Germany and the Germans Part 6

Ye shall march to peace and plenty, in the bond of brotherhood?sign!'"

Whatever the reasons, the criticisms, or the causes, the man whom we have been describing was as certain to dismiss Bismarck from office, as a bird is certain to fly and not to swim. The ruler who at a banquet May the 4th, 1891, proclaimed: "There is only one master of the nation: and that is I, and I will not abide any other"; and later, on the 16th of November, in an address to recruits said: "I need Christian soldiers, soldiers who say their Pater Noster. The soldier should not have a will of his own, but you should all have but one will and that is my will; there is but one law for you and that is mine." Again, in addressing the recruits for the navy on the 5th of March, 1895, he said to them: "Just as I, as Emperor and ruler, consecrate my life and my strength to the service of the nation, so you are pledged to give your lives to me." Such a man could not share his rule with Bismarck.

Bismarck left Berlin amid groans and tears. A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath the empire. The young Emperor would stumble and sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. Men said this was the first sign of an imperious will and temper.

There is an Arab proverb which runs: "When G.o.d wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings." The Kaiser was to be given power for his own destruction. But what has happened? Absolutely nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884 Bismarck was saying to Gerhard Rohlfs, the African explorer: "The main thing is, we neither can nor really want to colonize. We shall never have a fleet like France. Our artisans and lawyers and time-expired soldiers are no good as colonists." If the ideas of William the Second were to prevail, it was time that Bismarck went over the side as pilot of the ship of state. The Kaiser in appropriate terms regretted the loss of this tried public servant and said: "However, the course remains the same? full steam ahead!"

Three days after the Jameson raid, on the 3d of January, 1896, the Kaiser telegraphed to President Kruger: "I beg to express to you my sincere congratulations that, without help from foreign powers, you have succeeded with your own people and by your own strength in driving out the armed bands which attempted to disturb the peace of your country, and in reestablishing order and in defending the independence of your people from attacks from outside."

On the 28th of October, 1908, The Daily Telegraph of London published a long interview with the Emperor, the gist of which was that the British press and people continued to distrust him, while all the time he was and had been the friend of Great Britain. The Emperor cited instances of his friendship, declared the English were as mad as March hares not to believe in him; insisted that by reason of Germany's increasing foreign commerce, and on account of the growing menace to peace in the Pacific Ocean, Germany was determined to have an adequate fleet, which perhaps one day even England might be glad to have alongside of her own.

In addition to these two incidents, the Emperor had written a letter to Lord Tweedmouth, who was already then a sick man, and probably not wholly responsible, in which it was said he had offered advice as to the increase of the British navy.

I have described these furious indiscretions, as they were called at the time, together, though they were years apart; for these utterances, and the constant repet.i.tion of his sense of responsibility to G.o.d, and not to the people he governs, are the heart of this whole contention that the German Emperor is indiscreet, is indiscreet even to the point of damaging his own prestige, and injuring his country's interests abroad.

Of all these so-called indiscretions there is the question to ask: Should these things have been said? Should these things have been written? There are several things to be said in answer to these questions. I shall treat each one in turn, but all these statements told the truth and cleared the air. The Kruger telegram was not written by the Emperor, and when the worst construction is put upon it, it expressed what? It was merely the condemnation of freebooting methods, a condemnation, be it said, that it received from many right- minded and sincerely patriotic Englishmen, a condemnation too that was re-echoed from America. Only the honorable and winning personality of one of the most patriotic and charming men in England, Sir Starr Jameson, saved the raid from looking like piracy. A brave man spoke his mind about it, and he happened to be in a position so conspicuous that the rumble of his words was heard afar.

So far as The Daily Telegraph interview is concerned, the secret history of the incident has never been fully divulged. One may say, however, without fear of contradiction that the importance of the matter was unduly magnified, by those, both at home and abroad, who had something to gain by exaggeration. It is admitted on all sides by those best informed that at any rate the Emperor was neither responsible for the publication, a point to be kept in mind, nor for the choice of expressions used in the interview.

The letter to Lord Tweedmouth was a friendly communication dealing with the conditions of the British and German fleets in the past and present, and without a word in it that might not have been published in The Times. It was quite innocent of the sinister significance placed upon it by those who had not seen it; and the British Ministry declined to publish it for entirely different reasons, reasons in no way connected with the German Emperor.

