Read the book: «The Secret Memoirs of Bertha Krupp», page 13

The Chancellor smiled. "I submit that Herr von Bohlen is entitled to six months' leave of absence."

"Six months for making yourself solid with my ward, and prepare for the greatest job ever entrusted to one man," decided the War Lord. "Now listen:

"I've already told you that I will hack my way to Calais and crush France absolutely. Essen's business, then, is to make all so-called works of peace wait upon the necessities of war – all, everything I say. Is that clear?"

"We are to attend only to orders from the German General Staff," replied von Bohlen.

"They come first, of course," said the War Lord, "but foreign orders for guns and ammunition must also be attended to if Berlin so advises. On that point there will be special instructions. But it's only the beginning – an obvious one, and the Krupp's have always been more than equal to regular demands from my War Office. However, in future these are sure to increase immeasurably, out of all proportion both in size and in variety."

Exhausted by the intense mobility of his ideas, the War Lord abruptly threw himself into the armchair, held in readiness for him by the obsequious Bülow, crossed his legs and struck a match. He carried it to his lips, holding it there; then, having burnt his fingers and moustache, dropped it, cursing madly. He now took a cigarette out of the silver gilt box offered him for the tenth time or oftener, but was too busy to light it.

"Krupp," he said, "I mean Bohlen – Krupp von Bohlen, a good name, we'll stick to it – Krupp, I want you to make me a gun capable of mowing down Dover Castle from Calais. Can't be done? It will have to be done!" And he brought his fist down on the table with a bang.

"I looked in at the Photographic Society the other day," he proceeded, "and saw an Adolf Menzel photo enlarged five times the original size. The operator just extended a piece of framework. I don't suppose it's quite as easy to double or treble the size or range of cannon, but the mind and energy now experimenting with my new twelve-inch howitzer should be capable of turning out a seventeen-inch or twenty-inch howitzer, and that's what you will have to do, Krupp."

The ex-Councillor of Legation, just renamed, bowed low. "I assure Your Majesty that, as head of the Krupp works, I will not rest until such a war machine is produced," he vowed.

"And take my word that I won't let you go to sleep." The War Lord's tone was a cross between banter and threat, but its brutal meaning was photographed on the speaker's face. "You will now make your bow to Madame la Princess," he continued, pulling out his watch: "Return in fifteen minutes.

"Bertha's husband must not know everything at the start," he said, when the door closed behind Krupp von Bohlen. "As to that twelve-inch howitzer, I did not have a chance to talk to you about my recent clandestine visit to Meppen, where we had the final test. The twelve-inch howitzer quite suffices for Calais if the plans for longer range guns miscarry or war comes quicker than we calculated. At Calais, you know, the Channel narrows to a width of twenty-two and a half miles, and the new twelve-incher covers fourteen miles."

"That means Kent is safe for the present," the Chancellor made bold to comment.

"It is easy to see that you are a general of cavalry and not of artillery," he was immediately corrected, "else you would perceive that a howitzer of the range given, planted at Calais, will allow our warships to advance within eight and a half miles of the English coast and pound everything into muck and pulp there. Where – what will your Kent be then? A heap of rubbish and scrap-iron!"

"I presume Tirpitz is satisfied that there can be no blockade?"

"We will guard against that by mine fields and destroyers, submarines, cruisers, scouts and Zeppelins," explained Wilhelm. "Old Zep's Echte" (alluding to the cigar-like shape of Zeppelins) "will be as safe in our French harbours – for we will probably take Havre and Dieppe at the same time as Calais – as in Kiel Canal."

The War Lord was going strong on technical details when the return of Krupp von Bohlen was announced.

"So the ladies dismissed you!" he cried, at the same time unbending enough to ask von Bülow to be seated, while the younger man must remain standing. "Got the howitzer-Calais-Dover question pat, have you not? Well, the twenty-three miles' range gun is only one of the achievements you owe me and the Fatherland. In addition, the Krupp works and associated interests must extend their facilities for mines and mine-laying a hundred-fold, for we will have to cut Portsmouth and Plymouth off from the North Sea and provide safety zones for our warships the whole breadth of the Channel.

"Thirdly, Essen will have to turn out submarines at a much faster rate than your firm is doing now; have to arm the numerous forts we will set up along the French-Belgian coast with the heaviest of artillery, and furnish air fleets to prosecute a guerilla war against English trade and – stomachs."

Von Bohlen looked puzzled. He had imbibed enough of the Krupp spirit to encourage him in the belief that he might rival an earthquake as a destroyer of life and property, but his ambition had never extended to interference with other people's digestion.

