Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3830/Unwritten Letters to the Kaiser
All-Highest War Lord,—To have received from you a letter written in your own gracious and weapon-bearing hand is an honourable privilege, under the weight of which many a General might have felt his knees tremble, and I confess that I too, though used to your Majesty's kindnesses, have not been unmoved.
Your Majesty asks me what I now think of this war of mine—I quote your words—and goes on to insinuate that in some measure the humble books that I have from time to time written, and the conversations I have held with your supreme self and with others, are responsible for what is now taking place in France, Flanders, and the Eastern seat of war. This insinuation I must with all my strength repudiate. It is true that I have been an advocate of war. For the Germans it was necessary that war should be the object of their policy in order that when the hour struck they might be able to attack their foes under the most favourable conditions and conquer them in the shortest possible time. But in saying this I made myself merely the echo of your Majesty's speeches and the faithful interpreter of your august mind. When you in words of matchless eloquence spoke of the mailed fist and bade your recruits shoot their parents rather than disobey their Kaiser, a humble General like myself could not go far wrong if he supposed that the thought of war was constantly in your Imperial mind. No other nation, I knew, had the purpose of attacking us, and I assumed therefore that if we were to gain the world-power at which we aimed we must be ready to attack other nations. Everything, however, depended on the conditions and the moment.
As for a war begun, as this war was begun, in a sudden fit of temper, I must use frankness with your Majesty and say that I never contemplated it. War against France—yes; and war against Russia, if needs must be, though even then I deny that we ought to have made ourselves the mere instrument of Austrian ambitions and allowed ourselves to be dragged into danger for the beaux yeux of the Ballplatz. But to manage things so ill as to make it certain that England must declare against us and that Italy must refuse to help us—this, indeed, was the masterstroke of stupidity. Your Majesty will, no doubt, say that this was the fault of Bethmann-Hollweg and von Jagow, but I am not sure that you yourself must not share with them the responsibility, for it was you who lost your head and gave the final word—which, of course, no one else could have given. You could have spared Belgium and kept England out of the war, so as to deal with her alone at a later date, but you took the bit between your autocratic teeth, and, alas, there was nobody who could stop you.
I say again, this is not my war. I never imagined it or planned it in this way, and I decline to be made responsible for it. I wanted a war that might be quickly prosperous and as safe for Germany as any war can be—a war of which we might keep the management in our own hands with great profit to ourselves. But now, though only four months have passed, we have lost the reins and Fate has taken them up and is directing the course of things. When that happens anything may happen. It is useless, therefore, to turn round and make accusations which are not founded in reason. My system was a good one and is still good, but it cannot now be used. There is nothing for it now except to continue hammering with our heads against a stone wall, which is not an agreeable occupation even when the heads are German.
Your Majesty's faithful subject,
Von Bernhardi.