried Majesty; “you
deserve a wider field, the Wilhelmstrasse or the
Governorship of Klein-Popo should be yours.
Meanwhile, and until one of those posts becomes
vacant, ‘phone Bülow to meet me in Leopold’s
library at nine sharp. Moltke shall send six men
of the First Guards to investigate garden and all,
and they will remain for corridor duty. Augustus,
of course, must communicate with Leopold’s
maître d’hôtel.”
At 8.55 P.M. the War Lord, in mufti, fur collar
of his great-coat hugging the tops of his ears,
slipped down the secret staircase leading from his
apartments to a side door, and into Count von
Wedell’s quiet coupé. The Secret Service man
who acted as groom had mapped out a circuitous
route, avoiding the Linden and Charlottenstrasse.
When the carriage passed the Kaiserhof the
War Lord could not resist the temptation to bend
forward. “Udo,” he said, “are you not ashamed
of yourself, robbing these poor devils at the
journalists’ table? If they knew how I am
suffering in your springless cab—oh, but it does
hurt!—it would mean at least ten marks in their pocket.”
“Confound their impudence,” said Count von
Wedell. “But Your Majesty’s criticism of the
coupé is most à propos—just in time to insert the
item for a new one in the appropriation.”
“The devil!” cried the War Lord. “I
thought this ramshackle chariot your personal
property.”
Wilhelm likes to spend other people’s money,
but with State funds it is different, for every
pfennig spent for administration reduces the total
His Majesty “acquires.”
True, Prussia spells despotism tempered by
Parliament, but her kings can never forget the
good old times when appropriations for the Court
were only limited by the State’s utmost resources.
“My own!” gasped Wedell. “Would I dare
worry Your Majesty’s sacred bones in an ark like
this?”
The carriage entered the palace stableyard, the
gates of which opened noiselessly in obedience to
a significant crack of the whip.
Sentinels posted inside and out, civil service
men in frock-coats and top-hats, who muttered
numbers to their chief, replying in kind!
“Everything all right, Bülow upstairs,” whispered
Udo in Russian. He went ahead of the War
Lord through lines of his men, posted at intervals
of three paces in the courtyard and at the entrance.
The vestibule was splendid with electric light for
the first time in the history of the old palace.
As the suspicious War Lord observed, Marshal
Augustus had been busy indeed. Heavy portières
everywhere, over doors, windows, and oeils-de-boeuf;
to passers-by the Leopold Palace was as
dead and forlorn as during the past several years.
Up the newly carpeted grand stairway the War
Lord rushed. The smiling Bülow stood at the
library door. Wilhelm merely extended his hand;
he was too full of his subject to reply to Bülow’s
respectful greetings and inquiries after his health.
“Wedell will stay,” he said, “for our talk will
concern his department no less than yours.”
Bülow had arranged arm-chairs about the
blazing fireplace, but the War Lord was in no
mood to sit down.
“Here’s a devil of a mess,” he said, “just
discovered it in time. That confounded Este is too
much of a blackleg to be trusted.”
“Too deeply steeped in clericalism,” suggested
Bülow.
“That and Jesuitism, Romanism, Papism and
every other sableism. Found him out in our first
confab, and to-day’s meeting with Haeseler
confirmed it. He will never consent to a Roman
Empire of German nationality. Wants all Italy
for himself and Rome for his Church.
Intolerable!” cried the War Lord, as he strode up and
down. “Twenty marks if Otto were in his place.”
The War Lord’s joke drew tears of appreciative
hilarity from the obsequious eyes of the two
courtier-politicians.
“Your Majesty’s remark reminds me of a
patriotic speech made by the Prince of Bueckeberg
at the beginning of the railway age: ‘We must
have a railway in Lippe, even if it costs five
thousand thalers,’ said His Transparency, amid
thunderous applause.”
This from the Chancellor, who, like Talleyrand,
delights in quotations and has a knack of
introducing other people’s witty, or stupid,
sayings when desiring to remain uncommittal on his
own part. In this instance he would rather
exhaust Bartlett and his German confrère Hertslet
than discuss that Prince of mauvais sujets, Otto
of Austria.
At the time of the discussion (it was in 1903—three
years before the royal degenerate died) the
father of the present heir to the Dual Monarchy
was on the apex of his ill-fame.
He beat his wife and his creditors, he disgraced
his rank, his manhood, and, though thirty-eight
years of age, was frightened from committing the
worst excesses at home only by the threat of
corporal punishment at the hands of his uncle, the
Emperor. For Francis Joseph, most Olympian of
monarchs, according to the upholders of Spanish
etiquette at the Hofburg, is very apt indeed to
give a good imitation of the petty household tyrant
when roused. For this reason, probably, his late
consort, the Empress Elisabeth, used to liken him
to a cobbler.
Francis Joseph’s most recent fistic exploit at
Otto’s expense was still, at that time, the talk
of the European Courts. It appears that His
Imperial Highness, at dinner with boon
companions, had emptied a dish of spinach over the
head of uncle’s marble statue, and prolonged the
fun by firing over-ripe tomatoes, pimentos,
spaghetti and other dainties at the already abundantly
decorated effigy.
When finally he ordered Count Salm, his Court
marshal, to send for a “mandel”—fifteen pieces—of
ancient eggs to vary the bombardment, Salm
refusing, of course, he assaulted the Excellency,
sword in hand, and a general medley ensued, in
which considerable blue blood was spilt. No lives
lost, yet the innocent bit of passe-temps brought
the Emperor’s fist and cane into play again.
But our mutton is getting cold.
“Unfortunately,” said von Bülow, “Franz
Ferdinand is a particularly healthy specimen of
humanity.”
“And even should he die like a Balkan royalty——”
suggested von Wedell.
“I thought you had been unable definitely to
trace Russia’s fine Italian hand in the Belgrade
murders?” demanded the War Lord sharply.
“For which many thanks,” murmured Bülow.
“With Your Majesty’s permission, I referred
to the older generation of Balkan assassins,” said
Udo.
“Well, let it pass, Monsieur le Duc
d’Otrante.” The War Lord frequently addressed
his Minister of Police by Fouché’s title, while
commenting upon Napoleon’s bad taste in raising
that functionary to so high an estate. “After
all,” he used to say, “he was nothing but a spy,
and as treacherous as the Corsican himself.”
This, it will be observed, came with peculiar
ill grace from Wilhelm, who, like the first Emperor
of the French, demeaned himself to direct personally
his Secret Service, and to associate with the
cashiered army officers, agents provocateurs, etc.,
of this branch of government.
“What if Otto, as Emperor of the Slavs, sets
up a claim for all Poland, Your Majesty’s with the
rest?” Bülow had asked.
“I would rather see my sixty millions of people
dead on the battle-field than give up an inch of
ground gained by Frederick the Great and the rest
of my ancestors!” cried the War Lord, as if he
were haranguing a mob. “Besides, why should
Otto, more than Franz, covet my patrimony?”
“Because of his relationship with the Saxon
Court through her Imperial Highness Josepha.”
“Pipe-dreams——” snarled the War Lord
contemptuously. Then, seeing Bülow redden, he
added: “On Otto’s part, I mean.”
“I beg Majesty’s pardon—not entirely,”
quoth Wedell. “Dresden is still making sheep’s
eyes at Warsaw, and when Your Majesty spoke
about a grand Imperial palace to be built in Posen,
King George remarked: ‘Suits me to the ground.
I hope he’ll make it after the kind American
multimillionaires boast of.’ This on the authority of a
Saxon noble whose family established itself in the
kingdom long before Albert the Bold.”
“Children and disgruntled aristocrats tell the
truth,” commented the War Lord; “sometimes,
at least,” he added after a while. Then suddenly
facing Bülow, he continued in an angry tone:
“That black baggage, wherever one turns. Unless
there be a Lutheran Pope, Monsieur l’Abée de
Rome will try and catholicise Prussia, even as
Benedict XIV. tried to do through Maria
Theresa.”
“It was another Benedict, was it not, who
offered public prayers that Heaven be graciously
pleased to foment quarrels between the heretic
Powers?” suggested Bülow, pulling a volume on
historic dates from the shelf as if to verify his
authority.
“What of it?” demanded the War Lord impatiently.
“One of the heretic Powers prayed against was
England, Your Majesty.”
“And you want to insinuate that I must
pocket all the insults Edward may find it expedient
to heap upon me?”
“Nothing is farther from my mind, of course.
I merely meant to point to the historic fact that
the Catholics always pool their interests, always
fight back to back, while the disunity and open
rivalries among non-Catholic Powers——”
“I know the litany,” interrupted the War
Lord rudely; “but let’s return to Este. What
do you intend to do with that chap?”
“Make him work for us tooth and nail,” said
Bülow, “and as for any extra dances with the
Saxon or His Holiness—well, Udo will keep an eye
on him. From this hour on he must be kept under
constant observation, whether at home or abroad,
in his family circle or the army mess, at manoeuvre
or the chase, at the Hradschin or at Konopischt.”
The War Lord, visibly impressed, laid his
massive right hand on Count von Wedell’s
shoulder.
“Where is Este now?” looking at the clock.
“Suite eighteen, Hôtel de Rome.”
“With whom?”
“Cardinal Schlauch.”
“Bishop Tank of Gross-Wardein? And who
is watching them?”
“Number 103, garlic and bartwichse to the
backbone.”
“Under the bed?”
“No, Your Majesty; in it. I varied the
programme for His Highness’s sake. Like an old
maid who persists in the hope of catching a man
sometime, he never misses looking under the bed.”
“I will examine ‘103’ in Königgrätzerstrasse
at 9 A.M. to-morrow,” commanded the War Lord;
“and, Udo, if you love me, have him well aired.
An hour or two of goose-step would do the
garlic-eater the world of good.”
The number, of course, referred to a Secret
Service man. They have no names so far as the
Government knows, or wants to know, and,
despite their usefulness, are looked upon as
mauvais sujets. To make up for this their pay is
rather better than that of the average German
official. They get a little less than the equivalent
of £4 a week and 10s. a day for expenses. These
sums constitute the retaining fee; their main
income depends on the jobs they are able to pull
off. They get paid for all business transacted,
in accordance with its importance. When on a
foreign mission, they may send in bills up to £2
per day for personal expenses, but in all ordinary
circumstances the 10s. per diem must suffice.
The War Lord turned once more to Bülow.
“You said: ‘Make him work for us.’ I would
willingly sentence him for life to the treadmill.
What’s your idea of work for Franz?”
“I refer to Your Majesty’s complaint that the
Austrian army is in a state of unreadiness, of
unpreparedness for war. Now, while I have no
opinion whatever as to Herr von Este’s capacity as
a general, I do know that organisation and
discipline are ruling passions with him.”
“He would rather beat a recruit than go to
Mass,” interpolated Udo.
“The right spirit,” approved the War Lord,
“and it shall serve my purposes. I taught the
Bavarians to out-Prussian the Prussian; the
Austrians shall follow suit, or Franz will know the
reason why.
“A drill-ground bully by nature and inclination,
he will know how to make an end to Blue
Danube saloperie; and if strap and rod won’t do,
he will use scorpions, like that ancient King of
Judea—or did he hail from Mecklenburg,
Bülow?” Autocratically ruled Mecklenburg is
Bülow’s own particular fatherland.
“I am sure the riding-whip always sufficed in
our domains,” smiled the Chancellor; “but Your
Majesty is right: rose water wouldn’t make much
impression on Slovaks and Croatians.”
“Well then,” said the War Lord, “here is the
programme: No more about Lutheran popeship,
Holy Roman Empire of German nationality, future
of the Holy See and so forth. Nauseate him, on
the other hand, with Austrian military schweinerei
(piggishness), which ought to disappear from the
face of the earth in the shortest possible order to
make room for the glories of Prussian drill,
discipline and efficiency.
“With von der Goltz knocking the Turk into
shape and Franz Este driving the devil of
irresolution and maniana out of the Dual Monarchy, we
will be in a position to defy the world—and to fight
it, too.”
CHAPTER XVIII
A SECRET SERVICE EPISODE
No. 103 Arrives—The Spy’s Report—The Archduke
and the Cardinal—The Ruling of the Church
Count von Wedell’s office on Königgratzerstrasse.
Royal coupé driving up and down the opposite
side of the street. No groom—dismounted chasseur
with feather hat stands guard at the big oaken
door entrance.
Long-legged brown horses, evident habitat:
England. As a rule, the War Lord drives with
blacks or greys; likewise the wheel-spokes of the
vehicles used by him are gilded. Those of the
carriage we observe are chocolate colour, with just
a thin silver line. Wilhelm sometimes travels
incog. in his own capital. By the way, why always
chocolate-coloured carriages when royalty does not
wish to radiate official lustre? In the reminiscences
of the third Napoleon “the little brown coupé”
figured largely when the Emperor of the French
went poaching on strange preserves, and other
monarchs had the same preference.
Inside the Imperial office building: sentinels
with fixed bayonets at each corridor entrance; over
the coco-nut mat, covering the right-hand passage,
a thick red Turkey runner; Secret Service men in
top-hats and Prince Albert coats every ten paces.
At the extreme end a big steel double door.
“No. 103,” whispered the speaking-tube into
Count Wedell’s ear.
“Three minutes late,” snarled that official;
“but I will pay him back.”
“No. 103,” in faultless evening dress (though
it is nine in the morning), is conducted through
the right-hand passage. He is at home here, but
no one recognises him. Secret Service rule: No
comradeship with other agents of the Government.
You are a number, no more.
As he is ushered through the lines of sentinels,
the royal chasseur, drawn broadsword in his right,
opens the door with his left hand. Count Wedell
meets him on the threshold.
“Kept Majesty waiting,” grumbled the Privy
Councillor sotto voce.
“Cab broke down, Excellency,” No. 103
excused himself.
“Don’t let it happen again. You will stand
under the chandelier facing the inner room.
Attention!” commanded the chief.
And at attention, every nerve vibrating with
excitement and expectancy, No. 103 stood like a
statue in the Avenue of Victory, but with rather
more grace, for no man living could imitate the
War Lord’s marble dolls without provoking
murder. Wedell had gone into the inner room,
the entrance of which was framed by heavy damask
portières with gold lace set a jour.
“Portholes,” thought No. 103, sizing up the
decorations; and, keyhole artist that he is, he soon
met a pair of eyes gazing at him through the
apertures.
“Majesty taking a peep,” he reflected. “I
wonder what he thinks of the man who went back
on his native Nero for filthy lucre.”
Whether he thought well of him or not, the
War Lord kept No. 103 standing full twenty-five
minutes. If in his youth he had not had a particularly
cruel drill-ground sergeant, he could not have
endured the pain and fatigue.
Suddenly the portières parted: the War Lord,
seated at a “diplomat’s” writing-desk; Count
Wedell, toying with a self-cocking six-shooter,
stood at his left.
“If that thing goes off and accidentally hits
me,” thought No. 103, “there is a trap-door
under this rug, and a winding staircase leading to
a sewer, I suppose, as in the Doge’s
Palace.” Comforting thought, but who cares for a spy?
“Approach,” ordered the War Lord in a
high-pitched voice. When No. 103 was within
three paces of the Majesty, Wedell held up his
hand.
“His Majesty wants to know all about last
night,” said the Privy Councillor.
“Did Herr von Este really look under the
bed?” queried the War Lord, tempering the
essential by the ridiculous.
“He did indeed,” replied No. 103; “and I
nearly betrayed my presence between the sheets
watching him.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, Your Majesty; just a thought
passing through my mind.”
“Out with it,” cried the War Lord, when
No. 103 stopped short.
The agent provocateur looked appealingly at
Count Wedell. “I humbly beg to be excused.”
“I command you!”
“Well then, Your Majesty, it occurred to me
that I ought to have planted a mark’s worth of
asafoetida under that bed.”
Did the stern Majesty laugh? He guffawed
and roared enough to split his sides—the lines
between the sublime and the low are not tightly
drawn in Berlin.
“This fellow has wit,” said the War Lord to
Udo. “When you come to think of it, asafoetida
is mighty appropriate ammunition to use against
the Jesuit disciple.” Then, with a look to
No. 103: “Proceed.”
“Details and all,” commanded von Wedell.
“The minutest,” emphasised the War Lord.
“May it please Your Majesty, I was in that
bed three hours before the parties came into the
room. The Cardinal had hired Suite 18
expressly for the meeting, his lodgings being
elsewhere in the hotel. He was first to arrive, and
swore lustily because there was no crucifix or
prie-Dieu, as ordered.
“Cursed like a trooper, eh?” cried the War
Lord. “Make a note of that, Udo. When I am
Lutheran pope I will visit the grand bane upon any
cardinal guilty of saying naughty words.”
“Your Majesty will have the All Highest
hands full,” remarked von Wedell. “What about
Prince Max?”
“I shall take devilish good care that the Saxon
idiot never achieves the red hat. Making eyes at
Warsaw and a friend at the Curia! What next?” To
No. 103: “Proceed.”
“An impromptu altar was quickly set up, and
when Herr von Este was announced——”
“What name?” interrupted the War Lord.
“Ritter von Wognin, Your Majesty.”
Count von Wedell promptly explained: “One
of the minor Chotek titles.”
“I always said he was his wife’s husband,”
affirmed the War Lord, with an oath. Then, to
No. 103: “Well?”
“The Cardinal had taken his stand at the side
of the crucifix, and when the Ritter walked in
elevated his hand pronouncing the benediction,
whereupon the Austrian heir dropped on his
knees. The Cardinal seemed in no hurry to see
him rise, but finally held out his hand, saying:
‘In the name of the Holy Church I welcome thee,
my son.’
“And Este kissed his hand, didn’t he?” cried
the War Lord.
“He certainly bent over the Cardinal’s hand,
and I heard a smack,” replied No. 103.
“That settles it,” said the War Lord; “the
foot-kiss for me when I am pope of the Lutheran
Church.”
“May it please Your Majesty,” continued No. 103,
“the two gentlemen then settled down in easy
chairs and engaged in a long, whispered conversation
in which alleged sayings of Your Majesty
were freely quoted by Herr von Este.”
“Enough,” interrupted the War Lord; and
at a sign from Wedell No. 103 backed towards the
door, which opened from outside. “You will
await a possible further summons in here,” said
Count Wedell’s secretary, ushering No. 103 into
a waiting-room.
“How much has that fellow got on credit?”
demanded the War Lord.
Wedell pulled out a card index drawer. “Upwards
of thirteen thousand marks.”
“He knows that he’ll lose it to the last
pfennig if he squeals?”
“The case of our man who exchanged Barlinnie
Jail for the service of Sir Edward Grey
brought that home with peculiar force to everybody
in the Wilhelmstrasse and Königgrätzerstrasse,”
replied Udo.
It should be interpolated here that German
spies receive only two-thirds of the bonuses
accruing to them. One-third of all “extras” remain
in the hands of the Government at interest, to be
refunded when his spyship is honourably
discharged. If he is caught and does not betray his
trust, then these savings par order de mufti are
paid over to his family or other heirs; if he betrays
his Government, then the Government gets even
with him by confiscating the spy’s accumulated
savings, which arrangement gives the Secret
Service office a powerful hold on its employees.
“Very well, recall the millionaire-on-good-behaviour,”
quoth the Majesty.
No. 103 proved the possession of a marvellously
retentive memory. Quoting His Highness’s
confidences to the Cardinal, he repeated almost word
for word the War Lord’s conversation with Franz,
both at the Schloss and at the General Staff office.
“Any memoranda used?” demanded Wilhelm abruptly.
“None, Your Majesty.”
“Did the Cardinal take notes?”
“No, Your Majesty. When Herr von Este
urged him to do so, he said it was unnecessary,
since he never forgot matters of importance; in
fact, could recite a text verbatim after tens of
years.”
“Curse their stenographic memories,” said
the War Lord. “I hope you were careful to note
what Schlauch said,” he added in a stern, almost
threatening voice.
“I memorised his talk to the dotlets on the
i’s,” replied the Secret Service man, bowing low.
“Quite an easy matter, for His Eminence used
words sparingly—
“To conceal his thoughts, of course.” This
from the War Lord.
Then No. 103 read the “notes” from his
mental memorandum pad. The Cardinal, it
appears, laid down three rules “for the guidance
of his ‘dear son’ and all other Catholic princes:
“I. Agreements with heretic sovereigns do
not count unless they serve the interests of the
Church.
“II. If the proposed Slav Empire would bring
about the submission of the orthodox heretics to
the Church of Rome, no amount of blood and
treasure spent in so laudable a cause may be
called extravagant, the sacrifice being for God
Almighty.
“III. But if there should be a by-product”
(our own term, the Cardinal’s being too
circumstantial) “a by-product in the shape of a heretic
pope—pardon the blasphemous word—then
Franz’s ambition would be a stench in the nostrils
of the Almighty, excommunication would be his
fate in this world, the deepest abyss of hell in the
other.”
Count von Wedell, misinterpreting his master,
thought “it was to laugh,” but a look upon the
War Lord’s face caused him to change his attitude.
“Pay No. 103 five thousand marks, half in
cash, half in reserve,” said Wilhelm, disregarding
the one-third clause for a purpose, no doubt. “I
have no further commands for him at present.”
Count Wedell stepped forward from the inner
room, and the portières automatically closed before
No. 103 had finished his obeisance.
CHAPTER XIX
BERTHA AND FRANZ
On Forbidden Ground—A Talk on Brain-Curves—Bertha
is Afraid—Shades of Krupp—”Charity Covers ——”—A
Dramatic Exit
“Oh, Franz, tell me what it all means!”
If Bertha and the chief engineer had been real
lovers, and had selected the moon for a place of
rendezvous, they could not have been safer from
intrusion than in the late Frederick Krupp’s
library with the door unlocked, for the “room
sacred to His Majesty” was a sort of Bluebeard
chamber into which no eye but the War Lord’s
and Bertha’s must look.
Bertha had shown her mother a parcel of
documents which Uncle Majesty had ordered her to
read carefully. “I will go to the library, where
I will be undisturbed,” she said in her decisive
tone, while the butler was serving early
strawberries sent from Italy. Strawberries in January
in a little Rhenish town! It reminds us that when
Charles V., warrior and gourmet-gourmand,
sucked an orange in winter-time, his Court was
prostrate with astonishment and admiration.
And Alexis Orloff won Catherine the Great
from his brother Gregory—temporarily, at
least—by sending to the Semiramis of the North a plate
of strawberries for the New Year. Yet nowadays
any well-to-do person can indulge all the year
round in the luxuries that made Charles and
Catherine the envied of their Imperial class.
Bertha was in the War Lord’s chair, for she felt
very Olympian since she had returned from the
Berlin Court, while Franz sat on the tabouret
affected by the Krupp heiress during the interviews
with her guardian.
“What did Zara really mean?” repeated Bertha.
“Are you prepared to hear the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” queried
Franz.
Bertha Krupp moved uneasily in her high seat.
Her mental stature had advanced rapidly under the
War Lord’s teachings, disguised as coaxings, and
while the sound principles implanted in her bosom
by a good mother were at bottom unimpaired, she
was beginning to learn the subtle art of putting
her conscience to sleep when occasion demanded—a
touch of Machiavellism!
Just now she would have loved to shut up
Franz, as she was wont to silence her mother by
a word or look, though less rudely, perhaps, but
her fondness for the man—though she was not at
all in love with Franz—forced her to be frank
with him.
“Speak as a friend to a friend,” she said warmly.
“Well then——” began Franz.
Bertha covered his mouth with her hand. “A
moment, please. May I tell Uncle Majesty?”
“What I have to say is no secret of mine and
certainly it is not news to the War Lord. By all
means tell him if you dare.”
“If I dare?” echoed Bertha.