"Explain, Bülow," ordered the War Lord, considering it beneath his dignity to give information on so trifling a subject.

"His Majesty refers, of course, to the disturbance of England's food supplies. Unlike Germany, Great Britain cannot feed herself, being dependent for the sustenance of the inner man on imports. And these His Majesty intends to stop by the means referred to."

"And, speaking of aircraft, you must provide means for bringing airships down," continued the War Lord, "for there is every indication that the enemy will attempt to fight our aerial fire with ditto fire, especially the French. The slow English will fall behind, of course." Abruptly: "Have you got any ideas to offer in that line?"

"Not at the moment," confessed von Bohlen; "but I will ask Bertha to lend me her most enterprising constructor of light ordnance and the airship expert. They will be given three months for experiments."

The War Lord nodded. "Not half bad, but offer a premium if the question is solved within three weeks."³

He rose. "More of this in a day or two, after I have seen Moltke, Tirpitz and old Zep. In the meantime remember this: Super is the thing. We must have super-guns, super-submarines, super-aircraft – ordinary arms will not do in the struggle to come. Our enemies are ordinary men, fighting with ordinary means, while we are supermen bent on superhuman effort, and consequently need super-arms."

He turned from Bohlen. "Announce me to the Princess Maria," he commanded Bülow.

CHAPTER XXVII
BERTHA'S WEDDING DAY

Krupp Hospitality – A Nasty Custom – "Old Fritz at Play – The Bride Arrayed – Abdul's Present – The Wedding Service – A Glimpse of Essen

On October the 15th, 1906, Bertha Krupp was married, and, presto! Wilhelm jumped into the saddle: Krupp en croupe was meant for both the heiress and her husband-to-be.

To be sure, Essen was en fête for the War Lady and Gustav. For them flags and garlands and paper flowers. Rivers and oceans of paper flowers! They recalled Unter den Linden when some yellow or brown, or maybe a white, majesty is expected to make his state entry through the Brandenburg Gate. And almost as many girls in white as paper flowers on lantern posts and over doorways, while every boy had his face and his hands washed, and all the professors and directors wore their locks in curls.

To-day all victims of Moloch labour, of burns and crashing irons, of scaffolds that gave way and mountains of steel a-tremble, of engines gone wrong and cars off the track, and a thousand and one other accidents connected with work, were freshly shaved and voluble of their sufferings and Fraulein's kindness. Johann gave a leg to prevent bubbles in the casting of a royal Prussian cannon, and Fraulein bought him an artificial one, offering this advantage over the real article: he might throw it at his wife when nettled. Heinrich had lost the sight of an eye in the service of the works, and Fraulein not only procured him a glass one, but added a steel pince-nez that made him look like a twopenny clerk. And Mariechen and Märtchen had good jobs in the ammunition shops, since their husbands were killed in an earth-slide at the Germania shipyards near Kiel – "Fraulein looks after everything and everybody." In short, city and country-side, town hall and hospital, the well-to-do and the poor, old and young, the joyous and the lame and the halt – all looked their best in Bertha's honour and acted gemuetlich-like (which was mostly noise) in Bertha's honour – when the War Lord came into sight!

Once upon a time the War Lady had been sternly admonished not to bring more than three attendants on her state visit to Berlin; in repaying that visit – for his intervening comings to Essen were more or less impromptu or on business – the War Lord brought twenty times three, sixty: personal friends, courtiers, generals and army officers.

When, years before, he inflicted two-thirds of this number on King Christian, the Continent stood aghast at his inconsiderate impudence, for the Copenhagen Court was notoriously poor then. But Bertha was his ward and was under his thumb, and, besides, had "money to burn."

So he embraced this opportunity for paying off old debts by inviting to Essen a number of nobles whose hospitality he had enjoyed, for there they would be more sumptuously lodged and dined and wined than at his own house.

The call to Villa Huegel was snapped up by all who could crowd into the Imperial train, for Krupp hospitality is proverbial in the Fatherland's mansions and country houses; and the Prussian aristocrat, living at home on superannuated venison, herrings and potatoes, washed down by diluted fusel-oil called Schnapps, likes nothing better than to gorge himself at the expense of persons whose lack of rank precludes dreaded return visits.

Savings in the household exchequer weigh heavy enough with the War Lord to put him into royal good humour, but the limelight radiating from Essen, because the richest girl on the planet married a poor but capable man, was the main thing, of course. For the Wolff Bureau, that feeds the Continental Press with "pap" about "All Highest" doings and with governmental lies, would mention Wilhelm and his myrmidons twenty times as often as the bride and groom.

