Title: German Problems and Personalities
Author: Charles Sarolea
Contributor: Albert Sorel
Release date: February 3, 2010 [eBook #31161]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Markus Brenner, Irma Spehar and the Online
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BY
CHARLES SAROLEA
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1917
All rights reserved
Three years ago there was one man in Europe whohad a political sight so clear that his words thenwritten seem to-day uncanny in their wisdom.[1]
This man saw the present war; he saw that Belgiumwould be invaded by Germany; he saw that theGermans hated England with a profound and bitterhate; that German diplomatic blunders had placedthat nation in almost complete isolation in the world;that the Triple Alliance was really only a DualAlliance, popular feeling in Italy becoming increasinglyhostile to Austria and to Prussia; that Germans felttheir culture to be superior to the civilization of therest of the world, and themselves to be a superiorrace, with the right to rule other peoples; thatPrussianism and Junkerism and militarism were incomplete control of the German soul; that Germany[2]had ambitions for world empire, a recurrence of “theold Napoleonic dream”; that the danger to Europeanpeace lay with Germany and not with England; thatGermans believed war to be essentially moral and themainspring of national progress; that the wholeGerman people had become Bismarckian; that theGermans hoped to obtain by a victory over Englandthat shadowless place in the sun toward which theybegan to leap when they beat France in 1870.
The seer who thus saw is Dr. Charles Sarolea, whorecently came to the United States in the interests ofhis country, one of the most distinguished of Belgianscholars, a friend of King Albert, holder of Belgiandecorations and honours from British learned societies,for the last fourteen years Belgian Consul in Edinburgh,and for the last twenty-one years head of theFrench and Romance Department at the Universityof Edinburgh. His vision was set out in “TheAnglo-German Problem,” written in 1912, now publishedin an authorized American edition, perhapsthe most accurate forecast which has been pennedof to-day’s conflict, and certainly one of the mostexact analyses of the German nation made before theworld learned, since last August, to know it as it is—asSarolea, master delineator of a nation’s character,drew it. Clear, sane, calm, logical, strong—such isDr. Sarolea’s book, with its “rare perspicacity”and “remarkable sense of political realities,” in thewords of King Albert’s appreciation of the work.
Dr. Sarolea, looking at Germany from the BritishIsles, where he was writing, perceived that “war isactually unavoidable” unless a spiritual miraclewas wrought; that Europe was “drifting slowly but[3]steadily toward an awful catastrophe.” Why?Because Germany was strong, envious, ambitious,conceited, arrogant, unscrupulous, and dissatisfied.It was in Germany that “the pagan gods of theNibelungen are forging their deadly weapons,” forGermans believe national superiority is due to militarysuperiority. Dr. Sarolea named as a war year thisvery year[2] in which we now are when he said:
“Believing, as they do, that to-day they are richand prosperous mainly because in 1870 they beatthe French people, why should they not believeand trust that in 1915 they would become evenstronger and richer if they succeeded in beating theEnglish?”
And the conflict, when it comes, will be “a politicaland religious crusade,” rather than a mere economicwar, for the conflict between England and Germany“is the old conflict between liberalism and despotism,between industrialism and militarism, between progressand reaction, between the masses and the classes.”
So many other important points are made inDr. Sarolea’s closely written book, in which practicallyevery sentence contains a fact, an idea, or a prophecy,that it is not possible in this review to do more thanpresent a few of them in the summary which follows.Though the present tense is used by Dr. Sarolea andthe reviewer, it should be constantly rememberedthat Dr. Sarolea was thinking in 1912, not sinceAugust, 1914.
Germany is in “tragic moral isolation.” Themoral and intellectual influence of German cultureis steadily diminishing. Other nations feel a universal[4]distrust and dislike toward Germany. So great isthis antipathy that the Germans imagine there is amalignant conspiracy against them. An upstart nation,suddenly wealthy and powerful, Germany has developedan inordinate self-conceit and self-assertion.The German glories in being a realist. He thinksonly of political power and colonial expansion.Might is the supreme test of right. He constantlyemphasizes the indelible character of the Germanrace. Germans are suffering from “acute megalomania.”They think the English decadent, theFrench doomed to premature extinction, the Russians“rotten.” Germany is the “reactionary force ininternational politics.”
England believes the building of the GermanNavy is mainly directed against her, though Germanysays she is building to protect her colonies andcommerce. Yet it is not reasonably possible so toaccount for the German fleet.
The greatest danger to England is not invasionof the British Isles, but invasion of Belgium andFrance. These countries are the “Achilles heel ofthe British Empire.” The German strategic railwayson the Belgian frontiers show that Germany is farmore likely to invade Belgium than England, Belgiumagain becoming the cockpit of Europe.
Germany feels that she has grievances againstEngland; thus her hatred. She thinks England haschecked her commercial expansion. But this is nottrue, for English Free Trade has been one of the mostimportant contributory causes of German prosperity.
Germany thinks England has arrested her colonialexpansion; Germany says every other great nation[5]but herself has been permitted to build up a colonialempire; thus she is prevented from attaining hernatural growth. But this is not true. Englandcould not have checked her colonial aspirations,because Germany had no colonial aspirations untilrecently. When Germany did start to seek colonies,she met everywhere conflicting claims of England,but this was because England was already in possession,having begun her colonial policy years beforeGermany entered the race. Bismarck was largelyresponsible for Germany’s now having so small acolonial territory.
Germany thinks she has another grievance—thatEngland has hemmed her in with a ring of enemies.But Germany is friendless because of her mistakes.Bismarck alienated the Russians for ever in 1878 atthe Treaty of Berlin, making a Franco-Russianunderstanding unavoidable. The Kruger telegramof 1896, the outburst of anti-British feeling duringthe Boer War, the German naval programme, openedEngland’s eyes to her danger; thus was Englandforced to seek France and Russia.
The Kaiser is intensely religious, claiming to be“the anointed of the Lord.” Yet he is a materialist,an opportunist, and mainly trusts to brute force.The navy is his creation. He brandishes the sword,saying he loves peace. Napoleon III. used to expresshis love for peace, yet brought on the most disastrouswar of French history; Nicholas II. started as thepeacemaker of Europe, yet brought about the bloodiestwar in Russian history. “Are the Kaiser’s pacificprotests as futile, are his sympathies as shallow, asthose of a Napoleon or a Nicholas?[6]”
Dr. Sarolea closes his book thus:
“We can only hope that England, which to-daymore than any other country—more, even, thanrepublican France—represents the ideals of a pacificand industrial democracy, may never be called uponto assert her supremacy in armed conflict, and tosafeguard those ideals against a wanton attack onthe part of the most formidable and most systematicmilitary power the world has ever seen.”
[1] One of the most eminent American theologians, Bishop Brent,wrote in an article on “Speculation and Prophecy”: “In Dr.Sarolea’s volume, ‘The Anglo-German Problem,’ published in 1912,there is a power of precognition so startling that one can understanda sceptic of the twenty-first century raising serious doubtsas to whether parts of it were not late interpolation.” Mr. GilbertKeith Chesterton in his “Crimes of England” applied to the“Anglo-German Problem” the epithet “almost magical.”
[2] 1915.
The book of which a new and popular edition isnow presented to the American public has very littlein common with the thousand and one war publicationswhich are distracting the attention of a bewilderedand satiated reader. It was not compiledin feverish haste since the war began. It waswritten years before the war, and represents the outcomeof two decades of study and travel in Germany.
The volume was first published in 1912 to dispelthe false sense of security which was blindingEuropean opinion to the imminent perils ahead,to warn Britain of the appalling catastrophe towardswhich all nations were drifting, and to give an accurateestimate of the forces which were making forwar. I attempted to prove that Germany and notBritain or France or Russia was the storm-centreof international politics. I attempted to prove thatthe differences between Germany and Britain werenot due to substantial grievances, but that thosegrievances were purely imaginary; that such catch-phrasesas taking Germany’s place in the sun were[8]entirely misleading, and that both the grievances andthe catch-phrases were merely diverting the publicmind from the one real issue at stake, the clash andconflict between two irreconcilable political creeds—theImperialism of Great Britain, granting equalrights to all, based on Free Trade, and aiming at afederation of self-governing communities; and theImperialism of Germany, based on despotism andantagonism and aiming at the military ascendancyof one Power over subject races.
I further attempted to show how the Germanpeople were in the grip of the Prussian militarymachine, of a reactionary bureaucracy, and of aPrussian feudal Junkerthum; how behind that militarymachine and that feudal Junkerthum there wereeven more formidable moral and spiritual forces atwork; how the whole German nation were under thespell of a false political creed; how the Universities,the Churches, the Press, were all possessed with thesame exclusive nationalism; and how, being misledby its spiritual leaders, the whole nation was honestlyand intensely convinced that in the near future theGerman Empire must challenge the world in order toestablish its supremacy over the Continent of Europe.
Habent sua fata libelli! Motley’s “Rise of theDutch Republic” was refused by the illustrioushouse of Murray. The now historical “Foundations”of Chamberlain were rejected for twentyyears by English publishers, until the translationbrought a little fortune to Mr. John Lane. Without[9]in the least suggesting a comparison with thosefamous works, I only want to point out that the“Anglo-German Problem” has passed through asstrange literary vicissitudes. A book written by asympathetic and devoted student of German literature,and who for twenty years had been workingfor the diffusion of German culture, was denouncedas anti-German. A book inspired from the firstpage to the last with pacific and democratic idealswas denounced as a militarist and mischievousproduction. A temperate judicial analysis was dubbedas alarmist and sensational and bracketed with thescaremongerings of the Yellow Press. The radicalDaily News of London dismissed my volume with acontemptuous notice. The Edinburgh reviewer oftheScotsman pompously declared that such a bookcould do no good.
To-day both the Press and the public have madeample if belated amends for the unjust treatmentmeted out to the “Anglo-German Problem” on itsfirst appearance. His Majesty King Albert hasemphasized the prophetic character of the book, andhas paid it the high compliment of recommending itto members of his Government. University statesmenlike President Butler, eminent lawyers like Mr.James Beck, illustrious philosophers like ProfessorBergson, have testified to its fairness, its moderation,and its political insight. Almost unnoticed on itspublication in 1912, the “Anglo-German Problem”is to-day one of the three books on the war mostwidely read throughout the British Empire, and isbeing translated into the French, Dutch, and Spanishlanguages.[10]
Not only have the principles and general conclusionspropounded in the “Anglo-German Problem”received signal confirmation from recent events, butthe forecasts and anticipations have been verifiedin every detail. It is the common fate of war booksto become very quickly out of date. After fouryears, there is not one paragraph which has beencontradicted by actual fact. Even the chapter onthe Baghdad Railway, written in 1906 and publishedas a separate pamphlet nine years ago, remainssubstantially correct. One of the leading magnatesof Wall Street wrote to me: “Events have not onlyunfolded themselves in the way you anticipated,but they have happened for the identical reasonswhich you indicated.” I pointed out the fatalperil of the Austrian-Serbian differences and of theDrang nach Osten policy, and it is those Serbian-Austriandifferences which have precipitated the war.I prophesied that the invasion of Belgium and notthe invasion of England was the contingency to bedreaded, and Belgium has become the main theatreof military operations. I emphasized that theconflict was one of fundamental moral and politicalideals rather than of economic interests, and the warhas developed into a religious crusade. I prophesiedthat the war would be long and cruel, and it hasproved the most ruthless war of modern times.
All the forces which I prophesied would make forwar have made for war: the reactionary policy of theJunkerthum, the internal troubles, the personalityof the Kaiser, the propaganda of the Press and of the[11]Universities. Similarly, the forces which were expectedto make for peace, and which I prophesiedwouldnot make for peace, have failed to work forpeace. Few publicists anticipated that the millionsof German Social Democrats would behave as timidhenchmen of the Prussian Junker, and my friendVandervelde, leader of the International SocialDemocracy and now Belgian Minister of State,indignantly repudiated my reflections on his Germancomrades. Alas! the Gospel according to St. Marxhas been as ineffectual as the Gospel according toSt. Marc. The Social Democracy which called itselfthe International (with a capital I) has provedselfishly nationalist, and the masses which had notthe courage to fight for their rights under Kaiser Bebelare now slaughtering their French and Englishbrethren, and are meekly enlisted in the legions ofKaiser William.
The “Anglo-German Problem,” written by a writer ofBelgian origin who foresaw the catastrophe threateninghis native country, will be followed up shortly byanother book on the “Reconstruction of Belgium.”Belgium has been not only the champion of Europeanfreedom; she has also been the innocent victim of theold order. It is only in the fitness of things that afterthe war Belgium shall become the keystone of thenew International Order. The whole of Europe isultimately responsible for the Belgian tragedy. Thewhole of Europe must therefore be interested in andpledged to the restoration of Belgium and to theliberation of the Belgian people, now crushed andbleeding under the heel of the Teutonic invader.
[3] Preface written for the American Edition of the “Anglo-GermanProblem,” published by Putnam.
“Europe is drifting slowly but steadily towards anawful catastrophe, which, if it does happen, willthrow back civilization for the coming generation,as the war of 1870 threw back civilization for thegeneration which followed and which inherited itsdire legacy of evil. For the last ten years twogreat Western Powers and two kindred races havebecome increasingly estranged, and have been engagingin military preparations which are taxing tothe utmost the resources of the people, and areparalyzing social and political reform in bothcountries. A combination of many causes, moraland political, has bred suspicion and distrust, andthe fallacious assumption of conflicting interestshas turned suspicion into hatred. Only a year agoEngland and Germany stood on the brink of war.If, after thecoup of Agadir, Germany had persistedin her policy, the conflagration would have ensued,the storm would have burst out. The war-cloudhas temporarily lifted, but it has not passed away.[13]The danger is as acute as it was, because the causeswhich produced the recent outburst are still withus, and the malignant passions are gathering strengthwith each passing day.
This formidable evil is threatening England, butit does not originate in England, and Englandcannot be held responsible for it. The period ofaggressive Imperialism has passed away. Mr. JosephChamberlain and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in so faras they once represented the old bellicose Imperialism,to-day are exploded forces. The English peoplewere never more peacefully inclined, and Liberalsand Tories are united in their desire for a pacificsolution of the present difficulties.
It is Germany and not England which is thestorm-centre, the volcanic zone, in internationalpolitics. From there have come, ever since 1860,the tension and friction, the suspicion and distrust.It is there that the pagan gods of the Nibelungenare forging their deadly weapons.”
“German and English publicists, whilst admittingthe existence of a feeling of hostility, point out themany unmistakable signs of goodwill heralding abetter understanding in the future. They point tothe frequent exchange of international courtesies, tothe periodical visits of Members of Parliament andof representative men of the Churches; they pointto the visit of Viscount Haldane; and last, but notleast, they point to the many pacific assurances of[14]the German Kaiser. With regard to the utterancesof the Kaiser, I can only say that if the Kaiser hasmade many pacific speeches, his aggressive speecheshave been even more numerous. I have no doubtthat the Kaiser is perfectly sincere, and I believehim to be animated with the most cordial feelingsfor this country. If I am asked to explain thecontradiction, I can only see one explanation, andit is not one which I am very willing to admit. Andthe explanation is this: when he is expressing words ofpeace and goodwill he is speaking in his own privatecapacity and as the grandson of an English queen.On the contrary, whenever he utters words of ill-willand menace, whenever he waves the flag, whenhe shows the mailed fist, he is acting as the representativeand speaking as the spokesman of a considerablefraction amongst his subjects.
That there has existed in Germany a very widespreadfeeling of hostility against the English peoplewe have uncontrovertible proof. And the evidencewe have on no less an authority than the Kaiserhimself. In the famous interview published by theDaily Telegraph, William II. emphatically testifiedto the existence and to the persistence of the feelingwhich he had systematically attempted to counteract.The admission raised legitimate indignationin Germany. It was ill-advised. It was calculatedto intensify the very animosity which it deprecated.But the fact itself, the existence of the animosity,could not be disputed. After all, the Kaiser oughtto know the feelings, if not of the majority of hissubjects, at least of those ruling classes with whomhe comes in contact.[15]”
“Contemporary German philosophy is a ‘warphilosophy.’ In France we may find isolated thinkers,like Joseph de Maistre, who are the apostles of war,who maintain that war is a Divine and providentialinstitution, one of the eternal verities. InGermany the paradoxes of de Maistre are thecommonplaces of historians and moralists. To anEnglishman war is a dwindling force, an anachronism.It may still sometimes be a necessity, adura lex,anultima ratio, but it is always a monstrous calamity.In other words, to an Englishman war is evil, warisimmoral. On the contrary, to the German war isessentially moral. Indeed, it is the source of thehighest morality, of the most valuable virtues, andwithout war the human race would speedily degenerate.It is the mainspring of national progress.There are three causes which have ensured the presentgreatness of the German Empire: moral virtue inthe individual, political unity, and economic prosperity.If we were to believe modern theorists,Germany owes all three to the beneficent action ofwar. Germany is not indebted for its culture to thegenius of its writers or artists, but to the iron and bloodof its statesmen and warriors. It is the glorioustriumvirate of Bismarck, Moltke, and von Roonwho have been the master-builders of the Vaterland.
Our main contention is, that as the pacific philosophyof Herder and Kant, of Goethe and Lessing,provides the key to the old Germany described in[16]Madame de Staël’s masterpiece, even so the militaryphilosophy of Mommsen and Treitschke, of Bismarckand Nietzsche, gives us the key of modern PrussianizedGermany. The whole German people have becomeBismarckian, and believe that it is might whichcreates right. The whole of the younger generationhave become Nietzschean in politics, and believe inthe will to power—der Wille zur Macht. That politicalphilosophy is to-day the living and inspiring idealwhich informs German policy. And it is that philosophywhich we have to keep constantly in mind ifwe wish to understand the currents and under-currentsof contemporary politics and make a correctforecast of the future; if we wish to distinguishbetween what is real and unreal in internationalrelations, between the professions of politicians andthe aims and aspirations of the people. Germanstatesmen may protest about their love of peace,but the service they render to peace is only lip service.Peace is only a means, war is the goal. We are remindedof Professor Delbrück’s assertion that, consideringthe infinitely complex conditions of modernwarfare, many years of peace are necessary to andmust be utilized for the preparation of the warswhich are to come.
How, then, can we be reassured by any Germanpacifist protests and demonstrations? How canwe believe that German peace is anything more thana precarious truce as long as German statesmen,German thinkers, German teachers and preachers,unanimously tell us that the philosophy of war isthe only gospel of salvation? How can a patrioticGerman, if he is consistent, abstain eventually from[17]waging war when he is firmly convinced that hiscountry owes her political unity, her moral temper,and her Imperial prosperity, whatever she is andwhatever she has, mainly to the agency of war?When war has done so much for Germany in thepast, will it not do greater things for Germany in thefuture?
War may be a curse or it may be a blessing. Ifwar is a curse, then the wells of public opinion havebeen poisoned in Germany, perhaps for generationsto come. If war is a blessing, if the philosophy ofwar is indeed the gospel of the super-man, sooner orlater the German people are bound to put that gospelinto practice. They must look forward with anxiousand eager desire to the glorious day when once morethey are able to fight the heroic battles of Teutonism,when they are able to fulfil the providential destiniesof the German super-race, the chosen champions ofcivilization.”
“Uninfluenced by those ominous signs of the times,English and German optimists still refuse to surrender,still persist in their optimism. They argue that thesituation is no doubt serious, but that those outburstsof popular feeling in Germany, violent asthey are, have largely been caused by Englishsuspicion and distrust, and that there has beennothing in the German policy to justify that Englishsuspicion and distrust. After all, deeds are moreimportant than words, and by her deeds Germanyhas proved for forty-two years that she is persistently[18]pacific. Since 1870 Russia has made war againstTurkey and against Japan. England has madewar against the Transvaal. Italy has waged waragainst Turkey. France after Fashoda would havedeclared war against England, and after Tangierwould have declared war against Germany, if Francehad been prepared. Of all the Great Powers, Germanyalone for nearly half a century has been determinedto keep the peace of the world.
The reply to this objection is very simple. I amnot examining here whether a state of affairs whichhas transformed Europe into an armed camp of sixmillion soldiers, and which absorbs for militaryexpenditure two-thirds of the revenue of EuropeanStates, can be appropriately called a state of peace.It is certainly not apax romana. It is most certainlynot apax britannica. It may be apax teutonica or,rather, apax borussica, but such as it is, ruinous anddemoralizing, it is also lamentably precarious andperilously unstable. And if Germany has kept thispax borussica for forty-two years, it has not been thefault of the German Government. Rather has itbeen kept because she has been prevented fromdeclaring war by outside interference; or becauseshe has been able to carry out her policy and to achieveher ambitions without going the length of declaringwar; or because a war would have been not only aheinous crime, but a political blunder.
But the real reason why Germany for forty yearshas kept the peace is because a war would have beenboth fatal and futile, injurious and superfluous.It would have been injurious, for it would havearrested the growing trade and the expanding[19]industries of the empire. And, above all, it wouldhave been superfluous, for in time of peace Germanyreaped all the advantages which a successful warwould have given her. For twenty-five years theGerman Empire wielded an unchallenged supremacyon the Continent of Europe. For twenty years shedirected the course of international events.
But since the opening of the twentieth centuryGermany has ceased to be paramount; she has ceasedto control European policy at her own sweet will,and weaker States have ceased to be given over to hertender mercies. To the Triple Alliance has beenopposed the Triple Entente. The balance of powerhas been re-established. The three ‘hereditaryenemies’—England, France, and Russia—havejoined hands, and have delivered Europe from the incubusof German suzerainty. German diplomacy hasstrained every effort to break the Triple Entente, inturn wooing and threatening France and Russia,keeping open the Moroccan sore as the Neapolitanlazzarone keeps open the wound which ensures hisliving, and finally challenging the naval supremacyof England, and preparing to become as powerful atsea as she is on the Continent.”
“Precisely because the final issue will largely dependon the personality of the soldier, the moral and civicpreparation must be at least as important as thetechnical, and here the Government has an importantpart to play through the school and through thePress.Both the school and the Press must both persistently[20]emphasize the meaning and the necessity ofwar as an indispensable means of policy and of culture,and must inculcate the duty of personal sacrifice.To achieve that end the Government must haveits own popular papers, whose aim it will be to stimulatepatriotism, to preach loyalty to the Kaiser, toresist the disintegrating influence of Social Democracy.
But not least important is the political preparationfor the war. Statesmanship and diplomacy confinethemselves too much to consolidating alliances andentering into new understandings. Nothing could bemore dangerous than to rely too much on treatiesand alliances. Alliances are not final.Agreementsare only conditional. They are only binding,rebussic stantibus, as long as conditions remain the same—aslong as it is in the interest of the allies to keepthem; for nothing can compel a State to act againstits own interest, and there is no alliance or bond inthe world which can subsist if it is not based on themutual advantage of both parties. It is thereforeessential that the war shall be fought under suchconditions that it shall be in the interest of everyally to be loyal to his engagements; and thereforeit is essential for the State so to direct and combinepolitical events as to produce a conjuncture ofinterests and to provoke the war at the most favourablemoment.”
“England cannot honestly admit the truth andreality of German grievances. England cannot admitthat in the past she has ever adopted an attitude of[21]contemptuous superiority towards the German people.Still less can England admit that she has systematicallystood in the way of German colonial ambitions.She cannot admit it, for the simple reason that onlya few years ago those German colonial ambitions didnot exist. Almost to the end of his long rule, Bismarckwould not have colonies, and he deliberatelyencouraged France in that policy of African expansionwhich Germany now objects to. Germanywould probably have had a much larger colonialempire if she had chosen to have it. History teachesus that in the development of European colonizationthere are some nations, like the Spaniards and Portuguese,that have come too early in the field. Thereare other nations, like England and Russia, that havecome in the nick of time. And, finally, there arenations that have come too late. The Germanpeople have arrived too late in the race for colonialempire. They may regret it, but surely it wouldbe monstrous to use the fact as a grievance againstthe people of this country. I may bitterly regretthat twenty years ago I had not the money or theenergy or the foresight to invest in the developmentof Argentine, or that I did not buy an estate in Canada,which in those early days I might have got for ahundred pounds, and which to-day would be worthhundreds of thousands. But that is no reason whyI should hate the present possessors of landed propertyin the Far West or in the Far South. That is noreason why I should wish to dispossess them of landwhich they have legitimately acquired, whether theyowe it to their luck or to their pluck, to favourablecircumstances or to their initiative and perseverance.[22]”
“The new grouping of Powers, which has reducedGermany from a position of sole supremacy to aposition of equality, is not the result of any artificialcombinations of diplomacy. Still less is it the resultof a conspiracy, inspired by English envy and Englishhatred. It was not initiated by Edward VII. Ithas survived his death. To assume that Englandwould have been capable of isolating Germany byher own single efforts, and in order to serve her ownselfish purposes, is to attribute to England a powerwhich she does not wield. If there has been a conspiracy,France, Italy, Russia, and the United States,inhabited by twenty million citizens who are Germanby birth or by descent, have all been willing accomplices.The Triple Entente has been a spontaneousrevolt of Europe against German aggressiveness andGerman militarism.
England has not attempted to isolate Germany.She has only herself emerged from her isolation.If she can be accused of having made a grievousmistake in her foreign policy, it is that of having beenblind for so long to the perils which threatenedEuropean liberty. Since 1870 she has submitted fortwenty-five years to German predominance, becauseshe had to oppose the colonial ambitions of Francein Africa and the ambitions of Russia in Asia. To-dayEngland has returned to her ancient traditions.She has never suffered for any length of time, and willnever suffer as long as she remains a first-class Power,from the exclusive predominance of any one Continental[23]nation. She has ever fought for the maintenanceof the balance of power. She defended thatbalance against Charles V. and Philip II. in thesixteenth century, against Louis XIV. in the seventeenth,against Napoleon, against Nicholas I., andAlexander II. in the nineteenth century. She defendsit to-day against William II. But she is no morethe enemy of Germany to-day than she was the enemyof France or Russia ten years ago.And if the equilibriumof Europe were threatened to-morrow by Russia,as it is threatened to-day by Germany, England wouldbecome to-morrow the ally of Germany.
It may be contended, no doubt, that in opposingthe supremacy of another empire on land, she isonly defending her own supremacy on the sea. Butthe history of four hundred years convincingly showsthat England in defending her own interests hasalways been fighting the battles of European liberty.And to-day more than ever, when Europe is transformedinto an armed camp, when might has becomethe criterion of right, when all nations are living inperpetual dread of a European conflagration, thestrict adherence of England to her old principle ofthe balance of power remains the best sanction ofinternational law and the surest guarantee of the peaceof the world.”
“Whatever may be the cause of the state of mindof the Germans, they are certainly suffering justnow from acute ‘megalomania.’ The abnormal self-conceit,[24]the inflated national consciousness, expressthemselves in a thousand ways, some of which arenaïve and harmless, whilst others are grossly offensive.They show themselves in a craving for titles and ingaudy and tasteless public buildings;[5] in the thousandand one statues of Bismarck and William I.; theyreveal themselves in the articles of journalists and inthe writings of historians; but above all, the Germanmegalomania finds expression in the seven thousandspeeches and in the three hundred uniforms of theKaiser. In examining the influence of William II.we shall come to the conclusion that it is his defectsfar more than his virtues that have made him therepresentative hero of the German people. Hiswinged words voice the aspirations of his subjects.Like the Kaiser, every German believes that he is‘the salt of the earth’—Wir sind das Salz der Erde.Like Nietzsche, the modern German believes that theworld must be ruled by a super-man, and that heis the super-man. Like Houston Stewart Chamberlain,the German is convinced that he belongs to asuper-race, and that the Teuton has been the master-builderof European civilization.”
“The self-assertion of the Germans and the contemptfor the foreigner reveal themselves in theirpolitical dealings with other nations. German statesmencontinue the methods of Bismarck withouthaving his genius. German politicians delight in[25]shaking the mailed fist, in waving the nationalbanner with the Imperial black eagle, the ominousand symbolical bird of prey. Wherever they meetwith opposition they at once resort to comminatorymessages. Compare the methods of the EmperorWilliam with those of Edward VII. Nothing illustratesbetter the differences between the characteristicsof English and German diplomacy than thedramatic contrast between the bragging, indiscreet,impulsive, explosive manner of the Kaiser and thequiet, courteous manner of the English monarch.Nothing explains better the striking success whichhas attended English policy and the no less strikingfailure which has attended German policy. For ininternational as well as in private relations, intellectualsuperiority is often as efficient a weapon asan appeal to brute force. And all the might of theGerman Empire has not saved the German foreignpolicy from persistent bankruptcy. That bankruptcyis unanimously admitted even in Germany,and partly accounts for the present temper of thenation. The times have changed, and even the weakcannot now be bullied into submission. At theAlgeciras Conference even those small nations whosemost obvious interest it was to side with Germanygave their moral support to France.”
“There still remains for us to examine one deeperreason why Germany is distrusted and disliked inEurope.She is mainly distrusted because she continues[26]to be the reactionary force in internationalpolitics. Outside the sphere of German influencethe democratic ideal has triumphed all over thecivilized world, after centuries of heroic struggle andtragic catastrophes. But in Germany the old dogmais still supreme. Wherever German power hasmade itself felt for the last forty years—in Italy andAustria, in Russia and Turkey—it has countenancedreaction and tyranny. In politics Germany is to-daywhat Austria and Russia were in the days of the HolyAlliance, the power of darkness. Whilst in theprovinces of science and art the German people aregenerally progressive, in politics the German Governmentis consistently retrogressive. It cannot besufficiently emphasized and repeated that, more thanany other State—more even than Russia—Prussiastands in the way of political advance. It wasPrussia that helped to crush the Polish struggle forfreedom in 1863; when, a few years ago, Englishpublic opinion was protesting against the Armenianmassacres, the Kaiser stood loyally by Abdul Hamidand propped his tottering throne; when the RussianLiberals were engaged in a life-and-death strugglewith Czardom, the Kaiser gave his moral support toRussian despotism. It is not too much to say thatit is the evil influence of Prusso-Germany alone whichkeeps despotism alive in the modern world.”
“It is difficult to exaggerate the political dominationof Germany by Prussia. The practice belies thetheory: it is not as German Emperor but as Prussian[27]King that William II. rules the confederation.The larger is merged in the smaller. The poorbarren plains of Brandenburg and Pomerania ruleover the smiling vineyards and romantic mountainsof the south and west. The German people aregoverned more completely from Berlin and Potsdamthan the French were ever governed from Paris andVersailles. And they are governed with an iron hand.In theory, every part of the empire may have a proportionalshare in the administration of the country;in reality, Prussia has the ultimate political andfinancial control. Germany pays the taxes; Prussiaspends them. Germany provides the soldiers; Prussiacommands them. And the Prussian War Lord and hisJunkers in the last resort decide the issues of peaceand war.
To realize how complete is the Prussian controlwe need only consider the fact that in the supremeFederal Parliament—the Bundesrat—for forty-twoyears the Prussian representatives have always hadit their own way. Yet Prussia, according to theConstitution, has only got seventeen delegates outof fifty-two. When the Imperial Constitution wasframed it was thought that the Prussian representationwas far too small, and the fear was repeatedlyexpressed that the Prussian vote in the Bundesratwould be overruled. But not once has it happenedthat the German majority in the Bundesrat hasdared to oppose any important measure initiated bythe Prussian Government. For all practical purposes,therefore, Prussia is the suzerain power. The Germanprincipalities and kingdoms are reduced to politicaltutelage and subjection.[28]”
“How shall we explain this startling paradox?How is it, and why is it, that the artistic and exuberant,genial and sentimental German submits tothe hard rule of the commonplace, uninteresting,and dour Prussian?
If you ask ninety-nine out of a hundred Germansthey will not give you a reply. They know too littleof and care too little about politics to be even awareof the fact. They are satisfied with appearances.They do not see the King of Prussia behind theGerman Kaiser. They are hypnotized by the glitteringhelmet of the War Lord.
But if you succeed in discovering one in a hundredwho understands the relation between Germany andPrussia, and who has thought out the politicalproblem, he will probably give you something likethe following reply:
‘I know that there is no love lost between theGermans and the Prussians. I know that in cultureand native ability we are as superior to the Prussiansas our vine-clad hills are superior in beauty to thesandy wastes of Pomerania. And I know that inpolitics we play a subordinate part, although we aresuperior. But I also realize that it is necessary forus to submit. And it is necessary for us to submit,precisely because of our virtues. For those virtuesof ours are unpractical. And it is necessary for thePrussians to rule, precisely because of their shortcomings.For those shortcomings are practical.The pure gold of the German temper could never be[29]made into hard coin nor used to advantage. Itcould be made to produce splendid works of art,gems and diadems and ornaments, but for practicalpurposes, in order to forge the weapons of the Nibelungen,the alloy of the baser metal was indispensable.It required the mixture of Prussian sand and Prussianiron to weld us into a nation, to raise us to an empire.It is because we Germans are artists and dreamers andindividualists that we could never manage our ownaffairs, that we have always been “non-politicalanimals.”[6] On the contrary, it is because thePrussian has no brilliance, no romance, no personality,that he makes a splendid soldier and a model bureaucrat.Two things above all were required to makeGermany into a powerful State—a strong army anda well-ordered administration. Prussia has givenus both.
‘And let us not forget that Germany more thanany other Power required such a strong army andsuch a strong administration, not only owing to theshortcomings of her national character, but owing tothe weakness and danger of her geographical position.Germany is open on every frontier. She has everbeen harassed by dangerous enemies. Only a generationago she was threatened on every side. On thenorth she had to face the rulers of the sea, whohampered her commercial expansion; on the west shehad to face the restless Gaul; on the south she wasconfronted with the clerical and Jesuitical empireof the Habsburg; on the east with the empire of the[30]Romanovs. From all those enemies Prussia hasultimately saved us. The Hohenzollern dynastyhas proved a match for them all.
‘The whole annals of Germany and Prussia area striking proof of the political weakness of theGerman and of the strength of the Prussian character.Again and again Germany has witnessed magnificentoutbursts of national prosperity. She has seen themight of the Hohenstaufen; she has seen the wealthof the Hansa towns. Again and again she haswitnessed the spontaneous generation and blossomingof civic prosperity; she has seen the glory and prideof Nuremberg and Heidelberg, of Cologne and Frankfurt,the art of Dürer and Holbein. But again andagain German culture has been nipped in the bud.It has been destroyed by civil war and religious war,by internal anarchy and foreign invasion. TheThirty Years’ War devastated every province of theGerman Empire, and such was the misery and anarchythat in many parts the people had reverted tosavagery and cannibalism.[7] And hardly had thecountry recovered from the horrors of the wars ofreligion, when repeated French invasions laid wastethe rich provinces of the Rhine and Palatinate.So completely did German rulers of the eighteenthcentury betray their duty to the people that somePrinces degraded themselves to the point of sellingtheir soldiers to the Hanoverian Kings in order tofight the battles of England in America.
‘Whilst the German Princes were thus squanderingthe treasure and life-blood of their subjects, therewas growing up in the North a little State which was[31]destined from the most unpromising beginnings forthe most glorious future. It is true that the littlePrussian State was wretchedly poor; for that veryreason the Prussian rulers had to practise stricteconomy and unrelenting industry. It is truethe country was always insecure and constantlythreatened by powerful neighbours; for that veryreason the people had to submit to a rigid disciplineand a strong military organization. It is true thecountry was depopulated; for that very reason therulers had to attract foreign settlers by a just, wise,and tolerant government.’
A patriotic German might illustrate in the followingsimple parable the complex and strange relationsbetween Germany and Prussia:
‘The German people a century ago might be comparedto the heirs and owners of an ancient estate.The estate was rich and of romantic beauty. Theheirs were clever, adventurous, and universallypopular. But although devoted to each other, theycould not get on together. Their personality wastoo strong, and they were always quarrelling. Norcould they turn to advantage their vast resources,and the natural wealth of the estate only served toattract outside marauders. They were so extravagantand so unpractical that they would lay out beautifulparks and build magnificent mansions whilst neglectingto drain the land and to repair the fences.They would spend lavishly on luxuries, but theywould grudge food to the cattle and manure to thefields. Thus, with all their splendid possessions,the German heirs were always on the verge ofbankruptcy.[32]
‘To extricate themselves, they decided to acceptthe services of a factor and manager. The factor wasthe Prussian Junker. He was an alien. For hecould hardly be called a German. In blood he wasmore Slav than Teutonic. He was unrefined, unsympathetic,and overbearing. But as a managerhe was splendid. He bought up outlying parts toround off the estate. He paid more attention tothe necessaries than to the luxuries and the amenitiesof life. He was more careful to surround himselfwith a strong police force than with poets andminstrels. But he was able to keep out the maraudersand the poachers. He was able to protect the propertyagainst stronger neighbours and to bully the weakerneighbours into surrendering desirable additions tothe estate. In a short time the heirs, formerly universallypopular, were cordially hated in the land.But their rents had increased by leaps and bounds,and the German estate had been rounded off and madeinto one solid and compact whole.’
Such, German writers would tell us, is the parableof Germany and Prussia. The Germans are the gifted,generous, and spendthrift heirs to an illustriousdomain. Prussia is the alien, upstart, unpopular,unsympathetic, bullying factor and manager. Butto this bullying factor Germany owes the consolidationand prosperity of the national estate.”
“We are apt to forget that, strictly speaking, aParliamentary government does not exist in Germany,although we constantly speak of a ‘German Parliament.[33]’According to the Constitution, the Chancelloris not responsible to Parliament, he is onlyresponsible to the Emperor. There is no Cabinetor delegation of the majority of the Reichstag.There is no party system. There are only partysquabbles. I do not know whether Mr. Bellocwould approve of the German Constitution, but itcertainly enables the Government to soar high aboveall the parties in the Reichstag. German Liberalsmay be morally justified in their struggle againstpolitical reaction, but technically the Governmentare acting within their constitutional right. Andwhen, therefore, the Reichstag attempts to controlthe executive, it is rather the Reichstag which isunconstitutional. On the other hand, when theEmperor asserts his Divine right, it is he who is trueto the spirit of the Constitution; he is only givinga religious interpretation and colour to a politicalprerogative which he undoubtedly possesses. Andnot only is there no Parliamentary government, butthere is not even a desire, except with a small fractionof Radicals, to possess such a government. Prussianpublicists again and again tell us that Germany doesnot want to copy English institutions. The oldGerman monarchic institutions are good enough forGermany. Read the treatise of Treitschke, thegreat historian and political philosopher of modernPrussia. He systematically attempts to belittleevery achievement of the Parliamentary system; andevery prominent writer follows in his footsteps.Prussia has not produced a Guizot, a Tocqueville,a Stuart Mill, or a Bryce. Her thinkers are all imbuedwith the traditions of enlightened despotism.[34]Even the great Mommsen cannot be adduced as anexception. He makes us forget his Liberalism, andonly remember his Cæsarism.
The powers of the Reichstag are very limited.It is mainly a machine for voting supplies, but eventhat financial control is more nominal than real.For under the Constitution the Assembly must needsmake provision for the army and navy, which areoutside and above party politics. And havingpreviously fixed the contingent of the Imperial forces,the army and navy estimates must needs follow. Inthe present tension of international politics, a reductionis out of the question. Theoretically, theReichstag can indeed oppose an increase, but practicallythe increase is almost automatic. The Reichstagcould only postpone it, and in so doing would have toface unpopularity. Every party vies with its rivalsin sacrificing their principles on the altar of patriotism.Whereas the Catholic party in Belgium has fortwenty-eight years refused the means of nationaldefence, and has made the Belgian Army into a bywordon the plea that barrack life is dangerous to thereligious faith of the peasant, the German Catholicshave voted with exemplary docility every increaseof the army and navy. Only once did they dareto propose a small reduction in the estimates for theexpenditure on the war against the Herreros. Butthe indignation they raised by their independentattitude, and the doubtful elections of 1907, taughtthem a practical lesson in patriotic submission whichthey are not likely soon to forget.
