at their disposal, cannot fail to remember that simplicity and
directness have in the persons of their highest exemplars been
misunderstood; hunted down like wild beasts, burned, crucified, and
then, when they were well out of the way, crowned and held up to
humanity as the saviors of the race. We will have none of them when
authority, faith, truth, courage, show us our distorted images in the
mirror of their lives. Crucify him, crucify him! has always been the
cry when such a one asserts his moral kingship, or his sonship to God,
or his audacious intention to live his own life; and in less tragic
fashion, but none the less along the same lines, the world tends to
pick at, and to fray the moral garments of, its leaders still to-day.
When such a one succeeds through sheer simplicity, then that last
feeble epitaph of mediocrity is applied to him: "He is lucky," because
so few people realize that "luck," is merely not to be dependent upon
luck.
It is apparent from the quotations I have given, and many more of the
same tenor are at our disposal, that the personality we are studying
has a very definite image of his place in the world, of the duties he
is called upon to perform, of his rights according to his own
conception of his authority and responsibilities, and of his
intentions.
It is equally apparent that he looks upon history in quite another way
than that usually accepted by the modern scientific historian. Taine
and Green may explain everything, even kings and emperors, by the
forces of climate, environment, and the slow-heaving influence of the
people. This school of historians will tell you how Charlemagne, and
Luther, and Cromwell, and Napoleon are to be accounted for by purely
material explanations.
The German Emperor apparently believes that the history of the world
and the development of mankind are due to a series of mighty factors,
mysteriously endowed from on high and bearing the names of men, and
not infrequently the names of emperors and kings. He is continually
recalling his ancestors, the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and
William I, his grandfather. These men made Prussia and Prussia made
the German Empire, he declares. To the Brandenburg Parliament he says:
"It is the great merit of my ancestors that they have always stood
aloof from and above all parties, and that they have always succeeded
in making political parties combine for the welfare of the whole
people."
Due to a quality in the German character that need not be discussed
here, it is true that they have been led, and driven, and welded by
powerful individuals. No Magna Charta, no Cromwell, no Declaration of
Independence is to be found in German history. No vigorous demand from
the people themselves marks their progress. You can read all there is
of German history in the biographies of the Great Elector, of
Frederick William the First, of Frederick the Great, of York, of von
Stein, Hardenberg, Sharnhorst, and Bluecher, of Bismarck, William I,
and the present Emperor.
What the Kaiser believes of history is true of German history. If he
asserts himself as he does in Germany, it is because two hundred and
fifty years of German history put him wholly and entirely in the
right. It is to be presumed that what every student of German history
may see for himself, has not escaped the flexible intelligence of the
present Emperor, and that is, that only the autocratic kings of
Prussia succeeded, and that only an autocratic statesman succeeded, in
bringing the whole country into line, by the acknowledgment of the
King of Prussia, and his heirs forever, as German emperors.
The first so-called indiscretion of the present Emperor was
magnificent. He dismissed Bismarck two years after he came to the
throne. If you have ever been the owner of a yacht and your sailing-master
has grown to be a tyrant, and you have taken your courage in
your hand and bundled him over the side, you have had in a microcosmic
way the sensations of such an experience.
It is said that Bismarck, then seventy-five years old, and since 1862
accustomed to undisputed power, demurred to the wish of the Emperor
that the other ministers should have access to him directly, and not
as heretofore only through the chancellor. It is said too that the
matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical Bismarck, had but scanty respect
for the mystical view of his grandfather as a saint, that the Emperor
everywhere proclaimed. In 1896, the 20th of February, in speaking of
his grandfather, he refers to him as: "The Emperor William, that
personality which has become for us in some sort that of a saint."
Bismarck, too, objected to the Emperor's policy as regards the
treatment of, and the legislation for, the workingmen. On February the
5th, 1890, he writes to Bismarck: "It is the duty of the state to
regulate the duration and conditions of work in such manner that the
health and the morality of the workingman may be preserved, and that
his needs may be satisfied and his desire for equality before the law
assured."
