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MEMOIRS

OF THE CROWN PRINCE

OF GERMANY

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1922

■^"f^

Copyright, 1922, by THE MUNDUS PUBLISHING CO., Ltd., AMSTERDAM

german edition Copyright, 1922, by

J. G. COTTA, STUTTGART-BERLIN

Printed in the United States of America

Published May, 1922

MAV 1 5 1922 0)G!,A661656

CONTENTS

PAGE

Impulsus Scribendi I

CHAPTER I

Childhood Days 3

Boys will be Boys 3

My Father's Nature 18

Princes, Sovereigns and Sayings 27

CHAPTER H

Soldier, Sportsman and Student 35

The Value of Prussian Drill 35

The Queen 41

Student Life 44

In Command of the Foot-Guards .... 51

CHAPTER III

Matrimonial and Post-Matrimonial .... 60

Freely Chosen Freely Given 60

Recollections of Russia 65

Statecraft Studies in Germany and England . 70

The Row in the Reichstag 96

How the Kaiser Worked 104

Our pre-War Policy 108

Travel Impressions 118

CHAPTER IV

Stress and Storm 126

The Cloud on the Horizon 128

The Cloud Bursts 135

Our Military and Civil Leaders 157

My Memorials 163

Hindenburg and Ludendorff 184

V

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER V

PAGE

Progress of the War 197

Battle of the Mame 198

Verdiin 210

Princes and Politicians at the Front . . . 223

CHAPTER VI

The Great Collapse 237

Foreseeing the End 237

Mistaken Proceedings 248

Wilson and Foch 266

The Wrong Man 274

CHAPTER VII

Scenes at Spa 280

Schulenburg : Groner 285

The Forged Abdication 300

The Council of Officers 308

The Kaiser's Ejection 320

CHAPTER VIII

Exiled to Holland 328

Waiting for Berlin 329

Accepting the Inevitable 336

What was Done in My Absence . . . . 339

Farewell to My Troops 344

The Decisive Step 348

Wieringen 354

My Message 362

Index 367

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Crown Prince Frontispiece

FACTNG PAGE

The Crown Prince and Crown Princess with Their Children and with the Mayor of

WiERINGEN AND HiS WiFE 62

The Crown Prince and Crown Princess at

WiERINGEN 282

The Crown Prince's Residence in Wieringen . 354

IMPULSUS SCRIBENDI

March, 1919.

It is evening. I have been wandering once more along the deserted and silent ways between the wind-swept and sodden meadows, through grayness and shadow.

No human sound or sign. Only this sea wind grabbing at me and driving its fingers through my clothing. A March wind ! Spring is near at hand. I have been here four months.

In the vast expanse above me sparkle the eternal stars, the same that look down upon Germany. From the horizon of the Zuyder Zee, the lighthouses of The Oever and of Texel fling their beams into the deepening night.

On my return I find my companion waiting anxiously at the little wicket-gate of the garden. Had I been gone such a long time?

I am now sitting in this small room of the par- sonage. The paraffin lamp is lighted; it smokes and smells a little; and the fire in the grate bums rather low and cheerless.

Not a sound disturbs the silence, save this cease- less blowing of the wind across the lonesome and slumbering island.

Four months !

2 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

In this seemingly endless time — which I have spent in one unbroken waiting-for-something, listen- ing-for-something — the thought has recurred again and again to me: "Perhaps, if you were to write it out of your heart?" This idea has seized me again to-day; it was my one companion as I trudged the silent roads this evening.

I will try it. I will write the pages which shall recall and arrange the past, shall bring me out of this turmoil into calmness and serenity. I will re- touch the half-faded remembrances, will give ac- count to myself of my own doings, wishes and omis- sions, will fix the truth concerning many important events whose outlines are seen at present by the world in a distorted and falsified picture. I will de- pict all events honestly and impartially, just as I see them. I will not conceal my own errors nor in- veigh against the mistakes of others. I will compel myself to objectivity and self-possession even where recollection's turgid wave of pain, anger and bit- terness breaks over me and threatens to sweep me along with it in its recoil. In the distant days of my youth I will commence my reminiscences.

CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD DAYS

When I look back upon my childhood, there rises before me as it were a submerged world of radiance and sunshine. We all loved our home in Potsdam and Berlin just as every child does who is cherished and cared for by loving hands. So, too, the joys of our earliest childhood were, for sure, the same as the joys of every happy and alert German lad. Whether a boy's sword is of wood or of metal, whether his rocking-horse is covered with calfskin or modestly painted — this, at bottom, is all one to the child's heart; it is the symbol of diminutive manliness — the sword or the horse itself — that makes the boy happy. We played the same boyish tricks as every other German boy, — except, perhaps, that we spoiled bet- ter carpets and dearer furniture. Whenever and with whomsoever I have talked of those childhood years, I have found full confirmation of the truth that — be he child of King or child of peasant, son of the better class or son of the workman — every lad's fancy has a stage of development in which it seeks the same bold adventures and makes the same won- derful discoveries, undertakes expeditions into roomy and mysterious lofts or dank cellars; there are hap-

4 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

penings with suddenly opened hydrants which refuse to close again when the water gushes out, and secret snowball attacks upon highly respectable and punc- tiliously correct state officials who, forgetting all at once their reverend dignity, turn as red as turkey- cocks and shout: "Damned young rascals!"

As far back as I can remember, the centre of our existence has been our dearly beloved mother. She has radiated a love which has warmed and com- forted us. Whatever joy or sorrow moved us, she has always had for it understanding and sym- pathy. All that was best in our childhood, nay, all the best that home and family can give, we owe to her. What she was to us in our early youth, that she has remained throughout our adolescence and our manhood. The kindest and best woman is she for whom living means helping, succoring and spend- ing herself in the interests of others; and such a woman is our mother.

Being the eldest son I have always been partic- ularly close to our beloved mother. I have carried to her all my requests, wishes and troubles, whether big or little; and she, too, has shared honestly with me the hopes and fears couched in her bosom, the fulfilments and the disappointments which she has experienced. In many a difficulty that has arisen in the course of years between my father and me she has mediated with a soothing, smoothing and adjust- ing hand. Not a heart's thought of any moment

CHILDHOOD DAYS 5

but I have dared to lay it before her; and this loving and trustful intercourse continued throughout the grievous days of the war; nor has the relationship been destroyed by all the trying circumstances which now separate me from her. I am particularly happy to know that, in these painful times, she is still, in misfortune, permitted to be the trusty help- mate of my severely tried father as she was once in prosperity, and I am grateful for the dispensation which has rendered it possible. She has been his best friend, self-sacrificing, earnest, pure, great in her goodness, perfect in her fidelity. As her son, I say with ardent pride: she is the very pattern of a German wife whose best characteristics are seen in the fulfilment of her duties as wife and mother, and in her they display themselves only the purer and clearer now that the pomp of Imperial circumstance has vanished and she stands forth in her simple humanness.

The relations between us children and our father were totally different. He was always friendly and, in his way, loving towards us; but, by the nature of things, he had none too much time to devote to us. As a consequence, in reviewing our early childhood, I can discover scarcely a scene in which he joins in our childish games with unconstrained mirth or happy abandon. If I try now to explain it to my- self, it seems to me as though he were unable so to divest himself of the dignity and superiority of the

6 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

mature adult man as to enable him to be properly- young with us little fellows. Hence, in his pres- ence we always retained a certain embarrassment, and the occasional laxity of tone and expression adopted in moments of good humor with the mani- fest purpose of gaining our confidence rather tended to abash us. It may have been, too, that we felt him so often to be absent from us in his thoughts when present with us in the body, that rendered him almost impersonal, absent-minded, and often alien to our young hearts.

My sister is the only one of us who succeeded in her childhood in gaining a snug place in his heart. Moreover, all sorts of otherwise unaccustomed re- straints were experienced at his hands. When, for instance, we entered his study — a thing which never exactly pleased him — we had to hold our hands be- hind us lest we might knock something off one of the tables. In addition to all this, there were the reverence and the military subordination taught us towards our father from our infancy; and this en- gendered in us a certain shyness and misgiving. This sense of constraint was felt both by myself and by my brother Fritz, though certainly neither of us could ever have been characterized as bashful. I myself have only got free of the feeling slowly and with progressive development.

In recalling my father's study, I am reminded of an incident of my childhood which has imprinted

CHILDHOOD DAYS 7

itself indelibly upon my memory because it involved my first and unintentional visit to Prince Bismarck. It was early in the morning. My brother Eitel Friedrich and I were about to go to Bellevue for our lessons, and I was strolling carelessly about in the lower rooms of the palace. Accidentally I stumbled into a small room in which the old Prince sat por- ing over the papers on his writing-desk. To my dismay he at once turned his eyes full upon me. My previous experience of such matters led me to believe that I should be promptly and pitilessly ex- pelled. Indeed, I had already started a precipitate retreat, when the old Prince called me back. He laid down his pen, gripped my shoulder with his giant palm and looked straight into my face with his penetrating eyes. Then he nodded his head several times and said: "Little Prince, I like the look of you, keep your fresh naturalness." He gave me a kiss and I dashed out of the room. I was so proud of the occurrence that I treated my brothers for several days as totally inferior beings. It was incredible ! I had blundered into a study and had not been thrown out — not even reprimanded. And it was withal the study of the old Prince.

The nature of our later education tended to estrange us from our father more and more. We were soon intrusted entirely to tutors and governors, and it was from them that we heard whether His Majesty was satisfied with us or the reverse. Here,

8 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

in the family and in our own early youth, we already began to experience the ** System of the Third," the unfortunate method whereby, to the exclusion of any direct exchange of views, decisions were made and issued by means of third persons who were also the sole mouthpieces by which the position of the interested party could be stated to the judge. This principle, so attractive to a man of such a many-sided character and so immersed in affairs as unquestionably the Kaiser has always been, took deeper and wider root with the advance of years, and in cases in which place-seeking, in- gratiating and irremovable courtiers or politicians have gained possession of average posts that gave them the position of go-between has caused the ex- clusion of disagreeable reports and the doubtless often quite unconscious distortion of news with its consequent mischief. The ** department" (Kab- inet), especially the Department of Civil Adminis- tration was fundamentally nothing but a "personal board," the head of the department {chef de cabinet) was the mouthpiece and intermediary of any and every voice that made itself heard in this sphere of activity; he was also the bearer of the Imperial de- cision. The idea of such a position presupposes un- qualified and almost superhuman impartiality and justice — doubly so, when the ruler (as in this case the inner circle was well aware) is susceptible to in- fluence and is shaken by bitter experiences. Then

CHILDHOOD DAYS 9

the responsibility of these posts becomes as great as the power they confer, if their occupant exceeds the clearly defined limit indicated.

Then, and still more when they tacitly combine their influences so as to strengthen their position, they and their helpers at court become distorters of the views upon which the ruler must base his final and important decisions. It is they who are really responsible for the wrong decisions that were made in the name of the ruler and which possibly sealed his fate and that of his people.

But who would think now of discussing the sins committed against the German people by the heads of many years' standing of the Civil Department and the head of the Marine Department in their duo- logues over the daily "Vortrage." Closely and firmly they held the Kaiser entangled in their con- ceptions of every weighty question. If, after all, a mesh was rent, either through his own observation or by the bold intervention of some outsider, their daily function gave them the next morning an opportunity of repairing the damage and of removing the im- pression left by the interloper. I am aware that none of these men ever wittingly exercised a noxious influence. Every one considers his own nostrum the only one and the right one to effect a political cure.

Turning from those who were the pillars of this principle back to the principle itself, I know too that

10 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

a chef de cabinet who would have influenced and moulded the decisions of the Kaiser in quite another way might have proved a blessing to the Fatherland and to us all, if that chef had been a firm, strong and steadfast personality. But unfortimately destiny placed among the Kaiser's advisers no men of such a stamp with the single exception of the clever and resolute Geheimrat von Berg whose appointment to the responsible post of Chief of the Civil Depart- ment took place in the year 1918 — consequently too late to be of any effective service. In general, the notions of the rest were characterized by dull half- heartedness. Wherever they had to suggest men for the execution of new tasks, the men whom they proposed and recommended were only too often mediocre. Any one who was willing to go his own road with a resolute tread was carefully avoided. Hence, instead of a determined course, there was eternal tacking — instead of a steadfast and clear- sighted grasp of the consequences of such a policy, there was masking of the imminent dangers and a deaf ear for the louder and louder warnings of anxiety and alarm, until at last the cup of fate which they had helped to fill flowed over.

It was in the obscurity of their departments that these "advisers of the crown" labored, and it is into the darkness of oblivion that their names will disappear. But the taint of their doings will cleave to His Majesty's memory where no more guilt at-

CHILDHOOD DAYS 11

taches to him than just this: not to have displayed a better knowledge of character in the choice of his entourage and not to have been more resolute in dealing with his advisers when the wisest heads and the stoutest hearts among all classes in Germany were but just good enough for such responsible positions.

It was a fundamental mistake that only the Im- perial Chancellor made his report in private. All other ministers were accompanied by the chiefs of their respective departments; for the reports of the Military and Naval Ministers, indeed, Adjutant- General von Plessen was also present. In this way the departments acquired a certain preponderance over the minister or the man who was respon- sible.

But this theme has led me far astray. I must re- turn to the recollections of my youth. I stopped at the "System of the Third Party." In regard to us boys, the result was that when we acquired military rank, the Kaiser's intercourse with us was generally conducted through the head of the Military Depart- ment or through General von Plessen and, indeed, that in quite harmless matters of a purely personal nature, we occasionally received formal military no- tices. (Kabinetts-Orders.) Amicable and friendly discussion between father and son scarcely ever took place. It was clear that the Kaiser avoided any personal controversy in which decisions might be

12 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

necessary; here, again, the third party was inter- posed. For trivialities which, under other condi- tions, a few paternal words might have settled, in- termediaries and outsiders were employed and thus made acquainted with the affair; in my own case, since nature has not gifted me with a taste for such punctilious formalities, the tension was often increased. It is quite possible that these gen- tlemen, who were convinced of the very profound importance of their missions, were not always re- ceived by me with a seriousness corresponding to their own self-esteem and that they rewarded me by taking the first opportunity to express to His Majesty their views on my immaturity and lack of courtesy and dignity. Most certainly these inter- mediaries are in no small degree answerable for mis- understandings, and for the fact that small conflicts were occasionally intensified or caused all kinds of prejudices and imputations. Sometimes I received the impression that these little intrigues assumed the character of mischief-making. Everything I said or did was busily reported to His Majesty; and I was then young and careless, and I certainly ut- tered many a thoughtless word and took many a thoughtless step.

In such circumstances it was for me almost an emancipation to be ordered before the Kaiser in regimentals and to receive from him in private a thorough dressing down on account of some inci-

CHILDHOOD DAYS 13

dent connected with a special escapade. It was then that we understood one another best. More- over, one might often, in such colloquies, give rein to one's tongue. An absolutely innocent example just occurs to me. I had always been an enthu- siastic devotee of sport in all its forms: hunting, racing, polo, etc. But even here there were re- strictions, considerations and inhibitions. One felt just like a poacher. Thus I was not to take part in races or in hunting on account of the dangers involved. But it was for that very reason that I liked this sport. Now I had just ridden my first public race in the Berlin-Potsdam Riding Club — and was hoping that there would be no sequel in the shape of a row, when next morning the Kaiser ordered me to appear before him at the New Palace in regimentals. There was thunder in the air.

"You've been racing."

"Zu befehl."

"You know that it is forbidden.'*

"Zu befehl."

"Why did you do it, then?"

"Because I am passionately fond of it and be- cause I think it a good thing for the Crown Prince to show his comrades that he does not fear danger and thereby sets them a good example."

A moment's consideration, and then suddenly His Majesty looks up at me and asks:

"Well, anyway, did you win?"

14 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

"Unfortunately Graf Koenigsmarck beat me by a short head."

The Kaiser thumped the table irritably: "That's very annoying. Now be off with you." This time my father had understood me and had appreciated the sportsman in me.

The older I grew, the oftener did it happen that serious men of the most varied classes applied to me to lay before the Kaiser matters in which they took a special interest or to call the attention of His Majesty to certain grievances or abuses. I took such matters up only when I was able to inquire into them thoroughly and to convince myself of the justification for any interference. Even then their number was considerable. In most cases the subjects were disagreeable; and they concerned affairs which my father would probably never other- wise have heard of and which he nevertheless ought, in my opinion, to be made acquainted with.

The most difficult matter that I had to take to him was doubtless the one which I was forced to deal with in the year 1907. It was then that I had to open his eyes to the affair of Prince Philip Eulen- burg. Undoubtedly it was the duty of the respon- sible authorities to have called the Kaiser's atten- tion long before to this scandal which was becoming known to an ever-widening circle. But they failed to lay the matter before him; and since they left him in total ignorance of it, I was obliged to inter-

CHILDHOOD DAYS 15

vene. Never shall I forget the pained and horrified face of my father, who stared at me in dismay, when, in the garden of the Marble Palace, I told him of the delinquencies of his near friends. The moral purity of the Kaiser was such that he could hardly conceive the possibility of such aberrations. In this case he thanked me unreservedly for my interference. In contrast with the Eulenburg affair, most of the questions which, on my own initiative or at the sug- gestion of others, I had to bring before His Majesty were questions of home or foreign politics, or they concerned leading personages, nay, rather persons who were irresolute and flaccid, but who stuck tight to posts which ought to have been occupied by clear- sighted and steadfast men. In such cases the Kaiser generally listened to me quietly, and frequently he took action; more often, however, he was talked round again by some one else after I had left. It was inevitable that, in the long run, my reports and suggestions should affect him disagreeably. As he travelled very much, I saw comparatively little of him. In consequence, our meetings were mostly encumbered with a whole series of communications and questions by which he felt himself bothered. I myself was fully conscious of the pressure of these circumstances, but saw no means of altering them. Anyway, I considered it my duty to keep the Kaiser frankly informed of all that, in my view, he ought to know but would otherwise remain ignorant of.

16 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

Notwithstanding all this tension and although my father was annoyed by certain idiosyncrasies of mine — above all by my disinclination to adopt the tra- ditionally princely manner — he was, in his own way, fond of me, and in the secret recesses of his heart proud of me too.

Naturally, much was whispered, gossiped and written in public about these personal relations of ours. If I had possessed the nature to take all this sort of thing seriously, I might soon have appeared very important in my own eyes. Repeatedly there was talk of marked discord, of sharp reprimands on my father's part, of open or covert censure. In all this, as I have shown and as I would in no wise cloak or disguise, there was sometimes a grain of truth — a grain about whose significance a mighty cackle arose among the old women of both sexes. To re- iterate, there were early and manifold differences of opinion and many of them led to some amount of dispute. In so far as these conflicts were concerned with personal affairs and not with political ques- tions, they were, at bottom, scarcely more last- ing or more serious than those which so often occur everywhere between father and son, between repre- sentatives of one generation and another, between the conceptions of to-day and those of to-morrow; the difference lay in the enormous resonance of court life which echoed so disproportionately such simple events. Thus, these rumors do not really touch the

CHILDHOOD DAYS 17

heart of the matter. The frequently recurring fact that father and son differ fundamentally in char- acter, temperament and nature, appears to me, so far as I know the Kaiser and know myself, applic- able to us. It is, indeed, regularly observable in the history of our house.

