The Secret Memoirs of Bertha Krupp

Franz shrugged. "I quite understand. Forbidden ground even for your Mother."

Bertha felt the sting of reproval keenly, and did not like it. Indeed, at the moment she would have given up gladly a considerable portion of her wealth to be restored to Franz's unconditional and unrestricted good graces. So, humbling herself, she temporarily abandoned her high estate and again became the unsophisticated girl whom Franz used to call sister. "Do go on," she urged; "it was all so romantic, so strange, so mysterious, and you know I love to feel creepy."

Franz had risen and approached the great central window. "May I draw the curtains?" he asked, looking over his shoulder.

"They must not see you. I will."

Bertha tugged the golden cords. "Working overtime again?" she queried, as she observed the blazing smoke-stacks.

"More's the pity, for every pound of steam going up those chimneys means so many lives lost, and for all those lives, Bertha, you will have to account to God."

"Old wives' tales," commented the Krupp heiress, as if the War Lord in person played souffleur. "On the contrary, as you well know, war preparedness means peace, means preservation; and with us in particular it means happiness and prosperity to the ten thousands of families in this favoured valley. It spells education, arts, music, care of children and of the sick and disabled. It means cheerfulness, such as ample wage and a future secured confer; it means care-free old age." As she recounted these benefits her enterprises were actually dispensing Bertha looked at the chief engineer with a slightly supercilious air.

"Well rehearsed," remarked Franz dryly.

"Oh, if you want to be rude – "

"I do," said Franz, taking hold of her wrist; "I am sick of all this lying palaver about good coming out of evil, and I want you to be sick of it too, Bertha."

The Krupp heiress leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. "At the American Embassy I heard rather a quaint saying day before yesterday: 'Go as far as you like.'

"A most apt saying," admitted Franz. "Thank you for the licence. As I was going to point out, you did attach too little significance to Zara's words, thought them mere piffle of the kind for sale in necromancers' tents. There is enough of that, God knows, but do not lose sight of the fact that at all times and in all walks of life there have existed persons having the gift of prophecy. Who knows but Zara has?"

Bertha was now rigid with attention. She had moved knee from knee; her feet were set firmly on the carpet, while the upper part of her body straightened out. "I don't follow," she said almost pleadingly.

"Let me explain," continued Franz. "You and I and the vast majority of people can look into the past – a certain curvature of our brain facilitating the privilege. Another similar or dissimilar set of brain-cells, or a single curvature, might lift for us the veil that now obscures the future."

"The future?" gasped Bertha.

"Indeed, the future; and, practically considered, there is nothing so very extraordinary about it, for what will happen to-morrow, or the day after to-morrow, is in the making now. If, for instance, the Krupp works were going into bankruptcy a year hence, the unfavourable conditions that constitute the menace to our prosperity would be at their destructive work now. Do you follow?" added Franz.

"I think I do," said Bertha.

"Hence I say the gift of prophecy presupposes a correct interpretation of the past and present as well as the peculiar gift of extraordinary brain development – a rare gift, so sparsely distributed that in olden times prophets were credited with interpreting the will of the Almighty."

"Franz," cried Bertha, her face pallid and drawn, her hands twitching. "Oh, my God!" she screamed, as if nerve-shattered by an awful thought suddenly burst upon her; "you don't believe – no, you can't – ! Tell me that you do not think it was God's voice speaking through Zara?" And, as if to shut out some horrible vision, the Girl-Queen of Guns covered her face with both hands.

"It is not for me to pronounce on things I don't know," replied Franz. "Judged by what you have told me, Zara suited her prophecy for the most part to facts and to existing tendencies, conditions and ambitions on the part of political parties and high personages."

"She called me the coming arch-murderess of the age, insisted that the warrior-queens of past times, even the most heartless and most cruel, had been but amateurs compared with me in taking human lives – Oh, Franz, tell me it is not true! She was romancing, was she not? She lied to frighten me and to get a big trinkgeld."

"I wish it were so," said Franz earnestly; "but, unfortunately, she had a clear insight into the future as it may develop, unless you call a halt to incessant, ever-increasing, ever-new war preparations."

