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Updated: June 27, 2025
The absurd system of autocracy gives to the emotional reactions of an individual a preposterous weight in determining world-policy; and the almost insane feeling of the Kaiser about the sanctity of crowned heads was no doubt a main reason why Germany backed Austria in sending her ultimatum to Serbia.
His patronage of the Boers early in 1896 was a threatening sign; still more so was his World-Policy, proclaimed repeatedly in the following years, when the appointments of Tirpitz and Bülow showed that the threats of capturing the trident, and so forth, were not mere bravado.
On yet another occasion he explained that a prudent world-policy must go hand in hand with a sound protective policy for home industry, and that its basis must be a strong national home policy. There is nothing in all this, even supposing Germany's interests at that time were purposely exaggerated, to which the foreigner could reasonably object.
The visit was in reality made in pursuance of the Emperor's world-policy of economic expansion, but there were not a few politicians in England and America to assert that it was part of a deep scheme of the Emperor's to counteract too warm a development of Anglo-American friendship.
And now that the counter-revolutionaries have failed, France is almost as much out of sympathy with the Russian refugees as she is with the Bolsheviks themselves. Paris, however, remains the capital of Russia in exile. There are more distinguished Russians there than in any other capital of Europe, and Russian world-policy is organized from there. It is General Wrangel's civil headquarters.
"in saying that the task of the German people is a hard one.... I hope our peace will not be disturbed, and that the events that are now happening will open our eyes, steel our courage, and find us united, if it should be necessary for us to intervene in world-policy."
To this entire region, often termed in French expansionist circles "La France du Levant," the imperialists asserted that France had "imprescriptible historic rights running back to the Crusades and even to Charlemagne." Syria was a "second Alsace," which held out its arms to France and would not be denied. It was also the indispensable fulcrum of French world-policy.
The foreigner felt perhaps slightly uncomfortable when the same statesman, departing for a moment from his usual objective standpoint, spoke of the German "traversing the world with a sword in one hand and a spade and trowel in the other"; but otherwise no act of Germany's world-policy need have inspired alarm, or need inspire alarm at the present time, in sensible foreign minds.
However, all civilized nations nowadays see that war is the least satisfactory method of adjusting national quarrels, and the tendency is happily growing among them to pursue a commercial, an economic policy, a policy of peace. This is true Weltpolitik, true world-policy.
What particularly attracted the Emperor in the history of the Elector was the fact that he was the first Hohenzollern who saw the importance of promoting trade and industry, building a navy, and acquiring colonies. As yet, however, the Emperor had only clear and fairly definite ideas about the need for a navy. The world-policy may have been in embryo in his mind, but it was not born.
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