The Reichstag, therefore, is largely a debatingclub, and its debates are as irresponsible as those of[35]students in a University union, because no speech,however eloquent, carries with it any of the responsibilitiesof government. The Opposition inEngland is careful of the language it uses, and morecareful of the promises it makes, because it knowsthat it may be called upon to fulfil its promises andto carry out the policy it advocates. In Germanythere is no such possibility. The Opposition is onlyplatonic. It is doomed to impotence.”
“It has often happened in other countries when theexpression of free opinions has become dangerous ordifficult that independent political thought has takenrefuge in the Universities. Even in Russia theUniversities have been a stronghold of Liberalism.In the Germany of the first half of the nineteenthcentury many a University professor suffered in thecause of political liberty. In the Germany of to-daythe Universities are becoming the main support ofreaction. Professors, although they are nominatedby the faculties, are appointed by the Government;and here again the Government only appoints ‘safe’men. A scholar who has incurred the displeasureof the political authorities must be content to remainaPrivatdozent all his life.The much-vaunted independenceof the German professors is a thing of the past.They may be independent scientifically; they are notindependent politically. It is not that scholars havenot the abstract right to speak out, or that they wouldbe dismissed once they have been appointed; rather[36]is it that they would not be appointed or promoted.A young scholar with Radical leanings knows thathe will not be called to Berlin.
The German Universities still lead political thought;they still wield political influence, and their influencemay be even greater to-day than it ever was, but thatinfluence is enlisted almost exclusively on the sideof reaction.
And what is true of the Universities is true of theChurches. Of the Roman Catholic Church it ishardly necessary to speak.Non ragionar di lor,ma guarda e passa. The history of German Catholicismproves once more that the Church is never moreadmirable than when she is persecuted. Duringthe Kulturkampf the Catholics stood for politicalliberty, whereas the so-called National Liberalsstood for State centralization and political despotism.To-day, from being persecuted, the Catholic Churchhas become a persecuting Church. She has enteredinto an unholy compact with the Prussian Government.She has ceased to be religious, and hasbecome clerical. She has ceased to be universal.She has become narrowly Nationalist. She mighthave played a glorious part in the new empire. Insteadshe has resisted every attempt at financialreform. She might have resisted the oppressivepolicy against the Poles. Instead she has connivedat oppression. She might have opposed the orgiesof militarism. Instead she has voted every increasein the army and navy. She has bartered her dignityand spiritual independence to secure confessionalprivileges, and to get her share in the spoils of office.
The Protestant Churches have not had the same[37]power for evil, yet they have fallen even lower thanthe Catholic Church. They have lost even morecompletely every vestige of independence. GermanUniversity theologians may be advanced in highercriticism, but they are opportunists in practicalpolitics. They are very daring when they examinethe Divine right of Christ, but they are very timidwhen they examine the Divine right of the King andEmperor. Protestantism produced one or two prominentprogressive leaders; but they have had to leavetheir Churches. Dr. Naumann has become a layman;Stöcker, when he espoused the cause of the people,was excommunicated, and the Kaiser hurled one ofhis most violent speeches against his once favouriteCourt chaplain.”
“For forty years Germany had been seeking anoutlet for her teeming population and her expandingindustries. Hitherto emigration had seemed to be asufficient outlet and a sufficient source of strength.But as Germany was becoming more and more thecontrolling power of the Continent, she refused tobe contented with sending out millions of her sons,who, as mere emigrants to foreign countries, werelost to the Vaterland.[9] How different would the powerof Germany have been, German Imperialists wereever repeating, if the 20,000,000 Teutons who havecolonized the United States, or Brazil, or Argentina,and have been absorbed and Americanized and[38]Saxonized, had settled in territories under the Imperialflag!
And thus Pan-Germanists have been lookingtowards every part of the horizon. They have firstlooked to the north and the north-west, and they havereflected that the Rhine ought to belong to the Vaterland;that Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerpare the natural German harbours; that Denmark,Holland, and Flemish Belgium are the outposts ofGermany for the transit commerce of Europe; andthat all these outposts ought to be included eitherin an economic Zollverein or in a political confederation.[10]
But Germany wisely realized that those northernambitions would meet with absolute resistance onthe part of other Powers, that she was not yet strongenough to defy that resistance, and that this fulfilmentof her aspirations must be postponed untilshe was prepared to fight for the mastery of the sea.In the meantime, she contented herself withpeacefullyannexing the commerce of the Flemish and Dutchports, with building up a mercantile and a war navy,with advocating the historical maritime philosophyof Captain Mahan, and with repeating on everyoccasion the famous note of warning: ‘UnsereZukunft ist auf dem Wasser.’ Biding her time, andfollowing the line of least resistance, Germany forthe last twenty years therefore extended steadilytowards the south and towards the east. Towards[39]the south she saw two decaying empires, Austria-Hungaryand Turkey, which seemed to be a naturalprey for her political and commercial ambitions:two conglomerates of hostile races which are waitingfor a master. Towards the east she saw one of themost ancient seats of human civilization, a hugeand rich territory, which is the one great country, inclose proximity to Europe, which is still left unoccupiedand undeveloped. On those three empiresGermany set her heart, and with the method anddetermination which always characterize her she setto work. And with an equally characteristic spiritthis gigantic scheme of commercial and politicalabsorption of three empires, from the Upper Danubeto the Persian Gulf, was being explained away andjustified by an all comprehensive watchword: theDrang nach Osten. It was only in response to thisirresistible call and impulse, thisDrang and pressure,it was only to obey an historical mission, that theTeuton was going to regenerate the crumbling empiresof Austria, of Turkey, and of Asia Minor.
In the first place, let us consider for one momentthe Austrian-Hungarian Empire. It is now fiftyyears since, through the Battle of Sadowa, Austria-Hungarywas ousted from the German Confederation.The same reasons which impelled Protestant Prussiato drive Catholic Austria from the Germanic Confederationare still in large measure subsisting to-day,and I do not think that the Hohenzollern has anyintention of forcing the Habsburg into the Confederationagain, merely to obey the behests of the Pan-Germanists.Prussia has no interest whatever inreopening the ancient dualism of North and South, in[40]re-establishing the two poles and antipodes, Berlinand Vienna.As a matter of fact, ever since 1870Austria-Hungary has been far more useful to Germanaims in her present dependent condition than if shewere an integral part of the Confederation. In Continentalpolitics as well as in colonial politics, a disguisedprotectorate may be infinitely preferable tovirtual annexation. The protectorate of Tunis hasgiven far less trouble to France than the colony ofAlgeria. And for all practical interests and purposes,Austria-Hungary has become a German dependency.She has been drawn into the orbit of the TripleAlliance. She follows the political fortunes of thepredominant partner. She almost forms part of theGerman Zollverein, in that her tariffs are systematicallyfavourable to her northern neighbour.But above all,Austria-Hungary renders to Germany the inestimableservice both of ‘civilizing’—that is, of ‘Germanizing’—theinferior races, the Slavs, and of keepingthem in check. It is a very disagreeable and difficulttask, which Germany infinitely prefers to leave to Austriarather than to assume herself. And it is a task forwhich, as Professor Lamprecht, the national historian,is compelled to admit, the Austrian German seems farmore qualified than the Prussian German. AndGermany can thus entirely devote herself to herworld ambitions, whilst Austria is entirely absorbedby her racial conflict—for the King of Prussia!
For the last twenty-five years the process ofGermanizing has been going on without interruption.A bitter war of races and languages is being wagedbetween the Austrian German and the Magyar,between the Teuton and the Slav. Of the Slav[41]the Austrian Teuton wants to make his politicalslave. To him ‘Slav’ and ‘slave’ are synonymouswords; and when we consider that the Slavs aredisunited in language and religion, and that they hateeach other almost as cordially as they hate theNiemets; and when we further consider that behindthe ten millions of Austrian Germans there will besixty-five millions of other Germans to support them,whilst the Catholic Tcheches and Poles can only fallback on the support of abhorred and hereticalRussia, there is every reason to fear that the Slavmust eventually come under the economic and politicalcontrol of the Austrian Germans—that is to say,ultimately under the influence of the German Empire.
But it is not only the Slavs of the Austrian Empirethat are threatened by German absorption; thatabsorption has rapidly extended to the Slav States ofthe Balkan Peninsula. On the south as well as onthe north of the Danube, Austria has been used asthe ‘cat’s-paw,’ or, to use the more dignified expressionof Emperor William, as the ‘loyalSekundant’of the Hohenzollern. The occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina,in defiance of the Treaty of Berlin,was the beginning of that AustrianDrang nach Ostenpolicy, the next object of which is the possession ofthe Gulf of Salonica, and the ultimate object of whichis the control of Constantinople.”
“The absorption of Turkey is not a distant dream:it is very nearly an accomplished fact. Twenty-fiveyears ago Germany declared she had no political[42]stake in the affairs of Turkey. As recently as the’seventies, Bismarck proclaimed in the Reichstag thatthe Eastern Question was not worth the loss of onePomeranian soldier.
To-day Germany is wellnigh supreme on theBosphorus. She started by sending military instructors,amongst whom was the famous GeneralVon der Goltz Pasha, and by reorganizing the TurkishArmy on the German model. She then sent hertravellers, absorbing the commerce of the country.She then sent her engineers, obtaining concessions,building railways, and practically obtaining thecontrol of the so-called ‘Oriental’ line. Finally,she became the self-appointed doctor of the ‘sickman.’ Whenever the illness of recent years cameto a crisis—after the Armenian and the Macedonianatrocities, after the Cretan insurrection—Germanystepped in and paralyzed the action of Europe. Itwas Germany that not only enabled Turkey to crushGreece and to restore her military prestige: it wasGermany that enabled her to reap the fruits ofvictory.
For ten years Lohengrin appeared as the temporalprovidence, the protector of Abdul Hamid. TheHoly Roman Emperor appeared as the saviour of theCommander of the Faithful. A Power which didnot have one Mohammedan subject claimed toprotect two hundred million Mohammedans. Andwhen, in 1897, Emperor William went on his memorablepilgrimage to Jerusalem, this latter-day pilgrimentered into a solemn compact with a Sovereign stillreeking from the blood of 200,000 Christians. TheCross made an unholy alliance with the Crescent.[43]
This alliance, coinciding with the journey toJerusalem, marked a further step in the forwardmovement, in theDrang nach Osten policy. It wasthe third and the last stage, and by far the mostimportant one. It was obvious that, on the Europeanside of the Bosphorus, Germany could not makemuch further progress for some years to come. Thetimes were not ripe. International jealousies mightbe prematurely roused, all the more so becauseneither the German Kaiser nor his subjects have thediscretion and modesty of success. But on theAsiatic side there extended a vast Asiatic inheritance,to which, as yet, there was no European claimant;to which already, forty years ago, German patriotslike Moltke, German economists like Roscher andList, had drawn the attention of the Vaterland—acountry with a healthy climate and with infiniteresources as yet undeveloped. This was to be inthe immediate future the field of German colonization.On his way to Jerusalem the German Emperorpressed once more his devoted friend the Sultan foran extension of German enterprise in Asia Minor.The concession of the railway to Baghdad wasgranted, and a new and marvellous horizon openedbefore the Hohenzollern.”
“And not only is German Socialism not as strong,neither is it as pacifist as is generally supposed. Outsiderstake it for granted that in the event of a conflictbetween France and Germany there would be[44]solidarity between the French and the Germanartisans. They assume that Socialism is essentiallyinternational. And in theory such an assumptionis quite legitimate. But many things in Germanyare national which elsewhere are universal. Andin Germany Socialism is becoming national, as Germanpolitical economy is national, as German science isnational, as German religion is national. Thereforethe political axiom that German Socialists wouldnecessarily come to an understanding with theirFrench and English brethren has been falsified bythe event. German Socialists have, no doubt, showntheir pacific intentions; they have issued pacificmanifestoes and organized pacific processions; theyhave filed off in their hundreds of thousands in thestreets of Berlin to protest against the war party;but when the question of peace or war has beenbrought to a point in Socialist congresses—whentheir foreign brethren have moved that in the caseof an unjust aggression the German Social Democratsshould declare a military strike—German Socialistshave refused to assent. The dramatic oratoricalduel which took place between the French and theGerman delegates at the Congress of Stuttgart illustratesthe differences between the national temperamentof the Frenchman and the German. Whencalled upon to proclaim the military strike, theGerman Socialists gave as an excuse that such adecision would frighten away from the Social Democratparty hundreds of thousands of middle-classsupporters. This excuse is an additional proof ofthe moral and political weakness of Social Democracy.It illustrates its moral weakness; for the Socialist[45]leaders sacrifice a great principle for the sake of anelectoral gain. The leaders know that nationalistfeeling runs high in the middle classes; they knowthat any anti-militarist policy would be unpopular.And they have not the courage as a party to faceunpopularity. And the arguments used at Stuttgartalso illustrate the political weakness of GermanSocialism; for they show that the Socialist vote doesnot possess the cohesion and homogeneity with whichit is credited: they show that hundreds of thousandsof citizens who record a Socialist vote are not Socialistsat all. To vote for Socialism is merely an indirectway of voting against the Government. There is noorganized Opposition in Germany. The Socialistsare the only party who are “agin the Government.”And all those German citizens who are dissatisfiedwith conditions as they are choose this indirect andclumsy method of voting for the Socialists in orderto express their dissatisfaction with the presentPrussian despotism.
It is therefore not true to say that Socialism inGermany is a decisive force working for peace. Itwould be more true to say that it is a force workingfor war, simply because it is a force working for reaction.Prussian reaction would not be so strongif it were not for the bugbear of Social Democracy.If Social Democracy attracts a considerable sectionof the lower middle class, it repels and frightens thebulk of the middle classes as well as of the upperclasses. Many Liberals who would otherwise opposethe Government support it from horror of the redflag, and they strengthen unwillingly the power ofreaction. And therefore it would scarcely be a[46]paradox to say that the nearer the approach of theSocialistic reign, the greater would be the danger tointernational peace. German contemporary historyillustrates once more a general law of history, thatthe dread of a civil war is often a direct cause of aforeign war, and that the ruling classes are driven toseek outside a diversion from internal difficulties.Thus political unrest ushered in the wars of the Revolutionand the Empire; thus the internal difficultiesof Napoleon III. brought about the Franco-GermanWar; thus the internal upheaval of Russia in ourdays produced the Russo-Japanese War.
It may be true that power is slipping away fromthe hands of the Prussian Junkerthum and the bureaucracy,although Prussian reaction is far stronger thanmost foreign critics realize. But whether it bestrong or weak, one thing is certain: a power whichhas been supreme for two centuries will not surrenderwithout a struggle. The Prussian Junkers may bepolitically stupid, but they have not lost the fightingspirit, and they will not give way to the ‘mob.’Before Prussian reaction capitulates, it will play itslast card and seek salvation in a European conflagration.”
“Is the tremendous power and popularity of theKaiser exercised in the direction of peace or in thedirection of war?
To an Englishman the Kaiser’s devotion to militarypursuits, his frequent brandishing of the sword, his[47]aggressive policy of naval expansion, seem to be inflagrant contradiction with his no less persistentprotests both of his sympathy for England and of hislove for peace. We are reminded that Napoleon III.also delighted to express his love for peace—“L’Empirec’est la paix”—yet he brought about the mostdisastrous war in French history. We are remindedthat Nicholas II. of Russia also started his reign asthe peacemaker of Europe, the initiator of theConference of The Hague, yet he brought about themost bloody war in Russian history. Are the Kaiser’spacific protests as futile, are his sympathies as hollow,as those of a Napoleon or a Nicholas?
Unfortunately, if the Kaiser’s protests of peace aresupported by many of his utterances and sanctionedby the interests of his dynasty, they are contradictednot only by many other utterances, but, what ismore serious, they are contradicted by his personalmethods, and, above all, by the whole trend of hisgeneral policy.
Very few observers have pointed out one specialreason why the personal methods of the Kaiser willprove in the end dangerous to peace—namely, thatthey have tended to paralyze or destroy the methodsof diplomacy.
Little as we may like the personnel of legationsand embassies, strongly as we disapprove of themethods by which they are recruited, urgent as isthe reform of the Foreign Office, it remains no lesstrue that the function of diplomacy is more vitalto-day than it ever was in the past. For it is of thevery purpose andraison d’être of diplomacy to beconciliatory and pacific. Its object is to achieve by[48]persuasion and negotiation what otherwise must beleft to the arbitrament of war. It is a commonplaceon the part of Radicals to protest against the practicesof occult diplomacy. In so far as that protest isdirected against the spirit which animates the membersof the diplomatic service, it is fully justified. But inso far as it is directed against the principle of secretnegotiation, the protest is absurd. For it is of thevery essence of diplomacy that it shall be secret, thatit shall be left to experts, that it shall be removedfrom the heated atmosphere of popular assemblies,and that it shall substitute an appeal to intellect andreason for the appeal to popular emotion and popularprejudice.
For that reason it is deeply to be regretted thatthe personal interferences of the Kaiser have takenGerman diplomacy out of the hands of negotiatorsprofessionally interested in a peaceful solution ofinternational difficulties, and have indirectly broughtdiplomacy under the influence of the German‘patriot’ and the jingo. An Ambassador need notdepend on outside approval; his work is done inquiet and solitude. The Kaiser, on the contrary,conducts his foreign policy in the glaring limelightof publicity; and whenever he has been criticizedby experts, his vanity has only too often been temptedto appeal to popular passion and to gain popularapplause. For that reason, and entirely apart fromhis indiscretions, the bare fact that the Kaiser hasbecome his own Foreign Secretary has lessened thechances of peace.
Nor has the whole trend of his domestic policybeen less injurious to the cause of peace. In vain[49]does the Kaiser assure us of his pacific intentions:a ruler cannot with impunity glorify for ever thewars of the past, spend most of the resources of hispeople on the preparations for the wars of the future,encourage the warlike spirit, make the duel compulsoryon officers and theMensur honourable tostudents, place his chief trust in his Junkers, wholive and move and have their being in the game ofwar, foster the aggressive spirit in the nation, andhold out ambitions which can only be fulfilled by anappeal to arms: a ruler cannot for ever continue tosaw the dragon’s teeth and only reap harvests ofyellow grain and golden grapes.”
“Personally I am inclined to think that the fear ofa German invasion has haunted far too exclusivelythe imagination of the English people, and hasdiverted their attention from another danger far morereal and far more immediate. With characteristicnaïveté and insular selfishness, some jingoes imaginethat if only the naval armaments of Germany couldbe stopped, all danger to England would be averted.But surely the greatest danger to England is not theinvasion of England: it is the invasion of France andBelgium. For in the case of an invasion of England,even the Germans admit that the probabilities ofsuccess would all be against Germany; whilst in thecase of an invasion of France, the Germans claimthat the probabilities are all in their favour. It is[50]therefore in France and Belgium that the vulnerablepoint lies, the Achilles heel of the BritishEmpire.”
“It is true that in theory the neutrality of Belgiumis guaranteed by international treaties; but when Iobserve the signs of the times, the ambitions of theGerman rulers, and when I consider such indicationsas the recent extension of strategic railways on theBelgian-German frontiers, I do not look forwardwith any feeling of security to future contingenciesin the event of a European war. I am not at allconvinced that the scare of a German invasion ofEngland is justified. Indeed, I am inclined tobelieve the Germans when they assert that in case ofwar Germany would not be likely to invade Britain.She would be far more likely to invade Belgium,because Belgium has always been the pawn in thegreat game of European politics, and has often been,and may again become, the battlefield and cockpitof Europe.”
“If a war between the two countries did break out,it would not be merely an economic war, like thecolonial wars between France and England in theeighteenth century; rather would it partake of thenature of a political and religious crusade, like the[51]French wars of the Revolution and the Empire.The present conflict between England and Germany isthe old conflict between Liberalism and despotism,between industrialism and militarism, between progressand reaction, between the masses and the classes. Theconflict between England and Germany is a conflict,on the one hand, between a nation which believes inpolitical liberty and national autonomy, where thePress is free and where the rulers are responsible topublic opinion, and, on the other hand, a nation wherepublic opinion is still muzzled or powerless and wherethe masses are still under the heel of an absolutegovernment, a reactionary party, a military Junkerthum,and a despotic bureaucracy.
The root of the evil lies in the fact that in Germanythe war spirit and the war caste still prevail, and thata military Power like Prussia is the predominantpartner in the German Confederation. The mischievousmasterpiece of Carlyle on Frederick theGreat, and his more mischievous letter toThe Times,have misled English opinion as to the true characterand traditions and aims of the Prussian monarchy.Prussia has been pre-eminently for two hundredyears the military and reactionary State of CentralEurope, much more so even than Russia. Prussiaowes whatever she is, and whatever territory she has,to a systematic policy of cunning and deceit, ofviolence and conquest. No doubt she has achievedan admirable work of organization at home, and hasfulfilled what was perhaps a necessary historicmission, but in her international relations she hasbeen mainly a predatory Power. She has stolen herEastern provinces from Poland. She is largely[52]responsible for the murder of a great civilized nation.She has wrested Silesia from Austria. She has takenHanover from its legitimate rulers. She has takenSchleswig-Holstein from Denmark, Alsace-Lorrainefrom France. And to-day the military caste inPrussia trust and hope that a final conflict withEngland will consummate what previous wars haveso successfully accomplished in the past. They areall the more anxious to enter the lists and to run thehazards of war because it becomes more and moredifficult to govern a divided Reichstag and a dissatisfiedpeople without uniting them against aforeign enemy, and because they realize that unlessthey restore their prestige and consolidate theirpower by a signal victory the days of their predominanceare numbered.”
“The war of to-morrow, therefore, will not be likethe war of 1870, a war confined to two belligerentforces: it will be a universal European war. Norwill it be a humane war, subject to the rules of internationallaw and to the decrees of the Hague Tribunal:it will be an inexorable war; or, to use theexpression of von Bernhardi, it will be ‘a war to theknife.’ Nor will it be decided in a few weeks, likethe war of 1870: it will involve a long and difficultcampaign, or rather a succession of campaigns; itwill mean to either side political annihilation orsupremacy.”
[4] This chapter is entirely made up of extracts taken from mypamphlet, “The Baghdad Railway,”published in 1906, and frommy book, “The Anglo-German Problem,” published in 1912.
[5] See an amusing article, “Ornamente,” in theZukunft.
[6] This is again and again admitted even by the most patrioticGerman writers. (See General von Bernhardi’s last book, “TheComing War”: “Wir sind ein unpolitisches Volk”—“We are anon-political people.”)
[7] See Arvède Barine’s “Madame: Mère du Régent.”
[8] This was written and published in 1906.
[9] To-day the immigration into Germany exceeds the emigration.
[10] In Justus Perthes’s widely scattered “Alldeutscher Atlas,”edited by Paul Langhans, and published by the AlldeutscherVerband, both Holland and Flemish Belgium are considered and“coloured” as an integral part of the future German Empire.
[11] This was published in 1906.
It has become a trite and hackneyed claim of thePrussian megalomaniacs that they are an Imperialpeople, a super-race predestined by Nature andProvidence to the domination of the world. Itcertainly seems a grotesque claim to assert on thepart of a people who in their political and sociallife have shown themselves a pre-eminentlyservilepeople; who have ever been cringing to their superiors;who never produced one single leader of free men,one Cromwell, one Mirabeau, one Gambetta; whoalways believed in the virtue of passive obedience;who always submitted to the policeman rather thanto a policy; who always obeyed a Prince rather thana principle; who, as recently as the end of theeighteenth century, allowed themselves to be soldlike cattle by Hessian princelings; who never rose todefend their sacred rights; who never fought a spiritedbattle in a righteous civil war; and who have alwaysbeen ready to fight like slaves at the bidding of asword-rattling despot.
And yet in one very important respect the Germansmay rightly claim that they are actually ruling the[54]European world. German Princes are actuallyseated on almost every throne of Europe. TheFrench language may still be the language of diplomacy,but the German language, which was stilla despised lingo to Frederick the Great, has becomethe language of European royalties. Germany fortwo hundred years has done a most thriving and mostlucrative export trade in princelings. One HohenzollernPrince ruling in Roumania for thirty yearsasserted German influence in that Latin country.Another Hohenzollern Prince ruling in Athens, nicknamed“Tino” by his affectionate relative theKaiser, for three years stultified the will of his people,who were determined to join the cause of the Allies.Still another German Prince ruling in Sofia, whofive years ago was mainly responsible for the horrorsof the second Balkan War, compelled the Bulgariannation to betray the cause of Russia, to whom theBulgarian people owe their political existence andliberation from the yoke of the Turk.
Even yet public opinion does not realize to whatan extent European Princes in the past have beenmade in Germany. We speak of the Royal House ofDenmark as a Danish House. The Danish Houseis in real fact the German dynasty of Oldenburg.We speak of the House of Romanov as a Russiandynasty. And it is true that the founder of thedynasty, Michael Romanov, the son of Philarete,Archbishop of Moscow and Patriarch of all theRussias, was a typical Muscovite, and was called tothe throne in 1611, in troubled times, by the unanimousvoice of the people. But, as all the Czars ofRussia for two hundred years only married German[55]Princesses,without one single exception, the Russiandynasty had become in fact a German dynasty.So far as mere heredity is concerned, Nicholas II.,through the German marriages of all his ancestors,is of German stock to the extent of sixty-three sixty-fourths,and of Russian stock only in the proportionof one sixty-fourth.
Of all the German dynasties seated on the thronesof Europe, the Hohenzollern stand out, not merelyas the most powerful, but also by far the most strikingand the most interesting. The Hohenzollern are asunique in the history of royalty as the Rothschildsare unique in the history of finance. The history ofother dynasties has been largely a history of Courtscandal and intrigue, providing inexhaustible materialto the petty gossip of Court chroniclers. We are allfamiliar with the amorous episodes of Louis XIV.and Louis XV., with the mysteries of the Grand andPetit Trianon and of the Parc aux Cerfs, with Madamede Maintenon and Madame de Montespan, with Madamede Pompadour and Madame du Barry, that beautifulcourtesan who on the scaffold so pathetically askedthe executioner: “Mr. Hangman, I beseech you, dospare me.” We are all familiar through Thackeray’s“History of the Georges” with thechronique scandaleuseof the Hanoverian dynasty. No doubt theHohenzollern also have had theirchronique scandaleuseand have also attracted the prurient curiosityof memoir writers. The Court of Berlin in the days[56]of the polygamist King, Frederick William II., thesuccessor of Old Fritz, was the most dissolute Courtof Europe, as Berlin is to-day the most depraved cityon the Continent. But somehow the scandals of theHohenzollern seem to be irrelevant episodes. Somehowwe do not think of the annals of the augustHouse as a history of scandal. We only think of theHohenzollern as the political necromancers of modernEurope, as the supreme masters of statecraft. Thevery name of the Hohenzollern recalls to our mindsa race of State-builders. Machiavelli selected theHouse of Borgia to illustrate the principles of thestatecraft of the Renaissance. A modern Machiavelliwould have to go to Potsdam to study the philosophyof high politics.
From the beginning the Hohenzollern have beenidentified with the Prussian State. Louis XIV. saidof himself, “L’état c’est moi,” but Louis XIV. wasan exception in modern French history. On thecontrary, every Hohenzollern could have applied tohimself the words of the Bourbon King.
If we take each individual Hohenzollern, we findthe most obvious differences between them. Nodynasty more strikingly illustrates that psychologicaland political peculiarity of royal houses,which may be called the law of opposites, and whichhas almost the regularity of a universal law accordingto which each ruler is the living contrast of hispredecessor. The successor of the Great Elector,Frederick I. (1688-1713), the first King of Prussia,was an extravagant fop who spent a year’s income onthe ceremony of coronation. On the contrary, hissuccessor, “Fat William” (1713-1740), the Sergeant-King,[57]was a miser, who on his coronation only spent2,227 thalers and ninepence, where his father hadsquandered over six millions, a maniac who collectedtall grenadiers as other Kings have collected pictures,who tortured his children, and who wanted to punishwith a death sentence a juvenile escapade of the heirto the throne. Frederick the Great (1740-1786),again, was the antithesis of Frederick William I.,and loved literature and art as intensely as his fatherdetested them. Frederick William II. (1786-1797),the successor of the great realist and woman-hater,was a polygamist and a mystic. Frederick WilliamIII. (1797-1840) was an exemplary husband and awell-meaning, business-like bourgeois. He was succeededby Frederick William IV. (1840-1861), aromanticist and a dreamer who ended in madness.William I. (1861-1888) was an honest, straightforward,methodical, reasonable, self-controlledsoldier. Frederick III. was an idealist, and, likeFrederick the Great, a lover of literature and art.William II. has bewildered the world as a versatileand omniscient dilettante, war-lord and peacemaker,Mohammedan and Christian—always acomedian, yet always in earnest. And we all knowhow the heir to the throne is the reverse of theKaiser, and how this Crown Prince, with the fanciesof a degenerate, has deserved to be called the “ClownPrince.”
It is therefore apparent that if we analyze thecharacteristics of every one of the nine dynasts whohave reigned in Prussia since the Great Elector forthe last two hundred and fifty years, we do not findone single ruler who resembles his predecessor or his[58]successor. Yet all these Hohenzollerns, whethercapable or incapable, whether mad, half-mad, orsane, whether profligate or domesticated, whetherextravagant or miserly, have certain common traits.They have all been inspired with the same dynasticpolicy. When we consider the individual variationsfrom the family type, there can be here no questionof physical heredity, like the lip of the Habsburg orthe tainted blood of the Spanish Bourbons. It isa question of political environment, a question ofdynastic tradition. Indeed, we must carefully studythat Hohenzollern family tradition of politics if wewant to grasp the full significance of the word, if wewish to understand how such a dynastic traditionmay become a formidable power to European history.Maeterlinck in his “Life of the Bee” has an eloquentand profound chapter on the “Spirit of the Hive.”In the domestic and international policy of thePrussian State, in the Hohenzollern dynastic tradition,we discover such a collective spirit, the “Spiritof the Prussian Hive,” the evil spirit of war maniaand megalomania, the treachery, the brutality, thegreed, and, above all, the predatory instinct dignifiedinto the name ofReal Politik. And Europe willonly enjoy permanent peace and security if shesucceeds in destroying that Hohenzollern tradition,that sinister spirit which lives in the wasps’ andhornets’ nest of Berlin, that spirit which has “Potsdamized”Europe, and which has debased the moralcurrency of European politics.[59]
No one would call the political history of Germanyan interesting history. It is only the history of freenations or the free play of spiritual forces that is ofabiding human interest, and the history of Germanyis neither the history of a free people nor the conflictof spiritual forces. That history is so intolerablytedious that even the magic of Treitschke’s geniushas not been able to relieve its dulness, and thatbefore the war no British or French publisher daredventure on a translation of Treitschke’s masterpiece.But if the political history of Germany has allthe tedium and monotony of parochialism, on thecontrary, the personal history of the Hohenzollernis intensely instructive. One would hesitate to callit romantic. Yet there is an element of romance,the romance of business, the interest which attachesto the rise of a family from the humble obscurityof a petty princeling to the power and prestige ofworld rulers, the same kind of interest which belongsto the life-story of Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. Carnegie.What a progress those Hohenzollerns have madefrom the distant days when they left their littleSwabian southern home of Zollern between theNeckar and the Upper Danube, the cradle of theirdynasty!Nomen, omen! Does not the very soundof the wordHohenzollern suggest and inspire highambitions? And does not the very name of thatlittle village of Zollern, which is apparently derivedfromZoll, suggest that all the world was henceforthto pay a Zoll, or toll, to the dynasts of Hohenzollern?[60]
And what a strange succession of incidents! Inthemselves those incidents may seem insignificant.They left little trace in the chronicles of olden times.Yet those petty incidents have proved decisive eventsin the annals of modern humanity. We see thoseevents happening from generation to generationwithout any apparent connection. Yet somehow theyall made for the aggrandizement of the family. Wesee successive Princes acquiring through marriageand inheritance possessions in scattered and remoteoutposts of the Holy Roman Empire. Yet somehowall those outposts became eventually milestoneson the highway to greatness. One ancestor becomesBurgrave of Nuremberg—a considerable promotion!A subsequent Burgrave of Nuremberg lends moneyto a needy Austrian Emperor, and becomes in 1417Elector of Brandenburg—a much more considerablepromotion! Again, another ancestor inherits at theother extremity of Germany the petty dukedom ofCleves, and that dukedom became the nucleus ofPrussian power in the Far West of Germany. Stillanother ancestor of a collateral branch becomesGrand Master of the religious Order of the TeutonicKnights, and this fact induces Master Martin Luther,who was much more of a realist and a time-serverand a trimmer than theologians give him creditfor, to advise the Hohenzollern Grand Master tosecularize his knights, to confiscate the whole Churchproperty of the Order, and to make himself theoverlord of Eastern Prussia.
Thus everything has worked for the aggrandizementof the future Kings of Prussia, everything hasbrought grist to the mill of Sans-Souci.[61]
No dynasts in modern times, not even the Bourbonsnor the Habsburgs, have been more obsessed with thepride of race. A double avenue of gaudy statues inBerlin has been erected in the Siegesallee, or Alley ofVictory, to illustrate the glories of the House. AndCarlyle, in his “History of Frederick the Great,”devotes a whole volume—and a very tedious volume—tothe medieval ancestors of the dynasty. Thepresent Kaiser believes himself to be the linealsuccessor, not only of the Hohenstaufen, but ofthe Cæsars of Ancient Rome. It was in thatspirit that he was graciously pleased recently todedicate a monument to his predecessor, EmperorTrajan!Trajano Romanorum Imperatori, WilhelmusImperator Germanorum! (To Trajan, Emperorof the Romans, William, Emperor of theGermans!)
But all that Hohenstaufen-Hohenzollern genealogyis mythical history. The real history of the Hohenzollernis of recent date, and begins in 1640 with theadvent of the Great Elector (1640-1688). Comparedwith the ancient House of Habsburg or of Bourbon,the Hohenzollern may well be called the “parvenus”of royalty. Until the seventeenth century theElectors of Brandenburg were twice vassals—liegesof the Holy Roman Empire and vassals of the Kingsof Poland; and when in 1701 the first HohenzollernKing promoted himself to royal rank and ascendedthe throne, he made ceaseless and humiliatingattempts to secure recognition. The old Houses[62]refused to accept his title, and would not acknowledgethe upstart royal “brother.”
But the very fact that the Hohenzollern are the“parvenus” of European royalty has spurred themon to more strenuous endeavours and to still higherambitions. Their sole endeavour was to raise theirposition:sich considerable machen, as the GreatElector said in his quaint pidgin German. Theywere not born to the royal dignity. They had tomake it. They were not accepted as Kings. Theyhad to assert themselves and to impose their claims.The good sword of Frederick the Great asserted hisclaims with such results that, except Napoleon, noruler ever since has disputed the right of the Hohenzollernto rank amongst the dynasts of Europe.
Even as the Hohenzollern are an upstart dynasty,so the Prussian State may be called an upstart State.It has not, like France, Great Britain, or Spain, twothousand years of history behind it. Until the endof the Middle Ages Christian civilization was boundedby the Elbe. The Prussian populations were thelast in Europe to be converted to Christianity, andrecent history has proved only too conclusivelythat the conversion never struck deep roots.Until the end of the Middle Ages the religious andmilitary Order of the Teutonic Knights had to wagewar against the Prussian heathen, and the magnificentruin of Marienburg, the stately seat of the TeutonicKnights, still testifies to the achievements of theOrder. Marienburg is the only historic city of[63]Prussia; Berlin is but a mushroom growth of moderndays. Whilst London and Paris go back to thebeginning of European history, Berlin only threehundred years ago was a mean village inhabited byWendish savages.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that Prussiais not a nation, but a State, and that State is anentirely artificial creation. France and Great Britainare the slow and natural growths of many centuries.They have definite geographical boundaries, theirpeople have common traditions, common ideals,common affinities. The Prussian State is made upof a heterogeneous mosaic of provinces, the spoilsof successive invasions. What hold together theartificial fabric of the Prussian State are only thedynasty, the bureaucracy, and the Army. Thebureaucracy and the Army are to Prussia what theCivil Service and the British Army are to the IndianEmpire. Suppress the British Army and the CivilService, and British rule ceases to exist. Suppressthe Hohenzollern dynasty, the Prussian bureaucracy,and the Junker Army, and the Prussian structurecrumbles to pieces.
Nature has been niggardly to Prussia. Everythinghas had to be made with the hands of man.Brandenburg, Pomerania, Western and EasternPrussia are dreary wastes; Berlin is an oasis of brickand stone amidst a Sahara of sand. The provinces ofold Prussia have few industrial resources. The verysoil had to be made by intensive agricultural methods.The very population had to be imported. ModernPrussia is neither the gift of Nature nor the outcomeof history. It is the triumph of human statecraft.[64]It is the achievement of the “will to power.” Whenthat “will to power” relaxes the Prussian Statecollapses.
The modern Holy German Empire is born of theunholy nuptials of the German people with the PrussianState. But the paradox is that the PrussianState, which claims the right to rule the GermanStates, who themselves assert their right to rule overEurope, cannot even pretend to be German. Thecontrast between the German and the Prussian hasoften been pointed out.
The Southern and Western German is still to-day,as he was in the days of Madame de Staël, artisticand poetic, brilliant and imaginative—a lover of songand music. The Prussian remains as he has alwaysbeen, inartistic, dull, and unromantic. Prussia hasnot produced one of the great composers who arethe pride of the German race; and Berlin, with allits wealth and its two million inhabitants, strikes theforeigner as one of the most commonplace capitals ofthe civilized world. The Southern and WesternGerman is gay and genial, courteous and expansive;the Prussian is sullen, reserved, and aggressive. TheSouthern and Western German is sentimental andgenerous; the Prussian is sour and dour, and onlybelieves in hard fact. The Southern and WesternGerman is an idealist; the Prussian is a realist anda materialist, a stern rationalist, who always keeps hiseye on the main chance. The Southern and Western[65]German is independent almost to the verge ofanarchism; he has a strong individuality; his patriotismis municipal and parochial; he is attached tohis little city, to its peculiarities and local customs;the Prussian is imitative, docile, and disciplined;his patriotism is not the sentimental love of thenative city, but the abstract loyalty to the State.The Southern and Western German is proud of hisromantic history, of his ancient culture; the Prussianhas no culture to be proud of.
That contrast of temperament between Prussiansand Germans corresponds to a difference of race. ThePrussians are not really Teutons. They are alienintruders. The Prussians, the Pruzi or Pruteni,are Lithuanians. The population of Brandenburg isSlav. Berlin, Brandenburg, or Brannybor, are Slav-Wendishnames. The ruler of the Grand Duchy ofMecklenburg, a State which is even more Prussianthan Prussia, and which is a strange survival offeudalism, bears until this day the name of “Princeof the Wendes.”
