The War and Democracy Part 7

The chief reason lies, of course, in the fact that the German Empire is not a democracy and is not governed by ministers responsible to Parliament. The immense numbers and rapid growth of the Social Democrats have therefore not really been a menace to the Government. In fact, it has even been held in some quarters that it has been to the interest of the German Government, which is based on the Prussian military caste, to manoeuvre the Social Democrats into an extreme position and then to hold them up as a terrible example of what democracy means. "This," they can tell the German people, "is the alternative to Prussian rule." A dangerous policy, it may be argued, for the Social Democrats may some day secure a majority in the Reichstag. The Prussian answer to this is that, without a redistribution of seats, this is barely conceivable; and that, were it to take place, the Reichstag would promptly be dissolved for new elections on a narrower franchise. Bismarck himself contemplated this course, and his successors would not shrink from it.

Another reason why it has been possible for the Government to ignore the Social Democrats has been the absence of a practical alternative programme on the part of the Social Democrats themselves. "If I had to make out a school report for the Social Democratic Movement," said Prince Bulow in the Reichstag on one occasion, "I should say, 'Criticism, agitation, discipline, and self-sacrifice, I. _a_; positive achievements, lucidity of programme, V. _b._'" The taunt is not undeserved. The Socialist Movement in Germany has suffered, like so many German movements, through a rigid adherence to logical theories. Under the leadership of old revolutionary thinkers like Bebel it has failed to adapt itself to the facts of modern German life. The vague phrases of its republican programme, survivals from a past epoch of European thought, have attracted to it a large ma.s.s of inarticulate discontent which it has never been able to weld into a party of practical reformers. In the munic.i.p.al sphere and in the field of Trade Unionism, under the education of responsibility, German Socialism can show great achievements; but in national policy it has been as helpless as the rest of the German nation.

What effect, it will be asked, is the war of 1914 likely to have on the German working-cla.s.s movement? In 1848 middle-cla.s.s Germany made its stand for democracy. May we hope for a similar and more successful movement, in the direction of Western ideals and methods of government, from working-cla.s.s Germany as a result of 1914?

It is a tempting prophecy; but the outlook is not propitious. Germany, Prussian and South German, n.o.ble, bourgeois, and working cla.s.s, has rallied round the Emperor in this crisis of national history, as the brutal and cynical directors of German policy calculated that she would. For the Social Democratic Movement the war comes with a peculiar appeal. It is a war against Russia, a country about which the German workman knows little and understands less, but which he considers to be the home of a reaction far blacker than that of his own country. A war of aggression against the Western Powers would have found the Social Democrats divided. By representing Russia as the aggressor and the Western Powers as the shameless allies of the "Mongol," German diplomacy, more successful within than without, made certain of enlisting Socialist support.

Moreover, the Socialists too have to pa.s.s through a natural reaction from their refusal to recognise the forces of Nationality--from Utopian dreams of international action by the peoples across the barriers of separate governments. For the first time in the history of the party, German Socialism has been allowed to be patriotic. It is an exhilarating and heartening experience, and it is certain to leave an indelible mark upon the spirit of the movement. The great party organisation, hitherto confined to the sterile work of agitation, is being used to cope with the many problems created by the war; and this work, rather than revolutionary agitation, is likely to occupy it for some time to come.

A veil has fallen upon Germany: German books and papers are stopped at our ports: we cannot know through what thoughts the German nation is pa.s.sing.

But as we look with the mind's eye across the North Sea, past devastated Belgium to the populous towns of industrial Germany, we see a people skilful, highly instructed, and mechanically intelligent, yet equally devoid either of personal initiative or of great and inspiring leadership.

Two generations of Prussian education have left German public life practically empty of names of more than local reputation. Great changes are needed--a change of inst.i.tutions and a change of spirit; yet whence this will come we cannot divine. Only, as democrats, we can say with confidence that if the true spirit of the German people is to be liberated from its long imprisonment, its freedom must be won, not from without, but from within. Not Europe but only the Germans can make Germany herself again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

1. GERMAN HISTORY

BRYCE. _Holy Roman Empire_. (Deals with mediaeval Germany, but also contains a most interesting final chapter on Germany in the Nineteenth Century, written in 1873.) 1904. (7s. 6d.)

CARLYLE. _Frederick the Great_, vol. i. (Best account in English of the earlier history of Prussia.) (2s. 6d.)

H.A.L. FISHER. _Napoleonic Statesmanship: Germany_. 1903. (12s. 6d.) (Germany in the Napoleonic era.)