Many years ago I read a manuscript play by a Dutch author, in the opening scenes of which a Jew tried to sell another Jew a bill of goods. Shylock number two wanted the stuff badly, but calculated that by a show of indifference he might obtain them for a halfpenny less. On his part, Isaac was as eager to sell as the other was to buy, but the threatened impairment of his fortune called for strategy. So he feigned that he did not care a rap whether the goods changed hands or not, and the two shysters remained together a whole long act engaging in a variety of business that had nought to do with the original proposition, each, however, watching for opportunity to re-introduce it, now as a threat, again as a bait, and the third and seventh and tenth time in jest. So Bertha, having once disposed of the war preparation bogey, according to Uncle Majesty's suggestion, now returned to it in slightly different form. She was determined to discount Zara's prophecies at any cost.

Getting ready to fight was tantamount to backing down; spending billions for guns and ammunition and chemicals and fortifications and espionage and war scares and whatnots was mere pretext for keeping the pot boiling in the workman's cottage, and the golden eagles rolling in the financier's cash drawer, and so on ad infinitum. When Bertha had finished she thought Zara's prophecies very poor stuff.

Franz came in for the full quota of that sort of argument out of a bad conscience so warped by hypocrisy. Our Lady of the Guns no doubt believed every word she said, or rather repeated – dear woman's way! She always firmly trusts in what suits her, logic, proof to the contrary, stubborn facts notwithstanding. Instinct or intuition, she calls it.

"That is no way to dispose of so grave a subject," said Franz.

"But what can I do?"

"Prevent more wholesale family disintegration, forestall future mass-murder, future dunging of the earth with blood and human bones."

Franz put both hands on the girl's shoulders. "Bertha," he said impressively, "make up your mind not to sign any more death-warrants, stop making merchandise intended to rob millions of life and limb and healthy minds, while those coming after them are destined physical or moral cripples that one man's ambition may thrive."

"Shut down the works, you mean?" cried Bertha; and, womanlike, indulged once more the soothing music of self-deception: "It would ruin the Ruhr Valley, throw a hundred thousand and more out of work; and what could they do, being skilled only in the industries created by my father and grandfather?

"Papa, Uncle Alfred, the first Krupp – God bless their souls! – were they founders of murder-factories, as you suggest? No, a thousand times no. Their skill, their genius, their enterprise has been the admiration of the world. Everybody admits that they were men animated by the highest motives and principles. They made Germany."

"I don't deny it; I underline every word you have said, Bertha. The foundations for Germany's greatness were laid within a stone's throw of this window; much of her supremacy in politics and economics was conceived between these four walls. But now that the goal is achieved, that the Fatherland enjoys unprecedented wealth and prosperity – let well enough alone."

"You talk as if I were the War Lord!" cried Bertha.

"You are his right hand: the War Lady."

"He is my guardian, my master."

"Only for a while. You don't have to submit to his dictation when of age."

Carried away by emotion, Franz had spoken harshly at times, but now his tone became coaxing.

"When you come into your own, promise me, Bertha, to accept no more orders for armament and arms of any kind. Dedicate the greatest steel plant of the world to enterprises connected with progress, with the advancement of the human race! Build railways, Eiffel towers for observation, machinery of all sorts, ploughs and other agricultural implements, but for God's sake taboo once and for all preparations for murder and destruction!"

Bertha covered her ears. "Don't use such words; they are uncalled for, inappropriate." Then, with a woman's ill-logic, she repeated the last. "'Destruction' – you don't take into consideration what your 'destructive' factors have done for my people, what they are doing for humanity right along. Auntie Majesty thinks our charities and social work superior to Rockefeller's, and God forbid that I ever stop or curtail them."

"Yes! Think of your charities," said Franz; "take the Hackenberg case. What is he – a soldier blasted and crippled in mind and body by the war of 1870. Essen's industry made a wreck of Heinrich, and he costs you one mark a day to keep for the rest of his life; three hundred and sixty-five marks per year, paid so many decades, what percentage of your father's profits in the war of 1870-71 does the sum total represent?"

"A fraction of a thousandth per cent., perhaps. Another fraction pays for the son Johann's keep, another for that of the two younger boys, another for Gretchen, etc., etc."

"But if there had been no war, Heinrich would not have been disabled, and consequently would not have burdened charity with human wreckage! Do you see my point?"

"Go on," said Bertha.

