understanding in such matters. We are trying to get clearly in
perspective a ruler, who claims to rule in obedience to no mandates
from the people, but in obedience to God. We could not be ruled by
such a one in America; and in England such a ruler would be deemed
unconstitutional. It is elementary, but necessary to repeat, that we
are writing of Germany and the Germans, and of their history,
traditions, and political methods. We are making no defence of either
the German Emperor or the German people; neither are we occupying an
American pulpit to preach to them the superiority of other methods
than their own. My sole task is to make clear the German situation,
and not by any means to set up my own or my countrymen's standards for
their adoption. I am not searching for that paltry and ephemeral
profit that comes from finding opportunities to laugh or to sneer. I
am seeking for the German successes, and they are many, and for the
reasons for them, and for the lessons that we may learn from them. Any
other aim in writing of another people is ignoble.
This attitude of the ruler will be as incomprehensible to the
democratic citizen as alchemy, but, in order to draw anything like
true inferences or useful deductions, in order to understand the
situation and to get a true likeness of the ruler, one must take this
utterly unfamiliar and to us incomprehensible claim into
consideration, and acknowledge its existence whether we admit the
claim as justifiable or not. The relation of such a ruler to his
people is like that of a Catholic bishop to his flock. The contract is
not one made with hands, but is an inalienable right on the one hand,
and an undisseverable tie upon the other. Bismarck wrote on this
subject: "Fuer mich sind die Worte, 'von Gottes Gnaden,' welche
christliche Herrscher ihrem Namen beifuegen, kein leerer Schall,
sondern ich sehe darin das Bekenntniss, des Fuersten das Scepter was
ihnen Gott verliehen hat, nur nach Gottes Willen auf Erden fuehren
wollen."
On several occasions the German Emperor has made it unmistakably clear
that this is his view of the origin and sanctity of his
responsibilities. "If we have been able to accomplish what has been
accomplished, it is due above all things to the fact that our house
possesses a tradition by virtue of which we consider that we have been
appointed by God to preserve and direct, for their own welfare, the
people over whom he has given us power." These words are from a speech
made in 1897 at Bremen. In 1910, at Koenigsberg, he declares: "It was
in this spot that my grandfather in his own right placed the royal
crown of Prussia upon his head, insisting once again that it was
bestowed upon him by the grace of God alone, and not by parliaments
and meetings and decisions of the people. He thus regarded himself as
the chosen instrument of heaven, and as such carried out his duties as
a ruler and lord. I consider myself such an instrument of heaven, and
shall go my way without regard to the views and opinions of the day."
Prince Henry of Prussia, the popular, and deservedly popular, sailor
brother of the Emperor, has signified his entire allegiance to this
doctrine by saying that he was actuated by one single motive: "a
desire to proclaim to the nations the gospel of your Majesty's sacred
person, and to preach that gospel alike to those who will listen and
to those who will not."
This language has a strange and far-away sound to us. It is as though
one should come into the market-place with the bannered pomp of
Milton's prose upon his lips. The vicious would think it a trick, the
idle would look upon it as a heavy form of joking, the intelligent
would see in it a superstition, or a dream of knighthood that has
faded into unrecognizable dimness. Some men, on the other hand, might
wish that all rulers and governors whatsoever were equally touched
with the sanctity of their obligations.
It is somewhat strange in this connection to remember, that we all
wish to have our wives and daughters believers; that we all wish to
bind to us those whom we love with more sacred bonds than those which
we ourselves can supply. We are none of us loath to have those who
keep our treasures, believe in some code higher than that of "honesty
is the best policy." As Archbishop Whately said: "Honesty is the best
policy, but he who is honest for that reason is not an honest man."
