The War and Democracy Part 6

The electoral system in use for the Prussian Lower House is too complicated to explain here. Its injustice may be gauged from the fact that in 1900 the Social Democrats, who actually polled a majority of the votes, secured seven seats out of nearly 400. The whole spirit and practice of the Government is inimical to inborn British conceptions of civil liberty and personal rights. There is one law and code of conduct for officers and another for civilians, and woe betide the civilian who resists the military pretensions. The incidents at Zabern in Alsace in 1913 are still fresh in public memory, reinforced by evidence of a similar spirit in German military proclamations in France and Belgium. But it is important to realise that these incidents are not exceptional outbursts but common Prussian practice, upheld, as the sequel to the Zabern events proved, by the highest authority.

Prussia, and through Prussia Germany, is in effect ruled in accordance with the wishes of the official caste: and short of a popular rising nothing but defeat can dethrone it. "Any one who has any familiarity at all with our officers and generals," says an authoritative German writer, in words that we may hope will be prophetic, "knows that it would take another Sedan, inflicted on us instead of by us, before they would acquiesce in the control of the Army by the German Parliament."[1] No clearer statement could be given as to where the real power lies in Germany, and how stern will be the task of displacing it.

[Footnote 1: Professor Delbruck (who succeeded to the chair of history in Berlin held so long by Treitschke), in a book published early in 1914 (_Government and the Popular Will_, p. 136).]

The foreign policy of Prussia has reflected the same domineering spirit.

Its object has been the increase of its power and territory by conquest or cunning: and by the successful prosecution of this policy it has extended Prussian authority and Prussian influence over a large part of Western Germany. The best way of ill.u.s.trating this will be to quote a pa.s.sage from the _Recollections of Prince Bismarck,_ who directed Prussian policy from 1862 to 1890. In 1864 trouble arose as to the succession to the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein on the Danish border. Prussia had no claim whatever to the Duchies; but she coveted Holstein because it would give her a Western sea-board, with the results that we all know. Bismarck describes the arguments which he used to persuade his Royal Master to a.s.sert his claim. "I reminded him," he writes, "that each of his immediate predecessors had won an addition to the Monarchy": he then went through the history of the six previous reigns, and ended by encouraging King William to be worthy of his ancestors. His advice, as we have seen, was successfully adopted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRUSSIA SINCE THE ACCESSION OF FREDERICK THE GREAT]

The conquest of France in 1870, by means of the military power of Germany under Prussian leadership, made Prussia supreme in Germany, and the German army supreme in Central Europe. The Treaty of Frankfurt in May 1871, by which the new French Republic ceded to the German Empire the two French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, marked the opening of a new epoch in European history, the period of the Armed Peace, which ended in 1914. It marked also the opening of a new epoch in Germany, some features of which we must now examine.

--4. _Germany since 1870_.--German history from 1871 to 1914 falls into two well-defined periods. During the first period, from 1871 to 1888, Germany was ruled by her Imperial Chancellor, Prince Bismarck. But the accession of the present Kaiser led to a change, not in the letter, but in the spirit of the new const.i.tution, and since 1890, when William II. "dropped the pilot"

and selected a more amenable successor, the real control of policy has lain with the Emperor.

The relations between Prince Bismarck and the old Emperor, who was over ninety when he died in 1888, form a touching pa.s.sage in modern history.

Although his grandson has publicly claimed for him a peculiar measure of divine inspiration, his strength lay in his implicit confidence in his great minister. Bismarck's att.i.tude to him, as described in his _Memoirs_, is rather like that of an old family retainer who has earned by long and faithful service the right to a.s.sert his views and to pit his judgment against his master's. His one formidable antagonist was the Empress; and long experience, he tells us, enabled him to judge whether difficulties in persuading the old Kaiser to adopt a given line of policy were due to his own judgment or conceived "in the interests of domestic peace." The faithful servant had his own appropriate methods of winning his way in either case.