There would be – as a matter of fact, there were beforehand – long-winded litanies about the War Lord's love for his ward and his surpassing efficiency as a guardian; his consummate wisdom in the selection of a husband for Bertha; the unheard-of increase in the value of the Krupp property under Wilhelm's guidance – columns of that sort of symphony to Imperial ears.

And the War Lord's show: State coach and six, forty more horses from the royal stables, one hundred flunkeys, and the "great surprise!" – but that did not come off. "That woman wouldn't stand it."

When the War Lord was shown into Frau Krupp's boudoir he beamed most graciously. "I cannot make Bertha a Royal Princess," he said, "but I will treat her like one. How many guests have we?"

"In the villa a little over three hundred, Your Majesty."

"Well, I had a thousand ribbons printed – have the rest distributed among the loyal people. But let the police do it, as there is sure to be a terrible scramble for these souvenirs, and we don't want the Moscow tragedy repeated." (He referred to the crushing and killing of hundreds of men, women and children at the People's Festival during the Tsar's coronation.)

Meanwhile the Master of Ceremonies had opened the silver-gilt casket filled with layers upon layers of pieces of white ribbon, about one inch broad by five long. There was a baronial crown above the letter "B" at the top, and gold fringe at the bottom.

The Baroness turned purple at the sight, but her son-in-law pulled her sleeve in time. "Mamma will arrange with His Excellency," he said; and the unsuspecting War Lord got busy with one of his quintette of meals, served to him separately.

"An unheard-of honour," pleaded Herr Krupp von Bohlen, who had followed Her Ladyship into an inner room, as he dangled one of the garter-ribbons before her eyes.

"I call it a nasty, indecent custom, and my daughter will have none of it," replied Frau Krupp hotly.

Krupp von Bohlen looked both hurt and indignant. "Pardon me, madam, the customs of our Royal Family must not be spoken of in that style where I am. And what is deemed honourable for Royal Prussian Princesses can but add dignity and renown to a subject favoured like one of them."

"If an announcement of that kind is considered fair and decent in royal circles," angrily replied Frau Krupp, "it is their affair; as to the daughter of the Baroness von Ende, she would blush to think of such a custom."

Krupp von Bohlen advanced his chin an inch more.

"Matters affecting the Royal Family are beyond discussion," he said haughtily, "and if you ever again approach the subject, please remember that I am a Prussian officer. But that aside. His Majesty has graciously commanded, and the order is to be carried out to the letter." He bowed stiffly and retired.

The Baroness let herself fall into an arm-chair, and, elbows on knees, buried her face in both hands. A scandal in the air, but she was determined to risk it. Let the feelings of Prussian Princesses be what they may in regard to the ancient custom; there was to be no distribution of her daughter's garter for the War Lord's friends and her own cottagers to gloat over.

She had spent half an hour in this sort of brown study, agitated by reflections bordering on lèse-majesté most horrible, when Barbara rushed in: "Oh, Mamma, Uncle Majesty and everybody are at 'Old Fritz's,' and Uncle wants all the gentlemen to take chances under the hammer. He is making them give up watches and decorations, and he whispered to me he hopes some get smashed. Come and see the fun."

To be sure Frau Krupp was in no humour to attend the Imperial circus – it is a stock joke with Wilhelm to frighten under-dogs out of their wits by subjecting their valuables to seeming destruction, and Her Ladyship had been an unwilling witness more than once. But Barbara's naïve: "What a beautiful box – more presents?" made her sit up. Why should not "Fritz," oldest of family servants, essay to corriger la fortune de la maison de Krupp? A chance in a million, but stranger things have happened!

As everybody knows, "Fritz" has a falling weight of fifty tons, and has been hammering steel blocks into shape since 1860. When Bertha's grandfather started building it family, friends and competitors the world over thought him crazy, and said so, but "Fritz" has never missed a day's work in fifty-four years, and seems to be good for a century still. Indeed, the marvellous delicacy of his adjustment remains unimpaired, and occasionally the manager makes him crack nuts without injuring the kernel.

The War Lord was smashing his friends' watch-glasses without hurt to dial or hands when Frau Krupp and Barbara came upon the scene.

"The trunk of the Krupp heiress, containing some of her choicest wardrobe," explained Wilhelm banteringly in an undertone. Then aloud: "I'll forfeit ten marks to any charity madam may name if Fritz injures the casket in the slightest. Those with me raise a hand." Two dozen hands went up. "Sorry I did not make it a hundred marks," whispered Wilhelm to von Scholl, as he placed the casket on the steel table. Then, standing off, he commanded: "One – two – three."