“My own words.”
Franz spoke very earnestly, almost solemnly:
“Will you hear me to the end, whether you like
the tune or not?”
“If it relates to Zara’s prophecies, I will,” said
Bertha. “But,” she added falteringly, “you
know I mustn’t listen to criticism of my guardian.”
Franz shrugged. “I quite understand. Forbidden
ground even for your Mother.”
Bertha felt the sting of reproval keenly, and did
not like it. Indeed, at the moment she would
have given up gladly a considerable portion of her
wealth to be restored to Franz’s unconditional and
unrestricted good graces. So, humbling herself,
she temporarily abandoned her high estate and
again became the unsophisticated girl whom Franz
used to call sister. “Do go on,” she urged; “it
was all so romantic, so strange, so mysterious, and
you know I love to feel creepy.”
Franz had risen and approached the great
central window. “May I draw the curtains?” he
asked, looking over his shoulder.
“They must not see you. I will.”
Bertha tugged the golden cords. “Working
overtime again?” she queried, as she observed the
blazing smoke-stacks.
“More’s the pity, for every pound of steam
going up those chimneys means so many lives lost,
and for all those lives, Bertha, you will have to
account to God.”
“Old wives’ tales,” commented the Krupp
heiress, as if the War Lord in person played
souffleur. “On the contrary, as you well know,
war preparedness means peace, means preservation;
and with us in particular it means happiness
and prosperity to the ten thousands of families in
this favoured valley. It spells education, arts,
music, care of children and of the sick and disabled.
It means cheerfulness, such as ample wage and a
future secured confer; it means care-free old
age.” As she recounted these benefits her enterprises
were actually dispensing Bertha looked at the chief
engineer with a slightly supercilious air.
“Well rehearsed,” remarked Franz dryly.
“Oh, if you want to be rude——”
“I do,” said Franz, taking hold of her wrist;
“I am sick of all this lying palaver about good
coming out of evil, and I want you to be sick of it
too, Bertha.”
The Krupp heiress leaned back in her chair,
crossing her arms. “At the American Embassy
I heard rather a quaint saying day before
yesterday: ‘Go as far as you like.’
“A most apt saying,” admitted Franz.
“Thank you for the licence. As I was going to
point out, you did attach too little significance to
Zara’s words, thought them mere piffle of the kind
for sale in necromancers’ tents. There is enough
of that, God knows, but do not lose sight of the
fact that at all times and in all walks of life there
have existed persons having the gift of prophecy.
Who knows but Zara has?”
Bertha was now rigid with attention. She had
moved knee from knee; her feet were set firmly
on the carpet, while the upper part of her body
straightened out. “I don’t follow,” she said
almost pleadingly.
“Let me explain,” continued Franz. “You
and I and the vast majority of people can look into
the past—a certain curvature of our brain facilitating
the privilege. Another similar or dissimilar
set of brain-cells, or a single curvature, might lift
for us the veil that now obscures the future.”
“The future?” gasped Bertha.
“Indeed, the future; and, practically considered,
there is nothing so very extraordinary
about it, for what will happen to-morrow, or the
day after to-morrow, is in the making now. If,
for instance, the Krupp works were going into
bankruptcy a year hence, the unfavourable conditions
that constitute the menace to our prosperity
would be at their destructive work now. Do you
follow?” added Franz.
“I think I do,” said Bertha.
“Hence I say the gift of prophecy presupposes
a correct interpretation of the past and present as
well as the peculiar gift of extraordinary brain
development—a rare gift, so sparsely distributed
that in olden times prophets were credited with
interpreting the will of the Almighty.”
“Franz,” cried Bertha, her face pallid and
drawn, her hands twitching. “Oh, my God!”
she screamed, as if nerve-shattered by an awful
thought suddenly burst upon her; “you don’t
believe—no, you can’t——! Tell me that you do
not think it was God’s voice speaking through
Zara?” And, as if to shut out some horrible
vision, the Girl-Queen of Guns covered her face
with both hands.
“It is not for me to pronounce on things I
don’t know,” replied Franz. “Judged by what
you have told me, Zara suited her prophecy for
the most part to facts and to existing tendencies,
conditions and ambitions on the part of political
parties and high personages.”
“She called me the coming arch-murderess of
the age, insisted that the warrior-queens of past
times, even the most heartless and most cruel, had
been but amateurs compared with me in taking
human lives—— Oh, Franz, tell me it is not true!
She was romancing, was she not? She lied to
frighten me and to get a big trinkgeld.”
“I wish it were so,” said Franz earnestly;
“but, unfortunately, she had a clear insight into
the future as it may develop, unless you call a
halt to incessant, ever-increasing, ever-new war
preparations.”
Many years ago I read a manuscript play by
a Dutch author, in the opening scenes of which a
Jew tried to sell another Jew a bill of goods.
Shylock number two wanted the stuff badly, but
calculated that by a show of indifference he might
obtain them for a halfpenny less. On his part,
Isaac was as eager to sell as the other was to buy,
but the threatened impairment of his fortune called
for strategy. So he feigned that he did not care
a rap whether the goods changed hands or not, and
the two shysters remained together a whole long
act engaging in a variety of business that had
nought to do with the original proposition, each,
however, watching for opportunity to re-introduce
it, now as a threat, again as a bait, and the third
and seventh and tenth time in jest. So Bertha,
having once disposed of the war preparation bogey,
according to Uncle Majesty’s suggestion, now
returned to it in slightly different form. She was
determined to discount Zara’s prophecies at any
cost.
Getting ready to fight was tantamount to
backing down; spending billions for guns and
ammunition and chemicals and fortifications and
espionage and war scares and whatnots was mere pretext
for keeping the pot boiling in the workman’s
cottage, and the golden eagles rolling in the
financier’s cash drawer, and so on ad infinitum.
When Bertha had finished she thought Zara’s
prophecies very poor stuff.
Franz came in for the full quota of that sort
of argument out of a bad conscience so warped by
hypocrisy. Our Lady of the Guns no doubt
believed every word she said, or rather repeated—dear
woman’s way! She always firmly trusts in
what suits her, logic, proof to the contrary,
stubborn facts notwithstanding. Instinct or intuition,
she calls it.
“That is no way to dispose of so grave a
subject,” said Franz.
“But what can I do?”
“Prevent more wholesale family disintegration,
forestall future mass-murder, future dunging
of the earth with blood and human bones.”
Franz put both hands on the girl’s shoulders.
“Bertha,” he said impressively, “make up your
mind not to sign any more death-warrants, stop
making merchandise intended to rob millions of
life and limb and healthy minds, while those
coming after them are destined physical or moral
cripples that one man’s ambition may thrive.”
“Shut down the works, you mean?” cried
Bertha; and, womanlike, indulged once more the
soothing music of self-deception: “It would ruin
the Ruhr Valley, throw a hundred thousand and
more out of work; and what could they do, being
skilled only in the industries created by my father
and grandfather?
“Papa, Uncle Alfred, the first Krupp—God
bless their souls!—were they founders of
murder-factories, as you suggest? No, a thousand times
no. Their skill, their genius, their enterprise has
been the admiration of the world. Everybody
admits that they were men animated by the highest
motives and principles. They made Germany.”
“I don’t deny it; I underline every word you
have said, Bertha. The foundations for Germany’s
greatness were laid within a stone’s throw of this
window; much of her supremacy in politics and
economics was conceived between these four walls.
But now that the goal is achieved, that the
Fatherland enjoys unprecedented wealth and
prosperity—let well enough alone.”
“You talk as if I were the War Lord!” cried
Bertha.
“You are his right hand: the War Lady.”
“He is my guardian, my master.”
“Only for a while. You don’t have to submit
to his dictation when of age.”
Carried away by emotion, Franz had spoken
harshly at times, but now his tone became coaxing.
“When you come into your own, promise me,
Bertha, to accept no more orders for armament and
arms of any kind. Dedicate the greatest steel
plant of the world to enterprises connected with
progress, with the advancement of the human
race! Build railways, Eiffel towers for observation,
machinery of all sorts, ploughs and other
agricultural implements, but for God’s sake taboo
once and for all preparations for murder and
destruction!”
Bertha covered her ears. “Don’t use such
words; they are uncalled for, inappropriate.” Then,
with a woman’s ill-logic, she repeated the
last. “‘Destruction’—you don’t take into
consideration what your ‘destructive’ factors have
done for my people, what they are doing for
humanity right along. Auntie Majesty thinks our
charities and social work superior to Rockefeller’s,
and God forbid that I ever stop or curtail them.”
“Yes! Think of your charities,” said Franz;
“take the Hackenberg case. What is he—a
soldier blasted and crippled in mind and body by
the war of 1870. Essen’s industry made a wreck
of Heinrich, and he costs you one mark a day to
keep for the rest of his life; three hundred and
sixty-five marks per year, paid so many decades,
what percentage of your father’s profits in the
war of 1870-71 does the sum total represent?”
“A fraction of a thousandth per cent., perhaps.
Another fraction pays for the son Johann’s
keep, another for that of the two younger boys,
another for Gretchen, etc., etc.”
“But if there had been no war, Heinrich would
not have been disabled, and consequently would
not have burdened charity with human wreckage!
Do you see my point?”
“Go on,” said Bertha.
“Because you are used to it, maybe the
Hackenberg case does not particularly impress
you. You were not born when Heinrich sallied
forth in the name of patriotism. But reflect:
there are thousands of charitable institutions like
yours, not so richly endowed, not so splendid to
look upon, but charnel-houses for Essen war
victims just the same. And all filled to
overflowing—even as the Krupp treasury is. Yet that
Franco-German war, that made the Krupps and
necessitated the asylums and hospitals, was
Lilliputian compared with the Goliath war now in
the making—partly thanks to you, Bertha.”
“But I have told you time and again there will
be no war, that I have the highest authority for
saying so!” cried Bertha angrily.
“Authority,” mocked Franz. “The French
of 1870 had the no-war ‘authority’ of Napoleon
III., the Germans that of William I., before the
edict went forth to kill, to maim, to destroy, to
strew the earth with corpses and fill the air with
lamentations! So it will be this month, this year,
next year—for history ever repeats itself—until
the hour for aggression, which will be miscalled
a defence of our holiest principles and interests,
has struck.
“The air pressure has increased,” continued
Franz, parting the window curtains; “see the
lowering clouds! And watch the storm coming
up, lashing them in all directions. West and east
they are spreading, and, look, north too! They
are falling on Northern France, on the Lowlands
and Russia like a black pall.”
“You prophesy a universal war?” shrieked
Bertha.
“The answer is in your ledger. For thirty and
more years your firm has been arming the universe.
Since your father’s death you have distributed
armaments on a vaster scale than ever, and now,
I understand, the pace that killeth is to be still
more increased.
“When you have furnished Germany with all
the guns, the ammunition, the chemicals, the
flying machines, the cruisers, the submarines, the
hand grenades—what then? Presto! a pretext of
the 1870 pattern, or something similar, and Zara’s
prophecy will come true as sure as light will burst
from this Welsbach now.”
Franz touched a button.
“Voilà, Madame War Lady,” he said, bowing
himself out.
CHAPTER XX
“AUNTIE MAJESTY” AND HER FROCKS
Bertha on Her Dignity—On Thin Ice—Barbara
Wants to Know—The Empress’s Toilette
“And now for a good talk,” said Barbara, with a
look upon the tirewoman who had accompanied
Bertha to Court. “Tell me all about Auntie
Majesty’s ‘Martha.'”
“Oh, she’s far more important than this one,”
Bertha replied, patting the “Frau’s” cheek; “a
Baroness like Mamma and in the Almanach de
Gotha.”
“Better looking too than our Martha, is she
not?” mocked Barbara.
“I won’t go as far as that. She is too tall and
angular and spinster-like, and has a nose like Herr
Krause—always red.”
“Does she drink?” inquired Barbara.
“No,” said Martha, thrusting out her formidable
bosom; “she laces too tight, poor thing!”
It was after ten p.m., and Barbara ought to
have been in one of two white-and-pink beds
gracing the Young Misses’ Chamber in Villa Huegel,
but Frau Krupp was away in Cologne and Martha
the most indulgent of governesses. Hence it had
not been necessary for Bertha to exert her
authority to gain an hour out of bed for sister.
Bertha, who was sitting on a low “pouf,” was
convulsed with laughter at Martha’s pantomime.
Shrieking, she knocked her forehead against her
knees, Barbara joining.
“And Auntie Majesty’s Martha—the Baroness,
I mean—does she put out the linen and mend silk
stockings and serve tea on the waitress’s day out?”
continued Barbara her inquiries.
“Why not ask whether she makes the help’s
beds?” demanded Martha; and then, in her drastic
manner: “You are a baby, Fraulein Barbara.”
But the Krupp heiress treated the question
seriously. “No,” she replied, assuming an air of
superiority. “The Baroness tells the Empress
what is fit to wear.”
“Unfit, Fraulein means to say,” whispered
Martha.
“And besides——” continued Bertha.
“She tyrannises over the lower servants, such
as Lenchen and me.” Barbara laughed heartily
at Martha’s sallies, but Bertha “had an attack of
dignity,” as Barbara put it, and said to Martha:
“Come now, who was in Auntie Majesty’s
confidence, you or I?”
“Fraulein certainly had the run of Her
Majesty’s rooms, and I do hope they were nicer
and cleaner than Fraulein’s,” bristled up Martha.
“Don’t quarrel,” pleaded Barbara. “Soon it
will be eleven, and then both of you will shout
‘bed’ until you are hoarse. Do go on, Bertha,
and don’t you dare interrupt her again, Martha.”
“Well,” said Bertha, “I promised——” She
settled down in the big velvet fauteuil nearest the
fire and assumed an oldish mien.
“I was sometimes present when the Baroness
and Auntie Majesty discussed new frocks and
hats,” she continued, “and I think if Mamma was
in Madame von H.’s place, Her Majesty would
be—what shall I say?—more tastefully dressed.
“Once she persuaded Auntie Majesty to accept
a hat that made her look seventy to a day: Gold
lace and heliotrope velvet. I will buy Granny one
like it next time I go to Düsseldorf. At first
Auntie did not seem to care for it at all, but the
Baroness made such a fuss. ‘Majesty looks
enchanting,’ she kept saying.”
Here Martha dropped the courtliest of curtsies,
“flapping her arms like wings”—Barbara’s
description.
“‘Charming,’ ‘ever youthful,’ continued
Bertha, imitating the Baroness.
“The right sort of talk too,” said Martha.
“Tell a woman of our age—mine and Auntie
Majesty’s—that we look like sweet sixteen, with
a teapot for a bonnet, and we will wear it even at
the opera.”
“Well, did Auntie get Granny’s hat?” asked
Barbara.
“She did, and wore it when we went to the
children’s matinée at the theatre in the Neues
Palais; and I heard her sister, Princess Frederick
Leopold, tell her: ‘Thank your stars that Will
is not coming. He would certainly advise you to
send your new chapeau to——'” Bertha stopped
short.
“To?” asked Barbara, flipping a slipper in the
air and catching it on her naked foot.
“I can’t tell,” said Bertha; “it was not
intended for me anyhow.”
Barbara looked at Martha. “You say it.”
“It commences with an ‘H.'”
“Hohenlohe—Grandma Hohenlohe,”
explained Bertha quickly.
Barbara was thinking hard. “No, she did not
say Hohenlohe; and, besides, she is dead.”
“Getting warm,” murmured Martha.
“Now you stop.” Bertha looked very serious.
“The Princess Leopold referred to their grandmother,
of course. What else should she have in mind?”
The tirewoman bent low over Barbara’s ear.
“Majesty’s Jaeger told me that the War Lord is
in the habit of consigning old lady relatives of his
to a hot place, whether dead or alive.”
Barbara clapped her hands. “I know,” she
laughed; “you need not try and keep things from
this child, Bertha. I was not born yesterday.”
“I shall tell Mamma, and you will get it too,
Martha.” The Krupp heiress was on her dignity
once more.
“Why not put me across your knee and spank
me?” said Barbara derisively. Then, coaxingly:
“Do go on, Bertha; it is all so interesting; and
if Martha does not behave (stamping her foot) she
will leave the room this minute. Did you hear
what I said, Martha?”
“Indeed, Your Majesty, and the other Majesty
will now proceed,” mocked the tirewoman, who
was unimpressed, having known the girls “all their
born days.”
“Well,” began Bertha anew, “there were a
few days of Court mourning while I was in Berlin,
and I had to wear all white, no jewellery, no
flowers. All the gentlemen had mourning-bands
around their left arm, and Uncle Majesty wore
the uniform of Colonel of Artillery—black and
velvet.”
“Auntie was in black too—silk, of course, and
heavy enough to stand by itself; but at her throat
I saw a large diamond brooch.”
“‘That will get Mother into trouble if the old
man peeps it,’ observed the Crown Prince, who
took me in to dinner, and who knows all the
English and French slang.”
“How perfectly delightful he must be!” cried
Barbara.
Bertha continued: “‘Why?’ I asked.”
“‘Mourning and brilliants—absurd,’
whispered Wilhelm Wiseacre. But Uncle Majesty
either did not see, or knew less than his talented
son, and Auntie escaped a scolding that time.”
“Scolding a Queen. You are joking,” cried
Barbara.
Before the Krupp heiress could speak, Martha
delivered herself of a few “Mein Gotts.”
“Oh,” she said, “royal ladies are just like
other girls’ mammas.”
“Like Aunt Pauline and Rosa?”
“Well, yes. They have a husband, children
and an allowance.”
“An allowance? I thought they were wallowing
in gold pieces like you, sister,” said Barbara,
loojving up admiringly at the older girl.
“I suppose Auntie Majesty has about a million
per year to dress on,” said Bertha loftily.
“A million,” repeated Frau Martha
contemptuously. “Fraulein ought to have heard
some of the stories the maids told me about Auntie
Majesty’s lingerie. One of them used to be
dresser to a French diva, whatever that is, and on
the Q.T.——”
Bertha was anxious to change the subject, and
remarked, with a hard look upon Martha: “And
the troubles they have with servants! One
afternoon on Bal-Paré night Auntie’s coiffeur did not
show up—sickness, or something of the kind—and
the Baroness did her hair. ‘How very frail,’ I
thought, particularly as Auntie was going to wear
the grand tiara with the Regent diamond. However,
the head-dress, being so very heavy, is put on
only before she enters the royal box.
“Her Majesty was fully dressed when Uncle’s
Jaeger handed in a dispatch from Queen Victoria,
asking about Prince Joachim. She immediately
sat down to write an answer, and as she leaned
over the paper—for she is rather short-sighted—the
whole coiffure came down in a heap. I never
saw her cross before, but I tell you——” Bertha
checked herself.
“Now about the jewellery,” cried Barbara.
“She has wagon-loads of them, has she not?”
“Of her own, no more than Mamma, I guess,
for those you read so much about on festive
occasions belong to the State, and the Baroness is
responsible for their safety. Once, I was told, she
left a valise containing several Crown jewels and
some of Auntie’s own in the Imperial saloon
carriage when they were going to Stuttgart. Through
the stupidity of a guard the valise got misplaced,
and was discovered only a month later in an
out-of-the-way railway station. That time Uncle
Majesty himself lectured the Baroness, ordering
her at the same time to use her own baronial
fingers to sew the diamond buttons on Her
Majesty’s dresses. Furthermore, to make sure
that the fastenings of ear-rings, brooches,
bracelets and chains, etc., were intact.”
Barbara wanted to know whether the Berlin
Crown jewels were as fine as Queen Victoria’s in
the Tower of London.
“Not quite,” said Bertha thoughtfully.
The child nodded. “I know, for when I asked
Miss Sprague whether the Regent was as beautiful
as the Koh-i-noor, she said: ‘You might as well
liken your shabby German South-West Africa to
the Indian Empire, Miss Barbara.'”
“Don’t let the War Lord hear that!” Frau
Martha raised a warning finger.
“Now about the dresses! She wears a new
one every day, doesn’t she?”
“At least she never wears the same twice
unaltered.”
“What jolly shopping!” cried Barbara.
“Does she go round herself? I would.”
“That’s the ladies’—the Baroness and the
Mistress of the Robes—business, of course. She sees
the fashion through their eyes and, when Auntie
is ill-dressed, the blame really attaches to her
women. One morning Auntie called me in and
said: ‘Bertha, what do you think of my dinner
toilet for to-night?’
“The gown on the mannequin was of light red
silk with white flounces and blue train, set off by
rosebuds.”
“Kakadoo!” laughed Barbara.
“That’s how it struck me,” said Bertha.
“But there stood the Baroness pleased as Punch
about the new ‘creation,’ and certainly expected
me to say something nice. I was in despair, but
Auntie Majesty came to my rescue. ‘It’s quite
impossible,’ she said, ‘isn’t it? Tell Schwertfeger
and Moeller——’
“She did not finish, but took up the Alnumach
de Gotha lying on the dressing-table. ‘I thought
so—Wilhelmina’s colours. If Wilhelm had seen
me in this, he would have said: “You are rushing
things, Dona. Wait till we annex Holland.”‘ Then
she turned to the Baroness: ‘Have it unripped
at once. The silks shall be used any way
except in this absurd combination. I will wear
white this evening.'”
“To bed at once; enough for to-night,”
ordered Frau Martha, turning back the clothes
on Barbara’s bed.
CHAPTER XXI
THROTTLING BAVARIA
The Etiquette of Dress—Bülow in a Fix—That “Place
in the Sun”—”That Idiot Bismarck”—Prussianize
the British Empire
In the grandchamber where Bismarck sat so long
enthroned and Caprivi, the general “commanded
to the office,” as he might have been ordered to
occupy a bastion, spent troublesome years; at the
desk where Prince Hohenlohe’s thoughtful face
shone between colossal oil-lamps; in the very chair
where the Iron One swore lustily at petty kings,
sat Bernhard von Bülow, Chancellor and Major-General.
Don’t forget the Major-General, for the War
Lord had more trouble making him that than
conferring the Imperial Chancellorship. Military
titles are sadly embroidered with precedents and
rules and things.
Frederick the Great used to own silk mills,
therefore his ministers of State were compelled to
wait upon him in satin breeches and long-tailed
satin coats, and no man who loved his job would
appear more than six times in the same garments
before the Majesty, since the royal merchant
would have considered himself cheated out of the
sale of so many ells. Frederick’s descendant, the
War Lord, is interested in army cloth—hence his
dislike for mufti.
Jovial, talkative, on good terms with himself,
Bernhard felt quite guilty in his velvet jacket—a
present from the Princess, his wife—when he
heard a sharp voice call out his name. It came
from the garden path adjoining the high French
windows.
“Must be coming from the War Ministry.
What’s up?” thought the Chancellor, ringing
frantically for a dress coat. If those sentinels
would only challenge Majesty, there might be time
to change.
In the summer of 1905 the proverbial Bülow
luck was still in full swing. At the moment it
sent Phili Eulenburg to the rescue, for the
ex-ambassador, still undisgraced, was, as usual, in
attendance upon the War Lord.
“Fine chap, that,” said Phili, pointing to one
of the sentinels who guarded the inner court of
the Chancellor Palace; “may I put him through
the paces just to show I did not get my epaulettes
for form’s sake?”
“Anything as long as you don’t make me
ridiculous, Phili.” Maybe the War Lord was
curious to see whether his friend had any military
talents. Perhaps he remembered that Bismarck,
talking to Maximilian Harden or Moritz Busch,
let drop a remark to the effect that persons of
the Eulenburg type made great generals—sometimes,
vide Alcibiades, Cæsar, Peter the Great,
Frederick, etc.—good diplomats never!
