Stupidity

The eve of the opening of the new Reichstag found German party differences unsettled. Efforts were made by Chancellor Wilhelm Marx and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann to come to an agreement with Dr. Hergt, leader of the Nationalists (Monarchists), regarding the formation of a new Coalition Government in which the Nationalists would take part.

The demands put forward by the Nationalists were such that the Moderates declined to answer them. The Marx Ministry, unable to gain Monarchist support resigned. President Ebert accepted the resignation, requested Chancellor Marx to "carry on" until after he had conferred with party leaders upon the formation of a new ministry. It was believed in Berlin political circles that the resigning Chancellor would again be asked to head the next Government. All chance of a working agreement between Moderates and Monarchists appeared indefinitely remote.

The differences between the Government parties and the Nationalists centre mainly upon the adoption of the Experts' Reports. The Government is anxious to bow to the Allies and pass the Reports without any handles. The Nationalists insist upon handles because of their utility, but are by no means disposed to scrap the Reports. Negotiations seemed to be progressing toward a compromise when the Nationalists suddenly demanded that Grand Admiral von Tirpitz be made Chancellor as the price of their entry into the Government.

Prussian diplomacy is notoriously a myth; but as a model pf tactlessness, the advocacy of bewhiskered Tirpitz as Chancellor crossed the border of crass stupidity. Fortunately, the German press outdid the foreign press in harsh condemnation of so foolhardy a proposal, and this unfavorable criticism was not confined to the journals of Nationalist opposition.

Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz had grown up with the German Navy; they met each other in childhood; they left each other in old age. He was never a child of the Navy, the Navy was a child of his. In his Memoirs (1919) he said: "My rise is bound up with the development of the torpedo arm." It was dependent upon more than that. His hostility to Britain had been conceived when the German Navy was but a pup. His intense desire to have a better and bigger navy than Britain's made him a willing tool to Kaiser "Bill's" inimical whimsicalities. He descended to cheating the Reichstag by framing the naval estimates with much cunning and deceit. He was responsible to a large extent for Germany's naval policy during the War, became embroiled with Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, retired in 1917. From this time onward he never ceased to advocate "ruthless submarine warfare," although at first he had stoutly championed "ruthless dreadnaught and torpedo boat warfare." He became one of Germany's inhuman monsters--pitiless, murderous, unashamed. His conduct during the War was undoubtedly actuated by his intense fidelity to the tradition which he had built up in the Navy, by his inherent Prussian cruelty, and by his great belief in the omnipotence of the Fatherland. His record during those days, even if brought out into the sunlight, is black--unnecessarily black. And, as if it were not black enough, he said in his Memoirs that Germany had lost the War through not being ruthless enough.