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FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM
FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM
BY JAMES W. GERARD LATE AMBASSADOR TO THE GERMAN IMPERIAL COURT, AUTHOR OF "MY FOUR YEARS IN GERMANY" NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE PUBLIC LEDGER COMPANY COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1918, BY THE PUBLIC LEDGER COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO COLONEL EDWARD M. HOUSE STATESMAN AND FRIEND THE AUTHOR DEDICATES THIS BOOK Prison Camp Money Prison Camp Money Prison Camp Money Prison Camp Money FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF THE
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
T o the American mind the Kaiser is the personification of Germany. He is the arch enemy upon whom the world places the responsibility for this most terrible of all wars. I have sat face to face with him in the palace at Berlin where, as the personal representative and envoy of the President of the United States, I had the honor of expressing the viewpoint of a great nation. I have seen him in the field as the commanding general of mighty forces, but I also have seen him in the neutral countries
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
B ecause the German Emperor possesses talents of no mean order, because of his fiery energy, because of the charm of his conversation and personality, his ambitions for world conquest are most dangerous to the peace of the world. Certainly of all the ruling houses of the world, the Hohenzollerns have shown themselves the most able, and of the six sons of the Kaiser there is not one who is unable or unworthy from the autocratic standpoint to carry on the traditions of the house. They are all youn
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
W ho is responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania , for the deliberate murder which has always remained deep in the consciousness of every American, and which at the outset turned this great nation against Germany? In the first place there was no mistake—no question of orders exceeded or disobeyed. Count von Bernstorff frankly, boldly, defiantly, and impudently advertised to the world, with the authority of the German Government, that the attempt to sink the Lusitania would be made. The Forei
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
T he talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too, of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
An Unpublished Diary K aiserdom is an institution with which the American people are really unacquainted—a complex institution the parallel of which does not exist elsewhere. How it sought to play double with the United States is in a general way familiar to Americans, but I think the record of what happened in the eighteen months preceding our break with Germany will illustrate exactly the currents and cross-currents of official opinion which led the United States to be scrupulously cautious in
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
The Diary Continued O ctober , 1915. There is a tendency here to say Bernstorff went too far. But this is all for the public, von Jagow told a correspondent so to-day; but, of course, he did not know about the note of Austria to Servia either! The Marine people are positively raging. The paper which Reventlow writes for, the Tages Zeitung , was suppressed yesterday; I hear on account of an article on this Arabic settlement, but I am not yet sure. There is talk now of marching to Egypt. More and
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
The Diary Continued J anuary , 1916. Many of the intelligent rich are expressing the fear that after this war the Socialist high price system, governmental seizure of food, control of raw materials, etc., will be continued and also that the owners of large landed estates will be compelled to subdivide them. We are getting vague and conflicting reports in the newspapers here about the sinking of the Persia . There seems to be no end to this business. Perhaps it is best to have the inevitable come
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
The Diary Concluded A ugust , 1916. Count Andrassy, leader of the opposition to Tisza in Hungary, has been here for some time. He lunched with us one day and I had a talk with him in German. Andrassy is rather old and tired. Andrassy's father, the Prime Minister, was originally a great friend of Germany. It is possible that Andrassy through German influence may be made Minister of Foreign Affairs instead of Burian. This is to be the first step in a German coup d'état to take place on the death o
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
T he older I grow the more it seems to me that all men are alike and that they have been alike at all periods of history, capable of the same development and differing only because of environment. I do not believe, for example, that any mystery is concealed behind the faces of the peoples of the East. Once I asked Soughimoura, my colleague in Berlin, Ambassador of Japan, whether the Japanese were as much subject to nerves as western peoples. He answered in the affirmative but said they were taug
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
A s the king idea seems inseparably connected with war there is no country in the world where kings and princes have been held in such great account as in the Central Empires. I believe there are only two Christian kings in the world—the kings of Italy and of Montenegro—who are not by blood related to some German or Austrian royalty. For remember that while we think of Germany as ruled by the Kaiser and while it is his will that is certainly imposed upon the whole of that territory which does no
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
I had a shooting estate about twenty miles from Berlin, one that I could reach by automobile in forty-five minutes from the door of the Embassy. Because of the strict German game laws I had better shooting there than within two hundred miles of large cities in America. There seemed to be something to shoot there almost every day of the year. On the sixteenth of May the season opened for male roe—a very small deer. About the first of August the ducks, which breed in northern Germany, can be shot
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
E ven the women, many of whom are honorary colonels to regiments, must keep in trim for the great parade days of autumn and spring. Many of these female colonels appear in uniform, riding at the head of their regiments. They sit on side saddles, however, and wear skirts corresponding somewhat in colour with the uniform coat and helmet of the regiment of which they are the honorary proprietors. German female royalties are rather inclined to set an example of quietness in dress. They seldom wear t
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
T he apartments of Berlin are designed for outward show for which the Berliners have a weakness. They have great reception and dining-rooms called "representation rooms," but very little comfort or space in the sleeping quarters. It is impossible to think of dropping in suddenly on a Berliner for a meal. The dinners are always for as many people as the rooms will hold and are served by a caterer. Only two very distinguished guests may be invited. The host and hostess sit opposite each other at t