But with the new Kaiser the old minister's astuteness availed nothing, and the story of Bismarck's curt dismissal, after thirty-eight years of continuous service, from the post which he had created for himself, ill.u.s.trates the danger of framing a const.i.tution to meet a particular temporary situation. Bismarck, put out of action by his own machinery, retired growling to his country seat, and lived to see the reversal of his foreign policy and the exposure of Germany, through the Franco-Russian Alliance, to the one danger he always dreaded, an attack on both flanks.

Like Germany's present rulers, Bismarck was not a scrupulous man; but unlike them he was shrewd and far-sighted, and understood the statesmen and the peoples with whom he had to deal. The main object of his foreign policy was to preserve the prestige of the German army as the chief instrument of power in Central Europe, and to allow the new Germany, after three wars in seven years, time to develop in peace and to consolidate her position as one of the Great Powers.

The situation was not an easy one; for Germany's rapid rise to power, and the methods by which she had acquired it, had not made her popular.

Bismarck's foreign policy was defensive throughout, and he pursued it along two lines. He sought to strengthen Germany by alliances, and to weaken her rivals by embroiling them with one another. The great fruit of his policy was the formation, completed in 1882, of the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.

There was nothing sentimental about the Triple Alliance. The Italians hate the Austrians, whom they drove out of Venice as recently as 1866, while neither the German Austrians nor the other races in the Dual Monarchy have any love lost for the Prussians. But Bismarck decided that this combination was the safest in Germany's interest: so he set to work to play upon Austria's fear of Russia, and to embroil Italy with France in North Africa; and his manoeuvres were duly rewarded.

But this was not sufficient. Faced with the implacable hostility of France, on account of the lost provinces, Bismarck saw danger of trouble from a French Coalition with the two remaining Great Powers, Britain and Russia.

Bismarck never liked England; but he never made his successors' mistake of despising her. He cultivated good relations, but he rejected the idea of an alliance, because, as he said, "the English const.i.tution is not compatible with treaties of a.s.sured continuity." In other words, he fought shy of British democracy, which he felt to be an incalculable factor. This threw him back upon Russia.

The relations between the German and the Russian peoples have never been cordial. But between the reactionary bureaucracies of the Prussian and Russian governments there was a strong bond of mutual interest, which Bismarck exploited to the full. Both had popular movements to hold in check, both had stolen goods to guard in the shape of their Polish possessions, and both had an interest in the preservation of reactionary inst.i.tutions. The influence of Prussia upon Russia, and of the efficient, highly-organised, relentless Prussian machine upon the arbitrary, tyrannical, but far less efficient and inhuman bureaucracy of Russia, has been wholly sinister[1], both for Russia and for Europe. Bismarck's object, of course, was not so much to keep down the Russian revolutionaries as to check the aspirations of the Panslavists, whose designs for the liberation of the Slav nationalities, as we now see them unfolding, threaten the stability both of Prussia and of Austria-Hungary.

[Footnote 1: The same remark applies to the influence of Germany on Turkey.]

Throughout the 'eighties Bismarck succeeded in keeping on foot a secret understanding with Russia. How deeply he had implanted the necessity of this policy in the mind of William I. is brought home by the fact that it was the thought uppermost in the old man's mind as he lay on his deathbed.

"Never lose touch with the Tsar," whispered the old man to his grandson, when he was almost too weak to speak. "There is no cause for quarrel."

The old Emperor died in 1888. In 1890 the young Emperor "dropped the pilot." In the same year Russia refused to renew her secret treaty. In 1891 the first Franco-Russian Treaty was signed, and the diplomatic supremacy of Europe pa.s.sed from the Triple Alliance to be shared between the two opposing groups with which we have been familiar in recent years.

The disappearance of Prince Bismarck marked the beginning of a new phase in German policy and in German life. The younger generation, which had come to maturity, like the Kaiser, since 1870, had never known the old divided Germany, or realised the difficulties of her statesmen. Every one wondered what use the young Kaiser would make of the great Army bequeathed to him.

