The Secret Memoirs of Bertha Krupp. Fischer Henry William
Lord illustrated the intended process by kneading the air with grasping fingers, his "terrible right" alternately pushing and squeezing, attacking, relaxing and coaxing, with the father looking on, terror-stricken.
Such, then, was to be the fate of his little girl: a vice round her white neck, spurs to her sides. The man before him came into the world accoutred to ride, and seventy millions of people his cattle!
The jewels on the War Lord's ring-laden hand flashed and threatened. That twenty-carat ruby on his little finger meant blood, and the emerald, linked to it, might denote the poison-tongue eager to corrupt the childish mind into an instrument of high politics. Diamonds stand for innocence. There were diamonds galore. Oh, the farce of it! Opals, too, a rare collection, but the stone sacred to October tells at least an honest tale – tears.
The War Lord stripped off a gold hoop with a large turquoise. "Wear it in remembrance of this hour, dear Frederick," he said. "The turquoise signifies prosperity, you know."
He walked towards one of the windows and, standing within its deep embrasure, pointed to the towering chimneys. "My brave guardsmen," he exulted, half to himself, "outposts of my Imperial will, avant-guard of my seven millions of warriors; it will be great fun, old fellows, to make you dance as I whistle!"
Then, with a broad smile to Frederick: "That being settled, the Minister of Justice shall draw up your testament at once. I brought him to Essen for that. Now, don't look frightened, boy. 'Last will' does not mean 'last legs.' You will outlive us all, I bet. Let's think of a Prince Consort now."
"But, as said, Bertha is much too young," faltered Frederick.
"Herr," staccatoed the War Lord, "I already had the honour to inform you that Bertha is my godchild – m-y g-o-d-c-h-i-l-d. Do you hear?" he yelled, while startled Frederick looked anxiously towards the door.
The War Lord took the hint and resumed conversational tone. "Come now," he ordered, "roll call. Some of our dear friends are still in the marriage mart." (Reflectively): "Too bad; Fritzie got married." Bertha's father shuddered at the mentioning of a certain Count, who, though brother-in-law of a reigning Grand Duke, was prisoner Number 5429 at Siegen jail, in Rhineland, a few years later for crimes unspeakable. In 1902, however, the dashing Colonel of Horse had not yet been publicly disgraced, and the War Lord launched into a panegyric of his friend. "Yes, indeed, Fritz would have made a first-class master here. Not overburdened with brains, but knows enough to obey orders. No humming and hawing for him when the War Lord has spoken. But the Suien girl caught him. The kind of son-in-law you want, Frederick."
Krupp shook his head.
"I respectfully beg to differ; none of these for my little girl."
"These?" The War Lord again raised his voice, but dropped into a hoarse whisper when he heard the officer de jour address the sentinels in the corridor. "One can't say a word without being overheard," he grumbled; "nearer, Frederick, still closer." As he continued speaking he laid his massive right hand on Frederick's knee and hissed between his teeth: "These? You forgot that you were referring to my friends."
"I did not, most assuredly I did not," returned the Ironmaster, disengaging himself by a swift movement and jumping up.
"You dare!" hissed the War Lord, again losing control of himself.
"I dare anything for my child!" cried Krupp, his face livid with rage; "and I tell you to your face none of your free-living friends for my Bertha!"
"Insolence!" roared the War Lord. "Take a care that I don't send you to Spandau."
"I would endure Schlusselburg rather than suffer my child to marry one of these," insisted the Ironmaster doggedly.
The War Lord gazed at the speaker for twenty or more seconds, then said in a tone of command: "You can go. Send in Moltke" (referring to his adjutant, later chief of the general staff).
With the latter he remained closeted a quarter of an hour – quite a long space of time for a person of the War Lord's character – and it is said that he tried to persuade the blond giant (Moltke was blond and blooming then) that Krupp was a madman, as crazy as the Mad Hatter. Otherwise he would never have dared oppose his plebeian will against that of the supreme master. Of course not!
Of Moltke's counter-arguments we know naught, but the War Lord's visit to Essen wound up with a grand banquet of sixty covers, and in the course of it host and Imperial guest toasted each other in honeyed words.
Less than two months later Frederick Krupp died by his own hand, and Bertha Krupp – sixteen, homely and already prone to embonpoint – mounted the throne of the Cannon Kings, as the War Lord had willed.
And, as he had insisted, she became automatically a pawn in his hand, his alter ego for destruction and misery.
Ever since his intimacy with Frederick, the War Lord had looked upon the Krupp plant as the power house for the realisation of his ambition – the conquest of the world; and to a very considerable extent Frederick had aided and abetted his plans by employing his genius for invention and business to commercialise war, and making it fit in with the general scheme of high finance.
"Want a loan?" the Cannon King used to ask governments. "May we fix it for you? But first contract for so many quick-firing guns."
The loan being amply secured, and the quick-firers paid for, then the suggestion would come along: "Have some more Bleichroder or Meyer funds on top of our latest devices in man-killers." And so on, and so on; an endless chain.
Yet, while so eager to provide death with new-fangled tools wholesale, Frederick could not, or would not, divest himself from the shackles of business honesty – and his inheritance.
He wouldn't play tricks on customers. The steel and work he put into guns for, say, Russia or Chili were as flawless and expert as in the guns bought by his Prussian Majesty. And that was the "besetting sin of Frederick," the damning spot on the escutcheon of their friendship, as the War Lord viewed it. It followed, of course, that when one hundred of the Tsar's Krupp guns faced one hundred Krupp guns of the Government of Berlin, they would be an even match so far as material went – a thing and condition in strict contradiction to the Potsdam maxim: "Always attack with superior force."
How often the War Lord had argued with Frederick: Soft lining for enemy howitzers; a well-concealed, patched-up flaw in the barrel of quick-firers.
"I know no enemy, only customers," was Frederick's invariable rejoinder, garbed in politest language.
Customers! Decidedly the War Lord wanted customers – plenty of them, since, as we know, he had invested largely in Krupp stock; but to take customers' money was one thing, and to provide them with means for spoiling the War Lord's game was another.
When that pistol-shot startled Villa Huegel on November 22nd did it portend the death-knell of what the War Lord called "Krupp molly-coddledom"?
Even during Frederick Krupp's lifetime – just as if his early demise had been a foregone conclusion – technical experts of the Berlin War Office had been instructed to make extensive experiments with steel on the lines ordered by Wilhelm the War Lord.
The test would be the Day!
CHAPTER II
WEAVING THE TOILS ROUND BERTHA KRUPP
"Your Play Days are Over" – The Baroness Speaks Out – In the Grip of the Kaiser – A Room Apart
"The makings of the true German heifer," that astute Frenchman, Hippolyte Taine, would have said of the young girl who was busy in her garden behind Villa Huegel on the 24th of November, 1902. For her blooming youth was full of the promise of maternity – broad shoulders, budding figure, generous hands and feet, plenty of room for brains in a good-sized head. Pretty? An Englishman or American would hardly have accorded her that pleasing descriptive title, but comely and wholesome she was, with her air of intelligence and kindly eyes.
An abominable German custom makes scarecrows out of children at a parent's death. So Bertha Krupp was garbed in severest black, awkwardly put together. Her very petticoats, visible when she bent over her flowers, were of sable crepe; not