Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

The King’s displeasure with the Kaiser could be attributed to more than politics, the German Ambassador in London, Count Metternich, told von Bülow. ‘It is said that the Kaiser talked freely in yachting circles about the loose morals of English Society, and in particular about King Edward’s relationship with Mrs Keppel. King Edward is very touchy on this subject and this seems to have annoyed him especially.’

Nevertheless, in an effort to allay German suspicions about the entente cordiale and the Anglo–Russian détente, both of which the Wilhelmstrasse was endeavouring to break, the King wrote to the Kaiser on his fortyseventh birthday in 1906 to assure him that England ‘never had any aggressive feelings towards Germany’ and — less convincingly — that, since the sovereigns of the two countries were ‘such old friends and near relations’, the King felt sure that ‘the affectionate feelings’ which had ‘always existed’ would continue. The Kaiser replied in the same vein, reminding the King of the silent hours when they had both watched beside the deathbed of ‘that great sovereign lady’, Queen Victoria, ‘as she drew her last breath’ in her grandson’s arms; and affirming that the King’s letter, which ‘breathed such an atmosphere of kindness and warm sympathy’, constituted ‘the most cherished gift’ among his birthday presents.

When King and Kaiser met again the next year at Wilhelmshöhe both made an attempt to live up to these protestations of affection, the King — as Charles Hardinge told the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey — ‘studiously avoiding all reference to political questions in which Great Britain and Germany [were] interested’. Afterwards the King wrote to tell Prince George how pleased with the Kaiser he had been. But ‘although the King was outwardly on the best of terms with the German Emperor, and laughed and joked with him’, Hardinge ‘could not help noticing that there was no [such] real intimacy between them’ as there was between the King and the old Emperor of Austria, whom the King described to Sir Lionel Cust as ‘a dear old man’. As Frederick Ponsonby observed, ‘there was always a feeling of thunder in the air whenever the King and the [Kaiser] were together … There were always forced jokes and the whole atmosphere seemed charged with electricity … Both were such big personalities that they each tended to dominate the conversation.’ Ponsonby was thankful ‘when the talk kept’ — as the King always endeavoured to keep it — ‘on family topics and things that did not matter’. The atmosphere during the return visit, which the Kaiser made to England the following year, was no less uneasy. At the last moment, either because he was offended by the reluctance of the English to accept an escort of German battleships at Portsmouth or because he feared that he might be embarrassed by remarks about the impending trial of his friend, Count Philipp Eulenburg, who was accused of homosexual offences, the Kaiser sent a telegram to say that ‘bronchitis’ and an ‘acute cough’ prevented him from coming. Persuaded to change his mind, the Kaiser arrived as planned on 11 November 1907, looking, as the King archly observed when proposing a toast to his guests at a banquet the next evening at Windsor, ‘in splendid health’.

As usual, the King tried to avoid all political discussion with his nephew; but the Kaiser found audiences elsewhere and profoundly affronted many of them.

There were reports of savagely anti-Semitic tirades. There were even more alarming accounts of long monologues at the Hampshire house which had been rented for him, Highcliffe Castle, where he propounded the eccentric view that it was by adopting his strategic plan that the British army had saved itself from ultimate disgrace in the Boer War. The Kaiser also maintained that, out of family loyalty, he had vetoed proposals at the beginning of the war for an anti-British coalition; that he had stood almost alone in holding back the anti-British feelings in Germany; that he was England’s best friend; and that the English were ‘mad as March hares’ not to recognize it. When the gist of these remarks appeared in the Daily Telegraph of 28 October 1908, the King expressed the opinion that ‘of all the political gaffes’ which the Kaiser had made this was ‘the greatest’. Yet there was a worse one to come. A fortnight later the New York World provided a censored synopsis of an interview with the Kaiser which the New York Times had decided was ‘so strong’ that it could not be printed. And although he later repudiated the remarks attributed to him by the interviewer, W.B. Hale, the Kaiser was now on record as having said that war between England and Germany was inevitable, that the sooner it came, the better, that Great Britain was degenerate and her King corrupt. The King wrote in a profoundly aggrieved tone to Francis Knollys:

I know the E[mperor] hates me, and never loses an opportunity of saying so (behind my back) whilst I have always been civil and nice to him … I have, I presume, nothing more to do than to accept [his emphatic denial]. I am, however, convinced in my mind that the words attributed to the G[erman] E[mperor] by Hale are perfectly correct … As regards my visit to Berlin, there is no hurry to settle anything at present. The Foreign Office, to gain their own object, will not care a pin what humiliation I have to put up with …

Had he been able to please himself, the King, who knew very well that the Kaiser, in Eckardstein’s words, treated him ‘as a subject for schoolboy jokes’, would never have spoken to him again. But approached once more to meet him in an endeavour to smooth the path towards a better understanding between their two countries — and to halt competition in building up naval armaments — the King agreed to see the Kaiser on his way to Marienbad in 1908 and, on this occasion, to talk about important political matters rather than trivial family affairs. They met accordingly at Friedrichshof Castle one morning in August. The King had in his pocket a memorandum about naval expenditure which had been prepared for him by the Foreign Secretary. And as the morning wore on and the two sovereigns remained alone together, it began to be hoped that the basis for agreement was being prepared. Two hours passed, then three; and it was not until the early afternoon that the door was opened and the King and Kaiser emerged. All sorts of matters had been discussed, the King confided to Hardinge before luncheon, ‘with the exception of naval armaments’. He had ‘touched on the question and mentioned the document in his pocket’; but the Kaiser had ‘neither asked to see the paper nor to know its contents’, and the King had ‘therefore considered that it would be more tactful on his part not to force upon [him] a discussion which he seemed anxious to avoid’.

Thankful, as always, to have an excuse not to risk a scene with his nephew, who would certainly in the course of it have shown off his detailed knowledge of British and German naval construction, the King then left it to Hardinge to have further talks with the Kaiser during the afternoon and evening. In the course of these talks the Kaiser ‘made several satirical allusions to England’s policy and her new friends’, Hardinge reported to Edward Grey, ‘and endeavoured to show what a good friend he had been to England in the past.’ He again alleged that he had declined to enter a coalition against England, proposed by the Russian and French governments, during the Boer War and that he had, on the contrary, ‘threatened to make war on any Power that dared to make an unprovoked attack on England’. He referred once more to the plan of campaign which his general staff had drawn up for the guidance of the British army after its early reverses in that war, a plan which ‘had been followed by Lord Roberts in all its details’. And he complained that, whereas he was constantly sending his statesmen to London, no English statesman, with the exception of Lord Rosebery ‘many years ago and Mr Haldane quite recently’, was ever sent to Berlin.