“Advance,” “retreat,” “right,” “left,”
“charge,” “about face,” crowed Phili, repeating
the last order several times.
“Pack ein” (“Cheese it!”), said the War
Lord, “if these are the only commands you
remember.” However, when the pair entered through the
glass doors, Bernhard, to his intense satisfaction,
was resplendent in a frock-coat, with the ribbon
of the Red Eagle in buttonhole, Majesty missing
the chance to scold him for a sybarite. To
Wilhelm’s mind, male humanity is “nude”
when unaccoutred with knapsack and bayonet,
or else unshrouded in evening dress at nine a.m.
Bülow had flatly refused to array himself en frac
in daytime, and in his hussars’ breeches he always
fidgeted “in a nerve-racking way.” So he must
be allowed a Prince Albert coat—Chancellor’s
exclusive privilege, of course! Bismarck used to ride
to the old Kaiser’s palace in a fatigue cap, but at
the door donned the steel helmet. But let none
of lesser rank and importance imitate these
worthies.
“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” said the War
Lord, acknowledging Bülow’s respectful greetings
by a wave of the hand. “Phili tells me that
Victor will require pretty strong proof it’s
defensive before he joins our war. And Udo has
secured tell-tale correspondence to the same effect,
which will be sent to you presently.”
“Italy making demands before she has even
lost a battle?” cried Phili, without indicating
quotation marks.
Bülow knew of course that the bon mot was
Bismarck’s, but the War Lord thought it original.
“Don’t repeat that to the Princess, please,” he
said to Bülow, “lest she put our Phili on her
index. As to Victor, what do you think of the
ingrate?”
“With Your Majesty’s permission, I rather
think that the information” (Bülow looked
straight at Eulenburg, then thought better of it)
“of—Count Wedell is not well founded. Your
Majesty knows how such rumours arise. Maybe
King Victor has, at one time or another, expressed
himself to the effect that he meant strictly to
adhere to the stipulations of the Triple Alliance,
whereupon some person in the secret found out
that the Triple Alliance obliges Italy to take up
arms only in case Germany or Austria are attacked.
Presto, the mischief-maker concludes that King
Victor is not in sympathy with Germany’s world
politics, etc. etc.”
“Maybe, but Udo’s and Phili’s reports must
be sifted to the bottom,” commanded the War
Lord. “I told Wedell to put a man of
pronounced political instinct on the work—an Italian,
of course; there shall be a wrestling match between
Dago cunning and German political shrewdness.”
Up to then the War Lord had spoken quite to
the point. Now he indulged in one of those
saltomortales of uncontrolled thought that tends to
incoherency.
“We must get rid of Otto,” he said abruptly,
pounding his knee with his terrible right.
Prince Bismarck’s Christian name had been
Otto, and Wilhelm got rid of him. Count Bülow,
perceiving no connection with matters discussed,
wondered whether the War Lord had reference
to the former occupant of the Chancellor Palace,
or maybe to a dog or horse. So, to be on the safe
side, he smiled broadly and asserted: “Precisely,
Your Majesty.”
“Of course, there is that Schweinhund (pig-dog)
Ruprecht.”
Bülow began to scent a connection; however,
the War Lord saved him further cogitation by
doing all the talking.
“A madman, this Ruprecht; thinks his petty
State an Indian Empire. Period: Thirteenth
century, or thereabout. Dwells longingly on such
scenes as Mohammed Toghlak enacted, having
hundreds of rebels tossed about by elephants on
steel-capped ivories, and then trampled to death to
the sound of trumpets and beating of drums. ‘I
would like to treat our Socialists that way,’ he told
me time and again.”
“Using wild boars instead of elephants, I suppose,”
said Phili. The sally caused the War Lord
much merriment.
“Egad,” he laughed, “your mileage from
Liebenberg is not thrown away; you liquidate the
bill by bons mots every time.”
“I dare you tell the Reichstag,” cried Phili.
“Bülow shall,” said the War Lord; “but”—facing
the Chancellor once more—”those muttons!
With Italy a possible quantité négligeable,
we must make doubly sure of Bavaria’s unquestioned
and enthusiastic support of Berlin. Now,
Phili, who has been living there many years, tells
me that the Bavarian people as a whole——”
“The great unwashed,” put in Phili, who will
live up to his reputation as a wit or burst—in
Germany one need not be a Mark Twain to succeed.
“The Bavarian unwashed,” repeated the War-Lord,
“do not like Prussia. The only means of
gaining national support for our war in Bavaria,
then, is by favour of the Crown. Otto’s is a
harlequin’s cap, and you can’t ask people to rally
around a War Lord more beast than man, and
certainly as crazy as a march-hare. It follows: we
need a sane man in Munich, Bülow—nothing short
of a sane man will serve our purpose. I understand
that Maximilian Joseph, ‘the creature of that
upstart, Napoleon,’ had a royal diadem built which
has never been used. Pull it from the vaults of
the Munich Hofburg, Bülow, and place it on
Luitpold’s head, and if he persists in his silly
refusal, on Ludwig’s.”
“Majesty knows these gentlemen’s objections:
‘There can be no real king in Bavaria, they say,
until the constitutional incumbent is dead,'”
spoke the Chancellor gravely.
“Then kill Otto,” cried the War Lord.
“What, miss our place in the sun for a madman!
Not if I know Wilhelm, Imperator Rex. Briefly,
Bülow, as there is no king in Bavaria, we must
make one—one who recognises that he is Rex
Bavariæ par la grace de Roi de Prusse and,
accordingly, is willing to do the King of Prussia’s
bidding.”
“But the people, will they rally to a standard
bearer of that kind?” asked the Chancellor.
“The mob,” cried the War Lord. “What
has the mob to do with it? We show him a puppet
in ermine and purple with Maximilian Joseph’s
unused crown on his silly pate, and ‘hurrah,’
‘Heil Dir im Siegeskranz.'”
“With the aid of the loyal Press,” suggested
Phili.
“Of course, the Press bandits are part and
parcel of the plebs; let Königgrätzerstrasse see
to them at once. And, Bülow,” continued the
War Lord, “the Norddeutsche Allgemeine—not
a word!”
“That’s where Majesty shows his wisdom,”
said Phili, nearly doubling up in a profound bow.
And as the War Lord seemed to enjoy the
compliment, he added: “I am not the bird to befoul
his own nest; but if it be true, as the London
papers sometimes assert, that Germany produces
no real diplomats, I point to Your Majesty and
say: Here stands the greatest of them all, greater
than Cavour and Bismarck, Talleyrand and Wotton.”
“Talleyrand was a great liar,” mused the War Lord.
“And preserved Prussia.” This from the Chancellor.
“My motto,” said Wilhelm, “is: ‘Keep a
silent tongue where one’s own interests are
concerned, lest the itch of controversy produce a scab
that even the unknowing may perceive.’ He
was boldly plagiarising Wotton, but if his auditors
noticed the theft they were wise enough to keep
it to themselves.
“Your Majesty’s idea is that, in case Italy
prove disloyal, Bavaria must act the buffer, the
people offering stubborn resistance.”
“—— stubborn!” cried the War Lord, striding
toward the great wall where a series of maps
were displayed on rollers. Of course Phili got
ahead and pushed the button. “—— stubborn!”
repeated Wilhelm. “Look at the Bavarian
frontier—as naked of fortresses as a new-born babe
of a dinner dress—no defensive works to speak
of. If the Italians make good their threats
against Austria and reach Innsbruck, good-bye
Munich! The whole of Bavaria would be at
the mercy of the Dago dogs of war! Bülow,”
cried the War Lord, “Phili brought documents
to show that the Italian General Staff is mapping
out a road to Berlin via Munich, Leipzig,
Potsdam. That idiot Bismarck,” he added, with an
oath, “the question of collars and epaulettes was
not the only one he decided in favour of the
Bavarians. Four years previously he failed to squeeze
Bayreuth out of them—Bayreuth, one of the
Hohenzollerns’ earliest possessions. With small
pressure he might have regained the principality
in 1866 in place of the miserable few millions of
thalers as war indemnity that the Bavarians had
to pay. We could have made Bayreuth-land an
armed camp, a second Heligoland, as it-is-to-be!”
The “collars and epaulettes affair,” to which
the War Lord referred, cropped up in November,
1870, during the pourparlers for the
Bavarian-Prussian treaties. King Ludwig insisted that
Bavarian army officers should continue to wear the
badge of their rank on their collar, while King
Wilhelm said their shoulder straps were the correct
place. The Chancellor, Bismarck, saved the
situation by arguing: “If in ten years’ time, perhaps,
the Bavarians are arrayed in battle against us, what
will history say when it becomes known that the
present negotiations miscarried owing to collars
and epaulettes?”
No wonder Prince Pless (Hans Henry XI.,
late father-in-law of Princess Mary, née
Cornwallis-West) said to the Iron Chancellor: “Really,
if at the time we were discussing the criminal
code we had known what sort of people these
Sovereigns are, we should not have helped to
make the provisions against lèse-majesté so
severe.”
“Now if Bayreuth were in our hands,” continued
the War Lord, “the Italians could whistle
for the new road to Berlin, as the English can for
the promenade to Hamburg, since Salisbury, good
old man—God rest his soul—presented us with that
little islet in the North Sea.”
“Maybe Bavaria could be induced to fortify
her frontiers on the Austrian border,” suggested
the Chancellor.
“And I postpone my war until half a dozen
Liéges and Namurs and Metzs and Strassburgs
are built—man alive,” thundered the War Lord.
“Life is short, and the longer England and France
are left in possession of the best colonies, the
harder it will be for us to Prussianise them when
things are being adjusted to our liking.”
“Prussianise England and France, excellent
idea, très magnifique!” crowed Phili the irrepressible.
“Not quite so fast,” said the War Lord.
“I was thinking of India and Ceylon, of Cochin
China and Tonking, of Algeria, Hongkong, the
Straits Settlements and the French Congo, of
Madagascar and Natal, of Rhodesia, Gibraltar, the
Senegal and other dainties in the colonial line.”
“Even so—a jolly mouthful for Prussianisation,
Majesty.”
“You don’t suppose I would tolerate the
loose discipline encouraged by Downing Street
and Quai d’Orsay,” cried the War Lord. “Subject
peoples and tribes must have a taste of the
whip and spur. Where would Poland be without
them—yes, and Alsace-Lorraine! But those
Bavarians, Bülow. I hope I made it perfectly
clear that Otto must go and that severest pressure
must be brought on Luitpold.”
“Together with the Italian problem, the
matter shall have my closest attention,” said the
Chancellor.
“And don’t forget that they are a crazy lot at
best, and hand and glove with Franz Ferdinand’s
black masters.”
“Matters can’t be hurried, though,”
ruminated Bülow, “and I am afraid there is little store
to be set by Luitpold.”
“His ambition is to go thundering down the
ages as the man who refused a crown,” sneered
Phili.
“Thank Heaven he is eighty-four,” said the
War Lord piously.
“And Ludwig tickled to death with the idea
of becoming king,” added Eulenburg.
The War Lord was making his adieux, when
he suddenly turned upon Bülow. “What are you
going to do with Ruprecht?”
“Promise him a field marshal’s baton in our war.”
“The right bait,” assented Wilhelm, “but I
pity the country under his supreme command. Do
you know,” he added, “that the lowest of his
subjects would not permit him to cross his threshold?”
CHAPTER XXII
PAYING THE PRICE
What Edward VII. Thought—No Room for Art—A Vision
of Threadneedle Street
Bülow, who loved being Chancellor, hated Phili
Eulenburg.
However, the Imperial ex-Ambassador at the
Hofburg was then in the zenith of his ill-gotten
empire over Majesty, and to incur his displeasure
spelt disgrace or enforced resignation.
At the moment the grand old man’s thunderbolts
were under lock and key in Harden’s Grunewald
villa, and the exalted personages marked for
lightning carried things with a high hand, using
the German Empire like an entailed estate.
Pretty evenly parcelled out this fidei commissum
favoured by the Prussian Constitution, which
makes suffrage a mockery. Phili, of late enriched
by Hertefeld, the Rhenish domain that guarantees
him an independent income of £5,000 sterling a
year and by a couple of millions cash, which Baron
Nathan Rothschild, of Vienna, left him. Phili
was practically the overseer of the Government
personnel, and of the diplomatic corps in particular.
His card index of prominent men and women,
reinforced by reams and reams of correspondence,
characterised each person—diplomats, deputies,
ministers, councillors, governors, politicians,
commanding generals and aspirants for high honours
in the army or navy—according to his own
viewpoint, the avowed object being to people the
highest offices within the gift of the Crown with
people like-minded with himself.
And it must be admitted that Phili pretty
thoroughly succeeded, since the War Lord, seeing
everybody through Eulenburg’s eyes, selected in
the main only persons of mediocre intellect, or
plain bullies, as his representatives abroad and at
home. The reference to Eulenburg’s optics, by
the way, recalls another Bismarck sally: “One
look at Phili’s eyes is enough to spoil the most
elaborate dinner for me!”
Could gourmet-gourmand express himself more
emphatically? What the Iron Chancellor thought
of ambassadors appointed under that régime has
already been quoted; it coincides with the reputation
for clumsiness and inefficiency the War Lord’s
diplomatic servants have in all quarters of the
world. In ante bellum days few of them were
“honest men sent abroad to lie”; the great
majority were liars intent upon bulldozing or
deceiving the personages who mistook them for
gentlemen. Of course, “like master, like
servant.” The late King Edward maintained that
Wilhelm was vulgar and ungentlemanly; hence
Baron H or Count Y might think it presumptuous
to be otherwise. Besides, the Berlin Foreign
Office will employ nobles only, and we have the
authority of Gunther, Count von der Schulenburg,
Lord of Castle Oest, Rhineland, for the illuminating
fact that every tenth German aristocrat is
unspeakable. So much for the German diplomatic service.
General Count Kuno von Moltke presided over
another self-gratifying clique—that of the Army;
and if Germany had invaded Belgium ten years
previous to toying with the scrap of paper, she
would probably have been overthrown in short
order, for at that time the Commander of Imperial
Headquarters held the same sinister sway over the
military as Phili did over the civil branches of the
Government.
“Lovey,” “sweetheart,” “my soul,” “my
all” (Kuno Moltke’s epistolary titles for
Majesty), “hears as much of affairs as I want
him to know, no more,” was Moltke’s boast,
according to the sworn evidence of Frau von Ende,
Count Moltke’s former wife, in the famous Harden
slander case.
Yet though Moltke lost his case, the War
Lord declared “there is nothing definite against
Moltke, but he must remain on half-pay.”
Can you imagine King George V. so
flaunting the decisions of Old Bailey and thereafter
saddling the British public with a life pension
of about £500 per annum in favour of the guilty
party?
Can you imagine why such “sweet affection
for the All Highest” should make up for lack of
military qualities in a general officer slated for
supreme command in the field?
For his crusade Maximilian Harden won much
praise from English writers, but if he had let it
flourish in high places for a decade longer, Great
Britain would be richer in blood and treasure.
Another of these coteries of men who dispensed
high offices among themselves for their own
ends existed in the Imperial Court—aye, it lodged
there, not in the Schloss or Neues Palais exactly,
but—oh, irony!—in the Princess’s Palace, the
hideous dependance of the Crown Prince Palais,
Unter den Linden, the apartments granted for
life to Royal Chamberlain Count von Wedell
being its headquarters.
Oh, the jolly tea-parties they enjoyed in the
great high-ceilinged rococo chambers, full of
discarded furniture and appointments of the
Frederick the Great and Watteau period; Louis
Quatorze and Quinze, Boule and Chippendale,
Empire, here and there—antique regularity and
capricious bizarrerie, gems of Art some, also pieces
chipped and disjointed.
Carlyle called Frederick “the last of the
Kings”; he was certainly the last of Prussian
kings possessed of an appreciation of the beautiful.
The present War Lord kicked from his palaces—none
were built since the eighteenth century—all
objets d’art that would please the eye of anybody
not a German boor, substituting unmentionables
of the goose-step type, square-jointed, clumsy,
coarse, and wholly mauvais goût.
What the “majestic” chambers lack, then,
those of the Excellencies nolens volens boast.
Wedell’s rooms in particular contained a variety
of eighteenth century chef d’oeuvres selected by
the Count himself from heaps of “ancient
rubbish” sent from the Neues Palais and
Sans-Souci by order of Court Marshal von Liebenau, a
corporal dignified by a gold stick.
No doubt the Knights of Wedell’s Round Table
enjoyed what was “caviare to the general.” At
any rate, their tea-parties seem to have been a
delight to “high and low,” for no one admitted
to the charmed circle ever sent his regrets.
We find there General of Cavalry Count
Wilhelm von Hohenau, son of the War Lord’s uncle,
the late Prince Albrecht of Prussia, and Sailor
Trost, of His Majesty’s yacht Hohenzollern; the
gentleman already introduced, Count Kuno von
Moltke, also Lord of the Cathedral and Private
Riedel of the Uhlans; Count Lynar, brother-in-law
of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Colonel of
His Majesty’s Horse Guards, and Gus Steinhauer,
midshipman; Count Frederick von Hohenau,
brother of Wilhelm, and Court Councillor Kestler,
who rose from the ranks to gentlemanly estate and
high honours in His Majesty’s service; His Serene
Highness Prince Philip of Eulenburg, Right
Honourable Privy Councillor to the Prussian
Crown, member of the House of Lords, etc., and
Raymond Lecomte, French chargé d’affaires.
These men were regular attendants, under the
presidency of the noble-born host, of course, but
there was a fair sprinkling of counts and barons and
so on in this royal palace connected by a covered
archway with the town residence of the Crown
Prince and his family!
That was strange enough—audacity to the
point of recklessness, one might call it—but
stranger still is the fact that all these men were in
the War Lord’s good graces, if not on intimate
terms with him like Eulenburg.
With the Hohenaus he was on “Willy” and
“Freddy” footing; Count Johannes von Lynar
he called “Jeanie”; and His Excellency
Lieutenant-General Kuno von Moltke was his
“Tütü”—with dots over both u’s, if you please.
Nor were Wedell and Moltke the only
tea-party members admitted to high positions at
Court. Wilhelm Hohenau was governor to His
Imperial Highness the Crown Prince, and, on
Moltke’s recommendation, Count Lynar was about
to be gazetted personal adjutant to His Majesty—an
office giving him apartments at the royal
residence—when he was vulgarly “pinched” and
lugged off to jail for the crime of—being found
out.
Because he was the War Lord’s “Jeanie,”
Lynar would not listen to “Tütü’s” and
“Willy’s” and “Freddy’s” hints about the
Bank of England as a safe depository.
“Some day,” he used to bluster, “a few weeks
or a month after ‘The Day,’ I will ride up
Threadneedle Street and straight into the vaults of that
venerable pile, and leap my charger over mountains
of gold—will be quite a change, don’t you know,
from jumping fences at Hoppegarten.”
As to the others, Sailor Trost and ditto Gustav
Steinhauer each enjoyed a meteoric career, rising
in quick order to petty officership—impossible to
advance them higher, because they were men
without education; and whenever and wherever an
excuse could be found for employing them in that
extraordinary capacity, they were given charge of
the Imperial person. Thus Gustav Steinhauer
always acted as chief guardian of the War Lord’s
lodging in Castle Liebenberg when the Majesty
visited his beloved Phili.
Kestler was a miserable subaltern, destined to
starve on a daily wage of four marks, when
Eulenburg discovered and introduced him to Majesty.
Under the War Lord’s favour, he was transferred
to a more lucrative department in the service, and
decorated!
Yet why the Pour le Merite for Kestler, and
for Eulenburg, Wedell, etc.? What were their
peculiar merits? Has anyone ever been able to
discover?
To-day Eulenburg, twice tried, is a prisoner
for life on his estate; the two Hohenaus are
banished from Germany, and dare not come back
on pain of arrest; Count Kuno von Moltke is a
pensioner of the German people on foreign soil;
Count Wedell forfeited the two gold buttons on
the tails of his frac and his residence at the
Princess’s palace.
Why did they get off so easily in comparison
when the crash came?
The answer is obvious enough. These persons
had been careful to deposit in London, E.C., the
letters they had received from a certain exalted
party who shall be nameless, and Count Lynar,
prisoner No. 5429 at Siegburg Jail, had neglected
that simple precaution.
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW VON BOHLEN WAS CHOSEN
The First Step—Prussian Manners—The War Lord Finds
His Man—Putting Bülow to the Test—Discussing the
Husband to Be—von Bohlen is Chosen
On the morning after the Bavarian debate in the
Chancellor’s palace the War Lord and Prince
Phili met early in Sans-Souci Park for an hour’s
horseback exercise and scandalmongering. Be
sure that chronique scandaleuse was thoroughly
discussed, as well as the personnel of Phili’s
favourites, and if there was anybody at Court and
in Society, in high official places and in the royal
theatres whose ears did not tingle with the
calumnies or malicious tittle-tattle launched, the
gossipers’ memory was at fault, not their capacity
for impertinent innuendo.
These personages were walking their horses in
a secluded avenue of the woods beyond Klein
Glienecke when they heard galloping behind.
“My courier,” said the War Lord; “we’ll wait.” They
drew rein, and presently a red-coat shot by
them in a parallel road. When some fifty paces
ahead, the courier leaped his horse across the
intervening ditch, then stopped short at the imminent
risk of being thrown, and waited, hat in hand.
“Get the mail bag,” commanded Wilhelm
curtly, after the style of Napoleon, who thought
nothing of ordering a king to see how dinner was
progressing. Phili trotted off, and presently
returned with a red morocco leather portfolio. A
silver-gilt key dangling on the War Lord’s
bracelet gave access to the contents: two letters, both
postmarked Essen.
“From Bertha,” said the War Lord, glancing
at the bigger envelope, and put it into his
pocket. The other he tore open in great haste.
“Wonder what the Baroness wants from me?”
he muttered.
Phili having returned the portfolio, the courier
was dismissed by a wave of the hand, and Wilhelm
plunged into the epistle sans cérémonie.
“The devil!” he cried, before he had finished
the first page, and drove his horse so hard against
Eulenburg’s side that Phili could not suppress an
outcry.
“Listen to this: Bertha has fallen in love with
Franz, sort of foster-brother, you know; they were
children together.”
“The electrical expert you told me about?”
“Precisely. But I won’t allow it; she might as
well aspire to be wife No. 777 to our friend Abdul.
But here comes the Baroness and pleads that the
dear child may have her way, Franz being such
a good young man; marriages are arranged in
heaven, and her blessed Frederick will be tickled
to death, etc., and more tommy rot like that.”
“You don’t think Franz exactly the right person?”
“Phili,” cried the War Lord, “if you were
not such an old sinner and bald-headed and married
and the father of children of marriageable age, I
would order you to marry her.”
“Another woman—are there none but women
in the world?” groaned the ex-ambassador. “Besides,
I have not the least talent for bigamy; try
Kiderlen-Waechter.”
“Would be the right sort, but he is nearly as
old as you.”
Once more Extase’s flank squeezed Phili.
“I’ve got it,” Wilhelm exclaimed suddenly.
“When you get back home, browse for an hour
or two on your card index, picking out the most
desirable and up-to-date Benedicts in the thirties
or thereabout, preferably men in the diplomatic
service. Got everybody’s photo up there, haven’t
you?”
“At Your Majesty’s service, the whole gallery.”
“Pictures and personalia you’ll bring to the
Neues Palais this afternoon, and maybe I will run
over to Essen in the night to show the crème de
votre crème to the Baroness. This folly about
Franz must be nipped in the bud, and with a girl
the better and handsomer man does the trick every
time.”