Century after century the Burgraves of Brandenburgand Kings of Prussia had to attract coloniststo their dreary dominions. The recruiting sergeantwent out all over Europe to fill the ranks of thePrussian Army. One-third of Frederick the Great’sArmy was made up of foreigners. Frederick theGreat on his accession found himself at war with thePrince-Bishop of Liége, because that worthy prelatewould not allow his subjects to be impressed by thePrussian press-gang. Prussian colonizing agentsscoured the neighbouring countries for agriculturallabourers, foresters, and artisans. Twenty thousand[66]Bohemians were imported by the Sergeant-King. Inthe eighteenth century by far the most importantelement introduced into Prussia was of Frenchorigin. The majority of the French Huguenots ofthe lower classes were attracted to Prussia. Thepopulation of Berlin, which was only 6,000, wasdoubled by the French exodus. The very languagespoken at Berlin was a savoury mixture of Frenchand German.Ein plus machen meant in the languageof the Grand Elector to have a surplus revenue.To express his ideal of kingship, theElector said:Ich stabilire die souveraineté auf einen rocher vonBronce.Dem Regiment obligat expressed the obligationof military service. At the accession of Frederickthe Great, out of a population of 2,400,000, 600,000were refugees. It is one of the most impressiveinstances of historical retribution that modern Prussiashould thus have been built up with the assistanceof French exiles, and that modern France should havebeen crushed by the descendants of the FrenchProtestants who were expelled by the bigotry ofLouis XIV.
The colonization of Prussia has proceeded until thisday. Before the war immigration into Germany wasexceeding the emigration. Polish labour continuesto migrate to the Eastern provinces. Hence theodious expropriations of Polish land in the districtof Posen. The ablest literary and industrial andpolitical talent from all parts of Germany has beenattracted for generations to the Prussian capital.Prussian jingoes claim for Prussia the credit ofevery administrative improvement, of every politicalachievement of modern Germany. As a matter of[67]fact, the Prussian State has achieved little by itself.Its originality is never to initiate, but skilfully toexploit the creations of others. It is a safe rule toassume that every statesman or leader who has madean original contribution to Prussian history is notof Prussian origin. The greatest philosopher ofPrussia, Kant, was a Scotsman. Her greatest statesman,Stein, was a Westphalian. Of the two greatestPrussian Generals, one, Blücher, was a Mecklenburger;the other, Moltke, was a Dane. The nationalhistorian of Prussia, Treitschke, is a Saxon ofBohemian descent.
That colony of many heterogeneous populationsis above all a military State, aKriegstaat. It wascreated through war and has been organized for war.In the eighteenth century the whole of Prussia wasone vast camp and barracks. The King of Prussiais primarily theKriegsherr, or war-lord. The rulingcaste of Junkers is a caste of warriors. The veryschoolmasters in the eighteenth century were nearly allrecruited from the invalided non-commissioned officers.Historians single out Fat William, the Sergeant-King,as the supreme type of the martinet King.But it is not only Fat William, but all the Kingsof Prussia who have been martinet Kings and recruitingsergeants. Prussia has made war into anexact science. Prussia has created the “nation inarms.”
Geographical conditions and the ambitions of theHohenzollern have combined to make war a permanent[68]necessity. Prussia was a “mark” or frontierland, and the margraves or mark-grafs were the earlsand protectors of the Mark. The frontiers of Prussiawere open on every side. She was surrounded byenemies. George William, the father of the GreatElector, during the Thirty Years’ War tried to maintainneutrality. He soon found out that neutralitydid not pay, and his territory was overrun by hostilebands. Pomerania was occupied and retained by theSwedes. Poles, Russians, and Austrians in turn invadedthe country. After the Battle of Kunersdorff,in 1761, Prussia was at her last gasp, and Frederickthe Great found himself in so desperate a position thathe had resolved on committing suicide. Again, afterJena, Berlin was occupied by the French, and for fiveyears remained under the yoke. Insecurity has beenfor generations the law of Prussian existence. ThePrussian State has known many ups and downs andhas passed through many tragic vicissitudes. Theymanaged to turn geographical and military necessitiesto the advantage of their dynastic ambitions.What was at first commanded by the instinct of self-preservationbecame afterwards a habit, a tradition,and a systematic policy. They discovered that thebest way to maintain an efficient defensive was totransform it into a vigorous offensive. They discoveredthat the best means of living safely was tolive dangerously. They discovered, in the words ofTreitschke, that “the one mortal sin for a State wasto be weak.”
Not only is Prussia a military State, it is also apredatory State. All the great Powers of Europehave been in a sense military States. But to themall war has only been a means to an end, and often ameans to higher and unselfish ends. The Spaniardswere a military nation, but their wars were crusadesagainst the Moor. The Russians have been a militarynation, but their wars were crusades against the Turkor wars for the liberation of the Serbians, the Bulgarians,and the Greeks. The French have been amilitary nation, but they fought for a chivalrousideal, for adventure, for humanity. Even Napoleon’swars of conquest were really wars for the establishmentof democracy. The Corsican was the champion andthe testamentary executor of the French Revolution.
The peculiarity of the Prussian State is that it hasbeen from the beginning a predatory State. TheHohenzollerns have ever waged war mainly forspoliation and booty. Not once have they wagedwar for an ideal or for a principle.
The German Kaiser delights to appear in the garbof the medieval knight. He wears three hundredappropriate uniforms. A German wit has said thathe wears the uniform of an English Admiral when hevisits an aquarium, and that he dons the uniform ofan English Field-Marshal when he eats an Englishplum-pudding. Amongst those three hundred disguisesthere is none which is more popular inGermany than that of the Modern Lohengrin bestridingthe world in glittering armour. The Kaiser[70]lacks the democratic gift of humour, and does notseem to be aware of the incongruity of the Lohengrinmasquerade. A Prussian King cannot honestly playthe part of a knight in quest of the Holy Grail.Chivalry and Prussianism, the crusading spirit andthe predatory spirit, are contradictory terms.
The most exalted Order of the Prussian dynast isthe Order of the Black Eagle. The Hohenzollernscould not have chosen a more fitting emblem thanthat of the sinister bird of prey. For they have beenpre-eminently the men of prey amongst moderndynasts. Every province of their dominions hasbeen stolen from their neighbours. They secularizedand stole the Church property of the TeutonicOrder. They stole Silesia from Austria. They acquiredPosen by murdering a noble nation. Theystole Hanover from its lawful rulers. They stoleSchleswig-Holstein from the Danes. They wrestedAlsace-Lorraine from the French.
Circumstances in modern times seem to havesingularly favoured their designs of conquest. Tooutward appearance they were threatened by powerfulenemies, but those enemies looked far more formidablethan they appeared. On the Far Westernboundary, the feeble ecclesiastical Princes of Cologne,Treves, and Mayence ruled over the smiling fieldsand vineyards of the Rhine provinces. On everyside Germany was broken up into petty principalities.The Holy Roman Empire of Germany, which wasneither Holy nor Roman nor German, and whichhad ceased to be an empire, was only the shadow ofa great name. Austria was perpetually distractedby internal and external dangers. Poland was an[71]unruly republic. The very weakness of their neighbourswas a temptation to the Hohenzollern.
The one redoubtable enemy to the Hohenzollerndynasty was Russia. But after the disastrous defeatof the Seven Years’ War inflicted by Russian arms,Prussia learned to control by deceit and policy aPower which she dared not challenge, and couldnot hope to overcome, on the battlefield. From themiddle of the eighteenth century Prussia concludeda dynastic alliance with the Russian dynasty. TheHohenzollerns liberally provided their Russianbrethren with German Princes and Princesses. ThePrince of Holstein, who became Tsar Peter III., wasthe first German Prince of the Romanov dynasty.The little Cinderella Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, thefuture Catherine the Great, was the first of an uninterruptedline of German Princesses. The Teutonicbarons of the Baltic provinces for one hundred andfifty years were able to control the Russian foreignpolicy. Nesselrode for forty years was the ForeignMinister of the Tsar, although he only spoke Germanand did not know a word of Russian. Nicholas I. andAlexander II., with unswerving loyalty, supportedthe interests of their Prussian brother-in-law andnephew.
On two occasions the Russian Tsars actually savedthe Hohenzollern from complete destruction. In1761, when Russian armies occupied Berlin, anapologetic Tsar begged to be forgiven for daring tovanquish his illustrious cousin. In 1807, at Tilsit,Prussia was only saved from dismemberment throughthe quixotic intervention of Tsar Alexander I. Andthe Russian Tsar proved so powerless against Prussian[72]intrigues that, although Alexander I. had concludeda close alliance with Napoleon, the German-RussianCourt at St. Petersburg boycotted Napoleon’s Ambassador,Savary, and eventually succeeded inbreaking the Franco-Russian coalition.
But the Hohenzollerns did not only wage a predatorywar for conquest and spoliation. Theirmethods have been as predatory as their aims. Warto them was not merely a policy. It was a business,and often a lucrative business. In the Middle Ageswar had been largely a trade. A huge commerce inprisoners was transacted, and an enterprising ItalianCondottiere would often recoup himself through theransom of one single rich prisoner. The Prussianshave continued those medieval methods until thisday.Treitschke lays it down in his “Politik” thatwar must be made to pay, and need not exhaust aPrussian Treasury.
The poor Belgians to-day are learning to their costthe full meaning of those Prussian predatory methods.The Prussian invaders are extorting millions ofmoney, as well as enormous food-supplies, from astarving people. They are dislocating whateverremains of the internal trade. They are breaking upthousands of miles of Belgian railways, and they aresending them to the Polish theatre of war. But,brutally as the poor Belgians have been treated, oneshudders to think of the cruelty and the greed of thePrussian in the new conquered Russian territories,and of the pitiful plight of the Poles and theLithuanians.[73]
Prussia in her fiscal and commercial policy may becalled a typical modern State. The Hohenzollernshave been compelled to utilize all the resources ofcommerce and industry, not because they are liberalor progressive, but merely in order to increase thenational revenue, in order to provide for an ever-swellingmilitary expenditure. On the contrary, inher political constitution Prussia has remained amedieval and feudal State. She is the Paradise ofthe Junker. But Prussian Junkerthum is not merelya squirearchy of independent landowners. Mr.Bernard Shaw, in his “Common Sense about theWar,” in which one ounce of common sense is mixedwith three ounces of nonsense, would make us believethat there is little difference between German Junkerthumand British Junkerthum, and that there is littleto choose between the English Junker, Sir EdwardGrey, and a Pomeranian squire. Mr. Shaw musthave studied Prussian conditions to very littlepurpose when he makes so ludicrous a comparison.To call such a quiet, silent country gentleman, sucha law-abiding Parliamentarian as Sir Edward Grey,to call even him a typical Prussian Junker is atravesty of the facts. A more striking contrast tothe complete Junker of Pomerania than the “CompleteAngler” of the Foreign Office could not wellbe imagined. The glorified Prussian Junker is Bismarck.The typical Junker is Prince Blücher. Aperfect modern type is that fiery Freiherr von Oldenburg,who advised the Kaiser to send a troop of[74]Uhlans, as in the old Cromwellian days, to clear outthe politicians of a disloyal Reichstag.
The Prussian Junkers are the lieges of the war-lord.They are all the more loyal to the throne as they arepoor, and therefore dependent on the King for theirvery subsistence. There are few large estates inPrussia, and they yield but a meagre revenue. Therelations of the Junkers to the Hohenzollerns are therelations of William the Conqueror to his companions-in-arms.The Junkers originally held their broadacres, theirRittergut, by military tenure. Some of theirfeudal privileges have gone, but they continue to bethe leading political power in the State under theKaiser’s Majesty. They are the pillars of the throne.They owe military service. To recall the words of theSergeant-King, they are “dem Regiment obligat.”And they are rewarded for their military services byprivileges innumerable. They are the controllinginfluence in the Landtag, which is a representativeassembly only in name. They occupy the higherposts in the Civil Service and in the DiplomaticService. In each district the Landrat is the supremeauthority, the electioneering agent of the Governmentand the representative of the Prussian King.
And the Junker caste have been as selfish, asrapacious, as their Hohenzollern overlords. Nothingcould be more sordid than their attitude in the recentcampaign for financial reform. They have shiftedthe burden of taxation upon the weaker shouldersof the peasant and artisan. They have compelledvon Bülow to reverse the Liberal Free Trade policyof Caprivi, and to impose heavy corn duties, merelyto increase their own rents.[75]
In a military State like Prussia, which is mainlyorganized for war, where war is the vital function,not only does the King hold his power by the Divineright of the sword, but even in times of peace allpolitical power is concentrated into his hands:“L’état c’est moi!”
In such a State a Parliamentary Government isan absurdity, and, as a matter of fact, there is noParliamentary Government, neither in Prussia norin the Empire. There is no responsible Cabinet.The Chancellor is accountable, not to the majorityof the Reichstag, but to the Kaiser. The Germansimagine that because they have the fiction of universalsuffrage they possess the most democratic Governmentin Europe. And an enthusiastic Germantriumphantly reminded me of the fact at a mass meetingwhich I recently held in San Francisco on behalfof the Allies. I reminded him that Bismarck himselfhas given us in his “Memoirs” the Machiavellicreasons which induced him to invent the fiction ofuniversal suffrage. The man of blood and iron tellsus that he only adopted universal suffrage as atemporary device to convert the German States tothe Prussian policy, and as a means of influencingthe people against the federal dynasties.
The Reichstag is essentially different from aBritish House of Commons. As a political body itis the most contemptible assembly in Europe. Itis a mere debating club, a convenient machine tovote the Government taxes. And even the power of[76]voting has been largely taken from it. It has becomepart of the German constitutional practice thatthe military estimates must be passed without discussion.It is only considerable increases of the armyand navy which have to be submitted to the Reichstag,and those increases are generally voted for a numberof years. In 1887 a characteristic episode happened.Bismarck had decided on formidable additions tothe army, and he wanted those additions voted andguaranteed for seven years. The military “SeptennateLaw” frightened even a docile Reichstag, andthe Catholic party refused to vote it. Bismarck,who for ten years had fought the Pope, and who hadthundered against the interference of a foreignecclesiastical potentate in temporal matters, nowasked the Pope to interfere in favour of the ArmyBill. To the discredit of the Papacy, Leo XIII.fell into the trap. Leo XIII. exerted pressure onthe Catholic party. But they still were recalcitrant.Bismarck and the Pope proved equally persistent.Finally, at the behest of the Iron Chancellor and withthe assistance of the Vicar of Christ, the Reichstagpassed that fatal military law, which was the beginningof the colossal European armaments, which were toincrease the political tension of Europe until breaking-point,and which was to result in the present catastrophe.Thus is Parliamentary Government carriedon in the Empire of the Hohenzollern!
Passive obedience and discipline are the cardinalvirtues inculcated by the Hohenzollern. “Verboten,”“Nicht raisonniren,” are their watchwords.A Hohenzollern brooks no opposition. “Wir bleibendoch der Herr und Koenig und thun was wir wollen,[77]”said the Sergeant-King. And two hundred yearsafter, the Kaiser expresses the same imperial sentiments:“Wer mir nicht gehorcht, den zerschmettereich” (Whoever refuses to obey, I shall smash).Bismarck, who created the German Empire, was dismissedlike a lackey. Baron von Stein, who reformedthe Prussian State, and who stands out as the greateststatesman of his age, was ignominiously dismissed.Ingratitude has always formed part of the Hohenzollerncode of royal ethics.
We are told by the apologists of the Hohenzollernthat the same discipline, the same obedience to duty,are practised by the rulers themselves. “Ich Dien”is the Hohenzollern motto. Of all the servants ofthe Prussian State, there is none who serves it moreloyally, more strenuously, than the King of Prussia.“I am the Commander-in-Chief and the Minister ofFinance of the King of Prussia,” said the Sergeant-Kingof himself. How often have the Prussian Kingsbeen held up as shining examples of devotion toduty! Behold how hard a Hohenzollern King hasto work for the State! In the same way the businessman who rules his staff with a rod of iron might sayto his discontented workmen: “See how strenuouslyI labour for the success of the business!” Theworkmen would probably answer that the ceaselesstoil of the business man is not wholly disinterested,that the millionaire manufacturer is not a philanthropist;and the apologists of the Hohenzollernmight be reminded that a King of Prussia in everygeneration has been wont to work mainly for himself.[78]
Treitschke urges as one of the chief claims of theHohenzollerns that they have been in modernEurope the champions of the Protestant religionand at the same time the apostles of toleration. Isnot the Kaiser the supreme head of his Church andthe Anointed of the Lord? Does not he still preachedifying sermons to his soldiers and sailors? Anddoes he not at the same time extend his Imperialprotection over believers of every creed?
The truth is that the Hohenzollerns have neverbeen the champions of Protestantism, but have astutelyand consistently exploited it for their ownpurposes. They did espouse the Lutheran andCalvinistic faith, but their conversion enabled themto appropriate the vast dominions of the Church,a spoliation which might have presented some difficultiesif they had remained Catholic. We saw that,during the Thirty Years’ War, during the supremecrisis of Protestantism, William George, Elector ofBrandenburg, remained neutral and allowed theNorthern hero, Gustavus Adolphus, and CardinalRichelieu to champion the cause of the Protestantreligion.
Not only did the Hohenzollerns not defend theProtestant religion; they perverted it and debasedit by subjecting it to the Prussian State. Suchsubjection is the negation of Protestantism, as it isthe negation of Christianity. Christianity in apolitical sense has always meant the separation of[79]the spiritual and the temporal powers. It is theessence of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism that it actuallydoes protest. It is of the essence of Nonconformitythat it refuses to conform. Prussian Protestantismhas ceased to protest, and conforms to whatever isdemanded by the State. The Lutheran parson isthe obedient servant of the Hohenzollern. “Cujusregio illius religio”: spiritual allegiance must followtemporal allegiance.
The ultimate outcome of the confusion of spiritualand temporal powers in Prussia has been that Prussiahas become the Atheist State, and it is because thePrussian State is an Atheist State and absolutelyindifferent to the interests of religion that it has cometo practise in its own peculiar way the politicalvirtue of toleration. As the Prussian wars of conquesthad brought together many heterogeneouspopulations professing different religions, tolerationbecame a vital necessity for the State. It is not avirtue of the dynasty, and the Hohenzollerns certainlydeserve no credit for it. The Prussian doctrine oftoleration has always been of a negative and conditionalkind. Prussian Kings have adopted thereligious theory of Gibbon. All religions are equallytrue to the believer. They are equally true tothe unbeliever.They are equally useful to theState.
All religions have proved equally useful and havebeen exploited with equal indifference by the Prussiandynasty. The attitude of Frederick the Great toreligion is characteristic of the Hohenzollern attitude.Frederick the Great was surrounded by a band ofFrench, Swiss, and Scottish Atheists. His main[80]relaxation from the cares of State was to bandycynical and obscene jests on Christianity with theTable Round at the private supper-parties of Potsdam.But his royal hatred and contempt for all positivereligion did not prevent him from cordially invitingthe Jesuits to his dominions because he found themuseful pedagogues to teach and conciliate his newlyconquered Polish subjects. It is one of the paradoxesof history that the same religious order which had beensuppressed by the Pope and expelled by the CatholicKings of France and Spain was protected by theAtheist King of Prussia and the Atheist Empressof Russia. According to the same opportunistHohenzollern tradition, Bismarck in turn fought thePope, imprisoned Bishops and Cardinals, and thenused the influence of the Pope and the hierarchy tofurther his Machiavellian policy. Even so in morerecent times the Kaiser appeared at one and thesame time as a devout pilgrim to the Holy Land, asthe special friend of Abdul Hamid—Abdul theDamned—and as the self-appointed protector ofthree hundred million Mohammedans.
We have analyzed the principles which everdirected the Prussian State. We have described thecharacteristics of the Hohenzollern dynasty whocreated that Prussian State. How is it that theGerman nation should have surrendered their destiniesto a power which is so constitutionally selfish, soinherently evil, which has trampled down all the[81]principles that a modern world holds dear andsacred?
The subjection of Germany to Prussia has been atriumph of Hohenzollern diplomacy and deceit, andhas been the outcome of a tragic misunderstandingon the part of a politically uneducated and inexperiencedpeople. The German people were tired of theirpolitical impotence, of their miserable dynasticquarrels, of their abject subservience to their parasiticprincelings. The German people, broken up in ahundred petty States, had the legitimate and praiseworthyambition of becoming a united people.German unity had been for generations a cherisheddream of German patriots. History had abundantlyproved that the Austrian Empire could not assist inthe realization of that dream. Then came the opportunityof the Prussian tempter. Prussia offered hermighty sword. Prussia alone had the militarypower and a strong political organization. TheGerman States yielded to the temptation. Theytrusted that, in concluding an alliance with Prussia,they would retain their liberties. Indeed, theyhoped that once German unity was realized, Germanywould assimilate and absorb the Prussian State.Alas! it was the Hohenzollern State which was toannex and subject the German Empire. Little didthe Germans know Prussian tenacity. Little didthey know the rapacity of the Black Eagle. Stillless did they know the black magic of the necromancerBismarck.
Treitschke reminds us in his “Politik” of anincident which is characteristic of the relation of theGerman Empire to Prussia. On one occasion even[82]Bismarck, the Prussian Junker, expressed a misgivingthat a particular law would not be acceptable to theFederal States of the Empire. Emperor Williamcontemptibly dismissed the objection. “Why shouldthe Federal States object when they are only theprolongation of Prussia?” Treitschke, the Saxon,accepts the Prussian theory of Emperor William.He tells us proudly that the Federal States have ceasedto be independent States—indeed, that they havelost the essential characteristics of a State, that theyare only called States by courtesy, that there is onlyone State in the German Empire, and that all theother Federal communities only continue their precariousexistence by virtue and with the consent ofthe Hohenzollern dynasty.
It is one of the most appalling misunderstandings ofhistory. Like Faust, the German people have soldtheir soul to Mephistopheles: Bismarck. And theyhave sold it for power. They are now paying theprice. As in the wonderful old ballad of Burger,the Prussian horseman has taken the maiden “Germania”on his saddle. The death’s-head hussar hascarried her away on his wild career through spaceuntil he has brought her to the gates of Hell.
It has thus been the fate of the German nation, asof other European nations, to work and fight for theaggrandizement of the King of Prussia. A sectionof the people, the Social Democrats and the Liberals,have made fitful and impotent efforts to free themselvesfrom the tyranny of the Hohenzollern. Whatthey have not succeeded in doing, Europe is nowdoing for them. In the fulness of time, Europe hasarisen to crush the Hohenzollern, to kill the “Spirit[83]of the Prussian Hive.” The war will result in theenfranchisement of Germany as it will result in theenfranchisement of Poland and Serbia. Did thehistory of the world ever present so tragic a paradox?Twelve million heroes are fighting the GermanGovernment. Millions of the manhood of the civilizedworld are laying down their lives on all the battlefieldsof Europe and all the high seas of the world,mainly in order to make the German people free.
In 1807, after the crushing defeat inflicted byNapoleon on the Prussian armies at Jena, when theMilitary Monarchy crumbled to pieces in one day likea house of cards, Joseph de Maistre, the most profoundand the most prophetic political thinker ofhis age, wrote the following significant lines fromSt. Petersburg. To realize the full significance of thejudgment, one must remember that Count de Maistrewas a fanatic supporter of the old monarchic order.He hated Napoleon with a bitter hatred, but he hatedPrussia more:
“Ever since I have started to reason, I have felta special aversion for Frederick II., whom a frenziedgeneration has been in a hurry to proclaim a greatman, but who was really no more than agreat Prussian.Posterity will consider this Prince as one of thegreatest enemies of the human species that has everlived. His monarchy, which had inherited hisspirit, had become an argument against Providence.To-day that argument has been converted into atangible proof of eternal justice. This famous[84]structure built with blood and mud, with debasedcoin and base libels, has crumbled in the twinkleof an eye.”[12]
Those words were written exactly one hundredand ten years ago, and the world is once moreanxiously looking forward to another Jena whichwill deal a final blow to the Hohenzollern monarchy.When that catastrophe comes, Europe, enlightenedby the awful experiences of the last hundred years,and delivered from the black magic of the politicalnecromancers of Potsdam, will unanimously echothe prophetic judgment pronounced by Joseph deMaistre. For to-day, even more than in 1807,Prussia has become an “argument against Providence.”Even more than in 1807 the Prussia of1917 “is built with blood and mud.” Even morethan in 1807 the chastisement of Prussia is demandedby “eternal justice.” The whole civilized worldwill breathe more freely when the sinister and diabolicalpower will be broken for ever and will oppressand degrade humanity no more.
[12] De Maistre, “Lettres et Opuscules.”
The English reader is now in possession of a completetranslation of Nietzsche, in the admirableedition published by T. N. Foulis, and edited byOscar Levy, of which the eighteenth and concludingvolume has just appeared. To the uninitiated Iwould recommend as an introductory study: (1)Professor Lichtenberger’s volume; (2) Ludovici,“Nietzsche” (1s., Constable), with a suggestive prefaceby Dr. Levy; (3) the very useful summary of Mr.Mügge—an excellent number in an excellent series(Messrs. Jack’s “People’s Books”); (4) Dr. Barry’schapter in the “Heralds of Revolt,” giving theCatholic point of view; (5) Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche,“The Young Nietzsche”; and (6) an essay by thepresent writer, published as far back as 1897, andwhich, therefore, may at least claim the distinctionof having been one of the first to draw attention inGreat Britain to the great German writer. But asearching estimate of Nietzsche in English still remainsto be written. And there is only one man that couldwrite it, and that man is Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton.I confidently prophesy that a study of Nietzsche, if[86]he has the courage to undertake it, will be Mr. Chesterton’sgreatest book. He will find in the Germanheretic a foe worthy of his steel.
Like the history of most great thinkers, like thehistory of Kant and Schopenhauer, the biographyof Nietzsche is totally barren of incident, and can bedisposed of in a few lines. Born in 1844, apparentlyof noble Polish extraction (“Nizky” in Polish meanshumble), the son of a clergyman, and the descendanton both sides of a long line of clergymen, the future“Anti-Christ” spent an exemplary, studious, andstrenuous youth. After serving his time in the army—hewas considered one of the best riders of his regiment—andafter a brilliant University career at Bonnand Leipzig, he was appointed, at twenty-four yearsof age, Professor of Greek in the University of Bale.His academic activity extended over eleven years, andwas only interrupted in 1870 by a few months’ servicein the Ambulance Corps, during the Franco-GermanWar.
His first book, “The Birth of Tragedy,” appearedin 1871. Like most of his books, it was published athis own expense, and, like most of his books, it didnot find a public. The three first parts of his masterpiece,“Thus Spake Zarathustra,” were such adesperate failure that Nietzsche only ventured toprint fifty copies of the fourth and concluding part,and he printed them merely for private circulationamongst his friends, but he only disposed of sevencopies![87]
In 1879 he resigned, owing to ill-health, with apension of £120. After his retirement he spent anomadic life wandering from Nice to Venice, andfrom the Engadine to Sicily, ever in quest of healthand sunshine, racked by neuralgia and insomnia, stillpreaching in the desert, still plunging deeper anddeeper into solitude. And as the world refused tolisten to him, Nietzsche became more and more convincedof the value of his message. His last book,“Ecce Homo,” an autobiography, contains all thepremonitory symptoms of the threatening tragedy.It is mainly composed of such headings as the following:“Why I am so Wise,” “Why I am so Clever,”“Why I write such Excellent Books,” and “Why Iam a Fatalist.”
Alas! fatality was soon to shatter the wise andclever man who wrote those excellent books. In1889 Nietzsche went mad. For eleven years helingered on in private institutions and in the houseof his old mother at Naumburg. He died in 1900,when his name and fame had radiated over the civilizedworld, and when the young generation in Germanywas hailing him as the herald of a new age. England,as usually happens in the case of Continental thinkers,was the last European country to feel his influence;but in recent years that influence has been rapidlygaining ground, even in England, a fact abundantlyproved by the great and startling success of thecomplete edition of his works.[88]
Most writers on Nietzsche—and they are legion—beginwith extolling him as a prophet or abusing himas a lunatic. I submit that before we extol or abuse,our first duty is to understand. And we can no longerevade that duty. We cannot afford any longer toignore or dismiss the most powerful force in Continentalliterature, on the vain pretence that theauthor was mad, as if the greatest French thinker ofthe eighteenth century, Rousseau, and the greatestthinker of the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte,had not fallen victims to the same disease.
And, on the whole, Nietzsche is not difficult tounderstand, although there has arisen a host of commentatorsto obscure his meaning, although Nietzschehimself delights in expressing himself in the form ofcryptic and mystic aphorism, although he continuouslycontradicts himself. But apart from thosedifficulties, his message is strikingly simple and hispersonality is singularly transparent. And his messageand his personality are one. He is a convincingillustration of Fichte’s dictum, that any great systemof philosophy is the outcome, not of the intellect, butof a man’s character. Nietzsche is not a metaphysicianlike Hegel, whom he abhorred. He is nota “logic-grinder,” like Mill, whom he despised. Heis a moralist, like the French, whom he loved. Hisculture and learning were French even more thanGerman. He was steeped in Montaigne, to whom hehas paid a glowing tribute in “Schopenhauer asEducationalist.” He was a careful student of the[89]great French classics of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies. He read and annotated Guyau, with whomhe had many points in common. By a curiouscoincidence, a few years before the advent of Nietzsche,a great French thinker had anticipated everyone of Nietzsche’s doctrines, and had expressed themin one of the most striking books of the Frenchlanguage. And by an even more curious paradox,whilst every European critic devotes himself to-dayto the interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy, theysystematically ignore—as Nietzsche himself ignored—themasterpiece of the Frenchman.
Let us, then, first keep in mind that Nietzsche is nota metaphysician or a logician, but he is pre-eminentlya moralist. His one aim is to revise our moralvalues and to establish new values in their place.For Nietzsche does both. There are two poles to histhought. He is an iconoclast, but he is also a hero-worshipper.He is a herald of revolt, but he is alsoa constructive thinker. Even in his earliest work,“Thoughts out of Season,” whilst he destroys thetwo popular idols of the day, the theologian and thehistorian, he sets up two new heroes, Schopenhauerand Wagner.
We have said that Nietzsche’s philosophy isstrikingly simple. Its whole kernel can be expressedin two words. He is a systematic pagan, and he isan uncompromising aristocrat. As a pagan, he is a[90]consistent enemy of Christianity. As an aristocrat,he is a bitter opponent of democracy. He proclaimsthat Anti-Christ has appeared in his own person.He hails the advent of the Superman.
First, he is a pagan, a pagan of Greece, or, rather,a pagan of the Renascence, and, as a pagan, heconsiders Christianity the real enemy. Christianitydenies life; Nietzsche asserts it. Christianity mainlythinks of the future world; Nietzsche has his feetfirmly planted on Mother Earth. Christianity glorifiesmeekness and humility; Nietzsche glorifies pride andself-assertion. Christianity defends the poor andthe weak; Nietzsche contends that the strong alonehave a right to live. Christianity blesses the peacemakers;Nietzsche extols the warriors. Christianityis the religion of human suffering; Nietzsche is aworshipper of life, and proclaims the joyful science,die fröhliche Wissenschaft, thegaya scienza.
It is impossible within the limits of a short articleto discuss Nietzsche’s view of Christianity. We areconcerned here not with discussion, but with exposition.At an early opportunity we hope to deal atsome length in the columns ofEveryman with Nietzsche’scriticism of Christianity. For the present,let it be sufficient to say that no theologian would beprepared to accept his interpretation of the Christianreligion. The everlasting conflict of spirit againstsense and brutal force, which is the essence ofChristianity, is hardly conducive to passivity. It is,on the contrary, a consistent discipline in modernheroism. There is not much meekness about theJesuits or the warrior Popes. Nor is there muchmelancholy about St. Francis of Assisi or St. Theresa.[91]The only smiling countenance in a hospital is theSister of Mercy. The only active resisters underthe despotism of Henry VIII. were Sir Thomas Moreand a broken octogenarian priest, Cardinal Fisher.
The same fundamental instinct or principle, thesame defiant optimism, the same exultation in thepride of life, which makes Nietzsche into an opponentof Christianity, also makes him into an opponent ofdemocracy. The same belief in force, in the will topower, which makes Nietzsche into a pagan, alsomakes him into an aristocrat. For the politicalexpression of Christianity must needs be democracy.We are democrats because we are Christians, becausewe believe in the essential dignity of man. On thecontrary, the political outcome of paganism mustneeds be despotism and aristocracy. We believe indespotism and aristocracy because we believe in thenatural inequality of man, because we believe in forceand pride and self-assertion, in the power of thestrong to oppress the weak. Nietzsche is againstthe oppressed and for the oppressor; for the Supermanagainst humanity. For in Nietzsche’s view anaristocracy is the ultimate purpose of life.
But Nietzsche is not an aristocrat, like the ordinaryDarwinian. He does not believe in the survival ofthe fittest, like the typical evolutionist. He doesnot believe that a survival of the fittest will comeabout mechanically by the mere play of blind forces.Regression is as natural as progression. No one haspointed this out more convincingly than Huxley in[92]his “Evolution and Ethics.” The progress of therace is not natural, but artificial and accidental andprecarious. Therefore Nietzsche believes in artificialselection. The Superman is not born, he must bebred. Nietzsche is the spiritual father and forerunnerof the Eugenists.
And he is also the spiritual father of the Imperialistsand latter-day Militarists. The gospel of the inequalityof the individual implies the gospel of theinequality of race. The gospel of Nietzsche has notonly been anticipated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain,but by his much more influential German namesake,Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the author whosebooks the Kaiser liberally distributed amongst hisGenerals and advisers. The doctrine of force, thebelief in the German people as the salt of the earth,the self-gratification of the modern Teuton, can betraced directly to the influence of Zarathustra, andit is significant that the latest German exponent ofImperialism, General von Bernhardi, should haveselected an aphorism of Nietzsche as the quintessenceof his political philosophy:
“War and courage have achieved more great thingsthan the love of our neighbour. It is not yoursympathy, but your bravery, which has hithertosaved the shipwrecked of existence.
“‘What is good?’ you ask. ‘To be braced isgood.’”[13]
Quite apart from any elements of truth containedin Nietzsche’s ethics, the first reason for his popularityis, no doubt, the perfection of his form andstyle. Nietzsche is one of the supreme masters oflanguage, in a literature which counts very fewmasters of language, and the beauty of his styleis transparent even in the disguise of a foreigntranslation.
The second reason is that Nietzsche, who imaginedthat he was fighting against the times, was in realitythinking with the times, and he has met with a readyresponse, in the dominant instincts of the present age,in the aggressive materialism, in the race for wealthand power. The Supermen and the Super-races ofto-day only too cordially accept a philosophy whichseems to justify extortion, aggression, and oppressionin the name of a supreme moral principle.
The third and most important reason, and the realsecret of Nietzsche’s influence, is the fine quality ofhis moral personality. However much we may berepelled by the thinker, we are attracted by themagnetism of the man, by his noble courage, by hissplendid integrity, by his love of truth, his hatred ofcant. Even though he has himself misunderstoodChristianity, he has done a great deal to bring usback to the fundamental ideals of the Christianreligion. He has done a great deal to undermine thatsuperficial and “rose-water” view of Christianitycurrent in official and academic Protestant circles.He has done a great deal to convince us that whatever[94]may be the essence of Christianity, it has nothing incommon with that silly and pedantic game which,for half a century, has made Eternal Religion dependon the conclusions of “Higher Criticism,” and whichhas made theology and philosophy the handmaidensof archæology and philology.
Nietzsche is a formidable foe of Christianity, buthe is a magnanimous foe, who certainly brings usnearer to a comprehension of the inmost meaningof the very doctrines he attacks. And it is quitepossible that the Christian champion of the futuremay incorporate Nietzsche in his apologetics, evenas St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotle, evenas Pascal incorporated Montaigne. It was in thefitness of things that Nietzsche should be the descendantof a long line of Protestant ministers. For,indeed, he is the last of the true German Protestants,ever ready to protest and to defy and to challenge.He is the noblest of modern German heretics.
There is a continuity and heredity in the transmissionof ideas as there is in the transmission of life.Each great thinker has a spiritual posterity, whichfor centuries perpetuates his doctrine and his moralpersonality. And there is no keener intellectualenjoyment than to trace back to their original progenitorsone of those mighty and original systemswhich are the milestones in the history of humanthought.[95]
It is with such a spiritual transmission that I amconcerned in the present paper. I would like toestablish the intimate connection which exists betweenMontaigne and Nietzsche, between the greatestof French moralists and the greatest of Germans. Avast literature has grown up in recent years round thepersonality and works of Nietzsche, which wouldalready fill a moderately sized library. It is thereforestrange that no critic should have emphasizedand explained the close filiation between him andMontaigne. It is all the more strange becauseNietzsche himself has acknowledged his debt to the“Essays” with a frankness which leaves no room todoubt.
To anyone who knows how careful Nietzsche wasto safeguard his originality, such an acknowledgmentis in itself sufficient proof of the immense power whichMontaigne wielded over Nietzsche at a decisive andcritical period of his intellectual development. Butonly a systematic comparison could show that wehave to do here with something more than a mentalstimulus and a quickening of ideas, that Montaigne’s“Essays” have provided the foundations of Nietzsche’sphilosophy, and that the Frenchman mayrightly be called, and in a very definite sense, the“spiritual father” of the German.
At first sight this statement must appear paradoxical,and a first reading of the two writers revealstheir differences rather than their resemblances. Theone strikes us as essentially the sane; the other, even[96]in his first books, reveals that lack of mental balancewhich was to terminate in insanity. The one is agenial sceptic; the other is a fanatic dogmatist. ToMontaigne life is a comedy; to his disciple life is atragedy. The one philosophizes with a smile; theother, to use his own expression, philosophizes with ahammer. The one is a Conservative; the other is aherald of revolt. The one is constitutionally moderateand temperate; the other is nearly always extremeand violent in his judgment. The one is a practicalman of the world; the other is a poet and a dreamerand a mystic. The one is quaintly pedantic, and hispage is often a mosaic of quotations; the other issupremely original. The one is profuse in his professionsof loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church;the other calls himself Anti-Christ.
There can be no doubt that if the characteristicswhich we have just referred to belonged essentiallyto Montaigne, there would be little affinity betweenthe thought of Nietzsche and that of Montaigne.And it would be impossible to account for the magneticattraction which drew Nietzsche to the study of the“Essays,” and for the enthusiasm with which theyinspired him. But I am convinced that those characteristicsare not the essential characteristics. I amconvinced that there is another Montaigne who hasnothing in common with the Montaigne of conventionand tradition. I am convinced that the scepticism,the Conservatism, the irony, the moderation, theaffectation of humility, frivolity, pedantry, and[97]innocent candour, are only a mask and disguise whichMontaigne has put on to conceal his identity, thatthey are only so many tricks and dodges to lead thetemporal and spiritual powers off the track, and toreassure them as to his orthodoxy. I am convincedthat beneath and beyond the Montaigne of conventionand tradition there is another much bigger andmuch deeper Montaigne, whose identity would havestaggered his contemporaries, and would have landedhim in prison. And it is this unconventional and realMontaigne who is the spiritual father of Nietzsche.
It is obviously impossible, within the limits of abrief paper, to prove this far-reaching statement andto establish the existence of an esoteric and profoundmeaning in the “Essays.” I shall only refer to apassage which is ignored by most commentators,which has been added in the posthumous edition, inwhich Montaigne himself admits such a double andesoteric meaning, and which seems to me to give thekey to the interpretation of the “Essays”:
“I know very well that when I hear anyone dwellupon the language of my essays, I had rather a greatdeal he would say nothing: ’tis not so much to elevatethe style as to depress the sense, and so much themore offensively as they do it obliquely; and yet I ammuch deceived if many other writers deliver moreworth noting as to the matter, and, how well or illsoever, if any other writer has sown things much morematerial, or at all events more downright, upon hispaper than myself. To bring the more in, I onlymuster up the heads; should I annex the sequel Ishould trebly multiply the volume. And how manystories have I scattered up and down in this book,[98]that I only touch upon, which, should anyone morecuriously search into, they would find matter enoughto produce infinite essays. Neither those storiesnor my quotations always serve simply for example,authority, or ornament; I do not only regard themfor the use I make of them; they carry sometimes,besides what I apply them to, the seed of a more richand a bolder matter, and sometimes, collaterally, amore delicate sound, both to myself, who will say nomore about it in this place, and to others who shallbe of my humour.”