It is possible, too, that there has come between us the great epochal change from traditional con- ceptions to a broader view of life — a change which seems to have inserted itself between people of the Kaiser's years and my contemporaries and by which I have benefited while he has viewed it with hos- tility. At any rate, many of his notions, opinions and actions appeared to me strange and even in- comprehensible; they struck me so at an early period of my life and the more so the older I grew. The first group of the questions towards which, even as a lad, I felt a certain inner opposition, concerned court ceremony as it was then practised. It was painful to me to see people losing their freedom through prescribed and often thoroughly musty regulations. Each became, I may say, the actor of a part; nay, under the influence of these sur- roundings, men who were otherwise clever lost their own opinion and yielded here nothing more than the average. Hence, wherever possible, I myself later on avoided everything courtly, pompous or decora- tive; and, as far as was feasible, I suppressed all for- malities in my own circle. For my recreative hours

18 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

I desired, not endless reunions and ceremonious gala performances, but unrestrained intercourse with people of all kinds, sociability in a small circle, theatres, concerts, hunting and sport.

Intercourse with persons of my own age always had a greater attraction for me than association with people much older than myself, though I never designedly avoided the latter. Furthermore, my natural bent bringing me perhaps more in touch with actualities than was possible to my father and giving me the chance to talk with and listen to a greater number of unprejudiced persons of all pro- fessions, I frequently felt impelled by the convic- tions thus gained to warn and to contradict. But I have ever recognized in the Kaiser my father, my Imperial overlord, to whom it was my duty as well as my heart's wish to show every respect and every honor.

I have been perusing the pages which I penned recently as reminiscences of my childhood and of my attitude towards my parents. The perusal sug- gests to me that my jottings are not quite just to my father's character, that they speak only of petty weakness, that, if I am to give a complete sketch of his personality, I must dwell upon him more in detail. When I try to distinguish his deepest charac- teristic, a word forces itself upon my attention which I am almost shy of applying to any man of

CHILDHOOD DAYS 19

our own day, a word which seems hollow and trite because, like some small coin, it is flung about so continually and thoughtlessly: it is the word ''EdeV (noble). The Kaiser is noble in the best sense of the word; he is full of the most upright desire for goodness and piety, and the purity of his intel- lectual cosmos is without a blemish and without a stain. Candor that makes no reservations, that is perhaps too unbounded in its nature, ready con- fidence and belief in the like trustworthiness and frankness on the part of others are the fundamental features of his chatacter. Talleyrand is said to have uttered somewhere the maxim: ''La parole a ete donnee a Vhomme pour deguiser sa pensee." With my father it has often seemed to me as though speech had been bestowed upon him that he might unfold to his hearer every nook and cranny of his rich and sparkling inner world. He has always al- lowed his thoughts and convictions to gush forth in- stantaneously and immediately — ^without prelude and without prologue, an incautious and noble spend- thrift of an ever-fertile intellect which draws its sustenance from comprehensive knowledge and a fancy whose only fault is its exuberance. More- over, he is by nature and by ethico-religious train- ing free from all guile; he would regard secrecy, dissimulation or insincerity as despicable and far beneath his dignity. The idea that the Kaiser could ever have wished to gain his ends by false

20 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

pretenses or to pursue them by tortuous routes is for me quite unimaginable. It may be that, with all this unreserved and unrestrained self-expression, the passion for complete frankness which is implanted in every virtuous being found, in the Kaiser, its strongest support in his evident overestimation of his momentary personal influence. In a personal exchange of ideas he believed himself to be sure of immediate victory and to need the expedients of trickery or dodgery just as little as he did wordy diplomatic skirmishing. I have a thousand times observed the effects of his personality to be indeed very great and have seen men of otherwise thor- oughly independent habit fall an easy prey to his frequently fascinating, though perhaps only transi- tory, influence.

Nevertheless, such successes, experienced from youth onward and, still more, the consequent ex- pressions of admiration and the flattery of com- plaisant friends and courtiers in the end clouded his judgment concerning the expediency of thus sacrific- ing every final reserve as well as obscuring his in- sight into the fact that the individual^ven though he be an emperor and a never so energetic personal- ity— ^is of little ultimate weight in comparison with the vast world-shifting currents of time.

To this lack of perspective in estimating his per- sonal relations and his personal influence may be partly attributed his remaining so long unconscious

CHILDHOOD DAYS 21

of the full significance of the approaching danger. Many a false estimate was formed by him in this re- gard, and his confiding trust was not seldom lulled into security by clever opponents.

So it happened that, even when the enormous pressure of economic and political forces was incon- trollably driving the world towards the catastrophe of war, he believed himself able to bring the wheels of fate to a standstill by means of his influence in London and St. Petersburg. The capacity to esti- mate men and things correctly — ^that is, impartially and objectively and without any personal exaggera- tion— ^is of the greatest moment to rulers and states- men. It has not been liberally bestowed upon the Kaiser, and my impression is that responsible indi- viduals and the heads of the various "cabinets" have not, by any means, always intervened with the energy necessary to correct erroneous concep- tions of this description.

In the depths of his nature my father is a thor- oughly kind-hearted man striving to make people happy and to create joyousness around him. But this trait is often concealed by his desire not to appear tender but royal and exalted above the small emotions of sentiment. He is thoroughly idealistic in thought and feeling and full of confidence towards every collaborator who enters fresh into his environ- ment. Present and future he has always seen and gauged in the mirror of his own most individual

22 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

mental cosmos, which became all the more unreal, the harder and the more inflexible grew the secret and the open struggle for our national existence, both within the realm and without it, or the more harshly one fragment of this cosmos of ideas after another was snatched away and crushed by the hand of destiny.

In the chivalrous ethics of the Kaiser his con- ception of loyalty is of great moment. He de- mands it without reserve, and there is scarcely any dereliction which he feels more keenly than actions or omissions that he regards as breaches of trust. Take one example: he has never, from the bottom of his heart, pardoned Prince Biilow for not giving him that support which he might have expected in the November incidents of 1908. As a matter of fact, unless I am mistaken, those severe conflicts, with their stormy Reichstag sittings and their num- berless press attacks, meant for him far more than an affront to his Imperial position or dignity. It was only to outsiders that they appeared to have this effect. Possibly I was able at that time to see deeper into the heart of my Imperial father than any one, save my dear mother; and I am firmly convinced that, from experiences which were for him barely conceivable and scarcely tolerable, his self-confidence received a blow from which it has never recovered. His joyous readiness of decision and intrepid energy of will, till then undaunted,

CHILDHOOD DAYS 23

were suddenly broken; and I believe that the germ was then planted of the lack of decision and vacil- lation noticeable in the last ten years of his life and especially during the war. From that moment on- ward, the Kaiser allowed affairs to glide more and more into the hands of the responsible advisers in the various Government departments, eliminating himself and his own views either partially or even entirely. A secret and never-expressed anxiety con- cerning possible fresh conflicts and responsibilities which he might have to confront had come over him. Where strong hands were needed, complaisant and officious persons pushed themselves forward, and, making use of the opportunity to usurp functions which should never have come within their scope, they dragged into the sphere of their own small- mindedness matters which, so long as the then current constitutional ideas remained valid, ought never to have been withdrawn from the range of the unhampered Imperial will. Still I will not be too hard upon these advisers; I do not wish to be unjust to them; it may be that, in the anguish of those dark days, His Majesty was sometimes even grateful to them for so busily troubling their heads — it may be that they believed themselves to be acting for the best while in reality creating only evil.

The Kaiser, too, in those years of self-depression and of weakness just as in his days of unbroken

24 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

self-confidence, desired to do his best, and he re- garded as the best the peace of the realm. Nothing should destroy that; with every means at his com- mand he would secure that to the empire. The ter- rible tragedy of his life and of his life's work lay in the fact that everything he undertook to this end turned to the reverse and became a countercheck to his aims, so that finally a situation arose in which we were faced by enemy upon enemy.

April, 1919.

Weeks have passed since I last occupied myself with these pages. Tidings have come to hand which are enough almost to break one's heart, — which show our poor country to be torn by internal dissension and to be conducting a desperate struggle with a pack of heartless and greedy ** victors." In the face of these monstrous events and problems, I have felt as though the individual had no right whatever to review and determine the petty incidents of his own life and destiny. Thus spring has had to come before I could revert once more to my task — spring with its sunny, green pastures in which droll little lambs are skipping beside the dirty winter- wooUed ewes, and across which blow the clear sea- breezes in ceaseless restlessness.

In this radiance and in the revived color every- where visible, all things look better, and people too have more genial faces.

CHILDHOOD DAYS 25

When I think of these first months here in the island ! With the best will to make the best of it, there was not much to be done. Distrust and re- serve in every one — among the fisherfolk and among the peasants, and among the tradespeople in Ooster- land, in Hippolytushoef and in Den Oever. A shy edging to one side when you came by: "De kroon- prins" — and that was as much as to say: "That Boche — the murderer of Verdun, the libertine." What the Entente with the help of their mendacious press and their agents had beaten into the minds of these good people had got thoroughly fixed. Nor was there any possibility of an explanation with them concerning this nonsense. Moreover, my quar- ters can scarcely be heated, since these little iron stoves will not bum, and our famous single lamp smokes and can only bum when petroleum is to be had. Therefore, as soon as it is dark, one crawls into bed and lies there sleepless to torture oneself with the same matters over and over again, and gets half mad with worrying over the questions: "How did it all happen?"— "Where lies the blame?" — "How might one have done better?"

Now, all has grown less hard and is more tolera- ble. To-day, the people of the island know that none of all the slanders that have been circulated about me are justified. Their distmst has van- ished; their simple, unsophisticated nature now meets me frankly. Every one greets me in a friend-

26 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

ly manner, and most people shake hands. I also receive occasional invitations and then sit in these clean little rooms to sip a cup of cocoa and make trial of my acquirements in the Dutch language.

One person in particular has done much to en- lighten people and to smooth my path, namely. Burgomaster Peereboom. At the outset, he was the only one who thrust aside all prejudice, and sought to see and to help the human individual — he and his family. And to him and to his warm-hearted and active wife I am indebted for many a little im- provement in my modest household at the Parson- age as well as for many a wise hint that taught me to understand my new environment. One or two Germans also tendered me immediate help; among them the experienced Count Bassenheim of Amster- dam, who knows Holland as well as he does his beautiful Bavaria; then the clever and ever-faithful Baron Huenefeld, formerly vice-consul at Maas- tricht, whose care for me has been most touching; further, there are several German business men of Amsterdam, faithful, self-sacrificing men to whom I owe a lifelong debt of gratitude. And so there only remains unchanged the anxiety as touching my old home, my country, the longing for her and for those to whom I belong.

But not of that now. I will talk here of that other life which to me, in the seclusion of this island.

CHILDHOOD DAYS 27

often appears so distant as to be separated from the present by a whole train of years.

Bom heir-apparent to a throne, I was brought up in the particular notions valid by tradition for a Prussian prince. No one in the family had ever cherished a doubt as to the suitability and excellence of these principles, for in their youth all its male members had traversed exactly the same path.

While fully recognizing the undeniable value of the old Prussian traditions, I believe, nevertheless, that the narrow, sharply defined and hedged-in educa- tion of Prussian princes (in which the rigid etiquette of the court combines with the anxious care of the parental home to provide instructions for mentor, tutor and adviser) is calculated to produce a definite and not very original product adapted to ceremonial duties rather than a modern man capable of taking an unswerving course in the life of his times. If I had submitted tamely to the system, it would in time have led me into a position in which I should have been ignorant of the world, sequestered and secluded. The worst of such a position appears to me to be, not the Chinese Wall itself, but the ulti- mate incapacity to see the wall, so that the immured imagines himself free while in reality his mental range is closely circumscribed.

At an early age, and certainly at the outset as a mere consequence of my natural disposition though

28 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

later with growing consciousness and maturer judg- ment, I opposed the efforts to level out the inde- pendent features in me with the object of creating a "Normal Prussian Prince." Two directly diverg- ing views were at work here. On the one hand was the traditional notion stressed so emphatically throughout His Majesty's reign, the notion of the augustness (erhabenheit, exaltedness) of the ruler, the notion — figuratively expressed in the word itself — that the Prince, King, Kaiser must stand elevated high above the level of the governed classes; on the other hand was my own conception that he must become acquainted with life as it is and as it has to be lived by people of every station. It remains to be said that the endeavor to be true to my con- viction in thought and act caused me many a strug- gle and many an unpleasantness.

The upbringing and the daily life of us children in the Imperial parental home was simple. We certainly were not indulged — least of all by our military governors.

My first military governor — I was then a lad of seven years — was the subsequent General von Fal- kenhayn. I remember him with reverence and gratitude. He did not pamper me; permitted no excuses; and even in those childhood years he im- pressed upon me that, for a man, the words "dan- ger" and "fear" should not exist. In the best sense, he passed on to me the undaunted freshness of his

CHILDHOOD DAYS 29

faithful soldierliness. There was in me from infancy a passion for horses and riding. General von Fal- kenhayn arranged our rides in the beautiful environs of Potsdam in such a way that we had obstacles to surmount. Hedges, fences, walls, ditches and steep gravel-pits had to be briskly taken. He used to say on such occasions: ** Fling your heart across first; the rest will follow." That saying I have taken with me through life; again and again, and in recent circumstances when the drab hours of my destiny and my loneliness here in this island have threatened to stifle me, the general has stood before my mind's eye and has helped me over my difficulties with his brave soldierly philosophy.

Even when a lad I had to prove myself as patrol and scout, and I was also instructed in reading maps. Gymnastics, drill and swimming were ardently prac- tised as physical training.

An event that made a deep impression upon my young mind recurs to me. I was permitted to pre- sent myself to Prince Bismarck in due form and not in the unofficial way in which I had done so when, as a youngster, I suddenly surprised him in his den. From my father I received instructions to don my uniform and meet him at Friedrichsruh; I was go- ing to the eightieth birthday of the ex-chancellor (Alt-Reichskanzler). To don uniform was, even in that early period, the acme of delight to my boyish heart; and to this was to be added a visit to the

30 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

man whom, then as now, a healthy instinct taught me to regard as a sort of legendary hero. In the night before this journey, I did not sleep a wink.

Bismarck was suffering severely from gout, and leaned upon a stick to welcome us in the castle. At lunch he displayed an astounding liveliness and vigor; but, as a consequence of the excitement nat- urally experienced in this first ** official" appearance of mine, this general impression is all that I have preserved in my recollection. Moreover, it must be confessed that I was rendered somewhat anxious during the meal by the Prince's big boarhound, who suddenly laid his cold nose on my knee under the table, and growled very unmistakably whenever, unobserved, I tried to free myself.

After lunch. His Majesty mounted horse and, on a piece of ploughland close to the castle, awaited Bismarck at the head of the Halberstadt Cuirassiers, whose chief the aged Prince had been appointed. I had the honor of accompanying the old gentleman in his carriage. In a truly paternal manner, he pointed out to me all the beauties of the Friedrichs- ruh Park. My father delivered a very fine speech and presented the Prince with a sumptuously wrought sword of honor. The Prince replied with a few pregnant words.

Then we returned to the castle. I noticed that the Prince was very weary and fatigued; the pro- longed standing had doubtless put too great a strain

CHILDHOOD DAYS 31

upon him. His breathing was quick and heavy; and finally he tried to open the tight collar of his uniform, but failed. Almost startled by my own boldness, I bent over him and undid it; then he pressed my hand and nodded gratefully.

We left the same afternoon. On this beautiful day, which I would not, for all that is dear to me, have blotted out of my memory, I had seen for the last time the greatest German of his century.

Our first scientific education we received from our private tutor. I cannot approve of this method, for the pupil misses the stimulating rivalry of com- rades. When"! entered the Cadet School at Plon as a lad of fourteen, in April, 1896, large gaps mani- fested themselves in my knowledge, which neces- sitated a good deal of overwork.

In my Plon days, the future General von Lyncker acted as governor to me and to my brother Eitel Friedrich. He was a typical high-minded Prussian officer of the old school. His unswervingly serious nature made it rather difficult for him to enter into the ideas of us immature little creatures or to dis- cover the appropriate means of managing us. And we were real children at that time. For him there existed only orders, school, work and duty, and again orders and duty. When I grew a bit older, we often got to loggerheads. As a youth, I cer- tainly was not a pattern being for the show-window of a boys' boarding-school; but that there was so

32 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

much to complain of as General von Lyncker man- aged to discover day in day out, I really caimot be- lieve. Moreover, although quite unintentionally on his part, his somewhat hard and unyielding manner hurt me. But it was this very General von Lyncker whom the Kaiser afterwards employed as go-be- tween when disagreeable conflicts arose. Although I readily and gratefully acknowledge that, in the task imposed upon him. General von Lyncker never adopted the role of time-serving tale-bearer or con- sciously increased the friction — anything of the kind would have been totally irreconcilable with his sin- cere and lofty character — still, I cannot help saying that the introduction of his frequently brusque manner rather tended to widen the breach than to narrow it.

As Plon cadets, we were very fond of Frau von Lyncker. At that time a special School of Princes was formed at Plon for my brother Fritz and me. Each of us had three fellow pupils. In harmony with the totally false educational principle which this evinced, any association with the other cadets was looked at askance. Nevertheless, from the very first day onward, we continually leaped o'er the barriers and seized every opportunity of culti- vating comradeship and friendly relations with the other lads of the corps. The football, the rowing matches and the snowball fights are still for me pleasant recollections. Many of my then "corps'*

CHILDHOOD DAYS 33

companions, drawn from the most varied classes, have become good friends of mine with whom I have remained bound by close ties ever since. Dur- ing the war, I often quite unexpectedly ran up against one or other of my old Plon comrades in distant France; and then, amid all the harsh ear- nestness of the time, the long-lost, care-free days of youth rose before our memories like a sweet smile.

In acquiescence with my special wish, I was per- mitted to apprentice myself to a master turner. Among the Hohenzollems it is customary for every Prince to learn a trade. In general, of course, such princely apprenticeships must not be regarded too seriously, though the tradition is a valuable symbol and un beau geste. Now, while I will not assert that I could make my way in the world with my turner's craft, I can say with truth that I have prac- tised it with pleasure again and again and that mas- ter and apprentice took the matter quite seriously. My good master kept me hard at it, and I was an ardent and willing pupil, and felt thoroughly happy in the atmosphere of the joiner's workshop and in his simple, cleanly household.

Our associations at Plon took us into the families of the masters, and we had also friendly relations with the grammar-school boys. Furthermore, I had a few "friends" among the farmers of the neighbor- hood; I ploughed many a piece of their land, and I

34 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

still remember how proud I was when my furrow turned out neat and straight.

