Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [153]
Chanceries buzzed, diplomatic pouches bulged with dispatches, ambassadors called on foreign ministers and endeavored in the prescribed conversational minuet to discover the intentions of the government to which they were accredited. Lord Salisbury appeared in a German report as “very skeptical” and the Emperor Franz Joseph as taking an “unfavorable” view and considering any limit on military development “unacceptable.” In Rome the Marquis Visconti-Venosta declined to be a delegate to a conference “which was not likely to be attended by any very useful results.” Washington would send delegates but would do nothing toward limitation of arms. Belgium awaited the conference with “regret and anxiety,” fearing that any alteration in the laws of war would confirm the powers of an invading army or restrict the rights of legitimate defence against invasion. Berlin’s reaction seemed expressed in the addition of three army corps to her forces. From capital to capital, reaction varied little: arms limitation was “impractical”; restriction on new developments unwanted; arbitration on matters involving “national honor or vital interest” unacceptable, although perhaps feasible on minor matters. Conduct of war, however, offered room for discussion.
Fearing that all the excited talk of the peace advocates about disarmament had caused misunderstanding of his proposal, Muraviev visited the capitals to explain in personal interviews that what Russia really wanted was simply a ceiling on the status quo. It seemed so sensible. The powers might even agree, he suggested, on a fixed percentage of their population to be called to arms, which would enable them greatly to reduce their armies while “retaining the same chances as before.” “Idiot,” noted the Kaiser on the margin of this memorandum.
No one was more agitated by the Czar’s proposal than Wilhelm II, in whose mind the military function was equivalent to the State as well as to himself, who personified the State. The white cloak and shining helmet he liked to pose in, the sparkle and color of uniforms, the gallop of cavalry, the panoply of regimental colors, the complicated rattle of ordnance, the whole paraphernalia of officer corps and Army, and lately, the brilliant vision of power upon the sea, were all facets of the same jewel—armed force. Everything else, Reichstag, political parties, budgets, votes, were more or less extraneous nuisances—except diplomacy, which was only properly understood by monarchs and invariably bungled at lower levels.
The Kaiser had come to the throne at twenty-nine, in 1888, after his father’s sad small reign of ninety days when liberal rule had flickered for a moment in Germany and gone out. His first proclamation on his accession was addressed, not like his father’s, “To My People,” but, “To My Army.” It announced, “We belong to each other, I and the Army; we were born for each other.” The relationship he had in mind was explained in advice to a company of young recruits: “If your Emperor commands you to do so you must fire on your father and mother.” His sense of personal responsibility for the affairs of Germany and of Europe was expressed in the frequent “I’s” and “My’s” that