The War Lord wheeled his horse around and
trotted off in the direction of his residence. He
never takes the trouble of telling his riding
companions of his intentions. “Let them keep their
eyes open and do as I do.” The Queen herself
fares no better when out riding with him. If her
harness gets out of order or something of that sort,
and she has to dismount, Wilhelm presses on
unconcernedly. “Let the Master of Horse look
after her.”
Phili, arrived at his apartments, had no sooner
got into his dressing-jacket of flowered silk, when
the telephone rang furiously. “I command,”
admonished a hard voice.
“Here, Phili, at Your Majesty’s service.”
“Are you at work on the cards?”
“Head over heels,” lied Phili.
“And in this connection—has nothing
occurred to you?”
The obsequious courtier was in a quandary.
Woe to him if he attempted to be wiser than his
master!
“The old story; I have to think of everything,”
the War Lord thundered. “Can’t you
see you must take your selection of names to
Bülow and pretend to get advice on the candidates
from him? If you don’t, he will be offended.”
“Like the old woman he is,” ventured Eulenburg.
“Don’t you criticise my Chancellor.” There
was a brutal emphasis on the “my,” and Phili
stuttered a dozen excuses for his slip of the
tongue.
“Never mind, to work, Prince! It was Louis
XIV. who almost waited on one particular
occasion. Remember, Phili, I don’t want to repeat
his experience.”
Phili rang for Jaroljmek, his secretary.
“I do wish Majesty could get along without
me for a day or two,” he said. “More pressing
business. All the young men in the diplomatic
service to be inquired into, liver and kidneys. At
once, of course! Beastly bore unless I may count
on your assistance.”
“Of course, Serene Highness.”
“Have the maids bring in the card index, then.”
“With Highness’s permission, I will ask the
butler to help me. It’s too heavy for girls.”
“Not at all. Women were put into the world
to wait on such as you and I. The woods are full
of girls, while nice boys are few and far between.
And you vulgarise a high-stepping horse by hard
work.”
So two nine-stone girls were ordered to carry
in from an upper storey the great wooden case
weighing a hundredweight, while His Highness
and secretary looked on and, moreover, increased
their task by foolish directions.
“The smaller legations where I am sending the
unlicked cubs—fellows without an inkling of Greek
art and antique beauty—we’ll go through those
first,” said the Prince.
“May I ask Highness the purpose of our
research?”
“Majesty is trying to find a hubby for—Nomina
sunt odiosa. However, you know the party.”
“Rich?”
“Wealthiest girl in the world.”
“Old Frederick’s daughter! I heard some
queer stories about Papa.”
“Naughty boy!” with an indulgent smile from
Phili. “Well, Majesty wants a Benedict for
Bertha who will paddle the War Lord’s canoe
even more enthusiastically than his wife’s
baby-carriage.”
“Why doesn’t Majesty consult von Treskow
and Kopp?” said the secretary.
“Don’t mention those rude plebeians.”
And so the pretty pair went on. They selected
a round dozen should-be aspirants for Bertha’s
hand.
These the Emperor examined later.
“Receding chin,” announced the War Lord
disdainfully, reviewing the first few while the
friends sipped their China tea.
“All the ear marks of the wife-beater,” he
commented on an attaché accredited to the Court
of St. James’s. “That fellow is sure to give
trouble,” he commented on photo No. 4. No. 5
was dismissed with a contemptuous: “Meddlesome
snout.” He continued to throw the
photographs on the carpet, but suddenly sat up
straight as a bolt.
“My man!” he cried. “Get Bülow on the
‘phone. No; order Augustus to have an extra
train ready for the Chancellor to leave Potsdamer
Bahnhof in half an hour at the latest.”
The Court Marshal ‘phoned back that a regular
train was leaving at the time prescribed, and that
a saloon carriage might be attached for Count
Bülow.
“Very well, but express—Neues Palais first
stop. Now call up Bülow.” The War Lord was
continually filling his teacup and absorbing large
quantities of cucumber sandwiches. He had his
mouth full when the red disc annunciator reported
Bülow at the other end, and emptied it with a
gulp.
Yes—immediately. Most important. Would
not he bring the Princess? His wife would be
delighted.
In an hour’s time a royal landau and four set
Chancellor von Bülow and his Princess down in
the Sandhof, the War Lord stepping from one of
the tall door-windows of his study on to the terrace
to welcome them, and Countess Brockdorff, Mistress
of the Robes, receiving Her Serene Highness
on Her Majesty’s behalf.
Do these august ladies love each other?
Assuredly—after the fashion of Empress Eugenie
and Princess Pauline Metternich. The Princess
thought herself as good as the Empress any day,
and never hesitated to say so, and when on one
occasion Eugenie’s tantrums were excused on the
plea that she had an uncle in the strait-jacket,
Pauline quickly responded: “There are a few
lunatics in my family too.”
So the Princess Camporeale, whose husband
was to be “princed” a few weeks hence, regarded
herself as good as the née Schleswig-Holstein,
arguing that the Beccadello were more ancient
than Her Majesty’s family. And her Margraviate
of Altavilla was worth more in lires and centimes
than Her Majesty’s title of Margravine of
Brandenburg.
So the Princess Maria told Countess Brockdorff
she could not move until the ladies of her Court
arrived from the station, and the House Marshal
was warned that Her Highness’s lackeys must not
be allowed in the palace canteen. German beer
and sausage always upset them.
Four exceedingly pretty Italian women came
in the second carriage. “My governess,
Marchesa ——.” “My reader, the Countess ——.”
“My maids of honour, Contezzina —— and
Baroness ——”—all members of former sovereign
or semi-sovereign houses.
Bülow beamed in his animated fashion when he
did not see Eulenburg, whom he rather expected
to find, since he was always where least wanted.
“And what may be Your Majesty’s pleasure?”
he asked in his courtly way, when they were alone
in the study.
“I want your opinion on the husband I’ve
selected for a certain young lady.” The War
Lord had quite forgotten his own admonition to
Phili. “Look!” He laid a hand partly over the
photograph on the table, allowing only the
forehead to be seen.
“Good, capable forehead,” observed Bülow;
“something behind that.”
“No obstinacy, I hope,” said the War Lord.
Next he let the photograph’s eyes be seen.
“Cold, steadfast, may be some disposition for
cruelty,” was Bülow’s verdict.
“A good nose, mouth disdainful, somewhat
high cheekbones—it’s von Bohlen und Halbach!”
cried the Chancellor.
“You know him?”
“To some extent, both officially and
unofficially. Never had any chance to distinguish
himself, but decidedly adaptable, yet not lacking
executive ability, I believe.”
The War Lord was delighted with the endorsement
his own views received.
“Look at that chin,” he said; “firm isn’t the
word for it—bulldog, regular bulldog. He will
lead you the deuce of a dance, Bertha!”
At the mention of the name the Chancellor
winced perceptibly. “I endorsed his capacity for
business; I know nothing about his personal
character,” he ventured, adding: “He must be at
least fifteen years older than Bertha.”
The War Lord consulted Phili’s notes. “Old
enough to vote, as they say in the States—to vote
for me, nota bene, at directors’ meetings. Call up
your office and find out what kind of subordinate
he is.”
“I looked at his papers only the other day.
He seems to give his chief no trouble, carrying
out orders punctually and painstakingly; never
harasses the minister with original suggestions, but
is quite content to do his duty and say naught
about it.”
“Is his family good enough?”
“Gentle born,” explained the Chancellor;
“father was Baden Minister, mother not of noble
birth—Sophie Bohlen—but she had money, I
believe. The present Councillor of Legation is
university bred, of course, and belongs to the
Guard Hussars, Landwehr, Chef d’escadron, says
the army ‘Who’s Who.’ Nevertheless,” concluded
the Chancellor in his most persuasive style,
“I don’t think him the right sort of husband for
Bertha.”
“Right sort for me,” cried the War Lord.
Bülow, conscious that His Majesty at the time
could not afford to quarrel with him, risked a none
too gentle rebuke by disregarding the interruption.
“She is so young,” he went on, “and, as I
pointed out before, there is the making of a cruel
master in his face. Think of the wealthiest girl
in the world tied to a man who will not let her have
her own way—a sort of drill-sergeant husband.
Your Majesty is too whole-hearted, too generous,
too gallant,” he added with a smile, “to impose a
husband of that kind upon your ward.”
In response the War Lord dropped the high
falsetto of command which had marked his
interruptions, and said in a more conciliatory tone:
“There is not a man alive against whose choice as
a husband objections may not be marshalled à la
advocatus diaboli. Now, for a change, listen to
the advocatus Dei, please: It goes without saying
that I have my ward’s happiness very much at
heart. Indeed, if she was of my own flesh and
blood, I could not cherish more tender feelings for
her. I love her like one of my own children, and
haven’t I accepted Cecile much as I loathe her
mother? But with Bertha it’s not a mere matter
of getting married and preserving her unexampled
wealth, if you will——” The War Lord stopped
short, but after a moment’s thought continued:
“It will be more public spirited for Bertha to
marry the man of my selection than to imperil the
Fatherland’s right arm. Where would we be if
she chose for lord and master one of those
fool-pacifists, some von Suttner milksop, seeing that
without Krupp’s loyal co-operation our great war
would go to pot—that even a mere defensive war
would better be avoided.”
“If Fraulein Krupp or her husband went to
extremes, the State could step in and take over the
Krupp works,” objected the Chancellor.
“And do you suppose that our agents in
Brussels, Lisbon, Rome, the South Americas and
so forth would be allowed to buy guns from the
King of Prussia?” The War Lord answered his
own question with an emphatic “No!” then
suggested slyly:
“To sell the enemy war materials is part of our
ante-war programme, is it not?”
After walking the length and breadth of the
room, he planted himself firmly before Bülow,
whom, by the way, he had not asked to be seated.
“I command,” he said with an air of finality;
“Bohlen is the man. Your own suggestion, you
can’t escape from it,” he quickly added, when
Bülow protested. “You said the fellow, though
capable, is not self-opinionated—no swelled
head—always obeys orders—in short: adaptable. That
kind of man we need at the head of the Krupp
establishment to do the Fatherland’s work according
to my directions—hence Bertha will marry him
and no one else.”
Then, to forestall further arguments: “Let’s
join the ladies now.”
He rang for an orderly. “The Grand Master,”
he commanded.
Count Augustus zu Eulenburg had evidently
anticipated that he would be wanted, as he stood
waiting in the Shell Grotto, facing the park. The
walls and ceiling of this gorgeous entrance hall
are clad with semi-precious stones in their natural
growth: mountain-crystal and malachite, coral
trees and amethyst rocks, agate and garnets, gold
and silver ore; presents from royal friends for the
most part.
“I’ll leave for Essen to-night. Wire Frau
Krupp to expect me for breakfast. The small
entourage, and warn messieurs my humble servants
not to take too many lackeys. I am tired
of carting their households around.”
“At Your Majesty’s orders.” The Marshal
bowed low. Then in a whisper: “Is Phili to be
of the party?”
“Certainly not,” replied the War Lord so
Bülow might hear him. “Report to me later,”
he added in an undertone.
“Later” the following tripotage was overheard:
War Lord: “Phili hasn’t left?”
“He is awaiting Your Majesty’s further commands.”
“Tell him to get ready for Essen.”
“He begs to remind Your Majesty that he is
not in the Baroness’s good graces.”
“Am I not painfully aware of that? She
would prefer the measles to a morning call from
Phili.”
“Then he is to stay on the train while Your
Majesty visits Villa Huegel?”
“Until I require him. He may be needed
to quicken her ladyship’s decision about matters
in hand, as under pressure of his presence she will
consent more readily, just to get your precious
cousin out of the house.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE WAR LORD’S DAY IN ESSEN
The Krupp Free Hotel—The War Lord and the
Cinder—Bertha’s Little Surprise—The Blue Ribbon
of the Son—A Mad Idea—The War Lord Apes the
Expert—Enter the Pawn—A Wily Game—Disposing
of Franz
“A wonderful country, the United States,” said
the War Lord to Chief-Engineer Franz; “it
produced two Maxims. The British War Office
captured Hiram, but there is another, Hudson,
who seems to know as much about explosives and
guns as his more celebrated namesake. I want
you to take a year’s leave and study him—him and
Pittsburgh. Your salary goes on, of course, and
there will be a suitable allowance for expense. I
will arrange this with the Director-General.”
Franz bowed his thanks, for Wilhelm, big with
his subject, showed plainly that he meant to do
all the talking.
“Hudson Maxim,” he continued, “claims
priority as inventor of half a hundred discoveries
that would seem to spell success in war. He knows
a lot about dynamite, torpedoes, and detonating
fuses too, and is great in chemistry. Try and learn
all he knows by fair means or—foul,” he added.
Then, musingly:
“I have lately looked into some recipes
suggesting chemical preparations for means of attack. The
War Office will furnish details. Consult Hudson
Maxim and other American authorities on the
subject, using the utmost discretion, of course, for I
don’t quite trust those Yankees. They manage
to cover up their British sympathies, but I have
had a peep or two beneath the surface. I know
Armour.” His mind took a sudden leap. “How
soon will you start?” he demanded. “Do you
want a week’s time? Very well.”
“May it please Your Majesty, Frau Krupp
invited me to accompany herself and daughters
on their jaunt—sort of maréchal de logis——”
ventured Franz.
“Duty, sir! Fatherland first. Tuesday’s
French liner, then; and don’t fail to investigate
whether steamers of this class are liable to be of
use as auxiliary vessels in case of war. Ballin and
the Norddeutscher Lloyd people pronounce them
veritable men-of-war. But, to my mind, Ballin
and Company are after subsidies.”
Thus was Franz politely requested and cruelly
coerced to leave Villa Huegel. It was on the eve
of the day after the interview between War Lord
and Chancellor. Events had moved swiftly since
then.
A comfortable night on Majesty’s train de
luxe, preceded by a variety performance by Phili
Eulenburg, star impersonator.
Breakfast, 9 A.M., at the Krupp villa, better
and more plentiful than at home.
A drive next? No; Uncle Majesty would not
allow Bertha to handle the ribbons of the four-in-hand.
Never doubted her ability, of course—yet
that experience of his at Count Dohna’s. No
amateurs on the box for him. “His little girl was
to sit by his side,” and they were to discuss “grave
business matters.”
Wilhelm, who always looks for chances to
combine business with pleasure, asked to be driven
to the Essener Hof, a hotel in the city of Essen
proper, where intending buyers of guns and
ammunition are lodged, and, it may be added, wined and
feasted at the War Lady’s expense. Be sure that
the Krupp hostelry is never lacking in guests
pretending to be unsatisfied with the tests of war
material conducted for their benefit as long as there
is the slightest excuse for delay in going home,
since, once satisfied, they must buy, and, the deal
concluded, give up their comfortable apartments
at the Hof.
Wilhelm left half a dozen of his large, ugly
visiting-cards at the door of the hotel for the Jap,
Chinese, Turkish and other representatives,
bending down the lower right-hand corner of the
pasteboards to indicate his regrets that he had failed to
find the gentlemen in.
“If any of them attempt to pay me a return
visit, I shall put them under ‘old Fritz’ and
pulverise their yellow bones,” he said to Bertha.
But before they had finished laughing at the
piece of raillery the War Lord uttered a cry of
anguish. An infinitesimal cinder or a bit of soot
had got into his left ear, causing him the most
excruciating pains.
“Home,” he gasped piteously. “Let’s pick
up a physician on the way.” (For some reason or
other no doctor was included in the small Imperial
party.)
Dr. Shrader was dumbfounded when the royal
chasseur, in feather hat, broadsword at his side,
summoned him. “My consulting hour; dozens of
people waiting,” he protested. The chasseur bent
over the doctor’s ear and whispered, whereupon
Shrader ran into the street in his dressing-gown,
apparently to interview the gutter, for, in his
anxiety to pacify the War Lord with stammered
excuses, his nose was close to the stream of mucky
water running down the hill.
Naturally, the humour of the thing did not
appeal to Wilhelm, racked with pain as he was.
He rose from the seat, and, pushing the obsequious
doctor aside, jumped up the steps, saying:
“Attend me, I command.” Of course, in the
meanwhile the doctor’s household had got wind of
the royal radiance, and flocked from parlour,
bedrooms and scullery, males and females and children,
all eager to prostrate themselves in hall or on
staircases, wherever they might be.
The War Lord turned to Shrader: “Send
them upstairs; lock them in if necessary.” And,
with a look through the glass door of the
waiting-room: “These people must leave instantly; I
won’t be their Grossebeest.”
He let himself drop into the doctor’s ample
desk-chair.
“The ear-pump and antiseptics!” he commanded
with a cry of pain. Then, as the doctor
approached with the instruments: “Oh, take off
that dirty dressing-gown first. Roll up your
sleeves. Wash your hands.”
More insulting orders were thundered at the
man of science by a supposed gentleman, but their
execution gave Shrader time to recover.
He handled the ear-pump with consummate
ease, as he happened to be a specialist in the line,
and soon had the satisfaction of showing the War
Lord the annoying fragment of cinder which his
skill had discovered and extracted.
“May it please Your Majesty, it would be well
to clear all the passages by blowing air through
them,” he humbly suggested.
“Do all that’s necessary, doctor.”
Shrader produced another instrument fitted
with a spiral trumpet and a long rubber tube, and
went to work vigorously. By the time the War
Lord was ready to leave the doctor laid down his
microscope: “I congratulate Your Majesty; no
evidence of putrefaction, hence no gangrenous
inflammation.”
“Who said there was?” demanded the War
Lord severely.
“I meant to submit to Your Majesty that the
ear will give no further trouble.”
“That’s better,” said Wilhelm in a pleasant
voice. He strode through the hall at such a pace
that the chasseur had hardly time to open the door
for him.
The street was black with people. “Hochs!”
resounded from a thousand throats, basso, tenor,
soprano, what not. A good many people had
been talking to Bertha—all at once, of course.
“Prating of their misfortunes—the usual racket,”
suggested the War Lord, with a look of contempt,
as he sat down beside the heiress. And when the
carriage was clear of the mob he added: “You
ought to have walked the horses up and down in
the neighbourhood while I was with the doctor.”
“I thought of that, likewise that the carriage
might not have been on hand when you wanted
to start, Uncle Majesty. You told me the remark
of the French king: ‘I almost waited,'” replied
Fraulein Krupp.
Dr. Shrader had indeed relieved the Majesty,
who felt fresh and buoyant after the invigorating
ride over the hills and along the shooting-ranges.
The latter, while fully manned, were silent, for the
chasseur had telephoned to Count Helmuth von
Moltke, and the adjutant had countermanded all
trial practice.
“Let’s look at ‘old Fritz’ again,” said the
War Lord, after refreshments. Unlike Charles V.,
the War Lord is never awakened during the night
to swallow some favourite dish, but five meals a
day are his rule, and to revive his animal spirits he
takes a number of raw eggs in a glass of cognac
after the slightest exertion, when at home, i.e. at
his own expense, while more substantial and
elaborate provision is expected at friends’ houses.
At Villa Huegel he is never disappointed. Even
if he brought those “forty scientist friends” he
once imposed upon Dom Carlos of Portugal, poor
man!—indeed, even if he asked Frau Krupp to
lodge and feed a whole regiment of gold-laced
or fringe-trousered nobodies or impostors, there
would be the most generous response on her part
and no questions asked.
“When I heard you were coming, Uncle
Majesty, I planned a little surprise,” said Bertha,
when showing the War Lord a short cut to “old
Fritz’s” habitat. She led the way to a section
of the armour-plate department, whose employés
burst into feverish activity at their approach. No
doubt they were expected.
“Eighty tons,” said Bertha, pointing towards
the huge crucible steel block being placed under a
giant hydraulic press.
“How will you move a cannon of that size?”
queried the War Lord, who is liable to get his
figures mixed.
“But it is not going to be a cannon, Uncle
Majesty,” explained the mistress of the works.
“You are going to roll it out into an armour-plate
for Chimborazo, then?”
“Once more Uncle Majesty is pleased to be
mistaken.”
“Maybe it’s a statue of England’s lord high
admiral you are making?”
“Burning,” said the smiling Bertha; “it has
something to do with the sea.”
There was more guessing and repartee during
the first half of the thirty minutes required to coax
and squeeze and handle and form the block and
drag its slow length along—150 feet of it. Seeing
that, the War Lord no longer could master his
curiosity.
“What is it to be, Bertha?” he asked in a tone
that would not be denied, and the wonder is that
he did not add the polite: “I command!” of
average Prussian bully ship.
“The shaft of a big steamer, Uncle Majesty;
the biggest——”
“I know, I know,” shouted the War Lord
above the din of machinery, “for Ballin. Wants
to snatch the speed record from Bremen. Fetch
the superintendent, Bertha.”
To the official, who was undecided whether he
ought to drop dead with devotion or burst with
pride, he said in the tone of an ancient Father of
the Church: “Work of the utmost importance is
entrusted to you—in a measure you are the
guardian of the Fatherland’s supremacy at sea.
England is building a giant steamship to steal our
speed record. Her new ocean greyhound is to be
ready for passenger service in 1907. Pray to God
fervently, asking Him to grant you success that
you may help to defeat the enemy of German
commerce and our development as a sea power.
To assist in taking the blue ribbon of sea power
away from Great Britain should be the aim of all
good Germans, even as it is your War Lord’s duty
to secure for the Fatherland the ocean coast-lines
she needs.” He dismissed the man with a wave of
the hand.
It is interesting to note here that this speech
was delivered a month before Wilhelm met King
Edward at Wilhelmshohe to spout “his sincere
wishes for a frank understanding with Great
Britain” and for the “desirability of common
action” where German or British interests were
involved.
Meanwhile the shaft had been completed, a
towering, solid mass, and the War Lord, walking
round it, remarked admiringly: “Fine, looks as
if come out of Vulcan’s own smithy. What
next?” he added, with his customary impatience.
The young girl was anxious to show her
familiarity with the business. Had she not
undergone much coaching by Franz for this very reason?
“Extracting the kernel,” she answered, with
an air of superiority.
“I should like to see the removal of the
kernel,” ordered the War Lord, as if the idea were
original with him. Bertha pulled his sleeve and
whispered again, after which Wilhelm admonished
the superintendent: “Take care that it comes out
in one piece.”
No doubt the man would have died of mortification
if the well-known “cussedness” of
“inanimate objects” had played him a trick; but,
luckily for him, it refrained, which encourages the
thought that the supposed “inanimation” is not
quite so hopeless after all. Maybe in this case the
“inanimate object” was intent upon beating the
War Lord out of a chance to scold and air his views
on mechanics.
“Any more novelties?” asked Wilhelm, disappointed
because the machinery worked to perfection.
“The hydraulic shears are busy in the next
shop,” said Bertha.
There the War Lord saw sections of armour-plates
for one of his Dreadnoughts cut as if they
were so many enormous Swiss cheeses.
“Some fine day,” he commented, “we will
mount one of these shears on the Calais coast, and
next to it a giant magnet.” He paused,
contemplating the picture of his imagination.
“Yes, yes, Uncle Majesty!” cried the eager Bertha.
“The magnet,” continued the War Lord,
“will pull the English Dreadnought fleet out of
the Channel, and toss ship after ship over into the
jaws of the shears to be made mincemeat of.
Fine heap of scrap-iron for you, Bertha.”
“But the sailors!” cried the young girl.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”
declared the War Lord, shrugging.
Next they looked at some enormous presses
capable of bending armour-plates to any shape
desired. This amused the Majesty hugely. He
likes to bend men and things.
“Any shape desired?”
“Any Your Majesty will be pleased to command.”
“Very well. Model one on the left half of my
moustache.”
The supervisor shouted orders and the
machinery stopped for a little while, then turned
out the desired shape with photographic accuracy.
