BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

with discretion and for his pro-British influence at Constantinople. Bismarck’s “plain and
straightforward policy” for the defense of Germany would no doubt continue and, with the
pending accession of Crown Prince Frederick to the Prussian throne, formerly turbulent relations
between Bismarck and the English-born Crown Princess Victoria would resolve into “complete
accord” on the interests of the German Empire. 60 Although liberal hopes for a more progressive,
Anglophile German government were dashed with the premature death of Kaiser Frederick III in
1888, British reformers, radicals and social imperialists alike could look to Bismarckian state
insurance models. Joseph Chamberlain and the Unionists, eventually endorsed tariff reform. 61
Bismarck’s falling out with Kaiser Wilhelm II and his forced resignation in 1890,
metaphorically depicted as “Dropping the Pilot” in John Tenniel’s famous Punch cartoon, led
some to regret the ex-chancellor’s downfall. 62 Sensing an atmosphere of worry and anxiety in
European chancelleries since Bismarck’s disappearance, an anonymous writer for the Fortnightly
Review detailed the unraveling of German foreign policy through the kaiser’s vacillations. The
author missed Bismarck’s “brilliant unscrupulousness” and lamented the kaiser’s aspiration to be
not an “honest broker” but a “sort of War Lord of European Peace.” The impatient kaiser
abandoned his Neue Kurs of openness and conciliation after the lapse of Bismarck’s secret
Reinsurance Treaty with Russia had precipitated the Franco-Russian Dual Entente in 1894, and
after the repeal of Bismarck’s anti-Socialist law had failed to quell democratic political
60 “The Present Position of European Politics: Part I.—Germany,” 4-7, 12-14.
61 McBriar, Fabian Socialism, 261; Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform, 208.
62 Tenniel’s cartoon appeared in the March 1890 issue.
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