In the year 1887, that is, long before my Plon days, an event happened which I must recall here as it made a strong and vivid impression on my young imagination. It was my first sea trip. The aged Queen Victoria was to celebrate the jubilee of her reign. My parents went to England to take part in the festivity and took me with them. It was at a great garden fete in St. James's Park that I first saw the Queen — sitting in a bath-chair in front of a sumptuously decorated tent. She was very friendly to me, kissed me and kept on fondling me with her aged and slightly trembling hands. Un- fortunately, I have no recollection whatever of the words she spoke; I only know that my boyish fancy was far more occupied with the two giant Indians on guard before the tent than with the weary little old lady herself.

The huge multitude in St. Jameses Park and the intermingling of representatives of almost every race made a deep impression upon me. And if my youthfulness rendered me unable to appreciate the symbolism of the British world-power embodied in the picture, it nevertheless absorbed with awe the astounding copiousness of what it saw and forever guarded me from underrating the significance of the British Empire.

CHAPTER II

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, AND STUDENT

If I regard the turn of the century as the close of my childhood and youth, I would consider the years which followed as my apprenticeship.

After I had passed my matriculation examination, and following upon the declaration of my majority on May 6, 1900, my father placed me in the body company of the First Foot-Guards, in which regi- ment, according to tradition, every Prussian Prince must first serve. This was a good thing since that regiment has always been conspicuous for its excel- lence, and the young Princes receive in it a thor- oughly strict training. I was afterwards appointed lieutenant and chief of the 2d Company, which my father had commanded when a young Prince; accordingly, I said to myself: "You are taking here the first steps on the road which is to lead you, through years of learning, to the great tasks of life."

I was inspired by the strongest faith in my life and my future — ^filled with a sacred determination to be honest and conscientious. The moment when, in the venerable old Schlosskapelle in Berlin, I took the military oath on the colors of the body corps before my Imperial father and Supreme War Lord still stands out clearly before me in all its thrilling solemnity.

35

36 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

The barracks of the First Foot-Guards, the regi- ment house and the Casino of the Officers' Corps were now my new home; the rigid and numerous military tasks were my new school. The chief of my company, Count Rantzau, was a typical old, experienced and conscientious Prussian officer of the line. He himself was always punctual to the min- ute; he never spared himself, and he devoted him- self fully to his profession; but he also required the utmost from his officers and his men. Accuracy in every detail and strictness towards laxity were com- bined with an unerring sense of justice and a warm heart which followed with human sympathy the progress of every one. His company revered him. Now, that excellent man rests in French soil before Rheims.

Stem but just, a man and superior as he ought to be, honored and respected by me and by all was likewise my first commander. Colonel von Pletten- berg. With the same feelings, I recall also my old battalion commander. Major von Pliiskow; a giant even among the tall officers of the regiment, he was famous as a drill-master and, despite his strictness, much liked as an ever-kind superior.

What I learned in the Foot-Guards formed the foundation of my entire military career. The value of faithfulness in little things, the much-decried fatigue-uniform, the iron discipline and the abused, because misunderstood, Prussian drill became clear

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 37

to me in their full significance as a means of concen- trating the vast number of heads and forces into a single unit of the greatest strength. The army- trained on these principles gained the great and im- perishable victories of the year 1914. Unfortu- nately, in the long course of the war, this admirable Prussian method was pushed more and more into the background, greatly to the detriment of the army and its value.

On the whole, my lieutenancy was an incompar- ably pleasant time. I was young and healthy, ful- filled my duties with passionate devotion and saw life in sunshine before me. A circle of friends of like age with myself enabled mie to enjoy the blessings of that comradeship which is the most important root whence a Prussian corps of officers draws its strength. To-day, alas, the green sods of France and Russia cover the mortal remains of most of the brave and trusty men who were then young and joyous and faithful; it is lonesome around me.

In those distant days of my lieutenancy and for years afterwards, three dear friends stood particu- larly near to me; they were Count Finckenstein, von Wedel and von Mitzlaff — all of them at that time lieutenants. They shared with me joy and sorrow till fate separated us forever. Fincken- stein and von Wedel fell in the ranks of our fine old regiment — my dear Wedel at Colonfey and brave Finckenstein at the head of his company at Ba-

38 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

paume. Mitzlaff was, for a time, orderly officer in my staff; subsequently he took over a squadron in the East and then returned to the west front as battalion leader. A mournful shroud hangs over the memory of my last sight of this trusty comrade. It was in the summer of 1918, just before the last great Rheims attack. On a visit to the staff of my brave Seventh Reserve Division, I learned by acci- dent that my friend Mitzlaff was with his battalion in the neighborhood. I at once drove over to him and found him in a little half-demolished farmhouse. Seated on a broken camp-bed, and sharing some cigarettes and a bottle of bad claret which he had managed to rake up somewhere in honor of my visit, we chatted for a long time about the events of our youth and exchanged many an anxious word concerning the future. Both of us knew how mat- ters stood and how overfatigued the troops were. Mitzlaff himself, however, was of good cheer. Then we held each other's hand for a good while and parted. I drove back to my staff quarters; while he moved up into the front position with his men. Three weeks later I stood beside his simple soldier's grave; a few days after I had bidden him farewell, the brave chap had fallen at the head of his men in storming the enemy's position. He was the last of my three faithful friends.

I remained with the First Foot-Guards one year. During that time, the evening order-slip beside my

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 39

bed determined the hours of the following day. But, in that winter, there was not much sleep for me; for my position demanded my presence at court festivi- ties and a crowd of private gatherings. Often I did not get to bed till two o'clock, and by seven I was in the barracks, where my duties kept me busy till noon and again from two till five. Frequently, too, after-dinner attendance at the cleaning of rifles, saddlery, and so on, fell to my lot. This task I was particularly fond of. My grenadiers sat in the lamplight cleaning and polishing their kits. This provided a natural opportunity to approach them quite closely and humanly and to converse with them about their little personal joys, sorrows and wishes. They talked of their homes or of their civilian occupations with brightened eyes, the fine German folk-songs and soldier's ballads filling up the intervals in the conversation. To have shared in such an evening would perhaps have opened the eyes of the clever people who babble so much about the tyranny and harsh treatment of the militarism of that time.

During my lieutenancy, as also afterwards, I de- voted as much of my leisure time as possible to sport. This I did, not merely because of my natural in- clination for sport, but also because I considered its practice to be of particular significance for the future head of a state; and that is, after all, what I was.

The community of sport is calculated, more than

40 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

anything else, to remove internal and external bar- riers between people of like aims; for it is exactly in sport that the actually and manifestly best performance is decisive. Who accomplishes it — whether junker, business man or factory-hand, Chris- tian, Jew or Moslem — is a matter of indifference. Therefore I have repeatedly attended bicycle races, football matches, route marches and other sporting events; and, on suitable occasions, I have promoted them by the presentation of prizes. This, again, is one of the things by which I have given offense: a properly brought up heir-apparent should, forsooth, maintain an exalted position and hold himself aloof from such noisy affairs. All right, then, I have pur- posely not been this ideal of a prescribed heir-appar- ent; instead, by visiting sporting events, I have gained an insight into the life and bustle, and into the exigencies and desires of many classes of people with whom otherwise, by reason of my upbringing and general circumstances, I should never have come into touch.

In those days, however, I was, above all, heart and soul a soldier; and it is no exaggeration to say that, of an evening, I looked forward with pleasure to my next day's duties. The training and the as- sociation with the rank and file, the strict old-Prus- sian discipline, the healthy physical exercise in wind and weather, the pride taken in the ancient regi- mental uniform — all this made me love the service.

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 41

As with all things else, so too with the soldier's calling, one must bend to the task with one's whole being and with real love and devotion, if success is to be obtained. This is the spirit that must ani- mate both the officer and his troops.

Short energetic spells of work with the utmost exercise of all one's capacity, smartness and dis- cipline, cleanliness and punctuality, punishment for every negligence or passive resistance, but a warm heart for the most meagre or the stupidest recruit, gaiety in the barracks, as much furlough as possible, exceptional distinctions for exceptional performances — in a word, sunshine during military service formed the fundamental principle which guided me.

May, 1919. Two bitter-sweet days have been mine in this month of May. On the sixth, I celebrated the thirty-seventh anniversary of my birth. Loving letters from family and numberless indications of remembrance from all parts of my native country the homeland proved to me here in my seclusion that there are still people who feel that they belong to me and cannot be alienated from me by a never so wildly raging campaign of slander. From the island and from the Dutch mainland, many touching indications of love and sympathy have also reached me — little, well-meant presents for the improvement of my modest household, flowers in such plenty that

42 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

the small narrow rooms of the parsonage cannot contain them.

And then, after all the unspeakably severe and lonely experience of the past half-year, I was able, with the consent of the Dutch Government, to leave the island towards the end of the month and to celebrate a day with my mother on the estate of good Baron Wrangel. ** Celebrate"? I don't know whether that word suits the hours in which, arm in arm, and no one near, we walked up and down in the rose-dappled garden, and, as so often in the bet- ter days gone by, I was able unreservedly to pour out, to my heart's content, all that burdened it. To my mother, to that ever-sympathetic and com- prehending woman, so clear-sighted and wide-vi- sioned in her simple modesty, I could always come in past years when my thoughts and my heart needed the kindly and soothing hand of a mother to smooth out their tangles and creases. It was so when I was a child, it was so when I wore my lieu- tenant's uniform, it was so when later in life I had duties to fulfil in responsible positions; and that it has remained so to this day has been proved by those few short hours in which, after the first shock of reunion, we recovered our inward equanimity. Scarcely ever before had I felt so deeply the measure with which her nature and her blood had determined my own.

During the initial period of my service in the

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 43

First Foot-Guards, a sorrowful event at the begin- ning of the year 1901 took me once more to London, namely, the death of my great-grandmother, the aged Queen Victoria of England.

Since the affair in St. James's Park, in which my boyish imagination had been too completely capti- vated by the exotic figures around her for me to gain anything but a purely superficial idea of the Queen, I had seen her twice. Each time the fea- tures of her character impressed themselves more deeply upon me; my eyes had been opened to the activities of this remarkable woman who maintained to the end her resolute nature and strength of will.

Now, in the winter of 1901, I was to do her the last reverence.

The Queen had died in her beautiful castle at Osborne in the Isle of Wight. There the coffin had been placed in a small room fitted up as a chapel. Over it was spread the English ensign, and six of the tallest officers of the Grenadier Guards kept watch beside it. In their splendid uniforms, their bearskin-covered heads bowed in sorrow, their folded hands resting upon their sword-hilts, they guarded, immovable as bronze knights, the last sleep of their dead sovereign.

The transport of the dead Queen to London took place on board the "Victoria and Albert." During the entire passage, which lasted fully three hours, we steamed between a double row of ships of the

44 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

entire British navy whose guns fired once more their salutes to the Queen.

The funeral procession through the streets of Lon- don was most impressive.

A moving incident occurred at Windsor on the way from Frogmore Lodge to the Mausoleum. It was a bitter winter day; and the train which brought the mortal remains of the Queen was several hours behind time. Just as the procession was about to start, the six artillery horses of the hearse began to jib; one of the wheelers kicked over the pole; the coffin began to sway, and threatened to slip from its platform. Prompt and brief orders were at once given by the then Prince Louis of Battenberg who was in command of the naval division drawn up at the spot. The horses were unharnessed, and, almost before one could realize what had happened, three hundred British seamen had their ropes fixed to the hearse; with calm tread and almost inaudibly, the dead Queen's sailors drew their sovereign to her last resting-place.

In the spring of 1901 the period of my lieuten- ancy came to an end. I was now to study, and, like my father before me, I matriculated at Bonn University.

The four semesters spent at the old alma mater were for me two delightful and fruitful years, re- plete with serious study and happy student's life

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 45

and filled with all the enchantment of Rhenish charm and merriment.

In accordance with tradition I became a member of the Borussia (Prussian) Corps. Nevertheless, I was not simply and solely a "Bonner Prussian"; on the contrary and rather in despite of the strict forms of the corps, I had many friends in other corps of the "Bonner S. C."

My sport-loving heart led me to share with great delight in the fencing practice which formed the preparatory training for duelling. Fain would I have taken active part in the latter; but, as an officer, I was only permitted to use the unmuffled weapon in serious affairs of honor. Comprehensible as this youthful impulse still appears to me, though I by no means wish to underrate the value of the "scharfen mensur" for the training of eye, hand and nerve, I believe, nevertheless, that our German studentry exaggerated its value. As in the question of weap- ons, so, too, in regard to drinking-bouts, I consider that the " Trinkkomment " (drinking statutes) — for which I never had any great liking and to which, as a student, I submitted unwillingly — ^needs to be purged of many formulae that have developed into abuses. This, moreover, is demanded by the pres- sure of present circumstances. Genuine and prac- tical love for the German Fatherland, in its distress and humiliation, means work, and work and work again; it means this especially for our youth, who.

46 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

in the self-training of their own personalities, are preparing values for the national entity on which may depend the fate of the coming generation.

The hours of my delightful Bonn days that were not occupied in study or in corps life I em- ployed in intercourse with people of all classes in the Rhineland. I accepted gratefully the hospi- tality of professors, merchants and manufacturers in whose families I was welcomed with genuine Rhenish cordiality. Having hitherto come into touch mainly with people of the military class, these new associations provided me with copious fresh and vivid impressions as a valuable additional gain to the intellectual stimulus of the university studies proper. To these studies I devoted myself with ardor, and I often think with gratitude of the prominent men who acted as my counsellors and mentors, such men as: Zitelmann, Litzmann, Go- thein, Betzold, Schumacher, Clemen and Anschiitz. With special indebtedness I recall the brilliant lec- tures of Zom, the famous professor of constitutional law; and a strong bond of confidence and friendship still unites me with that great teacher.

Out of my intercourse at Bonn with intellectual leaders in the fields of science, technology, industry and politics, there arose in me the desire henceforth to occupy myself more than ever before with the problems of our home and foreign policy and espe- cially with matters of sociology.

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 47

Like the lieutenant's period of my life, the two sunny years at Bonn sped rapidly by. They brought me an abundance of delightful and valua- ble experiences: the enjoyment of nature in a world full of beauty, youthful knowledge, attachment to select and clever men, Rhenish joyousness and the germs of much knowledge that ripened later into intellectual possessions.

Some amount of travel, undertaken during the vacations (in the late summer of 1901 through England and Holland) and, with my brother Eitel Fritz, at the close of my university career, also helped to widen my intellectual vision. The im- pressions afforded me I welcomed with an awakened and more receptive mind than ever before.

When I recall those travels, two figures particu- larly stand out before me as lifelike and undimmed as though, not years, but only days or at most weeks separated me from them. These are Abdul Hamid, the last of the Sultans of the old regime, and Pope Leo XI I L Strange as it may seem, these two men, who, in their natures and in their world, differed in the extreme both outwardly and in- wardly, are inseparably united in my mind by circumstances from which I can scarcely detach myself. In the solemn completeness of the Vati- can, seemingly so untouched by haste or time, and in the fairyland of the Sultan's court, so entirely outside the range of every occidental gauge and law.

48 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

there was revealed to me something utterly new and unsuspected, something into which I entered with astonishment. These men — ^the most remark- able Pope of the 20th century (for whose spiritu- alized being I could not, for a moment, feel any- thing but the deepest awe) and the ruthless, al- mighty Padishah (in whose presence I quickly recovered my self-possession) — both had the same expression of eye. Penetrating, clever, infinitely pondering and experienced, they looked at you with their gray eyes in which age had drawn sharply de- fined white rings around the piercing pupils.

The picture that awaited my brother Eitel Fritz and me as we arrived at Constantinople on board the English yacht "Sapphire" on a wonderful spring morning, was absolutely enchanting; and the events of the few days during which we were guests at the Golden Horn augmented the impression that we were dreaming a dream out of the "Arabian Nights."

Shortly after our arrival in the harbor, the Sul- tan's favorite son came to welcome us in the name of his father; and towards noon the Estrogul Dra- goons— excellent-looking troops on small white Arabs — escorted us to the Yildiz Kiosk, where the Sultan received us at the head of his General Staff and his court suite.

Abdul Hamid was an exceptionally fascinating personality — small, bow-legged, animated, a typical

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 49

Armenian Semite. He was exceedingly friendly, I might almost say paternal, towards us.

We were quartered in a very beautiful Kiosk of the enormous palace buildings of the Yildiz. About half an hour after we had occupied our rooms, the Sultan came to pay us a return visit. He arrived in a little basket-chaise, driving the nimble horses himself and followed on foot by his entire big suite. This included many elderly stout generals, and as the Sultan drove at a trot and these good digni- taries were determined not to be left behind, their appearance when they got to the palace was any- thing but ravishing.

The rules of the country permitted Abdul Hamid to speak nothing but Turkish; consequently, our conversations with him had to be interpreted sen- tence by sentence and were excessively wearisome. Moreover, the old gentleman understood our French perfectly, and when I happened to tell him some humorous anecdote or other, it was most amus- ing to see him laughing heartily long before the dragoman, with the solemnity of a judge, had given him the translation.

In the evening a banquet was to be given in our honor. Where this was to take place no one knew at first, since the Sultan's fear of would-be assassins was so great that he took the precaution to keep the time and place of such festivities secret as long as possible. At the last minute, therefore, and much

50 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

to the confusion of the marshals of his court, he issued the command for the dinner to be given in a great reception-room.

The Sultan and I sat at the head of an intermi- nably long table. Every one else, including my poor brother, had to sit sidewise so as to face the Padishah; there was not much chance of eating anything, but the sight of the Sultan is as good as meat and drink to a believing Mohammedan.

It struck me that my exalted host was wearing a very thick and badly fitting uniform, till a sudden movement on his part revealed to me the fact that he had a shirt of mail concealed underneath it. In conversation he evinced great interest in all German affairs and proved to be thoroughly informed on the most varied subjects; we discussed naval problems, the recent results of Polar research, the latest pub- lications on the German book market and, above all, military questions.

The days that followed were no less interesting than the first. We visited the sights of the city and its environs, and the old gentleman displayed a touching care for our welfare.

On the last day of our sojourn he invited us to a private dinner in his own apartments. The only other people present were my attendants, the Ger- man ambassador and the Sultan's favorite son. The Sultan, who was very fond of music, had asked me to play him something on the violin. The Prince

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 51

accompanied me on the piano, and we played an air from "Cavalleria Rusticana," a cavatina by- Raff and Schumann's "Traumerei." Then there followed an affecting incident. As a surprise for the old gentleman, I had practised the Turkish National Anthem with my army doctor, Oberstabsarzt Wide- mann; and as soon as we had finished playing it, the Sultan, who seemed to be deeply moved, flung his arms about me; then, at a sign from him, an adjutant appeared with a cushion on which lay the gold and silver medal for arts and sciences, and this the ruler of all the Ottomans pinned to my breast. Then he showed us his private museum containing all the presents received by him and his ancestors from other European Princes. Here, among a great quantity of trash, were grouped a number of beau- tiful and valuable articles. Thus, I recall an amber cupboard presented by Frederick William I.

This meeting with old Abdul Hamid has remained for me one of the most interesting encounters that I have ever had with foreign Princes.