"Now this is the tale of the Council the German
Kaiser decreed,
"And the young king said:--'I have found it,
the road to the rest ye seek:
The strong shall wait for the weary, and the
hale shall halt for the weak;
With the even tramp of an army where no man
breaks from the line,
Ye shall march to peace and plenty, in the
bond of brotherhood--sign!'"
Whatever the reasons, the criticisms, or the causes, the man whom we
have been describing was as certain to dismiss Bismarck from office,
as a bird is certain to fly and not to swim. The ruler who at a
banquet May the 4th, 1891, proclaimed: "There is only one master of
the nation: and that is I, and I will not abide any other"; and later,
on the 16th of November, in an address to recruits said: "I need
Christian soldiers, soldiers who say their Pater Noster. The soldier
should not have a will of his own, but you should all have but one
will and that is my will; there is but one law for you and that is
mine." Again, in addressing the recruits for the navy on the 5th of
March, 1895, he said to them: "Just as I, as Emperor and ruler,
consecrate my life and my strength to the service of the nation, so
you are pledged to give your lives to me." Such a man could not share
his rule with Bismarck.
Bismarck left Berlin amid groans and tears. A prop had been rudely
pushed from beneath the empire. The young Emperor would stumble and
sway, and fall without this strong guide beside him. Men said this was
the first sign of an imperious will and temper.
There is an Arab proverb which runs: "When God wishes to destroy an
ant he gives it wings." The Kaiser was to be given power for his own
destruction. But what has happened? Absolutely nothing of these evil
prophecies. In 1884 Bismarck was saying to Gerhard Rohlfs, the African
explorer: "The main thing is, we neither can nor really want to
colonize. We shall never have a fleet like France. Our artisans and
lawyers and time-expired soldiers are no good as colonists." If the
ideas of William the Second were to prevail, it was time that Bismarck
went over the side as pilot of the ship of state. The Kaiser in
appropriate terms regretted the loss of this tried public servant and
said: "However, the course remains the same-- full steam ahead!"
Three days after the Jameson raid, on the 3d of January, 1896, the
Kaiser telegraphed to President Krueger: "I beg to express to you my
sincere congratulations that, without help from foreign powers, you
have succeeded with your own people and by your own strength in
driving out the armed bands which attempted to disturb the peace of
your country, and in reestablishing order and in defending the
independence of your people from attacks from outside."
On the 28th of October, 1908, The Daily Telegraph of London published
a long interview with the Emperor, the gist of which was that the
British press and people continued to distrust him, while all the time
he was and had been the friend of Great Britain. The Emperor cited
instances of his friendship, declared the English were as mad as March
hares not to believe in him; insisted that by reason of Germany's
increasing foreign commerce, and on account of the growing menace to
peace in the Pacific Ocean, Germany was determined to have an adequate
fleet, which perhaps one day even England might be glad to have
alongside of her own.
In addition to these two incidents, the Emperor had written a letter
to Lord Tweedmouth, who was already then a sick man, and probably not
wholly responsible, in which it was said he had offered advice as to
the increase of the British navy.
I have described these furious indiscretions, as they were called at
the time, together, though they were years apart; for these
utterances, and the constant repetition of his sense of responsibility
to God, and not to the people he governs, are the heart of this whole
contention that the German Emperor is indiscreet, is indiscreet even
to the point of damaging his own prestige, and injuring his country's
interests abroad.
Of all these so-called indiscretions there is the question to ask:
Should these things have been said? Should these things have been
written? There are several things to be said in answer to these
questions. I shall treat each one in turn, but all these statements
told the truth and cleared the air. The Krueger telegram was not
written by the Emperor, and when the worst construction is put upon
it, it expressed what? It was merely the condemnation of freebooting
methods, a condemnation, be it said, that it received from many right-
minded and sincerely patriotic Englishmen, a condemnation too that was
re-echoed from America. Only the honorable and winning personality of
one of the most patriotic and charming men in England, Sir Starr
Jameson, saved the raid from looking like piracy. A brave man spoke
his mind about it, and he happened to be in a position so conspicuous
that the rumble of his words was heard afar.
