The New Germany Part 1

The New Germany.

by George Young.

PREFACE

The following account of events in Germany during the period from the Armistice to the Treaty of Versailles was written mostly in the summer of 1919. But the events of the succeeding period from the signature of the Treaty to its ratification during the autumn and winter call for no alteration and but little addition to the text. The six months hereinafter described from February to August were a--perhaps the--critical period for Germany and for Europe. It was the formative and creative stage for New Germany and for New Europe. If the whole phase through which Central Europe pa.s.sed after the collapse of the Central Powers is considered as the genesis of a new age, then the week of actual revolution was a phase of intense heat and fierce energy, in which the old political organisms were boiled down to their most simple and essential types and in which the germs of new political inst.i.tutions appeared in primitive forms such as the Councils. Thereafter came the period under review, in which the old and new types fought for a survival of the fittest; and the old--aided by the general cooling off of the revolution--to some extent rea.s.serted their supremacy. Indeed during this last winter I have even occasionally thought that the types of old Germany might succeed in suppressing the new, thereby making it necessary to change the t.i.tle and tone of this book. But I know this impression is largely due to the pessimistic and perverted point of view towards all events in Central Europe affected by the British Press with few exceptions. For our "Dailies" Germany is only a subject for "scare heads" and "stories," in which adventurous special correspondents see the Kaiser emerging from the Netherlands to re-ravage Europe like the Brontosaurus out of the Nya.s.sa swamp. Whereas the reality seems to be that reaction has moderated as the revolution became more amenable, and that a "modus vivendi" between the two is now more of a possibility than it was.

It now seems less probable than it did last summer that the solution in Germany will be a "second revolution" as in Russia. Weak as it is politically, the present German governmental system seems too strong police-ically to be overthrown by force. The situation to-day in Germany rather suggests that in Great Britain two years hence than that in Russia two years ago.

The new Germany of this winter of 1919-20 is essentially, then, the same as that of last summer. It is not the old Germany of the autumn of 1914, nor the young Germany of the autumn of 1917. But it has developed rapidly in some respects in the course of this winter. Thus the rough and ready rule by Frei-Corps expeditions and garrisons has been supplemented by a gendarmerie (_Sicherheitswehr_); and the middle-cla.s.s militia (_Burgerwehr_) has been replaced by an organisation of armed special constables (_Einwohnerwehr_).

The effect and perhaps the object of this change is to obscure the cla.s.s character of the conflict between reaction and revolution--between property and the proletariat. The police is no longer a weapon for use by a possible militarist reaction or monarchist restoration, and in return it will be supported by the moderate revolutionaries.

Reaction and revolution are reuniting as reconstruction; and this tendency appears in all regions of political activity. Thus the revolutionary Council system now seems established as a secondary representative inst.i.tution supplementary to Parliament.

This development is, however, not due to maturity of political experience--as it would be in similar conditions in an Anglo-Saxon community--but merely to mortal weakness. German political vitality, owing to mediaeval calamities, has always been low in modern times.

Now, as a result of a four years' frenzy of war and a fifth year in a fever of revolution, German political vitality is a very flickering flame. So long as France and Great Britain continue to enforce the principles and procedures of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Paris Council, Germany will remain a danger to Europe--a danger, not because of its recent relapse into a Conservative reaction, nor even because of the decreasing risk of a Communist "second" revolution, but because Germany is an essential and vital member of our European body politic that is being kept in a morbid, even moribund, condition by the provisions of the peace. The Paris diplomatists have not yet learnt the lesson taught by a great French diplomatist two hundred years ago at the time of the last great European settlement but one. M. de Callieres then wrote in his treatise on diplomacy--"We must think of the States of which Europe is composed as being joined ... in such a way that they may be regarded as members of one Republic, and that no considerable change can take place in any one of them without affecting the condition or disturbing the peace of all the others."

A majority of the rank and file of Greater Britain does so think of Germany to-day, but unless and until it can compel its rulers to act accordingly it will not get peace. Peace is only for men of good will.

CHRISTMAS, 1919.

65, STRAND ON THE GREEN, CHISWICK.