He was believed to be a firebrand. Few believed that, imbued with Prussian traditions, he would keep the peace for twenty-five years; fewer still that, when he broke it, Germany would have the second Navy in the world.

But we are not now concerned with the baffling personality of the Kaiser himself. What is important for us here is the general att.i.tude of mind among the German public of the Kaiser's generation, which has rendered possible the prosecution of the cherished ideas of their ruler.

The school of thought which has been steadily gaining force, under official encouragement, during the last twenty-five years is best summed up in the popular watchwords, "Germany's place in the sun" and "World-Policy"

(_Weltpolitik_). These phrases embody, for Germans, who always tend to be abstract in their thinking, not only a practical policy, but a philosophy of human society and government.

This is not the place in which to a.n.a.lyse in detail the outlook upon life (_Weltanschauung_) of the man in the street in modern Germany. It is a confused and patchwork philosophy, drawn, consciously or unconsciously, from many quarters--from the old cosmopolitan tradition of German culture, dating from Goethe and Leasing; from the brave and arrogant claims of Fichte and the prophets and poets of the Napoleonic era; from the far-reaching influence of Hegel and his idealisation of the Prussian State; from the reaction to "realism" in politics after 1848; from the prestige of Bismarck and the deep impression made by the apparent success of his methods and principles; from the gifted Prussian historians, Treitschke and Sybel, who set their own interpretation upon Bismarck's work and imprinted it, by speech and pen, upon the mind of the German nation; and from a hasty interpretation of the theories of writers like Nietzsche and Thomas Carlyle, with their exaltation of "heroes" and "supermen," their encouragements to "live dangerously," their admiration for will-power as against reason and feeling, and their tirades against legal shams, "ballot-box democracy," and flabby humanitarianism.

The practical object of the policy of _Weltpolitik_ can be simply stated.

It is to extend to the other continents, and to the world as a whole, the power and the prestige secured for Germany in Europe by the work of Bismarck. "When Germany had won a mighty position on a level with the older Great Powers," says Prince Bulow, "the path of international politics lay open to her ... In the Emperor William II. the nation found a clear-sighted, strong-willed guide who led them along the new road."

Some such expansion of German influence was inevitable from the facts of her economic development since 1871. The population of the Empire, which in 1871 was 41,000,000, has now risen to 65,000,000. The resources of the country, the neglect of which during the days of disunion had forced so many Germans to emigrate for a livelihood, have been rapidly and scientifically developed. Already in the 'eighties "Made in Germany" had become a familiar talisman, and, before the outbreak of the present war, Germany ranked with the United States as the second greatest commercial power in the world.

Simultaneously, of course, there has been a great change in the distribution of the population. In the year 1850 65 per cent, and in 1870 47 per cent of the working population were engaged in agriculture. By 1912 the proportion had sunk to 28.6 per cent.

It was inevitable also that Germany should share with the other Great Powers in the work of colonial government. The adjustment of the relations between the advanced and backward races of mankind is the greatest political task of our age; it is a responsibility shared jointly between all the civilised States, and when in the 'eighties and 'nineties the vast regions of Africa were part.i.tioned amongst them, Germany, late in the field, a.s.serted her claims and received her share in the responsibility.

Rapid economic development and a colonial empire--what was there in these to cause hostility between Germany and Great Britain? The United States have pa.s.sed through a similar development and have accepted a similar extension of responsibility far outside their own continent. America is a great, a growing, and a self-respecting Power; yet Americans see no ground for that inevitable conflict of interests between their country and Great Britain which forms the theme of so many German books, from Prince Bulow's candid self-revelations down to less responsible writers like Bernhardi.

