Emperor William’s Visit to Palestine

EMPEROR WILLIAM^S VISIT TO PALESTINE. BY PROFESSOR J. M. TANNER, PRESIDENT OP AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, LOGAN. The emperor of Germany has just completed a visit to the Holy Land, and though the purpose of that visit was the consecration of "The Church of the Redeemer," recently built by his royal highness, the world is busy speculating about the ulterior and national motives which he really had in view The German press answers these speculations by saying that in this age of world-trotters the German emperor certainly may, if he choose, make a tour to the Holy Land without any political considerations. But the German emperor is unlike any other ruling monarch today. So far as he approves of any general policy inaugurated by his ministers, or urged in behalf of any commercial advantage to his nation, he endeavors to place himself at the head of that movement and to throw his personality into every public question; and to be, what he is in name, the responsible ruler of his empire. His movements are not without a plan; his speeches are not witless, they voice a strong sentiment, which may be a popular sentiment, or the sentiment of some statesman upon whom he largely relies. We are therefore at liberty to speculate upon the aims of this royal tour, and the accuracy of our speculations must depend largely upon the relation of Germany to certain other countries in general, to the internal demands of the nation, and to the relationship which now exists and has long existed between the German empire and Turkey. The purposes ascribed to this visit are two-fold. First, religious; second, political,—if a distinction can be made between

the religious and political purposes in a nation where the two elements are so strongly combined. The religious aspect of this question is a two-fold one. In the first place, it encourages the religious sentiment of Protestant Germany by the consecration of a Protestant church in the city of David, where heretofore the interest manifested in that wonderfully historic spot has been by the Catholic world. In the second place, Germany has a large Catholic population. Indeed the central party of the Reichstag is the representative of that organization. Years ago in the early creation of the empire there was a very strong antagonism, during what is called the Kultur-Kampf, against the Catholics, and the struggle lasted for many years, and the central party was always in opposition to the government, which at this time the emperor is trying to overcome by those means of conciliation not offensive to his Protestant subjects, v/ho by far out-number all other religious denominations of the empire. When Germany took up the cause of two murdered Catholic missionaries in China and made a naval demonstration and certain demands upon China, the emperor announced himself as the politicoreligious head of his government, for Catholics as well as Protestants; and that announcement has been reinforced by his recent visit to the Holy Land. France has undertaken to establish in oriental countries a sort of hegemony over all Catholics, and to look upon herself as the natural protector of the Catholic world in western as well as in eastern Asia, whether they were French, Italians, Austrians, or Germans. Italy, having overcome the papal power of Rome and seized the government of entire Italy, became the natural opponent of the pope—a political opponent—and by Italy's entrance into the triple alliance Germany and Austria have been regarded in some measure by the pope as accessories to Italy's crime. This attitude of the triple alliance left France the natural ally of the papal power of Rome, and through this preference the pope has naturally deferred much to France and relied upon her for the protection of Catholic interests. The Emperor William, by his newly inaugurated policy, denies that prerogative on the part of France, so far as it affects German subjects, and this is a source of much criticism and irritation on

the part of the French press. This effort on the part of the emperor to conciliate his Catholic subjects has met with a considerable response on their part; so that the appeals, instead of being made to the pope and through the pope to France, as has often been the case, are now made directly to Germany and its emperor as the natural guardian of their interests in all parts of the world. The surrender, therefore, of this powerful influence formerly exercised by France, is a loss of considerable prestige in the Catholic world, if not of influence over Catholics in all Catholic nations of Europe. After the Church of the Redeemer at Jerusalem had been consecrated—the church is located near that of the Holy Sepulchre—the emperor succeeded in the purchase of the abode of the Holy Virgin, situated on Mount Zion, and presented it to the pope of Rome for the use of the Catholics. This action will undoubtedly prove a source of reconciliation with his Catholic subjects, and it is a virtual announcement that the emperor, so far as he may assume to be the head of the church in Germany, acts in a dual capacity — protector of the Protestant as well as of the Catholic interests. Though we may hardly suppose that the pope encouraged this royal tour and manifestation of interest in Catholic welfare, yet nothing has been said by him to show that he throws any discredit upon it, and as a result France naturally feels uneasy over the situation. So far as the religious phase of the emperor's visit has any effect upon his political aims, it must be sought for in the support which he evidently hopes to secure from the central party of the Reichstag, a party composed chiefly of Catholics. So far as his visit has a purely political bearing that bearing IS to be found in the relationship which exists between Germany and Turkey. Ever since the Turko-Russian war Turkey has abandonded her relationship to England in so far as she regarded England as her natural protector, the Turks believing that her interests had been grossly betrayed by the English who encouraged this war and who then left the Turks to take its consequences. Since then, Turkey has allied her interests with Russia, with Austria and with England as the circumstances of the several occasions demanded. Her extreme friendship for Russia at one time has alarmed the Enghsh, and the Russians have been frustrated by combinations