In my twenty-second year, I was appointed to the command of the 2d Company of the First Foot- Guards. The amplitude of work involved by this responsible position for the next two and a half years brought me the greatest satisfaction. That I was intrusted with this particular company filled me with peculiar pleasure, as I had become acquainted with

52 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

all my non-commissioned officers when a lieutenant. The heads of companies, squadrons and batteries form, in conjunction with the regimental com- manders, the backbone of the army, inasmuch as, within the scope of their duties, the value of the individual as leader and trainer has a chance of making itself felt. But not much inferior to the personal importance of the head of the company must be ranked the personality of the sergeant- major, significantly dubbed in Germany the "com- pany's mother." My own sergeant-major, Wergin, was a devoted and conscientious man who set an example to all in the company. Early and late his thoughts were occupied with the Royal Prussian service and he was, at the same time, continually busied about the welfare of his hundred and twenty grenadiers.

In themselves the labors which fell to us captains in the First Foot-Guards were light and gratifying. The corps of non-commissioned officers was complete and consisted throughout of thoroughly efficient men; while the recruits of each year were excellent, all of them being well-educated young fellows and representing, in many cases, the fourth generation of service with the regiment or even with the same company. On the other hand, there was a certain difficulty in the bodily dimensions of the men. The height of many of them was altogether out of pro- portion to their breadth, and it was necessary to

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 53

exercise great care lest they should, at the outset, be subjected to overexertion. Furthermore, my tall grenadiers could eat an incredible quantity of food ! With my company and with the troops afterwards intrusted to me, I laid great stress upon smartness and discipline. Our combined movements and our drill as a whole were worth seeing, and the grena- diers themselves were proud of their unimpeach- able form.

My general principles were: short but very ener- getic spells of duty; for the rest, leave the men as much as possible unmolested; plenty of furlough, merriment in the barracks, excursions, visits to the sights of the town and its surroundings, occasional attendance at theatres, a minimum of disciplinary punishments. My men soon knew that, when he had to punish them, their captain suffered more than they did themselves. I endeavored to work upon their sense of honor, and that was nearly al- ways effective.

Of course, in the foregoing, the duties and labors of a company's captain are anything but exhausted. Apart from all questions of military service, he must be a true father to his soldiers; he must know each individual and know where the shoe pinches in every particular case. Just this phase of the officer's call- ing gave me the greatest pleasure, and its exercise gained for me the confidence and the attachment of every one of my grenadiers. They came to me with

54 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

their troubles both small and great, and I felt my- self happy in their firm and honest confidingness. Some fine, charming young fellows have passed thus through my hands. Many a one I met again after- wards in the war; many a one now rests in foreign soil, true to the motto on the helmet of our first battalion: Semper talis.

Despite this passionate and devoted attention to my duties with the First Foot-Guards, in which regiment I made closer acquaintance with my two former adjutants and future lords in waiting — the conscientious Stiilpnagel and the faithful Behr — I was not purely and solely a soldier during those years. The Bonn impetus continued active, and the living questions of politics, economics, art and technical science occupied even more of my leisure time than in the years which had opened my eyes to their importance.

Whereas, in the year of my lieutenancy, I had joined with a certain interest and curiosity in all the court festivities that came in my way, an ever- increasing dislike for the pomp of these affairs began to develop within me as my judgment ma- tured. The much too frequently repeated cere- monial, maintained as it was here in rigid form, appeared to me often enough to be an empty and almost painful anachronism. How many deeply reproachful or gently admonitory glances have I not received from the eyes of court marshals whose

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 55

holiest feelings I had wounded ! But here, as in so many other spheres, the exaggeration of the circum- scribed, the "exalted," the congealed, had impelled me to a noticeable nonchalance — not by any means always intentional, often enough involuntary and as though a reaction was bound to take place of its own accord.

Court festivities ! Thinking of them reminds me of a man for whom, and for whose art, I always cher- ished the greatest veneration and the sight of whom on these occasions invariably filled me with plea- sure and brought a smile to my lips. It was Adolf Menzel. His appearance was generally preceded by a tragi-comedy in his home and on the way to the palace, since he was so deeply absorbed in his work till the last moment that no amount of subsequent haste in dressing could enable him to arrive in time. In his later years an adjutant of my father's was always sent to fetch him, and this messenger often enough had to help in getting him dressed. But it was all to no purpose; he still came late.

Indelibly imprinted in my memory is Menzel as I saw him at the celebration of the Order of the Black Eagle. On this occasion, the knights wear the big red-velvet robes and the chain of this high order. The little man, whom none of the robes would fit, struggled wildly the whole time with his train, at which he kept looking daggers from his spectacled, but expressively flashing eyes.

56 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

At the close of the ceremony, it was customary for the knights to defile, two by two, before the throne, to make their obeisance to the Kaiser and to leave the chamber. According to the order of rank, it always happened that the dwarfish Menzel was accompanied by the abnormally tall haus- minister, von Wedel. When this ill-matched couple stood before the throne, the sight was in itself suffi- cient to fill one with a warm sense of amusement. But when, at the same time, the artist was aroused in Menzel's bosom, it was difficult to restrain one's hilarity. Menzel seemed to forget altogether where he was, and I have seen him, entirely captivated by the picturesqueness of the scene before him, give his head a sudden jerk, set his arms akimbo and stare long and fixedly at my father. — ^Meantime old Wedel had delivered his correct court bow and was marching off, when, to his horror, he noticed, his partner still planted before the throne.

I don't know which delighted me more at that moment, whether the perplexed and dismayed face of the hausminister, who felt himself implicated in an unheard of breach of traditional etiquette, or the little genius who, turning his head first one way then the other, gazed at the Kaiser, heedless of those waiting impatiently behind him for the space in front of the throne. In the end, Wedel took courage and plucked Menzel by the sleeve. This interruption greatly annoyed the seemingly very

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 57

choleric master of the brush. If a look can foam with rage, it was the one which, with head thrown back, Menzel flung up into the eyes of his tall com- panion. Then, gathering up the skirts of his robe, he stumbled angry and offended out of the room. It was as though he seemed to be saying to himself: "Bah! What a gathering, where one may not even look at people for a bit."

Time and again have I stood and chatted with him at such court ceremonies. He was full of dry humor, sarcasm and criticism. Nothing escaped his notice; and since, little by little, people had ceased to expect from him a strict subordination to rules, he had come to regard himself as a species of supe- rior outsider and perhaps felt fairly happy in the exceptional position which certainly provided him with many an artistic suggestion.

For my part, as already stated, these festivities, in which every one made a show of his own vain- glory, soon lost all attraction for me. Their rigid mechanical nature became dreary; their stiff pomp was like a mosaic made up of a thousand petty vanities set in consequentialism of every shade. I perfectly well recognized that ceremonial festivities necessitated a certain formality; but it appeared to me that they ought also to be animated by an in- nate freedom, and of this there was scarcely a trace perceptible.

In free and unconstrained intercourse with capa-

58 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

ble men of every category, with artists, authors, sportsmen, merchants, and manufacturers, I found greater stimulus than in these courtly shows. Moreover, as a lover of sport and the chase, I gave my physical frame its due share in cheerful exer- tion.

Withal, I felt the vexation of having continually to take into consideration my position as Prince. In everything that I undertook, I was surrounded by people who — ^with the best intentions, no doubt, but much to my annoyance — rehearsed, again and again, their two little maxims: "Your Imperial Highness must not do that" and "Your Imperial Highness must now do this." Any attempt to re- pulse these admonitions or to introduce the freedom of action of a free being into this fusty formalism met with a total lack of imderstanding. It was, therefore, best to let people talk and to do what seemed most simple and natural.

Only one person showed any sympathy with my opposition or any comprehension of my desire to be a little less "Crown Prince" and a little more of a contemporary human being. It was my dear mother. Ever and again, when I sat talking with her on such matters, I felt how much of her nature she had passed on to me — only that what in my blood offered masculine resistance had ultimately accommodated itself and quieted down in her. For this self-resignation she undoubtedly drew never-

SOLDIER, SPORTSMAN, STUDENT 59

failing energy from the deep religiousness of her nature.

To the strictly religious character of her ethical views is also to be attributed her urgent desire that we, her sons, should enter wedlock "pure," and un- touched by experiences with other women. With this object in view, she and those around us whom she had instructed endeavored to keep us, as far as practicable, aloof from any one and every one who might possibly lead us astray from the straight paths of virtue. Undoubtedly my mother, in her thoughts and purposes, was inspired by the best intentions in regard to us and to our moral and physical welfare; and, whatever nonsense may have been early circulated about me, I, at any rate, cannot have greatly disappointed her.

CHAPTER III MATRIMONIAL AND POST-MATRIMONIAL

June, 1919.

Wrote letters first thing. Then, after breakfast, two hours at the anvil in the smithy. Luijt told me that an American had offered twenty-five guilders for a horseshoe that I had forged. Might he give him one? These people are, after all, incorrigibly ready to inspire the likes of us with megalomania — even when we sit on a grassy island far from their madding crowd. At one time they used to pick up my cigarette-ends; and now, for a piece of iron that has been under my hammer, a snob offers a sum that would help a poor man out of his misery in the old homeland. It is not surprising to me that many a one, under the influence of this cult, has become what he is ! No, we are not always the sole culprits !

I left Luijt and went down to the sea, stripped and plunged in. How that washes the wretched- ness out of you for a while and makes you forget the whole thing !

About noon, I told my dear Kummer, who has been with me for some time, the story of the Ameri- can. He is on fire with enthusiasm ! "Twenty-five guilders, at the present rate of exchange ! I'd keep

on making horseshoes for them the whole day."

60

MATRIMONIAL 61

After dinner, looked through the old notes of the battles at Verdun and worked at the subject for the book. Took a walk with Kummer.

And now it is evening again.

Another day passed. How long will it be now?

On a beautiful and memorable summer's day of the year 1904, in fir-encircled Gelbensande, the seat of the Dowager Grand Duchess Anastasia Michail- ovna of Mecklenburg, I was betrothed to Cecilie, Duchess of Mecklenburg. Not quite eighteen years of age, she was in the first blush of youth and full of gaiety and joyousness. The years of her childhood, in the society of her somewhat self-willed but loving and beautiful mother, had been replete with serene happiness.

On a bright June day of the following year, my beautiful young bride gave me her hand for life. She entered Berlin on roses; she was received by the welcoming shouts of many thousands; she started upon her new career upborne by the love and sym- pathy of a whole people. And as, on that day, I rode down the Linden with my 2d Company to form the guard of honor, the warm-hearted partici- pation of all that great throng touched me very deeply. Moreover, the city and the happy faces, the many pretty lasses and the roses all over the place presented an unforgetable picture. My gren-

62 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

adiers naturally felt that they quite belonged to the family and strode along smartly.

A kind destiny permitted my choice to be free from all political or dynastic considerations. It fell upon her to whom my heart went out and who gave me her hand as freely and whole-heartedly in return. Our union was the outcome of genuine and sincere affection.

Shall I take any notice of all the nonsense that has been talked and written concerning my wedded life? If the good people who have such "brilliant connections" and consequently such ** intimate in- sight" and "reliable information" would but be a little less self-important. I can say this: whenever the newspapers printed such things as "The Divorce of the Crown Prince Imminent," my wife and I had a good laugh over the matter. What a craving for sensation possesses the public !

I can only thank my wife from the bottom of my heart for having been to me the best and most faith- ful friend and companion, a tender helpmate and mother, forbearing and forgiving in regard to many a fault, full of comprehension for what I am, hold- ing to me unswervingly in fortune and in distress.

She has presented me with six healthy and dear children whom I am proud of with all my heart and for whom I feel a longing as often as I stroke the head of one of these flaxen-haired little fisher lads here. May my four boys some day be brave Ger-

<

2: w Pi O

W fa

MATRIMONIAL 63

man men, doing their duty to their country as true Hohenzollems !

During the time of severe torment that followed Germany's downfall, my wife stuck to her post with exemplary faithfulness and bravery and, in a hun- dred difficult situations, proved herself to possess that strong, noble nature for which I love and revere her.

After all "war" has entered our married life!

In 1915, the Crown Princess paid me a two-days' visit in my headquarters at Stenay. At 4 o'clock in the morning of the second day, there began a French air attack manifestly aimed full at my house which, at that time, had no bomb-proof cellar or dugout. A direct hit would undoubtedly have meant thorough work. The attack lasted two hours. In that time, twenty-four aeroplanes dropped bombs around us and a hundred and sixty bombs were counted. Several of them landed only a few yards from the house and, unfortunately, claimed a num- ber of victims. It was the severest air attack that I had ever experienced, and was a test to the nerves in which my wife showed the greatest courage and calmness. The way in which she stood the strain was magnificent.

Following upon my captaincy in the First Foot- Guards, I was now to be appointed to the command of a squadron. Through the mediation of his Excel-

64 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

lency, von Hiilsen, I requested His Majesty to in- trust me with a squadron of the Gardes du Corps. At first, His Majesty wished to appoint me to the Hussars. Ultimately, he gave way and placed me, in January, 1906, at the head of the body squadron of the Gardes du Corps, though, instead of the handsome uniform of that regiment, he ordered me, by special decree, to wear the uniform of the Queen's Cuirassiers.

In this new position, my love of horsec found once more a wide field of activity, and I look back with great satisfaction to the delightful period dur- ing which I was attached to this proud regiment whose glorious traditions are so intimately bound up with the history of the Brandenburg-Prussian state. That it was no mere parade troop was proved at Zomdorf and again in the gigantic struggle of the world war. It was a bitter-sweet joy to me to re- ceive, only a few days ago, a loving sign that the old and well-tried members of the body squadron had not forgotten their former leader in his present misfortune: on my birthday. May 6, a small album containing the signatures of the officers and gardes du corps of the old squadron found its way to my quiet island. — Of the officers and of the gardes du corps 1 — How many names are wanting ! East and west repose those whose names are not in the album. My thoughts wander in both directions to greet the brave dead.

Here, although it belongs to a later period, I

MATRIMONIAL 65

would say a word about my appointment to the third military weapon — the artillery. To render me familiar with it, I was appointed, in the spring of 1909, to the command of the Leibbatterie of the First Field Artillery. I felt particularly happy in this excellent regiment — excellent both from a mili- tary standpoint and in its comradeship; and I recall with sincere gratitude the assistance given me by my faithful mentor. Major the Count Hopfgarten, and his manifold suggestions in matters relating to artillery.

Even at that time, the mode of employing our field artillery and, to some extent, also, our mode of firing struck me, in some points, as out-of-date when compared with French regulations. About five years later, the experiences of the war demon- strated that the French army really had gained a start of us in the development of this weapon. With us the technology of artillery had dropped be- hind the equestrology; the horse had obtained too many privileges over the cannon.

As personal adjutant, I asked and obtained the services of Captain von der Planitz. This excellent and well-trained officer, whom I shall ever grate- fully remember as a sincere and noble man and as my long-standing and trusted companion and coun- sellor, fell as commander of a division in Flanders.

A report is being circulated by the newspapers which purports to come from an eye-witness of the

66 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

murder of Tsar Nicholas and to reveal, in all its horrors, his bloody end.

This description, whose ghastliness is only en- hanced by its cold objectivity, I read this morning. Ever since, as the rain outside has continued to pour down ceaselessly, my thoughts have reverted again and again to this poor man — to him and those around him on the two occasions that I came into closer contact with him, — first, as his guest in Rus- sia and, afterwards, on the one occasion that he was our guest in Berlin.

Now, as I write these lines in recollection of him, it is night.

When I first met Tsar Nicholas at St. Petersburg in January, 1903, he was at the height of his power. I had been despatched to take part in the Bene- diction of the Waters. The court and the troops formed an exceptionally brilliant framework to the celebration. But the Tsar, himself, who was at bottom a simple and homely person and most cor- dial and unconstrained in intimate circles, appeared irresolute, I might almost say timid, in his public capacity. The ravishingly beautiful Empress Alex- andra was, in such matters, no support for him, since she herself was painfully bashful, indeed al- most shy. In complete contrast to her, the Dowager Empress, Maria Feodorovna, embodied perfectly the conception of majesty and of the grande dame, and she exercised also the chief influence in the political

MATRIMONIAL 67

and court circles of St. Petersburg. It was par- ticularly noticeable how little the Tsar understood how to ensure the prestige due to him from the members of his family, /. e., from the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses. When, for instance, the company had met previous to a dinner, and the Imperial couple entered, scarcely a member of the family took any notice of it. An absolutely pro- voking laxity was displayed on such occasions by the Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaievitch, who, by the way, did not hesitate, in conversation with me, to give fairly pointed expression to his dislike of everything German. In vain did I look for traces, in St. Petersburg, of the old friendship between Prussia and Russia; English and French were the linguistic mediums; for Germany no one had any interest; more often than not I even came across open repugnance. Only two men did I meet with who manifested any marked liking for Germany, namely. Baron Fredericks and Sergei Julivitch Witte, who, a few years later, was made a count. With Witte I had a long talk upon the question of a new Russo-German treaty of commerce, in the course of which the politician, with his far-sighted views of finance and political economy, maintained emphatically that, in his opinion, the healthy devel- opment of Russia depended closely upon her pro- ceeding economically hand in hand with Germany. The fear of assassins was very great at the court.

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Among the many precautionary and preventive measures which I saw taken everywhere, one that I met with on paying the Tsar a late evening visit made a deep impression upon me. In the vestibule of his private apartments, the Emperor's entire body-guard of about one hundred men were posted like the pieces on a chess-board. It was impossible for any one to pass; and my entrance created the greatest alarm and excitement.

Within the inner circle of his family, the Emperor was an utterly changed being. He was a happy, harmless, amiable man, tenderly attached to his wife and children. From the Empress, too, disap- peared that nervousness and restlessness which took possession of her in public, she became a lovable, warm-hearted woman and, surrounded by her young and well-bred daughters, she presented a picture of grace and beauty. I spent some delightful hours there.

On the second occasion, my wife and I were in- vited to Zarskoe Selo. Here I might have imagined myself on the country estate of some wealthy pri- vate magnate, but that, at every step, the police and military precautions reminded me that I was the guest of a ruler who did not trust his own peo- ple. Zarskoe stands in a great park. Outside the palings was drawn up a cordon of cossacks who trotted up and down night and day to keep watch. Within the park stood innumerable sentinels, while

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inside the palace one saw everywhere sentinels in couples with fixed bayonets. I said to my wife at the time that it made you feel as though you were in a prison, and that I would rather risk being bombed than live permanently such a life as that.

A distressing motor drive still remains vivid in my memory. The Tsar wanted to show us the palace on the lake side. We started off in a closed carriage. It was the first time, for months, that the Emperor had left Zarskoe. The drive lasted about four hours. The impression was cheerless and deeply depressing. Every place we passed through seemed dead; no one was permitted to show himself in the streets or at the windows — save, of course, soldiers and policemen. Weird silence and oppressive anxiety hung over everybody and every- thing. To be forced to conceal oneself like that! Eh, it was a life not worth living.

We also took part in a great military review. The guards looked brilliant; and, true to their an- cient tradition, they later on fought brilliantly in the war. An uncommonly picturesque impression was made by the bold-looking Don, Ural and Trans- baikal cossacks on their small, scrubby horses.

