This curious admixture of religion and diplomacy was made the more complicated when the Imperial Chancellor informed the Reichstag, on December 7, 1898, that one of the purposes of the Emperor’s visit to His Ottoman Majesty was to make it plain that the German Government did not propose to recognize anywhere “a foreign protectorate over German subjects.” This served notice to France that Germany would not respect the French claim to exclusive protection of Catholic missionaries in the Ottoman Empire. “We do not lay claim,” said Prince von Bülow, “to a protectorate over all Christians in the East. But only the German Emperor can protect German subjects, be they Catholics or Protestants.”[29] This pronouncement was received in France with undisguisedly poor grace. One writer in a prominent fortnightly magazine frankly expressed his disgust: “Germany possesses military power; she possesses economic power; she proposes to acquire maritime power. But she needs the support of moral power. On the world’s stage she aspires to play the part of Principle. To base her world-wide prestige upon the protection of Christianity, Protestant and Catholic; to centralize the divergent sources of German influence; to have all over the globe a band of followers, at once religious and economic in their interests, who will propagate the German idea, consume German products, and, while professing the gospel of Christ, will preach the gospel of the sacred person of the Emperor—these are the ultimate ends of the world policy of William II.”[30] Closely allied with the spread of German missions was the propagation of _das Deutschtum_—that is, the spread of the German language, instruction in German history and ideals, appreciation of the character of German civilization. German religious schools in the Near East were dynamos of German cultural influence. The _Jerusalems-Verein_ alone, for example, maintained, in 1902, eight schools with more than 430 pupils. In these schools German was taught. This also was the case with the Catholic schools, under German influence. Even the Jews—a large number of whom had emigrated from Germany because of anti-Semitic feeling there—carried with them their German patriotism. The _Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden_, the German section of _L’Alliance Israélite Universelle_, not only taught German in its own schools, but made a strenuous effort to have German adopted as the official language of all Zionist schools in the Near East.[31]