THE NEW GERMANY

CHAPTER I

THE REVOLUTION

When, in January, 1919, I resigned my commission and made my way out to Berlin as correspondent for the _Daily News_, I had two purposes in view. One was to find out to what extent we had really won the war--in the only way it could be won--by forcing the German people into revolution; and incidentally to take any opportunity that might offer of furthering that revolution. My second purpose was to find out what prospects there were of making a more or less permanent peace--in the only way it could be made--by establishing the forces of reform in Germany; and incidentally to point out any openings favourable to the furthering of such a peace. The following book brings together and sums up conclusions communicated to the _Daily News_ from time to time and is put forward as an answer to the double question: Have we won the war against Prussianism and have we made a permanent peace?

The answer to this question was only to be got in Berlin. The first mistake made by the soldiers and workers who had won the war was in not insisting on their representatives making peace with the German people and at Berlin. An experience of twenty years in diplomacy, beginning with the arbitration treaties of Lord Pauncefote and ending with those of Lord Bryce, followed by two years of war experience, beginning with political secret service and ending in the ranks, had convinced me from the first that true peace could only be got by developing the forces of democracy of the defeated peoples centering in Berlin, and not by any bickerings between diplomatic formulae of the victorious Governments collected in Paris. That is why I preferred going as a journalist to Berlin rather than in any other capacity to Paris. And that is why the following papers are published. They show that anyone who spent the first six months of 1919 in Berlin and the big German towns would have seen easily enough how it was that, in spite of military occupations and religious thanksgivings and bonfires and bonuses all round, we were not winning the war but losing it: and how, in spite of territorial part.i.tions and financial reparations, and signatures with gold pens and the setting-up of a League of Nations, we were not making peace but manufacturing wars. We have not yet won the war because we have not as yet supported in Germany the progressive--that is, the revolutionary--elements and suppressed the Prussian--that is, the reactionary--spirit: while we have, of late, been really losing the war by actually a.s.sisting German reaction against German revolution. And we are doing this just from the ignorance of our democracy and the _insouciance_ of our diplomacy.

Our democracy has been prevented from ascertaining, and our diplomacy has been precluded from understanding what the German revolution really means, both to Germany and to Great Britain. Although we are slow to understand foreign movements, yet ignorance of such a movement as this would have been impossible but for the conditions under which the war closed. The German revolution, banned, boycotted, and blockaded, became to us a stone of offence, an odious ruin of the war, and so we failed to recognise it as the only possible foundation stone for peace.

The six months I spent in Germany were none too much to realise the radical and rapid changes going on; and I can see how difficult it has been for English readers to get an idea of what is really happening there from the little that has been written about it. They cannot do so at all unless they clear their minds of the cartoons and caricatures and cliches forced on them during the last five years by the propaganda and the Press. It is no use drawing Germany from the life for people who still have before their eyes the "Boches" and "Bolsheviks" of _Punch_ and _John Bull_. One has, indeed, to clear away two strata of misrepresentation, that of our Government and Press and that of the German Government and Press; for the latter is as much opposed to the German revolution as the former.

It would have been better for Germany had it shown more courage and collapsed less completely last autumn. A few weeks' patient endurance under punishment in a losing fight would have gone far towards restoring it some measure of the sympathies of the civilised world.

While the consequent occupation of the whole country would have brought us into direct contact with the German revolution, and would have prevented the fatal split between reformers and revolutionaries, between Majority and Independent Socialists. As it was, we English were left to draw such conclusions as we could from the reports of the few correspondents who penetrated to Berlin. But, with two exceptions, the English Press could at this time publish nothing about Germany that was not merely malevolent. And of the few Englishmen in Berlin as correspondents in January, almost all were replaced before the Treaty of Peace by foreign Jews who would supply the sort of propaganda poppyc.o.c.k with which public opinion is still being poisoned.

What people in England wanted to know was whether the German revolution was a real riddance of the evil we had been fighting and a real renascence of good that we could favour; whether it had gone far enough and deep enough to be a sincere repentance and a sufficient remediation. For, unless Germany was born again, it could not enter the community of nations, and until it did so, there could be no true peace.

They could guess that Kaiserism was dead and gone and Junkerism down and out. But even so picturesque and positive an event as the fall of Kaiserism had been only baldly mentioned in a bare telegram of a line or two. How could the British public realise that the Black Eagle of Prussia was no Phoenix and that the blaze of November 9 had left nothing of it but a bad odour and a white feather.