The reception in the family circle was as hearty as on my first visit. For hours we canoed about the canals, and discussed exhaustively many a political problem. These talks convinced me that the Tsar cherished sincere sympathy for Germany,

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but was too weak to combat effectually the influ- ence of the great anti-German party; the Dowager Empress and the Grand Duke Nicholai — both pro- nounced opponents of Germany — ^possessed the up- per hand.

Tsar Nicholas was not, in my judgment, the per- sonality that Russia needed on the throne. He lacked resolution and courage and was out of touch with his people. As a simple, country gentleman, he might perhaps have been happy and have had many friends; but he did not possess the qualities essential to lead a nation in the development of its capacities; possibly, indeed, his timid mind scarcely dared to reflect upon the merest shadow of such qualities.

Deeply tragical appeared to us, even at that time, the weakly and continually ailing little heir-ap- parent, Alexis Nicholaievitch. Though already nine years old, he was usually carried about like a little wounded creature by a giant of a sailor. With anxious and trembling tenderness, the parents clung to this fragile offspring of the later years of their wedlock who was expected some day to wear the Imperial crown of Russia.

All over! Gone in blood and horror this little wearily flickering life.

After I had completed another two and a half years of military service, I felt a lively desire to fill in the very considerable gaps in my knowledge

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of political and economic affairs. Wishes repeatedly expressed by me in the matter had hitherto been disregarded, which was the more remarkable as, in the history of our house, the ruler for the time being had always treated the due preparation of the heir- apparent for his future career as a particularly ur- gent duty of the office conferred upon him. Con- sequently, I felt myself ill used in being thus denied the opportunity to grasp and fathom subjects whose mastery was essential for me. Without exaggera- tion, I can say that I had to wrestle tenaciously and uncompromisingly for admission to an environ- ment in which I might acquire this indispensable knowledge.

It was therefore with all the greater satisfaction that, in October, 1907, I welcomed the Kaiser's finally consenting to attach me to the bureau of the Lord Lieutenant at Potsdam, to the Home Office, to the Exchequer and to the Admiralty. I was, however, to wait a while before being initiated into questions of foreign policy; these were treated as a trifle mysterious — and as though they lay within the sphere of some occult art. For the present, therefore, I was to have the opportunity of attend- ing lectures on machine construction and electro- technics at the University of Technology in Char- lottenburg, where I might acquire a more extensive acquaintance with these subjects which had always aroused my peculiar interest.

Thus the obstacles that bad heretofore stood in

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my way were now removed; doors which had been kept religiously closed to me at last opened to my hankering for knowledge.

My self-instructive activities in the various minis- tries— which were greatly facilitated by my father's orders to supply me with every desired information — speedily led to my occupying myself busily with the great questions of the day and their international interdependence; and thus I soon found myself ab- sorbed in the study of the German and the foreign press.

The pulse of our life is the newspaper; in it beats the heart of the times; inertness and activity, lassi- tude and fever find in it their efficacy and expression and, for him who has to care for the well-being of the entire organism, they became, under certain circumstances, admonishing and warning voices. In that year of study which I devoted to the press, my first modest gain was that I learned to estimate clearly the significance of the newspaper for those who are willing to hear, to see and to recognize; — yes, for those who will hear, see and recognize, and are not blinded to the signs of the times by an os- trich-like psychology either imposed upon them or voluntarily adopted.

Of course, I had read the newspapers before, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Mainly, I had confined myself to journals of the conserva- tive type and colorless, well-disposed news-sheets;

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though I had, at any rate, read them unmutilated by anybody else's scissors. Now, I ploughed my way daily through the whole field from the Kreuz- zeitung to the Vorwdrts ; and often an article marked by me found its way to the proper persons to give me the required explanations and enlightenment.

Consequently, in regard to particular cultural and political questions, I soon arrived at a point of view which showed me the problems from quite a different angle from that adopted by His Majesty on the ground of the press cuttings and the reports presented to him. The humor of history was gro- tesquely inverted: the King was guided ad usum delphini, and the Dauphin drew his knowledge out of the fulness of life. By reason of this deeper in- sight into the driving forces of the masses and of the times, many of the fundamental notions kept to by the Kaiser in his method of government ap- peared to me to have lost their roots and to be no longer reconcilable with the spirit of modem mon- archy with its wise recognition of recent develop- ments and current phenomena.

Besides the German state organization, there was another which, at that time, aroused my special in- terest, namely, the British. I had been about a good deal in England, and, in many an hour's talk on this fascinating subject my uncle. King Edward, had lovingly instructed me concerning England's political structure, in which I recognized many a

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feature of value to our younger development. When I recall these memorable conversations, in which my part was that of a thoroughly unsophisticated young disciple of a successful past master and fatherly friend, it strikes me that the King wanted to bestow upon me something more than a simple lesson in the conditions of England; it was rather as though this, in his own way highly talented man recognized that the ideas which had governed the first two decades of my father's reign had been lead- ing farther and farther from the lines along which the monarchy of Germany ought to develop, if that monarchy were to remain the firmly established and organic consummation of the state's structure; it was as though he clearly and consciously meant to call my attention to this danger point, in order to warn me and to win me to better ways even at the threshold of my political career.

All that my old great-uncle imparted to me out of the fulness of his observation and experience I gladly accepted and developed, and doubtless this has had its share in forming my views concerning the Kaiser's maxims of government and in my feel- ing a strong inclination for the constitutional sys- tem in operation in England.

During this period of eager study, I received from Admiral von Tirpitz, the head of the Admiralty, some particularly deep and stimulating impressions. In him I found a really surpassing personality, a

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man who did not stare rigidly at the narrow field of his own tasks and duties, but who saw the effects of the whole as they appeared in the distant political perspective and who served the whole with all the comprehensive capacities of his ample creative vigor.

The great work of producing a German navy had been intrusted to him by the Kaiser, and his life, his thoughts and his activities were entirely filled with the desire and determination to master the enormous task for the good of the empire and in spite of all external and internal opposition. How well he succeeded has been proved by the Battle of Jutland which will ever remain for him an honor- able witness and memorial — Jutland, where the fleet created by him and inspired by his mind passed so brilliantly through its baptismal fire in contest with the immensely stronger first navy of the world. Germany had then every reason to be proud of the glorious valor and exemplary discipline of her young bluejackets.

Only in one fundamental question did I, in that year of co-operation, differ from the lord high ad- miral. He held firmly to the conviction that the struggle with England for the freedom of the seas must, sooner or later, be fought out. His object was the "risk idea," that is to say, he maintained that our navy must be made so strong that any possible contest with us would appear to the English to be

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a dangerous experiment because the chances of the game would then be too great — chances that could not be risked without involving the possibility of the English dominion of the seas being entirely lost. To the ideal principle underlying this defense the- ory I did not shut my eyes; but, considering our political and economic position, it seemed to me that its form, which presupposed our being the sole opposing rival of England at sea, did not permit its realization. I was rather of opinion that the "risk idea" could only ripen into a healthy, vigorous and real balance of power at sea, if the counterpoise to England were formed in combination with another great power whose land forces for this purpose would not come into consideration, but whose navy in conjunction with our own would yield a force ade- quate to gain the respect and restraint aimed at. In this way, if the thing were at all feasible, not only could an immense reduction of our naval burden be effected, but it would be easier to overcome the great danger of the whole problem, namely, the smothering of our sea forces before their goal had been reached; for, I always frankly maintained and asserted that the British would never wait until our "risk idea" had materialized, but, consistently pursuing their own policy, would destroy our greatly suspected navy long before it could develop into an equally matched and — in the sense of the "risk idea" — dangerous adversary.

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That, in point of fact, the will to adopt such a radical course was not wanting, was further proved to me recently on reading Admiral Fisher's book. He states the matter with astounding candor in the following way: ** Already in the year 1908, I pro- posed to the King to Copenhagen the German navy."

In consequence of our political isolation, all my doubts and considerations had to remain doubts and considerations. An ally whose navy came into consideration as an adjunct to ours we did not pos- sess. Nor would an alliance with Russia, such as was aimed at by Tirpitz, have given us the help of such a navy.

When the various efforts to bring about an under- standing over the naval question had all failed, the right moment and the last chance arrived for Eng- land to try conclusions with the German navy with some likelihood of success. The opportunity of war in the year 1914 offered that chance and provided also an unexampled slogan: there were binding treaties to be kept, and England could likewise ap- pear as a spotless hero and the protector of all small nations.

In all this, too, it was naturally not the naval problem per se which induced England to seize this opportunity of joining in a war against Germany. Sea power is world-power; our navy was the pro- tecting shield of our world-wide trade; it was not the shield, but the values which it covered, at which

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the blow was aimed, in the not overwillingly waged war. The motive forces which urged towards war, towards final settlement, across the Channel were the same that had previously effected our economic isolation; they grew out of England's struggle for existence with the vast development of German industry and German commerce. Her attem.pted strangling of these in pre-war years had failed; the German expansion continued. Hence England gave up the endeavor to avoid war; the final settle- ment must be faced. No one who knew the situa- tion could doubt that England would make the utmost use of such an excellent opportunity as that provided by our treatment of the Austro-Serbian dispute. Only lack of political insight on the part of our statesmen could overlook all this and hope for the neutrality of England as Bethmann HoUweg did.

And when we were once involved in war with England and problems of attack were presented to our navy in place of the defensive tasks for which it had been created, it was a fatal blunder to keep it out of the fray, or to deny a free hand in its employ- ment to Grand- Admiral von Tirpitz who knew the instrument forged by him as no one else could. The parties who, at that time, had to decide con- cerning the fate of the navy failed to gain that im- mortality which lay within their reach. Although it lay within arm's length of both von Miiller and

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of Admiral Pohl neither of these men has succeeded in gaining immortality. Everybody clung to Beth- mann's notion of carrying the fleet as safe and sound as possible through the war in order to use it as a factor in possible peace negotiations — ^an idea that was scarcely more sensible than, say, the idea of carrying the army and its ammunition intact through the war with a like purpose. People philo- sophized over distant possibilities and missed the hour for acting!

Admiral von Tirpitz was a highly talented and strong-willed man, looked up to by the entire navy. His sense of responsibility and his resoluteness per- sonified, as it were, for them the fighting ideal of his weapon, and I am still convinced that he would have turned the full force of the fleet against England as rapidly as possible. Such an attack, carried out with fresh confidence in one's own strength and under the conviction of victory, would not have failed. That such a view is not in the least fantastic and is shared by the enemy is evidenced by a pas- sage in Admiral Jellicoe's book, in which he writes: —

"With my knowledge of the German navy, with my appreciation of its performances and with a view to the spirit of its officers and its men, it was a great surprise to me to see the first weeks and months of the war pass by without the German navy having conducted any enterprises in the Chan- nel or against our coasts. The possibilities of sue-

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cess of an immediate employment of the German forces I should not have underrated."

But, as Goethe says, enthusiasm is not like her- rings; it cannot be pickled and kept for years; and the spirit of attack, national consciousness and dis- cipline cannot be preserved or bottled. In our navy, so proud and powerful at the outbreak of the war, these qualities withered and decayed because that navy was not allowed to prove its strength, and was not used at the right moment.

Hence, the weapon which failed to strike when it ought to have struck finally turned against our Fatherland and helped to bring about our defeat.

I have perused the sheets written yesterday. These jottings of mine will not constitute a regular and well-arranged book of reminiscences reproducing events in their exact order of time. I had intended to write of my inauguration into the affairs of the Admiralty and of the valuable work in conjunction with Admiral von Tirpitz; and, in the ineradicable bitterness of my recollections, I sped into the events of later years.

In mentioning the "risk idea" of Tirpitz, I touched upon our political isolation. On this sub- ject there is, perhaps, much more to be said.

When, soon after the completion of my labors at the Admiralty, I penetrated farther and farther into the problems of the foreign policy of the empire, I repeatedly found confirmation of the fact that, as I

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had observed during my travels, our country was not much loved anywhere and was indeed frequently hated. Apart from our allies on the Danube and possibly the Swedes, Spaniards, Turks and Argen- tinians, no one really cared for us. Whence came this? Undoubtedly, in the first place, from a cer- tain envy of our immense economic progress, envy of the unceasing growth of the German merchant's influence on the world market, envy of the great diligence and of the creative intelligence and energy of the German people. England, above all, felt her peculiar economic position threatened by these cir- cumstances. This was naturally no reason for us to feel any self-reproach, since every people has a per- fect right, by healthy and honorable endeavors, to promote its own material well-being and to increase its economic sphere of influence. By fair competi- tion between one nation and another, humanity as a whole attains higher and higher stages of civiliza- tion. Only ignorant visionaries can imagine that progress in the life of the individual, of a people or of the world can be expected if competition be barred.

But it was not alone envy of German efficiency that gained for us the aversion of the great majority; we had managed by less worthy qualities to make ourselves disliked. It is imprudent and tactless for individuals or peoples to push themselves forward with excessive noisiness in their efforts to get on; dis-

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trust, opposition, repulsion and enmity are thereby provoked. Yet it is into this fault that we Ger- mans, both officially and personally, have lapsed only too often. The openly provocative and blus- tering deportment, the attitude adopted by many Germans abroad of continually wishing to teach everybody and to act as guardians to the whole world ruffled the nerves of other people. In con- junction with the stupidity and bad taste of a kin- dred character proceeding from leading personages and public officials at home and readily heard and caught up abroad, this conduct did immense dam- age, more especially, again, in the case of England, who felt herself particularly menaced by modem Germany.

In many a political chat, that was as good as a lesson to me, my great-uncle. King Edward VII — with whom I always stood on a good footing and who was undoubtedly a remarkable personality en- dowed with vast experience, as well as great wisdom and practical intelligence — repeatedly expressed his anxiety that the economic competition of Germany would some day lead to a collision with England. "There must be a stop put to it," he would say on such occasions.

Facing all these facts objectively and remember- ing that England's forces had always been employed against that Continental power which at any given moment happened to be the strongest, it followed

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that, sooner or later, the German Empire would in- evitably become involved in a war unless the oppo- sition between it and England were removed.

Personally, I considered it desirable to strive for an understanding with England on economic, eco- nomico-political and colonial questions. I did not, however, entertain any illusions as to the difficulty of such an undertaking. I was quite aware that any such effort presupposed a thorough discussion both of the naval programme and of economic mat- ters. The goal appeared to me well worth the sac- rifice, for the relaxation of the political tension followed ultimately by an alliance with England would not merely have secured peace, but would have provided us with advantages amply compen- sating for the concessions made. Prince Biilow, with whom I once talked about this delicate question, re- ferred me to a saying of Prince Bismarck's, namely, that he was quite willing to love the English, but that they refused to be loved. For an alliance with England, which, while not involving the sombre risk of war with Russia, would have been calculated to bind England really and seriously, he seemed at that time not at all disinclined. But as, accord- ing to him, Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minis- ter in the early years of the century, was not to be persuaded to such an alliance, he thought to do better, under the circumstances, by adopting a "policy of the free hand." Similar answers were

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given me by all the other leading statesmen of the realm to whom I disclosed my ideas: an under- standing with England, they said, was impossible; England would not have it; or, if a basis were found, we should lose by the whole affair. But their rea- sons failed to convince me. Why, a glance across the black, white and red frontier poles showed that, all around us, quite other political feats had been performed; but they had been performed by men who understood their profession and the signs of the times. Nor do I consider that, in the years to which I refer here, England was indisposed or could not have been won over, even though matters were no longer presented to us on a silver tray as they had been at the beginning of the Boer War, when Joseph Chamberlain quite openly tried to bring about an alliance between Germany, England and the United States. Even now the possibility of start- ing over at the point where we had then failed was by no means out of the question. Nevertheless, I had to accept the fact that Prince Biilow and his politicians were not to be persuaded to a serious, well-grounded understanding with England; they seemed thoroughly satisfied with the outwardly amiable and courteous relations, they considered the situation well tried and satisfactory, and saw no reason to regard it as so acute or threatening.

Hence, for the future, I endeavored to think the matter over on the rigid lines laid down by Wilhelm-

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strasse. Assuming it to be impossible to alter the dif- ferences with England or to bridge the gap opened during the Boer War by the overhasty Kriiger tele- gram (the responsibility for which, by the way, has been quite unjustifiably charged to the Kaiser), the only possible and capable ally left for us in Europe was Russia. If we had an alliance with Russia, England would never risk a war with us; nay, she would have to be satisfied if this alliance did not menace her Indian dominions. Consequently every effort should be made to re-establish the bond which, subsequent to Bismarck's retirement, had been broken by denouncing the reinsurance treaty; every- thing ought to be done to loosen the Franco-Russian Alliance and to draw Russia into co-operation with ourselves. This, too, was no easy task ; but there was a prospect of succeeding, if we supported Russia's wishes in regard to the Dardanelles and the Persian Gulf. I talked at the time with Turkish politicians about the matter and found them anything but in- accessible in regard to the question of a free passage through the Dardanelles. Moreover, opposition to this solution was scarcely to be feared from our allies Austria-Hungary. Here, therefore, I seemed to see a suitable starting-point.

From all these considerations France was excluded since, after the weakening of Russia, we had missed the opportunity of coming to a complete under- standing with the well-intentioned Rouvier Cabinet

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in the early summer of 1905. In the meantime, by skilful cultivation of the idea of revenge against Germany, even the bitterness towards England caused by the Fashoda affront had been dissipated. The conditio sine qua nan for any agreement would be the sacrifice of at least a part of the Reichsland, a thing which we could not even discuss in times of peace.

But, neither during Billow's chancellorship nor Herr von Bethmann's, was any energetic action undertaken or well-defined programme adopted by the Government to bring about an understanding with England or to attach our policy to Russia. People clung to the hope of sailing round any pos- sible rocks of war; they wished to offend nobody and therefore conducted a short-term hand-to-mouth policy which had no longer anything in common with the clever and wide-spun conceptions of Bis- marck tradition.

As a consequence, very depressing misgivings often overcame me when I thought what notions our leading statesmen entertained of our political position. That they misconstrued the seriousness of affairs I refused to believe, for the fact of our isolation was sufficient to prove even to the most inexperienced observer with any sound common sense that, with our peace policy of ''niemand zu Liebe und niemand zu Leide" (without considera- tion of persons) we were in danger, between two

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stools, of coming to the ground. Hence I was obliged just to recognize the incomprehensible calm with which our political leaders guided the realm through those times while our opponents' ring closed tighter and tighter.

The game was an unequal one !

It was unequal in the parties that faced each other as exponents of the two sets of effective forces. On this side was His Majesty, who, down to the crisis of November, 1908, ruled with great self-con- fidence and a perhaps too assiduously manifested desire for power; beside him and severely handi- capped by all kinds of moods and political sym- pathies and antipathies of the Kaiser's, stood Prince Billow, whose place was taken the following summer by Theobald von Bethmann.

On the other side was King Edward VII, and be- side him and after him half a dozen strong, clear- headed men who, misled by no sentiment, worked along the lines of a firmly established tradition to accomplish the programme mapped out for Eng- land and England's weal.

I repeat it: the game was unequal.

