Dreadnought
Page 89
The scene in the House of Commons on July 23 was too much for Arthur Balfour. On August 9, the day before the climactic vote in the House of Lords, the leader of the opposition departed England for a vacation in the Austrian Alps. There, amid “the cataracts, the pines, and the precipices”60 of Badgastein, he reflected upon his life, then in its sixty-fourth year. Politics seemed “quite unusually odious”61; it was time to devote himself to philosophy; he already had a short article in mind. That autumn on returning to England, the elegant prince of the House of Commons resigned the leadership of the Unionist Party. His successor was a Glasgow steel manufacturer, born in Canada, named Andrew Bonar Law.
fn1 Placed in the House in the fourteenth century to proclaim the nation’s wealth in the wool trade.
fn2 Dreadnoughts cost roughly £1.5 million apiece; the eight authorized in 1909 eventually cost British taxpayers at least £12 million.
fn3 Asquith was not bluffing. Although, at one point, he declared that he would ask the King to create only enough new peers to carry the Parliament bill through the House of Lords by a majority of one, he already was drawing up lists of Liberal gentlemen whom the King might be asked to ennoble. One list of 249 names survives. It contains men of varied distinction: forty-four were baronets and fifty-eight were knights; there were four generals and one admiral (one of the generals was Baden-Powell, defender of Mafeking and founder of the Boy Scouts); history was represented by G. M. Trevelyan and G. P. Gooch; the law by Sir Frederick Pollock; commerce by the South African millionaire Abe Bailey; classics by George Gilbert Murray; philosophy and mathematics by Bertrand Russell; the theater by J. M. Barrie; and fiction by Thomas Hardy and Anthony Hope (author of The Prisoner of Zenda).
fn4 The Times, the stalwart, schoolmasterish voice of Conservative England, stood with Lansdowne. It reproached Lord Halsbury and his “Ditchers” for their use of “picturesque phrases, such as ‘nailing the colors to the mast,’ ‘going down with the flag flying,’ and ‘dying in the last ditch’... [phrases which, in real life] stir the heart and fire the blood. What makes... [these phrases] so splendid is the majesty of death. But the heroic peers will not go down or die in the last ditch; they will only be out-voted. That is not the majesty of death but the bathos of the stage; and to assume airs about it is not tragedy but melodrama.”
Chapter 36
The Eulenburg Scandal
When Asquith drew Balfour aside in November 1908 to say that he could give no explanation for Germany’s behavior except that “the internal condition of Germany1 was so unsatisfactory that they might be driven to the wildest adventures,” he was referring to the upheavals caused by the Eulenburg Affair and the Kaiser’s Daily Telegraph interview. “PRUSSIAN COURT SCANDALS”2 headlined the London Times, as reporters from around the globe sat in a Berlin courtroom writing stories which bathed the leadership of the German Empire in a lurid glow. Before the conclusion of these events, shock waves had rolled through German society, the Kaiser had suffered two nervous collapses, and the Chancellor had announced in the Reichstag, “It is false and foolish3 to suppose that because some members of society have failings, the nobility as a whole is corrupt or the army destroyed.”
The diplomatic policy of Bülow and Holstein—threatening war with France over Morocco; attempting to smash the Anglo-French Entente before it took root—had spectacularly failed. The Kaiser, who in his delight at the fall of Delcassé had made Bülow a prince, was frustrated and angry. Someone would have to pay. Bülow, who had adopted, administered, and taken credit for Holstein’s strategy as long as it was successful, was determined not to be the scapegoat.
In the spring of 1906, during the humiliation at Algeciras, Holstein’s personal position in Berlin worsened. State Secretary von Richthofen, whom Holstein was accustomed to ignoring, died in January and was replaced by Heinrich von Tschirschky, a friend of the Kaiser’s whom Holstein disliked. Tschirschky reciprocated the feelings. After Algeciras, it occurred simultaneously to Bülow and Tschirschky that the moment had come to rid themselves completely of Holstein. The First Counselor, aware of the tremors beneath him, resorted to his customary tactic: on April 2, he handed his resignation to Bülow. On April 4, Bülow told Holstein that he would do nothing until he had discussed the matter with the Kaiser. On April 5, before he had seen William, Bülow fainted on the floor of the Reichstag and was carried home to bed. From his bed, the Chancellor instructed Tschirschky to forward Holstein’s resignation to the Emperor with the recommendation that it be accepted. When William received the document, he signed it immediately.
