After all, he received the army triumphant from the hands of Moltke and
of Bismarck, but the navy is his own personal achievement; he believes
this, and says so repeatedly. But the German navy has no luck. This
year, besides the _Iltis_, the _Frauenlob_, and the _Amazone_, which
swallowed up a large number of junior officers of the Prussian navy, it
has lost the _Kurfurstin_ (as the result of an error of navigation)
with 300 sailors, also the _Augusta_, the _Undine_, and other vessels.
February 22, 1897. [5]
William II has announced himself as the enemy of Greece, and the prop
of the Ottoman Empire. At the subscription ball given at the Opera in
Berlin, did he not walk arm-in-arm with Ghalik Bey, the Turkish
Ambassador, and authorise him to telegraph to the Sultan that, under
existing conditions, he might count upon his sense of justice and his
good-will? Does not this constitute an insolent challenge to the
decision which the Powers are supposed to have taken for the
observation of neutrality?
When William II is insolent, he does not do things by halves; now, he
repeats to all concerned: "One does not argue with Greece, one gives
her orders," and on every occasion that has offered, he has displayed
sentiments hostile to Greece and favourable to the Sultan. For these
reasons, Abdul Hamid is devoted to William II. He is tied to him, and
bound by all his sentiments, by all his admiration and his fear, to the
Germans.
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