The real and esoteric Montaigne is, like Nietzsche,a herald of revolt, one of the most revolutionarythinkers of all times. And the Gascon philosopherwho philosophizes with a smile is far more dangerousthan the Teuton who philosophizes with a hammer.The corrosive acid of his irony is more destructivethan the violence of the other. Like Nietzsche,Montaigne transvalues all our moral values. Nothingis absolute; everything is relative. There is no lawin morals.
“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to bederived from nature, proceed from custom; everyonehaving an inward veneration for the opinions andmanners approved and received amongst his ownpeople, cannot, without very great reluctance, departfrom them, nor apply himself to them withoutapplause.”
There is no absolute law in politics. And oneform of government is as good as another.[99]
“Such people as have been bred up to liberty, andsubject to no other dominion but the authority oftheir own will, look upon all other forms of governmentas monstrous and contrary to nature. Thosewho are inured to monarchy do the same; and whatopportunity soever fortune presents them with tochange, even then, when with the greatest difficultiesthey have disengaged themselves from one master,that was troublesome and grievous to them, theypresently run, with the same difficulties, to createanother; being unable to take into hatred subjectionitself.”
There is no law in religion. There is no justificationin patriotism. The choice of religion is not amatter of conscience or of reason, but of custom andclimate. We are Christians by the same title as weare Perigordins or Germans.
If to destroy all human principles and illusions is tobe a sceptic, Montaigne is the greatest sceptic thatever existed. But Montaigne’s scepticism is only ameans to an end. On the ruin of all philosophiesand religions Montaigne, like Nietzsche, has built upa dogmatism of his own. The foundation of thatdogmatism in both is an unbounded faith in life andin nature. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne is an optimist.At the very outset of the “Essays” he proclaimsthe joy of life. He preaches thegaya scienza, thefröhliche Wissenschaft. All our sufferings are dueto our departing from the teachings of Nature. Thechapter on cannibalism, from which Shakespeare has[100]borrowed a famous passage in “The Tempest,” andwhich has probably suggested the character ofCaliban, must be taken in literal sense. The savagewho lives in primitive simplicity comes nearer toMontaigne’s ideal of perfection than the philosopherand the saint.
And this brings us to the fundamental analogybetween Nietzsche and Montaigne. Like the German,the Frenchman is a pure pagan. Here, again, wemust not be misled by the innumerable professionsof faith, generally added in later editions and notincluded in the edition of 1580. Montaigne is uncompromisinglyhostile to Christianity. His Catholicismmust be understood as the Catholicism of AugusteComte, defined by Huxley—namely, Catholicismminus Christianity. He glorifies suicide. He abhorsthe self-suppression of asceticism; he derides chastity,humility, mortification—every virtue which we areaccustomed to associate with the Christian faith.He glorifies self-assertion and the pride of life. Notonce does he express even the most remote sympathyfor the heroes of the Christian Church, for the saintsand martyrs. On the other hand, again and againhe indulges in lyrical raptures for the achievementsof the great men of Greece and Rome. He is anintellectual aristocrat. His ideal policy is the policyof the Spartans—“almost miraculous in its perfection.”His ideal man is the pagan hero—thesuperman of antiquity—Alcibiades, Epaminondas,Alexander, Julius Cæsar.[101]
There is a most baneful delusion which has misledthe Allies from the beginning of the war, and whichis still being acted on after three years of a desperatestruggle—namely, that we are mainly fighting asinister political dynasty and a formidable politicalmachine constructed with all the diabolical ingenuityand armed with all the resources of thedestructive genius of man. If, indeed, we had onlybeen confronted by the Kaiser and his paladins, oronly threatened by his military machine, the warwould long ago have been ended—if not by the Allies,then by the German people themselves. Millions ofpeople, however loyal, do not allow themselves to beslaughtered for a dynast, even though that dynastclaims to be a Superman, even though he be calledPrince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen or Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt,even though he be called PrinceHenry XXI. of Reuss of the younger branch or PrinceHenry LXXXVIII. of Reuss of the older branch.Whole nations do not indefinitely submit to beingthe slaves of a machine, however diabolical and howeverperfect. The truth is that behind the Germanprinces and princelings and Junkers there is theresolve of a united people. Behind the Prussianmachine there is the driving power of tremendousspiritual and moral forces, of an inflexible purpose, ofa compelling idealism, of a mystical creed accepted[102]with more than Mohammedan fanaticism. It is thatnational purpose, it is those spiritual forces, whichexplain the unconquerable pride of the Germanpeople, as evil and as lofty as the pride of Satan in“Paradise Lost.” It is these which explain theirdevotion and self-sacrifice, it is these which explainthe Teutonic legions marching to their doom singingtheir hymns of love as well as their hymns of hatred.It is these which explain the two million volunteerswhich in August, 1914, went to swell the hugeGerman conscript armies. It is the obsession ofthat mystical German creed which explains theepic achievements of the German offensive and theeven more astounding achievements of the Germandefensive. We may continue to denounce thecrimes of Germany and the atrocities of the Germansoldiery—and I have personally denounced themuntil my readers must have got sick of my denunciations.But there is nothing particularly mysteriousin crimes and atrocities, and crimes and atrocitiesalone do not help to explain the German soul.Crimes and atrocities do not make us understandhow even to-day the German hosts are still able tochallenge a whole world in arms.
Let us, then, take in the vital fact that after threeyears those German spiritual forces, those pervertedGerman ideals, remain the most formidable obstaclein our path. We may continue to destroy theGerman armies by the slow process of attrition, andwe may continue to sacrifice the flower of our youthuntil the process is completed. We may trust to oursuperiority in money-power and in man-power, butunless we also break the moral power of German[103]ideals, unless we exorcise the spell which possessesthe German mind, unless we triumph in the spiritualcontest as well as in the battle of tanks and howitzers,unless we overthrow the idols which successive generationsof great teachers and preachers have imposedon a susceptible, receptive, and docile people, therewill be no early settlement, nor, however long belated,can there ever be a lasting peace.
The foregoing remarks may justify the followingattempt to interpret and to make intelligible, evento the most inattentive reader, the creed of one ofthe most powerful of those teachers and preacherswho have taken such mysterious and uncanny possessionof the soul of the German nation. Before1914 none except a few initiated had ever heard ofTreitschke. Since 1914 he has become a householdname and a name of evil import. But to the immensemajority of readers that name, howeverfamiliar and ominous, remains an empty name.Nomen flatus vocis. And even those to whom thename conveys something more definite do not troubleabout its meaning. With that strange disbelief inthe power of ideas which is one of our lamentableweaknesses, and which even the war has not beenable to cure, even yet we have not brought ourselvesto take seriously those terrible theories which haveburnt themselves into the Teutonic imagination.And so indifferent have we remained to doctrinesso far-reaching and so deadly that the recent publicationof an excellent English translation of Treitschke’s“German History,” one of the masterpieces of historicalliterature, has had to be suspended for the incrediblereason that there was no British public to read it.[104]
On approaching the study of Treitschke’s works,we are at once impressed by the inexorable logic ofhis political and moral creed. There is, perhaps, noother instance of a system so splendidly consistentin its principles. We are told that the great Frenchnaturalist, Cuvier, was able to reconstruct the wholeanatomy of an animal merely through examiningthe structure of a tooth or the fragment of a bone.Applying to the German historian the method whichCuvier applied to the antediluvian mastodon, wecan reduce the whole complex political philosophy ofTreitschke from a few fundamental principles whichhe follows with a single mind, and which the PrussianState has applied with an equally relentless consistencyboth in its internal and in its foreign policy.
It is this magnificent consistency, this confidentdogmatism, which gives us the secret of the enormousinfluence of Treitschke on his countrymen, as it explainsthe hypnotism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on aprevious generation. I do not think it would beeasy to overestimate the extent of that influence.It is true that in one sense Treitschke’s politicalphilosophy only expresses the Prussian policy, andthat he did not create it. But when a political idealis expounded with such clarity and such force, whenit is propagated with such enthusiasm, when it takessuch exclusive hold of the mind, it becomes a hundredtimes more efficient and more dangerous; it acquiresthe compelling force and inspires the fanaticism ofreligion. Those readers who will follow Treitschke’sclose reasoning to the end will probably agree withme that the political creed of which he has been theapostle and prophet is substantially the same creed[105]which has plunged Europe into the present worldwar, and that, more than any one thinker, muchmore certainly than Nietzsche, Treitschke must beheld responsible for the catastrophe.
I have confined myself to expounding the doctrinesof Treitschke. I have not attempted to refute them.It is not my object to denounce: there is always asufficient number of publicists ever ready to undertakethe task of denunciation. I am only trying to understand.Nor have I dwelt on any side-issues. I haverestricted myself to those simple and fundamentalaxioms which have directed the policy of Prussia.Almost invariably in human history it is only thesimple, sweeping dogmas which obtain universalacceptance.
There exist in the realm of fiction certain literarytypes which are an equal joy to the creative artistand to the student of human nature. There arecertain malignant diseases which are an inspiration tothe pathologist. And there are criminal cases whichare a revelation to the lawyer: test cases which leadup to new discoveries and illustrate fundamentalprinciples. What those classical types of Balzac orDostoievski are to the critic, what those diseases andcriminal cases are to the surgeon and the lawyer, thewritings of Treitschke are to the student of historyand politics; they throw a new and vivid light on thedark and hidden depths of the Prussian mind. Theyreveal like no other German writings the meaning of[106]German policy, the spirit which inspires it. Theyexplain what without them would have remained unexplained.He is much more than the historian ofthe Prussian State, he is the champion of its ideals.Much better than Bismarck, or the Kaiser, or thanthe “Clown Prince,” he makes clear to us the aimsand the aspirations of the Hohenzollern monarchyand of the German nation.
In the history of literature and thought it is givento but very few writers thus to become the spokesmenof a whole people. To achieve such importance awriter must possess many qualifications. He mustpossess a strong and dominating character. Hemust be a great literary artist. He must be a clear,a bold, and an independent thinker. The followingpages will show in how eminent a degree Treitschkepossessed all those qualities and how unreservedlythey were placed at the service of the Prussian cause.
The first quality which challenges attention is thecommanding strength of his personality. He combinesthe most contradictory gifts: the temperamentof the artist, the imagination of the poet, the inspiringfaith of the idealist, the practical sense of therealist, and the enthusiasm of the apostle. He alwaysimpresses you with that magnetic sense of power intowhich Carlyle impresses his readers. Like Carlyle,he is a firm believer in the heroic, and he has himselfthe temper of a hero. Three of his volumes of essaysbear the significant title, “Deutsche Kämpfe”(“German Battles”). All through his career Treitschke[107]has been fighting his patriotic battles. Obsessedby his ideals, he always has the courage of hisconvictions, and is always ready to suffer for them.In his early youth he had a painful quarrel with hisfather, a Saxon General and a loyal servant of theSaxon dynasty, because the son would not refrainfrom his attacks on Saxon “particularism” andwould not abstain from championing the Prussiancause. Treitschke never evades a difficulty. He isnever swayed by outside influences. He neverdreads contradiction. When facts do not tally withhis favourite theories, he brushes them away. Andhe never accepts any compromise. He is all madeof one piece. He has the hardness of granite. Hehas never been afraid of unpopularity. He hasalways been a loyal friend and an equally staunchhater.
“Le style est l’homme.” Never was Buffon’sdictum more strikingly verified, and never did anyliterary style reveal so completely the personality ofthe man. Treitschke’s style is imperious and aggressive.It has the ring of the General who gives theword of command. His sentences are not involved,as German sentences generally are. They are pregnantand concise. Treitschke often reminds one ofa writer whom of all others he most cordially detests.Like Heine, Treitschke is incisive, epigrammatic.His phrase has always muscle and nerve: it haswarmth and fervour. Treitschke has not the gift ofhumour. A German seldom possesses that redeeming[108]gift. But he wields the weapon of trenchantirony with terrible force, and he adds the poet’s powerof vision and the true historian’s sense of realityand sense of individuality. He has Macaulay’s giftof orderly narrative. He is equally masterly in describinga battle scene, a meeting of diplomatists,a revolutionary movement. His picture of theCongress of Vienna is unsurpassed in historicalliterature. Like Saint-Simon, he can sum up acharacter in a few lines. German historians areseldom skilful portrait-painters. Treitschke formsan exception. His portraits of Talleyrand, of Metternich,of Tsar Alexander I., of Leopold I., King of theBelgians, are masterpieces of the literary craft.
But all those artistic gifts would not have givenhim his commanding influence in the world of practicalpolitics if he had not added the gifts of clear thinkingand luminous exposition, which are so very rare inGermany. Treitschke is essentially an honest andsystematic thinker. As Professor of History in theUniversity of Berlin, he was accustomed to makeintricate and abstract subjects interesting and intelligibleto vast audiences of students. We are neverleft in any doubt as to his inner meaning. He alwaysgoes straight to the point. There are no equivocationsor mental reservations. He has the brevitybut none of the ambiguity of the lawgiver. Thereare no gaps in his reasoning. He moves from onepoint to another in orderly sequence. Our intellectual[109]and artistic joy in following the severe and simpleoutline of his political system is only marred by thethought of the appalling practical consequences ofthose doctrines.
And not only is he a clear thinker. He is also anoriginal and independent thinker. He has not theprofessional taint of the German pedant. He hasthe German professor’s minute knowledge of concretefacts, and his doctrinaire love of abstract principles,but he is not a mere scholar and teacher. He alwaysremains the man of the world, and he brings to theconsideration of historical problems the practicalexperience which he gained as a journalist and as amember of the Reichstag. He does not apply anyconventional standards to his judgments of menand events. He looks at everything from his ownangle. There is a delightful freshness about everythinghe writes. He believes that the first duty ofan historian is to be partial. He always follows abias, but it is his own bias. In his German historyhe has not been content with digging up thousandsof new facts from the recesses of German records; hegives his own interpretation to the facts. He hasno respect for established fame, for existing theories.He delights in shocking his readers. In his“Götzendämmerung,” or “Twilight of the Gods,”Nietzsche has shown us how to “philosophize witha hammer.” Treitschke has written history with ahammer, and all his writings are strewn with thefragments of broken idols and shattered reputations.[110]
All Treitschke’s activities have centred round onesubject: the history and policy of the Prussian State.All his loyalties are given to one cause, the supremacyof the German Empire led by the Prussian State. Hehas been a voluminous writer, and he has written onthe most varied subjects. But all those subjects haveonly been taken up with the one object of elucidatingPrussian problems and directing Prussian policy.His studies on Federalism, on the United Netherlands—byfar the most suggestive survey of Dutch historywhich has so far been attempted—are intended tosolve the problem of the relation of Prussia to theFederal States of the German Empire. His studyon Cavour and Italian unity was undertaken as anintroduction to the study of German unity. Hisadmirable monograph on that strange and uniquemilitary theocracy of the Teutonic order was anessay on the early history of Prussia. His volumeon Bonapartism was a study of the chief politicalopponent of Prussian supremacy. Briefly, all hisvolumes of essays have been preparatory to his life-work,the history of Germany, and the history ofGermany itself is always kept subordinate to thehistory of the Prussian State.
It is much to be regretted that the British publicshould have been first introduced to Treitschke’s“History of Germany.” The “History of Germany[111]”is, no doubt, the most important and the most monumental,but it is by no means the most interestingnor the most significant of Treitschke’s writings.German history could never be as arresting to aContinental student as British or French history.It is not mixed up with universal events. It is tooparochial. It does not evoke human sympathy.With all the magic of Treitschke’s art, we feel thatwe are following, not the great highway, but one ofthe by-ways of history. We cannot get absorbed inthe petty quarrels of the princelings of the GermanFederation. Of the five volumes of Treitschke’s“German History,” the only part which is of generalinterest is the first volume, dealing with the rise ofPrussia, the reign of Frederick the Great and hissuccessors, the Napoleonic wars, and the Congress ofVienna.
As often happens, it is mainly through his minorwritings that Treitschke will live—through his“Cavour,” his “United Netherlands,” his “Bonapartism,”and his Biographical Essays. But tothe philosophical student by far the most importantof Treitschke’s writings are his two volumes on theScience of Politics, which are, without exception, themost fascinating and the most suggestive politicaltreatise published in this generation. Politicaltreatises are proverbially dull and out of touchwith reality. Treitschke’s treatise is a solitary exception.To him politics are not, like mathematics,an abstract or a deductive science. We cannot buildan ideal political structure in the air. The politicalthinker must be more modest in his ambitions. Hecannot adduce first principles. All politics must be[112]Realpolitik. All politics must be based on concretehistorical facts—i.e., circumscribed in time andspace. Indeed, strictly considered, political philosophyis only applied history. That is why politicaltreatises are so disappointing. The philosopher iscontent to generalize, and does not know the facts.On the other hand, the historian who knows the factshas not the capacity of generalization. Politics mustbe mainly empirical. The political thinker does notreason forward from the past to the present, butbackwards from the present to the past. He studiesthe present results of the mature experience of manyages, and then explains the distant past in the lightof the present.
Not only has Prussian history been the centre ofall Treitschke’s activities; it also supplies him withthe sole standard of all political values, the sole testof the truth of all political theories. With superblogic he deduces all his political system from thevicissitudes of the Brandenburg State. His sympathiesand antipathies, his affinities and repulsions,are Prussian. Prussia and the German Empire havemonopolized all human virtues. His only enemiesare the enemies of the Prussian State (see paragraphsVIII. andIX. of this Essay).
Prussia is a national State, exclusive, self-sufficient,self-contained. Therefore, the national State is thesupreme and final political reality (see paragraphXI.).
All the theories which challenge or threaten this[113]conception of the national State are dismissed byTreitschke as damnable heresies: the heresy of individualism(see paragraphXII.), the heresy ofinternationalism (see paragraphXIII.), and theheresy of imperialism (paragraphXIV.).
The one aim of the Prussian State has been theextension of Prussian power. Therefore the will topower must be the fundamental dogma of the State(paragraphXV.).
Prussia has always subordinated political ethics tonational aggrandizement; therefore Treitschke holdswith Machiavelli that in politics the end justifiesthe means (paragraphXVI.).
Prussia has only expanded through war. War hasbeen the national industry of the Prussian people.Therefore war is considered by Treitschke as thevital principle of national life (paragraphXVII.).
Prussia has been the family estate of the Hohenzollerndynasty; therefore the monarchy must beconsidered as the ideal form of government (paragraphXVIII.).
The Prussian military aristocracy of Junkers havebeen the mainstay of the Prussian State; thereforean aristocratic government is a corollary of themonarchic form of government, and the Frenchdemocratic theory of government is the arch-heresy(paragraphsXIX. andXX.).
Prussia has been the leading Protestant State;therefore Roman Catholicism must be held to be inconsistentwith the prosperity of any modern polity(paragraphXXI.).
Prussia, from a small straggling territory, hasgrown to be one of the leading Powers of Europe by[114]the gradual absorption of all the surrounding smallStates; therefore only great Powers have a right toexist (paragraphXXII.); therefore small States area monstrosity (paragraphXXIII.).
There is no counterpart in modern history to thedevelopment of the Prussian State, no politicalstructure so entirely self-contained and self-sufficient,which has so continuously pursued its own selfishends. For an exact analogy it is necessary to revertto ancient history; therefore Treitschke’s sympathiesgo to the ancient State much more than to the modernState. In his religion he is a devout Lutheran. Butin his political conceptions he is entirely pagan. Tohim the politics of Aristotle remain the fountain ofall political wisdom. The modern man in orderto understand the majesty of the State must free himselfof a whole mass of acquired notions. In quietand peaceful times the average man may pursue hisprivate avocations and hardly give a thought to theState. It was different in antiquity. The ancientcity State was everything, and was felt to be everything,so that the citizen could not conceive himselfas apart from the State. That is why they had a muchstronger and healthier political sense, an instinctivecomprehension for, and a passionate devotion to, theState. The moderns have ceased to live and movein the State. They are divided and distracted bytheir social and economic interests. Only the modernPrussian feels for Prussia as the Roman and theSpartan felt for their native countries. To the[115]Prussian alone, as to the Roman and the Spartan,the devotion to the State is glorified into a religion,the religion of patriotism.
Even as his sympathies, so are Treitschke’s antipathiesdetermined by his Prussian preconceptions.Whatever is alien to Prussian ideals is odious toTreitschke. Whoever has opposed the growth ofthe Prussian State or threatened its future becomesa personal enemy. And, as every State has hadto oppose the predatory policy of Prussia, and isthreatened by its ambitions, as, to use Treitschke’sown words, “Prussia was the best hated of all theGerman States from the first days of her independenthistory,” the antipathies of the Prussian historianare almost universal. And what a fierce hater he is;what unlimited power of vituperation; what intensityof bitter feeling! He hates Talleyrand, Lord Palmerston,King Leopold of Belgium, with a personalanimosity. He hates Britain and France. He hatesAustria and the small German Principalities. Hehates Belgium and Holland; and, above all, heloathes and despises the Jews.
No nation inspires Treitschke with a more instinctiverepulsion than the Jews. He may be calledthe father of scientific and pedantic anti-Semitism.In other nations anti-Semitism was only an instinctiveand irrational popular feeling. In Treitschke anti-Semitism[116]becomes a systematic doctrine. It becomespart of a political creed. Treitschke hates the Jewsbecause they are unwarlike, because they are absorbedin material interests, because they are Atheists.He abhors the Gospel according to Saint Marx. Hedenounces the cynicism of Heine. He dreads theinfluence of the Jewish Press. But, above all, hehates the Jews because they are denationalized,because they have no stake in the prosperity and greatnessof the national State. The Jews are wandererswithout a settled existence, without allegiance andloyalty except to their own race. The dual politicallife which the Jews are leading as members of theJewish nation and as parasites of other nationalStates to which they have temporarily migrated is apermanent menace to a healthy national German life.Everywhere the Jews are revolutionists, anarchists,Atheists. All the leaders of the German SocialDemocracy—Lassalle, Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Bernstein—areHebrews. It is the imperative duty ofall Prussian patriots to guard the people against theJewish danger, against Jewish journalism, Jewishfinance, Jewish materialism, Jewish socialism, andJewish internationalism.
Let us revert to the starting-point of Treitschke’spolitics, which is the theory of the national State.Only in the national State can the individual realizethe higher moral and political life. The State is notpart of a larger whole. It is in itself a self-containedwhole. It is not a means to an end; it is an end in[117]itself. It is not a relative conception; it is an absolute.The French people may fight for humanity.A St. Louis may be inspired with the crusading spirit.Treitschke has no sympathy for such quixotism. Thenational State must be selfish. To be unselfish is themortal sin of politics. Humanity, sentimentalism,have no place in politics. Frederick William IV.,the one sentimental King in the whole history of theHohenzollern Dynasty, once rendered an unselfishservice to his neighbours. A Prussian army savedthe Saxon monarchy from revolution and then withdrew.Treitschke has no words strong enough tocondemn this solitary instance of a disinterestedPrussian policy.
The national State is alone invested with theattributes of sovereignty. There is nothing above it.National rights must be final. The national Statemay for the time being limit its absolute sovereigntyby international agreements, but any such agreementsare only conditional and temporary—rebus sicstantibus. No national State can make internationalagreements which are binding for the future. Thetime must always come when the scrap of paper hasto be torn asunder. It is true that the national Stateis indirectly playing its part in the moral educationof humanity, but it will best serve humanity by onlythinking of itself.
There are many heresies which threaten the orthodoxreligion of the national State. The first andthe most dangerous is the heresy of individualism.[118]A school of modern theorists, William von Humboldtand John Stuart Mill, have asserted the rights ofthe individual apart from and above the rights ofthe State. They reserve for the individual a spherewhere the State may not encroach. According toMill, the political life is only a part and the minorpart of his social activities. His higher activitiesare spent in the service of the Church, in the serviceof Art and Science.
Treitschke has fought this heresy of individualismin all his writings. The interest of the individualcannot be opposed to the interest of the State. Theindividual can only realize himself, he can onlyrealize the higher life, in and through the State. Itis the State which sets free the spiritual forces of theindividual by securing for him security, prosperity,and economic independence.
The second deadly heresy which threatens thedogma of the national State is the heresy of internationalism.It takes the form either of the blackinternationalism of the Catholic Church or the redinternationalism of Social Democracy. Treitschkehas fought Roman Catholicism and its champions,the Jesuits, with relentless hate. Through all hiswritings there sounds the watchword of Voltaire, thespiritual adviser of Frederick the Great, “Écrasezl’infâme,” and the battle-cry of Gambetta, “Leclericalisme, voilà l’ennemi.” Nor is he less bitteragainst the Socialists. Bismarck and the Kaiseropposed the encroachments of the Social Democracy[119]in a succession of anti-Socialist repressive measures.Treitschke may have disapproved of some of theSozialisten Gesetze because they defeated their purpose.But he shares the Kaiser’s hatred against those irreconcilableenemies of Prussian greatness. The SocialDemocratic theories of the Jews—Lassalle, Marx, andBernstein—are one of the most deadly poisons thatimperil the constitution of the German body politic.
Events have shown how little even Treitschkerealized the strength of the Prussian State and thefanaticism of German nationalism. We know howlittle his dread of the black International of Catholicismand the red International of Socialism has beenjustified by the servile attitude of all the Oppositionparties, and how, when the crisis came, both Catholicsand Socialists proved as Prussian as the Junkers ofPomerania.
If it be true that the citizen can only realize himselfthrough the national State, if the whole courseof human history is essentially a conflict of nationalStates, and if the rich variety of civilization is madeup of the rivalry of those national States, it logicallyfollows that the expansion of any national State intoa world empire must necessarily be baneful. TheState must, no doubt, expand, but there is a limitto that expansion. The State must not incorporateany alien races which it cannot assimilate. Whenthe State is unable to absorb heterogeneous elementsand grows into a world empire, it becomes a dangerboth to itself and to humanity.[120]
Civilization has been threatened in the past bysuch monstrous conglomerates of heterogeneousnations. It has been threatened by the Spanishtyranny of Charles V. and the French tyranny ofLouis XIV. and Napoleon. It is still threatenedto-day by a similar danger. Two national States,Great Britain and Russia, have again grown intoworld empires. If their ambitions were to succeed,if the greater part of the civilized world were tobecome either Anglo-Saxon or Russian, there wouldbe an end to the diversity and the liberty of moderncivilization. Only the good sword of Prussia andGermany can save humanity from that Anglo-Saxonand Slav peril.
But the fact that there is danger in the unlimitedexpansion of the national State ought not to preventus from recognizing that irresistible tendency toexpansion. The “will to power” is the essence ofthe State. “The State is power” (Der Staat istMacht) must ever be the first axiom of politicalscience. Muddled political thinkers, who confusethe spiritual with the temporal activities of man,may hold that the end of the State is social justice, orthe diffusion of light, or the propagation of religion,or the advancement of humanity. But the cause ofjustice, the spread of education, will best be furtheredif the State is strong. Only the strong can bejust, partial, and enlightened. The sole criterionof political values is strength. It is the suprememerit of Machiavelli that he has been the first to[121]emphasize this cardinal truth. The mortal sin ofa State is to be weak. Only the strong man, only aBismarck, a Richelieu, a Cavour, is a true statesman.
And that strength of the State which is its chiefattribute must not be dispersed; that political powermust neither be divided nor alienated. Many writerson politics still echo the absurd theory of Montesquieuon the division of the executive, legislative, and thejudiciary. Treitschke, following Rousseau, lays downthe axiom that the power of the State is indivisibleand inalienable.
If the one virtue of the State is to be strong andto assert its strength, it follows that the ethics of theState cannot be the ethics of the individual. Theruler of the State is not the head of a monastery orthe president of an academy of fine arts. The endmust justify the means, and any means may be employedwhich will add to the strength of the State.It is the glory of Frederick the Great that he hasalways had the moral courage of brushing away conventionsand scruples to achieve his object, and thathe has always had the political insight and wisdomof adjusting the means to the end.
Prussia is not, like France, the result of a thousandyears of natural growth. It has no definite naturalboundaries. The Prussian State is an artificialcreation. It has grown and expanded through conquest.[122]It is the Order of the Teutonic Knights, it isthe warrior dynasty of the Hohenzollern, who havebuilt up Prussian power. That purely militarygrowth of the Prussian State is made by Treitschkeinto a universal rule of all political growth. Accordingto him war always was and will remain themaster-builder of national life. Other thinkers, likeJoseph de Maistre, have glorified war in the nameof theology. Treitschke extols it in the name ofpolitics. War not only makes a State: it makes thecitizen. The heroic virtues are warlike virtues; theyare the outcome of military institutions. It is notwar but peace which is the evil. Woe to the nationwhich allows itself to be deceived by the sentimentand cowardice of pacifists.
War is the essential activity of the State. But inorder to be strong in war, unity and concentration areessential; they are the conditions of victory. Thatunity may, no doubt, be achieved under any form ofgovernment. It may be achieved under a republic,as it was during the wars of the French Revolution.It may be achieved under an aristocracy, as in thecase of Great Britain, which is a monarchy only inname, which, in reality, is a Parliamentary oligarchy,and which is always waging some guerilla in someoutlying post of empire. But the fact remains thatunity can be best achieved under a monarchic formof government, which concentrates all powers intothe hands of the responsible monarch. That is whymonarchy is the best form of government.[123]
A loyal military aristocracy like the Junkers isthe mainstay of a national monarchy. An aristocraticconstitution of the State is in conformity withthe nature of things. Not only all military activitiesbut all social and economic life depends on thedistinction of classes, on the existence of differentgrades corresponding to a difference in natural endowment,in social service. The equality of man notonly is an unattainable ideal, it is also an undesirableand a mischievous ideal. Suppress inequality anddistinctions and honours and you suppress the mainstimulus of human endeavour; you suppress that richdifferentiation of social life, that generous rivalry,that noble ambition, which are the conditions ofall intensive human activity.
The greatest danger, therefore, to the monarchic andaristocratic constitution of the State arises from theinsidious advance of the French revolutionary dogmaof equality. The spirit of envy is underminingthe social hierarchy in every country. That meanspirit of democratic envy is as old as the democraticinstitution itself. Ostracism in the nobler elementsof the community is as characteristic of the Greekdemocracy as of the French. All democracies haveresented that Aristides should be called the “Just.”So far it is only the Prussian State which has escaped[124]from the poisonous doctrine of Rousseau. But evenin Prussia the progress of the Gospel according toSaint Marx is a disquieting symptom. To defendthe prerogatives of the Junkers against the assaultsof the Social Democracy must therefore be one ofthe main political concerns of a patriotic Prussian.
It may be said that Protestantism is so closelyidentified with modern German history that it mayalmost be considered as the Germanic form of Christianity.Certainly Prussia is an essentially ProtestantState. From the beginning it has grown from thesecularization of Church property, when a HohenzollernGrand Master, following the advice of Luther,took the bold step of confiscating the demesnes ofthe Teutonic Order. But it is not only Prussia thathas grown and prospered through Protestantism.The Protestant form of Christianity in whateverform is essential to the very existence of the modernState. For no State can exist unless the spiritualpower be subordinated to the temporal power.The Protestant Church must needs accept thatsubordination because Protestantism must necessarilyresult in a diversity of rival and powerless sects, andtherefore, if it be true that Protestantism is necessaryfor the State, the State is even more necessary toProtestantism. The old dictum,Cujus regio, illiusreligio, holds good of Prussia. The spiritual allegiancefollows the temporal allegiance. The Statealone can secure for those different Churches thatpeace and toleration without which religious war[125]becomes a chronic evil. Toleration and the peacefulcoexistence of many Churches under the protectionof the State have been for centuries the boast andglory of the Prussian State.
Catholicism does not accept that necessary subordination.The German State of the Middle Ages,the Holy Roman Empire of the Hohenstaufen,perished because of the conflict with the Papacy.The modern Teutonic State, the Holy GermanEmpire of the Habsburg, has equally perishedthrough clericalism. Catholicism is an internationalpower, and the State must be national. Catholicismis encroaching and threatening the national State,and the State must remain independent and supreme;therefore Catholicism, ultramontanism, clericalism,are absolutely incompatible with the modern State.
Inasmuch as power is the main attribute of theState, it follows that only those States which aresufficiently strong in population, in territory, and infinancial resources, have a right to exist. There is adefinite limit below which a State cannot fulfil itsmission nor defend its existence. We must not bedeceived by the example of such States as Athens,Venice, Holland, and Florence, which, although apparentlysmall in territory, yet played an importantpart in political history. Those States were onlysmall in outward appearance; in reality they wereeither the centres of a vast political system, likeAthens and Florence, or the centres of a vast colonialempire, like Venice and Holland. Moreover, in[126]modern times, the whole relations and proportionsof States have undergone a fundamental change.Everything is on a larger scale, and there is analmost general tendency in modern times for allnational States to expand and to absorb into themselvesthe smaller neighbouring States. It mayalmost be said that modern history is made up mainlyof the conflicts between five or six leading States.Contemporary Europe had resulted in the unstableequilibrium of the five dominant Powers of Britain,Russia, Austria, France, and Germany. Europe hasalmost consolidated into a pentarchy.
If it be true that the national State almost inevitablymust develop into a great Power, conversely itis no less true that small States are an anomaly.Treitschke never ceased to rail at the monstrosity ofpetty States, at what he calls, with supreme contempt,the “Kleinstaaterei.” Holland, Denmark,Switzerland, are not really States. They are onlyartificial and temporary structures. Holland willone day be merged into the German Empire andrecover its pristine glory.
The smallness of the State produces a correspondingmeanness of spirit, a narrowness of outlook.Small States are entirely absorbed by their pettyeconomic interests and party dissensions. They onlyexist as the parasites of the larger States, who ensuretheir prosperity and security and bear all the bruntof maintaining law and order in Europe.
But worse even than the small States is the neutral[127]State. A neutral State in political life is as much amonstrosity as a neutral sexless animal in the naturalworld. A State like Belgium is only the parasiteof the larger neighbouring States. Treitschke nevermentions Belgium without an outburst of contempt.The country of Memlinck and van Eyck, of Rubensand van Dyck, the country whose people in thepresent war have borne the first onslaught of all theTeutonic hosts, are never mentioned by Treitschkeexcept with a sneer.
In no other part of his political system doesTreitschke show more sublime disregard of all thosepolitical facts which do not fit in with his theories.No other part more conclusively proves how thetyrannical dogma of Prussian nationalism can blindeven a profound and clear-sighted thinker to the mostvital historical realities. It must be apparentapriori to any student of politics that the life of smallcommunities must gain in concentration and intensitywhat it loses in scope and extent. And it must beobvious that small States have played a much moreconspicuous part than the most powerful empires.The city of Dante, Machiavelli, Michael Angelo, hasdone more for culture than all the might and majestyof the Hohenzollern. Humanity is indebted to onesmall State—Palestine—for its religion. To anothersmall State—Greece—humanity owes the beginningof all art and the foundations of politics. To othersmall States—Holland and Scotland—modernEurope is indebted for its political freedom. Andare not the German people themselves indebted forthe glories of their literature to the contemptiblecities of Jena and Weimar?[128]
We have explained the main tenets of the Treitschkeancreed. Even after this exhaustive analysis itwill be difficult for an English reader to understandhow such a system, if we divest it of its rhetoric, ofits fervid and impassioned style, and of a wealth ofhistorical illustration, which has been able to ransackevery country and every age, could ever have inspireda policy and could have hypnotized so completely ahighly intelligent and gifted race.
Our incomprehension is partly due to that strangedisbelief in the power of ideas to which we alreadyreferred, which remains such a marked trait of theBritish people, even as it was a marked trait of theRoman people, and which is perhaps characteristicof all nations who are pre-eminent in action, incolonization and empire-building. This disbeliefpartly explains why we have revealed such strangeimpotence in fighting our spiritual battles. OurChurches have remained silent and inarticulate.Our statesmen have seldom risen above sentimentalplatitudes. No trumpet voice has vindicated ourideas to the world. Our writers, with a few notableexceptions, such as Mr. Gilbert Chesterton and Mr.Wells, have seldom risen above trite truisms. Thiswar has not even produced a masterpiece such asBurke’s “Thoughts on the French Revolution.”
But our incomprehension is due even more to ourignorance of the strange and devious workings of theGerman mind. Even to-day few authors understandthe reasons which render the German people so[129]responsive and so docile to the most extravagantdoctrines and systems. The British are a politicalpeople; and a political people only accepts theoriesin so far as they can be verified, interpreted, andcorrected by experience, only in so far as they can betested by the fire of discussion. The German people,as even Prince von Bülow is compelled to admit,have remained an essentially unpolitical people.They still are under the yoke of countless princelings.There still exist sovereign potentates of Lippeand Waldeck, of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen andSchwarzburg-Rudolstadt. The Germans have acquirednone of the habits and traditions of freegovernment. But, most important of all, theirreligion has acted in the same direction as theirpolitics. They are described by Treitschke as thetypical Protestant nation; but the misfortune ofGerman Protestantism has been that it has never“protested.” Through the fusion and confusionof Church and State the Germans have sold theirspiritual birthright for a mess of pottage. Theirspiritual life has been almost entirely divorced fromaction. It has been centred in the intellect and in theemotions. It has moved in a world of abstractionand dreams.
And thus both their politics and their religion havemade them a prey to visionaries and sentimentalists,to unscrupulous journalists like Harden and Reventlow,to unbalanced poets like Nietzsche, to politicalprofessors, and to fanatic doctrinaires. Of thoseacademic politicians and fanatic doctrinaires, Treitschkehas probably been the most dangerous and themost illustrious representative. He will ever remain[130]a memorable example of the power for evil whichmay be wielded by a noble and passionate temperamentuntrained in and unrestrained by the realitiesof political life, who sees the State from the altitudeof the professional tripod. The war will have helpedto break the spell of the political professor, but thespell will continue to act until all the spiritual forcesof Germany, until the Press and the Universities andthe Churches, are emancipated from the intrusion ofthe State, until the German democracy reveals boththe spirit and conquers the power to achieve its ownsalvation.
As a rule the deliberate military policy of a nationremains the secret of diplomacy and the afterthoughtof statecraft. As for the military feeling and themilitary spirit, so far as they exist amongst the people,they generally remain subconscious, unreasoned, andinstinctive. It is therefore a piece of rare goodfortune to the student of contemporary history whenthe designs of statesmen are carefully thought outand revealed by one who has authority to speak,and when the instinct of the masses is explainedand made explicit by one who has the gift of lucidstatement, of philosophical interpretation, and psychologicalinsight. It is precisely those qualitiesand characteristics that give importance and significanceto the recent book of General von Bernhardion “Germany and the Coming War.” The author[131]is a distinguished representative of that PrussianJunkerthum which forms the mainstay of the militaryparty and which rules the German Empire. He thereforespeaks from the inside. And his previous workshave earned him a high reputation as an exponent ofthe science of war, and have worthily maintainedthe traditions of Clausewitz and von der Goltz.Nor are these the only qualifications of the author.General von Bernhardi’s new book possesses otherqualities which entitle him to a respectful hearing.He writes with absolute candour and sincerity; histone is unexceptionable; he is earnest and dignified;he is moderate and temperate; he is judicial ratherthan controversial. Although the author believes,of course, that Germany stands in the forefront ofcivilization and has a monopoly of the highest culture,yet his book is singularly free from the one greatblemish which defaces most German books on internationalpolitics—namely, systematic depreciation ofthe foreigner. Von Bernhardi does not assume thatFrance is played out or that England is effete. Heis too well read in military history not to realize thatto belittle the strength or malign the character of anenemy is one of the most fruitful causes of disaster.
