All this signified that the Hinzpeter propaganda of Christian Socialism had at last definitely captured the young Kaiser. Once enlisted, he threw himself with characteristic vehemence of energy into the movement. Events now crowded on each other’s heels.
On February 4th William issued his famous brace of rescripts to Bismarck and to the Minister of Commerce, reciting the woes and perils of German industrial classes, and ordaining negotiations with certain European States for a Labour Conference, “with a view to coming to an understanding about the possibility of complying with the needs and desires of labourers, as manifested by them during the strikes of the last few years and otherwise.”
“I am resolved,” wrote the Emperor, “to lend my hand toward bettering the condition of German working men as far as my solicitude for their welfare is reconcilable with the necessity of enabling German industry to retain its power of competing in the world’s market, and thus securing its own existence and that of its labourers. The dwindling of our native industries through any such loss of their foreign-markets would deprive not only the masters, but the men, of their bread.... The difficulties in the way of improving our working men’s condition have their origin in the stress of international competition, and are only to be surmounted, or lessened, by international agreement between those countries which dominate the world’s market.” Hence, he had decided upon summoning an International Labour Conference.
On the evening of the day on which William thus astonished Germany and Europe, he was the principal guest at a dinner given by Bismarck in his palatial residence in the Wilhelmstrasse, and it was noted that he took special pleasure in talking with Dr. Miquel, Chief Burgomaster of Frankfort, to whom he spoke with zeal and at length upon his desire to promote the welfare and protect the natural rights of the labouring classes. Court gossip was swift to mark Miquel as a coming man, and to draw deductions of its own from the story that Bismarck had, even as the host of an emperor, seemed preoccupied and depressed.
A fortnight of unexampled uncertainty, of contradictory guesses and paradoxical rumours, now kept Berlin, and all Germany for that matter, in anxious suspense. That Bismarck had been confronted with a crisis was evident enough. Day after day he was seen to be holding prolonged conferences with the young Emperor, and the wildest surmises as to the character of these interviews obtained currency. There were stories of stormy scenes, of excited imperial dictation and angry ministerial resistance, which had no value whatever as contributions to the sum of popular information, but which were everywhere eagerly discussed. The weight of Berlin opinion inclined toward the theory that Bismarck would in the end submit. He had never in his life shown any disposition to make sacrifices for political consistency, and it was assumed that, once his personal objections were overcome, he would not at all mind adapting his political position to the new order of things. This view was, of course, based upon the idea that the Kaiser really desired to retain Bismarck in office; the loosest German imagination did not conceive the actual truth: to wit, that the Chancellor’s retirement had been decided upon, and was the one end at which all these mystifying moves and counter-moves aimed.