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1012 was, nevertheless, cultivating close personal relations, after- ward to bear fruit during the World War, with his brother-in- law, Constantine, who had succeeded his assassinated father on the throne of Greece in March 1913. He sent Constantine flattering telegrams on his military prowess, and was conse- quently able in Aug. 1913 to induce the King of Greece to remove the last obstacle to the Peace of Bucharest (Aug. 10) by withdrawing the Greek claims, as against the Bulgarian, to the Thracian Hinterland of Kavala. King Carol of Rumania, at whose request the intervention had taken place, telegraphed to his kinsman, " thanks to you, the peace will be final."

King George V., with Queen Mary, and likewise the Tsar Nicholas II., were present in Berlin at the marriage on May 24 1913 of William II. 's only daughter, Princess Victoria Louise, with Prince Ernest Augustus of Cumberland, at last acknowl- edged as Duke of Brunswick, a marriage which was described as marking the reconciliation between the Guelphs of Hanover and the Hohenzollerns after the feud which had lasted since the conquest of Hanover by Prussia and the expulsion of the dynasty in 1866. These festivities were followed on June 16 and 17 by brilliant celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the accession of William II., with copious references by German sovereigns and official personages to the military strength of the German Empire under his sway as the guarantee of European peace.

A curious incident occurred in the same month. The Emperor disclosed the fact that one of his predecessors on the Prussian throne, Frederick William IV., had in a political testament rec- ommended his successor, if opportunity arose, to annul the Prussian Constitution which he had granted, or rather imposed, in 1848. William II. announced that he had magnanimously burned this document.

A visit which excited considerable speculation at a later date, when, during the World War, the future of the Russian border- lands became a question of practical politics, was that which William II. paid on June 12 1914 to the ill-fated heir to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Francis Ferdinand, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, at Konopisht Castle in Bohemia. The Emperor was accompanied by Adml. von Tirpitz. It is most probable that, apart from the sustained and ultimately successful efforts of William II. to win the reluctant personal sympathies of Francis Ferdinand (partly by encouraging his ambition to make his wife who was not of royal birth Empress when he should succeed to the throne), the object of the visit was to enlist his host's support for the extension of Austrian and inferentially of German naval power and influence in the Mediterranean. The story that the Emperor broached vast schemes for providing, after a contemplated European war, kingdoms for Francis Ferdinand's two sons by resuscitating the Greater Poland of the Jagiellos and by creating a great South- Slav State stretching to Salonika, seems entirely fanciful. A main feature of these alleged schemes was that the hereditary Austrian dominions should politically come into the confed- erated German Empire. Such an idea was never entertained by any sovereign or government during the Hohenzollern epoch. It had been, indeed, the so-called " Great German " policy'of the German Liberals in 1848, but it was rejected by Bismarck and by the ruling classes of Prussia. Its realization, apart from other considerations, would have entailed a diminution of the influence of the Prussian Throne and Government, and an immense strengthening of German Catholicism. It again became, of course, the cherished aspiration of republican Germany and republican Austria after the World War. But it never was an old-Prussian or a Hohenzollern policy.

The news of the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferd- inand and his wife at Serajevo on June 28 1914 reached Wil- liam II. on his yacht at Kiel during the regatta. His first ex- clamation, " Now I must begin all over again, my work of years is undone," showed that he had reckoned upon the Archduke as an instrument of German policy when he should ascend the thrones of the dual monarchy. William II. returned from Kiel to Potsdam for a week, and the laying of the mines which caused the world-explosion began. On July 5 Count Hoyos arrived at

Potsdam with a letter from the Emperor Francis Joseph contain- ing a memorandum, written before the Serajevo assassination, describing the situation in the Balkans, the menace of the Pan- Slavist agitation, particularly in Serbia, and the changed attitude of Rumania. It was only by cultivating friendship with Bul- garia and by isolating and diminishing Serbia as a factor in the Balkans that these dangers could be averted. The crime of Serajevo, it was added, had only confirmed this estimate of the situation. William II. gave Count Hoyos a reply in which he said that any contemplated action against Serbia ought to be taken without delay, that Russia would certainly be hostile, but that he had long reckoned upon this eventuality. If it came to war between Austria and Russia, Germany would loyally take her stand by her ally. A conference (not, as erroneously re- ported, a Crown Council, which would have meant the presence ' of the whole Prussian Ministry) afterwards toot place, and was attended by the Chancellor (Bethmann Hollweg), the War Minister (Gen. von Falkenhayn), the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Zimmermann) and the Chief of the Emperor's personal Military Cabinet (von Lyncker). And on the following day, July 6, there was a conference with Adml. von Kapclle, Tirpitz's right hand man at the Admiralty (Tirpitz was on leave), and with representatives of the War Ministry and the General Staff. It was resolved to take measures of preparation for the event of war, and orders in this sense were issued. At the same time it was arranged that all appearance of unusual excitement or activity should be avoided, and that the Emperor j should, according to programme, proceed upon his annual i cruise in northern waters. He left for Kiel on the same day, I and joined the fleet during its summer manoeuvres off Norway. He was constantly kept informed by telegraph of the progress of events. And now began the famous series of his marginal notes, I afterward published under the German Republican Govern- ment, upon the despatches he received. He was at first enthu- ' siastic for the most energetic measures against Serbia. He suggested that Austria should reoccupy the Sandjak, so as to sever the union of Serbia and Montenegro and prevent Serbian , access to the sea. Then " there will be a row at once," he wrote. ; He deprecated war councils and conferences at Vienna, " be- cause, " as Frederick the Great had said, " the timid party always gets the upper hand." On July 19 he ordered the German ( battle-fleet not to disperse, so that it could at a moment's I notice be recalled to Kiel. His chief anxiety at this stage was ! for the safety of the Baltic, and he wrote an angry marginal note because " the civilian Chancellor (Bethmann Hollweg) had not yet grasped his meaning." He (William II.) must " concentrate his forces on land and sea."

The text of the Austrian note to Serbia was communicated officially to the German Foreign Office on July 22, but the Ger- 1 man ambassador in Vienna, Tschirschky, had had it on the previous day, and had probably telegraphed it direct to the German Emperor. It was presented at Belgrade on July 23.

The Kaiser at first exulted over a firmness of which he had thought Austria incapable, and expressed the belief that all Slav states were hollow. " Just tread firmly on the feet of this rabble!" he added. On hearing that Count Berchtold, the Austrian Foreign Minister, did not desire to take any territory from Serbia he wrote, " Donkey! Austria must retake the Sandjak. . . . Austria must become preponderant over the smaller states at the expense of Russia, else there will be no peace." On the report of Serbian mobilization he recalled the German fleet from the North Sea to Kiel. " If Russia mobilizes, our fleet must be ready in the Baltic, and so it is going home." > The chancellor had suggested on July 26 that the Emperor should calm European anxiety by remaining in Norwegian waters, but he was now thoroughly aroused, and on the follow- ing day he returned to Potsdam. There he received the text of the Serbian reply, and at first thought it " a great moral success." No doubt the Serbians were liars and orientals, and Austria, he said in a letter to his chancellor, might do well to claim a " satis- faction d'honneur " and to exercise " une douce violence " by a temporary occupation of Serbian territory as a guarantee.