So far as The Daily Telegraph interview is concerned, the secret
history of the incident has never been fully divulged. One may say,
however, without fear of contradiction that the importance of the
matter was unduly magnified, by those, both at home and abroad, who
had something to gain by exaggeration. It is admitted on all sides by
those best informed that at any rate the Emperor was neither
responsible for the publication, a point to be kept in mind, nor for
the choice of expressions used in the interview.
The letter to Lord Tweedmouth was a friendly communication dealing
with the conditions of the British and German fleets in the past and
present, and without a word in it that might not have been published
in The Times. It was quite innocent of the sinister significance
placed upon it by those who had not seen it; and the British Ministry
declined to publish it for entirely different reasons, reasons in no
way connected with the German Emperor.
As we read The Daily Telegraph interview to-day, it is a plain
document. Every word of it is true. The moment one looks at it from
the point of view, that the Emperor of Germany is sincerely desirous
of an amiable understanding with England, and that he is, for the
peace and quiet of the world, working toward that end, there is no
adverse criticism to be passed upon it. The English are thoroughly and
completely mistaken about the attitude of the German Emperor toward
them. He is far and away the best and most powerful friend they have
in Europe, and I, for one, would be willing to forgive him were he
irritated at their misunderstanding of him. Personally, I have not the
shadow of a doubt that had France or Russia treated the German Emperor
with the cool distrust shown him by the British, the German army and
fleet would have moved ere this.
To those who know the Britisher he is forgiven for those luxuries of
insular stupidity which punctuate his history. I know what a fine
fellow he is, and I pass them by. Mr. Churchill speaks of the German
fleet as a "luxury"; but this is only one of those cold-storage
impromptus that a reputation for cleverness must keep on hand, and
when Lord Haldane in a clumsy attempt to praise the German Emperor
speaks of him as "half English" I laugh, as one laughs at the story of
fat Gibbon kneeling to propose to a lady and requiring a servant to
get him on his legs again. British courting often needs a lackey to
keep it on its legs.
Could anything be more burningly irritable to the Germans than those
two unnecessary statements? For the moment I am dealing with the
attitude of the Emperor alone. Of the tirades of Chamberlain and
Woltmann, Schmoller, Treitschke, Delbrueck, Zorn, and other
under-exercised professors, one may speak elsewhere. They are as
unpardonable as the yokel rhetoric of our British friends. Of the
Emperor's insistence upon his friendliness, of his outspoken betrayal
of his real feelings, of his audacious policy of telling the blunt
truth, I am, alas, no fair judge, for I am too entirely the advocate
of keeping as few cats in the bag as possible. If these things had not
been said and written, it is true that there would have been no
tumult; having been said and written, I fail to see the slightest
indication in the political life of either Germany or England to-day
that they did harm. Certainly, from his own point of view of what his
position entails, they can hardly, as the radicals in Germany claim,
be considered as unconstitutional or beyond his prerogative.
When the German Emperor says: "I," he refers to the authority and
responsibility and dignity of the German imperial crown. He is not
magnifying his personal importance; he is emphasizing the dignity and
importance of every German citizen. Let us try to understand the
situation before we pass judgment! Both German radicalism and German
socialism are peculiar to Germany, and everywhere misunderstood
abroad. They both demand things of the government for the easement of
their position, they both demand certain privileges, but they do not
seek or want either authority or responsibility. Look at the figures
of their proportionate increase and compare this with their actual
influence in the Reichstag to-day. From 1881 to 1911, here is the
percentage of votes cast by the five representative political parties:
1881 1893 1911
The National Liberals........... 14.6 12.9 14.0
The Freisinnige and south German
Volkspartei..................... 23.2 14.2 13.1
The Conservatives, including the
Deutsche and Freikonservative... 23.7 20.4 12.4
The Centrum (Catholic party).... 23.2 19.0 16.3
The social Democrats............ 6.1 23.2 34.8
If it were thought for a moment in Germany that the Socialists could
come into real power, their vote and the number of their
representatives in the Reichstag would dwindle away in one single
election.