But the War Lord would not have it: “The
point’s missing,” he declared.
“I leave it to Fraulein,” murmured the superintendent,
wincing under the rebuke. And with
the vivacity and carelessness of youth Bertha
divined the situation, and instantly came to her
employé’s rescue.
“Herr Grier is right; Your Majesty’s moustaches
are not trimmed alike. The left one is much
shorter.”
Wilhelm put his hand up to his cheek. “So
it is,” he admitted grudgingly. “I remember I
set fire to it last night on the train lighting a
cigarette.” This was addressed to Bertha. He
was too small a person to excuse his rudeness to
the superintendent.
“There is a ninety-ton block of steel making.
Would Uncle Majesty like to see how it’s done?”
said Bertha, on the way back to Villa Huegel.
“Ninety tons! What a cannon that would
make! Of course I would like to see it.”
Bertha led the way to the crucible works, where
at that moment fifty pairs of workers were engaged
in carrying about on long bars white-hot crucibles
of metal. They were acting with the utmost
precision, and one shudders to think of the wounds
and mutilation that would have ensued had either
one of them stumbled or been seized by sudden
illness. As each couple of men advanced and tilted
the glowing mass into the mould, the War Lord
observed:
“Much too long-winded and laborious. I will
talk to the Director-General about that, Bertha.”
And, turning to the supervisor, he demanded
curtly: “The composition of the mixture?”
The man bowed to the ground to hide his
confusion, and once more Bertha jumped into the
breach.
“He doesn’t know—nor do I. Secret formula
of Grandfather Frederick. Don’t press him,
Uncle Majesty, for even to speculate on these
technicalities means dismissal and disgrace for an
employé.” Though she spoke in a pleading tone
of voice, the War Lord continued to frown.
“Perhaps he is allowed to explain why no
shorter process is used.”
The supervisor fairly beamed with readiness
and satisfaction. “May it please Your Majesty,
our way—I beg Fraulein’s pardon, the Krupp
way—is the only absolutely sure method to forestall
bubbles and flaws.”
“And a flaw, is it a serious matter?” asked the
War Lord, very much alert.
“Indeed, Your Majesty, for it may cause the
shattering of a shaft, the breakdown of machinery,
the bursting of cannon.”
“And all cannon turned out by the works have
the benefit of this process?”
“All without exception, Your Majesty.”
A bystander says he heard the War Lord
mutter under his breath: “What rot!” And
there is a further report that he burst into the
Director-General’s room, and roared: “Fine
kettle of fish I discovered. Guarding against
flaws in cannon intended for enemy countries!
Why not turn over to France and England
and Russia all the secret plans of the German
War Office?”
But no authoritative record of Wilhelm’s sayings
relating to this particular point has been
obtainable. As a matter of fact, it isn’t worth the
pains of special research. It is to be noted,
however, that after the Turkish defeat at Lule Burgas
and Kirk Kilisse Bertha’s husband was moved to
say that the stories about the “inefficiency of
Krupp guns and Krupp workmanship” were
“fables,” and that he was ready at any time “to
take the field against all comers with Krupp guns
and Krupp armour.”
After tea the War Lord had a long, serious
talk with Frau Krupp. Happily her ladyship had
been mistaken. Bertha was not actually in love
with Franz; just a sort of sisterly attachment,
momentarily intensified by girlish longings. So
much the better, since the right sort of husband
for his ward had been found: Doctor von Bohlen
und Halbach, the young diplomat, distinguished,
well-bred, sound business head and ambitious.
“Highest ambition to serve his king.”
“Supposing Your Majesty understood Bertha
correctly with respect to Franz, her change of
heart does not mean that she will fall in love with
Your Majesty’s candidate for her hand,” said
Frau Krupp.
“Preparing to jump,” thought Wilhelm; “I
wish Phili were here.” And as accident would
have it, His Highness was announced that very
moment. Eulenburg, or Hohenzollern luck?
The Baroness opened her mouth to deny herself
to the visitor on the plea of unavoidable
business, but Wilhelm got ahead of her. “The
Prince is most welcome,” he said to the major-domo.
There is no denying that His Highness, ten
or more years ago, was a striking personality and
had a peculiar charm. As Murat knew more about
the art of dressing than Napoleon, so Eulenburg
overshadowed Wilhelm as a glass of fashion, avoiding
the latter’s all-too-apparent striving for effect
and pretence.
Despite their close relations, he greeted Wilhelm
without a trace of familiarity and kissed Frau
Krupp’s hand.
“Just in time,” cried the War Lord. “I was
telling the Baroness about the Chancellor’s young
friend, von Bohlen. Bülow told me he would ask
you to allow him sight of your records concerning
the diplomat. Was he satisfied? Tell us all you
know about Bohlen?”
That he was well aware of Frau Krupp’s loathing
for him need not be reiterated, and that in her
ladyship’s eyes praise from Sir Phili spelt the worst
of condemnation for the party approved of he fully
realised, and framed his answer accordingly:
“I am pained to acknowledge that I have
no personal acquaintance with the young man
who rejoices in the great Pontiff’s love and
friendship——”
“You have Pius’s own opinion,” cried the
War Lord. His astonishment was equalled only
by his appreciation of the lie told.
“At Your Majesty’s service—through the
kindness of the papal legate. When Majesty
commissioned me to get reliable information about
our foreign representatives, I went to
headquarters—may it please Your Majesty.”
“It pleases me immensely. What did the
Pontiff say?”
“Exemplary habits, God-fearing, able and
ambitious—these few words sum up the Holy
Father’s estimate of Bohlen.”
“Did you hear that?” asked Wilhelm, addressing
Frau Krupp. “We will get the details from
Bülow.” And turning to Phili, he said: “You
wanted to meet my ward. I will summon her,
and she shall show you over the house and grounds.
Beats Liebenberg,” he added in an undertone.
Phili beamed. “His Majesty is joking,” he
said to Frau Krupp. “To compare my poor
Tusculum to Villa Huegel and surroundings is to put
my Skalde songs next to the immortal ballads of
Beranger.”
Frau Krupp dared not object to Wilhelm’s
arrangements. She played into the War Lord’s
hands.
“I will meet you and His Highness at the
fountain in five minutes,” she told Bertha—a
welcome cue to Uncle Majesty.
“Aside from the Pope’s estimate, does the
Chancellor himself approve of Herr von Bohlen?”
asked Frau Krupp.
“Enthusiastically. Bohlen’s record in Washington
and in Peking equalled his success at the
Holy See. Gnädige Frau,” added Wilhelm in a
tone of conviction, “let’s hope that the estimable
young man’s heart is still free. I have no doubt
that he would be a dieu-donné to Bertha, yourself
and—Essen.”
“And Your Majesty desires me to broach the
matter to my daughter?”
“What is gnädige Frau thinking of? Do you
suppose I would have wooed Augusta if I had
known that Bismarck wanted me to marry her?
No, no; matters of that kind must be left to
accident, or apparent accident. This is the time for
diplomatic furloughs. Tell me where you want
to take the girls on their holiday, and I will have
your son-in-law-to-be introduced quite casually.
Bülow will manage.”
“Bertha spoke of having another look into
Rome before the hot season,” said the Baroness.
“Fate,” cried Wilhelm (if he was a Catholic
he would have crossed himself). “God’s will,” he
corrected his lapsus linguæ. “Herr von Bohlen
und Halbach will be ordered not to leave his post
until further notice. When you are in Rome he
will present himself with Bülow’s compliments,
offering to act as my ward’s cicerone. This will
give you abundant opportunity for intimate
observation and Bertha a chance to fall in love if
she cares.
“All’s arranged, then,” he added in the finality
vein peculiar to his nature, when he kissed Frau
Krupp’s hand at the door, which he had opened
for her. In the Teuton Majesty’s eye this was a
great and almost overpowering act of condescension;
the twentieth-century Prussian-en-chef rather
prides himself on such mannerisms, fondly mistaking
them for dignity.
Well satisfied with the success of his stratagem,
Wilhelm rang for his adjutant and dictated to him
a long dispatch to the Chancellor, giving a
well-coloured version of the interview with Frau Krupp
and instructing Count Bülow how to answer the
lady’s forthcoming inquiries.
“The holiest of the holies, of course,” ordered
Wilhelm, referring to the telegraphic code. “I
don’t trust these Essen fellows,” he deigned to
explain; “the Chasseur shall take the message to
Düsseldorf and personally hand it to the President
to be sent over the official wire.”
Afterwards he joined the ladies and Phili,
finishing up the day’s strenuous work of intrigue
and sight-seeing with the talk to Franz, recorded
at the opening of this chapter.
Just before leaving Villa Huegel he had
another tête-à-tête with Frau Krupp. “I have
conferred signal honours on your protégé” (meaning
the chief engineer), he said. “I am sending
him to the States to study new inventions and
investigate patents relating to war materials—greatest
chance that ever came to a young man.
If he does as well as I expect, I will make him
special representative of my General Staff. Is
your Ladyship satisfied now?”
Frau Krupp breathed her humblest thanks.
What else could she do?
CHAPTER XXV
A ROYAL LIAR
High-Placed Plagiarists—Diplomatic Trickery—The
Kaiser Whitewashes Himself—”What of the
German Navy?”—Clumsy Espionage
October 10th, 1905, 6 p.m.
The red disc betraying the War Lord’s presence
at the other end of the wire thrust itself between
the Chancellor’s eyes and the copy of Echo de
Paris he was reading.
“I command Bohlen,” said Wilhelm’s impatient voice.
“I am afraid he is not available just now, Your
Majesty. Gone shopping with his fiancée the last
I heard.”
“Order Wedell to find him. He shall be at
the Chancellery at nine sharp, when I expect to
find you too, Prince.”
“Gracing my wife’s soirée?”
“Soirée to-night? Excellent! I will order
all my boys to kiss Madame’s hand. It will put
her into good humour, and she will the more
readily allow you to attend to business.”
“And, Majesty,” said Bülow, hopefully, “the
Princess Maria is counting on having the honour
of Your Majesty’s presence.”
“I will send the insignia of dell’ Annunciata
instead.”
“I beg Your Majesty, don’t. Maria might
not remember that Charles XII. sent his boots to
preside at the Swedish Council of State.”
As before remarked, it is one of Bülow’s tricks
always to have on the tip of his tongue some
historic bon mot suitable to the occasion.
There was an outburst of rough laughter.
“He did, did he? And yet they called him the
Madman of the North. Next time Herr Bebel has
a congress, I will send the Reds a pair of my riding
breeches, and no new ones either. But revenons à
Bohlen. Devil of a chap! Made Bertha his
goods, his chattel, his stuff, his field, his barn, his
horse, his ox, his ass, his everything! That’s the
way! Make them eat out of your hand, Prince!”
Bülow was a Prince since the 6th of June, and
the War Lord never tired of calling him by the
title of his own creation. He had just borrowed
boldly from the Bard, and the theft being
apparently undiscovered by his literary Chancellor,
Wilhelm felt justified in relaxing his imperious mien
some more.
“Can’t you prescribe a dose of sleeping sickness
for that fool Liebert? His shouting about
‘our war’ to obtain supreme sea power is
co-responsible for the Entente Cordiale. Of course I
like to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy,
but in his Navy League speech Liebert went too
far. If he keeps it up, I shall put him on half-pay.
Tell him so.” (The War Lord referred to General
von Liebert, ex-Governor of German East Africa,
who had made a speech threatening Great Britain
and France.)
And more talk of that kind. The more gossipy,
the better for Bülow, as there had been no
time to digest the Echo de Paris article and to
enter into its discussion before he had fully made
up his mind what to say about the reported
Anglo-Franco-Russo-Japanese Alliance. His comments
might lead to serious dissension with Majesty, for
Wilhelm was sure to fasten on to some supposed
negligible point in the Chancellor’s argument to
distort the whole tenor of his interpretation.
Tit for tat. Only when Bülow was the victim,
there was no prearrangement like in the case of the
repudiations of the Joseph Chamberlain and the
London Daily Telegraph interviews.
When in England five years before, the War
Lord had prompted Mr. Chamberlain to make his
historic appeal in favour of co-operation between
Great Britain, Germany and the United States,
assuring him that Germany’s future policy would
rest on such an understanding as on a roche de
bronze.
Mr. Chamberlain, being under the impression
that only gentlemen were invited to Sandringham
House, thought His Majesty sincere and gave
public utterance to the message, promising peace
and mutual understanding.
But the Roi de Prusse had no sooner shaken
the dust of England from his boots than Bülow
was ordered to repudiate the whole thing (without
directly impugning his Sovereign’s word, of
course) and to ridicule Chamberlain’s “Utopian
schemes.”
Notwithstanding, the then German Ambassador
in London, Count Wolff-Metternich, later had
the impudence to complain to Sir F. Lascelles,
British representative in Berlin, that the state of
English opinion toward Germany and the British
Foreign Office’s coldness toward the Wilhelmstrasse
gave him considerable uneasiness; whereupon
Sir Lascelles demanded to know whether
Germany expected British Secretaries of State,
having been struck in the face, were to turn the
other cheek for further castigation and insult?
Three years after the birth of the Quadruple
Alliance, at which we are now assisting, the War
Lord and his Chancellor had another repudiation
game between them. Mr. Harcourt having
prepared the way in his amazing Lancashire speech,[#]
Wilhelm strove to outdo the Father of Lies in the
notorious Daily Telegraph interview, the general
theme of which was:
[#] Mr. Harcourt’s speech in Lancashire, October, 1908: “I wil
not offer to other nations the temptation which would be afforded
by a defenceless England, but let me assure you … there has not
been any period in the last ten or fifteen years—and I speak with
knowledge and a sense of deep responsibility—in which our relations
with Germany—commercial, colonial, political, and dynastic—have
been on a firmer and more friendly footing than they are to-day.
“Our rivalries are only in trade and education, and though I should
claim for us the supremacy of the former, I would yield to Germany
the palm for perfection in the latter; but of personal animosity there
is none between the rulers, the Governments, or the peoples. And
if in either country there is a small class of publicists who, for selfish
and unpatriotic ends, desire to set the nations at variance—well, they
are the footpads of politics and the enemies of the human race.”
“You English are mad, mad—mad as March
hares. What has come over you that you are so
completely given over to suspicions quite unworthy
of a great nation? What more can I do than I
have done? I declared with all the emphasis at
my command, in my speech at Guildhall, that
my heart is set upon peace, and that it is one of
my dearest wishes to live on the best of terms with
England. Have I ever been false to my word?
Falsehood and prevarication are alien to my nature.
“My actions ought to speak for themselves,
but you listen, not to them, but to those who
misinterpret and distort them. That is a personal
insult which I feel and resent. To be for ever
misjudged, to have my repeated offers of
friendship weighed and scrutinised with jealous,
mistrustful eyes, taxes my patience severely. I have
said time after time that I am a friend of England,
and your Press—or, at least, a considerable section
of it—bids the people of England refuse my
proffered hand, and insinuates that the other holds
a dagger.
“I repeat that I am the friend of England, but
you make things difficult for me. My task is not
of the easiest. The prevailing sentiment of large
sections of the middle and the lower classes of my
country is not friendly to England. I am
therefore, so to speak, in a minority in my own land.
“It is commonly believed in England that
throughout the South African War Germany was
hostile to her. German opinion undoubtedly was
hostile—bitterly hostile. The Press was hostile;
private opinion was hostile. But what of official
Germany? Let my critics ask themselves what
brought to a sudden stop, and indeed caused the
absolute collapse of the European tour of the Boer
delegates who were striving to obtain European
intervention? They were fêted in Holland;
France gave them a rapturous welcome. They
wished to come to Berlin where the German people
would have crowned them with flowers. But when
they asked me to receive them I refused. The
agitation immediately died away, and the
delegation returned empty-handed. Was that, I ask,
the action of a secret enemy?
“Again, when the struggle was at its height,
the German Government was invited by the
Governments of France and Russia to join with
them in calling upon England to put an end to the
war. The moment had come, they said, not only
to save the Boer Republics, but also to humiliate
England to the dust. What was my reply? I
said that, so far from Germany joining in any
concerted European action to put pressure upon
England and bring about her downfall, Germany would
always keep aloof from politics that could bring her
into complications with a Sea Power like England.
“Posterity will one day read the exact terms
of the telegram—now in the archives at Windsor
Castle—in which I informed the Sovereign of
England of the answer I had returned to the Powers
which then sought to compass her fall. Englishmen
who now insult me by doubting my word
should know what were my actions in the hour of
their adversity.
“Nor was that all. Just at the time of your
Black Week, in December of 1899, when disasters
followed one another in rapid succession, I received
a letter from Queen Victoria, my revered
grandmother, written in sorrow and affliction, and
bearing manifest traces of the anxieties which were
preying upon her mind and health. I at once
returned a sympathetic reply. Nay, I did more.
I bade one of my officers procure for me as exact
an account as he could obtain of the number of
combatants in South Africa on both sides, and of
the actual position of the opposing forces.
“With the figures before me I worked out
what I considered to be the best plan of campaign
under the circumstances, and submitted it to my
General Staff for their criticism. Then I
dispatched it to England, and that document,
likewise, is among the State papers at Windsor Castle,
awaiting the serenely impartial verdict of history.
“And, as a matter of curious coincidence, let
me add, that the plan which I formulated ran very
much on the same lines as that which was actually
adopted by Lord Roberts, and carried by him into
successful operation. Was that, I repeat, the act
of one who wished England ill? Let Englishmen
be just.
“But you will say, what of the German Navy?
Surely that is a menace to England. Against
whom but England are my squadrons being
prepared? If England is not in the minds of those
Germans who are bent on creating a powerful fleet,
why is Germany asked to consent to such new and
heavy burdens of taxation? My answer is clear.
Germany is a young and growing empire. She has
a world-wide commerce, which is rapidly expanding
and to which the legitimate ambition of
patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds.
“Germany must have a powerful fleet to
protect that commerce and her manifold interests in
even the most distant seas. She expects those
interests to go on growing, and she must be able
to champion them manfully in any quarter of the
globe. Germany looks ahead. Her horizons
stretch far away. She must be prepared for any
eventualities in the Far East. Who can foresee
what may take place in the Pacific in the days to
come, days not so distant as some believe, but days
at any rate for which all European Powers with
Far Eastern interests ought steadily to prepare?
“Look at the accomplished rise of Japan;
think of the possible national awakening of China;
and then judge of the vast problems of the Pacific.
Only those Powers which have great navies will
be listened to with respect, when the future of the
Pacific comes to be solved; and if for that reason
only, Germany must have a powerful fleet. It may
be that even England herself will be glad that
Germany has a fleet when they speak together on
the same side in the momentous debates of the
future.”
When the interview set the world guessing,
disputing, imputing and passing the lie freely,
Prince Bülow again disavowed his master, with
His Majesty’s consent and at his instigation, of
course, otherwise the fate of Bismarck would have
seemed much too good for the obstreperous
servant.
But to return to the 10th of October, 1905,
6 P.M. While the Chancelleries of all Europe were
quaking with deliberations on the Anglo-Russian
rapprochement in connection with the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the War Lord’s chief minister
spent an anxious quart d’heure trying to convince
His Majesty that he was not intriguing against one
of the numerous Eulenburg-maggots, fattening in
the public cheese, Limburger brand.
Majesty, it seems, was deeply concerned about
a certain titled member of the German Embassy
in London who had befouled his record by
spying. This pretty gentleman attended the Essex
manoeuvres in the fall of 1904, notebook in hand,
and sent elaborate reports, accompanied by
sketches and diagrams, to the Berlin General Staff,
acting the part of Secret Service agent no less
treacherously, but rather more clumsily, than the
German aristocrat who was convicted at Edinburgh
in 1911.
Subsequently, of course, no British Army
officer could afford to know this individual, and
Mayfair, too, showed a decided inclination to cut
dead the chevalier d’espionnage.
“Quite naturally!” Prince Bülow saved himself
by adding: “From the English standpoint.”
The telephone fairly “zizzled” as the War
Lord shouted back:
“What? Ostracise a man who has done
nothing but his —— duty toward me and the
Fatherland. Intolerable! ——!! He must be
reinstated in clubs and Society. He must be able
to hold up his head in Piccadilly as proudly as
in Unter den Linden. I command it. Speak to
Lascelles about it, and have this boycott ended at
once.
Of course Bülow promised—with his left hand
on his back, which, as explained, allows a good
German to vow one thing and mean another.
CHAPTER XXVI
EXPLAINING “THE DAY”
The True Wilhelm—The War Lord is Angry—More
Disclosures—Bülow Sums Up—Dreams of Conquest—The
Subjugation of England—Peace Must Wait on War—The
New Big Gun—von Bohlen is Dense
Prince Bülow emptied a small phial of
double-distilled extract of eau de Cologne on his
handkerchief, for a message from the palace said that the
War Lord’s ear trouble had again become acute,
and that, consequently, all windows and doors
must be hermetically shut during his visit at the
Chancellery. Again he was called up. Wilhelm
had dismissed his Chasseur, with a record of twenty
years’ faithful service, because the man kept the
carriage door open while he asked whether a
hot-water bag was wanted. “Instanter!” Wouldn’t
suffer him to take his place on the box again.
“Pleasant evening in store for us, Herr von
Bohlen,” said the Prince to Bertha’s fiancé.
He rang for his adjutant. “You would not
like to go back to Brandenburg?” he began
pleasantly.
“Nor to any other provincial hole, Your Highness,”
answered the Baron Reiff, clicking his heels
together.
“In that case see that His Majesty does not
complain of draughts while here.”
The adjutant raised a hand to his left ear.
Bülow nodded. “I will have to hold you responsible,
Reiff,” he said in tones of unwonted severity.
The Chancellor’s palace was en fête. The
brilliantly lit corridors and stairs were alive with
guests, eager to pay homage to Princess Maria:
Scions of Royalty and mere beggar counts, as the
great Frederick used to style poor nobles; masters
of statecraft and prima donnas; generals and
blue-blooded cornets, courtiers and members of the
hierarchy. And as many lackeys in blue and silver as
visitors.
Most of the guests longed for sight of the
Chancellor, and would have given much to have a peep
at the room where Bismarck bullied and ruled
Europe, but the glass doors leading to the grand
garden salon were guarded inside and out by Secret
Service men, while Baron Reiff flitted to and fro,
scrutinising faces and keeping an eye on everybody.
In the grand salon of the Bel Etage, Enrico
Caruso was exchanging notes of purity for the
immaculate ones of the Bank of England, when the
siren of the royal automobile cried shame on Verdi.
Three blasts and a half. Her Highness’s master of
ceremony, at the foot of the staircase, rapped
frantically; the doorkeeper rushed forward with an
enormous umbrella, though the sky was clear;
Baron Reiff looked daggers, and conversation was
cut as by the executioner’s axe.
Narrow lips frozen together under a carroty-greyish
moustache with points threatening the
white of his eyes; face a dead yellow; a masterful,
defiant chin thrust forward; eyes flashing, but dark
of aspect in general appearance despite his white,
red and silver accoutrements, the War Lord strode
into the Chancellor’s room.
He looked so stony, a stranger both to joy and
pity, that Herr von Bohlen told Bertha afterwards
that the War Lord seemed, to him, like a man
whose veins were clogged with salt and clay instead
of running warm blood.
A stiff, mechanical salute, squaring of
shoulders, inflating of chest, pecking at the two
men, who nearly bent double. Wilhelm acted as
if his spine were paralysed. No graven image of
his own design appears stiffer, more jointless.
Somebody has likened him to a coloured plate out
of a book of etiquette. He certainly looked it, for
etiquette taboos smiles, real courtesy, humanity
itself.