The explanation lies in the nature of German thought and ambitions. When Germans speak of "a place in the sun," they are not thinking of the spread of German trade, the success of German adventure or enterprise, or of the achievements of Germans in distant lands. They are thinking of the extension of the German State. British influence beyond the seas has been built up during the last four centuries by the character and achievements of British pioneers. Downing Street has seldom helped, often hindered, and generally only ratified the accomplished facts of British settlement and influence. That is not the Prussian theory or the Prussian method. It is for the State to win the territory, and then to set the people to work there, on lines laid down from above. The individual Englishman, when he goes out to colonise, carries England with him, as a part of his personality. Not so the German, at least on the Prussian theory. "The _rare case_ supervened," says Prince Bulow,[1] of an instance typical of the building up of the British Empire, "that the establishment of State rule _followed and did not precede_ the tasks of colonising and civilisation."

The State itself, on this theory, has a civilising mission of expansion towards which it directs the activities of its citizens.

[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, 1st ed., p. 249.]

Under the influence of ideas such as these, Germany, since the accession of William II., has built a Navy second to that of Great Britain alone.

What was the purpose of the building of the German Navy? The German official answer is that its purpose was the protection of German trade. "We are now vulnerable at sea," says Prince Bulow. "We have entrusted millions to the ocean, and with these millions, the weal and woe of many of our countrymen. If we had not in good time provided protection for them ...

we should have been exposed to the danger of having one day to look on defencelessly while we were deprived of them. We should have been placed in the position of being unable to employ and support a considerable number of our millions of inhabitants at home. The result would have been an economic crisis which might easily attain the proportions of a national catastrophe."

These words may yet prove prophetic. But the catastrophe will not be the result of Germany's lack of a Navy; it will be the result of challenging the naval supremacy of Great Britain.

Prince Bulow's argument a.s.sumes, as a basis, the hostility of Great Britain. This a.s.sumption, as we know, was unjustified; and its persistence in the German mind can only be set down to an uneasy conscience. The hard fact of the matter is that it is impossible for Germany or for any other Power successfully to defend her foreign trade in case of war with Great Britain. No other Power thinks it necessary to attempt to do so, for no other Power has reason to desire or to foresee a naval conflict with Great Britain.

Ever since 1493, when the Pope divided the monopoly of traffic on the ocean between Spain and Portugal, and English mariners flouted his edict, Great Britain has stood for the policy of the Open Sea, and there is no likelihood of our abandoning it. The German official theory of the purpose of their Navy, with its suspicious att.i.tude towards British sea-power, was, in effect, a bid for supremacy, inspired by the same ideas which made the German army, under Bismarck, supreme in Central Europe. The Kaiser's speeches on naval matters, notably his famous declaration that "our future is on the water," provide an official confirmation, if one were needed, of the real nature of Germany's naval ambitions.

But what right, it may be asked, has Great Britain to this naval supremacy?

Why should we, more than any other Power, claim one of the elements for our own? Has not Germany some reason to be jealous? Why should we not allow her, together with ourselves, "a place on the Ocean"?

The answer to this lies in the character of the British Empire. One quarter of the human race live under the Union Jack, scattered throughout the oceans and controlled from a small island in the Western seas. For Great Britain, alone among the States of the world, naval supremacy, and nothing less, is a daily and hourly necessity. India realised this truth recently in a flash when, after generations of silent protection by British sea-power, German sh.e.l.ls fell one night at Madras. Any Power that challenges the naval supremacy of Great Britain is quarrelling, not with the British Government or the British people, but with the facts of history, of geography, and of the political evolution of the world. The British Empire has not been built up, like the German, by the work of statesmen and thinkers; it is not the result, as Germans think, of far-seeing national policy or persistent ambition and "greed." It has slowly taken shape, during the last four centuries, since intercourse was opened up by sea between the different races of mankind, in accordance with the needs of the world as a whole. Its collapse, at the hands of Germany or any other Power, would not mean the subst.i.tution of a non-British Empire for a British. It would inaugurate a period of chaos in all five continents of the world.

