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Updated: May 31, 2025
At the head of the ministry is the Chancellor, appointed by the Emperor; and the other Ministers, such as Colonies, Interior, Education, Justice and Foreign Affairs, are but underlings of the Chancellor and appointed by him. The Chancellor is not responsible to the Reichstag, as Bethmann-Hollweg clearly stated at the time of the Zabern affair, but only to the Emperor.
Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg has declared before the Commission of the National Assembly that he had not sufficient faith in Mr. Wilson's peace intervention to advise the Emperor to oppose the demand of G. H. Q. for the declaration of unrestricted submarine war. At the end of this chapter I give a report which I drew up on the attitude of American public opinion towards intervention.
Of course, the President thus referred to the address made by Bethmann-Hollweg in the Reichstag in December, in which, after reviewing generally the military situation, the Chancellor said: "In a deep moral and religious sense of duty towards this nation and beyond it towards humanity, the Emperor now considers that the moment has come for official action towards peace.
It is inconceivable that the German reactionaries will abdicate of their own free will. It is equally inconceivable that the reaction will develop slowly and gradually into a free democratic government, as von Bethmann-Hollweg would make us believe in the historic speech of February 27. No doubt this war has hastened on the day of retribution.
As he has never tried to obtain anything from the Emperor, he has become quite intimate with him and with all the members of the royal family. The Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, is an enormous man of perhaps six feet five or six. He comes of a banking family in Frankfort. It is too soon to give a just estimate of his acts in this war.
We formed for a while quite a happy family. The French owners of the villa seemed to have had a fondness for mechanical toys. After dinner every night these toys were set going, much to the amusement of von Bethmann-Hollweg.
The opposition of Bethmann-Hollweg and the German foreign office was accordingly brushed aside, and the army made all preparations for an invasion of France through Belgium. The diplomatists would have made a stouter resistance had they anticipated the attitude England was to adopt.
No importance can be attached to this idea, in spite of the views expounded by the Imperial Chancellor, v. Bethmann-Hollweg, in his speech of November 9, 1911. We need not, therefore, regard this convention as definitive. It is as liable to revision as the Algeciras treaty, and indeed offers, in this respect, the advantage that it creates new opportunities of friction with France.
If the Germans were indifferent to this one elementary rule of the white race in equatorial Africa the white man's law that no white man be degraded before a native then the Belgian would show the Hun how to play the game. "We must hack our way through," said Bethmann-Hollweg. And we, in Morogoro, were very curious to see what manner of vengeance the Belgians might wreak.
This must include not only the Kaiser but Field Marshal von Hindenburg and the generals in control of the army, the Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, who did not keep his promises to the United States and the naval leaders who have been intriguing and fighting for war with America for over two years.
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