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
I have shown how the Kaiser is imbued with a desire of conquest, how, as he himself states, he dreamed a dream of world empire in which his mailed fist should be imposed upon all the countries of the earth. But the Kaiser alone could not have driven Germany into war. His system could. The head of one of the great banks of Germany told me in the first few weeks of the war that the Kaiser, when called upon at the last moment to sign the order for mobilisation by the General Staff, hesitated and d
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
F ew people in America perhaps realise how completely Austria-Hungary is under the domination of Germany and Kaiserism. There are those who think that the hand of the Vienna Government was forced by Berlin when the ultimatum to Serbia was answered so reasonably by the little country to the south, but there can be no doubt that Austria has been ever since under the yoke of the German General Staff. And because the first break, the first glimpse of reasonable peace will in turn be forced on German
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
J ust as I had the opportunity to study conditions in Austria, so also I came in contact with the politics and diplomacy of the nations contiguous to Germany on the north. My grandfather, Benjamin F. Angel, was American Minister to Sweden and Norway and on leaving received from the King the Order of St. Olaf. I have always taken a deep interest in Scandinavian affairs and it behooves the American people to regard closely what is happening nowadays in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The outbreak of t
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
F ree Switzerland ! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs to a free republic. It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a return to liberty. Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the French Ambassad
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
A t Pontarlier, on the French frontier, a special train was waiting for my party and into this train a German-American inserted himself after first mixing his baggage with mine. I went through the train and this enterprising gentleman and another German-American were detained for some days at Pontarlier. One of them, later, on reaching Spain, reported immediately to the head of the German secret service there, thus justifying my suspicions. Fortunately when he subsequently arrived in Spain we ha
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
N eutrals —how obsolete the word seems! Yet there are some nations in Europe which will remain neutral no matter how great the hardship. How much this is due to inherent weaknesses of government, fears that the people may acquire too much of the infectious spirit of liberalism that war brings and thereby overthrow royalty, is hard to judge. But I must say that Kaiserism has omitted no word or act to impress upon the royalty of those countries, which might otherwise be inclined to aid the entente
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
G erman spies who looked like "movie" detectives hung about and followed us on the journey from Berlin to Switzerland, France and Spain. There were even suspicious characters among the Americans with German accent who came on our special train from Germany to Switzerland. Berne is now the champion spy centre of the world. Switzerland, a neutral country, bordering on Germany, France, Italy and Austria, is the happy hunting ground and outfitting point for myriads of spies employed by the nations a
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
O ur party was so numerous that we were compelled to charter a special train to take us from Madrid to La Coruña, the port in the extreme northwestern corner of Spain from which the Infanta Isabela was to sail. Just before the train started, a Spanish gentleman from the Foreign Office, who had courteously come to see us off, said to me, "Do you know you have a Duke as engineer?" "The Duke of Saragossa is going to take out your train." So we ran forward to the engine and I shook hands with the Du
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
A fter the appearance, in August, 1917, in the Philadelphia Public Ledger and other newspapers in America and the Telegraph in England of the message of the Kaiser to President Wilson, the official North German Gazette , evidently unaware of the fact that the original message of the Kaiser in his own hand was in my possession, published the following: "The London Daily Telegraph publishes from the memoirs of former Ambassador Gerard a telegram that His Majesty the Kaiser is alleged to have sent
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
I n a country where the supreme power swings between the Emperor and the impersonal General Staff, all are interested, since even an Emperor is mortal, in learning something about the heir who succeeds in case of death. And we who face with the rest of the world the forces of Kaiserism desire to know about this heir. The Crown Prince is about five feet nine, blond and slim. In fact, one of his weaknesses is his pride in an undeniably small waist which he pinches and his characteristic pose is wi
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
I remember a picture exhibited in the Academy at London, some years ago, representing a custom of the wars of the Middle Ages. A great fortress besieged, frowns down on the plain under the cold moonlight. From its towering walls the useless mouths are thrust forth—if refused food by the enemy, to die—the children, the maimed, the old, the halt, the blind, all those who cannot help in the defence, who consume food needed to strengthen the weakened garrison. Every country of the world to-day is i
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
T he Yankee finding himself, like Mark Twain's hero, suddenly transported back to King Arthur's Court is landed in a surprising and unknown world. But one of King Arthur's knights brought to life at the court of the present German Emperor aside from steam, electricity, gun powder, telegraph and telephones would find the system as despotic as in the days when the enchanter, Merlin, wove his spells and the sword Excalibur appeared from the depths of the magic lake. But while the system is as royal
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
O nce the Kaiser said to me, "I wish I had as much power as your President. He has far more power than I have." What would the Kaiser say of the power and prestige now enjoyed by the President of the United States? At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to make the world safe for Democracy." Charles I must turn enviously in his grave when his spi
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
N o one but a fortune teller or professional seer dares to predict the condition of the world after this war. Only mere suggestions can be thrown out, shadows of prophecy as to what may come. Will the tide of emigration turn from Europe and the United States to other countries or will people of German birth and descent leave America to return to the Fatherland after the war? I made it my business after I had learned German to talk to many of the plain people in Berlin and elsewhere, to get their
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