I do not underestimate the great talents which, in the most difficult circumstances, enabled Prince Billow, time and again, to bridge over gulfs, to ef- fect compromises and adjustments, and to disguise fissures. But he was not a great architect; he was not a man of Bismarck's mighty mould; he was not

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a Faust with eyes fixed on the heights and the hori- zon ; no, he was none of these, but he was a brilliant master of little remedies with which to save oneself from an evil to-day for a possibly more bearable to- morrow; he was a serious politician who had thor- oughly learned his handicraft and exercised it with graceful ease; firm in the possession of this, he was therefore no charlatan; he was a reader of char- acter, too, who knew how to deal with his men — a personality.

Of all post-Bismarckian chancellors. Prince Biilow strikes me as, far and away, the most noteworthy; indeed, I would place him well outside the frame of this very relative compliment that really does not say much. He understood perfectly how to defend his policy in the Reichstag; and his speeches, with their genuine national feeling, scarcely ever missed their mark. Moreover, he could negotiate, he showed skill and tact in personal intercourse with parliamentarians, foreigners and press men; and, like no one else since the first chancellor, he gave a due place in his calculations to the value of the press and of public opinion. I look back with pleasure to my conversations with him. What a gaily pliable intellect ! What sound sense ! What excellent judg- ment of men and of problems !

He was also, I consider, the best man at hand in the summer of 1917; and I greatly regretted, at that time, his not being called to the chief post after

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Bethmann's exit. His peculiar character would as- suredly have understood how to bring about fruit- ful co-operation between the Government and the Higher Command; I believe, too, that this adroit diplomatist would have succeeded in finding a way out of the difficulties of the World War, and that he would have effected a peace that would have been tolerable for our country.

On each of the two occasions when a fresh chancel- lor was to be appointed, I advised His Majesty to select either him or Tirpitz, — unfortunately, with- out success! The reappointment of Biilow as chancellor would not have been prevented by the aversion which the Kaiser had conceived during the events of November, 1908, if the proper influen- tial parties had assiduously supported the choice. I was able to ascertain that, on both occasions, the necessary precautions had been taken to ensure Billow's being passed over by the Kaiser.

Yonder stood the King.

I am aware that there is a tendency (not by any means confined to the general public) to impute to King Edward a personal hatred of Germany — a diabolical relish for destruction which found expres- sion in forging a noose for the strangling of our country. To my mind such a presentation of his character is totally lacking in reality. Among others, my father has never viewed King Edward without all sorts of prejudices, and has conse-

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quently never formed a just estimate of him. That trait — so constantly visible in the Kaiser's actions — of readily attributing positive failures to the activities of individuals and of regarding them as the result of machinations directed against him personally may play some part here. But there was doubtless always, as a matter of fact, what I might call a latent and mutual disapproval present in the minds of these two men, notwithstanding all their outward cordiality. The Kaiser may have felt that his somewhat loud and jingling rather than essential manner often sounded in vain upon the ear of King Edward with his experience of the world and his sense of realities; that it encountered scep- ticism; that perhaps it was even received sometimes with ironic silence; that it met with a sort of quiet obstruction too smoothly polished to present any point of attack and thus easily tempted the Kaiser to exaggerate it.

Having myself known King Edward from my earliest youth and having had ample opportunity of talking with him on past and current affairs al- most up to his death, my own conception of his character is an utterly different one. I see in him the serene world-experienced man and the most successful monarch in Europe for many a long day. Personally, he was, as far as I can remember, ex- tremely friendly to me and, as I have said before, he took a most active interest in my development. In

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the year 1901, just after the passing of the Queen, he invested me with the Order of the Garter; the cere- mony took place in Osborne Castle, and King Ed- ward addressed to me an exceedingly warm-hearted and kinsman-like speech; I was then on the threshold of my twentieth year, and my great-uncle seemed, from what he said, to feel a sort of responsibility for my welfare. His sense of family attachment was altogether strongly marked; to see him in the circle of his Danish relatives at Copenhagen filled the be- holder with delight: there, he was only the good uncle and the amiable man.

Often we have sat talking for hours in the most unconstrained fashion — ^he leaning back in a great easy chair and smoking an enormous cigar. At such times, he narrated many interesting things — some- times out of his own life. And it is from what he imparted to me and from what I saw with my own eyes that I have formed my picture of him — a pic- true that contains not a single trait of duplicity, a picture that reveals him as a brilliant representa- tive of his country's interests and one who, I am convinced, would rather have secured those inter- ests in co-operation with Germany than in spite of her, but who, finding the former way barred, turned with all his energies to the one thing possible and needful, namely, the assurance of that security per se.

Owing to the great length of his mother's reign, Edward VII did not come to the throne till he was

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a man of very ripe age. As Prince of Wales he had abundantly exploited his excessively long period of probation. On leaving his parental home with a good training and education, he rushed into life with an ardent thirst for pleasure and gave himself up to his strong passions for women, gambling and sport. In this way he passed through all circles and all strata of society — ^good, bad and indifferent — and nothing human remained alien to him. Just as an old and tranquillized mariner talks of the voy- ages weathered in years gone by, so did King Ed- ward speak to me of those experiences of his which had evoked from the public only hard and dispar- aging judgments. Yet, for him and for his country, those years of restless vagabondage became fruitful. His clear, cool and deliberative insight and his prac- tical common sense brought him an unerring knowl- edge of mankind and taught him the difficult art of dealing properly with differing types of humanity. I have scarcely ever met any other person who understood as he did how to charm the people with whom he came in contact. And yet he had no vanity, he displayed no visible wish to make any impression by his urbanity or his conversation. On the contrary, he almost faded into the background; the other party seemed to become more important than himself. Thus he could listen, interject a question, be talked to and arouse in each individual the feeling that he, the King, took a most kindly

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interest in his thoughts and actions — ^that he was fascinated and stimulated by him. In this way he gained the friendship and attachment of a great number of people — ^above all of those who were of value to him.

In his own country, his taste for sport secured him an enviable position. He owned a superb racing stud, devoted himself with great enthusiasm to yachting, and was perhaps the best shot in England. Moreover, that partiality for beautiful women which he kept even throughout the later years of his life became finally a key to the extra- ordinary popularity enjoyed by him in England and throughout the Continent. In his outward appearance and bearing he was the grand seigneur and finished man of the world.

It is thus that I see the King and the qualities that served him in carrying out his policy. An ex- cellent reader of character and a cool tactician, he gained permanent successes wherever he interposed his personality. It was his influence that drew France into the entente cordiale with England in spite of Fashoda; and it was he, personally, who attracted the Tsar farther and farther away from Germany and won him for England notwithstand- ing the great commercial antitheses in the Far East and in Persia.

Why all that ? To destroy Germany ? Certainly not! But he and his country had recognized that,

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for some years, the curve of Germany's commercial, economico-political and industrial progress had been such that England was in danger of being outstripped. Here he had to step in. As an agreement could not be effected, commercial isolation became his instru- ment for curtailing our development. War with Germany the King, I believe, never wanted. I be- lieve, too, that not only would he have been able to prevent the outbreak of war, but that he would in- deed have prevented it. I believe so, because his statesmanlike foresight would have recognized both the revolutionary dangers and the risk run by the great European powers of losing authority and in- fluence in world-competition if — ^armed as never before — ^they tore and lacerated each other by war among themselves. I will go further and assert that, with the acknowledged status enjoyed by him in Europe and in the world at large. King Edward, if he had lived longer, would probably not have stopped at the creation of a Triple Entente but would perhaps have built a bridge between the Entente and the Triple Alliance and thus have brought into being the United States of Europe. He, but only he, could have done it.

His epigones have placed the outcome of his labors in the service of Russia and France; and there- with began the war, long, long before the sword it- self was unsheathed.

In the face of all this and in certain anticipation

]VIATRIMONIAL 95

of this final settlement, it became the bounden duty of the German Empire to arm itself as thoroughly as possible and to demand a similar fighting power from Austria, which country, under the influence of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the men selected by him, had become politically very active. This was the least we could do to ensure some pros- pect of an honorable and bearable settlement. And that there was danger in the air was proved not merely by the general political complexion; the fe- verish and unconcealed warlike preparations of the Entente were clearly directed against us and showed that they wanted to be ready and then to await the right watchword for a rupture. France exhausted her man-power and her finances in order to maintain a disproportionately large army; Russia, in return for French money, placed hundreds of thousands of peasants in sombre earth-hued uniforms; Italy glared greedily at Turkish Tripoli and built fortress after fortress along the frontiers of its deeply hated ally, Austria. England watched this activity and launched ship after ship.

In spite of these huge dangers, our own prepara- tions were limited to the minimum of the essential; and if proofs were required that we did not desire the war, it would suffice to point out that it did not find us prepared as we ought to have been. So far as my very circumscribed capacities and my feeble influence went in the years preceding the war, I per-

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sistently advocated, in view of the menacing situa- tion, an augmentation of our military resources.

Not much was done, however. The last Defense Bill of 1913 had to be forced down the throat of the Imperial Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg. The re-equipment of the field artillery could not be car- ried out before the outbreak of war, with the result that the superior French field-guns gave us a deal of trouble for a long time.

I am speaking here of the Bethmann era, and yet I would not leave the period of Prince Billow's chancellorship without dwelling for a little on one of the most perturbing incidents in the life of the Kaiser, namely, the conflict of November, 1908.

In the Reichstag sitting of the tenth — ten years to the day before all ended in the journey to Holland — the storm began to howl and lasted throughout the following day. The causes are known.

In reality, how did matters stand?

In the year 1907, while staying with the retired General Stuart Wortley at Highcliffe Castle on the Isle of Wight, my father had entered into a number of informal conversations in which, undeniably, sev- eral unintentional and therefore injudicious remarks and communications escaped him. With the help of the English journalist, Harold Spender, these com- munications were afterwards worked up by Wort- ley into the form of an interview to be published

MATRIMONIAL 97

in the Daily Telegraph. The manuscript was for- warded to the Kaiser with a request that he would give his consent to its publication. In a perfectly loyal way, the Kaiser sent it on to the Imperial Chancellor and asked him for his opinion. The pro- ceedings were consequently all absolutely correct; and nothing improper had occurred, unless the re- marks themselves are to be characterized as such; and even then, one must give the Kaiser credit for having made them with the object of improving Anglo-German relations, just as General Stuart Wortley, with the like intention, hit upon the idea of making them known to wider circles.

The manuscript was returned to the Kaiser with the remark that there was no objection to its being published — save that, through negligence and a number of unfortunate coincidences, none of the gentlemen who were responsible for this judgment had actually read the text with any care. And go mischief stalked his way.

For two days the Reichstag raged at the absent Kaiser; two groups of representatives of almost every party poured out their pent-up floods of in- dignation; all the dissatisfaction with his methods and his rule that had been accumulating for two decades now burst forth in an unimpeded stream. And yet the man who was called by my father's trust to stand by his Imperial master, to cover him and to defend him, — that man failed, that man

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shrugged his shoulders and shuffled off with a scarce concealed gesture of resignation. Nerves, you say? Possibly. The only man who, on that occasion, chivalrously rushed into the breach in defense of his King was the old and splendidly faithful deputy von Oldenburg. Considering the general indignation that had arisen, the task before which Prince Biilow stood was indisputably very difficult; but, on the other hand, it is perfectly comprehensible that the Kaiser — ^who, in this case, had acted quite correctly, and now saw himself suddenly, and for the first time, face to face with an almost united opposition of the people — was wrenched out of his security and confidence and felt that he was deserted and aban- doned by the chancellor.

Meantime, the press storm continued and pro- duced day after day a dozen or so of accusatory and disapproving articles.

My father had returned. Prostrated by the ex- citing and violent events and still more by the lack of understanding he had met with, he lay ill at Potsdam. The incomprehensible had happened: after twenty years, during which he had imagined himself to be the idol of the majority of his people and had supposed his rule to be exemplary, disap- proval of him and of his character was quite unmis- takably pronounced.

It was under these circumstances that I was ur- gently called to the New Palace. At the door, my

MATRIMONIAL 99

mother's old valet de chambre awaited me to say that Her Majesty wanted to see me before I went to the Kaiser.

I rushed up-stairs. My mother received me im- mediately. She was agitated, and her eyes were red. She kissed me and held my head before her in both hands. Then she said:

"You know, my boy, what you are here for?"

"No, mother."

"Then go to your father. But sound your heart before you decide."

Then I knew what was coming.

A few minutes later I stood beside my father's sick-bed.

I was shocked at his appearance. Only once since have I seen him thus. It was ten years later, on the fatal date at Spa, when General Groner struck away his last foothold and, with a shrug, coldly destroyed his belief in the fidelity of the army.

He seemed aged by years; he had lost hope, and felt himself to be deserted by everybody; he was broken down by the catastrophe which had snatched the ground from beneath his feet; his self-confidence and his trust were shattered.

A deep pity was in me. Scarcely ever have I felt myself so near him as in that hour.

He told me to sit down. He talked urgently, ac- cusingly and hurriedly of the incidents; and the bit-

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terness aroused by the injustice which he saw in them kept reasserting itself.

I tried to soothe and encourage him.

I stayed with him for quite an hour sitting on his bed, a thing which, so long as I can remember, had never happened before.

In the end it was arranged that, for a short time, and till he had completely recovered from his ill- ness, I should act as a kind of locum tenens for the Kaiser.

In exercising this office I kept entirely in the back- ground, and was soon released from the duties alto- gether, since, in a few weeks, the Kaiser was seem- ingly himself again.

Seemingly! For, as I have already said, he has never really recovered from the blow. Under the cloak of his old self-confidence, he assumed an ever- increasing reserve, which, though hidden from the outside world, was often more restricting than the limits of his constitutional position. In the war, this personal modesty led to an almost complete ex- clusion of his own person from the military and organization measures and commands of the chief of his General Staff. Those of us officers who had an insight into the business of the leading military posts could not but regret this fact, as we had un- reservedly admired the sound judgment and the military perception of the Kaiser even in operations on a grand scale. During the war, I had frequent occasion to discuss the entire strategic situation

MATRIMONIAL 101

with my father, and I generally received the impres- sion that he hit the nail on the head.

July, 1919.

Bright midsummer days are now passing over the island in which I have lived for roughly three-quar- ters of a year.

Three-quarters of a year in which the closely cir- cumscribed space and its inhabitants have become dear to me; in which the vast silence and the sky and the sea, the privacy and the seclusion have brought me much that I had never before possessed — change and ripening in my own nature, changes in my views and judgments on the things that lie be- hind, around and before me. It is not inactive revery with me, for each day is filled up from morn- ing till night with letter-writing, with my reminis- cences, diaries, reading, music, sketching and sport.

I am not unhappy in my loneliness, and I almost believe that to be due to all the unstifled desire to produce which is still unreleased within me and makes me hope in spite of everything — makes me hope that the future will somehow open up the pos- sibility of my laboring as a German for the German Fatherland.

Anxieties as to the pending extradition wishes of the Entente? That is a question constantly re- peated in the letters sent by good people at home and I can only repeat as often : No, that really will not turn my hair gray.

102 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

I have a longing for home, for my mfe, for my children. Often it comes over me suddenly, through some accidental word, through a recollection, a picture. Recently, as I had just got out my violin and was about to play a bit, I couldn't bring my- self to do so, the yearning had got such a hold of me.

And then at night ! The windows are wide open, and one can hear the distant plash of the sea and often the deep lowing of the cattle in the pastures. Heinrich Heine says somewhere: "Denk' ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, bin ich um meinen Schlaf gebracht."

In the June days just gone by, came the news that the Versailles "Diktat" had been signed. The Peace Treaty! The word will scarcely flow from my pen, when I think of this chastising rod, this birch that blind revenge has bound for us there, this closely woven network of chains into which our poor Fatherland has been cast. Preposterous demands, that even with the very best intentions no one can fulfil! Brutal threats of strangulation in the event of any failure of strength! Withal, unexampled stupidity — a document that perpetuates hatred and bitterness, where only liberation from the pressure of the past years and new faith in one another could unite the peoples into a fresh and peacefully reconstructive community.

There remains only trust in the oft-tried energy and capacity of the German himself who, when time after time gruesome fate has led him through

MATRIMONIAL 103

darkness and the depths, has found the way up to the light again; and there remains, too, the great truth of all world experience that presumption, in the end, goes to pieces of itself.

Poverty-stricken, Germany and the German people go to meet the future. The wicked treaty, that rests upon the question of war guilt as upon a huge lie, has torn from them colonies, provinces, and ships. Workshops are destroyed, intellectual achievements stolen, competition in wide spheres of activity violently throttled. The treaty prepares for Germany the bitterest humiliation; it purposes to strangle and destroy her in unappeased hate and unabated terror.

But, in spite of it all, Germany will persist and will flourish again; and a time will come when this enforced pact will be talked of only as a stigma of a bygone day.

I wish for the homeland tranquillity and internal peace in which to get back to its wonted self, in which this earthly kingdom — exhausted by unheard- of sacrifices and damaged by the blows of fate — ^may recover its strength. And I should like to share in its new era ! Yet, the only service I can render to my country is to stand aside and continue to bear this exile.

The short space of time during which I was in- trusted with the representation of the Kaiser gave

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me a deeper insight than any previous period of my life into the mechanism of his technical Govern- ment labors, into the manner in which he was kept informed by the various officials and into the dis- posal of his time. Although, from years of cursory observation, I was fairly familiar with the outlines of this mechanism, I clearly remember that the closer acquaintance I now made with its structure filled me with the greatest amazement. That I speak of it here with unreserved candor is evidence that I do not regard my father as ultimately and solely responsible for this state of affairs. If you remove the mask of monarchy, the Kaiser is, by nature, simple in his character; and if he allowed these evils to arise about him, his share in them was due partly to the out-of-date upbringing caused by an old-fashioned conception of the royal dignity, and still more to his innate adaptability to the arrange- ments of his environment and to his renunciation of that simplicity and directness which might better have become his deepest nature. As a consequence, there developed, little by little, out of the zeal dis- played by those around him for the pettiest affairs, a vast ceremonial that robbed the simplest pro- ceedings of their naturalness, that removed every little stone against which the monarch might have struck his foot, and that strove to drown every whisper which might have been disagreeable to his ear. In the course of decades, this system deprived

MATRIMONIAL 105

the Kaiser more and more of his capacity to meet hard realities with a firm, resolute and tenacious perseverance.

How can a man, accustomed to expect as a matter of course the spreading of a carpet before his feet for every step he takes, maintain himself when he is suddenly confronted with really serious conflicts in which nothing can help him but his own resolu- tion?

Time seemed to be no object in ceremonial affairs; yet often none could be found for questions that demanded serious and calm consideration.

Not only for me, but for many a minister and state secretary, it was often quite a feat to break through the protective ring of zealous gentlemen who wished to prevent His Majesty from being "worried" with troublesome affairs and to save him from overfa- tigue and annoyance. Even when the ring was pierced, one had not, by any means, gained one's point; I remember many a case in which one or the other "Excellency" who had come to report to the Kaiser on a certain burning question, returned home- ward with an admirable impression of the anima- tion, the vigor and the communicativeness of His Majesty, and possibly with enriched knowledge con- cerning some sphere of research or technology, but without having unburdened himself of the burning question with which he came. Any one who failed to proceed, more or less inconsiderately, with his re-

106 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

port, might well find himself listening instead to a report of the Kaiser's on the subject in hand based upon preconceived notions; the would-be adviser would then be dismissed without ever having found an opportunity of stating his own views.