But in Berlin there could be no doubt. Kaiserism was dead--deader even than Tsarism--because the Kaiser was still alive. His shot-shattered and mob-swept palace was the only reminder of him. And every Berliner had more or less vivid recollections of his fall, recollections too lamentable, too ludicrous, to allow of any restoration of the Kaiser legend even now.

After reading your morning paper about revolution in Dublin and revolt in Glasgow and reconstruction in London, as you walk down to your office past the Dutch decorum of Kensington Palace, the Scotch skimpiness of St. James's, or the generous Germanosities of Buckingham Palace, does it ever occur to you to wonder what goes on in a palace when there is a revolution?

Well, this is what happened to the Kaiserschloss in Berlin on November 8.

The curious crowd that always collects outside the house of anyone mentioned in the papers, whether it's an absconded postmaster or an abdicated potentate, found that the sentries no longer challenged them, and first filtered, then flooded into the inner courts.

Thereupon the police and guards left, and the palace remained in charge only of the Kastellan and a few servants and soldiers. All doors were kept locked, and beyond some shouting everything was orderly, for the prestige of the Imperial precincts still prevailed.

Then one Schwieringer, not otherwise distinguished, made his way to the Kastellan and got leave to address the crowd from a window. Having draped the balcony with a red cloth borrowed for the purpose, he declared the palace national property. This broke the spell somewhat.

The rest of the soldiers left, and the crowd became noisy.

Late in the afternoon came Liebknecht, who engaged another balcony, borrowed more red curtains, made another speech, and after holding a sort of levee in the Throne Room left again. Later came soldiers and hoisted a red flag. So far the Kastellan had remained master of the situation, conducting his unwelcome visitors through the rooms, unlocking and locking behind him as on ordinary occasions with any ordinary tourists.

Then on November 10 came one Bujakowski, with a Slavonic eye for the possibilities of the situation. Having collected such soldiers and civilians as were hanging about, he made them a speech, and called on them to elect a council, and himself Commandant of the Castle, which they did. He then said he must have a suitable uniform. The council agreed, and appointed a delegation to make selections from the Imperial wardrobe.

Happy delegates--happy, happy Bujakowski! Five hundred uniforms and, say, five pieces to each. How many combinations does that give in which to find the perfect expression of a Spartacist commandant of a Hohenzollern castle. He did his best in the time no doubt. Delegate Schwartz, try a combination of those English and Hungarian uniforms!

Delegate Schmidt, see if that hunting costume goes with a Turkish fez!

History does not record the result, beyond a cavilling incrimination about a diamond-headed cane. But it must have been effective, for the Commandant returned from the Reichstag with his commission confirmed.

The rest of the company played up to his spirited lead, and the next morning his "adjutant" attempted a _coup d'etat_. Bujakowski suppressed it with a revolver, but was, however, deposed a day or two later by an ex-convict, who generously appointed him his secretary.

These three men then formed a triumvirate, which spent most of its time making excursions in fancy dress with the imperial cars, and, oddly enough, kept the castle in fairly good condition. It was not until the sailors' revolutionary corps turned them out that all order disappeared. Some ten commandants then succeeded each other rapidly.

The seventh shot the sixth, and was knocked on the head by the eighth.

The palace became a resort of bad characters, and was stripped bare.

Eventually, it was retaken by force, and the sailors were ejected.

Berliners shake their heads over the loss, estimated in millions (of war marks). But I don't know that there is much to lament. Personally, I am grateful to Bujakowski. His burlesque buffoonery has exorcised the Imperial incubus that still brooded over the deserted shrine of departed littleness, and I forgive him for his share in destroying or dispersing some of the ugliest _objets d'art_ in Europe.

Kaiserism died when William the Second fled to Amerongen and Bujakowski broke into his wardrobe. Nor has it been revived by the revulsion in favour of William of Hohenzollern that we have evoked by our proposal to put him on his trial in England. We have thereby rallied in his support many adherents of the monarchical principle who had previously abandoned him, and by persisting in making a martyr of him, by taking him out of this German pillory and by putting him on an international pedestal, we have already opened the door to a restoration of the Hohenzollern dynasty as a const.i.tutional monarchy.