Far be it from me to appear as an advocate of the divine right of
kings; but I am no fit person for this particular task if I have only
a sniff, or a guffaw, as an explanation of another's beliefs. History
sparkles with the lives of men and women, who proclaimed themselves
messengers and servants of God, obedient to him first, and utterly and
courageously negligent of that feline commodity, public opinion. Every
man, even to-day,
"Who each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are,"
has a grain of this salt of divine independence in him. To-day, even
as in the days of Pericles: "It is ever from the greatest hazards that
the greatest honors are gained," and the greatest hazard of all is to
shut your visor and couch your lance and have at your task with a
whispered: God and my Right! It is well to remember that under no
government, whether democratic or aristocratic, has the individual
ever been given any rights. He has always everywhere been pointed to
his duties; his rights he must conquer for himself.
The liberal in theology, as the liberal in politics, has perhaps
leaned too far toward softness. The democratization of religion has
gone on with the rest, and in our rebound from Calvin, and John Knox,
and Jonathan Edwards, we have left all discipline and authority out of
account. We have preached so persistently of the fatherhood of God, of
his nearness to us, of his profound pity for us, that we have lost
sight of his justice and his power. This nearness has become a sort of
innocuous neighborliness, and God is looked upon not as a ruler, but
as a vaporish good fellow whose chief business it is to forgive. We
have substituted a feverish-handed charity for a sinewy faith, and are
excusing our divorce from divinely imposed duties, by a cheerful but
illicit intercourse with chance acquaintances, all of whom are dubbed
social service.
This Cashmere-shawl theology is as idle an interpretation of man's
relation to the universe, and far more debilitating, than any that has
gone before. When we come to measure rulers who make divine claims for
their duties, from any such coign of flabbiness as this, no wonder we
stand dumb. I am willing to concede that perhaps even an emperor has
been baptized with the blood of the martyrs, and feels himself to be
in all sincerity the instrument of God; if we are to understand this
one, we must admit so much.
In certain departments of life, we not only grant, but we demand, that
our wives and mothers should look upon their special duties and
peculiar functions as divinely imparted, and as beyond argument, and
as above coercion. This assumption, therefore, of inalienable rights
is not so strange to us; on the contrary, it is an every-day affair in
most of our lives. This particular manifestation of it is all that is
new or surprising. We Americans and English look upon it as dangerous,
but the Germans, more mystical and far more lethargic about liberty
than are we, are not greatly disturbed by it. The secular press,
largely in Jewish hands, and the new socialist members of the
Reichstag, jealous of their prerogatives but unable to assert them,
criticise and even scream their abhorrence and unbelief; but I am much
mistaken, if the mass of the Germans are at heart much disturbed by
their Emperor's assertions of his divine right to rule. A conservative
member of the Reichstag speaks of, "a parliament which will maintain
the monarch in his strong position as the wearer of the German
imperial crown, not the semblance of a monarch but one that is
dependent upon something higher than party and parliament -- one
dependent upon the King of all kings."
To a thoroughbred American, with two and more centuries of the
traditions of independence behind him, this question of the divine
right of kings is a commonplace. He is a king himself, he holds his
own rights to be divine, and his influence and his power to be limited
only by his character and his abilities, like that of any other
sovereign. He may rule over few or many, he may control the destiny of
only one or of many subjects, he may be well known or little known,
but that he is a sovereign individual by the grace of God, it never
occurs to him to doubt. It is perhaps for this reason that the real
American is placid and unself-conscious before this claim. It is those
who admit and suffer from the exactions and tyrannies of such a claim
that he pities, not the man who makes it, whom he distrusts. I carry
my sovereignty under my hat, says the American; if any man or men can
knock off the hat and take away the sovereignty, there is a fair field
and no favor; for those who whimper and complain of tyranny he has
long since ceased to have a high regard.
That William the Second is the chief figure of interest in the world
to-day is due, not alone to this assumption of a divine relation to
the state, or to his own vigorous and electric personality, but to the
freedom to develop and to express that personality. Men in politics
have dwindled in importance and in power, as the voters have increased
in numbers and in influence. Genius must be true to itself to bloom
luxuriantly. It is impossible to be seeking the suffrage of a
constituency and at the same time to be wholly one's self. The German
Emperor is unhampered, as is no other ruler, by considerations of
popular favor; and at the same time he directs and influences not
Russian peasants, nor Turkish slaves, but an instructed, enlightened,
and ambitious people. This environment is unique in the world to-day,
and the Germans as a whole seem to consider their ruler a valuable
asset, despite occasional vagaries that bring down their own and
foreign criticism upon him.
