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Last winter the Socialists of Munich, who saw that the rich were having plenty of food and that the poor were existing as best they could in food kitchens, wrote Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg and demanded the immediate confiscation of all food in Germany, even that in private residences.
The Reichstag met shortly after Germany had compulsorily disposed of her connections with the United States. An expected address by the kaiser's Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, had been deferred until February 27, 1917, when a tardy official recognition was made of the American action.
It seems to me that this denial makes the case rather worse than before. At the Chancellor's house in the evenings we had discussions on the submarine situation and I had several long talks with von Bethmann-Hollweg alone in a corner of the room while the others listened to music or set the mechanical toys in motion.
It was on this occasion that Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg informed me that he could not help consenting to the U-boat war, as the German people would never have understood it if we had concluded an unsatisfactory peace, without attempting to bring about a happy decision by means of the last and most effective weapon in which the nation felt any confidence.
Concurrent with the new Von Tirpitz propaganda, at any rate, came a recrudescence of submarine destruction without warning, mainly in the Mediterranean. This activity lent weight to a fear that the kaiser and Von Bethmann-Hollweg were yielding to the pressure exercised by the Von Tirpitz party.
The British Press was growing dubious as to our determination in winning the war, hence Stürmer's assurance to bamboozle the world was highly necessary." "That relieves us of much anxiety," remarked Bethmann-Hollweg, chewing the end of his cigar. "We were beginning to fear that Stürmer might be leaning towards England." Rasputin made a gesture in the negative.
The latter seemed very wary at the outset, but he warmed up at last and in the course of the conversation told me he had reliable information that when Bethmann-Hollweg went to Munich just before the beginning of the allied offensive in the west in June he told the King of Bavaria that he was confident the Allies would be obliged to begin overtures for peace next October; adding that if they didn't Germany would have to do so.
He said that the restrictions as to submarines imposed by Germany's acceptance of the President's ultimatum after the Sussex affair, were growing burdensome and intolerable to the military and naval masters of Germany and that they were bringing all kinds of pressure to bear upon the leaders of the Civil Government, notably Von Bethmann-Hollweg and Foreign Minister Von Jagow, to repudiate the undertaking.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg said that one of the principal reasons why Germany had determined upon a resumption of ruthless submarine warfare was because of this speech of the President to the American Senate.
This law was overwhelmingly defeated in the Reichstag in February, 1913, but the Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg declared that it was an affair of Prussia, with which the Reichstag has nothing to do, and the sand-paper of the Prussian bureaucracy will probably be rubbed upon the Polish wound anew.
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