This would mean a restoration of Junkerism and Prussianism, but not of Kaiserism. That peculiar blend of divine right and demagogy is gone for ever.

And what about Junkerism? That cannot be so shortly answered.

Junkerism expresses itself in both regions of the ruling cla.s.s to which Germany has been hitherto subjected--the civil and the military.

It is the evil genius of both those great services; and seldom has the world produced public services with so much power for good in them and so much evil as in the German army and bureaucracy. And it is indisputable that the fate of Germany and the future of Europe now depend on whether the revolutionary spirit is strong enough to exorcise the evil genius of Prussianism and of Junkerism from the army and civil service. But the question as to how far, so far, Germany's good angel has fired its bad one out can only be answered as yet by a careful and impartial observation of events in Germany since the revolution. And if these events seem to suggest that the revolution has lost its impetus and that reaction has dominated it, let us remember that the results of a renascence of public conscience, such as occurred in the November revolutions, should be estimated by comparing the concrete conditions of to-day, not with the abstract principles then for a time extant, but with the concrete conditions existing before the upheaval.

As most have already got or can easily get a general knowledge of what general conditions in Germany were before the revolution of November and of what were the general principles promulgated by the revolution, much of what follows will consist of evidence as to how far the revolution has so far failed in realising those principles. For revolution has now resulted in a reaction in which every vantage point gained by the first revolutionary rush is counter-attacked and every early victory is contested again. As every consequent loss cannot be referred back to the deadlock before the offensive the general impression is that of failure. But the Prussianism that now fills German prisons with political suspects is rather a reflection of reaction abroad than a revival of the ancient _regime_.

By the first rush of revolution in November 1918, the military power of the officer caste was broken and the political power of land and money was reduced to insignificance. But there was no strong obstacle to their recovery, and the power of the bureaucracy was unimpaired.

Though the instigators of the crimes of the old _regime_ had been removed, the instruments remained; while the 'Independent'

intellectuals, the public prosecutors of those crimes, were before long voted down. And yet before we refuse absolution to the new German democracy we must be quite sure that these relapses are real unregeneracy and not reactions caused by fear of Russian revolution on the one side or Allied retribution on the other. We can only judge of this by reviewing the revolution.

The history of the German revolution can be shortly described and sharply defined. After the first explosion on November 9 came a month of equilibrium between revolution and reaction. Then a month of which the first fortnight was a swing slowly to the right until the breach with the Independents on December 24, and a swing swiftly the second fortnight until the fighting with the Spartacists in January.

Thereafter a month of rapid return to the point where it was before the explosion, a point reached with the formation of the Coalition Government by the National a.s.sembly on February 13. Indeed the Government of Scheidemann only differed from that of Max von Baden in being one degree more to the left, a development which was due in any case apart from the revolution.

The German revolution is peculiar in having reached its highest point at once and in having then relapsed to where it started from without any positive reaction. This in itself suggests that it was due in its origin to external forces--propaganda from Russia on the one side and pressure from us on the other. Our military and naval pressure broke first the prestige then the power of Kaiserism and Militarism, while the Russian precedent gave the forces of rebellion and revolution a practical example how to express themselves in co-ordinated councils of workmen and soldiers--the Soviet system. We knocked German Kaiserism out of the saddle, and Russia gave German Socialism a leg up. And that's why it went so far so fast.

That's also why it never got anywhere. For it came to power before it developed its own personalities and policies, and it had, therefore, to put its trust in pre-revolutionary politicians. The Council system had no time to produce leaders--men with enough confidence in their own position and enough character to impose themselves on the permanent officials. The Central Council--the true revolutionary Executive--and the Congress of Councils--the true revolutionary Legislature--never got any power. It was all monopolised by the People's Commissioners, who were not really a revolutionary inst.i.tution at all, but an ordinary Provisional Government of parliamentarians. And though they nominally held their mandate from the Congress of Councils a majority of them considered themselves as trustees for a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. Such parliamentarians could work well enough with the permanent officials, and, indeed, welcomed their a.s.sistance. Whereas the councils, of course, came into violent collision with them.