Altogether we could not have a better guide to thestudy of the present international situation fromthe purely German point of view, nor could we findanother book which gives us more undisguisedly the“mentality,” the prejudices and prejudgments andopinions of the ruling classes. And it is a characteristicallyGerman trait that no less than one-thirdof the work should be given to the philosophy andethics of the subject. General von Bernhardi surveys[132]the field from the vantage-ground of first principles,and his book is a convincing proof of a truth which wehave expressed elsewhere that in Prussia war is notlooked upon as an accident, but as a law of nature;and not only as a law of nature, but as the law ofman, or if not as the law of man, certainly as the lawof the “German superman.” It is not enough tosay that war has been the national industry of Prussia.It forms an essential part of the philosophy of life,theWeltanschauung of every patriotic Prussian. Bernhardibelieves in the morality, one might almostsay in the sanctity, of war. To him war is not anecessary evil, but, on the contrary, the source ofevery moral good. To him it is pacificism which isan immoral doctrine, because it is the doctrine ofthe materialist, who believes that enjoyment is thechief end of life. It is the militarist who is the trueidealist because he assumes that humanity can onlyachieve its mission through struggle and strife,through sacrifice and heroism. It is true thatBernhardi ignores the greatest of Prussian philosophers,whose immortal plea in favour of perpetualpeace is dismissed as the work of his dotage. Butif he dismisses Kant, he adduces instead a formidablearray of thinkers and poets in support of his militaristthesis; Schiller and Goethe, Hegel and Heraclitus, inturn are summoned as authorities. Even the Gospelsare distorted to convey a militarist meaning, for theauthor quotes them to remind us that it is the warlikeand not the meek that shall inherit the earth. ButBernhardi’s chief authorities are the historian ofthe super-race, the Anglophobe Treitschke, and thephilosopher of the superman, Nietzsche. Nine out of[133]ten quotations are taken from the political treatisesof the famous Berlin professor, and the whole spiritof Bernhardi’s book is summed up in the mottoborrowed from Zarathustra and inscribed on the frontpage of the volume:
“War and courage have achieved more great thingsthan the love of our neighbour. It is not your sympathy,but your bravery, which has hitherto savedthe shipwrecked of existence.
“‘What is good?’ you ask. To be brave isgood.”[16]
It is no less characteristic of contemporary Germanpolitical philosophy that from beginning to endBernhardi maintains consciously, deliberately, apurely national attitude, and that he does not evenattempt to rise to a higher and wider point of view.Indeed, the main issue and cardinal problem, therelation of nationality to humanity, the conflictbetween the duties we owe to the one and the dutieswe owe to the other, is contemptuously relegatedto a footnote (p. 19). To Bernhardi a nation is nota means to an end, a necessary organ of universalhumanity, and therefore subordinate to humanity.A nation is an end in itself. It is the ultimate reality.And the preservation and the increase of the powerof the State is the ultimate criterion of all right.“My country, right or wrong,” is the General’s wholesystem of moral philosophy. Yet, curiously enough,Bernhardi speaks of Germany as the apostle, not onlyof a national culture, but of universal culture, asthe champion of civilization, and he indulges in the[134]usual platitudes on this fertile subject. And he doesnot even realize that in so doing he is guilty of aglaring contradiction; he does not realize that oncehe adopts this standpoint of universal culture, heintroduces an argument and assumes a position whichare above and outside nationalism. For either theGerman nation is self-sufficient, and all culture iscentred in and absorbed in Germany, in which casePrussian nationalism would be historically andphilosophically justified; or culture is somethinghigher and more comprehensive and less exclusive,in which case national aims must be estimated andappraised with reference to a higher aim, and anational policy must be judged according as itfurthers or runs counter to the universal ideals ofhumanity.
General von Bernhardi starts his survey of theinternational situation with the axiom that Germanyimperatively wants new markets for her industry andnew territory for her sixty-five millions of people.In so doing, he only reiterates the usual assumptionof German political writers. And he also resemblesthe majority of his fellow-publicists in this respect,that he does not tell us what exactly are the territoriesthat Germany covets, or how they are to be obtained,or how the possession of tropical or subtropicalcolonies can solve the problem of her population.But he differs from his predecessors in that he clearlyrealizes and expresses, without ambiguity or equivocation,that the assertion of her claims must involvethe establishment of German supremacy, and he admitsthat those claims are incompatible with theantiquated doctrine of the balance of power. And[135]von Bernhardi also clearly realizes that, as othernations will refuse to accept German supremacy andto surrender those fertile territories which Germanyneeds, German expansion can only be achieved asthe result of a conflict—briefly, that war is unavoidableand inevitable.
[13] Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10thSpeech.
[14] Treitschke, “History of Germany,” Vols. I. and II. (Jarrold.)Treitschke, “Politics,” with Introduction by A. J. Balfour:2 vols, (Constable, London.)
[15] These pages were published in 1912.
[16] Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10thSpeech.
Amongst the many discoveries brought about bythe war of the nations, an educated British publichas suddenly discovered the unsuspected existenceof Heinrich von Treitschke. And not only have wediscovered the national Prussian historian—we havealso unwittingly discovered Prussian history. Wehave certainly had revealed to us for the first timeits secret and hidden meaning. We are only justbeginning to realize that for nearly two hundredyears it is Prussia, and not Russia, which has been theevil influence in European politics. Prussia has notbeen a natural political growth. She has been anartificial creation of statesmen. She has been pre-eminentlythe predatory State. She has never takenthe sword to defend a disinterested idea. Theravisher of Silesia, of Schleswig-Holstein, of Alsace-Lorraine,the murderer of Poland, she has neverexpanded except at the expense of her neighbours.She has corrupted the German soul; she has beenthe mainstay of reaction and militarism in CentralEurope. She has been the bond of that freemasonry[137]of despotism, of that Triple Alliance of the threeempires which subsisted until the fall of Bismarck,which has been for generations the nightmare ofEuropean Liberals.
In attempting to reread modern history in the lightof that new interpretation of Prussian history, weare naturally driven to ask ourselves who is primarilyresponsible for that sinister influence which Prussiahas exercised for the last two centuries. To the unprejudicedstudent there can be no doubt that theone man primarily responsible is Frederick the Great,the master-builder of Prussian militarism and Prussianstatecraft. He it is who has been poisoning the wells;he it is who first conceived of the State as a barracks;he it is who has “Potsdamized” the Continent andtransformed Europe into a military camp. Strangelyenough, all civilized nations to-day have proclaimedPrussia accursed. Yet we continue to hero-worshipthe man who made Prussia what she is. A halostill surrounds the Mephistophelian figure whichincarnates the Hohenzollern spirit. A legend hasgathered round the philosopher of Sans Souci. Acombination of circumstances has caused writersalmost unanimously to extol his merits and to ignorehis crimes. British historians naturally favour theally of the Seven Years’ War. Russian and Austrianwriters are indulgent to the accomplice of the partitionof Poland. Anti-clerical writers glorify the Atheist.Military writers extol the soldier. Political writersextol the statesman. But the most adequate explanation[138]of the Frederician legend is the circumstancethat public opinion has been systematicallymobilized in favour of Frederick the Great by thegreat French leaders of the eighteenth century, thedispensers of European fame.
It was not for nothing that Frederick the Great forforty years courted the good graces of Voltaired’Alembert. He knew full well that Voltaire wouldprove to him a most admirable publicity agent.And never was publicity agent secured at a lower cost.Those literary influences have continued to our ownday to perpetuate the legend of Frederick. Nearlya hundred years after Rossbach Frederick had thestrange good fortune to captivate the waywardgenius of Carlyle. It is difficult to understand howCarlyle, who all through life hesitated between theChristian Puritanism of John Knox and the Olympianpaganism of Goethe, could have been fascinated bythe Potsdam cynic. We can only seek for an explanationin the deeply rooted anti-French and pro-Germanprejudices of Carlyle. Frederick was thearch-enemy of France, and that fact was sufficientto attract the sympathies of Teufelsdröckh. It isCarlyle’s Gallophobia which has inspired one of themost mischievous masterpieces of English literature.
The conspiracy of European historians has thusattached greatness to the very name of the thirdHohenzollern King. Great the Hohenzollern Kingcertainly was, but his greatness is that of a Condottiereof the Italian Renascence, of a Catharine de[139]’Medici. It is the greatness of a personality who isendowed, no doubt, with magnificent gifts, but whohas prostituted all those gifts to the baser usages.
It is passing strange how every writer remainssilent about the ugly and repellent side of Frederick.The son of a mad father, he was subjected to aterrorism which would have predestined a less strongnature to the lunatic asylum. The terrorism onlyhardened Frederick into an incurable cynic. It onlykilled in him every finer feeling. His upbringingmust almost inevitably have brought out all thedarker sides of human nature.
The first twenty years of his life were one uninterruptedschooling in hypocrisy, brutality, anddepravity. A debauchee in his youth, a sodomite inlater life, a hater of women and a despiser of men,a bully to his subordinates, a monster of ingratitude,revelling in filth so continuously in his written andspoken words that even a loyal Academy of Berlinhas found it impossible to publish his unexpurgatedcorrespondence, he appears an anachronism in amodern Europe leavened by two thousand years ofChristianity. Ever scheming, ever plotting, everseeking whom he might devour, deceiving even hisintimate advisers, he has debased the currency ofinternational morality. As a man Frederick has beencompared with Napoleon. The comparison is aninsult to the Corsican. Napoleon was human, hewas capable of strong affections, of profound attachmentand gratitude. But neither friendship nor lovehad any place in Frederick’s scheme of the universe.[140]
To-day we are holding the poor Prussian professormainly accountable for the greatest and latest crimeof Prussian militarism. But those dogmatic professorsare only the abject disciples of the HohenzollernKing. There is not one aphorism which isnot to be found in the thirty volumes of Frederick’swritings. He has perfected the theory of the militaryState, and he has acted consistently on the theory.It is highly significant that his very first public act,almost never mentioned by his biographers, was hisspoliation of the Prince-Bishop of Liége (an historicalprecedent tragically suggestive at the present day).The Prince-Bishop of Liége had committed the heinouscrime of resisting the impressment of his subjectskidnapped by the recruiting sergeants of the PrussianKing. On the strength of that theory, Frederickattacked the defenceless daughter of the AustrianEmperor who had saved his life at Custrin. On thestrength of that theory he betrayed every one of hisallies. On the strength of that theory he committedhis most odious crime—he murdered the Polishnation.
We are told that Frederick the Great was anincomparable political virtuoso. We are told thathe showed heroic fortitude in disaster, after Kollinand Kunersdorff. But so did Cæsar Borgia after thesudden death of Alexander VI. We are told that hewas tolerant of all creeds. But that was only because[141]he disbelieved all creeds, and he believed, withGibbon, that “all creeds are equally useful to thestatesman.” We are reminded that he was an amazingeconomist, husbanding and developing the nationalfinances. But his finances were only the sinews ofwar. We are told that he protected literature andart, but, like religion, he found literature an instrumentuseful for his political designs. We are remindedthat he was himself the servant of the State.But in serving the State he only served his owninterests, because the State was incarnated in himself,and in husbanding his resources he was only actinglike a miser who is adding to his hoard. We arefinally told that as the result of his life-work Fredericksucceeded in creating the most marvellous militarymachine of modern times. We forget that, as is theway with most military machines, the Prussianmachine ten years after Frederick’s death had becomea pitiful wreck in the hands of his immediate successor,and that it required the genius of Bismarck to manufactureanother Prussian military machine to be usedonce more for the enslavement of Europe.
No less than three books on Goethe have been issuedin the course of the last few months, and the fact issufficient evidence that the cult of the OlympianJupiter of Weimar, which was first inaugurated eightyyears ago by Carlyle, is in no danger of dying out inEngland. Professor Hume Brown has given us apenetrating and judicious study of Goethe’s youth,such as one had a right to expect from the eminentScottish historian.[17] Mr. Joseph McCabe has givenus a comprehensive survey of Goethe’s life, and anobjective and critical appreciation of his personality.[18]Both are in profound sympathy with their subject,but neither is a blind hero-worshipper. In Mr.McCabe’s life we are not only introduced to thescientist who is ever in quest of new worlds to conquer,we are also made acquainted with the paganepicure ever engaged in amorous experiments! Weare not only introduced to the sublime poet andprophet, we are also introduced to the incurableegotist, who could only find time to visit his old[143]mother once every ten years, whilst, as boon companionof a petty German Prince, he always foundtime for his pleasures. We are not only admitted tocontemplate the pomp and majesty of his world-widefame, we are also admitted to the sordid circumstancesof Goethe’s “home.” And our awe and reverenceare turned into pity. We pity the miserable husbandof a drunken and epileptic wife rescued from thegutter; we pity even more the unhappy father ofa degraded son, who inherited all the vices of oneparent without inheriting the genius of the other.
The first quality which strikes us in Goethe, andwhich dazzled his contemporaries, and continues todazzle posterity, is his universality. He appears tous as one of the most receptive, one of the most encyclopædicintellects of modern times. A scientistand a biologist, a pioneer of the theory of evolution,a physicist and originator of a new theory of colour,a man of affairs, a man of the world and a courtier, aphilosopher, a lyrical poet, a tragic, comic, satiric,epic, and didactic poet, a novelist and an historian,he has attempted every form of literature, he hastouched upon every chord of the human soul.
It is true that, in considering this universality ofGoethe, it behoves us to make some qualifications.His human sympathies are by no means as universalas his intellectual sympathies. He has no love forthe common people. He has the aloofness of thearistocrat. He has a Nietzschean contempt forthe herd. He takes little interest in the religious[144]aspirations of mankind or in the struggles of humanfreedom. The French Revolution remains to him asealed book, and his history of the campaign in Franceis almost ludicrously disappointing.
With regard to what has been called his “intellectualuniversality,” the elements which compose itcannot be reduced to unity and harmony. It wouldbe difficult to co-ordinate them into a higher synthesis,for thatuniversality is at the same timediversityand mutability. Goethe is essentially changeable andelusive. In his works we find combined the antipodesof human thought. There is little in common betweenthe poet of Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther onthe one hand and the poet of Tasso and Iphigenia onthe other hand. The intellect of Goethe is like acrystal with a thousand facets reflecting all the coloursof the rainbow.
And it may well be asked, therefore, whether thisencyclopædic diversity can aptly be called universality.Universality must ultimately result in unity andharmony, and it is impossible to assert that Goethe’smind ever achieved unity and harmony, that it wasever controlled by one dominant thought.
At any rate, whether a defect or a quality, therecan be no doubt that this encyclopædic diversity hasturned to the great advantage of his glory. It is preciselybecause Goethe is an elusive Proteus that alldoctrines may equally claim him. Romanticists turnwith predilection to the creator of Werther or thefirst “Faust.” Classicists admire the plastic beautyof Tasso and Iphigenia. The cosmopolitan sees inGoethe theWeltbürger, the citizen of the world,the incarnation ofdie Weltweisheit. The patriot[145]acclaims in him the poet who has sung the myths andlegends dear to the German race. The sensuous andvoluptuous libertine is enchanted by the eroticismof the “Roman Elegies.” The domesticated readeris drawn by that chaste idyll, Herman and Dorothea.The Spinozist and Pantheist are attracted by thegeneral tendencies of his philosophy. The Christianis at liberty to interpret “Faust” in a sense whichis favourable to his religion. The Liberal politiciancan point to the author of Goetz and Egmont. TheConservative and Reactionary can claim all the worksof Goethe’s maturity, when the poet had become theperfect courtier.
There is a second quality which Goethe possessesin a supreme degree, and by which he is distinguishedfrom his contemporaries—namely, mental sanity andserenity. Most of his fellow-poets reveal some morbidcharacteristics, are afflicted with someWeltschmerz,with some internal spiritual malady. They live inan atmosphere of strife and discord. The marvellousvitality of Goethe has escaped from the contagion.Like his fellow-poets, he passed through the crisis oftheSturm und Drang. But it seems as if he hadonly known it in order to give to his experiencesa final artistic expression. He communicated the“Wertherian malady” to a whole generation, but hehimself emerged triumphant and unscathed. Thehurricane which wrecked so many powerful intellectsspared his own. After the Italian journey he neverceased by example and precept to recommendharmony and balance, and he became so completely[146]the perfect type of intellectual and artistic sanity thatthe world has forgotten the Bohemian days of Frankfurtand Leipzig, the merry days of Weimar, therepulsive vulgarity of his drunken mistress and wife,the degradation of his son, and has agreed onlyto contemplate the Olympian majesty of Weimar.Whether the repose and sanity of Goethe wereunmixed virtues, or whether they were partly theresult of indifference, of impassivity or selfishness, isanother question. Certain it is that there is no othertrait in Goethe’s personality which has done more toraise him in the esteem of posterity. He has provedto the world that internal discord and distraction andmorbid exaltation are not the necessary appanage ofgenius, and that, on the contrary, the most powerfulgenius is also the most sane, the most balanced, themost self-possessed, the most harmonious.
Without going here into the purely formal andartistic qualities of Goethe’s works, there is one factwhich, perhaps more than any other, impressed itselfon the imagination of the world, and that is therealization of his own personality, the achievementof his own destiny. Of all his poems, the rarest andmost perfect is the poem of his life. Hitherto nosuch life had ever been allotted to a favourite of theMuses. He seemed to have received a bountifulabundance of all the gifts of the fairies—superb health,comfort, and wealth, the love of an adoring motherand sister, the loyalty of illustrious friends, thefavour of Princes, the homage of women, and the[147]admiration of men. To him was opened everyprovince of human activity. He exhausted everyform of enjoyment. His life until the end was likethe unfolding of a glorious version of a happy dream.At eighty years of age he remained the one survivinggiant of the golden age of German literature. Inhis lifetime he was considered by Europe, as well asby Germany, as the most glorious exemplar of hisrace, and the city of his adoption had become apilgrimage attracting worshippers from all parts ofEurope. Death was merciful to him. The last actof his life was as beautiful as the others. It was notpreceded by the gradual dissolution of his physicaland intellectual strength; rather was it like theburning out of a flame. He passed away in anapotheosis, and the last words uttered by the dyingpoet, “Mehr Licht, mehr Licht” (More light, morelight), have become for all future generations thefinal expression of his philosophy and the symbol ofhis personality.
[17] “The Youth of Goethe.” By P. Hume Brown. 8s. net(Murray.)
[18] “Goethe, the Man and his Character.” By Joseph McCabe.15s. net. (Eveleigh Nash.)
All English students interested in Germany owe adeep debt of gratitude to the unremitting labours ofMr. William Harbutt Dawson in the fields of Teutonicscholarship. He is one of a gallant band of somehalf-dozen publicists who, amidst universal neglect,have done their utmost to popularize amongst usa knowledge of German life and German people.Mr. Dawson’s last book is certain to take rank as apolitical classic. It is a lucid exposition of “MunicipalLife and Government in Germany” (Longmansand Co., 12s. 6d. net). City administration and cityregulations are a subject which no literary art canmake very exciting, but, difficult and forbiddingthough it be, it is a subject which yields in importanceand interest to no other. There is certainly no othersubject which will reveal to us more of the secretsof German greatness.
For the greatness of Germany is not to be explainedby her unwieldy army, her red-tape bureaucracy, herimpotent Reichstag, her effete Churches. Her army,[149]Parliament, and Churches are symptoms of weaknessand not of strength. The true greatness of Germanyis largely due to a factor ignored by most writers,ignored even by Mr. Dawson in all his previousworks—namely, the excellence of German municipalinstitutions, the intensity of her civic life. We havebeen too much accustomed to think of Germany onlyas a despotic empire. She might be far more fittinglydescribed as a country of free institutions, a federationof autonomous cities. We fondly imagine thatours is the only country where self-government prevails.Readers who might still entertain this prejudicewill carry away from Mr. Dawson’s book thenovel political lesson that Germany, much more thanGreat Britain, deserves to be called a self-governingnation, and that, at least in her civic government,which, after all, affects 70 per cent. of her population,Germany enjoys a measure of political libertywhich is absolutely unknown in our own country.
The tradition of municipal freedom in Germanyis as old as German culture. It still lingers in thehaunting charm of the German cities to-day. TheHoly Roman Empire possessed only the trappingsand the shadow of power; the reality belonged to theburghers of the towns. TheStädtewesen gives itsoriginal character to the German Middle Ages. TheHansa towns and the Hanseatic League recall someof the most stirring memories of German history.The League still survives in the three independent[150]republics of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. Thedominant fact that German medieval civilization wasa civilization of free cities is driven home to the mostsuperficial tourist. In every corner of the GermanEmpire, in north and south, on the banks of theRhine and the Elbe, in Rothenburg and Marienburg,in Frankfurt and Freiburg, the thousand monumentsof the past prove to us the all-important truth thatin Germany, as in Italy and in Flanders, it is theservice of the city which has made for nationalgreatness.
War and anarchy put an end to municipal prosperity.Protestantism brought with it the confusionof spiritual and temporal power, which brought withit the despotism of the Princes, which meant thesuppression of civic liberty. The Thirty Years’ Warcompleted the ruin of the cities. The end of theseventeenth century put in the place of city governancethe tyranny of a hundred petty Princes. Everywherewe see the ancient town halls crumbling intoruin, and we see arising pretentious palaces builton the model of the Palace of Versailles. Germanyhad to go through the bitter humiliation of Jenabefore she realized the necessity of reverting to herglorious civic traditions. The statesmanship of Stein(see Seeley’s “Life and Times of Stein”) understoodthat such return was the prime condition of a Germanpolitical renaissance. By his memorable MunicipalLaw of 1808 Stein restored civic liberty. He madelocal self-government the corner-stone of Germaninternal policy. The ordinance of Stein remains to[151]this day the organic law and Great Charter of theGerman city. It has stood the test of one hundredyears of change, and even the iron despotism of theHohenzollern has not been able to challenge it. Inevery other political institution Germany is lamentablybehind. Only in her municipal life is she inadvance of most European countries.
As we hinted at the outset, the municipality hasfar greater powers in Germany than in Great Britain.It is true that the police authority is under the controlof the central power, that education inspectionis under the control of the Church, which is anotherkind of spiritual police. It is true that the CityFathers are debarred from mixing with partypolitics. But within those limitations, and in theprovince of economics and social welfare, municipalpowers are almost unrestricted. It is thus thatGerman towns have been the pioneers in schoolhygiene. Every German child is under the supervisionof the school dentist and the school oculist.It is thus that German cities have established theirpublic pawnshops, and have saved the poor man fromthe clutches of the moneylender. It is thus that theyhave initiated gratuitous legal advice for the indigent.They have even established municipal beerhouses andRathhauskeller. In one word, they have launchedout in a hundred forms of civic enterprise.[152]
One of the most striking fields of municipal enterpriseis the policy of Land Purchase. The peoplewere encouraged to enter on this policy by the evilsof private land speculation, and by the shockinghousing conditions in some of the big cities, andespecially in Berlin, where the curse of the barracksystem still prevails.
Nearly every German city is an important landowner,owning on an average 50 per cent. of themunicipal area.
“While the powers of English urban districts inrelation to land ownership are severely restricted bylaw, German towns are free to buy real estate onany scale whatever, without permission of any kind,unless, indeed, the contracting of a special loan shouldbe necessary, in which event the assent of the CityCommissary is necessary. This assent, however,entails no local inquiry corresponding to the inquiriesof the Local Government Board, simply because theGerman States have no Local Government Board,and no use for them; the proceeding is almost aformality, intended to remind the communes that theState, though devolved upon them their wide powersof self-government, likes still to be consulted now andthen, and it is arranged expeditiously through thepost. For, strange as it may sound to English ears,the Governments of Germany, without exception, farfrom wishing to hamper the towns in their land investments,have often urged the towns to buy as muchland as possible and not to sell” (Dawson, p. 123).[153]
“Within the present year the little town of Kalbe,on the Saale, expended just £14 a head on its 12,000inhabitants in buying for £468,000 a large estate forthe purpose of creating a number of smallholdingsand labourers’ allotments. During the period 1880to 1908 Breslau expended over one million and a halfpounds in the purchase of land within the communalarea. Berlin has an estate more than three timesgreater than its administrative area. In 1910 aloneseventy-three of the large towns of Germany boughtland to the aggregate extent of 9,584 acres and to theaggregate value of over four million pounds sterling.Charlottenburg now owns 2,500 acres of land as yetnot built upon, with a value of over a million and aquarter pounds, and the value of all its real estate isabout four and a half million pounds sterling. In1886 Freiburg, in Baden, owned nearly 11,000 acresof land with a value of £925,000. In 1909 its estatewas only 2,000 acres larger, but its value was then£2,300,000.”
“Since 1891 Ulm, under the rule of a mayor convincedof the wisdom of a progressive land policyand strong enough to carry it out, has bought some1,280 acres of land at different times for £316,000,while it has sold 420 acres for £406,000, showing a cashprofit of £900,000, apart from the addition of 860 acresto the town estate. As a result of Ulm’s land policy,its assets increased between 1891 and 1909 from£583,500 to £1,990,000, an increase of £1,407,000,equal to £25 a head of the population. Another resultis that of the larger towns of Würtemberg only onehas a lower taxation than Ulm. It is solely owing toits successful land policy that this enterprising town,[154]without imposing heavy burdens on the general bodyof ratepayers, has been able to undertake a programmeof social reforms which has created for it an honourablereputation throughout Germany.”
In quite a different direction, in the encouragementof Art and Literature, the German municipalityplays a leading part.
“The budgets of most large and many smallGerman towns contain an item, greater or less accordingto local circumstances, which is intendedto cover ‘provision for the intellectual life of the town.’This item is independent of expenditure on schools,and, if analyzed, will be found often to include themaintenance of or subsidies to municipal theatres,bands, and orchestras, as well as grants to dramaticand musical societies of a miscellaneous order. Inthis provision the theatre takes an altogether dominantposition, and the fact is significant as reflecting thegreat importance which in Germany is attributed tothe drama as an educational and elevating influencein the life of the community. It may be that thepractice of subsidizing the theatre is not altogetherindependent of the fact that the repertory theatreis universal in Germany, except in the smallestof provincial towns, with the result that a far moreintimate tie exists between the drama and the communitythan is possible in the case of travellingcompanies.”
“If the question be asked, Is the higher dramaencouraged by the municipal theatre? the answer[155]must be an emphatic affirmative of the high standardof education in Germany. Speaking generally, notheatres in Germany maintain the drama at a higherlevel than the municipal theatres in the large towns.The lower forms of the drama will find no home here,for public taste looks for the best that the stage canoffer, and as the demand is, so is the supply. Manya provincial theatre of this kind presents more Shakespeareanplays in a week than the average Englishtheatre outside London presents in a couple of years.A glance at the repertory of any of the municipaltheatres which have been named is enough to convinceone that an elevated aim is steadily kept inview. For example, in a recent year the two Mannheimmunicipal theatres presented 161 separateworks, including 93 dramas, 62 operas and operettas,and 6 ballets, and of these works 442 repetitionswere given in the aggregate, making for the year604 performances, a number of which were at popularprices. The dramas given included fifteen by Schiller,ten by Shakespeare, three by Goethe, three by Lessing,five by Molière, four by Hans Sachs, four by Sheridan,eleven by Grillparzer, two each by Kleist and Hebbel,and several by Ibsen, while the operas included threeby Beethoven, three by Cherubini, six by Mozart,three by Weber, and several by Wagner. Could anEnglish provincial theatre—could all English provincialtheatres together—show a record equal tothis? That plays of this kind are given is proof thatthe German public looks to the municipal theatrefor the cultivation of the highest possible standardof dramatic taste and achievement.[156]”
The German city has managed to combine efficiencywith freedom. She has managed to establish astrong executive and yet to safeguard the will ofthe people. In France the Mayor is appointed bythe State, and he is the tool of the Ministry. InGreat Britain the City Fathers are honorary andunpaid. In Germany they are salaried servants,and yet elected by the people. In Great Britainmagistrates are temporary, ephemeral figure-heads.They are not even allowed time to serve their apprenticeship.They remain in office one, two, or atmost three years, receive a knighthood in the largerprovincial towns, and retire into private life. InGermany the Burgomaster and Aldermen are permanentservants, at first elected for twelve years, andon re-election appointed for life. Their whole lifeis identified with the interests of the city.
There lies the originality of German civic government,and there lies the secret of municipal efficiency.The German Mayor and council are experts. Citygovernment is becoming so technical a sciencethat there are now schools of civic administrationestablished in several parts of the German Empire.The city administrator is not a grocer or a drapertemporarily raised to office, nor are they only townclerks and officials. They have both the confidenceof the people and the responsibility of power, andthey are given time to achieve results, to follow upa systematic policy.[157]
The whole secret of German municipal governmentis told by Mr. Dawson in a footnote of hisbook:
“The chief Mayor of Duisburg is about to seekwell-earned rest after thirty-four years of work.When in 1880 he took over the direction of the town’saffairs, Duisburg had 34,000 inhabitants. To-dayDuisburg, with the amalgamated Ruhrort andMeiderich, has a population of 244,000. This remarkabledevelopment is specially due to the far-sightedmunicipal policy pursued by the chief Mayor,who made it his endeavour to attract new industriesto the State for the creation of the docks—as theresult of which Duisburg is the largest inland portin the world—and the incorporation of Ruhrort andMeiderich in 1905.”
This footnote illustrating the history of Duisburgmight serve equally well as an illustration for thehistory of other German towns. On reading thatfootnote I could not help thinking of a famousEnglish statesman whose recent death has closed astirring chapter of British history. German andAustrian municipalities give the widest scope forpolitical genius and attract the ablest men. If thesame conditions had prevailed in this country, Mr.Chamberlain would have been content to identifyhimself with the prosperity of his adopted city,as the Mayor of Duisburg identified himself withthe greatness of Duisburg; as Lueger identifiedhimself with the greatness of Vienna. And if[158]Birmingham had given full scope to the genius ofMr. Chamberlain, how different would have been thelife-story of the late statesman, and how differentwould be the England in which we are livingto-day!
[19] Written in 1913.
There are many urgent reforms needed in our nationaleducation; those who are best qualified to speak couldmake many a startling revelation if they only dared tospeak out. And there is ample evidence that almostevery part of our educational machinery requires themost thorough overhauling. In the words of Bacon,“Instauratio facienda ab imis fundamentis.” But Idoubt whether there does exist any more glaring proofof the present inefficiency of our Secondary Schoolsand Universities than their scandalous attitude towardsthe study of the German language and literature.
The plain and unvarnished truth is that at the beginningof this, the twentieth century, when Germany isthe supreme political and commercial Power on theContinent of Europe, the study of German is steadilygoing back in the United Kingdom. In some parts itis actually dying out. In many important SecondarySchools it is being discontinued. Even in the ScottishUniversities, which pride themselves on being moremodern and more progressive than the EnglishUniversities, there does not exist one single Chair ofGerman. In Oxford a Chair of German was onlyestablished through the munificence of a patrioticGerman merchant.[160]
And even when there are teachers there are very fewstudents. In one of the greatest British Universities,with a constituency of 3,500 students, there has been,for the last ten years, an average of five to six menstudents. And the reluctance of young men to studyGerman is perfectly intelligible. The study of Germandoes not pay. It brings neither material rewardsnor official recognition. All the prizes, all thescholarships and fellowships, go to other subjects,and mainly to the classics. Let any reader ofEverymanstand up and say that I am exaggerating; Iwould only be too delighted to discover that I amwrong.
Such being the attitude of those who are primarilyresponsible for our national education, can we wonderat the attitude of the general public? Can we expectit to take any more interest in German culture thanthe educational authorities? Let those who haveany doubt or illusion on the subject make inquiriesat booksellers’, at circulating libraries and publiclibraries, at London clubs. I have tried to makesuch an investigation, and all those institutions havethe same sorry tale to tell. It is impossible to getan outstanding book which appears in Germany, forit does not pay the publisher to stock such a book.At Mudie’s, for every hundred French books theremay be two German books. At the Royal SocietiesClub, with a membership of several thousands, everyone of whom belongs to some learned society, youmay get theRevue de Deux Mondes, or theTemps,or theFigaro, but you cannot get a German paper.For the last twenty years I have not once seen acopy of theZukunft, or theFrankfurter Zeitung, or[161]theKölnische Zeitung, at an English private house,at an English club, at an English bookseller’s, at anEnglish library.
A few months ago the most popular and mostenterprising daily paper of the kingdom publishedsome articles on the German elections, which werejustly rousing a great deal of attention in this country.I was very much impressed by the cleverness of thosearticles, but my admiration knew no bounds when theauthor confessed that he was writing without knowinga word of German, and that when attending politicalmeetings he had to make out the meaning of thelanguage by the gestures and facial expression of theorators. Have we not here, my classical friends, anexhilarating instance of the results of your monopoly?Ab uno disce omnes.
We are constantly being told that “knowledge ispower,” and that the knowledge of a foreign languagemeans not only intellectual power, but commercialand political power. Yet those in authority do notbudge an inch to get possession of such power. Weare constantly warned by political pessimists thatGermany is making gigantic strides, and that weought to keep a vigilant outlook. Yet we do nothingto obtain first-hand information of the resources ofa nation of sixty-five millions, who is certainly aformidable commercial rival, and who to-morrow maymeet us in deadly encounter.[20] On the other hand,we are told with equal persistence by political optimiststhat we ought to be on the most friendlyterms with a great kindred people from whom nothingseparates us except regrettable ignorance and superficial[162]misunderstandings. Yet, in order to dispelthat ignorance and to remove those misunderstandings,we do not make the first necessary step—namely,to learn the language of the people whomwe are said to misunderstand.
It is true that Members of Parliament and journalistsare ready enough to proceed to Germany on a missionof goodwill, and to be entertained at banquets andinternational festivities. But how futile must bethose friendly demonstrations when we consider thatthe enormous majority of those Parliamentarians andjournalists are unable to read a German newspaper!And how must it strike a citizen of Hamburg orFrankfurt when their English guests have to replyin English to the toasts of their German hosts! Andhow must a patriotic German feel when he discoversthat not five out of a hundred have taken the troubleto master the noble language of the country whosefriendship they are seeking!
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending, atthe house of a prominent political leader, a representativegathering of politicians, diplomats, and journalists,who were met to consider the best means of promotingAnglo-German friendship. In answer to aspeech of mine, an eminent German publicist andeditor of an influential monthly review deliveredan eloquent address in broken French. To hear aGerman address in French an audience of GermanophileEnglishmen was certainly a ludicrous situation!But the speaker realized that it would be hopelessto use the German language, even to an assemblyspecially interested in supporting Anglo-Germanfriendship.[163]
How long, my classical friends, are we going tosubmit to these disastrous results of your monopoly?Quousque tandem! How long are we going to standthis scandal of international illiteracy and ignorance,fraught with such ominous peril for the future?How long is this nation going to be hoodwinked byan infinitesimal minority of reactionary dons andobscurantist parsons, determined to force a smatteringof Greek down the throats of a reluctant youth?How long is modern culture to be kept back underthe vain pretence of maintaining the culture ofantiquity, but in reality in response to an ignobledread of enlightenment and progress, and in orderto protect vested interests and to maintain political,intellectual, and religious reaction?
[20] Written in 1912.
The tourist who takes the express train betweenBerlin and Copenhagen, one hour after he has leftthe Prussian capital reaches a vast plain more thanhalf the size of Belgium, where barren moorlandsalternate with smiling fields, where dormant lakesare succeeded by dark pine-forests. Few travellersever think of breaking their journey on this melancholyplain, the territory of the Grand Dukes ofMecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz.They have not the remotest suspicion that theseGrand Duchies of Mecklenburg, which they crossin such listless haste, are, from a political pointof view, one of the most fascinating countries ofEurope. Mecklenburg has for the students of comparativepolitics the same sort of interest which anIndian reserve territory, or the Mormon State ofUtah, has for the traveller in the United States, orwhich a cannibal tract in the equatorial Congo foresthas for the explorer of Central Africa. For thispleasant land of Mecklenburg-Schwerin is the lastsurvival of a patriarchal and feudal civilization. It[165]is the most perfect type of the paternal Prussian typeof government, entirely unspoiled by the Parliamentaryinstitutions of a feeble democratic age.
Here alone of all the North German States theconditions of a past generation continue in theirpristine vigour. Although the Grand Duke is the onlydescendant of Slavonic Princes in the German Empire,and still calls himself “Prince of the Wendes,” heis the most Teutonic of dynasts. Although Mecklenburg-Schwerinis independent of Prussia, it is themost Prussian and the most Junkerized of all FederalStates.
In degenerate Prussia the Kaiser has actually tosubmit to the financial control of an unruly Reichstag,and is not even allowed to spend the Imperial revenuesas any Emperor by right Divine ought to be logicallyallowed to do. The Duke of Mecklenburg is farmore fortunate than William II. He has no accountsto settle,he has not even a budget to publish. Hecollects in paternal fashion the revenues of his GrandDucal demesnes, and no power has any right to ask anyquestions. Even the “Almanack of Gotha,” whichis generally omniscient in these matters, is silent onthe revenues of His Highness. There is a publicdebt of about one hundred and fifty million marks!The public revenues are the private income of theGrand Duke. The public debt is a private charge onthe people.
In degenerate Prussia even the Imperator-Rexhas to divide some of his authority with a meddlesome[166]assembly, and has to delegate it to an obedientbut ridiculous bureaucracy. In the Grand Duchyof Mecklenburg the ruler governs his subjects inthe good old patriarchal way. It is true, in thetroubled days of 1848 an unwise predecessor grantedsomething like a paper constitution, but that scrapof parchment happily became a dead-letter twelvemonths after it had been granted. It is also truethat there still subsists some faint image of representativegovernment in the two estates of the GrandDuchy, dating as far back as 1755, but those venerableestates of the Grand Duchy are only composedof and only represent theRitterschaft—i.e., sixhundred and ninety noblemen; and theLandschaft—i.e.,fifty municipalities. Neither the peasants inthe country nor the artisans in the towns are evertroubled to give their advice on matters concerningthe common weal. And as, in order that a Bill maybecome the law of the Grand Duchy, the consent ofthe two estates is required, nothing unpleasant isever likely to happen, and the old order, representedby the six hundred and ninety overlords, continuesundisturbed.
In degenerate Prussia even the Junkers have tosubmit to the presence of petty landowners of lowlybirth, or even to peasants of servile origin. Do nothistorians remind us that even Frederick the Greathad to surrender to the claims of the Miller of SansSouci. In Mecklenburg-Schwerin there is no Millerof Sans Souci to worry the Grand Duke.For nopeasant owns one single acre of land. One-half of theterritory of the Grand Duchy is owned by a fewhundred lords of the manor, and the other half[167]realizes the Socialist ideal of the suppression ofprivate property and of the transfer of all privateownership to the State. Six thousand square milesare the absolute property of the State—that is to say,of the Grand Duke. For never was absolute rulermore truly entitled than the Grand Duke to appropriatethe words of Louis XIV.: “L’état c’est moi.”
In this paradise of Prussian Junkerthum onemight reasonably have expected the monarch and thelords of the manor to enjoy as complete happiness asis ever allotted to mortal man. And the peasantsand artisans could equally be expected to share inthe universal contentment. Are not the GrandDuke and his knights as closely interested inthe welfare of their tenants as a shepherd in thewelfare of his flock? But even in a patriarchalGrand Dukedom the spirit of modern unrest seemsto have penetrated. If German statisticians maybe trusted, the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy doeven seem to have preferred the risks and uncertaintiesof living in a distant and unpaternal AmericanGovernment to the peace and quiet and securityof the Mecklenburg plains. The ungrateful subjectsof the Grand Duke have done what the Kaiser onceadvised his own disloyal subjects to do; they haveshaken the dust of the Fatherland off their feet;they have emigrated in such large numbers to theUnited States of America that this paradise ofPrussian Junkerthum, with its 700,000 inhabitants,is to-day the most thinly populated part of theGerman Empire, and contains fewer industries thanany other part.
