The night before departing for Stockholm from Danzig, Natsuki welcomed a special visitor to his accommodation, Theobarden von Batemann, the current Prime Minister of Germany. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 By this time, Natsuki had confirmed that he would meet with Tsar Nicholas II at the military port of Kronstadt and informed the Kaiser of the situation.

Von Batemann was commissioned by Wilhelm II to travel from Berlin.

If he expressed his approval or disagreement with his itinerary, there was no need to send a dignified prime minister to come in a hurry, Natsuki knew that there must be a deeper intention, so he ordered his attendant to prepare a pot of fragrant tea, and asked Charlotte to rest first, and he met with Bateman alone.

Like those generals who have been in the army for many years, Bateman has served in government for more than 40 years, and has deep political experience and a calm style. He was not in a hurry to tell all the intentions of the trip in one go, but arranged them in a way that did not appear abrupt or procrastinating, and that he controlled the rhythm and atmosphere well.

At the previous dinner, Wilhelm II had advised Natsuki to cancel his visit to Russia, but for his decision to go to Kronstadt to meet with Nicholas II, he appointed Bateman to convey his support, and even asked Natsuki to inquire about Nicholas II's tone about the joint aid of the Allies to Russia. For a long time, the Slavic peoples were regarded by the countries of Central and Western Europe as barbarians living in Eastern Europe, a terrible force that threatened to destroy European civilization, and this idea persisted until modern times. Now that the Tsarist Empire is crumbling, the question of what will happen to the largest and most powerful Slavic state, whether it will be artificially divided into a number of small states, or whether a new independent regime will continue to rule Great Russia, is a matter of close attention to the European countries, especially the great powers.

After the war, the strategic direction of the Allied camp was almost controlled by Germany alone. In Natsuki's view, the essence of the joint aid to Russia is to reduce Germany's worries in the event of a conflict with the United States and Britain, and to do so, it is necessary to improve German-Russian relations and keep Russia under the rule of a rotten regime as much as possible. However, in the current situation, with the exception of Germany, the other allied countries have neither much interest in the strategy of aiding Russia, nor do they have enough financial resources to support it.

Ireland's current direction of efforts is to develop peacefully and enhance its national strength, which is not at the same level as Germany's grand strategic goal of expanding its international influence and building a solid intercontinental sphere of influence, but Ireland's independent statehood and rapid development benefit from Germany's protection and support, and the future development situation is closely related to Germany's strategic success or failure. Proceeding from the overall situation, Natsuki expressed his political views more clearly in his conversation with Bateman - the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for more than 300 years, was terminally ill, and limited external assistance would not help to change the status quo. If a bourgeois government similar to France were to rule the country, the nascent Russia would be the object of a rivalry between the two camps, but if a workers' revolutionary regime emerged, it would be seen as a new scourge by the countries of Europe and the non-European world, blockaded or even intervened by arms.

However, Natsuki's analysis did not resonate with Bateman, who insisted that the workers' movement in Russia was the internal impetus for the Russian government to implement economic and political reforms, just as it had been in the latter part of the Russo-Japanese War until 1907. After a period of chaos and slump, Russia will once again usher in a period of positive economic development, and its military strength will return to a strong state. Therefore, the Allied camp should not intervene too much in the Russian political situation, but give friendly economic and political help to the Romanov dynasty, and win the favor of the Russian royal family, government, and army, so as to prevent the United States and Britain from gaining the upper hand again, and even promote a stronger "Triple Entente" to jointly oppose the Central Powers led by Germany.

There is no obvious logical flaw in Bateman's analysis, the problem is that he simply fails to see the trend of history. Natsuki felt both understandable and helpless about this. The German Chancellor, who had been in office for nine years, could surpass his predecessor Bernhard von Büelllow in a few months and become the second-longest serving as Chancellor since the birth of the Second German Reich - second only to Otto von Bismarck, the greatest political figure in the history of the Reich, but his political wisdom was not half as bad as Bismarck's, just like those so-called famous generals, whose achievements were not worth mentioning in the face of the historical achievements of Napoleon, Caesar, and Hannibal.