"Because you are used to it, maybe the Hackenberg case does not particularly impress you. You were not born when Heinrich sallied forth in the name of patriotism. But reflect: there are thousands of charitable institutions like yours, not so richly endowed, not so splendid to look upon, but charnel-houses for Essen war victims just the same. And all filled to overflowing – even as the Krupp treasury is. Yet that Franco-German war, that made the Krupps and necessitated the asylums and hospitals, was Lilliputian compared with the Goliath war now in the making – partly thanks to you, Bertha."

"But I have told you time and again there will be no war, that I have the highest authority for saying so!" cried Bertha angrily.

"Authority," mocked Franz. "The French of 1870 had the no-war 'authority' of Napoleon III., the Germans that of William I., before the edict went forth to kill, to maim, to destroy, to strew the earth with corpses and fill the air with lamentations! So it will be this month, this year, next year – for history ever repeats itself – until the hour for aggression, which will be miscalled a defence of our holiest principles and interests, has struck.

"The air pressure has increased," continued Franz, parting the window curtains; "see the lowering clouds! And watch the storm coming up, lashing them in all directions. West and east they are spreading, and, look, north too! They are falling on Northern France, on the Lowlands and Russia like a black pall."

"You prophesy a universal war?" shrieked Bertha.

"The answer is in your ledger. For thirty and more years your firm has been arming the universe. Since your father's death you have distributed armaments on a vaster scale than ever, and now, I understand, the pace that killeth is to be still more increased.

"When you have furnished Germany with all the guns, the ammunition, the chemicals, the flying machines, the cruisers, the submarines, the hand grenades – what then? Presto! a pretext of the 1870 pattern, or something similar, and Zara's prophecy will come true as sure as light will burst from this Welsbach now."

Franz touched a button.

"Voilà, Madame War Lady," he said, bowing himself out.

CHAPTER XX

"AUNTIE MAJESTY" AND HER FROCKS

Bertha on Her Dignity – On Thin Ice – Barbara Wants to Know – The Empress's Toilette

"And now for a good talk," said Barbara, with a look upon the tirewoman who had accompanied Bertha to Court. "Tell me all about Auntie Majesty's 'Martha.'"

"Oh, she's far more important than this one," Bertha replied, patting the "Frau's" cheek; "a Baroness like Mamma and in the Almanach de Gotha."

"Better looking too than our Martha, is she not?" mocked Barbara.

"I won't go as far as that. She is too tall and angular and spinster-like, and has a nose like Herr Krause – always red."

"Does she drink?" inquired Barbara.

"No," said Martha, thrusting out her formidable bosom; "she laces too tight, poor thing!"

It was after ten p.m., and Barbara ought to have been in one of two white-and-pink beds gracing the Young Misses' Chamber in Villa Huegel, but Frau Krupp was away in Cologne and Martha the most indulgent of governesses. Hence it had not been necessary for Bertha to exert her authority to gain an hour out of bed for sister.

Bertha, who was sitting on a low "pouf," was convulsed with laughter at Martha's pantomime. Shrieking, she knocked her forehead against her knees, Barbara joining.

"And Auntie Majesty's Martha – the Baroness, I mean – does she put out the linen and mend silk stockings and serve tea on the waitress's day out?" continued Barbara her inquiries.

"Why not ask whether she makes the help's beds?" demanded Martha; and then, in her drastic manner: "You are a baby, Fraulein Barbara."

But the Krupp heiress treated the question seriously. "No," she replied, assuming an air of superiority. "The Baroness tells the Empress what is fit to wear."

"Unfit, Fraulein means to say," whispered Martha.

"And besides – " continued Bertha.

"She tyrannises over the lower servants, such as Lenchen and me." Barbara laughed heartily at Martha's sallies, but Bertha "had an attack of dignity," as Barbara put it, and said to Martha: "Come now, who was in Auntie Majesty's confidence, you or I?"

"Fraulein certainly had the run of Her Majesty's rooms, and I do hope they were nicer and cleaner than Fraulein's," bristled up Martha.

"Don't quarrel," pleaded Barbara. "Soon it will be eleven, and then both of you will shout 'bed' until you are hoarse. Do go on, Bertha, and don't you dare interrupt her again, Martha."

"Well," said Bertha, "I promised – " She settled down in the big velvet fauteuil nearest the fire and assumed an oldish mien.

"I was sometimes present when the Baroness and Auntie Majesty discussed new frocks and hats," she continued, "and I think if Mamma was in Madame von H.'s place, Her Majesty would be – what shall I say? – more tastefully dressed.