SEELEY. _Life of Stein_. 1878. 3 vols. (30s.) (The standard work in English on reorganisation of Prussia after Napoleon.)

BISMARCK. _Reflections and Reminiscences_. (The guiding mind in Germany, 1862-1888.) 2 vols. 1898. (Can only be bought second-hand.)

HEADLAM. _Life of Bismarck_. 1899. (6s.) (Heroes of the Nations.)

HOLLAND. _Germany to the Present Day_. 1913. (2s. net.) A useful short history if supplemented by other books.

POWICKE. _Bismarck_. 1914. (6d.) (People's Books.) (Excellent.) The two great modern German historians are Treitschke and Sybel, for whom see Gooch's _History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century_, pp. 140-53.

Treitschke's history is not available in English: Sybel's has been translated under the t.i.tle, _The Founding of the German Empire by William I._ vols., New York, 1890-1891.

2. GERMANY UNDER WILLIAM II.

BuLOW. _Imperial Germany_. 1914. (2s. net.) (The mind of the German Government.)

SAUNDERS. _The Last of the Huns_. 1914. (1s. net.) (In spite of its objectionable t.i.tle this volume, by the late correspondent of the _Times_ in Berlin, is written with fairness and lucidity, and contains much valuable information.)

HENRI LICHTENBERGER. _Germany and its Evolution in Modern Times._ 1913.

(10s. 6d net.) (Translated from the French: suggestive, especially on economic questions and on the movements of German thought.)

W.H. DAWSON. _The Evolution of Modern Germany_. 1908. (5s. net.) (The best general account of modern Germany in English.)

C. TOWER. _Germany of To-day._ 1913. Home University Library. (Is.) (Good.)

C. SAROLEA. _The Anglo-German Problem_. (2s.) (A useful popular account of German political conditions and German policy.)

_Board of Education Special Reports_, vols. iii. and ix. (3s. 3d. and 2s.

7d.) Articles by Dr. M.E. Sadler on German Education.

_Memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe_. (Imperial Chancellor, 1894-1900.) 2 vols.

1906. (24s. net.)

The Britannica War Books. _Germany_. (2s. 6d. net.) By W. Alison Phillips and J.W. Headlam. (A somewhat carelessly abridged reprint from the standard article in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.)

3. GENERAL BOOKS

H.S. CHAMBERLAIN. _The foundations of the Nineteenth Century_. English translation. 2 vols. 1910. (25s. net.) (This book had an immense vogue in Germany, and was particularly recommended by the Kaiser to his subjects.

It is full of interesting, if ill-founded, generalisations tending to emphasise the importance of Race and to glorify the German race.)

THOMAS. _German Literature_. (6s.)

ROBERTSON. _German Literature_. 1914. Home University Library. (1s.)

HERFORD AND OTHERS. _Germany in the Nineteenth Century_. Manchester. 1912.

(2s. 6d.) Essays on different aspects of German development.

BERNHARDT. _Germany and the Next War_. 1912. (2s. net.) (The philosophy and aims of Gorman militarism worked out.)

CRAMB. _Germany and England_. 1914. (2s. 6d. net.) (An account of Treitschke and his school of thought: interesting for the light it throws on German misconceptions about Great Britain.)

TREITSCHKE. _Selections from his Lectures on Politics_. 1914.

Translated by A.L. Gowans. (2s. net.)

The writings of the following German professors will be found interesting if procurable: Oncken, Meinecke (both contributors to the _Cambridge Modern History_), Delbruck, Sombart, Erich Marcks (see his lectures on Germany in _Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century_, edited by Kirkpatrick, Cambridge, 1900, 4s. 6d.), Schiemann, Lamprecht, Schmoller, and F. von Liszt.

_Note_.--Such considered German writings as have come to hand since the outbreak of the war show little tendency to cope with the real facts of the situation, or even to seek to understand them. They seem to indicate two developments in German opinion.

(1) A great consolidation of German national unity (except, of course, in Poland and Alsace-Lorraine).

(2) A tendency to forgo the consideration of the immediate issues and to hark back in thought to 1870 or even to the Wars of Liberation. It is difficult to judge of a nation in arms from the writings of its stay-at-homes; but no one can read recent articles by the leaders of German thought without feeling that the Germans are still, before all things and incurably, "the people of poets and philosophers," and that, by a tragic irony, it is the best and most characteristic qualities of the race which are sustaining and will continue to sustain it in the conflict in which its dreams have involved it.

CHAPTER IV

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND THE SOUTHERN SLAVS

"For a century past attempts have been made to solve the Eastern Question.