Germany -- Politics and government -- 1888-1918; William II, German Emperor, 1859-1941
We have suggested that the telegram was partly due to a certain
element of chivalry in the Emperor's character. The Emperor was well
acquainted with other forms of government and other social systems
besides his own, and though a Hohenzollern could put himself in the
position of the chief of the little Boer republic, threatened as he
was with annihilation by a mighty and powerful opponent. Moreover,
there is always to be remembered the sympathy of view, particularly of
religious view, that existed in the two men as regarded their attitude
and duties to their respective "folk." The President had appealed to
the Emperor for help. The Emperor had had to refuse it, but had wired
that he would do all he could "diplomatically." He knew that this was
but a poor sort of assistance, but it was something, and when the Raid
occurred he gave the diplomatic assistance he had promised by sending
a telegram of congratulation. In any case--_tempi passati_. Foreign
policy is not concerned with sympathies or antipathies, and the whole
episode should be ignored, or, better still, forgotten.
The Kruger telegram, it turned out, was to usher in a long period of
tension between two countries of the same race, singularly alike in
their ideals of whatever is sound and praiseworthy in Christian
civilization, and almost equally mutual admirers of the fundamental
features of each other's national character. Unfortunately, along with
these fundamental features of the English and German national
characters, the love of money, the _auri sacra fames_, has to be
reckoned with, and in the race of nations for wealth and power the
fundamental qualities are apt, for a time, to be overborne and cease
to act. The rise of the modern German Empire to power and prosperity,
and the new world-situation thus created, largely by the Emperor, is
at the bottom of Anglo-German tension. As a main contributory cause of
both the power and the prosperity, was the creation of the German navy
at the period of which we write.
The following is a parable which he who runs may read:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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