I have already hinted that the Imperial Chancery prepared for the Kaiser a filtration of public opinion in the form of press cuttings. The preparation of this material appeared to me to be influenced too much by the desire to exclude the disagreeable and even the minatory — to be pleasant rather than thorough. Many things, therefore, that ought to have come under the Kaiser's eyes, even if they were not exactly gratifying, were never seen by him. In much the same plane lay the consular reports. They were often nothing more than amusing chats and feuilletons. When these "political reports" passed through my hands in 1908, I missed any clear judg- ment of the situation, any sharply defined presen- tation or positive suggestion.

A favorable exception among the communications sent in by our representatives abroad was to be found in the reports of the naval commanders. They were evidently drawn up by men whose eyes had been trained to look broadly at the world, to see things as they really are and to form a just estima- tion of the whole; they manifested calm and objec- tive criticism and furnished cautious and far-sighted suggestions.

MATRIMONIAL 107

August, 1919.

The last few days have brought me again one or two welcome visitors from the homeland — above all, excellent Major Beck, to whom I am attached by so many hard experiences shared in the army. Hours and hours were spent in taking long walks and sitting together — sometimes talking, sometimes silent. And during those hours, the prodigious strug- gle of the past came vividly before me again — espe- cially the last anguish that followed our failure at Rheims, the unceasing decay of energy and con- fidence, and then the end.

A few Dutch families have also been to see me; and Ilsemann came over from Amerongen, and had much to tell me about my dear mother; she suffers severely, is physically ill, but will not give way; she knows only one thought, namely, the welfare of my father and of us all, and has only one wish, which is to lighten for us what we have to bear.

But the best visit is still to come. My wife and the children are to spend a short time with me here on the island. How we shall manage with such limited room and such a lack of every accommoda- tion I don't know myself — ^but we shall do it some- how. It was touching to see the ready proffers of help that were made on the mere report of my ex- pecting my wife and children. Not only on the island — where every one now likes me and where the Frisian reserve has long given place to hearty

108 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

participation in my joys and sorrows — but from yonder on the mainland also.

In a day or two, Miildner, my untiring and faith- ful companion in this solitude, is to go to Amsterdam to do some shopping and other errands. In one of the rooms, the wall-paper is to be renewed; all sorts of household utensils need supplementing; and Amsterdam friends are going to lend me furniture. The parsonage is to become more respectable; in its present condition, it would really be quite im- possible for it to lodge a lady. These capital people of mine are working feverishly.

But to get back to my subject. I stopped at my recollections of our foreign policy in the years prior to the war. Closely connected with it were our home politics. Here, too, we suffered from the same lack of resolution, firmness and foresight. People fixed their eyes upon the things of to-day instead of on those of to-morrow. Hence, o^ly half-measures were taken, and everybody was dissatisfied.

Ever since I began to concern myself with politics, I have become more and more convinced that our home policy should develop along more liberal lines. It was clear to me that one could no longer govern on the principles of Frederick the Great — still less by outwardly imitating his manner. Just as little could I sympathize with the continually yielding and generally belated manner in which our liberal reforms were carried out. The almost systematic

MATRIMONIAL 109

method of first refusing altogether and then finding oneself obliged to grant a part of what was de- manded appeared to me .doubtful and dangerous. A foresighted and properly timed liberal _ policy- ought to have been able to reject inordinate wishes from whatever quarter they came, and thus to main- tain a just balance of forces for the welfare of the whole. Such government would also have been able to reckon with a certain constancy of parliamentary grouping. But after the collapse of the Biilow bloc — which certainly, in itself, presented no very great attractions — the only policy we had was Bethmann's "governing over the heads of the parties," with its convulsive formation of majorities from case to case and its silencing of the minorities.

In so far as they could be fitted into the historic- ally determined development of the State, the polit- ical and economic aims of the social democratic party as the representative of a large portion of organized labor, ought to have been taken into con- sideration unequivocally and without any miscon- struction or suffocation of what was possible; though the Government had no cause and no right to allow themselves to be pushed or driven in every ques- tion.

In its ideological endeavors to entice the social democrats away from their policy of negation into the sphere of productive co-operation and in its misconception of the fact that, for purely tactical

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108 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

participation in my joys and sorrows — but from yonder on the mainland also.

In a day or two, Miildner, my untiring and faith- ful companion in this solitude, is to go to Amsterdam to do some shopping and other errands. In one of the rooms, the wall-paper is to be renewed; all sorts of household utensils need supplementing; and Amsterdam friends are going to lend me furniture. The parsonage is to become more respectable; in its present condition, it would really be quite im- possible for it to lodge a lady. These capital people of mine are working feverishly.

But to get back to my subject. I stopped at my recollections of our foreign policy in the years prior to the war. Closely connected with it were our home politics. Here, too, we suffered from the same lack of resolution, firmness and foresight. People fixed their eyes upon the things of to-day instead of on those of to-morrow. Hence, only half -measures were taken, and everybody was dissatisfied.

Ever since I began to concern myself with politics, I have become more and more convinced that our home policy should develop along more liberal lines. It was clear to me that one could no longer govern on the principles of Frederick the Great — still less by outwardly imitating his manner. Just as little could I sympathize with the continually yielding and generally belated manner in which our liberal reforms were carried out. The almost systematic

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MATRIMONIAL

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method of first refusing altogether and then finding oneself obliged to grant a part of what was de- manded appeared to me doubtful and dangerous. A foresighted and properly timed liberal ^policy ought to have been able to reject inordinate wishes from whatever quarter they came, and thus to main- tain a just balance of forces for the welfare of the whole. Such government would also have been able to reckon with a certain constancy of parliamentary grouping. But after the collapse of the Biilow bloc — which certainly, in itself, presented no very great attractions — the only policy we had was Bethmann's "governing over the heads of the parties," with its convulsive formation of majorities from case to case and its silencing of the minorities.

In so far as they could be fitted into the historic- ally determined development of the State, the polit- ical and economic aims of the social democratic party as the representative of a large portion of organized labor, ought to have been taken into con- sideration unequivocally and without any miscon- struction or suffocation of what was possible; though the Government had no cause and no right to allow themselves to be pushed or driven in every ques- tion.

In its ideological endeavors to entice the social democrats away from their policy of negation into the sphere of productive co-operation and in its misconception of the fact that, for purely tactical

no MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

reasons, the social democrats of that period would not give up their policy of opposition within the then existing constitution, Bethmann's Government allowed itself to be exploited and weakened by the extraordinarily well-managed and well-disciplined social democratic party. To the other parties little attention was paid. Moreover, the fact was alto- gether overlooked that, in their humane and pro- gressive spirit, the social legislation in the care for workmen in Germany was already a very long way ahead of all measures of the kind in other countries and that this great work had been ardently pro- moted by the Kaiser. As in its attitude towards the opposition so in the Polish and Alsace-Lorraine questions, the policy of the Government was un- certain, being almost invariably harsh where it ought to have been yielding and yielding where it ought to have been firm. Absolutely nothing was done in the way of economic mobilization to meet the eventuality of war, although there could be no doubt that, if an ultima ratio ensued, England would at once endeavor to cut us off from every oversea com- munication and that, in respect to foodstuffs and raw materials of every kind, we should be thrown on our own stocks and resources.

As in all problems of foreign policy, so again in this question, the only man in the Government who showed any understanding for my fears and anxie- ties was Admiral von Tirpitz.

MATRIMONIAL 111

In the eight years' chancellorship of Herr von Bethmann HoUweg I over and over again took the opportunity of talking to him about the attitude of the Government towards foreign and home affairs. Here, in one and the same sentence in which I write that I always found him to be high-principled in thought and action and a man of irreproachable honor, I would state that we were not friends, and that an impassable chasm lay between his mentality and my own. In the post for which we ought to have desired the best, the boldest, the most far- sighted and the wisest of statesmen, there stood a bureaucrat of sluggish and irresolute character, his mind in a revery of weary and resigned cosmopoli- tanism and tranquil acceptance of immutable developments. People liked to call him the "Phi- losopher of Hohensinow." I never succeeded in discovering a trace of philosophic wisdom in the languid nature of this man who dropped so easily into tactless fatalism and who qualified even an upward flight with the motto of "divinely ordained dependency.'* His hesitating heart had no wings, his will was joyless, his resolve was lame.

This man, eternally vacillating in his decisions and oppressed by any contact with natures of a fresher hue, was certainly not the suitable persona- ality, in the years prior to the war, — ^least of all in the three that immediately preceded its outbreak — to represent German policy against the energetic,

112 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

resolute, quick-witted and inexorable men whom England and France had selected as exponents of their power.

Even in the days when I was attached to the various ministries for purposes of study, many peo- ple of excellent judgment told me that it was easy to discuss questions with Bethmann, but the disap- pointing thing about it was that one never reached any conclusive result; for, whatever the seemingly final outcome might be, he had, after musing for a while, one more sentence to utter, and that sentence began with the word ''nevertheless." This word "nevertheless" stands for me like a motto above Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's political career.

On one single occasion I allowed myself to be swept into a marked demonstration against him be- fore the whole world, and I readily admit that this public utterance of my opinion would have been better left unmanifested. It will be remembered that, in the Reichstag sitting of November 9, 1911, I gave clear expression to my approval of the speeches hurled against Herr von Bethmann's and Kiderlen- Wachter's, at first galling and afterwards retracting, policy in the Morocco affair, which had brought us a severe diplomatic check. At the time, the press of the left hastened to stigmatize me as a batter- ing-ram of extravagant and bellicose pan-German ideas. Nothing of the kind! The case was quite different! The drastic methods of Kiderlen, the

MATRIMONIAL 113

wanton provocation implied by the despatch of the ** Panther" to Agadir was just as disagreeable to me as the hasty retreat which followed Lloyd George's threats in his Mansion House speech: both bore evi- dence of the groping uncertainty of our leadership, a leadership which failed to see how sadly the first step affected the mentality of the other side and how much the second impaired our prestige in the eyes of the world. Thus, it was from the feeling that political tension had risen to fever-heat that, on that 9th of November, 1911, I spontaneously ap- plauded those speeches which were directed against the feeble and oscillating policy of the Govern- ment.

What a curious part coincidence plays in our affairs! Once again the 9th of November stands marked in the book of my remembrances — ^three years after the great Reichstag storm concerning the Kaiser interview of the Daily Telegraph and seven years to the day before the last act of the collapse in Berlin and Spa! A discussion of the incident soon followed — on the same evening, as a matter of fact.

To begin with, the Kaiser admonished me. All right.

Then I gave vent to my thoughts and feelings; and I blurted out all my fears for the future, my wishes for the suppression of a shilly-shally policy. I spoke without the slightest reserve; — and once

114 MEMOIRS OF THE CROWN PRINCE

more I was forced to note the fact that the Kaiser could not listen.

In the end we dined together in a not particularly talkative mood.

Then, at His Majesty's request and in his pres- ence, Bethmann, who, withal, was once again highly interesting and to the point, gave me, the "fron- deur," a long lecture which failed to convince me.

Politics, even high politics, are not an occult sci- ence. The times are dead and gone in which they could be conducted with Mettemichian ruses. They can nowadays dispense with apergus of speech and with the jabot of the Viennese Congress just as well as with the monocle of a later epoch of development. But they presuppose, besides all the obvious and the leamable, a few such things as practical com- mon sense to reduce all their problems to the sim- plest formulae, knowledge of human character and an eye for the general mentality of the peoples with whom one has to reckon.

Herr von Bethmann Hollweg — ^who, by the way, knew scarcely anything of foreign countries — ^pos- sessed none of these things; and neither Kiderlen- Wachter nor Secretary of State Jagow was the man to fill the gap with his intellectual talents.

True, there were, in our diplomacy, men of quite another category, who thought broadly and saw clearly; but people were content to know that they filled posts abroad where their voices could be heard

MATRIMONIAL 115

but where their influence upon the conduct of for- eign politics was bound to remain very slight. I entertain not the least doubt that such men as Wangenheim and Marschall — even Mont and Met- temich — ^would have understood how to give a timely turn to our foreign policy so as to conduct it into the proper and the constant way.

Just this very Herr von Kiderlen used to be praised by Bethmann as the great political light from the East. Personally, too, I myself liked this agreeably natural and courageous Swabian, despite his panther-like leap into the china-shop of Agadir. But his special suitability for the highly important post of foreign secretary did not strike me, the more so as he entirely lacked the most important quality for such a position, namely, the capacity to see things from the point of view of others. He not only utterly failed to consider the mentality of France and England, but he did not even appreciate the political tendencies of Roumania, the country in which, for ten years, he had charge of Gennany's interests.

That sounds almost like a bad joke, and it is, after all, only an example of what a poor reader of character the chancellor himself was and how lim- ited was the horizon of his staff at the Foreign Office.

But it is incumbent upon me to furnish evidence for my views as to Herr von Kiderlen's knowledge of Roumania. On returning from my Roumanian

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travels in April, 1909, 1 told my father I had received the impression that there was only one person in Roumania who was friendly to us, namely, King Carol himself. The leading political circles, who were only waiting for the decease of the aged King, were thoroughly and firmly under French and Rus- sian influence. The sympathies of the Crown Prin- cess were directed towards England, and the Crown Prince was very much under her influence. Conse- quently, I could not help thinking that, in the event of war, Roumania would fail her allies, even if she did not go over to the other party altogether. His Majesty sent me to the secretary for foreign affairs in Wilhelmstrasse to report my impressions. Herr von Kiderlen-Wachter listened with complaisant superiority and smiled. He thought I must be mis- taken; believed I must have had a bad dream; the whole of Roumania, with which he was as familiar as with his own hat ("wie sei' Weste' tasch' ") was, to the backbone, our sterling ally. ''Sozusage' miin- delsicher!" Soon afterwards, we had to experience the trend of events which followed upon King Carol's death.

But, after all, what is the false estimate of Rou- mania in comparison with the erroneous conception formed by Herr von Bethmann Hollweg and his Excellency von Jagow concerning the attitude of England? They remained hoodwinked in the mat- ter until, in August, 1914, Sir Edward Goschen tore

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the bandage from the chancellor's dismayed and horror-struck eyes.

Because — be it said to his credit — he had repeat- edly made mild and inadequate attempts at a rap- prochement with England without encountering any notable opposition, and because he knew that Eng- land had repeatedly stated in Paris that she de- sired to avoid a provocative policy and did not wish to participate in a war called forth by France, Bethmann imagined that the rapprochement had thriven to such an extent as to preclude England's joining in war against us at all. But the last effort made in the year 1912 by inviting Lord Haldane, the minister of war, to come to Berlin, had also been a failure. It had failed because, meantime, the re- lations of England to France and thereby to Russia had become too intimate; so that even the great sacrifice which Admiral von Tirpitz declared himself prepared to make in the question of the Navy Bill in exchange for a British neutrality clause was in- effective. England was determined to maintain her "two keels for one" standard under all circum- stances. Sir Edward Grey declined to enter into any engagement on account of "existing friendship for other powers"; and therewith matters became clear to any one who had eyes to see.

Nor did Haldane make any secret of England's attitude in the event of war with France and Rus- sia; as the Kaiser told me himself later, Haldane

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informed our ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, in a visit concerning political questions, that under the suppositions stated and irrespective of what party might set the ball rolling, his Government could not agree to a defeat of France by us and a consequent domination of Germany on the Continent. They would intervene in favor of the powers allied with England.

That, in spite of this fact, the gentlemen at the Foreign Office and above all the minister responsible for our foreign policy continued to live on calmly and self-complaisantly in their world of dreams dur- ing those perilous and menacing times one finds it difficult to understand. The ears of our politicians had caught up the voices from Paris in which they heard England's desire for peace and they allowed themselves to be misled by the alluring idea that England would maintain peace in Europe in any circumstances; they assumed that the serious, warn- ing words spoken by Lord Haldane in London were intended solely to prevent a breach of peace on the part of Germany.

I have again run off the track of my story; it seems that I cannot even make a chronicle of the affairs. But I must try to take up the thread again.

Down to the year 1909, I had visited, sometimes alone and sometimes in my father's suite, England,

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Holland, Italy, Egypt, Greece, Turkey and a few districts of Asia Minor. My stay in these countries had always been relatively short, but had sufficed to provide me with valuable opportunities of com- parison and to convince me of the necessity for see- ing more of the world.

It was, therefore, a great satisfaction to my de- sire for further knowledge when, in 1909, my father consented to my undertaking an extensive tour in the Far East. My wife accompanied me as far as Ceylon and then went to Egypt; while I proceeded to travel through India. The British Government had prepared for my journey in the most friendly way; so that I really obtained a great deal of in- formation. In every detail and everywhere I went, I met with the greatest hospitality. I recall with special pleasure Lord Hardinge, Sir Harold Stuart, Sir John Havitt and Sir Roos-Keppel. The Ma- harajah of Dschaipur and the Nisam of Hyderabad also provided me with a splendid reception.

In India my love of hunting and sport found all that my heart could desire. The magnificence of Indian landscape and of Indian architecture opened up a new world to me. The profusion of experiences of all kinds presented to me I welcomed with all the susceptibility and power of enjoyment of my youth; I wished to devote myself unrestrictedly to all that was great and novel, and I sometimes forgot, per- haps, that people expected to find in me the son

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of the German Emperor and the great-grandson of the Queen.

Of all the impressions I received the greatest and most lasting was that made upon me by the organ- izing and administrative talent of the English. It struck me, too, as a noticeable peculiarity, that, in the various branches of administration, compara- tively very young officials were employed, but that they were energetic and were invested with great independence and responsibility. Extensive and healthy decentralization prevailed generally. Every- where I was impressed by the vast power of Eng- land, whose magnitude was, before the war, fre- quently and considerably undervalued in Germany intoxicated as she was with her own rapid rise.

But it became just as clear to me how enormous was the competition which Germany created for the British in the emporiums of the Far East. Thus, many an English merchant told me, in confidential talk, that it could not go as it was — England could not and would not allow herself to be pushed to the wall by us. I myself, during the sea voyage, no- ticed that we met about as many German merchant vessels as British ones. Moreover, the muttered curse, "Those damned Germans!" occasionally reached my ear.

Omens of a gathering storm !

When, later on, I talked of these observations to the responsible parties at home, the warning was

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treated very light-heartedly. That some English shopkeeper or another swore when we spoiled his business for him didn't matter in the least; the man should give up his "week-end" and work the way our people did, then he would have no need to swear. Besides we really wanted to live in peace with those gentlemen. "And Your Imperial High- ness has seen for yourself how you were received there." Thus, there was not much to be done. I, for my part, knew that the "shopkeeper" was Eng- land herself, that no one over there was willing to sacrifice his week-end and that my reception was an act of international courtesy and nothing more. The will to live at peace with others has only a sig- nificance if one knows and adopts the means by which that peace may be realized.

After my return and in pursuance of His Ma- jesty's commands, I visited with my wife the courts of Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg and St. James — the last on the occasion of the coronation.

Everywhere we met with the most friendly per- sonal reception; but everywhere, too, appeared warning signs of the conflict and danger which were gathering ominously around the realm.