While his eyes swept the room, the silver
helmet came crashing down on a table. He would
have given much to discover reasons for complaint,
and Prince Bülow’s precautions against draughts
discomforted him more than his negligence would
have done; it robbed him of the chance for flying
into a passion.
“Pretty goings on at Downing Street and
Quai d’Orsay,” he snarled. “Yesterday it was
Kiau-chau. To-day it’s German Belgium and
Northern France they ask. Any additional insults
since then?”
“All the dispatches are in Your Majesty’s
hands,” replied the Chancellor, looking
significantly at Herr von Bohlen.
“Report.” If the Lord of Statecraft and
gentleman born and bred, Chancellor and Prince,
had been a thieving valet, Wilhelm could not have
spoken with more contemptuous severity.
“Will Your Majesty be pleased to be seated?” This
with another questioning look at Bertha’s
fiancé. Prince von Bülow had more than a little
respect for the dignity of his office.
“Without reserve,” muttered the War Lord,
dropping into an arm-chair. “I want him to
know, and knowing, to understand the imperativeness
of his duties as head of the Krupp works.
Report, sir.”
The Chancellor, who wore Hussar uniform with
the insignia of Major-General and more decorations
than the most beloved of cotillon favourites
at 2 A.M., bowed ceremoniously, then stood bolt
upright and somewhat constrainedly.
“May it please Your Majesty,” he began,
weighing a parcel of dispatches in his hand, but not
looking at them. “The Paris disclosures just
made seem to be the direct outcome of the
friendly understanding between Great Britain and
France——”
“The abortion called Entente Cordiale,”
interrupted the War Lord—a red rag to a bull
already wounded.
The Chancellor continued: “The British
assume that we are planning the destruction of
France, and, that accomplished, the invasion of
England. British statesmen recognise that the
French army is no match for ours, that even with
the assistance of the English Yeomanry——”
“Miserable hirelings, whom the German Boers
thrashed four years in succession,” cried Wilhelm,
rising and stamping his foot.
“Even with their assistance Germany would
remain supreme on land,” resumed Prince Bülow.
“Hence Quai d’Orsay’s overtures to Downing
Street: Paralyse German land supremacy by
supremacy on sea, and——”
“Steal my colonies, that’s their game,” thundered
the War Lord, addressing Bohlen. “Do
you know what that means, sir? That the
Hohenzollern wouldn’t have a stone to lay his head on
when the Reds have their way. To me colonies are
entailed estates, on which to fall back when the
civil list at home fails us. Suppose Germany—which
God forbid—turned republic. Off we are to
Africa like a shot, there to await our chance to
return at the proper time. And there won’t be
any doffing the chapeau to the mob if we do come
back, I warrant you.”[#]
[#] In March, 1848, Frederick Wilhelm IV., Wilhelm’s grand-uncle,
was ordered by the Berlin revolutionists to come out on the balcony
and to salute when the victims of his soldiery were carried past the
castle. He bowed obsequiously—an act that is gall and wormwood
to the War Lord. Hence it is permissible in the Fatherland to call
Frederick Wilhelm IV. an ass—no more or less. An editor who called
him a mouse-coloured ass got three months for his pains.
“It must be conceded, though,” said the Chancellor,
with a conciliatory smile, “that the British
are profoundly pacific and that there is no itch for
war in the Island Kingdoms. If ever there was,
it lies buried somewhere on the African veld.
Neither is France likely to provoke war.”
“She knows better,” cried Wilhelm. “French
women don’t want children.”
“So much for the Entente Cordiale,” continued
Prince Bülow—the War Lord had sat down
on the edge of a table, swinging his right leg to
and fro—”British statesmanship contending that
Europe needs a strong France, and that a blow
struck at France is a blow aimed at England.”
“Donnersmarck’s talk. If it was not for his
money and his age, I would muzzle the old fool.
But as I told him only the other day, he will be
punished sure enough.”
Donnersmarck is a Prince of the War Lord’s
creation, better known by his hereditary title of
Count Henckel. The family achieved the lower
grades of nobility at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and has always been noted for
considerable landed possessions. Prince Guido is one
of the richest men on the Continent, and the King
of Prussia sometimes uses him as a speaking tube,
never scrupling of course to disavow his utterances
when it suits the Majesty-souffleur. In the
disclosures referred to, Donnersmarck and Professor
Schiemann had boldly announced in Paris that,
if France contracted an alliance with England,
Germany would fall upon her, crush her and exact
a staggering indemnity, enough to pay for all
damage the British fleet could possibly do to the
German merchant marine and trade.
These threats were not repudiated at the time
(the latter half of June) and the War Lord had
considered them quite legitimate clubs for
pounding French opinion while the Entente Cordiale
pourparlers were on.
Professor Schiemann is a publicist, a historian
and a lecturer on military academics. He is
held responsible for some of the misinformation on
historic topics the War Lord frequently betrays in
his public utterances.
“We now come to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,”
said Prince Bülow.
“Aiming at Kiau-chau,” finished the War Lord grimly.
“Which Your Majesty’s foresight will preserve
for the Fatherland,” declaimed Bülow, who
ought to have been a great courtier instead of an
indifferent chancellor. But the War Lord was not
in the mood for compliments. He was out to
smash things.
“By Heaven!” he vowed, “I would rather
turn the Pacific and the Yellow Seas into Red
Seas and exterminate those brown devils to the last
than allow a stone to be touched in my glorious
colony of Kiau-chau.”
“Spoken like an emperor,” seconded Bülow.
Then, with a look at the clock: “May it please
Your Majesty, I would submit that our young
friend here must not be misled by the statements
in the Press. I have here a copy of the agreement,
stating clearly that the Alliance becomes operative
only by reason of attack or aggressive action
resulting in war against either England or Japan.”
“Words, words!” cried the War Lord
contemptuously. “I suppose Herr von Bohlen’s
heard of Bismarck’s editing of the Ems dispatch!
But proceed.”
Bülow cleared his throat before he approached
the momentary cause célèbre.
“To-day it is reported from Paris, Tokyo,
London and Petersburg—in the leading journals,
though not officially—that a quadruple alliance is
about to be ratified, terminating once and for all
the seemingly interminable quarrels between Great
Britain and Russia, and drawing each empire’s
own ally into close relations with the other:
Britain’s ally, Japan, automatically becomes
Russia’s ally, while Russia’s brother-in-arms,
France, becomes England’s, and all four have
agreed to defend either when driven to war by
unprovoked attack.”
“Four to three,” mused the War Lord
gloomily, “and number three as unreliable as a
girl with nerves.”
“Majesty is pleased to forget Turkey.”
“What’s an ally without a navy in a conflict
with Great Britain?” demanded Wilhelm. “That
old thief, Abdul, rather invests in Circassian
beauties than cruisers. But” (impatiently) “sum
up, Bülow, sum up!”
The Prince resumed his lecture: “It is argued
that Japan, being bound to give military support
to Great Britain under certain eventualities, is of
course interested in maintaining amicable relations
between the other three empires and joined as a
logical consequence of her alliance with England.”
“England, always England,” cried the War
Lord. “Ostertag writes that it was on the advice
of England that the fortifications of Antwerp and
the Meuse were strengthened before and after the
Morocco trouble.” (Ostertag, German military
attaché at the Court of St. James’s.) “Bohlen,”
he continued abruptly, “is there anything in the
situation that is not quite clear to you?”
The Councillor of Legation with the bulldog
jaw and the cruel eyes answered modestly, but
firmly: “May it please Your Majesty, I think I
understand fully.”
“Then you also understand what is expected
of you as future head of the Krupp works,” quoth
the War Lord, laying his heavy right hand on
Bohlen’s shoulder.
“To obey Your Majesty’s instructions and
carry them out as a Prussian officer should.”
The only great king Prussia boasts, Frederick,
said on his death-bed: “I am tired of ruling
slaves.” His successor would have his Prime
Minister une âme damnée, and never tires of telling
about his “great, his inestimable reward” to a
sentinel who murdered a man. The latter was
drunk, German fashion, and did not at once
respond to the sentinel’s “Who goes there?” Bang,
bang popped the sentinel’s gun, and the
man in mufti was ready for the undertaker.
“Next day, while a vile Press was assailing the
soldier,” said the War Lord, “I had him called
before the ranks, promoted him, decorated him
and, as a supreme honour, shook him by the
hand.”
“Obey Your Majesty’s instructions.” The
War Lord, who would tell the Deity what to do,
had expected as much of course, but Bohlen’s
evident sincerity, nay, enthusiasm, was not to be
despised, particularly since it outweighed the latent
fear that, after all, Bertha, when of age, might
elect to take the bit between her teeth and make
trouble.
“My advice and commands shall never fail
you,” said Wilhelm, with the air of a great Lord
conferring £500 for life upon a dustman. “Now
to Germany’s aims—the grand future in store for
her under my guidance. When you know my
plans, you will begin to realise the magnitude of
the work expected of Essen—of you.”
“At Your Majesty’s orders,” saluted von Bohlen.
The War Lord was too excited to accept the
gilded and crowned arm-chair Bülow offered,
thereby obliging the older man in tight-fitting
accoutrements and high boots to remain standing.
“We must have an adequate seaboard,” he poured
forth; “the waters between the English, French
and Belgian coasts and the harbours, fortresses and
towns commanding that area will do for a start.
That means Calais and Dover, Portsmouth and
Boulogne, Antwerp and perhaps Havre, for Germany’s
future lies on the water, as I have said time
and again, and those few miles of wet element
circumscribe the focus of the world’s trade, which
must be ours by reason of superior military,
scientific and commercial achievements—by our
Kultur.”
“Your Majesty orders a further extension of
the Germania shipyards,” submitted Bohlen.
“Everything in time,” corrected the War
Lord. “We may lay down ships as fast as our
utmost resources permit, or faster. Still those
confounded English can beat us. A great navy we
will have, of course a greater and a better one even
than the skunks of the London gutter Press credit
my imagination with, but not to be knocked to
bits. We will keep it safe, and at the end of the
war will augment it by the French fleet and the
fleets of the minor countries. Then good-bye for
ever, British Sea Power!
“Of course,” continued Wilhelm, “the
French and Belgians will have to be forced before
they recognise my claims to those parts of their
territory that formerly belonged to Germany.
Flanders is German to the core, Liége and
Limburg provinces were never anything but German,
while the southern half of the Netherlands
belonged to Germany since Charles the Fat, even as
Alsace and Lorraine. Franche Comté is German
of course, and Toul and Verdun were once German
Free Cities like Metz.”
As he dilated on his claims the War Lord
grabbed a walking-stick leaning against von
Bülow’s desk, and tapped and stabbed at the map
of Europe on the wall, puncturing and piercing it
in places he particularly coveted.
“Montbeliard,” he continued, “is Moempelgard,
an old-time apanage of Würtemberg. My
title to the principality of Orange is more
legitimate than King Edward’s as Emperor of India,
and who will deny that Bourgogne is German
Burgund, and that the original Burgunders came from
the Mark and West Prussia? Not to have inserted
Duc de Bourgogne in the grand title of the roi de
Prusse is a mistake, for which its maker ought to
be kicked.”
He had nearly ruined the map, when his fury
changed to an attitude of calm deliberation. With
an air of magnanimity, he said: “However, as to
France, I am willing to exchange these inland
territories for the coast departments, from Dieppe
to Dunkirk, provided we do not find it necessary,
from a strategic standpoint, to annex Havre too.”
He paused, and von Bülow tried to curry favour
by suggesting: “Your Majesty intends the
absolute conquest of France?”
“As a preliminary to the subjugation of
England,” said the War Lord solemnly.
“I am half-English myself,” he continued,
“and have no illusions whatever as to Great
Britain’s submission. After our victory the
Wilhelmstrasse and Downing Street will have to enter
into a gentleman’s agreement: Myself, Admiral
of the Atlantic; the United Kingdom to retain
home-rule; Germany to be confirmed in the
possession of the whole Continental shore of the
Straits of Dover and in that of the French and
Belgian Colonies; we, on the other hand, to
guarantee England’s occupation of India.
“Now to the part Essen will play in the
coming upheaval.”
Wilhelm was facing von Bohlen, and took hold
of a button of his silver-braided Hussar jacket, the
button nearest the throat. If he had intended to
throttle Bertha’s future husband, his grip and
mien could not have been more menacing.
“We will probably have less than ten years to
prepare; it’s time that you get to work, young
man,” he said. “How do you stand with Bertha?
Has she agreed to leave business to you?”
“Everything, according to Your Majesty’s
wishes. She promised me only to-day. We have
divided our kingdom. I to be regent of the works
under Your Majesty’s guidance; Bertha to devote
herself exclusively to social work and charities.”
“Approved,” said Wilhelm like a schoolmaster
handing out diplomas. “When is the
wedding to be?”
“May it please Your Majesty, we fixed on the
second week of October next year.”
“It doesn’t please me a bit. Why lose so
much time postponing?”
“Her ladyship will not have Bertha marry
before her twentieth birthday.”
“The Baroness, of course,” cried the War
Lord, with an oath. “When it comes to doing
things, there is always a woman in the way. But
I will thwart her. You shall take virtual, if not
active, control of the Krupp works at once. Your
resignation as my Councillor of Legation is
accepted as from to-day,” he added, with a look
at Bülow.
The Chancellor smiled. “I submit that Herr
von Bohlen is entitled to six months’ leave of
absence.”
“Six months for making yourself solid with my
ward, and prepare for the greatest job ever
entrusted to one man,” decided the War Lord.
“Now listen:
“I’ve already told you that I will hack my way
to Calais and crush France absolutely. Essen’s
business, then, is to make all so-called works of
peace wait upon the necessities of war—all,
everything I say. Is that clear?”
“We are to attend only to orders from the
German General Staff,” replied von Bohlen.
“They come first, of course,” said the War
Lord, “but foreign orders for guns and ammunition
must also be attended to if Berlin so advises.
On that point there will be special instructions.
But it’s only the beginning—an obvious one, and
the Krupp’s have always been more than equal to
regular demands from my War Office. However,
in future these are sure to increase immeasurably,
out of all proportion both in size and in variety.”
Exhausted by the intense mobility of his ideas,
the War Lord abruptly threw himself into the
armchair, held in readiness for him by the obsequious
Bülow, crossed his legs and struck a match. He
carried it to his lips, holding it there; then, having
burnt his fingers and moustache, dropped it,
cursing madly. He now took a cigarette out of the
silver gilt box offered him for the tenth time or
oftener, but was too busy to light it.
“Krupp,” he said, “I mean Bohlen—Krupp
von Bohlen, a good name, we’ll stick to it—Krupp,
I want you to make me a gun capable of mowing
down Dover Castle from Calais. Can’t be done?
It will have to be done!” And he brought his fist
down on the table with a bang.
“I looked in at the Photographic Society the
other day,” he proceeded, “and saw an Adolf
Menzel photo enlarged five times the original size.
The operator just extended a piece of framework.
I don’t suppose it’s quite as easy to double or
treble the size or range of cannon, but the mind
and energy now experimenting with my new
twelve-inch howitzer should be capable of turning
out a seventeen-inch or twenty-inch howitzer, and
that’s what you will have to do, Krupp.”
The ex-Councillor of Legation, just renamed,
bowed low. “I assure Your Majesty that, as head
of the Krupp works, I will not rest until such a
war machine is produced,” he vowed.
“And take my word that I won’t let you go
to sleep.” The War Lord’s tone was a cross
between banter and threat, but its brutal meaning
was photographed on the speaker’s face. “You
will now make your bow to Madame la Princess,”
he continued, pulling out his watch: “Return in
fifteen minutes.
“Bertha’s husband must not know everything
at the start,” he said, when the door closed behind
Krupp von Bohlen. “As to that twelve-inch
howitzer, I did not have a chance to talk to you
about my recent clandestine visit to Meppen,
where we had the final test. The twelve-inch
howitzer quite suffices for Calais if the plans for
longer range guns miscarry or war comes quicker
than we calculated. At Calais, you know, the
Channel narrows to a width of twenty-two and a
half miles, and the new twelve-incher covers
fourteen miles.”
“That means Kent is safe for the present,” the
Chancellor made bold to comment.
“It is easy to see that you are a general of
cavalry and not of artillery,” he was immediately
corrected, “else you would perceive that a howitzer
of the range given, planted at Calais, will allow
our warships to advance within eight and a half
miles of the English coast and pound everything
into muck and pulp there. Where—what will your
Kent be then? A heap of rubbish and scrap-iron!”
“I presume Tirpitz is satisfied that there can
be no blockade?”
“We will guard against that by mine fields and
destroyers, submarines, cruisers, scouts and
Zeppelins,” explained Wilhelm. “Old Zep’s Echte”
(alluding to the cigar-like shape of Zeppelins)
“will be as safe in our French harbours—for we
will probably take Havre and Dieppe at the same
time as Calais—as in Kiel Canal.”
The War Lord was going strong on technical
details when the return of Krupp von Bohlen was
announced.
“So the ladies dismissed you!” he cried, at
the same time unbending enough to ask von Bülow
to be seated, while the younger man must remain
standing. “Got the howitzer-Calais-Dover
question pat, have you not? Well, the twenty-three
miles’ range gun is only one of the achievements
you owe me and the Fatherland. In addition, the
Krupp works and associated interests must extend
their facilities for mines and mine-laying a
hundred-fold, for we will have to cut Portsmouth and
Plymouth off from the North Sea and provide
safety zones for our warships the whole breadth of
the Channel.
“Thirdly, Essen will have to turn out
submarines at a much faster rate than your firm is
doing now; have to arm the numerous forts we will
set up along the French-Belgian coast with the
heaviest of artillery, and furnish air fleets to
prosecute a guerilla war against English trade
and—stomachs.”
Von Bohlen looked puzzled. He had imbibed
enough of the Krupp spirit to encourage him in
the belief that he might rival an earthquake as a
destroyer of life and property, but his ambition
had never extended to interference with other
people’s digestion.
“Explain, Bülow,” ordered the War Lord,
considering it beneath his dignity to give
information on so trifling a subject.
“His Majesty refers, of course, to the disturbance
of England’s food supplies. Unlike Germany,
Great Britain cannot feed herself, being dependent
for the sustenance of the inner man on imports.
And these His Majesty intends to stop by the
means referred to.”
“And, speaking of aircraft, you must provide
means for bringing airships down,” continued the
War Lord, “for there is every indication that the
enemy will attempt to fight our aerial fire with
ditto fire, especially the French. The slow English
will fall behind, of course.” Abruptly: “Have
you got any ideas to offer in that line?”
“Not at the moment,” confessed von Bohlen;
“but I will ask Bertha to lend me her most
enterprising constructor of light ordnance and the
airship expert. They will be given three months for
experiments.”
The War Lord nodded. “Not half bad, but
offer a premium if the question is solved within
three weeks.”[#]
[#] Neither three weeks nor three months nor three years sufficed,
and Krupp’s balloon-gun, mounted on automobile carriages, is one
of the latest additions to the German artillery.
It is effective at about
7,000 yards, and throws projectiles weighing 12 lb.
Its dead weight
of 11,000 lb. operates against its usefulness
in the field, but it is well
adapted to forts and fortresses.
This gun can describe a complete
circle in the horizontal plane and can fire vertically.
He rose. “More of this in a day or two, after
I have seen Moltke, Tirpitz and old Zep. In the
meantime remember this: Super is the thing. We
must have super-guns, super-submarines,
super-aircraft—ordinary arms will not do in the struggle
to come. Our enemies are ordinary men, fighting
with ordinary means, while we are supermen bent
on superhuman effort, and consequently need
super-arms.”
He turned from Bohlen. “Announce me to
the Princess Maria,” he commanded Bülow.
CHAPTER XXVII
BERTHA’S WEDDING DAY
Krupp Hospitality—A Nasty Custom—”Old Fritz
at Play—The Bride Arrayed—Abdul’s Present—The
Wedding Service—A Glimpse of Essen
On October the 15th, 1906, Bertha Krupp was
married, and, presto! Wilhelm jumped into the
saddle: Krupp en croupe was meant for both the
heiress and her husband-to-be.
To be sure, Essen was en fête for the War
Lady and Gustav. For them flags and garlands
and paper flowers. Rivers and oceans of paper
flowers! They recalled Unter den Linden when
some yellow or brown, or maybe a white, majesty
is expected to make his state entry through the
Brandenburg Gate. And almost as many girls in
white as paper flowers on lantern posts and over
doorways, while every boy had his face and his
hands washed, and all the professors and directors
wore their locks in curls.
To-day all victims of Moloch labour, of burns
and crashing irons, of scaffolds that gave way and
mountains of steel a-tremble, of engines gone
wrong and cars off the track, and a thousand and
one other accidents connected with work, were
freshly shaved and voluble of their sufferings and
Fraulein’s kindness. Johann gave a leg to prevent
bubbles in the casting of a royal Prussian cannon,
and Fraulein bought him an artificial one, offering
this advantage over the real article: he might
throw it at his wife when nettled. Heinrich had
lost the sight of an eye in the service of the works,
and Fraulein not only procured him a glass one,
but added a steel pince-nez that made him look like
a twopenny clerk. And Mariechen and Märtchen
had good jobs in the ammunition shops, since their
husbands were killed in an earth-slide at the
Germania shipyards near Kiel—”Fraulein looks after
everything and everybody.” In short, city and
country-side, town hall and hospital, the
well-to-do and the poor, old and young, the joyous and
the lame and the halt—all looked their best in
Bertha’s honour and acted gemuetlich-like (which
was mostly noise) in Bertha’s honour—when the
War Lord came into sight!
Once upon a time the War Lady had been
sternly admonished not to bring more than three
attendants on her state visit to Berlin; in repaying
that visit—for his intervening comings to Essen
were more or less impromptu or on business—the
War Lord brought twenty times three, sixty:
personal friends, courtiers, generals and army
officers.
When, years before, he inflicted two-thirds of
this number on King Christian, the Continent
stood aghast at his inconsiderate impudence, for
the Copenhagen Court was notoriously poor then.
But Bertha was his ward and was under his thumb,
and, besides, had “money to burn.”
So he embraced this opportunity for paying off
old debts by inviting to Essen a number of nobles
whose hospitality he had enjoyed, for there they
would be more sumptuously lodged and dined and
wined than at his own house.
The call to Villa Huegel was snapped up by
all who could crowd into the Imperial train, for
Krupp hospitality is proverbial in the Fatherland’s
mansions and country houses; and the Prussian
aristocrat, living at home on superannuated
venison, herrings and potatoes, washed down by
diluted fusel-oil called Schnapps, likes nothing
better than to gorge himself at the expense of
persons whose lack of rank precludes dreaded
return visits.
Savings in the household exchequer weigh
heavy enough with the War Lord to put him into
royal good humour, but the limelight radiating
from Essen, because the richest girl on the planet
married a poor but capable man, was the main
thing, of course. For the Wolff Bureau, that
feeds the Continental Press with “pap” about
“All Highest” doings and with governmental
lies, would mention Wilhelm and his myrmidons
twenty times as often as the bride and groom.
There would be—as a matter of fact, there
were beforehand—long-winded litanies about the
War Lord’s love for his ward and his surpassing
efficiency as a guardian; his consummate wisdom
in the selection of a husband for Bertha; the
unheard-of increase in the value of the Krupp
property under Wilhelm’s guidance—columns of
that sort of symphony to Imperial ears.
And the War Lord’s show: State coach and
six, forty more horses from the royal stables, one
hundred flunkeys, and the “great surprise!”—but
that did not come off. “That woman wouldn’t
stand it.”
When the War Lord was shown into Frau
Krupp’s boudoir he beamed most graciously. “I
cannot make Bertha a Royal Princess,” he said,
“but I will treat her like one. How many guests
have we?”