Here we have a versatile and vigorous personality with no shadow of a
stain upon his character, and with no question upon the part of his
bitterest enemy of the honesty of his intentions, or of his devotion
to his country's interests. So far as he has been assailed abroad, it
is on the score that he has made his country so powerful in the last
twenty-five years that Germany is a menace to other powers; so far as
he has been criticised at home it is on the score of his
indiscretions.
It is of prime importance, therefore, both to glance at the progress
of Germany and to examine these so-called indiscretions. Throughout
these chapters will be found facts and figures dealing with the fairy-like
change which has taken place in Germany since my own student
days. I can remember when a chimney was a rare sight. Now there are
almost as many manufacturing towns as then there were chimneys.
Leipzig was a big country town, Pforzheim, Chemnitz, Oschatz,
Elberfeld, Riessa, Kiel, Essen, Rheinhausen, and their armies of
laborers, and their millions of output, were mere shadows of what they
are now.
In 1873, when Bismarck began his attempts at railway legislation,
Germany was divided into sixty-three "railway provinces," and there
were fifteen hundred different tariffs, and it is to be remembered
that it was only as late as 1882 that the state system of railways at
last triumphed in Prussia. In only ten years the railway trackage has
increased from 49,041 to 52,216 miles; the number of locomotives from
18,291 to 26,612; freight-cars from 398,000 to 558,000; the passengers
carried from 804,000,000 to 1,457,000,000; and the tons of freight
carried from 341,000,000 tons to 519,000,000 tons. In Prussia alone
there are 1,000,000 more horses, 1,000,000 more beef cattle, and
10,000,000 more pigs. The total production of beet sugar in the world
approximates 7,000,000 tons; of this amount Germany produces 2,500,000
tons. Great Britain consumes more sugar per head of the population
than any other country, and of her consumption of 1,460,000 tons of
beet sugar all of it is produced from beets grown on the continent.
Between 1885 and 1912 the population increased from 46,000,000 to
66,000,000. The expenditure on the navy has increased in the last ten
years from $47,500,000 to $110,000,000, and the number of men from
31,157 to 60,805, with another increase in both money and men, voted
at the moment of this writing in the summer of 1912.
The debt of Germany, exclusive of paper money, in 1887 was 486,201,000
marks; in 1903 it stood at 2,733,500,000. In 1911 the funded debt of
the empire was 4,524,000,000 marks, and the funded debt of the states
14,880,000,000; and the floating debt amounts to 991,000,000, of which
Prussia alone bears 610,000,000 and the empire 300,000,000. Between
the years 1871 and 1897 a debt of $500,000,000 was incurred, bearing
an average interest charge of 3 3/4 per cent. In the year 1908 the
combined expenditures of the states and of the empire reached the
enormous total of $1,775,000,000. The debt of the city of Berlin alone
in 1910 had reached $110,750,000 and has increased in the last two
years.
For purposes of comparison one may note that our own later national
budgets run roughly to $1,000,000,000. The British budget for 1911 was
$906,420,000. After the French war, speculation on a large scale
ensued. The payment of the $1,000,000,000 indemnity had a bad effect.
As has often happened in America, money, or the mere means of
exchange, was taken for wealth. The earth will be as cold as the moon
before men learn that the only real wealth is health. Many schemes and
companies were floated and after 1873 there was a prolonged financial
crisis in Germany. It is said that bankruptcy and the liquidation of
bubble companies entailed a loss of a round $90,000,000. It was in
1876-7, when Germany was thus suffering, that the policy of protection
was mooted and finally put into operation by Bismarck in 1879. Ten
years later the laws for accident, old age, and sickness insurance
were passed, at the instigation and under the direct influence of the
present Emperor.