Holstein, stunned at his sudden downfall, quickly turned his formidable powers to ferreting out the enemy who had brought it about. He discounted Bülow: the Chancellor had been his protégé and ally for thirty years; Bülow always had been elaborately respectful of the First Counselor’s special role at the Wilhelmstrasse; besides, Bülow had been home in bed. Tschirschky, he knew, lacked the authority to persuade the Kaiser to such a deed. Then Holstein learned that, on April 17, the day William had countersigned the resignation, Prince Philip von Eulenburg had been at the Palace for lunch. Holstein looked no further. This friend of the Kaiser, who had helped overthrow chancellors and state secretaries during the nineties, had once again wielded personal power over the Emperor. His enemy, Holstein was convinced, was Prince Philip von Eulenburg.
The greatest influence on Philip von Eulenburg’s life, he always said, was his mother. Alexandrine von Rothkirch-Eulenburg was a woman of artistic temperament who delighted in music and showed considerable skill as an amateur painter. From his mother, Philip inherited his enthusiasm for nature, art, music, and poetry, and a desire for intimate friendships. Countess von Eulenburg lived until her son was fifty-five and spent as much time at his side as possible; when apart, they wrote to each other daily.
Eulenburg’s father, an old-fashioned, hardbitten Prussian who had been a soldier, found little good in the artistic interests of his wife and children. Philip was as closed with his father as he was open with his mother. “I could never put into words,”4 he wrote later, “what the world of the imagination meant to me in childhood.... The narrow world in which my parents lived at that time, my father’s perpetual injunctions to reduce expenses, filled me with bitterness.”
Heir to a Junker, a young Count von Eulenburg would become a soldier, and Philip was entered as a cadet in the Garde du Corps (the Royal Bodyguard Regiment) at Potsdam. He was inept and hated the “torment of unfair, narrow-minded, and coarse-natured5 superiors.” When the Franco-Prussian War broke out and the regiment went to the front, his commanding officer left him behind. Eventually, he was transferred to a staff position in which he so charmed his new commander that, although Philip had never been in combat, the officer procured for him an Iron Cross for bravery. When the war ended, his mother won his father’s permission for Philip to leave the army. He went to Leipzig and Strasbourg universities, earned a doctorate in law, and began to work, without enthusiasm, in the courts. At twenty-eight, he married a Swedish countess, who over eleven years produced eight children. Marriage was an ordeal for Eulenburg. His wife, said a friend, was “terribly boring.”6 “Her conversation was negligible,”7 said another friend. “She was entirely eclipsed by the brilliant Phili whom she looked up to in idolizing love and wonderment.” “I enjoy family life little,”8 said Eulenburg. “I gladly go my way.”
Eulenburg embarked on a diplomatic career believing that this profession would give him more time to develop as an artist. “My official career9 as a diplomat was to me a torment,” he said later. “An artist every inch of me, and certain of success, I fought like a desperate creature against my father, who in his Old Prussian way recognized nothing but an official career, and looked upon all artistic activity as a pastime, a toy, for a Count Eulenburg.” He entered the Foreign Office at thirty through his friendship with Herbert Bismarck. (Eulenburg’s sister, Adda, was an intimate of the Chancellor’s daughter, Marie.) During Herbert’s unhappy love aff
air with Princess Elisabeth Carolath, Eulenburg had played a dual role: to the lovesick son he was the intimate friend to whom all could be confessed; to the worried parents he was the sensible young man who could guide their son back to the path of reason. Subsequently, a grateful Herbert had suggested that “dear Phili”10 join him in the diplomatic service.
Eulenburg’s career proceeded slowly. He was thirty-four before he received his first foreign assignment, in 1881, as Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris. His six-month tour was marked by the beginnings of a friendship with the Embassy’s Second Secretary, Bernhard von Bülow. Eulenburg’s second post was Munich, where he served as First Secretary of the Prussian Legation. His official duties were light and he was able to plunge into the cultural and artistic life of the Bavarian capital. Eulenburg had considerable amateur talent, and in each field he was self-taught. He wrote children’s stories which extracted enthusiastic praise from as unlikely a source as Friedrich von Holstein. Eulenburg’s plays were professionally produced in Berlin and Munich. Without formal architectural training, he designed Italianate halls and pavilions for the family estate at Liebenberg. He was proudest of his music. His “Rosenlieder” (Rose Songs) had three hundred printings over twenty-five years and sold 500,000 copies; he created ballads, “Skaldengesänge,” based on Norse sagas; these songs and ballads he frequently sang himself in a pleasant voice. He hoped to write an opera. Once in Paris, he sang one of his compositions for a famous professional singer, who urged him to study counterpoint. Offended, Eulenburg told Bülow as they were leaving, “I shall take care11 never to study counterpoint. It would only lame the wings of my genius.”