Down came the Brobdingnagian not like fifty, but like a hundred thousand tons, hitting the table an earthquake-like smack. It was all over in a second, but both Wilhelm and the War Lady's mother thought a lot in that tiny fragment of time. The casket was, of course, as flat as a window-pane and not much thicker, while of its contents there was no trace, the silk having become part and parcel of the metal. Nothing short of the melting-pot, said the expert, would yield isolated strains of the thousand bedizened ribbons. And, on top of it, Fraulein Krupp collected 250 marks for her orphanage!

Was it the loss of his ten marks, the blotting out of his "indecent surprise," or thoughts of the murderous fruit which the marriage about to be solemnised would yield him that clouded the War Lord's brow as he walked up the middle aisle of the chapel? He was to give the bride away. The groom was the War Lord's man, his discovery, his creature! He found him secretary of legation with the least of the kings, grubbing along on a salary of five hundred pounds a year, and destined in all probability to marry either a spindle-shanked or a bull-necked "Fraulein von" with an infinitesimal dot. The goal of his ambition: a berth as minister plenipotentiary at the Court of a minor king! Salary: seven hundred pounds per year.

Well, he (the War Lord) was about to give in marriage this candidate for polite poverty and subaltern honours a nice, healthy, well bred and intelligent girl of good family, likewise revenues compared with which the civil list of the average German king were twopence! It surely should follow as a matter of course that common gratitude, if not inborn discipline, would make Krupp von Bohlen the instrument of any warlike mischief the author of his good luck might contemplate. Indeed, he had vowed so much.

Now Lohengrin and rustling silks: The bride and groom.

The latter, like most of the men present, in showy uniform, blue and gold; the War Lady in lilac crêpe de Chine, myrtles in her blonde hair.

She was rather pleasant than pretty to look upon: a massive face, indicating a not unkindly disposition; blue eyes, wavy hair, a firm mouth; a bit strong on figure.

Her head-dress was typical enough for Germany: myrtle, the "bleeding," commemorating the cruelty of the barbarous islanders who pierced the shipwrecked with spears and arrows!

Ancient history aside, the sign of the myrtle leaf was indeed prophetic of the horrors this marriage would impose upon humanity, in accordance with the compact between the War Lady's husband and the War Lord; but, as nine out of every ten German brides are myrtle-bedecked, the fashionable crowd in the chapel had no mind for the augury.

Still, why mauve, the colour of mourning and old age, for the wedding gown? Since it was of the War Lady's own selection, it suggested almost a premonition of the evil in store for Europe.

Did Bertha's lens of imagery conjure up the ghosts of the millions who must die by the output of her factories that her own unborn offspring have more milliards to play with, and was she mourning in advance for the children she would render fatherless, for the hosts doomed to extinction because profits in the wholesale murder of men are surpassing high?

Who knows?

It is almost inconceivable that a person like the War Lady, engaged in the appalling trade of death-dealing, regarded her business other than a gigantic slaughter monopoly – a privileged one, to be sure, yet the most heinous of crimes against God and men just the same.

At the Courts of the eighteenth century "punishment boys" were kept, to be thrashed when small highnesses deserved to have their jacket warmed. Here, at the altar, Bertha, used to Royal State on account of her wealth, was about to engage a punishment boy. In future Gustav was to take the blame for all the enormities her factories would visit upon humanity!

The old-time punishment boys were well paid for their pains; the Krupp punishment boy was to have an income of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling per annum. The old-time punishment boys were frequently loved by the masters for whom they suffered; Herr Krupp von Bohlen was loved by the young woman whom he relieved of grievous responsibility. Yet the note of mourning in her attire, and at her bosom the mark of "Abdul Hamid the Damned"!

The War Lady is sincerely religious, and so is the War Lord's Imperial lady, only more so. Indeed, with Her Majesty the Church is almost an obsession, yet both the Queen of Prussia and the Queen of Essen have accepted presents from the wholesale assassin of Christians, who remembered only one thing to his credit in the course of thirty-three years of absolute rule: that he did not murder his brother. This was his plea to the Young Turks when deposed.

For many years the Berlin Court was a pensioner of the man who prided himself on having spared the life of his mother's son, making up for this unnatural restraint by spilling the blood of forty thousand "Christian dogs." Five millions cash "Abdul the Damned" lent to the War Lord (and he is still whistling for its return), and season after season he sent material for the Queen of Prussia's underlinen and summer dresses. Bales of Oriental stuffs, gauzes, linens, laces and silks from Tscheragan Serai used to be delivered at the Neues Palais about every April the first, filling the house with real "Turkish delight," of which Her Majesty's sisters, the rich and the poor, likewise partook according to their needs or the favour in which they were held at the moment.