The rulers and people of Germany, who counted on the "decadence" of Great Britain and the disintegration of her unorganised Empire, did not realise these simple facts. Their lack of perception was due partly to their political inexperience; but a deeper reason for it lies in their wholly false estimate as to what "world-policy" and "world-empire" mean. Trained in the Prussian school, they thought of them, like soldiers, in terms of conquest, glory, and prestige. That way lies Napoleonism. None of the great Powers is wholly free from blame on this score. But until Germans realise, as the other Powers are slowly realising, that the true basis of Empire is not a love of glory but a sense of responsibility towards backward peoples, it will be hard to readmit them into the comity of the Great Powers. Only a sense of common purposes and ideals, and of joint responsibility for world-problems, can make the Concert of Europe a reality.

Such is the general att.i.tude of mind among the German public of the younger generation. Let us now turn to the effect of this new outlook upon the political parties and groupings.

The chief result has been the extinction in Germany, as a political force, of the great liberal movement of the mid-nineteenth century which in England, France, and other Western countries has grown and developed during the last generation along lines corresponding to the needs of the new century. The younger generation of middle-cla.s.s Germans, indoctrinated with "orthodox" and "national" opinions at school and on military service, eschew the ideals which attracted their fathers and grandfathers in 1848; and, although so-called "liberal," "free-thinking," and Radical parties still exist, they have steadily been growing more militarist. Militarism in its new guise, bound up with ideas of industrial and commercial expansion, is far more attractive to them than in the form of the Prussian Army. The Emperor's Navy Bills were from the first more popular in commercial and industrial circles than with the old Prussian Conservatives. But as the years went on the Kaiser succeeded in converting both the Junkers to his Navy Bills and the middle cla.s.ses to his Army Bills, so that by 1913, when he demanded the "great national sacrifice" of a levy of 50 million pounds by a tax, not on income, but on property, there was no difficulty whatever about "managing" the Reichstag. "The Army Bill of 1913," says Prince Bulow, "met with such a willing reception from all parties as had never been accorded to any requisition for armaments on land and sea.... So far as man can tell, every necessary and justifiable Army and Navy Bill will always be able to count on a safe Parliamentary majority."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, p. 169.]

Prince Bulow's "safe Parliamentary majority" means, of course, a majority sufficient to outvote the Social Democrats, with whom every German Government has to reckon as a permanent opposition.

So far we have left the Social Democrats out of the picture. It was necessary to do this, in discussing German policy and the relation between the German Government and Reichstag opinion; for the German Government itself habitually leaves them out of the picture. Hitherto in Germany, so far as opinion on political questions has mattered at all, it is upper-and middle-cla.s.s opinion that has counted, as it counted in England up to fifty years ago. To the German Government and to the ordinary educated German the Social Democratic party, though it numbers in its voting ranks over 4 million German workmen and others, does not represent German opinion at all: it represents something un-German and anti-German--a public enemy.

Between the Social Democrats and the rest of society a great gulf is fixed, across which no intercourse is possible: as the pioneers who attempted to introduce the Workers' Educational a.s.sociation into Germany found, such intercourse is forbidden from either direction. The Social Democrats are the "Red Danger," "men who," in the Kaiser's words, are "the enemies of Empire and Fatherland," and "unworthy" (except, of course, in war-time) "to bear the name of Germans." We must go back a hundred years in English history to realise the depth of the animosity between the Social Democratic party and the rest of German society. "The word Radical," says an English historian, "conveyed a very different meaning in 1816 to what it does now.... The hands of the Radicals were supposed to be against every man, and every man's hand was against them. Scott, when he talks of rebels in arms, always styles them Radicals. 'Radicalism is a spirit,' wrote the Vicar of Harrow in 1820, 'of which the first elements are a rejection of Scripture, and a contempt of all the inst.i.tutions of your country, and of which the results, unless averted by a merciful Providence, must be anarchy, atheism, and universal ruin.'"[1] The Vicar of Harrow in 1820 very fairly sums up the substance of innumerable German speeches, pamphlets, and election addresses in 1912 on the subject of the Social Democrats.

[Footnote 1: Spencer Walpole, _History of England_, vol. i. p. 348.]

How is this extraordinary position maintained? How is it possible that in a modern, largely industrial community, the representatives of working-cla.s.s opinion should be regarded as public enemies?