The average German is no leader of men, no lover of an emergency, no
social or political colonist, and he would shrink from the initiative
and daring and endurance demanded by a real political revolution and a
real change of authority, as a hen from water. The very quality in his
ruler that we take for granted he must dislike is the quality that at
the bottom of his heart he adores, and he reposes upon it as the very
foundation of his sense of security, and as the very bulwark behind
which he makes grimaces and shakes his fist at his enemies. Such men
as the present chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, a very calm spectator
of his country's doings, and the Emperor himself, both know this.
As he looks at history and at life, it follows that he must be
interested in everything that concerns his people, and not
infrequently take a hand in settling questions, or in pushing
enterprises, that seem too widely apart to be dealt with by one man,
and too far afield for his constitutional obligations to profit by his
interference. Certainly German progress shows that the Germans can
have no ground to quote: "Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi,"
of their Emperor.
In the discussion of this question, I may remind my American readers,
although the German constitution is dealt with elsewhere, that there
is one difference between Germany and America politically, that must
never be left out of our calculations. Such constitution and such
rights as the German citizens have, were granted them by their rulers.
The people of Prussia, or of Bavaria, or of Wuertemberg, have not given
certain powers to, and placed certain limitations upon, their rulers;
on the contrary, their rulers have given the people certain of their
own prerogatives and political privileges, and granted to the people
as a favor, a certain share in government and certain powers, that
only so long as seventy years ago belonged to the sovereign alone. It
is not what the people have won and then shared with the ruler, but it
is what the ruler has inherited or won and shared with the people,
that makes the groundwork of the constitutions of the various states,
and of the empire of Germany. Nothing has been taken away from the
people of Prussia or from any other state in Germany that they once
had; but certain rights and privileges have been granted by the rulers
that were once wholly theirs. Bear this in mind, that it is William II
and his ancestors who made Prussia Prussia, and voluntarily gave
Prussians certain political rights, and not the citizens of Prussia
who stormed the battlements of equal rights and made a treaty with
their sovereign.
The King of Prussia is the largest landholder and the richest citizen
of Prussia. We have seen what he expects of his navy and of his army.
Speaking on the 6th of September, 1894, he says: "Gentlemen,
opposition on the part of the Prussian nobility to their King is a
monstrosity."
But arid details are not history, and in this connection let us have
done with them. I have documented this chapter with dates and
quotations because the situation politically, is so far away from the
experience or knowledge of the American, that he must be given certain
facts to assist his imagination in making a true picture. I have done
this, too, that the Kaiser may have his real background when we
undertake to place him understandingly in the modern world. Here we
have patriarchal rule still strong and still undoubting, coupled with
the most successful social legislation, the most successful state
control of railways, mines, and other enterprises; and a progress
commercial and industrial during the last quarter of a century, second
to none.
This ruler believes it to be essentially a part of his business to be
a Lorenzo de Medici to his people in art; their high priest in
religion; their envoy extraordinary to foreign peoples; their watchful
father and friend in legislation dealing with their daily lives; their
war-lord, and their best example in all that concerns domestic
happiness and patriotic citizenship. He fulfils the words of the old
German chronicle which reads: "Merito a nobis nostrisque posteris
pater patriae appelatur quia erat egregius defensor et fortissimus
propugnator nihili pendens vitam suam contra omnia adversa propter
justitiam opponere."
If history is not altogether valueless in its description of symptoms,
the Germans are of a softer mould than some of us, more malleable,
rather tempted to imitate than led by self-confidence to trust to
their own ideals, and less hard in confronting the demands of other
peoples, that they should accept absorption by them.