As we read The Daily Telegraph interview to-day, it is a plain doc.u.ment. Every word of it is true. The moment one looks at it from the point of view, that the Emperor of Germany is sincerely desirous of an amiable understanding with England, and that he is, for the peace and quiet of the world, working toward that end, there is no adverse criticism to be pa.s.sed upon it. The English are thoroughly and completely mistaken about the att.i.tude of the German Emperor toward them. He is far and away the best and most powerful friend they have in Europe, and I, for one, would be willing to forgive him were he irritated at their misunderstanding of him. Personally, I have not the shadow of a doubt that had France or Russia treated the German Emperor with the cool distrust shown him by the British, the German army and fleet would have moved ere this.

To those who know the Britisher he is forgiven for those luxuries of insular stupidity which punctuate his history. I know what a fine fellow he is, and I pa.s.s them by. Mr. Churchill speaks of the German fleet as a "luxury"; but this is only one of those cold-storage impromptus that a reputation for cleverness must keep on hand, and when Lord Haldane in a clumsy attempt to praise the German Emperor speaks of him as "half English" I laugh, as one laughs at the story of fat Gibbon kneeling to propose to a lady and requiring a servant to get him on his legs again. British courting often needs a lackey to keep it on its legs.

Could anything be more burningly irritable to the Germans than those two unnecessary statements? For the moment I am dealing with the att.i.tude of the Emperor alone. Of the tirades of Chamberlain and Woltmann, Schmoller, Treitschke, Delbruck, Zorn, and other under-exercised professors, one may speak elsewhere. They are as unpardonable as the yokel rhetoric of our British friends. Of the Emperor's insistence upon his friendliness, of his outspoken betrayal of his real feelings, of his audacious policy of telling the blunt truth, I am, alas, no fair judge, for I am too entirely the advocate of keeping as few cats in the bag as possible. If these things had not been said and written, it is true that there would have been no tumult; having been said and written, I fail to see the slightest indication in the political life of either Germany or England to-day that they did harm. Certainly, from his own point of view of what his position entails, they can hardly, as the radicals in Germany claim, be considered as unconst.i.tutional or beyond his prerogative.

When the German Emperor says: "I," he refers to the authority and responsibility and dignity of the German imperial crown. He is not magnifying his personal importance; he is emphasizing the dignity and importance of every German citizen. Let us try to understand the situation before we pa.s.s judgment! Both German radicalism and German socialism are peculiar to Germany, and everywhere misunderstood abroad. They both demand things of the government for the eas.e.m.e.nt of their position, they both demand certain privileges, but they do not seek or want either authority or responsibility. Look at the figures of their proportionate increase and compare this with their actual influence in the Reichstag to-day. From 1881 to 1911, here is the percentage of votes cast by the five representative political parties:

1881 1893 1911

The National Liberals........... 14.6 12.9 14.0

The Freisinnige and south German Volkspartei..................... 23.2 14.2 13.1

The Conservatives, including the Deutsche and Freikonservative... 23.7 20.4 12.4

The Centrum (Catholic party).... 23.2 19.0 16.3

The social Democrats............ 6.1 23.2 34.8

If it were thought for a moment in Germany that the Socialists could come into real power, their vote and the number of their representatives in the Reichstag would dwindle away in one single election.

The average German is no leader of men, no lover of an emergency, no social or political colonist, and he would shrink from the initiative and daring and endurance demanded by a real political revolution and a real change of authority, as a hen from water. The very quality in his ruler that we take for granted he must dislike is the quality that at the bottom of his heart he adores, and he reposes upon it as the very foundation of his sense of security, and as the very bulwark behind which he makes grimaces and shakes his fist at his enemies. Such men as the present chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, a very calm spectator of his country's doings, and the Emperor himself, both know this.

As he looks at history and at life, it follows that he must be interested in everything that concerns his people, and not infrequently take a hand in settling questions, or in pushing enterprises, that seem too widely apart to be dealt with by one man, and too far afield for his const.i.tutional obligations to profit by his interference. Certainly German progress shows that the Germans can have no ground to quote: "Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi,"

of their Emperor.

In the discussion of this question, I may remind my American readers, although the German const.i.tution is dealt with elsewhere, that there is one difference between Germany and America politically, that must never be left out of our calculations. Such const.i.tution and such rights as the German citizens have, were granted them by their rulers.

The people of Prussia, or of Bavaria, or of Wurtemberg, have not given certain powers to, and placed certain limitations upon, their rulers; on the contrary, their rulers have given the people certain of their own prerogatives and political privileges, and granted to the people as a favor, a certain share in government and certain powers, that only so long as seventy years ago belonged to the sovereign alone. It is not what the people have won and then shared with the ruler, but it is what the ruler has inherited or won and shared with the people, that makes the groundwork of the const.i.tutions of the various states, and of the empire of Germany. Nothing has been taken away from the people of Prussia or from any other state in Germany that they once had; but certain rights and privileges have been granted by the rulers that were once wholly theirs. Bear this in mind, that it is William II and his ancestors who made Prussia Prussia, and voluntarily gave Prussians certain political rights, and not the citizens of Prussia who stormed the battlements of equal rights and made a treaty with their sovereign.