Conveying the Kaiser's request, Batemann asked Natsuki about his plans to visit Tsarist Russia. One of them is to strive to reach a cooperation agreement with Russia on military technology and personnel under the premise of mutual benefit, strengthen military ties between the two sides, and keep abreast of Russia's internal developments. Bateman asked again, as if because he didn't get any news from Wilhelm II, but in Natsuki's view, this is the separation between countries, and even the closest allies have their own interests and positions. Natsuki knew that the Kaiser's suspicion was not Ireland's position, but that he was worried that he would make unwise moves in order to benefit Ireland, so he took the trouble to make statements and explanations to Bateman, reminding the German Prime Minister that ideological opposition was a factor that needed to be paid special attention to in the future.

In just over two months, the heads of state of 19 European countries, including Germany, Austria, Italy, and France, will hold a new round of meetings. Such high-level meetings with no fixed theme have been held annually since 1917 and have become a common practice. At the last meeting, which was held in Hamburg, Germany, the main topic was economic development and arms reduction, when Irish Prime Minister Horders proposed that more countries join the economic and trade alliance formed by Austria-Hungary, Ireland, and Spain, thereby enhancing the economic activity of European countries, but did not receive a positive response from other countries. As the United States and Japan, two military powers outside Europe, have continued to expand their armaments in recent years, neither Germany, Britain, nor Italy have slowed down their original plans to build ships.

The monarchs and heads of government of Europe have not yet regarded the Marxist revolution as an unstoppable beast, but when the first proletarian power is established and the revolutionary currents of thought have had a guiding influence on the workers' movement in the countries of Europe, the rulers of the monarchies and bourgeois democracies will realize the amazing power of the Marxist revolution and will scramble to fortify the fences, extinguish the fires, and even unite to blockade and strangle the emerging proletarian power.

The so-called Marxist revolution in this era generally refers to the workers' revolutionary movement initiated with Marx's theory as its root, which can also be called the proletarian revolution. The revolution could take the form of a seizure of power by force or a change of regime through legitimate elections, as was the case with the Paris Commune uprising of 1871. With the exception of turbulent Russia, the possibility of violent overthrow of the current government by revolutionary movements is slim to none, and it seems to be the latter that worries the monarchies and democratic republics of Europe more. In Germany, for example, the Marxist Social Democratic Party is convinced that it can bring about socialist change in Germany through a democratic, legitimate election for a change of government, and similar situations exist to varying degrees in France, Spain, Italy, and other countries.

After listening to Natsuki's reasoning about ideology and the revolutionary situation, Bateman finally came to his senses, and he hurriedly asked Natsuki what his coping strategy was, but all he got was a wordless shake of his head. Regardless of the rapid economic development and social stability of Ireland today, the ills of the economic and social structure are only covered up by nationalist currents, and the new class that holds military and political power and the old aristocracy who are trying to restore their former position, the bourgeoisie who control social capital and the ordinary people engaged in industry and agriculture, and even the Germans in the same class and the local elite, if they cannot properly resolve various problems in the process of development, but let them continue to accumulate, once the country's development momentum slows downThe concentrated appearance of various social contradictions will inevitably provide space for the Marxist trend of thought to take root and develop; if it is strongly impacted by the external environment, many problems cannot be settled by relying on the personal charm of the monarch or military power. When the time comes, a new social change or even a revolution is inevitable!

The tide of history is unstoppable, Natsuki's silence made Bateman fall into a long period of thinking, and it is worth mentioning that the German labor movement has a long history, the German Socialist Labor Party and later the German Social Democratic Party are the earliest proletarian parties, they led the development of Marxist revolutionary thought in Germany, Bismarck was deeply concerned about this in his time, on the one hand, he took severe measures to suppress the German labor movement, prompting the Reichstag to pass the "****** Act", On the other hand, legislation to protect the rights and interests of citizens, including the Sickness Insurance Act of 1883, the Accident Insurance Act of 1884, and the Old Age and Disability Insurance Act of 1889, tried to buy off and co-opt the working class, but these measures failed to achieve the desired effect of Bismarck, and instead encouraged the power of the Social Democrats. In 1890, the German Social Democratic Party already held 27 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, and in 1912 this proportion increased to 35 percent, and the unexpected turning point came on August 4, 1914, driven by fanatical nationalist sentiment, the Social Democratic MPs voted in favor of the parliamentary vote on war appropriations and the long recess of the Reichstag, allowing Germany to enter the war without legal hindrance, which greatly damaged the image and prestige of the Social Democratic Party, and ultimately caused a split in the Social Democratic PartyAs a result, the German workers' movement fell into a relative low point during the war and for a long time after the war.

(End of chapter)