And when Her Prussian Majesty is en grande tenue she often augments the great Napoleon's diamonds, captured at Waterloo (the same that once blushed at the generous bosom of his sister Paulette), by those that the great Frederick gave to his lovely mistress La Barbarina, the dancer, and took back again when he tired of her; and when even multiplication fails to give satisfaction – for a Queen of Prussia must have more diamonds than an American multi-millionairess – she adds the parure of brilliants and the numerous brooches and buttons and bracelets given her by The Damned.

After all, this seems appropriate enough for the Queen of a country pieced together of territories gained by assassination, war, treachery and other atrocities; but think of the War Lady accepting gifts from the most despicable of men and kings! Surely there must be some fellow-feeling of malign camaraderie between the makers of murderous tools and their users, a sort of revival of swordsmiths-worship and the veneration in which the great men of old held their Curtanas and Flamberges!

Possible, or shall we set it down to mere female thoughtlessness, which in some respects seems akin to that of half-savages after the style of the story Mark Twain once told the War Lord:

"Where is 'Liza?" asked the master of the house, when he missed the coloured waitress at breakfast.

"Can't come round for a few days. Just had a tiny wee baby," answered the housemaid, grinning.

"A baby! How's that?"

"Oh, just nigger-shiftlessness, I reckon."

But it wasn't thoughtlessness, or shiftlessness alone, that made the War Lady pin to her breast the grand cordon of the Osmanié Order of Virtue; it spelled, at the same time, a bid for war material, decreed by the businesslike groom. The War Lord saw it and smiled. "Bravo, Gustav, you are the stuff," and "Bertha, as is fit, the yielding lamb."

And the organ pealed and cooed, and the chorus of cathedral singers chanted off the key, and the voice of the officiating minister droned, and everybody thought it most "heavenly," but boring; and the generals and army officers smacked their lips, anticipating the table delicacies in store; and the courtiers congratulated themselves because it was all fun and no work; and each lady thought she looked a heap better than her best-beloved friend; and the War Lord stared at the ceiling contemplating ways and means for mining the Krupp quarry of wealth and efficiency to within an inch of hell.

"And so I pronounce you man and wife," sang out the minister, expecting the biggest fee!

"Hail thee, Frankenstein," thought Wilhelm. He inflated his chest as the archangel aspiring to omnipotence may have done: from this moment on the means for such aggrandisement as only Napoleon dreamt of were in his hands, and he was free to plunge the world into irremediable ruin if he liked.

Through Bertha's resignation, through von Bohlen's connivance, he now owned the Krupp works; he was Frankenstein – Frankenstein, the hideous, the abhorred, whose malignity was equalled only by the accumulated wretchedness he meant to visit on all resisting.

Even as he extended his hand to the bride, with lip congratulations, he thought of the riot of despair the troth just sealed spelt for his own people and the nations to be subdued! Was he then – is he then – the hideous fantasm of one bent on naught but destruction?

God knows – mere physical observation discerns no more than the frightful selfishness that has lashed the War Lord to ever-increasing efforts of fury since Bertha's wedding day and is driving him still.

As overlord of the greatest industrial plant in the world, he deliberately diverted it from its legitimate raison d'être as a cradle of life and progress and turned it into a dividend-mill for the cultivation of human hatred and the making of corpses, at the same time endowing it with a soul still more monstrous: his thrice-abhorred Kultur.

He had steel hammers enough to line, side by side, a road reaching from Liverpool Street Station to Hyde Park; steel boilers enough to start a second Pittsburgh; more machinery than the rest of the kingdom boasts; more electric motors than Paris or London employs in its public conveyances, etc.; and with unparalleled selfishness in evil suborned them exclusively to his passion for destruction, adding unlimited capital and business capacity, utter disregard for human life and extraordinary facilities for chemical-physical research, begetting inventive genius of a high order. There is the explanation of the frightful catalogue of Hunnish sins that have disgraced civilisation since the 29th of July, 1914, according to the findings of Lord Bryce's Committee.

"The Kapellmeister, at Your Majesty's orders?" reported Count Eulenburg.

"Hohenfriedberger March," replied the War Lord, locking his teeth.

Hohenfriedberg is a shining mark in Prussian history, for in June, 1745, Frederick the Great overwhelmed the Austrians near the small Silesian village, nearly annihilating Prince Karl and his Saxon allies. He composed a march in honour of the event, a rather stirring piece of musical claptrap, among the best that came from his pen.

"I can drive the Austrians too," thought the War Lord, as he stepped from the chapel, the bride's mother on his arm. And, the military band outside executing some flourishes when he passed, he added grimly: "Bayonet in back, if necessary."