initiative must
not be curtailed, and will not be curtailed, by any chancellor.... As
regards the chancellor, however, I say that no imperial chancellor worthy
of the name ... would take up any position which in his conscience he did
not regard as justifiable." It is clear that the position of a chancellor
holding these views in relation to a ruler so masterful and so impulsive as
the emperor William II. could be no easy one; and Buelow's long continuance
in office is the best proof of his genius. His first conspicuous act as
chancellor was a masterly defence in the Reichstag of German action in
China, a defence which was, indeed, rendered easier by the fact that Prince
Hohenlohe had--to use his own words--"dug a canal" for the flood of
imperial ambition of which warning had been given in the famous "mailed
fist" speech. Such incidents as this, however, though they served to
exhibit consummate tact and diplomatic skill, give little index to the
fundamental character of his work as chancellor. Of this it may be said, in
general, that it carried on the best traditions of the Prussian service in
whole-hearted devotion to the interests of the state. The accusation that
he was an "agrarian" he thought it necessary to rebut in a speech delivered
on the 18th of February 1906 to the German Handelstag. He was an agrarian,
he declared, in so far as he came of a land-owning family, and was
interested in the prosperity of agriculture; but as chancellor, whose
function it is to watch over the welfare [v.04 p.0794] of all classes, he
was equally concerned with the interests of commerce and industry
(_Koelnische Zeitung_, Feb. 20, 1906). Some credit for the immense material
expansion of Germany under his chancellorship is certainly due to his zeal
and self-devotion. This was generously recognized by the emperor in a
letter publicly addressed to the chancellor on the 21st of May 1906,
immediately after the passage of the Finance Bill. "I am fully conscious,"
it ran, "of the conspicuous share in the initiation and realization of this
work of reform... which must be ascribed to the statesmanlike skill and
self-sacrificing devotion with which you have conducted and promoted those
arduous labours." Rumours had from time to time been rife of a "chancellor
crisis" and Buelow's dismissal; in the _Berliner Tageblatt_ this letter was
compared to the "Never!" with which the emperor William I. had replied to
Bismarck's proffered resignation.

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