The tonnage of steam vessels under 4,000 tons in Great Britain (net
tons) was, some five years ago, 8,165,527; in Germany (gross tons),
977,410; but the tonnage of steam vessels of 4,000 tons and over was
in Great Britain 1,446,486, in Germany 1,119,537! It should be added
that no small part of Great Britain's big ships belong to the American
Shipping Trust, sailing under the British flag. Albert Ballin became a
director of the Hamburg-American line in 1886, and was made general
director in 1900. During his directorship the capital of the line has
been increased from 15,000,000 to 125,000,000 of marks, and the number
of steamers from 26 to 170.
Germany's combined export and import trade in 1880 was $1,429,025,000;
in 1890, $1,875,050,000; and in 1905 it was $3,324,018,000; in 1910,
$4,019,072,250. The German production of coal and coal products in
1910 was the highest in its history, amounting to 265,148,232 metric
tons. It would be easy enough to chronicle the commercial and
industrial strides of Germany during the last quarter of a century by
the compilation of a catalogue of figures. It is not my intention to
persuade the reader to believe in any such fantastic theory as that
the present Kaiser is entirely responsible for this progress. I am no
Pygmalion that I can make an Emperor by breathing prayers before pages
of statistics.
It is only fair, however, in any sketch of the Emperor to give this
skeleton outline of what has taken place in the empire over which he
rules, and which, in certain quarters, it is said, he menaces by his
predilection for war. These few figures spell peace, they do not spell
war, and the ruler who has some 700,000 armed men at his back, and a
navy the second in strength in the world guarding his shores, and a
mercantile marine carrying his trade which is hard on the heels of
Great Britain as a rival, but who has none the less kept his country
at peace with the world for twenty-five years, may be credited at
least with good intentions.
It may be said in answer to this same argument that this building and
training and enriching of a nation are a threat in themselves. True, a
strong man is more dangerous than a weak one; but it is equally true
that a strong man is a greater safeguard than a weak one where the
question of peace is at stake. It is also true that a rich and
powerful man must needs take more precautions against attack and
robbery than a tramp. A tramp seldom carries even a bunch of keys, and
pays no premium on fire, accident, or burglary insurance.
William the Second knows his history as well as any of his people, and
incomparably better than his English, French, or American critics. He
knows that only twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great,
the Prussian power went down before Napoleon like a house of cards,
and that the country's humiliation was stamped in bold outlines when
Napoleon was received in Berlin with the ringing of bells, the firing
of cannons, and he himself greeted as a savior and a benefactor. That
was only a hundred years ago. Is it an indiscretion, then, when the
present ruler, speaking at Brandenburg the 5th of March, 1890, says:
"I look upon the people and nation handed on to me as a responsibility
conferred upon me by God, and that it is, as is written in the Bible,
my duty to increase this heritage, for which one day I shall be called
upon to give an account; those who try to interfere with my task, I
shall crush"?
On his accession to the throne his first two proclamations were to the
army and the navy, his third to the people. On the 14th of July, 1888,
he reviewed the fleet at Kiel, and for the first time an Emperor of
Germany and King of Prussia appeared there in the uniform of an
admiral. In April, 1897, Queen Victoria celebrated the sixtieth year
of her reign, and Prince Henry represented Germany, appearing as
admiral of the fleet in an old battle-ship, the King William. On the
24th of April the Emperor telegraphed to his brother: "I regret
exceedingly that I cannot put at your disposition for this celebration
a better ship, especially when all other countries are appearing with
their finest ships of war. It is a sad consequence of the manoeuvring
of those unpatriotic persons who have obstructed the construction of
even the most necessary war-ships. But I shall know no rest till I
have placed our navy on a par for strength with our army." From that
day to this he has gone steadily forward demanding of his people a
strong army and a powerful fleet. He now has both. He has pulled
Germany out of danger and beyond the reach, for the moment at least,
of any repetition of the catastrophe and humiliation of a hundred
years ago. This is a solid fact, and for this situation the Emperor is
largely, one might almost say wholly, responsible.
