change in public opinion abroad concerning the personal military ambitions of our Kaiser is of immense value. From the speech by Prince Wilhelm (February 8, 1888), in which he protested against such “criminal imprudence,” to the February decrees of this year – which, with irrefutable logic, imparted the certainty that this ruler was intent, insofar as he was capable, on seeking greatness in works of peace – the Kaiser has been working to lift the fog of this prejudice – to dispel it at last with the warm sunbeams of new ideas about the common weal and the struggle against human misery. Any hint of a pretext that Germany or the Triple Alliance is toying with ideas of an attack (one that would have to be preempted) has now vanished. But we know that this would have always been just a pretext. The real reason for the danger of war is solely Pan-Slav fanaticism on the one hand and the chauvinistic notion of [French] revanche on the other. Power and power alone is capable of subduing these demons. It is Prince Bismarck who created this power for us in the form of the Triple Alliance; he is the one who created this power for us in his own hands.
This is the juncture at which foreign policy blends into domestic affairs. Bismarck managed to make clear to the German people the necessity of bearing a heavy burden of armaments without provoking the neighbors against whom these efforts are directed: on the contrary, he managed to fashion that wonderful speech of February 6, 1888, in which he justified these efforts simultaneously as an announcement and a guarantee of peace. The slow dissipation of war anxieties dates from this speech and the publication of the alliance treaties.
In the years 1888 and 1889, the Reichstag granted the funds for military armaments almost unanimously. At that time, one viewed this as a reaction to an external threat that compelled even the opposition parties to agree. Increasingly, though, it is becoming apparent that this unanimity had a greater significance: it ushered in the final renunciation of fundamental opposition to the military. Certainly, it has not been practically tested, but political circles have little doubt any longer that even the German Radical Party, once it is faced with serious responsibility, will hardly take a different stance on the army question than the Cartel.* Of course, conflicts will continue – about individual barracks and fodder rations, officers' orderlies and fortress commandants, the regiment Garde du Corps and officers' quarters. But the parties will neither dare to challenge the fundamentals of the existing army constitution nor reject any substantial new demands that the government might put forth. In fact, the greater these demands, the less likely they are to be rejected. Whose achievement is this radical transformation of our party scene? It is Prince Bismarck's achievement, for it constitutes the lasting after-effect of the Septennat elections [of February 1887]. Never again in the foreseeable future will the opposition risk having the Reichstag dissolved because of an army issue. All the rumbling and grumbling in the German Radical press against militarism is nothing but a rearguard action. The National Liberals, too, took more than a decade before they were able to free themselves completely from their [anti-]military views and their catchphrases from the age of conflict.** Thus, the
* The loose alliance of pro-government parties (German Conservatives, Free Conservatives, and National Liberals) that supported Bismarck's policies from 1887 to 1890 – ed.
** Referring to the constitutional conflict between the Prussian government and the liberal majority in the Prussian House of Deputies in 1861-66; the latter opposed the government's army increases – ed.
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