After all, to a military empire soldiers are more[168]necessary than peasants and artisans. Already in1815 Mecklenburg could claim the glory of havingproduced the greatest Junker soldier of the age, bluffand rough Prince Blücher, the victor of Waterloo.The achievements of the Grand Ducal regimentshave fully proved that Mecklenburg-Schwerin andMecklenburg-Strelitz have in the present war remainedtrue to the glories of their military past and haveremained worthy of their feudal present, and theaugust head of the Grand Ducal dynasty is just nowdoing most efficient work in the Balkan States as thesuper-Ambassador of his Imperial cousin.
It is the purpose of the following article to single outone aspect of the war which has been strangelyneglected. It is our purpose to emphasize the influencewhich the obsession of one particular idea,the German race theory, has exercised over theGerman mind and the part which it has played inbringing about the war of the nations. False ideashave been the dragon’s teeth from which have risenthe legions of five continents. Amongst those falseideas the most deadly, the most fatal, has been theGerman heresy of race, the theory of race inequalityand race antagonism. It is in the name of thatrace heresy, in the name of Germanism and Pan-Germanism,of Slavism and Pan-Slavism, of Saxonismand Pan-Saxonism, the war is being waged.
We read the following passage in a recent bookby Sven Hedin, the official chronicler of the Germanarmies:
“Here is a (German) reservist. What a tremendousfigure! What can Latins, Slavs, Celts,Japs, Negroes, Hindus, Ghurkas, Turcos, and whateverthey are called, do against such strapping giants[170]of the true Germanic type? His features are superblynoble, and he seems pleased with his day’s work.He does not regret that he has offered his life forGermany’s just cause.”
In this odious passage we have in a few lines thewhole history and the whole philosophy of the tragedy.We have the spirit with which the Germans havewaged the war, we have the motive for which theyhave waged it, and we have the ultimate purposewhich they hope to achieve—namely, to force upona subjected Europe the rule of the super-race ofTreitschke and thebionda bestia of Nietzsche.
In former times, in the so-called “Dark Age,”nations would fight for the human, rational, butimpracticable principle of orthodoxy. To-day weare fighting for the inhuman, for the equally impracticableand immoral principle of race antagonism.Germans fight because through their veins coursesthe red blood of the Teutons of Tacitus. They arefighting because they are convinced that they havethe Might and the Right and the Duty of crushingthe French and the Russians, because through Frenchveins courses the tainted blood of the Gauls of Cæsar,and because through the veins of the Slavs coursesthe white fluid of the slave and the yellow fluid ofthe Tatar.
It is one of the commonplaces of the economicschool that the economic motive is the main factorwhich makes for peace or war, that material interestsonly count, and that ideas do not matter. It isone of the shallow illusions of the pseudo-rationalist[171]school that the age of religious wars is passed for ever.As a matter of fact, this war is as much a religiouswar as any crusade that was ever waged. The onlydifference between the religious war of to-day andthe religious wars of yesterday is that in the pastdogmas were promulgated by priests and saints inthe name of Theology. The dogmas of to-day arepromulgated in the name of Science by the high-priestsof Universities and Academies. A fewmystical Greek words, such ashomousios andhomoiousios,were the watchwords of the crusades of old.A few equally mystical Greek words,brachycephalicanddolichocephalic, are the watchwords of thecrusades of to-day.
It may seem the idle conceit of a dreamer out oftouch with reality to assert that it is principles whichmainly matter and that it is the ideal which is theultimate reality. It may seem a ludicrous exaggerationto assert that a mere abstract scientific theory,apparently so innocuous as is the German race theory,could be held responsible for so titanic a catastrophe.Surely there seems to be here no relation and noproportion between cause and effect. Yet it doesnot take a prolonged effort of profound thinkingto understand the portentous political significanceof the German race heresy. It is not difficult tounderstand that according as we believe that historyis mainly a conflict of ideals or according as webelieve that history is mainly a conflict of materialinterests, or a conflict of races, we shall consistently[172]either believe in peace or in war as the normal conditionof humanity. Conflicts of ideas ought rationallyto make for peace. Conflicts of material interestswill frequently, although not necessarily, make forwar. Conflicts of races must inevitably and alwaysmake for war.
If you believe in the materialistic theory thathuman history is mainly made up of the inevitableantagonism between Aryan and Semite, between Slavand Teuton, between Celt and Anglo-Saxon, then youmust also believe that war is the permanent andbeneficial factor in human history. For the conflicts ofraces for supremacy can only be solved through war.
On the other hand, if you believe in the idealistictheory that human history is mainly a conflict ofspiritual and moral and political ideals, then peaceis the ultimate factor. For human experience andhuman reason equally teach us that a conflict ofspiritual ideals cannot be solved by violence. Theycan only be solved by discussion and argument, bypersuasion and conversion, by the spread of education,by clear thinking and strenuous working, bythe diffusion of sweetness and light. Both reasonand wisdom teach us that truth and faith are likelove—they cannot be imposed by force.
Underlying the theory of race there is a firstassumption that there is such a thing as a distinctracial type; that there are definite breeds of men,Aryans and Semites, Celts and Teutons, just as thereare definite breeds of dogs and pigeons; that human[173]breeds are evolved by similar selective processes;that those distinct racial types are the main factorin the history of nations; that those types are endowedwith specific anatomical and physiological characteristics,and that those physiological characteristicscarry with them equally definite moral, intellectual,and political qualities.
And there is a second assumption which is thecorollary of the first. Not only is there a separationof races, there is also an inequality of races.“L’Inégalité des Races humaines” is the title ofthe epoch-making book of Count de Gobineau. The“Separation of Race” is a biological and objectivefact. But to that biological fact we must add amoral and subjective distinction. Some races arenoble, others are ignoble. Some races are born torule, other races are born to obey, to be “hewers ofwood and drawers of water.” The Slav is born aslave to be controlled by the Germans. The Serbianis born a serf to be controlled by the Austrians. TheBohemian is an outcast. The Pole is a drunkard.The Celt is a weakling. The Anglo-Saxon is amercenary. The Russian is a Tatar and a brute.
The German race theory is propped up by a formidablearray of so-called scientific proofs. All theauxiliary disciplines of biology, botany and zoology,physiology and anatomy, are enlisted in the serviceof anthropology and ethnology. The question asto whether a particular nation is aKultur Volk orwhether it is only a rabble of slaves depends entirely[174]on whether the facies is square or oval, brachycephalicor oligocephalic. It depends entirely—touse the pedantic jargon of the anthropologist—onthe “cephalic index” of the race.
The historical sciences are called in to support theconclusions of ethnology. It is especially philologywhich is the most efficient instrument demonstratingthe existence and the superiority of a distinct race.Just as anatomy reveals to us the structure of thecranium, so philology reveals to us the structure ofthe mind. The philologist reveals the genealogies ofwords even as the anthropologist studies the genealogiesof races.
In the burning controversies which for the lastgeneration have divided the Tchech and Magyarand Croatian and Roumanian races of the AustrianEmpire, it is the philologists who have acted asumpires. In Vienna philologists like von Jagichave all the authority and prestige of statesmen.Similarly, in the Balkan States, Serbians and Bulgarians,Roumanians and Greeks, find conclusiveevidence of their respective rights in the dialects ofthe Macedonian populations. Such and such aprovince must be allotted to the Serbians, and notto the Bulgarians, because such and such a dialect hasmore affinity to the Serbian than to the Bulgarianlanguage. Similarly, in the Latin elements of theirdictionary, Roumanian patriots find convincingevidence of their Latin ancestry, and finally provethat they are the lineal descendants of the Dacianlegions of Emperor Trajan.[21]
Those scientific arguments, biological and philological,may satisfy the biologists and the philologists;they certainly satisfy nobody else. All those pseudo-scientificfacts belong to the realm of fiction. Seriousthinkers have ceased to prattle about the applicationof biology to ethics since Huxley delivered hisRomanes lecture on “Evolution and Ethics.” Theencroachments of scientific materialism have failedas signally in the political sciences as they have failedin ethics.
It is futile to compare the processes which evolveraces of man with the processes which evolve breedsof animals. It is true that in the lower stages ofhumanity the word “race” has a definite meaning.It may be contended that there is a wide gulf betweenthe races at the extreme end of the human scale,a gulf which even the enthusiastic devotion ofmissionary effort does not seem able to bridge. Thereis such a thing as the “blackness” of the niggerand the “yellowness” of the Chinese and theJapanese, although the Japanese have proved themselves[176]capable of assimilating Western civilization,and although the black race has produced the greatestpoet of Russia, Pouchkine, and one of the greatestnovelists of France, Alexandre Dumas. But it is anall-important fact that as civilization advances theword “race” entirely changes its meaning. Evolutionentirely modifies its processes. Biological factorssteadily decrease in importance. Moral and politicaland intellectual factors as steadily increase inimportance.
Isolation and selection are the main conditionsrequired to produce a definite breed of cattle. Onthe other hand, if we want to produce a highlycivilized type, it is not isolation which is the maincondition, but crossing and blending, mixture andintercourse. As we rise in the scale of humanitythere are no fixed types. All types are equallyplastic. There are no pure types. All types areequally mixed.
Even if we take the Jewish race, which seems toshow extraordinary fixity and stability of type, thereis not one dominant Jewish type; there are fullyfifty different Jewish types. There is hardly anyresemblance between the Jew of Tiflis and the Jewof Tangier, between democratic Ashkenazim and thearistocratic Sephardim. Race is not a cause, but aneffect. It is not biology which explains politics, itis politics which dominate biology. It is not thephysical which explains the moral, it is the moralwhich produces the physical. It is not the racialtype which produces a racial belief and a racialcommunity, it is the religion which produces the race.It is not the Hindu caste which produces the religion,[177]it is religion which produces the caste. Similarly,it is the religious and political conditions which havekept the Jew apart, and which have preserved thecharacteristics of the race. Even so, religion andpersecution have kept the characteristics of theArmenians or the Parsees and the Greek coloniesin the Levant.
A highly gifted race is invariably the outcome ofcomplex elements, of many cross-currents. Invariablyit is the outcome of moral, spiritual, and politicalfactors. It is the outcome of unity of language, ofunity of religion, of community of traditions and institutions.It is mainly religion which keeps apartthe French and the Anglo-Saxon races in Canada,and which divides the Celt from the Ulsterman inIreland. Let the religious boundary break down,and the Irish Celt will blend with the Ulster Scot,the French Canadian will mix with the Anglo-Saxon.The race heresy in its modern form is thesinister shadow projected by the biological materialismof the early Darwinians. It is the same materialisticconception which has triumphed in German Marxismand in the economic interpretation of history. It isthe same conception which has triumphed in theRealpolitik andWeltpolitik, and the elimination ofthe moral factor from the activities of high policy.The tyranny of the race dogma permeates the majorityof the German historians and publicists from theearly nineteenth century. We find it in Mommsen’s“History of Rome.” It has found a striking expression[178]in his famous chapter on the Celts, whichis only a veiled attack against the French, who areassumed to be the lineal descendants of the Gauls.The same dogma is the dominant idea of Treitschke’s“History.” We find it in thebionda bestia ofNietzsche. We find it in the “Foundations of theNineteenth Century” of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.We find it in the works of Count de Gobineau,who, after working unnoticed in his own country,has been heralded as the apostle of Pan-Germanismin the Vaterland. The race heresy has been theleitmotiv of all political controversies in the Empire.We find it equally in the anti-Semitic, in the anti-Russian,in the anti-French propaganda. It hasculminated in the triple dogma of the superman,of the super-race, and of the super-State, and thistriple dogma of the GermanRealpolitik has workedfor the enslavement of Europe as inevitably as thetriple dogma of the French Revolution—Liberté,Egalité,Fraternité—was bound to lead to the liberationof Europe.
For the philosophy of race, with all the liberaldemonstrations of its votaries, is essentially andinevitably the philosophy of reaction and the philosophyof militarism, if it is carried to its logicalconclusion. And, unfortunately, in Germany it hasbeen carried to its logical conclusion. In Britain andFrance thinkers have advocated the same deadlytheories. The same deadly poison of pseudo-sciencehas infected the body politic. But Darwin and[179]Huxley always saved themselves by inconsistencyfrom the ruthless application of their doctrines. Thecommon sense of the community has shrunk fromextreme logic. In a country of free discussion andof free institutions doctrines are counteracted byother influences. Theories are tested by life. Inan autocratic country theories are supreme. Theundiluted theories of Rousseau and Robespierre weresupreme under the Reign of Terror; the theories ofKatkov and the extreme Pan-Slavists were supremein Russia under the reign of Alexander III. Undera government like Prussia, where all the spiritualforces are mobilized, where Universities, Churches,and newspapers are subject to the State, there isnothing to counteract the doctrinaire spirit. It is,therefore, not to be wondered at that the heresy ofrace should have become a fixed idea, a monomania, inthe German Empire. In Great Britain the theoriesof the apostate Englishman Chamberlain could nothave struck deep root, notwithstanding all theenthusiastic praise which Mr. Bernard Shaw hasgiven to the “Foundations.” In France the theoriesof Count de Gobineau passed unnoticed. In Germany“Gobineau Societies” have been established in orderto propagate the gospel of the French diplomat. InGermany one hundred thousand copies of the “Foundations”of Chamberlain, with their ponderous twelvehundred pages compact with facts and arguments,have been sold, have poisoned countless brains, andhave wielded enormous political influence.[180]
The first inevitable outcome of the German raceheresy has been to stimulate the belief in thesupremacy of the Teuton and to transform thenatural conceit of patriotism into an odious megalomania.Once the Germans assumed in accordancewith the race dogma that some European races areborn to rule and others to obey, it was inevitablethat they should draw the further inference thatthey of all races were the dominant race. It is truethat the belief of the Calvinist in religious predestinationmay lead to a pessimistic as well asto an optimistic conclusion. The believer in predestinationmay assume that he is predestined toeternal damnation as easily as he assumes that heis predestined to eternal salvation. But the pseudo-scientificmind and the materialistic mind is not soeasily addicted to humility and pessimism. Theslave morality of the Christian may lead to meeknessand charity and to all the negative virtues of a degenerateChristianity. The master morality of theAnti-Christ Nietzsche must lead to the ruthless assertionof power. The belief in race predestinationcan therefore only result in megalomania, and inGermany it has certainly resulted in the most acute,the most insane, inflation of nationalism and imperialismrecorded in modern history. Of thatmegalomania the Kaiser has been, in innumerablespeeches, the eloquent and insolent spokesman.[181]
Even as race heresy must result in racial megalomania,it must result in political reaction and inthe government of caste. The principle which istrue of the nation as a whole is as true of everysection of that nation. And the pride of race in anation is substantially the same thing as the pride ofbirth in a class. If amongst the races of man thereis one particular breed, the Teuton, which constitutesthe born aristocracy of humanity, so amongst thoseTeutons there is one special caste which is the bornaristocracy of Teutonism. It is the rooted beliefin the race theory which has maintained the ruleof Junkerthum. On the race theory an exclusivearistocratic government recruited and maintained byartificial selection is the only logical and sensiblegovernment, and democracy is bound to be consideredas a principle of decay. The Kings of Prussiaselect their rulers on the same principle on whichKing Frederick William selected his regiment ofsix-foot grenadiers from the military caste.
That is why we find in Prussia the most exclusivearistocratic government in the world. As a sop toSouthern German opinion, Bismarck was compelledto grant universal suffrage for the Reichstag, but inthe Prussian Parliament, or “Landtag,” Bismarck,the Junker of blood and iron, retained the good oldprinciple of aristocratic government. Under thethree-class voting system of the Landtag, one voterconstituting by himself the first class may have asmuch political power as the twenty thousand electors[182]constituting the third class. That is also why thePrussian Junker retains by right of birth a monopolyin the higher ranks of the Army, of the Diplomaticand Civil Service. The Junker is born to greatnesseven as the princely families of Germany have beenborn to a monopoly of all the thrones of Europe.
As the race theory must inevitably lead to megalomaniaand reaction, so it must inevitably lead tomilitarism. As it is incompatible with democracy, soit is incompatible with peace. As we pointed out atthe beginning of this analysis, if it be indeed true thatthere are some races which are born to rule, it is theirduty to assert their will to power over inferior races.If “the true Teutonic type”—to use the words ofSven Hedin—be indeed superior to the Celt, to theAnglo-Saxon, to the Slav, and to the Latin, he ismorally bound to assert that superiority. The Teutonwill not only achieve the victory, he will deserve it.Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht (World historyis world judgment). History is not a conflictbetween abstractions, between truth and error,between higher and lower principles, between conflictingideals; it is, above all, the tragic conflictbetween higher and lower races. War is necessaryand war is beneficial. War is not only the instrument,it is also the criterion, of progress. “Might isRight” ceases to be an immoral principle. “Mightis Right” is the ultimate formula of the most sublimemorality, for Might is but the Right of the strong toestablish the rule of the noble over the ignobleelements of humanity.
[21] The Roumanian language is a composite language like English.Even as the English vocabulary is mainly a blend of Anglo-Saxonand Franco-Norman, so the Roumanian language is a blend ofLatin and Slavonic words. Many years ago the British and ForeignBible Society published a Roumanian Bible from which the majorityof the Slavonic words had been eliminated. I pointed out inEveryman that this Roumanian translation was not Roumanianat all. The authorities of the Bible Society indignantly protestedand asked me to withdraw. I refused to withdraw. The Britishand Foreign Bible Society investigated the question, deferring tomy criticisms, and prepared and published a new revised version oftheir Roumanian Bible in which the Slavonic words largely composingthe religious vocabulary of Roumania have been restored.
In the universal readjustment—or, to use the favouriteexpression of Nietzsche, in the “transvaluation”—ofpolitical and spiritual values which must follow thewar, we may confidently expect a general slump inall German values. There will be a slump in Germaneducation and in German erudition, in German musicand in German watering-places. There will be aslump in that “exclusive morality” for which LordHaldane could not find an equivalent in the Englishlanguage, and for which, in his famous Montrealaddress, he could only find an equivalent in theGerman wordSittlichkeit. But, most important ofall, there will be a lamentable slump in the mosthighly prized of all German values—German theology.
Germany may still retain a monopoly of toys;Germany may still continue to supply Princes tothe vacant thrones of Europe; but it is eminentlyprobable that God Almighty will cease to be madein the Vaterland.
No one who has not been brought up in aScottish Presbyterian University atmosphere realizes[184]the mystical prestige hitherto enjoyed by Germantheology. The education of a Scottish divine wasthought incomplete, a graduate in divinity, howeverbrilliant and devout, could not get an importantcharge, if he had not received the hallmark andconsecration of a German theological faculty. Andwhat was true of German Universities was equallytrue of German theological books. Publishers likeMessrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, and Messrs. Williamsand Norgate, of London, made considerable fortunesmerely from their translations of German works ofdivinity.
The prejudice in favour of German Universitiesand against French Universities goes back to theearly days of the Reformation. Already in “Hamlet”we find the serious young man going to Wittenbergand the frivolous young man going to Paris in questof worldly amusement. That pro-German and anti-Frenchprejudice has continued until our own day.In vain have I for twenty years attempted in theUniversities of Scotland to send our graduates toFrench Universities. In vain did I contend that onesingle year spent in the Sorbonne provided greaterintellectual stimulus than a whole decade spent in aGerman University. The old Puritan feeling againstFrance proved too strong. Until the year 1914 thestream of our students continued to be directed toGöttingen and Heidelberg, to Bonn and Berlin.Even in our distant colonies, even in Toronto, Ifound that the majority of teachers were “made inGermany,” whilst of American Universities it ishardly too much to say that many of them hadactually become German institutions.[185]
The prejudice which sent Scottish and Englishministers of the Gospel to complete their preparationin Germany was all the more extraordinary becausePositive Christianity had almost vanished from thetheological faculties of Protestant Germany. Evenas Holy Russia has remained on the whole the mostChristian nation in Europe, Protestant Prussia wascertainly the least Christian. It was aptly said byHuxley of the philosophy of Comte, that Comtismwas Catholicism minus Christianity. We might sayin the same way of German theology, that it wasphilosophy and metaphysics and philology minusChristianity. Seventy-five years ago David FrederickStrauss, who would be forgotten but for the pamphletof Nietzsche, wrote a ponderous treatise of a thousandpages, translated by George Eliot, to prove thatChrist was a myth. At the end of his life he strenuouslyattempted in his “Old and New Faith” tofind a substitute for Christian theology. GermanProtestantism travelled the road he indicated. TheGerman people have ceased to believe in Christianity;but they have come to believe in the self-styledAnti-Christ Nietzsche. They have ceased to believein God; but they still believe in His self-appointedvicegerent, the Kaiser. They have ceased to believein Providence; but they still believe in a ProvidentialGerman nation. They have ceased to believe in theHoly Trinity; but they believe all the more fanaticallyin the New Trinity of the Superman, the Super-race[186]and the Super-State. And it is this new fanaticalbelief which has brought about the war of thenations.
The prejudice of our Protestant Churches in favourof German Theological Faculties proceeded on theassumption that German Protestantism was identicalwith Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Surely that strangeassumption does little credit to the spiritual insightof our divines. German Protestantism has absolutelynothing in common with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism.For whatever may have been adduced againstBritish and American Nonconformity, it must beadmitted that at least Anglo-Saxon Nonconformitywas generally what it professed to be. Anglo-SaxonNonconformity actually did refuse to conform,Anglo-Saxon Protestantism did actually protest.The separation between Church and State was afundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon policy, andthat separation was no ideal platonic theory. Nonconformistsgave up their emoluments, they againand again risked their lives in defence of theirprinciples. In defence of their principles tens ofthousands migrated to distant climes.
For that very reason Anglo-Saxon Nonconformityhas rendered inestimable service to political liberty.German Protestantism has never rendered a singleservice to political liberty, for the simple reason thatits political practice has been consistently the reverse.So far from Lutheran Protestantism being based onthe separation of Church and State, it was based onthe confusion of spiritual and temporal power. That[187]confusion began with the very earliest days ofLutheranism. Lutherans are inclined to depreciatethe personality and activity of John Huss, the greatSlav reformer, because, judged from worldly standards,John Huss seems to have been a failure. As amatter of fact, the Slav reformer was the idealspiritual hero. The Teutonic reformer was in manyways a time-server. To Luther must be tracedthe principle that spiritual allegiance must followtemporal allegiance, that the subjects must followthe creed of their Prince. That belief was expressedin the Protestant motto,Cujus regio illius religio,and that motto even to this day accounts for thebewildering religious geography of the GermanEmpire.
That servile attitude of the Protestant Church tothe German State has survived to this generation;whereas the Roman Catholic Church made a bravestand against Bismarck in theKulturkampf, theLutheran Church has remained a docile State Church.This Erastianism is illustrated by no one moresignally than by the Pontifex Maximus of PrussianProtestantism, His Excellency Wirklicher GeheimrathAdolf von Harnack. Harnack has earned world-widefame as a bold interpreter of the Scriptures, but hehas refused to countenance those ministers who weredischarged merely because they acted on his teachings.In his exegesis, Harnack has been the most uncompromisingof critics. In his religious politics, he hasbeen the most tame of courtiers, the most pliable ofdiplomats. He has taken infinite liberties with theSacred Texts. He has never taken any liberties withthe sacred majesty of the Kaiser.[188]
The confusion of temporal and spiritual power inGerman Protestantism brought about two great evils—servilityin politics and indifference in religion.But it also seemed to bring one great compensatingadvantage—namely, complete toleration of othercreeds. People do not fight for a creed to which theyhave become indifferent. Frederick the Great gaveequal hospitality to the free-thinking Voltaire andto the Jesuits who had been expelled from mostCatholic countries.
That compensating advantage of religious tolerationseemed to further the higher intellectual life of theUniversities, and in one sense it did. But it mustnot be forgotten that neither religious tolerationnor the higher intellectual life ever extended to theprovince of politics. The freedom of the PrussianUniversities was always limited by the necessitiesof the State and the accidents of politics. Withregard to religion and political thought, the PrussianState always acted on the principle implied in thecynical epigram of Gibbon: “All religions are equallytrue to the believer. They are equally false to theunbeliever, andthey are equally useful to the statesman.”For three hundred years the Prussian statesmenhave attempted to utilize the Christian religion,and Prussian Christian divines have in fact provedthe most serviceable of tools. Unfortunately, in theprocess religion has disappeared from Prussian soil,and with the liberating influence of the Christianreligion has vanished political liberty.
The present investigation into Franco-Germanrelations conducted on behalf of theFigaro is thework of one of the ablest publicists of modernFrance. It is the work of a good European whowishes to put an end to the senseless competitionin armaments, and to the international distrust andnervousness which are the main causes of sucharmaments. The book is also the work of a goodFrenchman who realizes that no settlement can bedurable which does not safeguard the sacred rightsof the conquered peoples of Alsace-Lorraine, who arethe first victims of outraged justice. There lies theoriginality of the book. It reveals the new directionwhich public opinion and political thought are takingin contemporary France. The whole question of therelations between France and Germany is lifted to ahigher plane. We hear no more of the humiliationof France, of her pride and dignity, of rancour andrevenge. We hear less of the balance of militaryforce. The main question which is raised is a questionof moral principle and of international right.
The work of Monsieur Bourdon is not only a goodbook; it is also a brave deed. Too long has it beenthe fashion for French publicists to entrench themselvesbehind Gambetta’s phrase: “N’en parlerjamais, y penser toujours!” Silence may have beenthe best policy on the morrow of the catastrophe of1870, when one single indiscretion might have setEurope aflame. But after forty-four years, andunder entirely altered conditions, an ostrich policy ofreticence, a cowardly policy of mental reservation,cannot be the best means of bringing about asettlement.
Monsieur Bourdon has therefore chosen the boldercourse, which happens also to be the wiser course.He has broken down the barrier of fear and distrust.He has taken the first step. He has gone to Germanyin a spirit of frankness and conciliation. He hastried to get at her thoughts and afterthoughts. Hehas cross-examined the German people, and he hascross-examined them with consummate tact andskill. An unofficial ambassador of peace, he hasrevealed all the qualities of a diplomat, and he hasadded qualities which the diplomat does not oftenpossess—outspokenness and uprightness, a loyalregard for truth, and that moral preoccupation andthat delicate sense of international honour whichare generally alien to the official diplomatic mind.[191]
And the result of this searching inquiry is mostsatisfactory. Quite apart from the value of theopinions expressed, and of the author’s own opinion,the inquiry in itself is an historical document ofprime importance. Here we have before us at firsthand the public opinion of Germany. Nor is it theirresponsible opinion of anonymous scribblers, or theopinion of party politicians; it is the deliberate,reasoned opinion of some of the most distinguishedGerman readers in thought and action. Statesmenand diplomats, captains of industry and armycaptains, editors and financiers, all the professionsexcept the Church (a significant omission!), are representedin this survey of German opinion. Afterreading M. Bourdon’s book, no politician will henceforthbe allowed to plead as an excuse that he doesnot know what official and unofficial Germany thinks,and what she feels on the vital questions of foreignpolicy.
And perhaps the readers may carry away the impressionthat Germany feels more than she thinks;that she is carried away by prejudice, by currents andcross-currents of emotion, rather than led by generalprinciples and clear and sober thinking. I had askedone of the most eminent British publicists living towrite an introduction to the English translation ofM. Bourdon’s book which is to be published nextmonth by Messrs. Dent. But my friend answered[192]that he would willingly have written such an introductionif he could have agreed with the ideas of theFrench writer. Unfortunately, he did not see his wayto agree with Monsieur Bourdon. No purpose, heargued, could be served by cross-examining Germanopinion, for there was no German opinion. In vaindid Monsieur Bourdon claim to tell us what Germanythinks; the Germans were not educated to thinkpolitically. And there was the rub. There was noorganized public opinion, and even if there were, itcould only express itself, it could not press its demandsupon a despotic Government.
I do not here examine how much truth there maybe in my friend’s contention. But one fact mustcertainly strike the readers of M. Bourdon’s book.The present position is as ominous as it is bewilderingand unintelligible.
Monsieur Bourdon has proved once more thetremendous power of German militarism. Germanmilitarism seems to be bred in the bone of thePrussians, and has been inoculated into the Germanpeople. The army is the most popular service in thecountry. It provides an honourable career to tensof thousands of young men of the middle classesand of the aristocracy. At the same time, MonsieurBourdon points out that from the German point ofview it is one thing to be militarist, and another tobe warlike and bellicose. The Germans hold thatthe most confirmed militarist may be a convincedpacifist. The father of Frederick the Great, the[193]greatest militarist of the Hohenzollern Dynasty, theSergeant-King, was so attached to his army that henever employed it in active warfare, he never allowedit to fight a single battle, for fear of losing or spoilingso perfect an instrument.
But even granting this paradoxical thesis of thepacifism of German militarists, the situation remainssufficiently contradictory and distracting to the ordinarymind. Every representative German consultedby Monsieur Bourdon proclaims that Germany ispacific, that she wishes for peace, and that she needspeace for her industrial and commercial expansion.Yet we see her making gigantic preparations fora possible war. With a restless endeavour, and attremendous cost, we see her developing her warlikeresources. Every representative German insists onmaking platonic professions. Yet we do not hear ofa single statesman daring to take the necessary stepor to make the necessary sacrifices. No one seemsto understand that peace demands sacrifices quiteas heroic as war. No Bismarck of peace seems tobe strong enough to-day to put an end to the senselesswaste of national resources and misdirected energies.
The “German Enigma” of Monsieur Bourdon ismainly an objective, impartial, and impersonal study,and the author has been careful not to obtrude hisown private views. It is only in the last chapterthat he attempts to draw the lesson and point out theconclusion of his own inquiry. And his conclusionis an eloquent though restrained plea for a Franco-German[194]rapprochement, and in favour of the onlypolicy which will bring about that reconciliation.France, he argues, does not want a revision of theTreaty of Frankfurt. She does not want compensationor revenge. French history contains asufficiently brilliant roll of glorious military achievementsthat the French people may afford to forgetthe reverses and humiliations of 1870. A Frenchstatesman, on the eve of the Treaty of Frankfurt,made the rhetorical statement that France wouldnever surrender one stone of her fortresses nor oneinch of her territory. Animated by a very differentspirit, modern French statesmen do not claim backto-day one inch of lost territory. All that the Frenchpeople demand is that the claims of justice shall beheard, that Alsace-Lorraine shall cease to groanunder the heel of an arbitrary despot, that Alsace-Lorraineshall be governed according to her ownlaws, that the Alsatians shall be treated as a freepeople, and not as conquered subjects.
And that one sole possibly solution is also the onlysimple solution. That solution would involve nosacrifice of pride or dignity to either nation. Francewould not make any surrender to Germany, andGermany would not make any concession to France.Both would surrender to the demands of internationaljustice.
And the solution of the autonomy of Alsace-Lorrainewould be in the interests of all partiesconcerned, as well as of European civilization.[195]France and Germany would be delivered from anightmare which for forty-four years has paralyzedtheir activities. One hundred and ten millions ofthe two most progressive nations of the Continentwould cease to oppose each other in every quarter ofthe globe.
Alsace-Lorraine would cease to be the festeringwound on the open frontier of the two countries, butwould once more discharge her historical functionof being the connecting link between Latin andTeutonic peoples.
And the whole of Europe would be deliveredfrom the crushing burden of military expenditure.Hundreds of millions at present wasted on armamentswould be devoted to productive purposes. Commerceand industry would receive an impetus whichin one generation would renew the face of Europe.Reaction would collapse with the disappearance ofmilitary predominance, and European Governmentscould devote themselves whole-heartedly to theanxious problems clamouring for a solution, andto the momentous tasks of popular education andsocial reform which are waiting to be accomplished.
[22] Georges Bourdon, “L’Enigme Allemande,” Librairie Plon,Paris.
A few months ago[23] it was my good fortune to discussthe international situation with Monsieur EmileOllivier, the veteran statesman, the Napoleonic PrimeMinister with the light heart whose name will ever beidentified, and identified unjustly, with a disastrouswar. A few days ago it was again my privilege todiscuss the European situation with another Continentalstatesman whose name will for ever beidentified with the cause of peace. I am not atliberty to disclose the identity of the illustriousspeaker. Suffice it to say that he is a statesmanwhose every word compels attention all over theworld and imposes respect, a man of infinite wit,of penetrating intellect, and whose commandingpersonality has on more than one occasion directedthe course of world politics, and has helped to saveEurope from an impending catastrophe. For morethan an hour the speaker discussed with me, if analmost uninterrupted monologue may be called adiscussion, the anxious problems of modern Germany.Without reticence or afterthought, he gave me the benefitof his mature wisdom and of a lifelong experience.
You ask me to give you the key of the internationalsituation. That key is in Germany, or rather inBerlin. For Prussia controls Germany, and willmore and more control it in the future.
The Germans are nervous and uneasy, and that iswhy they ceaselessly increase their armaments. Theyare nervous because the whole European situation hasbeen radically changed, to their detriment. Thewhole balance of power has been upset by the resultsof the Balkan War. They are nervous because theyare tragically isolated. Germany has no friends, noallies, and has therefore to defend herself on two, orrather on three, fronts. She has to defend herselfat once against France, against Russia, and againstEngland.
It is true that the Triple Alliance still subsists.But it subsists only in name. For Germany cancount neither on Italy nor on Austria. She cannotcount on Italy. For Italy is a hopeless coquette,and she transfers her erratic affections wherever herinterest leads her. Nor can Germany count onAustria. No longer can Austria be called the “loyalsecundant.” For Austria has ceased to be controlledby her Teutonic population. She is at the mercy ofthe Slavs, both inside and outside of her empire.She is abandoned by Roumania, who is seeking thesupport of Russia. She is detested by the Serbians,who have the best organized army in the Balkans.It would have been the vital interest of Austria towin over Serbia, and it would have been so easy to[198]win her over. An equitable treaty of commerce, theconcession of a port on the Adriatic, and Serbiawould have become the ally of Austria. Serbia wasprepared to forget the shameful policy hithertopursued by Austria. All that was required wassome give-and-take, some fairness.
But that sense of fairness, of international equity,is exactly what both Prussia and Austria are solamentably deficient in. The Austrians, like thePrussians, may be individually most pleasant. Politicallyand collectively they are consistently disagreeable.They never seem to understand the first principleof diplomacy—namely, that no treaty can be of anypermanent value which is only advantageous toone side.
And then there is the utter tactlessness of theGermans. It is partly explainable by their belief inforce. When you believe in force you do not troubleto persuade or conciliate. It is also partly explainableby the absence in Prussia of an old traditionof refinement and culture. As Bismarck once saidcynically and frankly to Thiers: “Mon cher ami!Nous autres Prussiens, nous sommes encore desbarbares” (We Prussians, we are still barbarians).
The Prussian, therefore, in diplomacy is a blundererand a bully. He has the art of making himself unpleasant.And he seems to enjoy doing so. It issignificant that the Germans are the only people whohave coined a special word to express the pleasure[199]felt by inflicting pain. The curious and expressiveGerman wordSchadenfreude cannot be translated intoany other language.
And that is why in politics the Germans fail tomake friends. They are feared by all nations.They are respected by some. They are loved bynone.
And they fail to make friends at home quite aslamentably as abroad. They fail to win over thenations living under their own German laws. Theyare making such inconceivable blunders as the expropriationof the Poles and the colonization schemeof Posen. It is a striking fact that with the singlepossible exception of the Galicians—who fear Russiaeven more than they detest Austria—there is not asingle non-German-speaking people either in theGerman Empire or in the Austrian Empire who hasaccepted the rule of the Teuton. Alsatian andDane, Pole and Tchech, Croatian and Roumanian—allthe subject races are equally disaffected. Theymay disagree in everything, but they agree in theiropposition to Teutonic rule.
What a tragedy this German world empire of thetwentieth century! Once Germany was made up oflittle cities and great Universities. To-day she ismade up of big cities and impotent Universities.Where are the spiritual and artistic glories of thepast? The moral and intellectual influence ofGermany has reached its lowest ebb.[200]
It is this striking isolation of Germany whichcompels her to arm. On the other hand, there canbe no doubt that this very isolation is making forpeace. Nobody either in Europe or Germany wantswar. Neither the Emperor nor his Ministers wantwar. War is too great a risk. It is too much of agamble. In warfare it is always the unexpected thathappens. War may be the national industry ofPrussia. But it is the mostspeculative of all industries.
At the same time, whilst we are all wishing forpeace, we must ever be on our guard. With themilitarist tendencies of a bureaucratic and despoticState, with the economic pressure of an increasingpopulation, one is always at the mercy of an incident.Twenty-five years ago the Schnaebele incident broughtEurope to the verge of war. Similar frontier incidentsin this age of aeroplanes can happen any day. Theydid happen yesterday. They did not lead to seriousconsequences. They might lead to fatal consequencesto-morrow. They might be magnified by a sensationalPress and by bellicose partisans such as thePan-Germanists. The Pan-Germanists may be onlya small minority to-day, but they are noisy, and theyare just the kind of people ever looking out for justsuch “unpleasant incidents.”
Yes, let us be on our guard! Let us not trust toa false sense of security, and let us not put our trustin politics and politicians. Politics are so petty, andpoliticians so impotent. How many so-called statesmen[201]are there to-day who have the courage of theirconvictions, and who would not be carried away bythe impulses and emotions of the moment?
Such were the weighty words of the Europeanstatesman. They were uttered without animus andwithout passion. They were uttered with the serenedetachment of the philosopher and of the experiencedman of the world. And they express the deliberateopinions of a confirmed pacifist. And they expressthe substantial truth.
It would be well if our German friends wouldponder and meditate those sober and sobering utterances.It would be well if they would try and givetheir own explanation of their tragic isolation andof their universal political unpopularity. It wouldbe well if they in turn would ask themselves whypolitical Germany is left without a friend in the wideworld? As Maximilian Harden once said: “Unslebt kein Freund auf der weiten Welt.” Might notthe result of such sobering reflections be to inducethe Germans to turn over a new leaf? Might it nothelp to precipitate the downfall of a medieval militarybureaucracy? And might it not help to falsify theominous prophecy of our European statesman thatPrussia will more and more control the politics of theGerman Empire?
We loved the glorious Germany of the past. Letthe Germany of to-morrow make herself again ascordially liked as she is feared to-day. But let herunderstand that no nation will allow herself to be[202]bullied into sympathy. Sympathy must be spontaneous.In the words of one of her greatest thinkers:“Die Liebe ist wie der Glaube, man kann sie nichterzwingen” (Love is like Faith. You cannot secureit by force).
[23] Written in the spring of 1914.
The complicated and contradictory relations betweenRussia and Germany can be summed up very briefly.On the one hand, there existed before the war theclosest intercourse between the Russian and theGerman Courts, and that close intercourse extendedto the army, to the bureaucracy, to the Universities,to the industrial and commercial classes. On theother hand, the Russian and the German people aremutually repelled. There is a temperamental antagonismbetween the two nations, between the dourdisciplined Prussian and the easygoing disciplinedRussian. In the province of ideas, of art and literature,French influence is dominant amongst theintellectual and in the upper classes, but as literaturecounts for very little, and as trade and industry, asthe bureaucracy and the Court, count for a verygreat deal, and as all these social and politicalforces hitherto were almost entirely controlled bythe Germans, it may be said that before thewar German influence was supreme in the RussianEmpire.[204]
Until Peter the Great, the Romanov Family wasa national dynasty. It had remained national fromsheer necessity, as no European Court would havecared to intermarry with Tatar and BarbarianPrinces. Even at the end of Peter the Great’s reignthe prestige of Russia had scarcely asserted itself inthe politics of the West. Peter the Great expresseda keen desire to pay a visit to the Court of Louis XIV.He was politely given to understand that his visitwould not be acceptable, even as a poor relation willbe told that his visit is not welcome to a kinsman inexalted position. After the death of Louis, the Tsaragain asked to be received at Versailles. This timehis overtures were accepted, but even at the Court ofthe Regent his visit caused the greatest embarrassmentto the masters of ceremonies. The situationwas a tragi-comic one. French etiquette could notdecide whether the Tatar Prince was to receive thehonours which belong of right only to the ruler of acivilized people.
