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Updated: May 31, 2025
A rupture at that time would have destroyed all the efforts of the Foreign Office to keep the German military machine within bounds. It would have over-thrown von Jagow and von Bethmann-Hollweg and put in von Tirpitz as Chancellor and von Heydebrand, the reactionary leader of the Prussian Diet, as Secretary of State.
In turn, the Kaiser gave this notion of the treaty as a scrap of paper to his Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, who engraved, as has been said, "on eternal brass the infamy of Germany": "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. We were compelled to override the the just protest of Luxembourg and Belgian Governments.
According to my knowledge of things, the matter is a fake, inasmuch as *our factories have bound themselves orally and by word of honour to do nothing in the present situation which might help the United States." As further evidence of this definite policy, witness a letter from Consul-General Hossenfelder to the Imperial German Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg.
The President had been anxious to make plain his principles, before the United States became involved in the conflict through the withdrawal of German submarine pledges, as well as to convince the world that every honest effort possible had been made to preserve the peace. He was only just in time. Already the advocates of ruthlessness in Berlin had persuaded the Kaiser and Bethmann-Hollweg.
No doubt any chancellor, including Doctor von Bethmann-Hollweg, would be glad to divide the Reichstag as definitely and easily as I have done. Theoretically these divisions may be useful to the reader, but practically to the leader they are useless.
At the time of the Zabern Affair, Scheidemann claimed that the resignation of the Chancellor must logically follow a vote of want of confidence; and it was von Bethmann-Hollweg who refused to resign, saying that he was responsible to the Emperor alone.
Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, in a cryptic remark to the Reichstag on September 28, 1916, succeeded in aggravating American concern, though he may not have so intended. "A German statesman," he said, "who would hesitate to use against Britain every available instrument of battle that would really shorten this war should be hanged."
In my final conversation on the subject with von Bethmann-Hollweg, he said, "You don't mean to say that President Wilson and Secretary Bryan will do anything for the Standard Oil Company?"
Germany claims that up to the last minute of the last fatal week she was working for peace. Bethmann-Hollweg insinuates that on July 31st a last decision was to have fallen in Vienna; he does not tell us what that decision would have been, but he maintains that Russia's military preparations forestalled it and so the decision was never arrived at.
He therefore advocated that no concessions be made to Washington. Von Bethmann-Hollweg was of the opposite opinion. A deadlock resulted, which was broken when the Kaiser summoned both men to separate and secret conferences. He decided in favour of the Chancellor, whereupon Washington received the famous "Arabic Guarantees."
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