Spurned and disdained by Louis XIV, they fawned upon him, built
palaces like his, dressed like his courtiers, wrote and spoke his
language, copied his literary models, and even bored themselves with
mistresses because this was the fashion at Versailles. He stole from
them, only to be thrown the kisses of flattery in return. He sneered
at them, only to be begged for his favors in return. He took their
cities in time of peace, and they acknowledged the theft by a smirking
adulation that he allowed one of their number to be crowned a king.
As for Napoleon, he performed a prolonged autopsy upon the Germans.
They were dismembered or joined together as suited his plans. At his
beck they fought against one another, or against Russia, or against
England. He tossed them crowns, that they still wear proudly, as a
master tosses biscuits to obedient spaniels. He put his poor relatives
to rule over them, here and there, and they were grateful. He marched
into their present capital, took away their monuments, and the sword
of Frederick the Great, and they hailed him with tears and rejoicing
as their benefactor, while their wittiest poet and sweetest singer,
lauded him to the skies.
It is unpleasant to recall, but quite unfair to forget, these
happenings of the last two hundred years in the history of the German
people. What would any man say, after this, was their greatest need,
if not self-confidence; if not twenty-five years of peace to enable
them to recover from their beatings and humiliation; if not a powerful
army and navy to give them the sense of security, by which alone
prosperity and pride in their accomplishments and in themselves can be
fostered; if not a ruler who holds ever before their eyes their ideals
and the unfaltering energy required of them to attain them!
What nation would not be self-conscious after such dire experiences?
What nation would not be tenderly sensitive as to its treatment by
neighboring powers? What nation would not be even unduly keen to
resent any appearance of an attempt to jostle it from its hard-won
place in the sun? Their self-consciousness and sensitiveness and
vanity are patent, but they are pardonable. As the leader of the
Conservative party in the Reichstag, Doctor von Heydebrandt, speaking
at Breslau in October, 1911, anent the Morocco controversy, said,
after, alluding to the "bellicose impudence" of Lloyd-George: "The
[British] ministry thrusts its fist under our nose, and declares, I
alone command the world. It is bitterly hard for us who have 1870
behind us." They feel that they should no longer be treated to such
bumptiousness.
I trust that I am no swashbuckler, but I have the greatest sympathy
with the present Emperor in his capacity as war-lord, and in his
insistent stiffening of Germany's martial backbone.
When shall we all recover from a certain international sickliness that
keeps us all feverish? The continual talk and writing about
international friendships, being of the same family, or the same race,
the cousin propagandism in short, is irritating, not helpful. I do not
go to Germany to discover how American is Germany, nor to England to
discover how American is England; but to Germany to discover how
German is Germany, to England to see how English is England. I much
prefer Americans to either Germans or Englishmen, and they prefer
Germans or Englishmen, as the case may be, to Americans. What spurious
and milksoppy puppets we should be if it were not so. So long as there
are praters going about insisting that Germany, with a flaxen pig-tail
down her back, and England, in pumps instead of boots, and a poodle
instead of a bulldog, shall sit forever in the moonlight hand in hand;
or that America shall become a dandy, shave the chin-whisker, wear a
Latin Quarter butterfly tie of red, white, and blue, and thrum a banjo
to a little brown lady with oblique eyes and a fan, all day long; just
so long will the bulldog snarl, the flaxen-haired maiden look sulky,
the chin-whisker become stiffer and more provocative, and the
fluttering fan seem to threaten blows.
We have been surfeited with peace talk till we are all irritable. One
hundredth part of an ounce of the same quality of peace powders that
we are using internationally would, if prescribed to a happy family in
this or any other land, lead to dissensions, disobedience, domestic
disaster, and divorce. Mr. Carnegie will have lived long enough to see
more wars and international disturbances, and more discontent born of
superficial reading, than any man in history who was at the same time
so closely connected with their origin. Perhaps it were better after
all if our millionaires were educated!