The King of Prussia is the largest landholder and the richest citizen of Prussia. We have seen what he expects of his navy and of his army.

Speaking on the 6th of September, 1894, he says: "Gentlemen, opposition on the part of the Prussian n.o.bility to their King is a monstrosity."

But arid details are not history, and in this connection let us have done with them. I have doc.u.mented this chapter with dates and quotations because the situation politically, is so far away from the experience or knowledge of the American, that he must be given certain facts to a.s.sist his imagination in making a true picture. I have done this, too, that the Kaiser may have his real background when we undertake to place him understandingly in the modern world. Here we have patriarchal rule still strong and still undoubting, coupled with the most successful social legislation, the most successful state control of railways, mines, and other enterprises; and a progress commercial and industrial during the last quarter of a century, second to none.

This ruler believes it to be essentially a part of his business to be a Lorenzo de Medici to his people in art; their high priest in religion; their envoy extraordinary to foreign peoples; their watchful father and friend in legislation dealing with their daily lives; their war-lord, and their best example in all that concerns domestic happiness and patriotic citizenship. He fulfils the words of the old German chronicle which reads: "Merito a n.o.bis nostrisque posteris pater patriae appelatur quia erat egregius defensor et fortissimus propugnator nihili pendens vitam suam contra omnia adversa propter just.i.tiam opponere."

If history is not altogether valueless in its description of symptoms, the Germans are of a softer mould than some of us, more malleable, rather tempted to imitate than led by self-confidence to trust to their own ideals, and less hard in confronting the demands of other peoples, that they should accept absorption by them.

Spurned and disdained by Louis XIV, they fawned upon him, built palaces like his, dressed like his courtiers, wrote and spoke his language, copied his literary models, and even bored themselves with mistresses because this was the fashion at Versailles. He stole from them, only to be thrown the kisses of flattery in return. He sneered at them, only to be begged for his favors in return. He took their cities in time of peace, and they acknowledged the theft by a smirking adulation that he allowed one of their number to be crowned a king.

As for Napoleon, he performed a prolonged autopsy upon the Germans.

They were dismembered or joined together as suited his plans. At his beck they fought against one another, or against Russia, or against England. He tossed them crowns, that they still wear proudly, as a master tosses biscuits to obedient spaniels. He put his poor relatives to rule over them, here and there, and they were grateful. He marched into their present capital, took away their monuments, and the sword of Frederick the Great, and they hailed him with tears and rejoicing as their benefactor, while their wittiest poet and sweetest singer, lauded him to the skies.

It is unpleasant to recall, but quite unfair to forget, these happenings of the last two hundred years in the history of the German people. What would any man say, after this, was their greatest need, if not self-confidence; if not twenty-five years of peace to enable them to recover from their beatings and humiliation; if not a powerful army and navy to give them the sense of security, by which alone prosperity and pride in their accomplishments and in themselves can be fostered; if not a ruler who holds ever before their eyes their ideals and the unfaltering energy required of them to attain them!

What nation would not be self-conscious after such dire experiences?

What nation would not be tenderly sensitive as to its treatment by neighboring powers? What nation would not be even unduly keen to resent any appearance of an attempt to jostle it from its hard-won place in the sun? Their self-consciousness and sensitiveness and vanity are patent, but they are pardonable. As the leader of the Conservative party in the Reichstag, Doctor von Heydebrandt, speaking at Breslau in October, 1911, anent the Morocco controversy, said, after, alluding to the "bellicose impudence" of Lloyd-George: "The [British] ministry thrusts its fist under our nose, and declares, I alone command the world. It is bitterly hard for us who have 1870 behind us." They feel that they should no longer be treated to such b.u.mptiousness.

I trust that I am no swashbuckler, but I have the greatest sympathy with the present Emperor in his capacity as war-lord, and in his insistent stiffening of Germany's martial backbone.

When shall we all recover from a certain international sickliness that keeps us all feverish? The continual talk and writing about international friendships, being of the same family, or the same race, the cousin propagandism in short, is irritating, not helpful. I do not go to Germany to discover how American is Germany, nor to England to discover how American is England; but to Germany to discover how German is Germany, to England to see how English is England. I much prefer Americans to either Germans or Englishmen, and they prefer Germans or Englishmen, as the case may be, to Americans. What spurious and milksoppy puppets we should be if it were not so. So long as there are praters going about insisting that Germany, with a flaxen pig-tail down her back, and England, in pumps instead of boots, and a poodle instead of a bulldog, shall sit forever in the moonlight hand in hand; or that America shall become a dandy, shave the chin-whisker, wear a Latin Quarter b.u.t.terfly tie of red, white, and blue, and thrum a banjo to a little brown lady with oblique eyes and a fan, all day long; just so long will the bulldog snarl, the flaxen-haired maiden look sulky, the chin-whisker become stiffer and more provocative, and the fluttering fan seem to threaten blows.