One hears and one reads criticisms of the Emperor's habit of speaking
and writing of "my navy." It is said that the other states of Germany
have borne taxation to build the fleet, and that it is no more the
Emperor's than that of the King of Bavaria, or of Wuertemberg, or of
Saxony. This is the petty, pin-pricking babble of boarding-school
girls, or of those official supernumeraries who have turned sour in
their retirement. Even the honest democrat is made indignant. If the
German navy is not the work of William the Second, then its parentage
is far to seek; and if the German navy is not proud to be called "my
navy," it is wofully lacking in gratitude to its creator.
No man who looks back over his own career, say of twenty-five years,
but is both chastened and amused. He is chastened by the unforeseen
dangers that he has escaped; he is amused by the certificates of
failure, and the prophecies of disaster, that always everywhere
accompany the man who takes part in the game in preference to sitting
in the reserved seats, or peeking through a hole in the fence. I have
not been honored with any such intimate association with the German
Emperor as would enable me to say whether he has a highly developed
sense of humor or not. I can only say for myself, that if I had lived
through his Majesty's last twenty-five years, I should need no other
fillip to digestion than my chuckles over the prophecies of my
enemies.
It has been said of him that he is volatile; that he flies from one
task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the
extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and
obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions
would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty
official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a
mystic and a dreamer, looking for guidance to the traditions of
mediaeval knighthood; while others, again, dub him a modernist, insist
that he is a commercial traveller, hawking the wares of his country
wherever he goes, and with an eye ever to the interests of Bremen and
Hamburg and Essen and Pforzheim. Again, you hear that he is a Prussian
junker, or that he is a cavalry officer, with all the prejudices and
limitations of such a one; while, on the other hand, he is chided for
enlisting the financial help of rich Jews and industrials. He is
versatile, but versatility is a virtue so long as it does not extend
to one's principles. Every man who has profoundly influenced the life
of the world, from Moses to Lincoln, has been versatile. Carlyle goes
so far as to say: "I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man
that could not be all sorts of men." He speaks French well enough to
address the Academie; he speaks English as well as a cultivated
American, and no one speaks it more distinctly, more crisply, more
trippingly upon the tongue, these days; he preaches a capital sermon;
he is an accomplished binder of books; he is a successful and
enthusiastic farmer, and he is frankly audacious in his loves and
hatreds, his ambitions and his beliefs. He has, in short, no vermin
blood in him at any rate. If you do not like him, you know why; and if
you do, you know why as easily. He even knows what he believes about
woman's suffrage and about God, a rare conciseness of thinking in
these troublous times.
There stands before you a man apparently as sound in mind and in body
as any man who treads German soil; a man of great vivacity of mind and
manner, and of wholesome delight in living; who bears huge
responsibilities with good humor, and that most unwholesome of all
things, undisputed power, with humility. At a banquet in Brandenburg
the 5th of March, 1890, speaking of his many voyages, he said: "He
who, alone at sea, standing on the bridge, with nothing over him but
God's heaven, has communed with himself will not mistake the value of
such voyages. I could wish for many of my countrymen that they might
live through similar hours of self-contemplation, where a man takes
stock of what he has tried to do, and of what he has accomplished.
Then it is that a man is cured of vanity, and we have all of us need
of that."
It is obvious that a man cannot be modest, as the above quotation
would indicate, and at the same time preening with vanity; a Sir
Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless, dashing cavalry officer
or proud Prussian squire, and at the same time a wary and astute
insurance agent for the empire; a preacher of duty and honor, and
belief in God, and at the same time a political comedian deceiving his
rivals abroad, and hoodwinking his subjects at home.
Not a few men, even of slight powers of observation and of meagre
experience, have noted the strange fact that a blank and direct
statement of the truth is very apt to be put down as a lie; and that a
man who frankly expresses his beliefs and ambitions, and openly goes
about his business and his pleasures with no thought of concealment,
is often regarded as Machiavellian and deceitful, because a timid and
cautious world finds it hard to believe that he is really as audacious
as he appears.