“In the villa a little over three hundred, Your
Majesty.”
“Well, I had a thousand ribbons printed—have
the rest distributed among the loyal people.
But let the police do it, as there is sure to be a
terrible scramble for these souvenirs, and we don’t
want the Moscow tragedy repeated.” (He referred
to the crushing and killing of hundreds of men,
women and children at the People’s Festival during
the Tsar’s coronation.)
Meanwhile the Master of Ceremonies had
opened the silver-gilt casket filled with layers
upon layers of pieces of white ribbon, about one
inch broad by five long. There was a baronial
crown above the letter “B” at the top, and gold
fringe at the bottom.
The Baroness turned purple at the sight, but
her son-in-law pulled her sleeve in time. “Mamma
will arrange with His Excellency,” he said; and
the unsuspecting War Lord got busy with one of
his quintette of meals, served to him separately.
“An unheard-of honour,” pleaded Herr
Krupp von Bohlen, who had followed Her Ladyship
into an inner room, as he dangled one of the
garter-ribbons before her eyes.
“I call it a nasty, indecent custom, and my
daughter will have none of it,” replied Frau Krupp
hotly.
Krupp von Bohlen looked both hurt and
indignant. “Pardon me, madam, the customs of
our Royal Family must not be spoken of in that
style where I am. And what is deemed honourable
for Royal Prussian Princesses can but add
dignity and renown to a subject favoured like one
of them.”
“If an announcement of that kind is considered
fair and decent in royal circles,” angrily
replied Frau Krupp, “it is their affair; as to the
daughter of the Baroness von Ende, she would
blush to think of such a custom.”
Krupp von Bohlen advanced his chin an inch more.
“Matters affecting the Royal Family are
beyond discussion,” he said haughtily, “and if
you ever again approach the subject, please
remember that I am a Prussian officer. But that
aside. His Majesty has graciously commanded,
and the order is to be carried out to the
letter.” He bowed stiffly and retired.
The Baroness let herself fall into an arm-chair,
and, elbows on knees, buried her face in both
hands. A scandal in the air, but she was
determined to risk it. Let the feelings of Prussian
Princesses be what they may in regard to the
ancient custom; there was to be no distribution
of her daughter’s garter for the War Lord’s
friends and her own cottagers to gloat over.
She had spent half an hour in this sort of brown
study, agitated by reflections bordering on
lèse-majesté most horrible, when Barbara rushed in:
“Oh, Mamma, Uncle Majesty and everybody are
at ‘Old Fritz’s,’ and Uncle wants all the
gentlemen to take chances under the hammer. He is
making them give up watches and decorations, and
he whispered to me he hopes some get smashed.
Come and see the fun.”
To be sure Frau Krupp was in no humour to
attend the Imperial circus—it is a stock joke with
Wilhelm to frighten under-dogs out of their wits
by subjecting their valuables to seeming
destruction, and Her Ladyship had been an unwilling
witness more than once. But Barbara’s naïve:
“What a beautiful box—more presents?” made
her sit up. Why should not “Fritz,” oldest of
family servants, essay to corriger la fortune de la
maison de Krupp? A chance in a million, but
stranger things have happened!
As everybody knows, “Fritz” has a falling
weight of fifty tons, and has been hammering steel
blocks into shape since 1860. When Bertha’s
grandfather started building it family, friends and
competitors the world over thought him crazy, and
said so, but “Fritz” has never missed a day’s
work in fifty-four years, and seems to be good for
a century still. Indeed, the marvellous delicacy
of his adjustment remains unimpaired, and
occasionally the manager makes him crack nuts without
injuring the kernel.
The War Lord was smashing his friends’
watch-glasses without hurt to dial or hands when
Frau Krupp and Barbara came upon the scene.
“The trunk of the Krupp heiress, containing
some of her choicest wardrobe,” explained
Wilhelm banteringly in an undertone. Then aloud:
“I’ll forfeit ten marks to any charity madam may
name if Fritz injures the casket in the slightest.
Those with me raise a hand.” Two dozen hands
went up. “Sorry I did not make it a hundred
marks,” whispered Wilhelm to von Scholl, as he
placed the casket on the steel table. Then,
standing off, he commanded: “One—two—three.”
Down came the Brobdingnagian not like fifty,
but like a hundred thousand tons, hitting the table
an earthquake-like smack. It was all over in a
second, but both Wilhelm and the War Lady’s
mother thought a lot in that tiny fragment of
time. The casket was, of course, as flat as a
window-pane and not much thicker, while of its
contents there was no trace, the silk having become
part and parcel of the metal. Nothing short of
the melting-pot, said the expert, would yield
isolated strains of the thousand bedizened ribbons.
And, on top of it, Fraulein Krupp collected 250
marks for her orphanage!
Was it the loss of his ten marks, the blotting
out of his “indecent surprise,” or thoughts of the
murderous fruit which the marriage about to be
solemnised would yield him that clouded the War
Lord’s brow as he walked up the middle aisle of
the chapel? He was to give the bride away. The
groom was the War Lord’s man, his discovery, his
creature! He found him secretary of legation
with the least of the kings, grubbing along on a
salary of five hundred pounds a year, and destined
in all probability to marry either a spindle-shanked
or a bull-necked “Fraulein von” with an infinitesimal
dot. The goal of his ambition: a berth as
minister plenipotentiary at the Court of a minor
king! Salary: seven hundred pounds per year.
Well, he (the War Lord) was about to give
in marriage this candidate for polite poverty and
subaltern honours a nice, healthy, well bred and
intelligent girl of good family, likewise revenues
compared with which the civil list of the average
German king were twopence! It surely should
follow as a matter of course that common
gratitude, if not inborn discipline, would make Krupp
von Bohlen the instrument of any warlike mischief
the author of his good luck might contemplate.
Indeed, he had vowed so much.
Now Lohengrin and rustling silks: The bride
and groom.
The latter, like most of the men present, in
showy uniform, blue and gold; the War Lady in
lilac crêpe de Chine, myrtles in her blonde hair.
She was rather pleasant than pretty to look
upon: a massive face, indicating a not unkindly
disposition; blue eyes, wavy hair, a firm mouth;
a bit strong on figure.
Her head-dress was typical enough for Germany:
myrtle, the “bleeding,” commemorating
the cruelty of the barbarous islanders who pierced
the shipwrecked with spears and arrows!
Ancient history aside, the sign of the myrtle
leaf was indeed prophetic of the horrors this
marriage would impose upon humanity, in
accordance with the compact between the War Lady’s
husband and the War Lord; but, as nine out of
every ten German brides are myrtle-bedecked, the
fashionable crowd in the chapel had no mind for
the augury.
Still, why mauve, the colour of mourning and
old age, for the wedding gown? Since it was of
the War Lady’s own selection, it suggested almost
a premonition of the evil in store for Europe.
Did Bertha’s lens of imagery conjure up the
ghosts of the millions who must die by the output
of her factories that her own unborn offspring have
more milliards to play with, and was she mourning
in advance for the children she would render
fatherless, for the hosts doomed to extinction because
profits in the wholesale murder of men are surpassing
high?
Who knows?
It is almost inconceivable that a person like
the War Lady, engaged in the appalling trade of
death-dealing, regarded her business other than a
gigantic slaughter monopoly—a privileged one, to
be sure, yet the most heinous of crimes against
God and men just the same.
At the Courts of the eighteenth century
“punishment boys” were kept, to be thrashed
when small highnesses deserved to have their jacket
warmed. Here, at the altar, Bertha, used to Royal
State on account of her wealth, was about to
engage a punishment boy. In future Gustav was
to take the blame for all the enormities her
factories would visit upon humanity!
The old-time punishment boys were well paid
for their pains; the Krupp punishment boy was to
have an income of seven hundred and fifty
thousand pounds sterling per annum. The old-time
punishment boys were frequently loved by the
masters for whom they suffered; Herr Krupp von
Bohlen was loved by the young woman whom he
relieved of grievous responsibility. Yet the note
of mourning in her attire, and at her bosom the
mark of “Abdul Hamid the Damned”!
The War Lady is sincerely religious, and so is
the War Lord’s Imperial lady, only more so.
Indeed, with Her Majesty the Church is almost
an obsession, yet both the Queen of Prussia and
the Queen of Essen have accepted presents from
the wholesale assassin of Christians, who remembered
only one thing to his credit in the course of
thirty-three years of absolute rule: that he did not
murder his brother. This was his plea to the
Young Turks when deposed.
For many years the Berlin Court was a pensioner
of the man who prided himself on having
spared the life of his mother’s son, making up for
this unnatural restraint by spilling the blood of
forty thousand “Christian dogs.” Five millions
cash “Abdul the Damned” lent to the War Lord
(and he is still whistling for its return), and
season after season he sent material for the Queen
of Prussia’s underlinen and summer dresses. Bales
of Oriental stuffs, gauzes, linens, laces and silks
from Tscheragan Serai used to be delivered at
the Neues Palais about every April the first, filling
the house with real “Turkish delight,” of which
Her Majesty’s sisters, the rich and the poor,
likewise partook according to their needs or the favour
in which they were held at the moment.
And when Her Prussian Majesty is en grande
tenue she often augments the great Napoleon’s
diamonds, captured at Waterloo (the same that
once blushed at the generous bosom of his sister
Paulette), by those that the great Frederick gave
to his lovely mistress La Barbarina, the dancer,
and took back again when he tired of her; and
when even multiplication fails to give satisfaction—for
a Queen of Prussia must have more diamonds
than an American multi-millionairess—she adds the
parure of brilliants and the numerous brooches and
buttons and bracelets given her by The Damned.
After all, this seems appropriate enough for the
Queen of a country pieced together of territories
gained by assassination, war, treachery and other
atrocities; but think of the War Lady accepting
gifts from the most despicable of men and kings!
Surely there must be some fellow-feeling of malign
camaraderie between the makers of murderous tools
and their users, a sort of revival of swordsmiths-worship
and the veneration in which the great men
of old held their Curtanas and Flamberges!
Possible, or shall we set it down to mere female
thoughtlessness, which in some respects seems akin
to that of half-savages after the style of the story
Mark Twain once told the War Lord:
“Where is ‘Liza?” asked the master of the
house, when he missed the coloured waitress at
breakfast.
“Can’t come round for a few days. Just had
a tiny wee baby,” answered the housemaid,
grinning.
“A baby! How’s that?”
“Oh, just nigger-shiftlessness, I reckon.”
But it wasn’t thoughtlessness, or shiftlessness
alone, that made the War Lady pin to her breast
the grand cordon of the Osmanié Order of Virtue;
it spelled, at the same time, a bid for war material,
decreed by the businesslike groom. The War Lord
saw it and smiled. “Bravo, Gustav, you are the
stuff,” and “Bertha, as is fit, the yielding lamb.”
And the organ pealed and cooed, and the
chorus of cathedral singers chanted off the key,
and the voice of the officiating minister droned,
and everybody thought it most “heavenly,” but
boring; and the generals and army officers smacked
their lips, anticipating the table delicacies in store;
and the courtiers congratulated themselves because
it was all fun and no work; and each lady thought
she looked a heap better than her best-beloved
friend; and the War Lord stared at the ceiling
contemplating ways and means for mining the
Krupp quarry of wealth and efficiency to within
an inch of hell.
“And so I pronounce you man and wife,”
sang out the minister, expecting the biggest fee!
“Hail thee, Frankenstein,” thought Wilhelm.
He inflated his chest as the archangel aspiring to
omnipotence may have done: from this moment
on the means for such aggrandisement as only
Napoleon dreamt of were in his hands, and he was
free to plunge the world into irremediable ruin if
he liked.
Through Bertha’s resignation, through von
Bohlen’s connivance, he now owned the Krupp
works; he was Frankenstein—Frankenstein, the
hideous, the abhorred, whose malignity was
equalled only by the accumulated wretchedness he
meant to visit on all resisting.
Even as he extended his hand to the bride, with
lip congratulations, he thought of the riot of despair
the troth just sealed spelt for his own people and
the nations to be subdued! Was he then—is he
then—the hideous fantasm of one bent on naught
but destruction?
God knows—mere physical observation discerns
no more than the frightful selfishness that has
lashed the War Lord to ever-increasing efforts of
fury since Bertha’s wedding day and is driving
him still.
As overlord of the greatest industrial plant in
the world, he deliberately diverted it from its
legitimate raison d’être as a cradle of life and
progress and turned it into a dividend-mill for the
cultivation of human hatred and the making of
corpses, at the same time endowing it with a soul
still more monstrous: his thrice-abhorred Kultur.
He had steel hammers enough to line, side by
side, a road reaching from Liverpool Street Station
to Hyde Park; steel boilers enough to start a
second Pittsburgh; more machinery than the rest
of the kingdom boasts; more electric motors than
Paris or London employs in its public conveyances,
etc.; and with unparalleled selfishness in
evil suborned them exclusively to his passion for
destruction, adding unlimited capital and business
capacity, utter disregard for human life and
extraordinary facilities for chemical-physical research,
begetting inventive genius of a high order. There
is the explanation of the frightful catalogue of
Hunnish sins that have disgraced civilisation since
the 29th of July, 1914, according to the findings
of Lord Bryce’s Committee.
“The Kapellmeister, at Your Majesty’s
orders?” reported Count Eulenburg.
“Hohenfriedberger March,” replied the War
Lord, locking his teeth.
Hohenfriedberg is a shining mark in Prussian
history, for in June, 1745, Frederick the Great
overwhelmed the Austrians near the small Silesian
village, nearly annihilating Prince Karl and his
Saxon allies. He composed a march in honour of
the event, a rather stirring piece of musical
claptrap, among the best that came from his pen.
“I can drive the Austrians too,” thought the
War Lord, as he stepped from the chapel, the
bride’s mother on his arm. And, the military band
outside executing some flourishes when he passed,
he added grimly: “Bayonet in back, if necessary.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
A FORESHADOWING OF “LUSITANIAISM”
The Rise of Herr Ballin—A Woman’s Vanity—Herr
Ballin at the Schloss—”Frightfulness” on the
Sea—Smoothing the Way—The War Lord and
Wedell—A Spy Plot—Overrunning England with Spies
On the eve of the day when the Lusitania snatched
the world’s speed record from the North German
Lloyd, the red discs in the Chancellor’s and in
Count Wedell’s office bobbed up almost simultaneously:
“I want to see the Jew Ballin. To-morrow
morning at the earliest. You heard about the
Lusitania?” Before Prince Bülow could say
“Yes,” the War Lord had hung up the receiver,
simultaneously pressing the button marked Wedell,
whom he asked to bring in the Ballin personalia.
“No ordinary Jew,” explained the chief of the
Secret Service.
“But common stock?”
“Very, Your Majesty.”
“How does Ballin dress?”
“Affects the American business man, All
Highest, in demeanour and dress.”
“A genius, you said?”
“For making money, absolutely, Your Majesty.”
“Let’s hear about his beginnings.” The War
Lord sat down in a low chair and lit a cigarette.
No such luxuries for Count Wedell, though. The
head of the Secret Service stood while he read from
his card index in telegraphic style:
“Born emigrant agents.—Son, brother and
nephew of drummers-up of steerage cargo.—Learnt
rudiments of trade in his native Hamburg.—Finished
in London——”
“Perfect finishing school for aspiring German
boys,” interrupted the War Lord; “the English
educating their future business rivals—touching!”
“I have often thought about that in connection
with our war,” said Wedell. “Of course, Your
Majesty expects to win, but victory does not beget
good will. Suppose London, Birmingham, Liverpool
and the rest say no more foreign clerks and
other employés, especially none of Teutonic
origin?”
“Don’t you worry. Any little game of that
kind will be forestalled in the terms of peace.
Finish your Ballin.”
“Returned home,” read Wedell from his cards,
“secured employment in minor steamship line to
bring Poles and Hungarians to Hamburg for
shipment to the States. Hapag people soon awoke to
the fact that the devil of a genius was weaning
their quarry away from them.—Approached Ballin
with promises of double salary. Ballin refused—then
acquired controlling interest in employer’s
line.—Then sold out to Hapag.”
“That happened when?”
“In 1886, Your Majesty.”
“Since then business has grown immensely,
hasn’t it?”
“Its gross profits climbed from £125,000 to
£2,825,000 per annum in twenty-five years, while
its fleet increased from twenty-six to one hundred
and eighty pennants. Tonnage in 1886, 50,000;
to-day, exceeding one million.”
“That will do,” said Wilhelm. “Send in Haeseler.”
Count Haeseler had arrived the night before
from Konopischt, had been waiting to report to
His Majesty for an hour or more, and, to kill time,
had been paying visits to officials and pensioners
living in the big pile. There had been cigars and
cognac galore, and Gottlieb was on excellent terms
with himself when he saw His Majesty.
“Went to bed with an attack of the heart, and
got up refreshed and happy,” he said.
“I see Franz Ferdinand’s reputation at home
is of the value of nothing, but, still, he treated you
like a white man,” interpreted the War Lord.
“Majesty hit the nail upon the head, as usual.
Not an Austrian, Hungarian, Croatian, Servian,
Bosniak or Pollack alive would not gladly spend his
last heller to buy a dose of prussic acid for the heir
to the throne, but to Your Majesty’s representative
he was all charm. Nearly gave me a horse.”
“Forgot to send it to the station with the other
baggage, eh? Well, aside from cheating my field
marshal, how is he going on?”
“Like a steam-roller. The next time Your
Majesty will deign to inspect the Sixth Infantry
or the Wilhelm Hussars, Majesty will not
recognise them. Fellows like me are being relegated
to the scrap-heap by the dozen, and he cares no
more for archdukes’ privileges than the white souls
of valets de chambre. His iron broom is busy
with horse, foot and artillery, with the navy and
the air fleet all at the same time, and wherever he
touches there is a clean sweep and a howl of dismay,
pitiful enough to move a tiger, but not Nero.”
“He is stirring them up,” rejoiced the War Lord.
“He is making the Austrian army a worthy
adjunct of Your Majesty’s forces,” said Haeseler,
very earnestly.
“And you taught him these new stratagems?”
“I would never have been allowed to leave the
country alive if the Hungarians knew what I did
teach Nero.”
“Dirty trick,” said the War Lord, “not to
give Gottlieb the horse.” Then imperiously: “I
expect your detailed report about all the reforms
in the Austrian army and navy in a fortnight.”
“There will be no gun missing, I promise Your
Majesty.”
Count Haeseler referred, of course, to the
astounding memory and precision of the great
Napoleon. Once, when occupied by much business,
the Emperor sent an officer to Belgium to
investigate military stores. The officer handed in
his report. Napoleon gave him back the document
with these words: “There are two guns missing
at Ostend.” And there were two missing.
“And your general opinion of Franz based on
intimate observation?” queried Wilhelm.
“He seems to regard himself as a sort of necessary
barricade to progress, yet has no patience with
the idea uppermost in Austria that laissez faire
must be perpetuated for ever and a day simply
because it’s as old as the hills.”
“And the Duchess?”
“With Your Majesty’s leave, confidently
expects to be Empress of Austria.”
“Must have Pan-German leanings.”
“No, Your Majesty; only the truly womanly
passion to be the most envied of her sex.”
“Slav conflict with Austria suits me all right,”
said the War Lord. “The Czechs and Hungarians
wanting Sophie, the Austrian Germans will
feel the more inclined to join my Germanic
Federation.”
“But,” said Haeseler, “Franz counts upon
Your Majesty to help at the enthronisation of
Sophie by force, if necessary.”
The War Lord went to a bookshelf and pulled
out a volume bound in red with atrocious gold
decorations. “And Franz brags about having
read every strategic work ever written,” he
commented.
“Majesty refers to Moltke’s introduction of
the Franco-Prussian war.”
“Yes, but this isn’t the volume. Can you
quote from memory?”
“I will try my utmost, Your Majesty: ‘The
days are past when for dynastical ends armies went
forth——'”
“Take an ‘echte,’ Edward’s brand,” said the
War Lord.
There was a royal carriage at the station for
Herr Ballin, and the royal coachman, keen for
marks, waved his whip frantically to attract
attention, and coin: the shipping king, emerging from
a first-class compartment, affected not to see.
Berlin has two kinds of cabs, and Ballin chose the
Noah’s Ark brand at threepence a mile. When he
said “Schloss,” the driver quizzed him curiously
and decided at once to put him down at the kitchen
entrance. “Must be a relative of some housemaid,”
he calculated, and could not understand
at all why the royal carriage, though empty, drove
plumb ahead of him when they reached the
Schlossplatz. Of course the War Lord’s livery
meant to impress upon the Court Marshal that he
had been on the spot.
Court Marshal von Liebenau left the reception
to his aide and ran upstairs.
“With Majesty’s permission. Regular Jewski,
second-class cab. How long shall he wait?”
“Show him up instantly.”
From this it may be gathered as from the scene
witnessed at the Wilhelmstrasse, that waiting for
Majesty is a punishment meted out on religious or
other grounds.
Ballin had anticipated questions, and received
instructions. “The Lusitania,” said the War
Lord, after the curtest, not to say abruptest of
welcomes, “must teach you Hamburgers and the
Lloyd people this important lesson: In the ocean
greyhound to be built hereafter, the naval value
is obviously of greater importance than trade or
dividend considerations, for the moment war is
declared all your vessels will pass under my exclusive
control, and I need all the auxiliaries, with a
prodigious coal supply and a speed unsurpassable by
cruisers, I can get. If war with England came
to-morrow, the Lusitania would be turned loose
upon our commerce at once, and neither Wilhelmshaven,
nor Bremen nor Hamburg boasts a vessel
capable of overtaking her. She can sink our ships
right and left, and show a clean pair of heels every
time. Until yesterday I considered Kaiser
Wilhelm der Grosse, der Krönprinz, die Deutschland
and the flyer named after me capable commerce
destroyers, but the Lusitania could sink either of
these giants, and boast of her record in the nearest
English harbour protected by mines.”
“But Majesty doesn’t anticipate that merchantman
will turn upon merchantman, and that
passenger steamers in particular will be sunk either
by vessels of the same lay calibre or by regular
men-of-war?” ventured Herr Ballin, who evidently
believed at that time in “scraps of paper.”
“Herr Ballin,” said the War Lord, “you were
described to me as the most far-seeing and
progressive of sea lords outside of my navy. Surely
you can’t be of opinion that in the great war to
come international niceties will be allowed to cut
any figure? If Germany must draw the sword
before my navy is superior to the British, I propose
to save my men-of-war and trust to submarines.”
“But passenger steamers——” quoth Herr
Ballin rather more timidly.
“Passenger steamers carry freight, and in time
of war all goods that might possibly be of use
to the enemy in any way, manner or form
I consider contraband. And contraband spells
destruction.”
“Does Your Majesty anticipate that the
English, French or Russians would attack Hamburg
liners while engaged in the passenger traffic?”
“If they half know their business they will.
For my part, I would not hesitate a moment to
sink the Lusitania, or any other Cunarder at sight,
since all are supposed to be in the service or, at
least, at the service of their Government.”
Herr Ballin breathed hard as he said: “May it
please Your Majesty, what about neutrals? Like
the Cunarders, the Hapag carries on every journey
hundreds of American citizens.”
“I don’t know anything about a Yankee’s
food value,” replied the War Lord cynically. “I
think the denizens of the big herring-pond will
have to make the best of them.”
Herr Ballin bowed low. “As Your Majesty
commands.”
“It is settled then,” continued the War Lord.
“On your part, bigger and faster boats than the
English; on my part, I promise to advise you of
the date of the outbreak of hostilities long enough
beforehand to save your vessels for the Fatherland.