These talents, along with his brilliance as a conversationalist and raconteur, appealed to Prince William of Hohenzollern when Eulenburg, at thirty-nine, met the twenty-seven-year-old future Kaiser at a hunting party in May 1886. Eulenburg, tall, with a broad forehead, neatly trimmed beard, and large, expressive eyes, immediately captivated the younger man. While Philip sat at the piano, playing and singing his songs, William turned the pages. Beginning that summer William and Augusta invited him frequently to Reichenhall, where, William wrote later, Eulenburg “used to enliven our evenings12 with his piano playing and ballad singing. One of his finest compositions, the ‘Submerging of Atlantis,’ was my favorite piece of music. He was, like me, a great lover of nature and my wife and I had long, stimulating talks with him on art, music, and literature on our walks. He was great on the Italian Renaissance especially, and had many friends and acquaintances among notable artists in Munich.” William noted his new friend’s storytelling ability: “He was one of those13 fortunate people to whom, particularly when traveling, something comical always happens. Phili could tell these stories to universal hilarity.” Soon, William was introducing Eulenburg to his former tutor, Hinzpeter, as “my bosom friend,14 the only one I have.” “Whenever he came into our Potsdam home,” William recalled later, “it was like a flood of sunshine15 on the routine of life.”
Eulenburg responded enthusiastically to William’s friendship. His letters to the Prince were flowery: The Prince’s friendship, he said, “has become a radiance16 in my life; a letter from Prince William “I will lay among my most treasured gifts”17; a visit to Eulenburg’s home drew from Eulenburg’s children the relayed expression “that Prince William18 looked ‘so very handsome’ in uniform.” When William was downcast, Eulenburg lavished sympathy; when William was excited, Eulenburg heaped on praise. William received an unpleasant telegram: “He was very pale,”19 Eulenburg wrote to his friend Bülow, “and looked at me, half afraid, half miserable, questioning me with his beautiful blue eyes.” As Kaiser, William had given a speech: afterward, Bülow recorded, “Phil was so excited20 that he ran up... and kissed both His Majesty’s hands with the words, ‘I am overcome. I am overwhelmed!’”
The Bismarcks approved of the friendship. “It was very useful,21 your going to see Prince William,” Herbert wrote to Eulenburg in August 1886. “He thinks a great deal of you and has sung your praises to me in every kind of way. You must make use of this and... talk to him and get an influence over him. For the heaven-storming strain in most of his opinions must be more and more toned down, so that the Potsdam lieutenant’s outlook may gradually give way to statesmanlike reflections. Except for that, the Prince is really a pearl.” At the end of the summer, the two friends, William and Philip, set out together for Bayreuth to listen to Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal and to meet Wagner’s family, whom Eulenburg already knew. Again, Herbert Bismarck wrote approvingly: “So you are going to be in Bayreuth22 with Prince William.... I hope you will distract his mind so that the Wagnerian trombones may not damage his bad ear with their discords. Six hours of the Music of the Future would inflame even my drums. I am always afraid that the Prince will do too much, so energetic as he is in everything; and he must be prevented from that, for his health is of quite inestimable importance to the German nation.”
At this time, with Prince William’s father, Crown Prince Frederick, in apparent good health, it seemed unlikely that Prince William’s health would matter much to the German nation for a number of years. In fact, twenty-four months later, the young man was to become German Emperor. Even then, the Bismarcks continued to approve of the friendship. When William as Kaiser was forming a party for his first Norwegian cruise, Herbert suggested that Eulenburg go. “Your influence on His Majesty23 is an excellent one,” he said. Eulenburg’s unique relationship as bosom friend of the Emperor and trusted confidant of the Bismarcks ended in March 1890 with the Chancellor’s dismissal. In the great schism which divided society and the bureaucracy in the 1890s, Eulenburg chose William. When he attended Otto von Bismarck’s funeral in 1897, he walked up to Herbert to offer sympathy. Herbert coolly and ostentatiously turned his back.