For the first time in modern Russian history,Peter the Great’s daughter, Anne, married a GermanPrince in 1725. With that year begins that closedynastic alliance with the German Courts which haslasted until our own day. Germany has been carryingon a most thriving export trade of Princes andPrincesses with almost every European monarchy—anexport trade of which she is reaping the enormouspolitical advantages in the present crisis. But inRussia alone she has obtained a monopoly of this[205]royal export trade.All the Russian Tsars havemarried German Princesses. For one hundred andfifty years the rule suffered no exception untilAlexander II. married a daughter of the DanishDynasty, which itself is in reality the German Dynastyof Oldenburg.
I need not emphasize the supreme importance ofthose close family relations between the Courts ofRussia and Germany,and especially between the Courtsof Russia and Prussia. It is the peculiarity of anautocratic government that the smallest causes areproductive of the greatest consequences, and amongstthose smaller causes none are likely to produce morefar-reaching results than the personal likes anddislikes of the ruler and his family. In the Empireof the Tsars the sympathies of the ruler and ofthe Imperial family for a hundred and fifty yearshave generally been German. Women have no lessinfluence in Russia than in other countries, and asevery Russian Princess has, for a hundred and fiftyyears, been German in origin, German by training,German by pride of birth, German by prejudice, theTeutonic influences have necessarily been supreme inthe Russian Court. Nor must we forget that everyGerman Princess coming to Petrograd would bringwith her a numerous suite of ladies-in-waiting andCourt officials, so that the German Court colonywas automatically increasing. Indeed, it is nomere chance that the capital, the military harbour,and the chief Imperial residences should all haveGerman names—Kronstadt, Oranienbaum, Schluessenburg,Petersburg, and Peterhof. Peterhof hasbeen the Russian Potsdam. Petersburg has been[206]the outpost of Germany in the Russian Empire,thefeste Burg of Prussia until the eve of thewar.
From what has been said, it is obvious that thenational Romanov Dynasty, founded in 1613 byMichael Romanov, Patriarch of all the Russias,ceased to be a Romanov Dynasty at the death ofEmpress Elizabeth in 1761. With Peter III. it is aGerman Dynasty which ascends the throne. Peter III.,son of a Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, is a Romanov inthe proportion of one-half; Paul, son of a Princessof Anhalt-Zerbst, in the proportion of one-fourth;Alexander I. and Nicholas I., sons of a Princessof Würtemberg, in the proportion of one-eighth;Alexander II., son of a Princess of Hohenzollern, tothe extent of one-sixteenth; Alexander III., son of aGrand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the extent ofone thirty-second; and the late ruler, Nicholas II.,who married a Princess of the House of Oldenburg,to the extent of one sixty-fourth. One sixty-fourthof the blood of the late Tsar is Russian Romanovblood. In the proportion of sixty-three sixty-fourthsit is the blood of Holstein, of Anhalt, of Oldenburg,of Hesse, of Würtemberg, of Hohenzollern, whichflows through the veins of the late Emperor of allthe Russias.
The history of Russia proves only too conclusivelythat again and again the national interests of Russiahave been sacrificed to the German dynastic influences.[207]At the end of the Seven Years’ War, Frederickthe Great was at his last gasp. Prussia was on theverge of ruin.The Russian Army had entered Berlin;the power of the new military monarchy had beentotally broken at Kunersdorf. The death of Elizabethand the accession of her mad nephew, Peter III.,retrieved a desperate situation. For the mad nephewwas a German Prince, a Duke of Holstein, and apassionate admirer of Frederick the Great. Peter III.was murdered in 1762. He only reigned a fewmonths, but he reigned sufficiently long to savePrussia from destruction and to surrender all theadvantages secured by Russian triumphs and dearlypaid for by Russian blood.
There is no more fantastic fairy-tale and there is nomore fascinating drama than the life-story of Catherinethe Great, which recently has been so brilliantly toldby Mr. Francis Gribble. A Cinderella amongst Germanroyalties, a pauper Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst,Catherine became the mightiest potentate of her age.Although the nominee of Frederick the Great, shepursued consistently a national Russian policy. Andshe had good reasons for doing so. For no thronewas less secure than the throne of the Romanovs.She had had to remove her husband by murder forfear of being removed herself. She continued to besurrounded by a rabble of unscrupulous adventurersand intriguers. Her only safety lay in becoming apatriotic Russian, and in seeking the support ofRussian sentiment and Russian opinion. Whilst[208]Frederick the Great surrounded himself with Frenchadvisers, and contemptuously refused even to speakthe German language; whilst he declared to theGerman scholar who presented him with a copy ofthe “Nibelungen Lied” that this national Germanepic was not worth a pipe of tobacco, Catherine theGreat systematically encouraged Russian literature.Whilst Frederick the Great remained the consistentAtheist on the throne, Catherine the Great professedthe utmost zeal for Russian Orthodoxy. All throughher reign she avoided as far as possible a conflict withFrederick and his successor. She divided with themthe spoils of Poland, or, as Frederick the Great putit in his edifying theological language, she partookof the Eucharistic body of the Polish kingdom inunholy communion with Prussia and Austria. ButCatherine saw to it that Russia secured the greaterpart of the spoils.
There is a curious and uncanny similarity betweenthe character and the reign of Peter III. and thecharacter and reign of his son, Paul I. Both reignswere brief, yet both reigns had an incalculable influenceon European affairs. Both rulers sacrificednational interests to dynastic interests. Both rulerswere insane, and both rulers engaged in insane enterprises.Both father and son were murdered with thecomplicity or connivance of their own family. TheRussian armies, on the advent of Peter III., hadsecured and achieved a dramatic victory over Prussia,but the admiration of Peter III. for Frederick the[209]Great prevented the Russians from reaping the fruitsof victory. Suvoroff crossed the Alps and achievedan equally sensational victory over France, butPaul I. was prevented from taking advantage of hisvictories by his admiration for Napoleon.
The reign of Alexander I. once more strikinglyillustrates the enormous part which subterraneanGerman influences have played in the foreign policyof Russia. After the costly victories of Eylauand Friedland, Napoleon I. had concluded withAlexander I. the Peace of Tilsit. The treaty wasfatal to Europe, for it divided the Continent practicallybetween the Russian and French Empires. But itwas highly advantageous to Russia, and enormouslyadded to Russian power and Russian prestige.
It was certainly in Russia’s interest to maintainthe Alliance. It was broken largely through one ofthose small dynastic incidents which are of such vastimportance under an absolute despotism. One ofNapoleon’s main objects was to establish a NapoleonicDynasty and to be adopted by marriage into one ofthe ruling families of Europe. The Corsican parvenupassionately desired a matrimonial alliance with theHouse of Romanov, and repeatedly applied for thehand of one of Alexander’s sisters; the dowagerTsarina, Alexander’s mother, a daughter of the Kingof Würtemberg, as persistently refused. She had allthe pride of birth of a German Princess, and all thehatred of a reactionary against the armed soldier of[210]the Revolution. Foiled at the Court of Petersburg,Napoleon was more successful at the Court of Vienna.A few months after Napoleon’s last overtures had beenrejected by Russia, the Habsburgs, who, after theBourbons, were the most august, the most ancientdynasty of Europe, eagerly accepted what theRomanovs had refused. The war of 1812 withRussia was the result of that pro-German policy ofthe Russian Court.
During the reigns of Nicholas I. and Alexander II.the German-Austrian influence reached its zenith atthe Court of Petersburg. Nicholas I. was the brother-in-lawof the Prussian Hohenzollern. An able andan honest man in his private relations, he was inhis political capacity a Prussian martinet, as evenTreitschke is compelled to admit, and he organizedhis Empire on the strictest Frederician principles.The Court, the Army, and the bureaucracy werePrussianized as they had never been before. AGerman bureaucrat, Nesselrode, who could not evenspeak the Russian language, for forty years controlledas Foreign Minister the policy of the Russian Empire.Even as his grandfather, Peter III., even as hisbrother, Alexander I., had saved Prussia from destruction,so Nicholas I. saved Austria from a similarfate. Francis Joseph had ascended a throne shakento its foundations. Hungary was in open rebellion.The young Austrian Emperor appealed to Russiafor help. Nicholas I. sent an army to quell the revolution,and established his cousin on the Hungarian[211]throne. It is unnecessary to add that Francis Josephwas as loyal and as grateful to Russia as Frederickthe Great had been!
Alexander I. had refused to accept Napoleon I. asa brother-in-law. Even so did Nicholas I. refuse torecognize Napoleon III. as Emperor of the French.It was a gratuitous insult inspired by Prussia; it wasopposed to Russian interests, and it was one of themain causes of the Crimean War.
Under Alexander II. the alliance of the three reactionaryempires of Central Europe was welded evenmore firmly than under his predecessor. Bismarck,during his tenure of the Prussian Embassy at Petersburg,was the chosen favourite of the Russian Court,and if he had chosen could have become a Ministerof the Tsar. An understanding with Russia becamethe chief dogma of his political creed, and it remainedso until the end. It was Bismarck’s adherence tothe Russian-Prussian Alliance which was one of thecauses of his dismissal.
Alexander II. did nothing to guard against theGerman peril. He might have been the umpire ofCentral Europe, as Alexander I. had been fifty yearsbefore. He demanded no compensation for theenormous accession of power and territory whichGermany had received through the victorious wars of1863, 1866, and 1870. He insisted on no guarantees.When, after Sedan, Thiers came to St. Petersburg toobtain the intervention of the Russian Empire, hewas dismissed with empty words. One year after[212]Thiers’s fruitless journey, Emperor William paid anofficial visit to his nephew Alexander II., and theTsar once more proclaimed the indissoluble solidarityof Russia with Germany. Until the end of his reignthe German-Austrian-Russian Alliance, the famousdynastic Alliance of the Three Emperors, remainedthe keystone of European policy and the mainstayof Russian reaction.
The influence of Germany at the Russian Court wasstrengthened by the influence of Germany on theRussian bureaucracy. An agricultural communitywithout a middle class, Russia has had to recruit herCivil Services almost entirely from the outside andmainly from Germany, and more especially from theGerman Baltic provinces of Esthonia, Livonia, andCourland. Teutonic barons from those Balticprovinces have filled the higher ranks of the DiplomaticService and of the Civil Service for a hundredand fifty years. The Russian Tsars found theGerman barons far more serviceable tools than theRussian boiars. In a previous age one Emperorafter another had been removed by a rebelliousaristocracy. The highest nobles in the land had beenimplicated in the Decabrist conspiracy at the end ofAlexander I.’s reign. Even under Alexander II.there were always a few members of the nobility tobe found as accomplices in the revolutionary plots.But there never was one single German from theBaltic provinces implicated in a conspiracy againstreaction. It is easy to understand, therefore, why a[213]Russian autocrat should have preferred the servicesof the German Baltic barons. The Russian noblemanis casual, lavish, a bad economist, easygoing, generous,and he is corrupt because easygoing and generous.He is also much more independent. The Junker ispunctual, precise, disciplined, generally poor, alwaysambitious. He is also tolerably honest. He is theideal bureaucrat.
German influence has been no less dominant inthe Russian academies and in scientific institutions.The Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg wasorganized on the pattern of the Academy of Berlin.It was an official institution with high privileges, andit remained consistently German. Until recently itsproceedings were published in the German language,and German scientists were invariably preferredrather than Russian scientists. Mendelieff, one ofthe most creative scientific minds of his generation,was a member of every European academy exceptthe Academy of Petersburg.
The Germans have been an even greater power inthe Russian Universities. They took full advantageof the prestige which German science had acquired inEurope, and they largely filled the ranks of the liberalprofessions. German doctors, German veterinarysurgeons, GermanFeldschers, German foresters,German engineers, were to be found in every part ofthe Empire. A casual reading of the Post Officedirectories of Moscow, or Petersburg, or Kiev, providesa most instructive commentary on the extent of theGerman domination.[214]
Securely entrenched in the Russian Court, in theArmy, in the bureaucracy, in the Universities, in theDiplomatic Service, the Germans secured a no lesscommanding influence in trade and industry. Aswe have already pointed out, Russia, until recentyears, had remained an agricultural country withouta middle class. The trade remained almost entirelyin foreign hands. Already in the Middle AgesRussian cities, like Novgorod, were affiliated to theGerman Hanseatic League. In the sixteenth centuryadventurous English explorers and traders, whoseexploits are amongst the most thrilling of Hakluyt’svoyages, tried to oust their German competitors, butthey utterly failed. The Russians themselves areexcellent traders, and the merchant guilds of Moscowhave been for centuries a powerful commercialorganization. Even to-day you will meet in Moscowunassuming Russian merchants leading the simplestof lives and possessed of enormous wealth. But theRussian merchant is generally conservative, un-enterprising,a bad linguist, and servilely attachedto ancient usages. He is scarcely a match for theforeigner. In recent years British and Belgiantraders as well as Jews and Armenians have sharedin the enormous trade of the Russian Empire,butthe Germans have secured the lion’s share.
And what is true of Russian trade is equally trueof Russian industry. The liberal economic policy ofWitte has created in one generation powerful industrialcentres in Central Russia, and especially in[215]Poland. Here, again, the Germans have benefitedmore than all their competitors together. Lodz, the“Manchester of Russian Poland,” has ceased to beeither Polish or Russian, and has become a Germanmanufacturing town. Caprivi, Bismarck’s successor,negotiated with the Russian Government a treatyof commerce which gave enormous advantages toGerman industry, and if the German Governmenthad continued to show the wisdom of Bismarck andCaprivi, Germany would certainly have profited morethan any other country by the commercial expansionof the Russian Empire.
It might have been expected that a Germaninfluence so absolutely supreme in every sphere ofsociety, in every walk of life, should have extendedto the lower classes. But the common people werenever affected by German methods and remaineduntainted by the German spirit. To the Russianmoujik, the German remained theNiemets, themute, the alien enemy. The Russian peasant, withhis simple ways and his child-like faith, a mysticand an idealist, has an instinctive antipathy tothe modern Prussian, who is an implacable realist,selfish, calculating, and aggressive. The persistencewith which the Russian people have resisted andescaped Prussian influence is not the least convincingproof of the soundness of the Slav character.[216]
We have seen German influence supreme in theprovince of the practical, the tangible, the useful.It is all the more remarkable that it should be insignificantin the sphere of the ideal and of thebeautiful. In Art and Literature the influence ofGermany has been purely superficial, although thebeautiful Russian language has often been spoiledby the influence of a cumbrous German syntax.With the exception of Nietzsche, no German writerhas left his mark on Russian literature. The literaryinfluence of Great Britain has been much moreextensive, and has grown enormously during thelast generation. But it is the literature of Francewhich has been the dominant factor in theliterary life of modern Russia. The fascination ofFrench culture has been as old as Russian culture.Catherine II. was the friend of Diderot and Voltaire,and herself translated French masterpieces intoRussian. The French language has been the languageof diplomacy and society. Readers of “War andPeace” will remember how the noblemen of thePetersburg salons denounced the French usurper inthe language of Voltaire.
We have sufficiently proved that Germany hasbeen a formidable factor in the whole past historyof the Russian Empire. We may hope that afterthe war German influence will be a thing of the past.[217]After the war it is not German political ideas andGerman institutions, but French and British ideasand institutions which will mould the destinies ofthe Russian Empire. The elective affinities betweenthe Russian democracy and the French and Britishdemocracies will assert themselves and will eliminatethe mischievous and reactionary influence of Germany.
We have seen how entirely German power has beenartificial and imposed from above, how it has beenthe outcome of the dynastic connection.But in themeantime the German influence supreme before thewar still subsists and still constitutes a danger whichit would be extremely unwise and unstatesmanlike toignore or to under-rate. We must therefore guardourselves, so that when the day of settlement comesthe subtle and subterranean German forces shallnot make themselves felt, and that the TeutonicMonarchies shall be frustrated in their supremeeffort to retain a power which has been so fatal tothe liberties of Europe and to the free developmentof the Russian people.
In the year of grace 1878, after the great Turkish-Russianwar, a young and unknown Prussian diplomatof twenty-nine years of age called Bernhard vonBülow found himself, as assistant to his father, theForeign Secretary of the German Empire, suddenlysummoned to co-operate in the making of a newEurope. In the same year, on the same arena, anequally unknown young Scotch politician calledArthur James Balfour, born in the same year, 1849,also found himself, as assistant to his uncle, LordSalisbury, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom,unexpectedly chosen to play the identical part of aninternational peacemaker. And now, after a lapseof thirty-eight years, the two erstwhile Secretariesof the Congress of Berlin, to-day the only survivingstatesmen of that momentous crisis, Prince vonBülow and Mr. Arthur James Balfour, are about tomeet in another European Congress, and be calledupon once more to recast the map of the world.But this time the Scotsman and the German will meetno more as Allies working out a common policy.[219]They will meet as the leading champions of hostileand irreconcilable world policies, united only in ajoint endeavour to undo the evil work of Bismarckand Beaconsfield which claimed to bring to Europe“peace with honour,” and which ultimately broughtEurope nothing but war with dishonour.
Prince von Bülow’s whole career has been onesteady and rapid ascent to high office and exaltedhonour. Before his fall he had earned the well-deservednickname of “Bernhard the Lucky.” Heseemed to have found in his cradle all the gifts of thefairies. His most striking characteristic is an amazingand totally un-German versatility and resourcefulness.As a soldier he volunteered in the Franco-GermanWar, and retired from service as a Prussian Lieutenant.As a diplomat he has occupied responsiblepositions in every capital of Europe except London,and the exception, by the way, is probably the reasonwhy he has always been less familiar with the Englishmind than with the Continental mind. An unrivalledParliamentary tactician as well as a persuasiveParliamentary orator, he managed with even morethan the skill of Mr. Asquith or Mr. Balfour themost unmanageable representative assembly of theContinent, and for twelve years he played off oneagainst the other the ten or more parties of theReichstag. As Fourth Chancellor of the New GermanEmpire he has been associated with all the leadingmeasures of the “new course,” and he succeeded forten years in retaining the confidence and affectionate[220]regard of the most fickle and most despotic of masters.A man of the world and a patron of learning and art,he has enlisted all the graces and amenities of sociallife in the service of his ambition.
Like most of the men who have built up the Prussianpower; like Stein, who came from Nassau; like Moltke,who came from Denmark; like Treitschke, who camefrom Saxony, Prince von Bülow is not a Prussian.Like Blücher, his family originates from the GrandDuchy of Mecklenburg, that strange paradise of amedieval and feudal Junkerthum. But, like mostof the naturalized servants of the Hohenzollern, vonBülow proved even more Prussian than any nativeof Pomerania or Brandenburg. The son of one ofBismarck’s trusted lieutenants, he always remaineda loyal pupil of the Iron Chancellor. It is significantthat the first visit which Bülow paid on his accessionto power was a visit to the fallen statesman. He wasbrought up on Bismarckian traditions and ideals.He is not a creative genius like the hermit of Friedrichsruhe.He has been accused of being a trimmer,but he was a trimmer like the great Lord Burleigh,always keeping in mind the final goal to be reached.He had to work with different materials and underconditions entirely different from those which prevailedunder Bismarck. He had to embark on aWeltpolitik, whereas Bismarck was content with aContinental policy. He had to initiate the colonialand naval policy of William, while Bismarck systematicallykept clear of colonial ventures. But as far[221]as circumstances permitted, the “new course” ofBülow was but the continuation of the old course ofBismarck. Like Bismarck, he fought the Socialists.Like Bismarck, he in turn fought and conciliated theClericals. Like Bismarck, he enforced in Poland theinexorable policy of expropriation and appropriation.Like Bismarck, he remained true to the Austrianalliance. Like Bismarck, he tried to work in closeco-operation with Russia, and tried to build up againthe reactionary alliance of the three Central Empires.And in these many difficult tasks, which had becomemuch more difficult even than in the ’seventies or’eighties, Bülow was as little hampered as his predecessorby any moral principles or scruples. Heproved even more Machiavellian than his predecessor,adhering as steadfastly to the same implacablerealism.
But, if Prince von Bülow has revealed the same aimsand is imbued with the same political philosophyas Bismarck, he has tried to attain his end by verydifferent means. He has none of the cynical sincerityof his master. Bismarck carried into diplomacy thedirectness and brutality of the soldier. Bülow introducedinto politics the tortuous practices of Italy. Hereminds one of Cavour much more than of the master-builderof German unity. Whilst Bismarck won hisspurs in the embassies of Germany and Russia, Bülowreceived his main training as Ambassador in Latincountries. He served for five years in Paris. InBucharest he imbibed the Byzantine influences of[222]the East. He spent six years in the Eternal City,which for three thousand years has been the centre ofstatecraft, and which even to-day remains the besttraining-school of diplomacy. His marriage withan Italian Princess is another indication of thenatural affinities of his temperament, and an additionalproof that he constitutionally preferred the subtlemethods of Rome to the more brutal methods ofBrandenburg. Bismarck was always using threatswhich he had no intention of carrying out. Bülowis equally fond of using promises which he is as littledisposed to fulfil. Bismarck was always showingthe mailed fist. Bülow prefers to show the velvetglove. Bismarck wielded the sword of the berserker.Bülow prefers the rapier of the fencer. Bismarckwas stern, irascible, uncontrolled, titanic, and hiswhole career was one long and hard struggle againstbitter enemies. Bülow was ever amiable, courteous,smiling, suave, patient, elusive. He managed equallyto conciliate the Kaiser and Bismarck, Herr Hardenand theKölnische Volkszeitung, the Catholics andthe Jews, the industrials and the agrarians. Whenthe hour of disfavour came, Bismarck retired with hismastiffs among the pine-woods of Lauenburg, nursinghis rancour and revenge. Bülow retired with quietand graceful dignity among the statues and theflowers of the Villa Malta.
In no other aspect of his versatile career did Princevon Bülow show more resourcefulness than in hisskilful handling of the Press. He was the first[223]German statesman who knew how to discipline andto exploit public opinion in the interests of Imperialpolicy. It is true that already Bismarck had madefrequent use of the Press as an instrument of government,as is abundantly shown by his close associationwith Lothar Bucher, with his famulus Moritz Busch,and with Maximilian Harden. But Bismarck, whilstusing the journalists, profoundly despised them,with the result that “Bismarck’s Reptile Press”became a byword in Europe. Under Bülow’s régimethe humble pressman rose to influence and affluenceand basked in Ministerial favour. With the assistanceof Mr. Hammann, Prince von Bülow made theBerlin Press Bureau a sinister power in Europe aswell as in Germany; for the Chancellor was as anxiousto conciliate the foreign journalist as the German.M. Huret sang his praises in theFigaro. Even thearch-Germanophobe Monsieur André Tardieu wascoaxed into writing a whole volume of panegyric onthe irresistible Chancellor. Before the caprice ofhis Imperial master sent him into premature retirement,Bülow had succeeded in marshalling all theintellectual forces of the German Empire. WhilstBismarck had frittered away his energies quarrellingwith von Virchow, with Windhorst, and with theprofessors of the National Liberal party, Bülow hadmanaged to make the shining luminaries of theUniversities, the Harnacks, the Schmollers, and theDernburgs, into the most enthusiastic advocatesof his policy.[224]
There are few more bewildering subjects to thestudent of politics than the many concatenations ofevents which brought about the present worldcatastrophe. If that fateful interview had not beenpublished in theDaily Telegraph, there would havebeen no political hurricane in Germany. If therehad been no hurricane, Prince von Bülow would nothave fallen from power. If Prince von Bülow hadnot fallen from power, there would probably havebeen no world war. It is certain that Bülow’s retirementfrom office in 1909 was a disaster to the GermanEmpire. It is equally certain that his return tooffice in 1914 and his peace mission to Italy was anominous danger to Europe. And it is also certainthat he will be even more dangerous to Europe in theeventful days to come when he will be called back tooffice, and be once more the leader and spokesman ofGerman policy. In the future Congress which willliquidate the world war Bülow will be the greatestasset of the enemy. In the Congress of BerlinBismarck, towering like a giant, dictated his policyto subservient Europe. The day of German hegemonyis past, and no German plenipotentiary will be ableagain to impose his will by the same methods. Butthe resources of diplomacy will be all the morenecessary to the German Empire in the future settlement,and of the art of diplomacy Bülow is perhapsthe greatest master that the world has seen sincethe days of Talleyrand. It is highly doubtful whetherthere is any statesman amongst the Allies who[225]possesses to the same extent those special characteristicswhich will win victory in the internationalarena. If high moral ideals and perfect politicalintegrity were the qualities most valuable to thediplomatist, Viscount Grey and Mr. Balfour wouldbe more than a match for Prince von Bülow; but ifan intimate knowledge of the European chess-boardand of the psychology of European politics, if infinitewit, if nimbleness and ingenuity, are the qualitieswhich are likely to decide the issue, Prince von Bülowwill prove indeed a formidable opponent. It isalmost inevitable that the European Powers shallenter the future Congress with different aims and withdivergent policies. And one needs be no prophet topredict that it will be Bülow’s object to play off onePower against another; even as for twenty years heplayed off one party against another in the Reichstag,so he will play off Serbia against Italy, and Italyagainst France, and Russia against England. Inthose unavoidable conflicting interests of the belligerentPowers Bülow will seek his opportunity.It will be for the Allies to foresee and to forestallthe danger. Let the Allies enter the Congress witha clearly defined and settled policy. Let them composetheir differences before they meet their opponents.Then, but only then, will there be no scope for theuncanny virtuosity of Prince von Bülow. Only onthose terms will Viscount Grey and Jules Cambonand Sasonov defeat the manœuvres of the ItalianizedPrussian Machiavelli and frustrate the hopes of“Bernhard the Lucky.”
Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg is to-day the mosttragic figure amongst the statesmen of Europe. Forthree years he has borne a crushing burden, a burdenwhich even Bismarck, the man of blood, was unableto bear in the piping days of peace; a burden fromwhich the Iron Chancellor had to seek periodicalliberation amidst the heather and the pine-forestsof his native Brandenburg. As Prime Minister ofPrussia, as Chancellor of the German Empire, asForeign Secretary of the Teutonic Alliance, he hasto keep a firm grip of all the threads, both of internaland of external policy. Distracted between Catholicsand Protestants, between agrarians and industrials,between Germany and Austria, he has been made responsiblefor all the blunders of his subordinates. Arich man, and the scion of an historic house, he hasled the life of a galley-slave; an honest man, he hasbeen doomed to perpetual prevarication; a humaneman, he has had to condone every atrocity; an independentman, he must cringe before his master; apeaceful man, he must submit to the continuation[227]of insensate slaughter; a highly gifted intellectual,he has had to pursue a policy of insane stupidity.Twenty-five years ago a professor of the Universityof Munich, Dr. Quidde, compared the Kaiser toCaligula. The analogy between William and Caligulaor Nero points to another analogy, that betweenHerr von Bethmann-Hollweg and Seneca, the ill-fatedcounsellor of the Cæsars. Read in theAnnalsof Tacitus the speech of Seneca to Nero, and youwill perhaps understand the position of Herr vonBethmann-Hollweg in the Imperial Palace of Potsdam.
The internal political crisis in Germany, whichstarted at the beginning of last autumn, has come toa head because the Chancellor will not speak out.There was a time when political crises in Germanywere due, not to the silence of the German rulers,but to their utterances and indiscretions. In recentmonths the Kaiser, the man of the three hundreduniforms and of the three thousand speeches, hascommitted no such indiscretions as marked his reignfrom his ascent to the throne; he has been almostas reticent as his unhappy father, who did not speakbecause he had cancer in the throat. And now thesilver-tongued von Bethmann-Hollweg has also discoveredthe political virtue of silence. The peoplehave been loudly clamouring for a few words ofcomfort, but above the thunder of the distant gunswe only hear the scribblers of a servile Press, who arebeating the air with their croakings.[228]
Why this ominous, obstinate, sphinx-like silenceof the Chancellor, more pregnant with meaning thanthe most eloquent speeches? It would be so easyfor so resourceful a man to utter a few oracularsentences, a few ambiguous phrases, a few patriotictrumpet-calls. Was not the last great speech whichhe delivered in the Reichstag covered with franticapplause? But the days are past for ambiguousutterances, however patriotic, however oracular.The Chancellor knows that any clear, outspokenutterance on the peace aims of the German Governmentwould seal the doom of the Government; heknows that any statement of terms would reveal theglaring discrepancy between those terms and thesolemn promises so often made to the German people.The people still passionately believe in the promisesand assurance of an early and final victory. Onlysuch a belief is still sustaining the drooping spirits ofthe nation, only such an assurance enables them tosubmit to the starvation of their women and children,to their tragic isolation in a hostile world, to theappalling sacrifices on the battlefield.
And now the conspiracy of lies and the conspiracyof silence is about to be exposed. The inexorabletruth must be proclaimed. The German present isdark, but the future is desperate. The U-boatcampaign has failed, the hope of a separate peace[229]with Russia has vanished, the menace of America isdrawing near. Greater exertions and more appallingsacrifices are needed, and yet all the motives for furthersacrifices have vanished. The rulers were fighting forconquest and plunder. But it is now obvious thatthere can be no conquest nor plunder. The Germanpeople were misled into the belief that they werestruggling in self-defence against the “Slav peril,”but since the Ides of March in Petrograd the Russianbugbear has disappeared. They were misled intothe belief that they were struggling for liberty.But the Germans are now the only people still deprivedof political liberty. Even the much-despisedSlav has ceased to be a slave. The only slaves inEurope to-day are the subjects of the Hohenzollern.
This German war has been described as a tragedyof Prussian craft and graft, and the Teuton rulershave been denounced rightly for their cruelty andbrutality. But posterity would be more inclined tosee in this war a tragedy of German virtue. For thevirtues of the German have been more terrible thanhis vices. For this catastrophe has been possible,not because the German people are so wicked, butbecause they have been so good, because they havepractised too well the “three” theological virtuesof blind faith, passive obedience, and inexhaustiblepatience; because they have been so patheticallyloyal to their misrulers; because they have shown thesentimentality of a woman and the credulity of achild. The German Michel has been the political[230]Peter Pan of Europe, the boy that won’t grow up.He has been the boy that has been let loose and haslit the match to the powder magazine. He has beenthe incurable romanticist who has continued to believein fairy-tales in a world of stern realities. And nowthis child-like faith in fairy-tales has been dispelledby disaster. The vision of a holy German Empire,of the pomp and circumstance of war, its glory andglamour, is shattered. The spell is broken. TheGerman Michel is awakening from his dreams.Walhalla is shaken to its foundation. Tor is readywith his hammer. Revolution is knocking at thedoor!
Both French and British publicists have remainedstrangely silent and reticent on the problem andprospects of a revolution in Germany. It may bethat they are afraid to conjure up the ghost ofpolitical rebellion, lest that ghost might cause havocin other countries than Germany. It may also bethat they are unwilling to tackle a very complex anddelicate question. Yet the more we consider theproblem, the more central, the more vital it willappear. German policy, German diplomacy, Germanstrategy, are now entirely dominated by the dreadof a social upheaval. Measures which might seemto be dictated solely by military considerations arein reality imposed by the necessity of deceiving anddistracting public opinion and of striking the popularimagination.
And this obsession of an impending revolution isfully justified. To the outside view the war may seemabove all a conflict of nations, involving a reconstructionof the map of Europe, raising internationalissues and resulting in a new international order.But in reality the conflict is concerned with national[232]and internal issues, and it must result in a newnational order. If this war has not been fought invain, if we are to achieve the objects for which weentered it, if we are ultimately to crush Germanmilitarism, which is only a vague and confusingsynonym for German reaction, then it inexorablyfollows that the war must end in a German revolution.The road to peace must indeed pass through Berlin,but that Berlin will have ceased to be the Berlin ofthe Junkers—it must be the insurrectionary Berlinof 1848. Just as there can be no real war of attritionin the struggle between Germany and Europe, sothere can be no war of attrition in the strugglebetween the German people and despotism. As therecould be no compromise or surrender of principlesbefore, there can be no compromise and no surrenderafter. On the conclusion of peace, it must come toa final trial of strength between the rulers and theirsubjects, between the masses and the classes. Theissues must be fought out in a decisive battle. Eventhough we achieve a crushing military victory,militarism would not be crushed if the Hohenzollernwere still able to command the allegiance of a stillpatient and passive German people: just as Napoleonicmilitarism was not crushed at Waterloo and revivedin 1849, because Napoleon still retained the allegianceof the French people. It is inconceivable that theGerman reactionaries will abdicate of their own freewill. It is equally inconceivable that the reaction willdevelop slowly and gradually into a free democraticgovernment, as von Bethmann-Hollweg would makeus believe in the historic speech of February 27. Nodoubt this war has hastened on the day of retribution.[233]And the pathos of the war lies in this, that it has beena vicarious sacrifice, and that millions of Frenchmenand Britons have died to prepare the liberation ofa nation of slaves.But ultimately it is the Germanpeople themselves who must work out their own salvation.They will have to turn against their oppressors someof that combativeness, of that fanaticism, of thatidealism, which hitherto they have only directedagainst their European brethren.
I stated at the outset that publicists have maintaineda conspiracy of silence on the coming Germanrevolution, because they were afraid to conjure up asinister spectre, and because they are repelled bya difficult and delicate subject. But there may beanother and a more plausible reason for their silence—namely,that most people simply cannot believe inthe very possibility of a German revolution. Andif you press them to state their definite reasons forsuch a belief, you will probably find that all thearguments given can ultimately be brought under thefour following headings:
1. Militarism and reaction are too deeply rootedin Germany. The reactionary forces are far toostrong to leave any chance to a successful revolution.
2. A revolution is impossible under modern conditionsof warfare. A few machine-guns, a few crackregiments of the Kaiser’s bodyguard, would at oncedrench the rebellion in rivers of blood.
3. The Social Democrats, the so-called “revolutionary[234]party,” have themselves repudiated revolutionarymethods.
4. The German temperament has not the initiative,the resilience, which are the prime conditions of asuccessful revolution. The whole German historicaltradition is against any revolutionary solution, andany radical reform must be imposed from outside.
Let us carefully and dispassionately examine eachof those arguments.
In the first place we are told that Prussian reactionis too strong, and that for the German people toattack the Hohenzollern stronghold would be ashopeless as for a madman or a prisoner to breakdown the walls of his prison or cell. The prisonerwould only break his head, and the madman wouldonly get himself put into a “strait-waistcoat.”The German rebel is confronted by the impregnablestructure of a solid and efficient Government, aGovernment based on the prestige of the past, andsurrounded by the glamour of triumphant victoriesachieved in great national wars.
The argument might have been valid after 1863and 1870, when the Catholics fought the battle ofLiberalism and when the Social Democrats foughtthe battle of democracy against Bismarck. But theargument ceases to be valid to-day. For this is nota national war for the Germans. When the conspiracyof lies and the conspiracy of silence cometo an end, when the diplomatic intrigues, when thepan-Germanic plot, are revealed in their naked and[235]hideous horror, it will be clear, even to the blindestand dullest German mind, that this war was wagedneither in defence of national existence nor in defenceof national interests. It began primarily as a waragainst Russia, who for a hundred and fifty yearswas the close ally of Prussia. It began as a waragainst the Russian people, who were by far the bestcustomers for German industries. It developed intoa war against England, who, like Russia, was for onehundred and fifty years the ally of Germany, whofought on many a battlefield with the Germans,who never on any single battlefield fought againstGermany.
Neither can this war be described as a nationalwar for the German people, nor has it resultedin a German victory. Here, also, when the conspiracyof silence is broken, the net result of the warwill prove to be universal ruin, bankruptcy, millionsof cripples walking the streets of every German city,the loss of the goodwill of the world. “Tout estperdu sauf l’honneur,” said the French King afterthe disaster of Pavia. “Everything is lost, evenhonour,” will be the verdict of the German peopleafter the war.
In so far, therefore, as Prussian reaction washitherto based on the glamour of victory, that glamouris dispelled. The Hohenzollerns were supposed to bethe unsurpassed practitioners ofRealpolitik. Theyhave only proved reckless and romantic visionaries.The Prussian Government was supposed to be amarvellously efficient instrument. Its efficiency hasmainly shown itself in wanton destruction. ThePrussian Government was supposed to be the perfect[236]type of a stable government. Its work of five hundredyears has been destroyed in three years. The Germanshad sold their birthright to the Hohenzollern for amess of pottage. They have lost their birthright, butthey have not secured the pottage. The Germanpeople had entered into tacit contract. The rulershave broken the contract. The German people wereready to surrender their personal liberty for theadvantages which the contract gave them. Theypreferred the security of despotism to the risks ofliberty. But the German people have discoveredthat the security was illusory, that the advantageswere negative, and that the risks of despotism areinfinitely greater than the perils of liberty.
But, even granting that the prestige and glamourof the Hohenzollern Monarchy are dispelled, we shallbe told that it does not necessarily follow that arevolution would have any chances of success. Forit may still be objected that a revolution is impossibleunder modern conditions of warfare, that underthose conditions all the advantages are with theGovernment and are not with the people, that it hasbecome very much easier to-day than in a previousgeneration to stamp out a rebellion, and that therisks are very much greater.
I believe that argument to be entirely fallacious.I do not believe that the chances are with theGovernment. I believe that they are all the otherway. Modern conditions are more favourable to theprospects of a popular rising than they were, say, in[237]1789, in 1848, or in 1871. In olden days armies didnot side with the people. They were non-national.They were professional. They were made up ofmercenaries. The Swiss mercenaries allowed themselvesto be massacred in defence of the monarchy.The Hessian mercenaries allowed themselves to bemassacred in the service of the Hanoverian Kings.Nor had the people any military training. To-daythe armies are national armies. They are the peoplethemselves. They have received a military training.They have imbibed the military spirit. Ifonly the people can be gained over to the revolution,three-fourths of the battle is won.
In this connection it is essential that we shouldclearly understand the fundamental differences betweena foreign war and a civil war. A foreign waris a trial of strength between one nation in arms andanother nation in arms. A rebellion is a trial ofstrength between a nation and a Government. Ina foreign war the armies will always be on the side ofthe Government. In a revolution the armies mayor may not side with the people. They will side withthe people if the people are determined to fight.
The problem of revolution, therefore, is not primarilyone of military force, but of moral and politicalforce. The people will dispose of the necessarymilitary strength if they dispose of the necessarymoral and political strength. In normal times thepeople are generally unconscious of their moral andpolitical strength, even as they are unconscious oftheir military strength. But in times of revolution,with their political consciousness awakened by theirgrievances and their sufferings, with a quickened[238]sense of political realities, the attitude of the peopleto their rulers undergoes a radical change. Theysuddenly discover that they are the source of allpower. Once that revelation has come to them,and once the subjects refuse to support their rulersand are determined to resist them, the whole fabricof government collapses like a house of cards.There lies the reason for the fundamental differencesbetween the slow development of foreign warfareand the sudden and catastrophic termination ofcivil war. The Bastille fell as if by magic and as bya flourish of trumpets, like the walls of Jericho. TheRevolution of 1848 overthrew in twenty-four hoursthe strongest French Government of modern times.And there, also, lies the reason why, in a civil war,the greatest possible results are achieved with theminimum of sacrifice. To attain the aims of a foreignwar may require the sacrifice of millions of lives.The aims of a civil war have often been obtainedby the sacrifice of a few hundred.