"Once she persuaded Auntie Majesty to accept a hat that made her look seventy to a day: Gold lace and heliotrope velvet. I will buy Granny one like it next time I go to Düsseldorf. At first Auntie did not seem to care for it at all, but the Baroness made such a fuss. 'Majesty looks enchanting,' she kept saying."

Here Martha dropped the courtliest of curtsies, "flapping her arms like wings" – Barbara's description.

"'Charming,' 'ever youthful,' continued Bertha, imitating the Baroness.

"The right sort of talk too," said Martha. "Tell a woman of our age – mine and Auntie Majesty's – that we look like sweet sixteen, with a teapot for a bonnet, and we will wear it even at the opera."

"Well, did Auntie get Granny's hat?" asked Barbara.

"She did, and wore it when we went to the children's matinée at the theatre in the Neues Palais; and I heard her sister, Princess Frederick Leopold, tell her: 'Thank your stars that Will is not coming. He would certainly advise you to send your new chapeau to – '" Bertha stopped short.

"To?" asked Barbara, flipping a slipper in the air and catching it on her naked foot.

"I can't tell," said Bertha; "it was not intended for me anyhow."

Barbara looked at Martha. "You say it."

"It commences with an 'H.'"

"Hohenlohe – Grandma Hohenlohe," explained Bertha quickly.

Barbara was thinking hard. "No, she did not say Hohenlohe; and, besides, she is dead."

"Getting warm," murmured Martha.

"Now you stop." Bertha looked very serious. "The Princess Leopold referred to their grandmother, of course. What else should she have in mind?"

The tirewoman bent low over Barbara's ear. "Majesty's Jaeger told me that the War Lord is in the habit of consigning old lady relatives of his to a hot place, whether dead or alive."

Barbara clapped her hands. "I know," she laughed; "you need not try and keep things from this child, Bertha. I was not born yesterday."

"I shall tell Mamma, and you will get it too, Martha." The Krupp heiress was on her dignity once more.

"Why not put me across your knee and spank me?" said Barbara derisively. Then, coaxingly: "Do go on, Bertha; it is all so interesting; and if Martha does not behave (stamping her foot) she will leave the room this minute. Did you hear what I said, Martha?"

"Indeed, Your Majesty, and the other Majesty will now proceed," mocked the tirewoman, who was unimpressed, having known the girls "all their born days."

"Well," began Bertha anew, "there were a few days of Court mourning while I was in Berlin, and I had to wear all white, no jewellery, no flowers. All the gentlemen had mourning-bands around their left arm, and Uncle Majesty wore the uniform of Colonel of Artillery – black and velvet."

"Auntie was in black too – silk, of course, and heavy enough to stand by itself; but at her throat I saw a large diamond brooch."

"'That will get Mother into trouble if the old man peeps it,' observed the Crown Prince, who took me in to dinner, and who knows all the English and French slang."

"How perfectly delightful he must be!" cried Barbara.

Bertha continued: "'Why?' I asked."

"'Mourning and brilliants – absurd,' whispered Wilhelm Wiseacre. But Uncle Majesty either did not see, or knew less than his talented son, and Auntie escaped a scolding that time."

"Scolding a Queen. You are joking," cried Barbara.

Before the Krupp heiress could speak, Martha delivered herself of a few "Mein Gotts."

"Oh," she said, "royal ladies are just like other girls' mammas."

"Like Aunt Pauline and Rosa?"

"Well, yes. They have a husband, children and an allowance."

"An allowance? I thought they were wallowing in gold pieces like you, sister," said Barbara, loojving up admiringly at the older girl.

"I suppose Auntie Majesty has about a million per year to dress on," said Bertha loftily.

"A million," repeated Frau Martha contemptuously. "Fraulein ought to have heard some of the stories the maids told me about Auntie Majesty's lingerie. One of them used to be dresser to a French diva, whatever that is, and on the Q.T. – "

Bertha was anxious to change the subject, and remarked, with a hard look upon Martha: "And the troubles they have with servants! One afternoon on Bal-Paré night Auntie's coiffeur did not show up – sickness, or something of the kind – and the Baroness did her hair. 'How very frail,' I thought, particularly as Auntie was going to wear the grand tiara with the Regent diamond. However, the head-dress, being so very heavy, is put on only before she enters the royal box.