We have been surfeited with peace talk till we are all irritable. One hundredth part of an ounce of the same quality of peace powders that we are using internationally would, if prescribed to a happy family in this or any other land, lead to dissensions, disobedience, domestic disaster, and divorce. Mr. Carnegie will have lived long enough to see more wars and international disturbances, and more discontent born of superficial reading, than any man in history who was at the same time so closely connected with their origin. Perhaps it were better after all if our millionaires were educated!

The peace party need war just as the atheists need G.o.d, otherwise they have nothing to deny, nothing to attack. Peace is a negative thing that no one really wants, certainly not the kind of peace of which there is so much talking to-day, which is a kind of castrated patriotism. Peace is not that. Peace can never be born of such impotency. When German statesmen declare roundly that they will not discuss the question of disarmament, they are merely saying that they will not be traitors to their country. If the Emperor rattles the sabre occasionally, it is because the time has not come yet, when this German people can be allowed to forget what they have suffered from foreign conquerors, and what they must do to protect themselves from such a repet.i.tion of history.

When the final judgment is pa.s.sed upon the Emperor, we must recall his deep religious feeling that he is inevitably an instrument of G.o.d; his ingrained and ineradicable method of reading history as though it were a series of the ipse dixits of kings; his complacent neglect of how the work of the world is done by patient labor; of how works of art are only born of travail and tears: his obsession by that curious psychology of kings that leads them to believe that they are somehow different, and under other laws, as though they lived in another dimension of s.p.a.ce. In addition, he is a man of unusually rapid mental machinery, of overpowering self-confidence, of great versatility, of many advantages of training and experience, and, above all, he is unhampered. He is answerable directly to no one, to no parliament, to no minister, to no people. He is father, guardian, guide, school- master, and priest, but in no sense a servant responsible to any master save one of his own choosing.

The only wonder is that he is not insupportable. Those who have come under the spell of his personality declare him to be the most delightful of companions; what Germany has grown to be under his reign of twenty-five years all the world knows, much of the world envies, some of the world fears; what his own people think of him can best be expressed by the statement that his supremacy was never more a.s.sured than to-day.

I agree that no one man can be credited with the astonishing expansion of Germany in all directions in the last thirty years; but so interwoven are the advice and influence, the ambitions and plans, of the German Emperor with the progress of the German people, that this one personality shares his country's successes as no single individual in any other country can be said to do.

Whether he likes Americans or not one can hardly know. No doubt he has made many of them think so; and, alas, we suffer from a national hallucination that we are liked abroad, when as a matter of fact we are no more liked than others; and in cultured centres we are in addition, laughed at by the careless and sneered at by the sour.

That the Kaiser is liked by Americans, both by those who have met him and by those who have not, is, I think, indisputable. He is of the stuff that would have made a first-rate American. He would have been a sovereign there as he is a sovereign here. He would have enjoyed the risks, and turmoil, and compet.i.tion; he would have enjoyed the fine, free field of endeavor, and he would have jousted with the best of us in our tournament of life, which has trained as many knights sans peur et sans reproche as any country in the world.

I believe in a man who takes what he thinks belongs to him, and holds it against the world; in the man who so loves life that he keeps a hearty appet.i.te for it and takes long draughts of it; who is ever ready to come back smiling for another round with the world, no matter how hard he has been punished. I believe that G.o.d believes in the man who believes in Him, and therefore in himself. Why should I debar a man from my sympathy because he is a king or an emperor? I admire your courage, Sir; I love your indiscretions; I applaud your faith in your G.o.d, and your confidence in yourself, and your splendid service to your country. Without you Germany would have remained a second-rate power. Had you been what your critics pretend that they would like you to be, Germany would have been still ruling the clouds.

Here's long life to your power, Sir, and to your possessions, and to you! And as an Anglo-Saxon, I thank G.o.d, that all your countrymen are not like you!

IV GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE PRESS

In the days when Bismarck was welding the German states into a federal organization and finally into an empire, he used the press to spray his opinions, wishes, and suspicions over those he wished to instruct or to influence. He used it, too, to threaten or to mislead his enemies at home and abroad. The Hamburger Nachrichten was the newspaper for which he wrote at one time, and which remained his confidential organ, though as his power grew he used other journals and journalists as well.