(speech of April 5 1916). On the question of unrestricted submarine warfare he ultimately divested himself of responsibility, having declared to the Emperor in Jan. 1917: “I can give Your Majesty neither my assent to the unrestricted U-boat warfare nor my refusal. I submit to Your Majesty's decision”[1] which was that of the General Staff and the Admiralty. He must have given his explicit assent to the monstrous note addressed on Jan. 19 1917 by his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Zimmermann, to Mexico inviting her to attack the United States in the hope of annexing New Mexico, Texas and Arizona and to try to detach Japan from the Allied cause. His alleged high principles did not prevent him from associating himself with this scheme for a treacherous assault upon a Power with whom Germany was then at peace.
By the middle of July 1917 Bethmann Hollweg had lost all support in the Reichstag. The Conservatives and National Liberals were alienated by his Prussian franchise policy and his conflicts with the higher command. The Left and the Catholic Centre in which Erzberger with his so-called Peace Resolution (adopted by the Reichstag on July 19) had acquired the upper hand were convinced that the Allied and Associated Powers would place no confidence in the overtures of men with the past of Bethmann Hollweg and Zimmermann. Finally, on the morrow of the publication of the second Prussian Franchise Edict, on July 14 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff came to Berlin in order to hold conferences with the chiefs of political parties regarding the terms of the “Peace Resolution.” The Chancellor could not tolerate this military interference with his own department, and the Emperor, confronted with an ultimatum from his two indispensable military leaders, accepted the Chancellor's resignation. Bethmann Hollweg retired to Hohenfinow and took no further part in politics beyond writing his Reflections on the World War (vol. i. 1919). He died, at Hohenfinow on Jan. 1 1921, after a brief illness. (G. S.)
BEYERS, CHRISTIAN FREDERICK (1869–1914), S. African general, was born in Cape Colony in 1869 and went as a young
man to the Transvaal, where he took a prominent part on the
Boer side in the S. African War, winning high distinction in the
field and bearing the rank of general when peace was made in
1902. Gen. Beyers had much influence, as soldier and statesman,
among the Dutch-speaking people of S. Africa, and was, with
Gen. Botha and Gen. Smuts, though in a less degree than they,
one of the recognized leaders of the Transvaal Dutch. When
responsible government was granted to the Transvaal, Beyers
became speaker of the Lower House. He showed in the speaker's
chair remarkable gifts. He was acute, tolerant and rigidly impartial, thus making a deep impression upon English-speaking
S. Africans, who would have supported his claims to be the first
speaker of the first S. African House of Assembly, had they been
pressed by Gen. Botha, the first Prime Minister. Instead, Beyers
was made commandant-general of the Citizen Forces of S.Africa,
and in that capacity paid a visit to Great Britain, Germany,
Switzerland and Holland in 1912. A man of fine physique, of
passionate nature, and of profound religious convictions, Beyers,
as commandant-general of S. Africa, was entertained with marked
attentions during his visit to Germany by the Kaiser. When the
World War broke out, he set himself in almost open opposition
to the policy of the Botha Government. For some months this
opposition smouldered. Then, at a moment when the S. African
expeditionary force was being mobilized for the invasion of
German S.W. Africa, and when rebellion was already smouldering
among the irreconcilables of the S. African Dutch, Beyers
resigned his post as commandant-general in a letter addressed
to Gen. Smuts, then Minister of Defence, and published in
Het Volk, an anti-Government journal. In this letter he declared
that he had always disapproved the Government's intention to
invade German S.W. Africa and that this disapproval was
shared by the great majority of the Dutch-speaking people of
the Union. Gen. Smuts replied in a stern letter declaring that
the war was a test of the loyalty to their pledged word of the
Dutch-speaking people, and accepting Beyers' resignation. A
few weeks later Beyers took the field as a leader of the rebellion
against the Government, only to be overwhelmed by the Govern-
ment troops under the command of Gen. Botha, to be driven
from pillar to post as a fugitive, and to be drowned on Dec. 7
1914 while trying to escape from his pursuers by crossing the
Vaal river. His body was recovered two days later, and with his
death the rebellion was brought to an ignominious end.