made between the Turks and England, or France or Germany, as Turkey found it to her interest to make political alliances. Turkey has no policy; she is too weak to have one. Her strength lies in the support which she gives to the foreign policy of one or more of the great powers. Sometimes England, sometimes Russia, has been stronger with the sublime porte at Constantinople than any other power; but in the midst of the fluctuating influence which one or the other of the great powers has exercised in a prominent degree over the Turks, Germany has always been the second factor. In the first place, Bismarck was the most prominent figure of diplomatic Europe. His influence and his consent must always be secured in order to carry out any international purposes which the great powers may have had in view. Taken therefore in its entirety the German influence during the period of the last twenty years has been farther-reaching and immieasurably stronger upon the Turkish policy than that of perhaps all the other countries combined, and it is perhaps true that the Turk often threw himself into the arms of Russia or England at the suggestion of Bismarck who foresaw certain advantages to be derived by the sultan from the one course or the other. Nowhere was this German relation to Turkey more strikingly exemplified than in the Greek war, wherein Germany, feeling that the Greeks had been the aggressors, and provokingly so, felt that Turkey must have a free hand in carrying on that war against Greece, and, up to a certain point, to be allowed all the advantages that would accrue to any other nation from such a war. Germany's policy in dealing with Turkey is wholly unlike that of either Russia or England. Russia has sought territorial advantages, and England's policy has been governed mainly by a determination to counteract that policy. Their positions have been purely positive and negative. On the other hand, Germany has felt that the sultan was not so sick a man as his traducers would have him appear, and that Turkey had an assured existence covering a longer period than that which even her friends had believed her to possess. Furthermore, Germany believed that to reap the advantages which must sooner or later come from the immense commerce and development of the Turkish empire the best policy was that of a friendly attitude toward the sultan, for two very suflSicient reasons. In the

first place, Germany desired all the advantages of a favored nation in such great Turkish ports as Constantinople, Smyrna and Beyrout; in the second place, Germany clearly foresaw the opening of a vast region in Asia Minor, and that Asia Minor constituted one of the commercial conquests of the modern world just as Africa to the south and Asia to the east, especially China, no\V present. Concessions to build railroads were desirable, and these were secured and a railroad is now in process of construction from Constantinople and may, within the next five years reach Biredjik, at the headwaters of ths Euphrates river. This would open a region of enormous wealth in agriculture as well as in minerals, and concessions granted by the sultan might be an inducement to German settlers to build up that wonderful region; and German commercial interests have been the controling factor in her dealings with Turkey, irrespective of what the world may think about the moral responsibility of the sultan for the massacres in Armenia, or for the misfortunes of the Cretes. Commercial interests are, as they always have been, paramount. They have carried with them more Christian and moralizing forces, it is true, at one time than another. But commerce has been the underlying motive in German as well as in English foreign policy. "Carry to them our commerce and our religion, if we can; but carry to them our commerce anyhow." All theories of government, all national policies, have been more or less elastic in the presence of this over-ruling and controling thought of commercial activity. The visit, therefore, of the emperor to the sultan at Constantinople was no less significant than his visit to the Holy Land. The former was pre-eminently political; the latter political and religious combined, or a political mission which had to do chiefly with the internal interests of the fatherland. It is noted that during this visit the emperor refrained from going to Egypt. The English control of Egypt is offensive to France, and the emperor's visit there would undoubtedly have been taken as an offense, from the fact that the French would have construed it as an endorsement of the English policy in Egypt. There are today three great centers of commercial activity that give wonderful promise for the future—three countries in which commercial competition, accompanied by political activity,

are now largely absorbing the attention of the commercial world. These are, Africa, China and the Turkish empire. Africa has been in the lead for some time. China's change of policy and promise of commercial development is more recent. The emperor's visit to Palestine, and especially to Constantinople, have reinforced the repeated declaration of the commercial importance of Asia Minor to adjacent Europe. Concessions, preferences and commercial advantages in Turkey have been secured largely upon the favor of the sultan. Seeing this, the emperor has cultivated his friendship, and that in disregard of that public sentiment which has undertaken to associate the ruler of a Christian empire with a "bloody assassin." Germany's race is a commercial one. She is England's greatest competitor today. Her hopes are unbounded. They lie in the direction of Turkey and China more than towards Africa, and the recent visit of the German emperor has but emphasized Germany's commercial intentions in a direction to which, of late, the world has not given much attention. If Turkey could rid herself of some of her enormous debt—enormous for a country so poor—there is no reason why there might not be some promise of national recovery on her part. If the Zion movement started at Basle creates an enthusiasm sufficiently strong and extended among the Jews for the rehabilitation and recovery of the Holy Land, its sale may afford the sultan of Turkey one of the best opportunities of continued existence, and so long as there is promise of continued life and power in the Turkish empire Germany's advantages lie in a friendly attitude towards its ruler, who after all but responds to a national sentiment by his visit to the Holy Land and to Abdul Hamid.