All revolutions have the same beginnings. TheGerman Revolution of 1848 started in the same wayas the French Revolution of 1848. The insurrectionof the people of Berlin very nearly succeeded in 1848in establishing a German democracy. The proudestof the Prussian Kings, the most intoxicated with thedreams or delusions of absolute power, was humbledto the dust. In an agony of terror, bareheaded,Frederick William IV. of Hohenzollern had to salutethe funeral procession of the heroes of liberty, andthe King’s army had to withdraw from Berlin, andPrince William, the future Emperor, had to escapeto England.[239]
And the rising of the German people to-day willhave a much better chance than in 1848. If it beindeed true that a few machine-guns may decide theissue, it will be by no means difficult for the insurgentpeople to secure possession of those machine-guns. Ifit be true that a military training is essential tosuccess, millions of Germans have received thattraining. Let only the merest fraction of the peopleraise the standard of rebellion, and let the spirit ofrebellion be rife, and that spirit will spread like wild-fire,and the Hohenzollern Monarchy after this warwill be brought to the ground like a decaying treein a November gale.
We shall be told that if a revolution were such aneasy task, it is inconceivable that the German peopleshould not have risen before; and it is perfectly truethat, since the bloody days of 1848, there has beenno serious riot, not to mention any rebellion, in theGerman Monarchy. But the reason for this passiveacquiescence in and for this servile surrender todespotism is due to the German revolutionaries themselves.One of the secrets of recent German historyis that the revolutionists themselves have repudiatedrevolutionary methods. It is the Social Democratswho deserted the cause of democracy. In FranceSocialists were pacifists abroad and aggressive athome. In Germany the Socialists were pacifists athome and aggressive abroad.
That is why, as I anticipated in my “Anglo-GermanProblem” (1912), the German Socialists are[240]ultimately responsible for the war, even more thanthe Junkers. The Junkers and the Governmentknew that they had no reason to dread a renewal of1848. They felt that they had a perfectly free hand.They knew the temper of the Social Democrats andthe meaning of the Marxian creed. For it was anessential part of the Gospel according to St. Marxthat the revolution, if it ever came, would comepeacefully, inevitably, with the people raising theirlittle finger, through the mere automatic pressure ofeconomic concentration. Capitalism itself, so theSocialists said, was working for the triumph ofSocialism. Once the process of concentration ofproduction was complete, once all the capital wasgathered in a few hands, the German revolutionwould come of itself, and Kaiser Bebel and KaiserLiebknecht would simply substitute themselvesfor Kaiser William as the rulers of an absolutecollectivist State.
That attitude of passive acquiescence, that sordidmaterialistic creed, explains the ignominious collapseof the Social Democrats at the outbreak of the war.It explains the paradoxical fact that to-day vonBethmann-Hollweg in his tragic isolation is only supportedby Scheidemann and the Socialist majority.The failure is not due to any lack of numbers.For the Social Democrats had millions of devotedfollowers. The failure is not due to lack of organization,for the Social Democrats were the mostadmirably organized party known to modern history.It was not due to lack of discipline, for the SocialDemocrats were subjected to an iron discipline. Thefailure is entirely due to a lack of spirit, and the[241]lack of spirit itself is entirely due to the sinister anddreary Marxian creed. Between Marxian Socialismand Prussianism there is no opposition of principles.Indeed, one might almost say that the present warsocialism, with its bread rations, its organizationof industry, its suppression of every individualliberty, its hundred thousand regulations, is thenearest approach to the ideal of the Marxist.
But as the result of the war, that Gospel accordingto St. Marx is totally and finally discredited. Itis now admitted that the Socialists have been merevoting machines and doctrinaire opportunists. It isadmitted that no democracy can be built with suchignoble material. It is admitted that, relinquishingthe servile and materialistic Socialism of Marx, wemust revert to the heroic conception of the British,French, and Italian Revolutions. It is admitted thatthe salvation of a people cannot be attained by themere mumbling of catchwords and the waving ofred flags; that it cannot be attained by the mereproclamation of an iron law of wages; that it canonly be achieved by the display of an iron courageand by miracles of heroism and self-sacrifice.
But again granting that the German Socialistcreed is partly responsible for the failure of GermanDemocracy, it will be objected that this creed is atypically German creed. Granting that the spirit ofheroism and sacrifice is an essential condition of anysuccessful revolution, it will be objected that it isprecisely this heroism which is lacking in the German[242]temperament and in the German race. In a famouspassage of his “Governance of England,” ChancellorFortescue, who wrote about the time of the Warsof the Roses, comparing the large number of crimesof violence and burglary in England with the smallnumber of such crimes in France and Scotland,concluded that neither the French nor the Scotchhad the courage and spirit to be burglars.
“It is not pouerte that kepith Ffrenchmen ffrorysinge, but it is cowardisse and lakke off hartesand corage, wich no Ffrenchman hath like vnto aEnglysh man. It hath been offten tymes sene inEnglande, that iij or iiij, theves ffor pouerte haue settapon vj or vij trewe men, and robbed hem all. Butit hath not bene sene in Ffraunce, that vj. or vij.theves haue be hardy to robbe iij. or iiij. trewe men.Wherfore it is right selde that Ffrenchmen be hangedffor robbery and manslaughter, then there be hangedin Ffraunce ffor such maner of crime in vij yeres.There is no man hanged in Scotlande in vij yere togedur ffor robbery. And yet thai ben often tymeshanged ffor larceny, and stelynge off good in theabsence off the owner thereoff. But ther hartesserue hem not to take a manys gode, while he ispresent, and woll defende it; wich maner off takynge iscallid robbery. But the Englysh man is off anothercorage. Ffor yff he be pouere, and see another manhavynge rychesse, wich may be taken ffrom hym bemyght, he will not spare to do so, but yff that pouereman be right trewe. Wherfore it is not pouerte, butit is lakke off harte and cowardisse, that kepith theFfrenchmen ffro rysynge.”
That “lack of spirit” which Lord Chancellor[243]Fortescue so quaintly and so unjustly denounces inthe French and Scottish temperaments, may it not bemore justly attributed to the German temperament?Are not the Germans constitutionally incapable ofaccomplishing a revolution? They lack the redcorpuscles in their veins. They have no phosphorusor mercury in their composition. They have no élan,no resilience or vitality. They are strong, but onlywhen they act gregariously, not when they act asfree and irresponsible individuals. They can fight,but only when they are driven, and only in a quarrelwhich is not their own. They fight to-day againstthe English as the slaves of the Kaiser even as theyfought for the English as the mercenaries of theLandgrave of Hesse.
I submit that all those generalizations are essentiallyshallow. It is not true that the creed ofSocial Democracy is an essentially German creed.As a matter of fact, the founders of German Socialism,and some of their chief leaders, are Jews. Lasalleand Marx were Jews. Bernstein and Adler are Jews.It is not true that the Germans are constitutionallyincapable of heroism. As a matter of fact, no peoplehas ever fought more heroically than the millionsof blinded and misguided wretches who challengeda world in arms, and went to their doom singingreligious hymns and patriotic songs. And it is nottrue that there is some mysterious fatality in temperamentor race. The race theory is a Prussian theory,and it is a sinister theory, the prolific mother ofmany political and moral heresies. National temperamentchanges with circumstances, and the Germantemperament has often changed in the course of[244]history. If the Germans may be described to-day asa nation of practical materialists, at one time theywere described as a nation of dreamers. If theGerman Government may be described to-day asa despotic State, at one time it was described as aGovernment of free cities.
The truth is that national character has little todo with race. It is the result of political institutionsand religious beliefs. And it is the political institutionsand religious beliefs of modern Germany whichlargely explain the failure of Democracy.
We have already pointed out the baneful influenceof the Socialist creed. But there is another creedwhich has exercised an even more baneful influence.If we attempt to trace, farther back in history, themain source of German character, we are driven tothe conclusion that it is Lutheranism which is responsiblefor the perversion of the German soul, thatit is Lutheranism that is thefons et origo malorum.Before the war all our ideas about religion andphilosophy in Germany were made up of unmeaningformulas. And I make the confident forecast thatall those ideas will have to be transvalued in the lightof the present catastrophe.
If I were asked to sum up the achievementsof Lutheranism, I would say that it has accomplishedtwo things equally fatal to Germany andEurope.
On the one hand it has broken up the spiritualunity of Medieval Christendom and the politicalunity of the Holy German Empire into two thousandfour hundred petty principalities. It has set up atribal religion and the pagan idolatry of the State;[245]and, on the other hand, it has broken up the humansoul into two water-tight compartments.
Or to express the Lutheran achievement in termsof freedom and despotism, it has, in the first place,killed political liberty by surrendering all ecclesiasticalpower to the Prince, or to the State incarnatedin the Prince. It has brought about the fusion andconfusion of spiritual and temporal powers. It hasdecreed that the religion of the ruler shall determinethe religion of the subject.Cujus regio illius religio.From the beginning his own ecclesiastical policycompelled Luther to sanction the bigamy of theLandgrave Philip of Hesse. In the most violentof his tracts he denounced a miserable Germanpeasantry, and he called upon the nobility to massacrethose peasants who had only too faithfully obeyedthe provocations of the reformer.
And, in the second place, Lutheranism has killedspiritual liberty by creating an inner world ofemotions and of dreams and an outer world of socialand political activities without any relation to theinner world. It has divorced speculation and action,theory and practice. The German is like the symbolicaleagle of the Habsburg. He has two heads,and both look in an opposite direction.
I would say that the poison of Lutheranism hasbeen acting like that mysterious Indian poison called“curare,” which I used to inject in my distantstudent days when I had to dissect frogs in theZoological Laboratory at Liége. The “curare” doesnot kill the nerves, for the frog still suffers under thedissecting knife. Nor does it kill the muscles, forthe muscles still react if you stimulate them. But[246]the poison cuts the connection between the nervesand the muscles. The nerves can no more transmittheir orders to the muscles. Even so Lutheranismhas not killed the thinking power of the Germanpeople. On the contrary, it has given it a morbidstimulus, as speculation is no more hampered byreality. Nor has it paralyzed their external activities,but it has prevented any connection between thetwo. It has prevented the thinking from influencingthe acting. It justifies the recent damning statementof Prince von Bülow, who ought to be a competentjudge, that the Germans have remained anessentially unpolitical people.
At the outbreak of the Reformation there tookplace in Wittenberg, the Mecca of Lutheranism, amemorable and ominous meeting to which few textbookstake the trouble to allude, and which has hadmore far-reaching consequences than any meetingknown to history. It was the meeting betweenDr. Martinus Luther and the Grand Master of theTeutonic Order, Albrecht of Hohenzollern. Lutheradvised the Grand Master to secularize his Order,to confiscate its immense territories, and to proclaimhimself Duke of Prussia. Under such auspicesarose the Prussian State. Under such auspices, atthe instigation of the “Champion of Liberty,” wasestablished the most tyrannical despotism of moderntimes. Under such auspices was consummated theunholy alliance between a “reformed” Germanyand a twice “reformed” Hohenzollern Monarchy.
This unholy alliance has been shattered by the war.And with the alliance will vanish the Lutheran creed,with all the evil works that proceeded therefrom.[247]
For four hundred years the German people havefollowed their preachers, and have been led by themto the abyss, even as in the famous ballad of Burgerthe German maiden Lenore has fallen under the spellof a corpse and has been driven to the gates of hell.
For four hundred years the German people havebeen in the grip of their despots. They will be underthe spell no more.
For four hundred years the German masses havepractised the three theological virtues of Faith,Patience, and Obedience. The long-suffering, docile,and servile Teutons are now ready to surrender tothe original sin of rebellion. They are now readyto revert to the methods followed by the peasantsmassacred by the orders of Luther.
For four hundred years their temporal and spiritualrulers have manufactured a nation of slaves. Thewar has manufactured a nation of revolutionists.What seemed an inexhaustible inheritance of loyaltyand devotion has been wantonly squandered. TheHohenzollern Monarchy has been born in spoliation,baptized in blood, and welded together by iron.Blood and iron are now destroying it. The Germanarmies have been the terror of the world. The dayis drawing near when those same German armieswill become a terror to their tyrants, and will call themto account for the slaughter of twenty nations.
Whatever excellent reasons we may have for doubtingthe sincerity of the German peace overtures, andwhatever grounds we may have for criticizing theunfortunate wording of the American Notes, it mustbe conceded that President Wilson has rendered aconspicuous service to the Allies by compelling themto face the formidable difficulties of the problem ofpeace. Henceforth it will be impossible for ourrulers to shirk those difficulties. They will have togive us something more tangible than mere vagueand solemn abstractions, than mere rhetorical phrasesand catchwords: they will have to depend on thesupport of public opinion. The peace settlementwill have to be made by the nations themselves, andnot by a few diplomats. It will have to be made inthe full light of day and not in the secret and murkyand musty atmosphere of chancellories.
As a basis for any discussion on the peace settlementwe would lay down the following propositions:
1. We must take good care to retain a firm hold offundamental principles, and we must remain loyalto the conditions which have been proclaimed fromthe beginning by the statesmen of the Allies, andwhich are summed up in the primary aims, the[249]“crushing of Prussian militarism and the liberationof small nationalities.”
2. We must see to it that none of the secret agreementswhich may have been entered into by thediplomats of the Allies shall be allowed to conflictwith those fundamental principles.
3. We must realize that those principles are notparticular principles applicable only to Germany andAustria. They are universal principles, applicableto all the Powers. “Prussian militarism” must becrushed everywhere, in Great Britain as well as inGermany, in Finland as well as in Alsace-Lorraine,in Italy as well as in Austria. Nationalities mustbe liberated everywhere, the Ruthenians as well asthe Poles, the Jews as well as the Croatians.
4. We must realize the concrete and deeper meaningof the vague and somewhat confusing phraseologycontained in the words “to crush Prussian militarism.”To “crush Prussian militarism” does not mean onlyto crush the German armies. It cannot mean tocrush 100,000,000 German and Austrian people.It does not mean the repression of the legitimateexpansion of the Teutonic nations. To “crushPrussian militarism” means to do away with a sinisterpolitical system. It means exorcising an evil spirit.And we must clearly understand that, in order toexorcise that evil spirit, we must have the co-operationof the German people themselves. We must helpthem to achieve their own salvation. We must takein the paradoxical and tragic fact that the awfulsacrifice of twenty nations has been mainly a vicarioussacrifice, and that millions of our soldiers have diedfor the good of the enemy as well as for the good of[250]Europe—that they have died to make Germanyand Austria free.
5. We must realize that this war is a holy war andnot a punitive expedition, much less a predatorywar. Vengeance must be left to Almighty God.The punishment of the criminals must be left to thepeople themselves.
6. Peace, if it is to be real, and if it is to be permanent,cannot be achieved by any vindictive policy.From the moment they enter the peace congress thebelligerents cease to be belligerents, and become alliesin a sacred cause—the reconstruction of the world.From the moment the Central Powers are admittedto cross the threshold of the Temple of Peace theyare readmitted to the community of nations, and theyare admitted on equal terms.
7. A permanent peace excludes the very idea of anyfuture economic war. We must prevent the CentralPowers from entering into any offensive or defensiveeconomic alliance. We must repudiate the sinisterdelusion of a “Mittel Europa” which is hauntingthe diseased brains of the Pan-Germanists. On theother hand, we must repudiate any offensive ordefensive economic alliance between the AlliedPowers. The terms of peace must be engraved onclean white marble.
8. If a permanent peace is to be attained we mustremove the deeper causes which brought about thecatastrophe. The Central Powers are immediatelyand directly responsible for the greatest crime ofhistory, and they will bear the penalty for generationsto come. They planned the war and forced iton Europe. But the megalomania of the Teutons[251]has only been one of the contributory causes. Thewar could never have taken place but for the universallyprevailing and universally accepted immoralityof European foreign policy, which is writlarge in Morocco and Persia, in China and AsiaMinor.
9. The principle of nationality, however legitimatein the case of oppressed nationalities, is not a sufficientfoundation for the new European order. Theprinciple of nationality, which in the case of smallnations leads to the vindication of freedom, on thecontrary, in the case of great Powers, leads to an aggressiveimperialism. The international principle musttherefore take the place of the national principle.Federalism and solidarity must take the place oftribal rivalry and national isolation.
10. Any permanent peace settlement must involvethe unreserved acceptance of a new political philosophyand the practice of a new political system.No peace is possible through the old methods of abalance of power, of alliances and counter-alliances,of assurance and reassurance treaties. Any balanceof power is unstable and precarious and can only bemaintained by a competition of armaments. Thedistinction between offensive and defensive alliancesis essentially unreal. Under the old dispensation adefensive alliance became offensive as soon as itfelt strong enough to assume the offensive. It is thesystem of alliances which led to armaments, andnot the armaments which were responsible for thealliances. It is therefore futile to speak of disarmamentas long as we do not repudiate the traditionalEuropean principle of the “balance of power.[252]”
11. It also follows as a corollary that no peace ispossible merely through a readjustment of boundaries,through compensations and annexations of territories.We might recast the whole map of Europe, we mightdismember the German Empire, we might dismemberthe Austrian Empire, we might dismember theTurkish Empire, and yet entirely fail to achieve theobjects for which we entered the war. On the otherhand, we might achieve those objects without shiftingone single milestone of the political boundaries ofEurope.
12. We must clearly realize that the issue of peaceand war is not a military issue, but a political issue,and that the political issue itself is a moral issue.It is not aMachtfrage, but aRechtfrage. It is not aquestion to be settled by diplomats of the old school;it can only be solved by constructive and democraticstatesmanship.
13. To say that “we must crush Prussian militarism”is only a vague and unsatisfactory way ofstating that we must establish democratic government.Militarism is not a matter of foreign policy,but of domestic policy. Militarism is but theultimaratio of reaction, and all nations are allies againstthe one common enemy, reactionary government.
14. It is therefore futile to say that the futurecongress must not interfere in the internal governmentof any belligerent Power. If any EuropeanPower after this war were still to be ruled by areactionary government based on brute force andoppression, that government would still have tomaintain a large army in order to keep down theliberties of its people, and such an army would[253]sooner or later be used against the foreign enemyin the name of imperial national aspirations, in thename of a higher civilizing mission.
15. Therefore, the one problem before the EuropeanCongress is to establish government in Europe on aconstitutional and democratic basis, and to grantaMagna Carta to all nations, great and small. Theestablishment of such a government, and not anyannexations or compensations, would alone guaranteea permanent peace.
16. All civilized nations must be equally interestedin the maintenance of peace and in the establishmentof the new international order. Therefore, all neutralnations, including the United States of America,must join the congress as signatories and guarantorsof the peace settlement.
17. The new democratic charter shall be placedunder the guardianship of a Supreme ConstitutionalCourt. Such a Court would not be a secret diplomaticSanhedrin, but a democratic Tribunal. Such aCourt would be essentially different from the HagueTribunals of the past, and the democracies of theworld would be directly interested in enforcing itsdecrees.
18. There is one immediate sanction to the constitutionalsettlement just outlined—namely, theSovereign Will of the people of Europe. Revolutionis knocking at the door. Unless a constitutionalcharter be granted, unless democratic government befirmly established in Europe, it will be wrested fromtheir rulers by the nations themselves. All the signsof the times confirm us in the conviction that theonly alternative to the establishment of democratic[254]government for all the nations participating in thecongress is universal civil war. The peacemakers ofto-morrow have it in their power not only to crush“Prussian militarism,” but to prevent an appallingupheaval which would shake human society to itsfoundations.
It is generally assumed, even by those writers whoare most strongly opposed to the sinister policy ofthe Hohenzollerns, that at least their domesticrelations present an edifying contrast with the privateimmorality of the other Royal Houses of Europe.The world has been made familiar with the Courtscandals of the Habsburgs, the Bourbons, and theGeorges, and has heard little of the HohenzollernDynasty. But that is merely because the “amours”and the family squabbles of the Hohenzollerns areso much less picturesque and so much less interestingthan those of a Henry IV. or of a Louis XIV., andbecause they have been hidden under a thick cloudof hypocrisy. The most brilliant of French historians,Monsieur Albert Sorel, has torn the veil from thishypocrisy and has laid bare the sordid story ofFrederick William II.
As an illustration of the manner in which theofficial historians of Prussia have narrated the[256]history of the dynasty, it is instructive to comparethe following character-sketch of the successor ofFrederick the Great with the idealist portrait ofTreitschke (“Germany History,” vol. i.), who wouldmake us believe that Frederick William II. was aparagon of all the private virtues.
Frederick the Great’s base tolerance produceddissolvent effects. Not proceeding from respect ofreligious beliefs, it engendered contempt for them.As, apart from the curb of religion, the new societyof Prussia had no tradition of social morals to relyupon, corruption entered in and consumed it. TheKing’s scepticism took possession of his subjects,who translated it into deeds. It was good “form”;everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himselfaccordingly. The leaven of licence and sensualitywhich mars all the literature of the century fermentedwithout let or hindrance in those coarse souls. Animmature civilization had overstimulated imaginationsand senses without abating the brutality of theprimitive passions. In Prussia people lacked thedelicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit, whichin France qualified the depravity of the age. Aheavy dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials,the gentry, women, all fed their minds on d’Holbachand La Mettrie, taking their doctrines seriously andapplying them to the very letter.
Add to this that in the newly built Prussian capitalsociety, utterly artificial as it was, an improvisedamalgam of incongruous elements, was predisposed,[257]so to speak, to dissoluteness. Berlin swarmed witharmy men who had no family life and whose whole daywas not occupied with military duties. Men of letters,adventurers of the pen and of the sword, attractedby Frederick’s reputation and reduced to intrigueand all sorts of expedients for a living; a nobility,very poor, very proud, very exclusive, weighed downby royal discipline and thoroughly bored; a bourgeoisieenlightened, enriched, but relegated to aplace of its own; between these groups, separatedone from the other by etiquette or prejudice, a sortof demi-monde where they met, chatted and enjoyedthemselves at their ease, the foyer of “French ideas,”the hub of affairs and intrigues—Jewish society, therichest and most elegant in Berlin. With the marvellouspliancy of their race the Jews had assimilated thenew civilization and took their revenge from thepolitical exclusion of which they were the victimsby bringing together in their salons all the intellectualmen in Berlin, all the attractive women, all desirousof liberty and freed from prejudice. Such was Berlinin the days of Frederick.
One of the finest cities in Europe, wrote Forsterin 1779; but the Berliners! Sociability and refinedtaste, he found, degenerated in them into sensuality,into libertinage (he might almost say voracity),freedom of wit and love of shining in shameless licenceand unrestrained debauch of thought. The womenin general were abandoned. An English diplomat,Sir John Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, had[258]the same impression: Berlin was a town where, iffortis might be translated by “honourable,” youcould say that there was not avir fortis nec feminacasta.
If you consider that outside Jewish homes moneywas scarce, and that temptations are all the strongerthe less means you have of satisfying them, you cansee why in many minds disorder of ideas and corruptionof morals opened a new wound, the mostdangerous, in sooth, and the most repugnant innations—venality. Mirabeau, in his “Secret History,”indelibly recorded all the vices ofce noble tripot,Berlin. On this head his famous pamphlet is apicture in violent colours, but true nevertheless.Cynicism there seems merely local colour. “‘Rottennessbefore Ripeness’—I am very much afraid thatmust be the motto of Prussian power.... Whatcannot money do in a house so poor?”
It required Frederick’s hand of iron to set in motionthese complicated springs, to regulate the unwieldymachine, keep together these elements collected withno little ingenuity and ready to go to pieces. Butthat hand was weighty and hard. There were signs,in the upper classes at all events—the only classesthen taken into account—of a sort of muffled revoltagainst this implacable disciple. Besides, thePrussians entertained queer illusions as to the future.Frederick had deceived his subjects just as he haddeceived himself regarding the durability of his work.They did not understand to what an extent their[259]power was the personal power of their King. Proudto the point of infatuation of the rôle he had madethem play, they imagined it was their own doing,and that Frederick’s soul would survive in them.They expected from a new reign the same gloryabroad, the same security at home, the same relativeprosperity, with a yoke less rough and a disciplineless severe, not understanding that the very roughnessof the yoke and the severity of the discipline wereconditions necessary to the duration of the work.The mercantile protective system, which had builtup industry; the administration of taxes, which pouredmoney into the State coffers; the economy, whichimmobilized this money in the treasury, hamperedand irritated all who wished to work and trade, allwho reflected on the natural conditions of commerceand industry; but it was these things alone that enabledthe poorest Government in Europe to be betterarmed than the richest, and to keep in the van. Ina word, people wanted the spring to relax, and failedto see that to slacken the spring meant annihilatingthe State.
To reform Frederick’s monarchy would haverequired no less genius than it took to create it.Reform, however, was indispensable, since Frederickalone was capable of holding up the composite edificehe had built. Hence a threatening and wellnigh inevitablecatastrophe. “All will go on almost of itsown accord, so long as foreign affairs are quiet andunbroken,” wrote Mirabeau after Frederick’s death.[260]“But at the first gunshot or at the first stormysituation the whole of this little scaffolding of mediocritywill topple to the ground. How all theseunderling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone,from the distracted chief to the convict-gang,would shout for a pilot! Who would that pilot be?”
Frederick’s nephew, who was called upon tosucceed him, was not made for so great a rôle. Inevery respect he offered a complete contrast to thePrince whose weighty heritage he took up. Frederickin person was infirm and sober; all his prestige layin the gaze of his great eyes, which, as Mirabeau putit, “at the will of his heroic soul, carried fascinationor terror.” Frederick William II. was abel homme,highly sanguine, very robust, fond of violent exerciseand coarse pleasures. “The build and strength ofa Royal Guardsman,” wrote the French Ministerd’Esterno, who had no liking for him. “An enormousmachine of flesh,” said an Austrian diplomat who sawhim at Pillnitz in 1791. “The true type of a King,”according to Metternich, who was presented to him in1792 at Coblenz, at the time of the German crusadeagainst France and the Revolution. “His stature,”he added, “was gigantic, and his corpulence in keeping.In every company he stood a head higher thanthe surrounding crowd. His manners were nobleand engaging.” He expressed himself with a certaineffort, in little abrupt phrases. There was nothingin him to recall the implacable and sovereign ironyof Frederick.[261]
“His look,” said one apologist, “does not betokena man of genius, but German candour shines on hisbrow.” Strange candour, scarcely recognizable ifyou take the word in its common and proper sense.It must be taken, as was then the practice in Germany,through translations of Rousseau, in the equivocaland refined acceptation which reconciled innocencewith indecency, virtue with every disorder of theimagination and the heart. Ecstatic and sensual,devout and licentious, a prey to violent appetites,tormented by scruples, superstitious and debauched,believing in ghosts, with a tendency towards cabal,Frederick William had a taste for ethics and a feelingfor religion. He spoke of them with respect, withawe, with emotion. In his case it was a naturalpenchant and at the same time a pose, the attitudeof every heir-presumptive towards the crowned head,a way of winning admiration and captivating byforce of contrast.
He and those around him might be gulled by this“German candour.” Not so Frederick. In hisMemoirs he draws his nephew as he was in 1765, atthe age of twenty-one, at the time of his first marriagewith Elizabeth of Brunswick: “The young husband,without any morals, given over to a life of debauchery,was daily guilty of infidelity to his wife. The Princess,who was in the flower of her beauty, was shocked atthe slight regard shown for her charms. Soon sheplunged into excesses almost as bad as her husband’s.”In 1769 they were divorced. Frederick William[262]married a Princess of Darmstadt. The secondmarriage was no happier than the first. The Princessdid not retaliate, though she did not lack incentivesto do so. The Prince lapsed back into his dissolutehabits. Apart from many passing fancies, he hada recognized mistress-in-chief. This person, whomanaged always to retain the favour, if not the love,of Frederick William, was the daughter of a humblemusician. She married the Prince’svalet de chambre,became Madame Rietz, and was afterwards madeCountess of Lichtenau. Frederick William by thefirst marriage had had a daughter, Princess Frederica,who was brought up by the Queen, the discarded,not to say repudiated, wife of Frederick the Great.The father, when visiting the girl, fell in love withone of her maids-of-honour. Her name was Mademoisellede Voss, and she came of a good house, beingcousin to one of the King’s Ministers, M. de Finckenstein,and sister of a President of the Chamber.“This beauty, who to my mind is very ugly,” wroteMirabeau, “is a mixture of prudery and cynicism, ofaffectation and ingenuousness; she has a natural witof a kind, some schooling, manias rather than desires,a gaucherie which she strives to cover by an appearanceofnaïveté.... All her charm lies in hercomplexion, and even that I find wan rather thanwhite; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixtureof unique licence, they say, which she combined withthe airs of innocent ignorance and vestal severity,that captivated the Prince.[263]”
Frederick William was one of those complexlibertines who find in clever resistance a whet totheir passion and a solace to their scruples. Thesiege of Mademoiselle de Voss lasted nearly twoyears. The outs and ins of this strange romancewere the common talk of the Court. It had not yetreached its dénouement when Frederick the Great’sdeath stopped its course for several weeks. Kingfrom August 17, 1786, onwards, Frederick Williamseemed to forget everything but affairs of State.But Mirabeau affirms, after September 8, “thefervour of the novice began to abate.” Mademoisellede Voss, he added, was on the point of yielding.The King, to make her comfortable, had set up anestablishment for his daughter Frederica; Mademoisellede Voss did the honours. The year passed,however, without the vestal’s surrendering. Sheloved the King, but the honour of the family stillweighed more with her than love. She set rigorousconditions to her capitulation: a left-handed marriage,the written consent of the Queen, and the removalof the titular mistress, Madame Rietz. On this lastpoint the King was inflexible; he gave in on the othertwo. The Queen gave her consent, with the stipulationthat there should be no real divorce or publicseparation; she kept her title of Queen and herposition as lawful wife. The rest, it appears, was ofno great interest to her. It only remained to concludethe marriage, but, under the circumstances,that was a delicate and ticklish business.[264]
By hook or by crook a precedent had to be found:the Prussian Consistory proved amenable, andauthorized the marriage. The marriage was celebratedin July, 1787, in the Chapel Royal of Charlottenburg.Mademoiselle de Voss took the title of Countess ofIngenheim. Her happiness was short-lived. Shedied in the month of March, 1789. “All Berlin isin mourning,” wrote M. d’Esterno. “The Countessof Ingenheim is cruelly regretted by the people, theroyal family, and even the Queen, much less for theperson of the said Countess as because of the increaseof credit which her death will bring to Dame Rietz,the old habitual mistress, who is said to be veryavaricious and a great intriguer.”
The literature of the day shed tears over the royalbereavement, celebrated the “virtues” of thissusceptible monarch, and contrasted with the witheringscepticism of Voltaire and the criminal frivolityof the French the tender abandon with whichFrederick William gave himself up to “nature’ssweetest inclination.” “Women-haters,” wroteBaron de Trenck, “have been the scourges ofhumanity. The King of Prussia has a great soul,full of sensibility; in love he is capable of a tenderattachment: he knows the value of his mistress.Supposing he gives her a million, the money isdivided among the members of the household whoare citizens. He will not rob an honest man of thespouse who constitutes his happiness, he will notsacrifice Rome for Cleopatra. He wants to please[265]all by himself. For twenty months he courtedMademoiselle de Voss, he married her, he was faithfulto her, he wept over her ashes. Every citizen wiseenough to know human weaknesses must wish thatif he made a fresh choice it would fall on an objectas worthy of his heart. So let him enjoy a happinesswhich belongs to the simple peasant as it does tokings.” This hypocritical twaddle, this licentiouscasuistry, was “very good style” in Germany then,and was highly appreciated.
The distraction which Trenck desired for theafflicted soul of the King was not long in presentingitself. In 1790, on the anniversary of the Countessof Ingenheim’s death, Mademoiselle Dœnhof waspresented at Court. Everyone there was busyconsoling Frederick William. A claimant had evenbeen put forward in the person of a young lady calledViereck, a friend of Mademoiselle de Voss, who hadtaken the latter’s place with Princess Frederica.Unhappily for Mademoiselle Viereck’s friends, shewas dark and in no way recalled the dear departed.Mademoiselle Dœnhof, on the other hand, was,according to the French Minister, “so perfectlyfair that, while pretty in artificial light, in daylightshe was as yellow as a lemon.” With the samecharms as Mademoiselle de Voss, she had the samejumble of pietism and virtue. It was once more acase of marrying. The King saw no difficulty inthe way. “I am separated from the Queen,” hewrote to Mademoiselle Dœnhof; “Madame d’Ingenheim[266]has left me a widower; I offer you my heartand hand.” He made no concealment of it, openlydeclaring that he had grounds for repudiating theQueen, but he refrained from taking action uponthem in order to maintain the dignity of the throne.
The Consistory did not require to deliberate asecond time; precedents had been established, andthey were followed. The marriage took place onApril 10, 1790, and it was the Court preacher, Zœllner,who consecrated it, as he had consecrated that withMademoiselle de Voss. The Queen gave the bridegirandoles of diamonds. The Queen-Dowager receivedher, and everyone at Court made a fuss ofher. All the same, she was no more successful thanMademoiselle de Voss in getting rid of MadameRietz. This favourite, who had been given 70,000crowns to take her departure, remained, tookan officer as her lover, and even got the King topromote him.
And so, in 1790, the King of Prussia, Mademoisellede Voss’s widower, had three wives living: the Princessof Brunswick, who was repudiated; the Princess ofDarmstadt, who, although divorced, still kept therank of Queen; and Mademoiselle Dœnhof, morganaticwife. This third wife, wrote one diplomat, will notbe the last, for “those the King longs for will alsowant to be married.” The Prince in any case wasalways ready. Polygamy, in his eyes, was a prerogativeof royalty. As the result of a Court intriguein 1792 he had himself separated from Mademoiselle[267]Dœnhof, crowning by this divorce the strange seriesof his conjugal evolutions. Then he offered hisheart and hand to a lady called Bethmann, a banker’sdaughter whom he had known at Frankfurt, and foundvery much to his liking. This young person, in thewords of Lord Malmesbury, was “all sentiment andall fire”; but she had principles and discretion.She had misgivings about the character of themarriage and the constancy of the bridegroom. Sherefused, thus sparing the Berlin casuists the troubleof a deliberation still more ticklish than before.I know not whether these accommodating theologians,reared in the school of Voltaire and Frederick, tookthese simultaneous marriages very seriously or not;abroad they afforded subject for ridicule, andCatherine the Great, who herself did not feel boundto observe so many formalities, was highly amusedat them; “that big lout of a Gu”—such was her namefor Frederick William in her letters to Grimm—“thatbig lout has just married a third wife; thelibertine never has enough legitimate wives; for aconscientious libertine, commend me to him.”
Frederick William loved women. Women, however,did not govern him. But if he escaped theinfluence of mistresses, he fell under the influenceof favourites, and the people were none the betteroff. Badly brought up, kept apart from Stateaffairs by his uncle, distrusting others because hewas very distrustful of himself, he knew nothing ofthe art of government, and dallied with vague[268]reform projects. The Ministers whom Frederickleft behind, although very second-rate, made himill at ease. He was afraid of being considered undertheir thumb; besides, these Ministers representedideas and a system which he affected to condemn.“The King will be led just because he is afraid ofbeing so,” wrote Mirabeau. The fear of beinggoverned by his Ministers delivered him into the handsof underlings, who promptly gained a masteryover him by humbling themselves before him, reassuringhis suspicious pride, flattering his passions—aboveall, exploiting the shortcomings of his mind.Frederick William desired the good of the State; hehad a hazy but quite keen idea of the necessity ofcounteracting the excesses of Frederick’s Government;but his intentions rambled, and his reform fancies,more mystical then political, proceeded not so muchfrom the idea of the interests of the State as from theinfluence of a secret doctrine with which he was imbued.The statesman in him was but an adept inmagic; for Ministers he took mere charlatans. Skilledconjurers replaced at Potsdam Frederick’s “judiciousMinisters.”
Of all these mystical adventurers, the one whoseinfluence was perhaps the most baneful for thePrussian State was Wœllner, a pure intriguer. Sonof a country pastor, he worked his way into thehousehold of General d’Itzenplitz; after wheedlingthe mother, he ended by marrying the daughter.Frederick, who was anything but indulgent to mis-alliances,[269]had him clapped into prison in Berlin.The hatred of Wœllner for the Philosopher-Kingdated from that day. At that time he was arationalist and a disciple of Wolf; he became aFreemason. But already in high society in Germanythe wind no longer set in the direction of pure Deism.Wœllner, always a perfect sceptic, changed hisconvictions. Considering himself as fitted as anyother for the apparition business and the mysteryindustry, he decided to turn “honest broker”between the powers of this world and those of the next,basing his credit with the former on that which heclaimed with the latter. He joined the Rosicrucians,and soon became one of the leading lights of the Order.
Thus he knew the man who was to counterbalancehis favour at the Court of Berlin and one day sharewith him Frederick’s Government, the Saxon Bischoffswerder.The son of a small noble, an officerof fortune, come like so many others to seek servicein Prussia, he had wormed his way into the favour ofthe Prince-Royal, and had quickly taken him in.
Mistresses and favourites, Rosicrucians and valets,theosophists andfemmes galantes, on the whole goton very well together and agreed surprisingly. Itwas but a step from the laboratory of the Rosicruciansto the boudoir of Madame Rietz, and these mysticpersonages cleared it without a scrap of shame.They formed a close alliance with thevalet dechambre and his wife, themaîtresse d’habitude, whothroughout all the matrimonial pranks of the King[270]managed to preserve her credit by artifices analogousto those which at Versailles had so long maintainedthat of Madame de Pompadour.
Around them swarmed a crowd of subordinateintriguers, the “clique,” as they were called inBerlin, ready for all sorts of jobs behind the scenesat Court, in the Army, in politics, in diplomacy—aboveall, in finance. Needy and greedy, they hada firmly established reputation in Europe for venality.“I maintain,” declared Mirabeau, “that with athousand louis you could, if need be, know perfectlyall the secrets of the Berlin Cabinet.... So theEmperor has a faithful record of every step of theKing, day by day, and could know everything heplanned, if he planned anything.” These were themethods, as Custine affirmed in 1792, that everydiplomatist in the world employed; all the Ministerswho resided in Berlin used them with more successand more generally than elsewhere.
Such was the strange band of adventurers whopounced on the monarchy and the treasury ofFrederick the Great. Their course of action, verycomplex and very powerful, was well designed tocaptivate a fantastic and voluptuous bigot. However,they would never have gained more than anantechamber or alcove influence, they would neverhave risen to political influence, had they not knownhow to pervert the noblest inclinations of the King,whilst flattering the lowest. Mediocre and secondaryas was his place in the line of the Hohenzollerns,[271]Frederick William was not devoid of all royal qualities.He was brave, he was kind-hearted, or rather he wasa man of “sensibility”; he desired the public weal;he had suffered, like the nation, from the pitilessrégime of Frederick; like the whole nation, he wantedto reform the State by lightening the yoke. Hebelieved himself inspired from on high, “illumined,”and called by Providence to restore the morals andfaith of a country which, he was told, and he himselfbelieved, was perishing through the scepticism ofmen’s minds and the looseness of men’s morals.
How could he combine such tendencies with suchtastes, such aspirations with such passions, suchbeliefs with such debauchery? It was just thereinthat he showed himself a weak character and amystic; that was why he joined theurgic sects insteadof submitting to the Church; why he believed invisions more than in the Gospel, listened to a ventriloquistmimicking the voice of Frederick instead oflistening to the voices of the Ministers, the greatKing’s disciples; that is why he distrusted wise,thoughtful, experienced people and surrendered himselfto charlatans and favourites.
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