"Her Majesty was fully dressed when Uncle's Jaeger handed in a dispatch from Queen Victoria, asking about Prince Joachim. She immediately sat down to write an answer, and as she leaned over the paper – for she is rather short-sighted – the whole coiffure came down in a heap. I never saw her cross before, but I tell you – " Bertha checked herself.

"Now about the jewellery," cried Barbara. "She has wagon-loads of them, has she not?"

"Of her own, no more than Mamma, I guess, for those you read so much about on festive occasions belong to the State, and the Baroness is responsible for their safety. Once, I was told, she left a valise containing several Crown jewels and some of Auntie's own in the Imperial saloon carriage when they were going to Stuttgart. Through the stupidity of a guard the valise got misplaced, and was discovered only a month later in an out-of-the-way railway station. That time Uncle Majesty himself lectured the Baroness, ordering her at the same time to use her own baronial fingers to sew the diamond buttons on Her Majesty's dresses. Furthermore, to make sure that the fastenings of ear-rings, brooches, bracelets and chains, etc., were intact."

Barbara wanted to know whether the Berlin Crown jewels were as fine as Queen Victoria's in the Tower of London.

"Not quite," said Bertha thoughtfully.

The child nodded. "I know, for when I asked Miss Sprague whether the Regent was as beautiful as the Koh-i-noor, she said: 'You might as well liken your shabby German South-West Africa to the Indian Empire, Miss Barbara.'"

"Don't let the War Lord hear that!" Frau Martha raised a warning finger.

"Now about the dresses! She wears a new one every day, doesn't she?"

"At least she never wears the same twice unaltered."

"What jolly shopping!" cried Barbara. "Does she go round herself? I would."

"That's the ladies' – the Baroness and the Mistress of the Robes – business, of course. She sees the fashion through their eyes and, when Auntie is ill-dressed, the blame really attaches to her women. One morning Auntie called me in and said: 'Bertha, what do you think of my dinner toilet for to-night?'

"The gown on the mannequin was of light red silk with white flounces and blue train, set off by rosebuds."

"Kakadoo!" laughed Barbara.

"That's how it struck me," said Bertha. "But there stood the Baroness pleased as Punch about the new 'creation,' and certainly expected me to say something nice. I was in despair, but Auntie Majesty came to my rescue. 'It's quite impossible,' she said, 'isn't it? Tell Schwertfeger and Moeller – '

"She did not finish, but took up the Alnumach de Gotha lying on the dressing-table. 'I thought so – Wilhelmina's colours. If Wilhelm had seen me in this, he would have said: "You are rushing things, Dona. Wait till we annex Holland."' Then she turned to the Baroness: 'Have it unripped at once. The silks shall be used any way except in this absurd combination. I will wear white this evening.'"

"To bed at once; enough for to-night," ordered Frau Martha, turning back the clothes on Barbara's bed.

CHAPTER XXI

THROTTLING BAVARIA

The Etiquette of Dress – Bülow in a Fix – That "Place in the Sun" – "That Idiot Bismarck" – Prussianize the British Empire

In the grandchamber where Bismarck sat so long enthroned and Caprivi, the general "commanded to the office," as he might have been ordered to occupy a bastion, spent troublesome years; at the desk where Prince Hohenlohe's thoughtful face shone between colossal oil-lamps; in the very chair where the Iron One swore lustily at petty kings, sat Bernhard von Bülow, Chancellor and Major-General.

Don't forget the Major-General, for the War Lord had more trouble making him that than conferring the Imperial Chancellorship. Military titles are sadly embroidered with precedents and rules and things.

Frederick the Great used to own silk mills, therefore his ministers of State were compelled to wait upon him in satin breeches and long-tailed satin coats, and no man who loved his job would appear more than six times in the same garments before the Majesty, since the royal merchant would have considered himself cheated out of the sale of so many ells. Frederick's descendant, the War Lord, is interested in army cloth – hence his dislike for mufti.

Jovial, talkative, on good terms with himself, Bernhard felt quite guilty in his velvet jacket – a present from the Princess, his wife – when he heard a sharp voice call out his name. It came from the garden path adjoining the high French windows.

"Must be coming from the War Ministry. What's up?" thought the Chancellor, ringing frantically for a dress coat. If those sentinels would only challenge Majesty, there might be time to change.