ABSTRACT
From this point of view I understand Bismarck’s statement when he said that the Emperor was conducting his policy in the manner of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. This is the black cloud on the horizon.
Wilhelm II hoped, by means of a friendly personal correspondence with Nicholas II (which, ironically, was conducted in English), to deflect Russia’s ambitions from Europe to Asia, and to arouse the tsar’s fears of too close a relationship with revolutionary France.