The journey to England we performed on board the new and heavily armored cruiser "Von der Tann." This excellently constructed vessel aroused the utmost excitement in England. During the great naval review in the Solent, it was interesting

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to observe the British marine officers and sailors devoting the greatest attention to our **Von der Tann.** For the war vessels of other nations they displayed not the slightest interest. Their judgment culminated in unbounded praise of the wonderful lines of the ship and of the practical distribution of the guns.

During the coronation festivities in London, the reception accorded me and my wife by all classes of the population was exceptionally cordial. The English press also welcomed us warmly; and during those days we noticed nothing of the hatred of Ger- many. But if an eloquent illustration were needed of how misleading it is to draw conclusions from the signs of sympathy shown towards Princes and heirs- apparent, such an illustration is to be found in an experience of our own. It has hung a signum vani- talis in my memory.

As King George and Queen Mary at the close of the coronation ceremony left Westminster Abbey, spontaneous cheers rose from the assembly. Imme- diately afterwards, the foreign Princes moved down the gigantic church, and, as the Crown Princess and I reached the middle of the nave, the same spon- taneous cheers that had greeted the King and Queen were accorded us. Afterwards I was told by English people that I might be "proud of my- self"; for never before in the history of England had a foreign princely couple received such an ova-

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tion in Westminster Abbey. Four years later we were at war; four years later, the man whom they then cheered had become a "hun."

Here I should like to mention an incident in my London sojourn which casts a light on the ideas of a leading English statesman of that day. The for- eign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, was introduced to me, and, in the course of the thoroughly animated conversation which ensued, I made the incautious remark, that, in my opinion and with a view to the certainty of peace, it would be far and away the wisest thing for Germany and England, the two greatest Teutonic nations — ^the strongest land power and the strongest sea power — to co-operate; they could then moreover (if need be) divide the world between them. Grey listened, nodded and said: "Yes, true, but England does not wish to divide with anybody — ^not even with Germany."

In Vienna, the then heir-apparent, Francis Ferdi- nand, spoke with me very earnestly and very anx- iously about the dangerous Serbian propaganda; he foresaw an early European conflict in these intrigues that Russia was fanning. I had, for a long time, been watching with discomfort the growing depen- dence of our Near East policy upon the ideas of the Vienna Ballplatz; consequently the remarks of the Archduke raised in my mind grave doubts as to this shifting of our political focus from Ber- lin to Vienna; these doubts continued to worry

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me from that day onward, but the unreserved ex- pression I gave to them, both in the Foreign Office and in the presence of individual representatives of our diplomatic service, was all in vain. The fears that the Reich would some day become fatally de- pendent upon the superior diplomacy of Austria- Hungary, as expressed with such anxious prescience by Prince Bismarck in his last memoirs, seemed to me to have long ago found their fulfilment. In the Vienna Belvedere, under the influence of the strangely suggestive words of this dangerously am- bitious Archduke, — who was prepared to act an any- thing but modest part and who was as clever as he was ruthless, — ^the definite feeling came over me that, as a result of this too great dependence, we should sooner or later become involved in a conflict brought about for the purpose of promoting the ambitions of the Austro-Hungarian dynasty; that the Archduke was putting out feelers and developing ideas which should enable him to see what he might expect from me. Destiny took the game out of the hands of that undoubtedly remarkable man and made of him the spark which was to kindle the great conflagra- tion. But, after bringing him to a bloody end, it spared us none of the bitter effects of our depen- dence and subordination; the results of the excessive Viennese demands upon Serbia involved us in the war against our will. On July 28, 1914, when Ser- bia had accepted almost all the points of the Aus-

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trian ultimatum, my father annotated thus the telegram which brought the news of Serbia's sub- mission:— **A brilliant performance within a limit of 48 hours. That is more than one could expect. A great moral success for Vienna; but with it disap- pears every reason for war, and the Austrian minis- ter, Giesl, ought to have remained quietly in Bel- grade. After that, I should never have ordered the mobilization." I quote this telegram and its mar- ginal notes, because they prove irrefutably the peaceful desires of Germany and the Kaiser. They prove the good-will, in spite of which our destiny — bound to the policy of the Vienna Ballplatz to the extent of vassalage — strode its way.

In Russia, where, as already stated, I sojourned with my wife after my Indian travels, I received the impression that the Tsar was as friendly to Ger- many as ever, but that he was less able to put his friendliness into action. He was completely en- meshed by the pan-Slav and anti-German party of the Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaievitch and power- less to oppose that Prince, who made a public ex- hibition of his hatred for Germany.

CHAPTER IV STRESS AND STORM

September, 1919.

The beautiful, happy days are past which I was able to spend here with my dear wife and the boys, the days in which we all wanted to enjoy the brief pleasure like simple, rustic holiday-makers and in which I purposely tried to forget that my nearest and dearest were staying for only a short sojourn with a voluntary exile.

By nature and upbringing I am not sentimental, and I will not lose myself in sentimental emotions; but I can honestly say that the island is more deso- late than ever, now that I have to go my walks be- tween the pastures, along the irrigation canals, up the shore and through the villages without my wife and without the boys. In their childish way, the little chaps found everything that was strange and new to them here incomparably delightful, thought it all a thousand times finer than the best that they had in our own Cicilienhof at Potsdam or at 01s. Everywhere I now miss those boys, miss the inquir- ing remarks of those youngest ones who really made their first acquaintance with their father here on the island, miss continually the kind, wise and under- standing words of the wife who has so many sorrows

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and worries of her own to bear and who yet never loses courage. Over there, at Hippolytushof, we stowed the little fellows in the house of the ever- ready Burgomaster Peereboom — for we had no room for them in my parsonage — and there they were soon the friends and confidants of all the lads anywhere near their own age. In our Oosterland cottage, quarters were found only for my wife and her companion. Everything now seems empty, since it is no longer filled with her fun at the primi- tive glories and makeshifts of our "bachelor's house- hold."

On her way home she stayed at Amerongen.

It is depressing to read what she writes about things there. Our dear mother suffering, and yet unwearily troubling about the Kaiser, about my brothers, my little sister and her grandchildren; my father bitter and not yet able to release himself from the ever-revolving circle of brooding about the things that have been.

It is a very different question whether the will and vital courage of a man of thirty-six years are to withstand the test of such a terrible strain of destiny, or whether a man of sixty is able to see shattered before him his life's work that he had re- garded as imperishable.

In the last few days, my thoughts have reverted to him over and over again.

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At the time that I was about to start on my In- dian tour, my military career had reached the point where I was to receive the command of a cavalry regiment. It was a matter of great moment to me; and, with a view to the political situation, I did not wish to be too far away from the centre of govern- ment, from those men who had to cook the broth in the serving out of which I was at the time so inter- ested.

In this matter of the army I could not approach the Kaiser directly. My appointed intermediary was the chef du cabinet militaire, General von Lyncker. I discussed the affair with him and asked for the Gardes du Corps. Herr von Lyncker, who treated my request quite impartially and without any prepossession, entertained great doubts; he told me that His Majesty would almost certainly not consent; rather than raise this "problem" again, they would prefer to drop my suggestion. From the trend of the conversation, moreover, it was ob- servable that the inner circle of His Majesty's ad- visers and certain Government officers did not pas- sionately share my wish that I should remain near the centre of government.

I therefore asked for the King's Uhlans in Han- over or the Breslau Body Cuirassiers; and Herr von Lyncker said that would not create any difficulty, and he would advise His Majesty accordingly. I was content; after all, Hanover and Breslau did not

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lie quite outside the world and one might keep fairly in touch with things from either place.

Such was the situation when I left for India. But at Peshawar I read in an English newspaper that His Majesty had appointed me to the com- mand of his First Body Hussars at Langfuhr by Danzig.

My prime feeling was one of disappointment, not only because my wishes had been once more totally pushed aside, but because it seemed to be a sort of principle to refuse the fulfilment of the wishes of us sons in military matters. Nor was this all. The remote position of Danzig and the bleak climate, which I feared especially on my wife's account, were not particularly alluring. Contrary to my expecta- tions, everything turned out capitally, and, but for my worries about the general situation of affairs, the two years and a half spent in Danzig became the happiest time of my life.

We lived in a small villa which scarcely afforded sufficient room for my already considerable family. But we made ourselves very comfortable and led a happy and peaceful life.

It was an honor and a pleasure to be the com- mander of that fine old regiment. The officers were all young, — a companionable medley of nobles and commoners. The serious and faithful character of my old regimental adjutant, Count Dolina, I recall with particular pleasure. Most of the officers

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were the sons of landed proprietors in East and West Prussia whose fathers and grandfathers had worn the Black Attila and the Death's Head of the Body Hussars. Similarly, the regiment recruited its non-commissioned officers and men almost exclu- sively from among the young country people of East Prussia, West Prussia and Posen, tip-top soldiers who brought with them from their homes a love of horses and an understanding for their management. Finally, the horses themselves were excellent; and we were the only white-horse regiment in the army.

The love of riding which had been in me from childhood could now have full away. In accor- dance with the convictions gained by experience, I limited the course-riding to the minimum, and laid chief stress upon cross-country and hurdle riding, in which really first-class results were obtained. Great emphasis was placed upon foot-practice and firing, more perhaps than was then customary with confirmed cavalrymen. The war showed that this training is, even for cavalry, a thing that should not be neglected.

I did my best to maintain a liking for the ser- vice among my Hussars. I had a nice commodi- ous Casino installed for the use of the non-commis- sioned officers, as well as comfortable quarters for the men. The men who had been in the ranks for a year or more were lodged separately from the re- cruits to prevent possible difficulties. In the leisure

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hours there were plenty of outdoor games. Towards the end of my time, we had a well-trained football team in which the officers participated.

It was during this period of my life that " Deutsch- land in Waff en" was published, a picture-book for young Germans. The preface which I wrote for it has been unjustly taken to indicate that I had ranged myself among the war firebrands. Nothing was ever further from my thoughts; nor can an im- partial perusal of my paragraphs discover such a meaning in them. The preface was written in con- sequence of the increasing dangers that threatened us; it was directed against sordid materialism and pointed out to the youth of Germany that it was their duty and honor to fight, if necessary, for their country. It was the admonition of a German and a soldier to the rising generation of Germans whose young energies and whose patriotic spirit of self- sacrifice we could not dispense with in the hour of need.

Since my demonstration against Bethmann HoU- weg's Morocco policy, I was labelled as a war inciter by every blind pacifist in Germany and by their friends abroad whenever I came before the public. So it was in the case of this little dissertation on our army: people sought in it evidence of the tendencies unjustly ascribed to me. Similarly they imagined themselves to have pinned me tight when, a short time afterwards, I came forward in another public

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affair, namely, the Zabem incident which obtained such unfortunate notoriety.

Our policy in the Reichslanden (Alsace-Lorraine) had, for years, caused me great anxiety. My visits to these provinces, as well as the reports of many of my comrades in the garrisons of the west frontier and the honest descriptions given me of conditions there by those familiar with them, had opened my eyes to the realities of the situation. Sugar-plums and the whip had prevailed ever since 1871. The results corresponded to the tactics. The last period had been one of sugar-plums, and the reichsldndische constitution had been its consummation. French propaganda now had its own way and did what- ever it pleased. The pro-French notables set the fashion and called the tune for the civil administra- tion. The military were, in a sense, merely tol- erated by the irredentist circles. Just one example to illustrate the pre-war conditions in the German Reichslanden and the attitude of the governmental authorities. Two of my flying officers told me one day that, in the year 1913, a great French presenta- tion of the colors took place, and they — the military — ^were advised not to show themselves in the streets on that day lest the sight of their Prussian uniform might irritate the French. Under such conditions it was that the conflict arose. The civil population had heckled the Prussian military, the officer had defended himself, and then the whole world sud-

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denly howled at Prussian militarism. At this mo- ment, at a time when foreign countries and the never-lacking sophist advocates of absolute justice in our own poor Germany were doing everything to discredit our last and only asset, our army, in the eyes of friend and foe, I readily and "without the proper reserve," as it was said, took my stand by my comrades who were so hard pressed by the at- tacks of public discussion. I wired to General von Deimling and to Colonel von Renter. That is all true. But that I sent the colonel a telegram con- taining the words "Immer feste druff" I learned from the newspapers, and this invention was due to the falsifying fantasy of those peace-lovers who sought perhaps to strengthen the great hankerings for peace all around us. In truth I had telegraphed to Colonel von Renter as a comrade that he should take severe measures, since the prestige of the army was at stake. If Lieutenant von Forstner had been condemned, every hooligan would have felt encour- aged to attack the uniform. An untenable situation would have been sanctioned, doubly untenable in the Reichslanden, where, in consequence of the lax attitude of the civil authorities, the military already found themselves in the most difficult circum- stances. I should like to have seen what would have happened in England or France, if an officer had been provoked as Lieutenant von Forstner was. But we were in Germany. German public opinion

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had once more a pretext for busying itself with me in conjunction with the events described; the old talk about a camarilla, about the war firebrand and the frondeur of Langfuhr were dished up again in the leading articles of the scribblers. If they were to be believed, I had once again made myself "impossi- ble." The highest dignitaries wore the doubtful faces prescribed for such occasions of national mourn- ing, and His Majesty was highly displeased.

Schiller says in "William Tell": "The waters rage and clamour for their victims"; and another passage runs: "'Twas blessing in disguise; it raised me up- wards."

Out of the blue and with great suddenness every- thing happened. His Majesty took my regiment from me and ordered me to Berlin, so that my over- grown independence might be curtailed and my do- ings better watched. I was to work in the General Staff.

In this way a ring was completed: the wish not to have me too near the central authorities had sent me to Langfuhr by Danzig; the wish to have me within reach brought me back again; in both cases, a little indignation and a little annoyance played their part.

At any rate, among the incorrigible pacifists who wished to disperse with pretty speeches the war menace already hanging above the horizon, indigna- tion was aroused by my farewell words to my Hus-

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sars. I had called it a moment of the greatest hap- piness to the soldier, "when the King called and March ! March ! was sounded." According to them I ought doubtless to have told my brave comrades some beautiful fairy-tale.

When I rode for the last time down the front of my fine regiment and the farewell shouts of my Hussars rang in my ears, my heart became unspeak- ably heavy. It was as though a still, small voice whispered that this was the farewell to a peaceful soldier's life which I was never again to know. What I was now to leave had all been so beautiful, so happy and so replete with honest labor.

In foreign soil, sleeping their eternal sleep, now rest many — ^too, too many — of the bright and capa- ble young comrades of my beloved and courageous regiment of Hussars whose uniform I wore through- out the war with joyous pride. Among them lies my cousin. Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, a particularly undaunted rider and soldier. My recol- lections will be with them all in grateful sadness as long as I live.

Perhaps I ought to have torn up the sheets I wrote yesterday and to have rewritten them in a different style. When I read them through to-day, I found in them a note of irritability that I would rather not introduce into my memoirs. But I shall let them remain as they are; they bear witness to

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the bitterness which still possesses me when I recall that last year before the war and the absurdity of our "ostrich" policy. What a sorry humor comes over me when I remember how they dubbed me the instigator to a "fresh, free, rollicking war" because of my warning: "Then preserve at least your last for the grave day and keep yourselves armed for the struggle that is surely coming!"

The truth is that I was clearly conscious of the terrible seriousness of our position, that I neither was nor am a Cassandra, filling the halls of Troy with verses of lament, but a man and a soldier. Yet people in our beloved homeland took it very ill that I was the latter, and they do so still.

For the winter 1913-14 I was ordered to the Great General Staff for purposes of initiation and study. My instructor was Lieutenant-General Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, who became afterwards my chief of general staff in the Upper Command of the Fifth Army. In matters of military science I owe much to His Excellency von Knobelsdorf. He was a brilliant teacher in every domain of tactics and strategy. His lectures and the themes he set for me were masterpieces. His chief maxim was: clearness of decision on the part of the leader; trans- lation of the decision into commands; leave your subordinates the widest scope of personal responsi- bility.

My appointment to the General Staff gave me an

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exhaustive insight into the enormous amount of work it performed. I was able to penetrate into the superb organization of the whole, to become ac- quainted with the maintenance, the re-enforcement and the movements of the army, and to form an opinion concerning the defensive forces of other na- tions. In the operations department I heard lec- tures on the proposed concentration of the armies in the event of war.

In the lectures and discussions concerning a possi- ble world war, I received the impression that the British army and its possibilities of development in case of war were treated too lightly. People seemed to reckon too much with the disposable forces of the moment and too little with the values which might be created under the pressure of war and resistance. I knew something of the English and their army from my various visits and from personal observa- tion, and I knew, too, their great talent for organiza- tion as well as their skill in improvising. If a conceivable war were carried successfully through before these talents could be brought into play, the estimates of our General Staff might prove correct, but not otherwise. The Russian army I also con- sidered not to have been always rated at its full significance.

In regard to our western neighbor and presum- ably immediate adversary, I have only to recall that France, at that time, despite her considerably smaller

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population, maintained an army almost as large as ours. To do so, she levied eighty per cent of her men, whereas we contented ourselves with about fifty per cent.

The general view of the peace strength in the event of a war such as that which actually occurred may be put thus: — For Germany not quite 900,000 troops, and for Austria-Hungary about 500,000 — together, roughly 1,400,000 men on the side of the Central Powers. On the other hand, Russia alone provided the Entente with well over 2,000,000 sol- diers, to whom were to be added those of France and Belgium. Thus, even at the outset of the war, we were outnumbered in the ratio of two to one. Reck- oning the quality of the German as high as you please — and to place him very high was quite justi- fiable— the odds were too great.

With all that, we had, in 1914, an army which, in every way, was brilliantly trained; and consequently, in the summer of that year, when the die was cast, we took the field "with the best army in the world."

But, so far as provision for war was concerned, we had unfortunately not, in our peace prepara- tions, attained the maximum of striking energy. We had not, by a long way, exploited all the re- sources of power in people and land or mobilized them in time. That the Great General Staff had repeatedly expressed urgent wishes in this matter I can myself testify. The fault did not lie there.

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Nor did it lie with the German Reichstag, which, in consideration of the menacing seriousness of the situation, would not, despite its party differences, have refused to provide the German sword with all passible force and keenness, if the responsible min- isters had used all their weight to this end. But it seemed then, as it had done in peace time, as though all communications, suggestions or inquiries issuing from military quarters, and especially from the General Staff fell on barren ground. Close co-operation was, under such circumstances, impos- sible.

In that very year 1914, a question arose which was viewed from totally different standpoints by the two parties. The Russians began to make a comprehensive redisposition of their troops. Quite evidently the centre of gravity was being shifted towards the German and Austrian frontiers, which felt more and more the pressure of these amassments. From the interior of Russia, also, the General Staff received news of curious troop movements. How were these proceedings to be explained? The mili- tary view that they gave us good reason to be pre- pared for any event was met by the watery explana- tion that the affair was only a test mobilization; and, in stupid anxiety lest a definite clearing of the matter might "start the avalanche," the political gentlemen adopted the attitude of "wait and see."

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Subsequent to the summer sojourn of the General Staff in the Vosges under the leadership of its chief, von Moltke, I received a few weeks' furlough, which I spent in West Prussia.