Even if circumstances decree their internment en
masse, Germany will be the gainer in the end,
when both our navy and our merchant marine
remain unbroken.”
Ballin was retreating backwards toward the
door, when the War Lord recalled him. “I am
dickering with Wilhelmina about Curaçao for a
coaling station, and”—banteringly—”if you
could stir up war between the Netherlands and
some other colonial power I would be very much
obliged. We got the coaling station in the Red
Sea through our pro-Boer sympathies. Curaçao
would make an excellent apéritif after getting over
Dutch troubles.”
“The United States would object.”
“Of course, but there are some twenty-six
millions of Germans in America, every mother’s
son of them fighting-mad for me—part of my
invisible army and almost as important as the other.
The Germans in America have an immense
vote-swaying power; they control Washington to a
large extent, and some of the State Legislatures
absolutely. And, as you know, each American
State is sovereign. Suppose I would threaten to
decree secession for the States between New York
and Seattle, taking in New York, Ohio, Illinois,
Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, etc. etc., where
would Washington be? Would Roosevelt risk
Civil War because I want a place to coal my ships
not exactly five thousand miles from the Panama
Canal?
“I tell you, my men controlling a large portion
of the American Press won’t let him. And, by the
way, Ballin, the Hapag, the Lloyd, Woermann,
etc., will have to give more extensive support to my
German Press in America than is done now. Die
Staats Zeitungs, the Herolds, and whatever-they-call-them
can’t live on wind. Ridder is a rapacious
cuss and a Jesuit besides; but my Washington
bureau tells me that his complaints are not
altogether groundless. As my Germans become more
and more Americanised, the German papers’
circulations are dwindling, and likewise slumps
the advertising. For this we must make up.
German shipping and the industries engaged in
international trade must support the German Press
in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis,
Kansas City and the minor towns, as my Government
supports the Norddeutsche Allgemeine and
Krupp his Neueste Nachrichten.
“By the way,” he added, grabbing a “Bismarck
pencil” suspended from a wire and scribbling
on his calendar block, “I will have to tell
Krupp, Loewe and the rest of the ammunition
hogs to loosen up on those German papers in
America. Podbielski shall see them about it. Of
course he is no stockholder, but his dear Emma
is.” (The War Lord referred to the scandals
connecting a German general with subserviency to
army purveyors to the extent of awarding contracts
exclusively to firms in which he was financially
interested.)
“It might serve the Hapag and ‘meine
Wenigkeit‘ (literally my inferiority, meaning your
humble servant) if specifically informed respecting
the invisible army Your Majesty was graciously
pleased to allude to,” bowed Herr Ballin.
“In the States,” explained the War Lord,
“my volunteers are mostly full-fledged
citizens—universal suffrage, otherwise a stench in my
nostrils, is working overtime for the German Cause
there—but in the rest of the world merchant-princes,
manufacturers, trade agents and skilled
workmen do yeoman duty for me and the Fatherland.
Of course we have a lot of adherents in
England—’naturalised’ they call them. Funny
term! I hold that it would be most unnatural
for a German to embrace another nationality,
especially the English.”
“Whenever you hear of troubles in Ireland,
put it down to my invisible army. That same army
has before this fomented labour troubles in Russia,
and it never sleeps in France, particularly not in
Paris.”
And, lowering his voice, the War Lord talked
of invisible forces building concrete gun-platforms
along the French and Belgian frontiers—”foundations
for manufacturing plants,” he added
sarcastically.
“Of course I am doing my bit in other respects
too,” he concluded. “I have fed some of these
German editors from the States at my own table,
and —— bad manners they had too; and I have
baited them with minor orders in plenty. If
Ridder behaves himself I will make him a ‘von’
some day, and that German Congressman from
Missouri—I forget his name—will get a
five-pronged coronet too. But to return to Curaçao.
If I get a foothold there, I will have both French
and English for neighbours—excellent chances for
picking a quarrel if desirable.”
The War Lord put a finger down vigorously
on the Wedell—and Adjutant von Moltke buttons.
The nephew of the great Field Marshal responded
almost instantly. “I want Wedell.”
“Count Wedell is in waiting, Your Majesty.” Even
while the equerry spoke, the sign language
of the telephone announced that the Chief was at
the Schloss.
“That Jew of yours will be useful,” said
Wilhelm approvingly. “He will obey orders like
Krupp, but remember His Majesty can’t do all the
reconnoitring himself. I tell you for the
hundredth time that your department is negligent with
respect to England. You must get Ballin to help
you.”
Count Wedell winced. “If I have had the
misfortune to fall short of Your Majesty’s
expectations——” he stuttered.
“‘My resignation is, etc.’ The old Wedell
complaint; I know what you want to say. Only
recently I stopped your cousin’s litany by
remarking: ‘I thought you liked your salary and
perquisites.’ None of that nonsense, please. Listen:
I have played sleuth for you at Portsmouth; I
know the dockyards there like my pocket. The
Solent and Cowes are open books to my General
Staff, owing to descriptive matter and diagrams I
have furnished, and what I did not tell Tirpitz
about Gibraltar is not worth knowing. Really,”
he added, “English naïveté is astonishing,
particularly in the face of the Press campaign. With
the most widely circulated and best informed
newspapers constantly reminding them that my whole
naval policy is directed against Great Britain,
English officials—military, naval and civilian—extend
me every opportunity for the study of old
England’s defence and weakness. Thanks to my
inspection, my General Staff is as well informed
about the Gibraltar signal station as the first
English Sea Lord—it is to laugh.
“And how they opened their ports to me:
Leith, Port Victoria, Folkestone were as free to
the Hohenzollern as Piccadilly Circus.
“The next time I visit Edward I will drive my
yacht right up above Tilbury. See if I don’t.”
“Poor devil of a pilot,” mocked Count Wedell.
“Now, don’t credit the English War Office
with more circumspection than the average
German schoolboy has,” guffawed Wilhelm; “the
pilot will probably get the V.C., and I promise
Tirpitz some astounding information for, while on
the bridge, I will pump the pilot dry—absolutely
dry.
“I really worked hard for your department,”
concluded Wilhelm; “now show that you can
follow my lead.”
“Perhaps Majesty favours establishment of
semaphores on the British coast on a larger scale.”
“After we prohibited the keeping of carrier
pigeons in the neighbourhood of German naval
stations? No, Herr Graf, I am not dispensing
meal tickets to penny-a-liners just now. Think of
something new, something Ballin can do for us.”
“I submit that cheap excursions to English
harbours and seaside resorts, arranged by the
Hamburg line during the holiday season——”
“I take it all back,” cried Wilhelm. “You
are earning your salary, Wedell. Capital idea.
The Naval Intelligence Service shall subscribe for
a hundred berths, sending its most expert
photographers, topographers, surveyors, fortification
experts and naval men. In mufti, of course, and you
will have men on board to spot fools that betray
their official connections. Tell Ballin I want some
of his largest steamers for this service, so that my
army and my navy men get well lost in the crowd.
The larger the crowd, the more men of military
age and reservists, of course.”
“Your Majesty thinks of everything.”
“I have to,” said the War Lord. “And
make a note of it. Amateur photography is to be
encouraged in the schools, the press, in society.
No use sending crowds of Germans to England
unless they bring back plenty of photographic
evidence relating to the enemy coast and land
defences. As a special inducement, Ballin shall have
a dark-room on board and develop films free of
charge. In that way we will get duplicates of
everything.”
“I beg to submit,” said Wedell, “there is
still another aspect to Your Majesty’s enlightened
prospect.”
“Fire away!”
“The legend of impossible invasion will suffer
a collapse with everybody observing that the
supposed impregnability of Dover is all moonshine.”
“Not half bad,” said the War Lord. “Those
tourists will make splendid commis voyageurs for
our army of invasion.”
“Agents provocateurs!”
Wilhelm shrugged impatiently. “Fouché’s
business! Of course my War Office will furnish
the dates for the excursions. Sounds ridiculous,
but England’s little vest-pocket army indulges in
annual manoeuvres like my own, and it would be
curious if some valuable information could not be
gleaned from a boat full of military and
semi-military sightseers. Of course the English naval
manoeuvres are much more important. Sometimes
a simple tourist sees things for which the official
and unofficial representatives of my Admiralty and
your own department, Wedell, search in vain.”
The discussion continued in the same vein for
another half-hour, the War Lord impressing upon
Wedell the absolute necessity of increased
espionage in England. “Thirty-six years ago,” said
Wilhelm in conclusion, “Bismarck had over
thirty thousand spies and sympathisers in France
doing his work. Have we got as many in England
to-day? How many are on the pay-rolls of English
railways, of Scotch railways and, particularly,
of Irish railways? You can’t tell off-hand?
Report within three days. And don’t forget the
proofs, if you please. I likewise want to know how
many of your men are detailed to attack British
arsenals, harbours, wireless stations and so forth
in the event of war. Whatever their number,
duplicate, nay, treble it, and don’t be sparing with
promises. If we invade England, we won’t get out
in a hurry, tell them, and there will be plenty of
pickings for our friends while we are on the Insular
side of the Channel.
“Remind them that our army of occupation
remained in France two years and five months after
peace had been signed. I propose to enjoy English
hospitality even a while longer, and the people that
serve us ‘before and aft’ can make enough money
while we are in England to evacuate with us and
live on their interests in the Fatherland after
Threadneedle Street has paid the last instalment.
Think of it! Serve the War Lord and feather
one’s own nest at the same time.”
Wilhelm had been sitting down uncommonly
long. Indeed he had been almost confidential with
his pal in the conspiracy international. He now
rose, squared his shoulders and assumed his
favourite character of the graven image.
“I don’t like Krupp’s ignorance of things English.
Shall make a few trips into England, and see
what there is to be seen,” he said in a tone of
command. He continued: “I want a talk from
Court Chaplain Dryander on the chosen people,
not on the Jews—on the term. Got impressed
with it while talking to Ballin. Germans the
chosen people! Sounds good!”
“Dryander will report at eleven to-morrow
morning. Order (Professor) Delbrueck to be here
at the same time. I will see him after the sky-pilot
has gone. Parsons are such romancers; it’s well to
digest their palaver to the accompaniment of
historic facts.”
“One thing more.” The War Lord grabbed
a pencil and marked asafoetida on half a dozen
pages of his daily calendar. “I want to have a
conference with chemists by and by.”
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.
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.[#] Less than an hour’s motor trip
from the frontier, you know.”
[#] 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.”
“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.
CHAPTER XXXI
A GREAT STATE SECRET
The Great Dundonald Plan—The Menace to Essen—Who
Holds the Secret?—An Infallible Plan—England
Will Have to Pay—The World Will be Mine
A minute passed while the War Lord listened for
the steady tread of his epauletted sentinel on the
marble floor and seemed to count the steps. If
Dommes had strayed an inch upon the purple
runner which he was ordered to avoid, Wilhelm
would have rushed out and abused him for a spy.
Not until satisfied that the possibility of being
overheard was out of the question, he told of the
things weighing upon his mind, or of those, rather,
that he wanted to weigh on Bertha’s mind.
“You heard of Lord Dundonald?” he asked abruptly.
“The father of Baron Cochrane, who announced
the death of Gordon and the fall of
Khartoum,” replied Bertha. “Gustav met him
at Brooks’s, I believe.”
“The desert rider doesn’t interest us now,”
retorted Wilhelm, “though I would love to have
him on my staff—just the man to lead my African
forces and to help in the Boer uprising. I am
talking of Thomas Cochrane, the tenth Earl. Surely
you learned about his good work against Napoleon
and his exploits in South American waters? For
a time he was admiral of the Chilian Fleet, re-entering
the British naval service in the last years
of William IV.’s reign.”
“I recollect now,” said Bertha.
“Well, the two elder Dundonalds were scientists,
like your father and grandfather. Indeed,
Dundonald grand-père made several epoch-making
chemical discoveries—I suspect Heydebrand is
stealing his ideas on every hand” (Dr. Ernst von
Heydebrand, leader of the Agrarian party and a
husbandman of note), “for Earl Archie enlarged
on the relations between agriculture and chemistry
even during the French Revolution; but Thomas
Dundonald, his son, the same who defeated the
Corsican at sea, was, or rather is, the man who
threatens the Fatherland, even though buried these
fifty years and more. Industry is indebted to him
for discoveries in the line of compressed air,
improvements in engines and propellers, but his chef
d’oeuvre was a war machine.
“I tell you, Bertha, it looms up larger and
larger as the struggle that is sure to come
approaches—a perpetual threat menacing the
stability of my Empire.
“The enemy—I mean the British War Office—has
wrapt that thing of horror in darkest mystery
ever since its inception a hundred years ago, and
Haldane is as secretive about it as the Prince
Regent was in the early decades of the nineteenth
century.
“During my every visit to England I have
tried to find out from princes, statesmen and
military men on the Dundonald plan, only to meet with
patriotic objections in one place, with bluff in
another. Lord Roberts went so far as to say there
was no such thing. But King Edward, when Prince
of Wales, contradicted Roberts, without suspecting,
of course, that I had quizzed the Field Marshal.
He had seen the document, he said; it rested in
a secret drawer of the War Minister’s safe. ‘No
other War Office official has access to it,’ he told
me, ‘and it’s the only copy in existence.’
“His word notwithstanding, there was a possibility,
of course, that the plans of the great war
machine might be concealed somewhere about
Lord Dundonald’s town residence in Portman
Square, or in the archives of Gwyrch Castle, his
seat in Wales, and Wedell has spent ten thousands
upon ten thousands, bribing confidential servants,
librarians and secretaries and what not? I had half
made up my mind to approach the present Earl,
when Metternich, by the merest accident, came
upon some of the information sought after.
“Bertha,” continued Wilhelm, “though we
don’t know its exact nature yet, the last doubt as
to its limitless efficacy as a destroyer is
removed—hence, the famous secret of the London War
Office constitutes a peril to the German Empire
that only war preparations on the largest possible
scale can hope to check.”
He dropped into melodramatic style, tutoyering
Bertha: “Dost understand now, child, why I
contemplated taking over the Krupp works for the
State in case you failed your Uncle Majesty? Such
would have been my duty, my sacred duty.”
“I understand now, understand fully, and I
humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon.”
“It is granted,” said the War Lord, with the
air of a tyrant annulling a death sentence. “And
now you want to know about the menace Dundonald’s
plan holds out to Essen, of course. But
for your fuller understanding we must first go into
the history of the case.”
The War Lord lit a cigarette and settled
comfortably into his throne chair. “Some two
years before the battle of Leipzig,” he began,
“Lord Dundonald first startled the British War
Office by a device for annihilating all fortified
places and armies of Europe, should Bonaparte
succeed in uniting them against England.
However, his plan was so terrible, the Secretary for
War refused to take the responsibility of either
rejecting or accepting it, and persuaded the Regent
to appoint a committee for its investigation en
camera. The Duke of York, Lord Keith, Lord
Exmouth and the two Congreves were chosen, and
their verdict was: ‘Infallible, irresistible, but too
inhuman for consideration.’ And at that time,
Bertha, Englishmen and Englishwomen were
hanged for stealing a sheep or an ell of cotton.
So you may be sure that Lord Dundonald’s war
machine is no more burdened with sentimentality
than ‘old Fritz’ yonder.
“The terrible plan was reluctantly pigeon-holed,
and, as you know, Prussia, not the English,
smashed Napoleon.
“In 1817 Lord Dundonald went to South
America, having previously pledged his word of
honour that he would not use his invention for the
benefit of foreigners, and that, on the contrary, it
should remain for ever at the disposal of England’s
War Office. Later, his lordship confessed that he
had been tempted time and again to employ his
invention, but refrained from self-respect.
“After 1832 he was back in London, and
from then on until his death in 1860 he submitted
his terrible plan to each succeeding War Minister,
and each of these gentlemen declared the method
capable of realisation with the awful results
predicted by the author, yet too savage for adoption
by a Christian government.
“Followed the Crimean War, with its initial
anxieties, particularly to my grandmother. To
her Lord Dundonald, then quite an old man,
submitted his plan anew, which he said would shorten
the war; but Queen Victoria hadn’t the heart to
listen to the inhuman proposal. However, Lord
Palmerston had the invention officially investigated,
appointing the most progressive scientists
of the day for the task. As expected, they upheld
Lord Dundonald’s claims in every particular, but
the inhumanity clause attached forbade its acceptance
under a ruler like Queen Victoria, and once
more the plan was shelved.
“Of course,” added the War Lord, “they
were fighting against Russia then. If it had been
Germany, that blackguard Palmerston would have
hanged the committee that declared against its
acceptance.
“That happened sixty years ago,” he went on,
“and the British War Office has kept Dundonald’s
terrible plan in reserve ever since. Nor has its
exact nature leaked out, though time and again
one or other of the Powers have offered millions
for the betrayal of the secret. Now, if I had been
War Lord when Lord Dundonald was travelling
in Germany—but that’s neither here nor there,”
he added gloomily.
Wilhelm walked to the empty fireplace and
stared at the lifeless logs, while a sinister and cruel
expression intensified the brutality of his features,
“You heard of Frederick the Great stealing the
dancer La Barbarina from the Venetians, bodily
snatching her out of the ambassador’s coach? So
would I have kidnapped Lord Dundonald, 70
Wilhelmstrasse” (the palace of the British
Embassy) “notwithstanding.
“I would have clapped him into Spandau, and
kept him at a diet of bread and water until he
revealed his secret in every detail—yes, and put to
the test, too. And if starvation hadn’t fetched him
round—why, we have a lot of that Nuremberg
bric-à-brac—thumb-screws, Spanish boots and toys
of that sort—hidden away in some of the old castles
and prisons——” True to his habit of manual
illustration, he described some of the workings of
the torture machinery by attacking the atmosphere.
“But, as said, it’s neither here nor there,” he
resumed finally. “Back to our muttons, then,
mon amie. This is the story which Metternich
obtained from two sources: Whitehall and
Gwyrch Castle.
“To-day Dundonald’s terrible plan plays a
more decisive part in England’s foreign policy
than ever, being regarded as the supreme reserve
force, a reserve force such as the world has never
dreamt of. Its point is against Germany, as a
matter of course, but I doubt not that Asquith
would use it upon his own allies if ever they turned
against him. Hence, France, Russia, even Japan,
dare not act independently of Great Britain lest
she employ Dundonald’s terrible secret.
“As to its nature, according to certain vague
information deduced from some of the late Lord
Thomas’s manuscript notes found at the Welsh
castle, the hope that in the meantime it had been
superseded by modern explosives, and that its
main principle, or allied principles, were no longer
the last cry in the line of destruction, has proved
absolutely untenable. His menacing method is as
infallible and irresistible to-day as it was a hundred
years ago; all your dynamiters, nitro-glyceriners,
lydditers and the rest of them notwithstanding,
Bertha.”
The War Lord struck a tragic pose: “To sum
up, in concocting this crime against humanity the
English lord degraded his intellect beneath the
meanest animal. Your poor child,” he murmured,
“like my fortresses and towns on the coast of
the North Sea or Baltic, so Essen and the peaceful
Ruhr valley may be swallowed up in the whirlwind
of his enormities.”
“I shall defend my boy with my last breath!”
cried Bertha, jumping to her feet, “him and all
my people. Tell me, Uncle Majesty, why is Essen
especially menaced?”
“Its proximity to the frontier is our most
vulnerable point. Pray, and pray hard, Bertha,
that Wilhelmina remains our friend. If she joined
our enemies, Lord Dundonald’s devilish invention
might be brought to your very doors, through the
Zuyder Zee and Waal, and Germany’s armoury,
the Krupp works, obliterated; the Fatherland
itself could be wiped off the map.
“I hope to prevent this by throwing an iron
wall across Belgium and Northern France,” he
continued, tracing a line on the wall-map, while
Bertha faltered out:
“And this English menace——”
“How it works, you mean? With the resistless
energy of Etna in eruption and the iron grip
of the flow of ashes that buried Pompeii and
Herculaneum. Only here will be no escape by
water; but for my protecting arm you will all be
suffocated in bed, or standing or going, as it
were.”
The War Lord stepped to the window and
looked through the telescope fixed on a stand.
“As far as the eye travels,” he monologued, “one
vast ghastly cemetery. Every house and cottage a
grave, this villa a mausoleum.”
“Save us!” shrieked Bertha. “Your Majesty
alone can save us!”
“I will,” said the War Lord, “my Imperial
word: they shall not harm a hair on your child’s
head. With the Krupps working according to my
plans, I will save Essen and my ships and my
fortresses, too, for danger anticipated is half
overcome; and when ‘The Day’ arrives I will move
so quickly Whitehall won’t have time to put the
Scottish nobleman’s surprise into practice. Listen,
Bertha:
“The Japs disembarked eight thousand men at
Sakhalin in a single hour, and whatever these brown
devils did my army will have to go them one better.
I will fall on Belgium, and, as I told Krupp, hack
my way to Calais. By that time, maybe, you will
have completed the howitzer that, planted at
Calais, will make Dover Castle tumble into the
dust. If you haven’t, my air fleet alone must
pull off the job. After closing the mouth of the
Thames——”
“Sheerness to be blockaded?”
“By mines, Zeppelin, admiral. And before
they have recovered from their surprise I will have
three hundred and fifty thousand men on the way
to Threadneedle Street. About the same time
King George and Mr. Asquith, or whoever is in
power, will get a wireless to the effect that, to the
indemnity England will have to pay, a thousand
million pounds will be added if there is an attempt
to interrupt the march of my armies by using the
Dundonald plan, or if same is used anywhere or at
any time against my possessions. My admonition
will be in time, for to launch an undertaking so
gigantic as to baffle even the most enterprising of
your own lieutenants, Bertha, will take the slow
English months and months; the swiftness of my
movements, then, can be relied upon to forestall
the evil intended to make our own warlike
invention pale into insignificance.”
“But the English fleet, Your Majesty?”
“Obsolete, old iron so far as the Channel is
concerned. If I have enough airships, I won’t
bother about George’s Dreadnoughts at all, for my
nine army corps can be shipped from Calais in half
an hour’s time.
“As you know, my latest Zep. carries a
hundred persons, and I have been talking it over
with your Board and the Count: there are no
technical obstacles against the construction of
airships four times the size; airships can expand even
more readily than howitzers.
“And the dream of my little girl need not be
abandoned, either,” added the War Lord in softer
tones, “for the telegram to King George will
further stipulate that the Dundonald secret must
be turned over to me, and that I will have a
hundred hostages to guarantee my absolute monopoly
of this war machine—all the living war ministers
and the heads of the families of the war ministers
for the last hundred years, with a sprinkling of
dukes, princes, high statesmen and low politicians
to boot. Lady Warwick has sometimes wondered
what the English nobility is good for—I’ll show
her.
“The Dundonald secret in my exclusive keeping,”
concluded Wilhelm, “you can devote the
Krupp plant in all future to the ideals of the
pacifists; for the world, awed into submission and
silence lest I make a vast Pompeii out of a rebel
country—the world will be mine!”
With the War Lady’s astonished eyes following
him as he strode the length and breadth of the
room, the War Lord chuckled to himself. “Lord
Dundonald’s crude notes, found by my agents,
have put me on the track of the secret; anyhow,
we are now experimenting in Charlottenburg. My
experts call it a liquid perambulant fire, a hundred
per cent. more efficacious than my asphyxiating
gas for clearing a road through a human wall, as
each cylinder is guaranteed to lay low man, beast
and technical obstacle for a space of a hundred
and more square feet. What do you say to that,
Bertha?”
“You are wonderful, Uncle Majesty,” said Bertha.
“Invincible, arm in arm with the War Lady,”
declaimed Wilhelm.
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*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET MEMOIRS OF BERTHA KRUPP ***