BHOWNAGGREE, SIR MANCHERJEE MERWANJEE (1851–),
Indian parliamentarian, the son of a Parsee merchant of Bombay, was born in Bombay Aug. 15 1851, and began
life as a journalist, but when only 22 was appointed, on the
death of his father, to succeed to the Bombay agency of the
Kathiawar state of Bhavanagar. Called to the bar at Lincoln's
Inn in 1885, in the following year the Maharaja appointed
him judicial councillor, a post in which he introduced far-reaching reforms. Settling in England in 1891, he actively associated
himself with public bodies connected with India. He was the
head of the Parsee organization in Europe and chairman of the
Indian Social Club. To the Imperial Institute building he
contributed, in memory of his only sister, the eastern colonnade
leading to the Indian section. His compatriot Dadabhai Naoroji
was in the 1892–5 parliament, but Bhownaggree, elected in
the latter year in the Unionist interest for N.E. Bethnal Green,
was the only other Indian to enter the House of Commons, and
the only one to be reelected (1900). During his ten years there
he impressed the House by the vigour and eloquence of his
speeches on Indian matters, and he originated and unflaggingly
maintained in and out of the House the long battle against the
disabilities of Indians in South Africa and other overseas domin-
ions of the Crown. His cogent and detailed statement of the
case for Indians in the Transvaal after annexation was the
basis of a blue-book (Cd. 2239, 1904), and was sent to Lord
Milner by the Colonial Secretary, Alfred Lyttelton, with the
observation that he felt much sympathy for the views expressed,
and that it would be difficult to give a fully satisfactory answer.
The practical result was that the proposals of the High Com-
missioner were in some important particulars rejected. Bhown-
aggree was one of the first Indians to press forward the need for
technical and vocational education in India side by side with
the literary instruction which was too exclusively maintained.
He was made a C.I.E. in 1886 and K.C.I.E. in 1897. In early life
he wrote a history of the constitution of the East India Company,
and made a Gujarati translation of Queen Victoria's Life in
the Highlands. During the World War he assisted in repelling
German falsehoods regarding British rule in India by means of
a widely circulated booklet entitled The Verdict of India.
BIGELOW, JOHN (1817–1911), American diplomat and journalist
(see 3.922), died in New York Dec. 19 1911. In 1909
he published three volumes of Retrospections of an Active Life,
covering his career to 1866. Two additional volumes, ending
with 1879, were issued by his son (1913).
BIKANER, SIR GANGA SINGH, MAHARAJA OF (1880–), Indian soldier and statesman, was born Oct. 3 1880, and succeeded by adoption his elder brother, Dungar Singh, in 1887 as 21st ruler of the state. After education at the Mayo College, Ajmere, he was invested with full powers in 1898, and
promptly showed energy and skill in their use in combating the great famine of 1899–1900. In the Chinese campaign of 1901 he accompanied the British contingent in command of his famous Camel Corps, the Ganga Risala, which also did good service in Somaliland in 1903. The first of his many visits to England was made in 1902, when he attended King Edward's coronation, and was made A.D.C. to the Prince of Wales, an appointment continued by King George when he came to the
throne. In the World War the Maharaja offered the whole resources of the state and served first on the headquarters staff of the Meerut division in France, and later on the staff of the
British commander-in-chief. In 1915, at the head of his Camel Corps, he took part in the fighting to withstand the Turkish invasion of Egypt. In 1917 he and Sir S. P. (afterwards Lord)
Sinha were the first Indians to be called to London for Empire gatherings. They were members of the Imperial War Confer-
- ↑ Scheidemann, Der Zusammenbruch, p. 74.