When William ascended the throne, Eulenburg worried that the friendship would end, but the new monarch reassured him. “I would never have dreamed24 that my Kaiser would be the one who alone understands... [my] sensibility,” Eulenburg wrote to William. His intimacy with the young, assertive Emperor quickly gave Eulenburg a key role in the Imperial Government. Once Caprivi had replaced Bismarck and Marschall became State Secretary, Holstein assumed a dominant role at the Foreign Office. William and the reclusive First Counselor did not meet and the task of mediating between them fell to Eulenburg, whose unofficial title became “Ambassador of the German Government to the Kaiser.” In 1890, Marschall, nominally Eulenburg’s superior—Eulenburg was serving as Prussian Minister to the German state of Oldenburg—recognized Eulenburg’s influence: “If I feel a certain degree25 of confidence in setting to work, I owe that feeling not least to the kind, cordial words which you have been so good as to say to me. The confidence and friendly feeling that you offer me, I respond to with the heartfelt request that you will help me further by word and deed, in case of necessity, as also by unhesitating criticism.”
Holstein wrote to Eulenburg almost daily, requesting help in steering the Kaiser: “Perhaps His Majesty could say...”; “A useful subject for conversation would be...”; “You might suggest to His Majesty that he...”; “You must utter a warning against...” Holstein motivated Eulenburg with a blend of gratitude and warning about the Kaiser’s position: “Your letter of today26... gives me hope that with your help we may still restrain the Emperor—without it, we shall not...”; “The reason I feel it my duty to inform you in good time is that this directly concerns the personal prestige of your Imperial friend. That prestige is not in any case increasing—on the contrary. The nation does not take him seriously.”
Eulenburg carried out his “Embassy to the Emperor” primarily by letter; when the matter was urgent, he traveled to Berlin. Eulenburg also saw the Kaiser regularly at the annual Kaiserjagd (Royal Hunt) at Romintern; at shooting parties at his own Liebenberg estate near Berlin; sailing aboard the Meteor at Kiel Week (the only picture on William’s desk in his small cabin was Eulenburg’s), and on the annual all-male Norwegian cruises
every July. During these Wilhelmine vacations, Eulenburg enjoyed special privileges. His cabin aboard the Hohenzollern was always next to the Kaiser’s. When William summoned his elderly generals on deck for morning exercises, making them squat so that he could come up behind to give them a push and send them sprawling, Eulenburg was absent. “The Emperor has never touched me,”27 he said. “He knows I would not suffer it.” At shooting parties, where all were forced to wear green court shooting-dress with choking high collars and high brown boots with silver spurs, Eulenburg alone dared to reach up and unfasten his collar so that he could breathe.
Eulenburg’s great influence on the Kaiser in the middle 1890s led to speculation that he might be appointed State Secretary, or even Chancellor. Eulenburg rejected this talk, explaining that an official relationship with the Emperor “would impair my influence.”28 In 1894, when Caprivi was weakening and Eulenburg’s name was mentioned as a replacement, he begged the Kaiser never to ask him to accept the office. William laughed. “I agree with you29 that in one way you are entirely unfit to be Imperial Chancellor—you are too good-natured.”
Eulenburg felt comfortable rejecting the demanding role of State Secretary because he had found an intimate friend—an alter ego—who could do it for him. Bernhard von Bülow, Eulenburg’s Paris colleague, was ambitious and had the taste for power that Philip lacked. From the beginning, Bülow had seen in Eulenburg a useful friend. “I soon fell under the spell30 of ‘Phili’ Eulenburg,” Bülow wrote of their early years. Subsequently, Bülow said, Eulenburg became “the friend who has been31 nearest to my heart.” Eulenburg quickly put his talents to Bülow’s use. When Bülow was maneuvering to marry the divorced Countess Maria Donhoff, Eulenburg worked to smooth Bülow’s path at the Wilhelmstrasse. In 1888 Bülow was posted to Bucharest, where he was marooned for five years—and counted on Eulenburg to rescue him. Bülow understood Eulenburg’s effusive nature and wrote to him in the same language: “I have a great longing32 to see you again, dearest Philip”; “Nothing will ever be able33 to part us from each other”; “in the depths of our souls34 we think and feel alike... ever since I have known you I have... loved you from my heart.” In 1893, when there was talk that Eulenburg would replace Marschall as State Secretary, Philip shared his reservations with Bernhard: “A poor barndoor fowl35 like me, cockered up into an eagle. I can hear myself cackling instead of clawing, and see myself laying an egg instead of sitting with flaming eyes on the gable of 76 Wilhelmstrasse. The thing is out of the question.” Bülow indignantly rejected this self-description: “I—not as a friend36 but quite dispassionately speaking—consider you the ideal Secretary of State. You would not run about in the yard like a barnyard fowl, but as a faithful, wise and noble watchdog would guard the Emperor’s door. You have... intuitive genius... His Majesty’s complete confidence... a great name, social charm—in short, you have everything.”