THE KAISER AND "LÈSE-MAJESTÉ"
The talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German
Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of
the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery
such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must
remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the
conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a
conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too,
of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration
and applause that they fail to hear the great, long drawn wail of
agony that echoes around the world. His eyes are so blinded with
the sheen of his own glory that they do not see the mutilated
corpses, the crime, the pestilence, the hunger, the incalculable
sorrow that sweeps the earth from the jungles of Africa to the
frozen plains of the North, from Siberia to Saskatchewan, from
Texas to Trieste, from Alaska to Afghanistan--everywhere he has
brought the dark angel of mourning to millions upon millions of
desolate homes.
Do you remember that picture of the Conquerors, Cæsar and
Alexander, Attila and Napoleon, Charlemagne and Cambyses, astride
their horses or in chariots in the centre of the picture, dark,
gloomy, menacing? On each side of them, lining a vast plain that
fades in the distance, lie the dead--stiff, cold, grey,
reproachful;--yet all the victims of those conquerors, as well as
all their battalions do not equal the countless number that have
already drenched a forgiving earth with their dying blood in this
war:--victims all of the vain-glorious ambition of a single
mortal--the German Kaiser.
But the despot who sends his subjects to die, as Frederick the
Great said, "in order to be talked about" is not indigenous to
any one particular country. Like conditions produce like results.
The career of Louis XIV, the "Sun King," for instance, whose wars
and extravagances sowed the seeds of the French Revolution, is
epitomised in two phrases uttered by him: "I am the State" and "I
almost had to wait."
After the French Revolution, another despot, the first Napoleon,
not only sought the conquest of the world, but made his ex-waiter
and ex-groom marshals and his washerwomen duchesses ape the
manners and customs of the old régime. Despotism has been
characteristic of many generations but the world had thought
itself rid of the worst offenders.
Royalty still lives to torture and retard civilisation. Its
methods of perpetuation are unchanged from the middle ages. What
is lèse-majesté but a survival of feudalism, a kind of slavery to
inviolable tradition--the immunity of the monarch and his family
from that criticism and freedom of discussion which is the
essence of democracy?
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN: MR.
GERARD IN THE CENTER]
To commit lèse-majesté, to speak slightingly of royalty in
Germany, is a very serious offence.
I have taken the following examples of decisions in lèse-majesté
cases not from the records of the lower courts, the decisions of
which may be reversed, but from the records of the Imperial
Supreme Court at Leipzig, the highest court in the land.
For instance: The defendant, a speaker at a meeting consisting
chiefly of sympathisers with the socialist cause, made the
following statement in reference to a speech of the Kaiser:
"Under the protection of the highest power of the State the
gauntlet has been flung before the (socialist) Party, the
gauntlet which means a combat for life and death. Well, then, so
far as the insult concerns our Party, we are so far above it,
that the mudslinging--no matter from what direction it may
come--cannot touch us."
The defence pointed out that the defendant "had considered each
word carefully before he had made the speech, and that in doing
so, wanted to avoid any possibility of lèse-majesté."
The Supreme Court held that although the defendant carefully
selected his words and tried to evade prosecution, he must be
adjudged guilty, because his audience could not have misunderstood
the insinuation. The sentence was affirmed.
Dangerous as it is to say anything that can be construed as
derogatory of the authority, of the Kaiser it is equally
dangerous to attack the dead members of the Royal House.
The editor of the _Volkswacht_ had published in his paper an
article entitled "The German Characteristics of the Hohenzollerns"
which the Lower Court interpreted to be a reply to a statement of
the Kaiser, which had referred to a group of people considered
unworthy by him to be called "Germans." Without doubt the editor
was alluding to the Kaiser's speech, made at Koenigsberg to the
newly enlisted army recruits, in which he called the socialists
"vaterlandslose Gesellen," i.e., scoundrels without any country.
The writer, however, discussed "the conduct of the Elector
Joachim of Brandenburg and of his brother Albrecht, Elector of
Mainz, before and during the election of Emperor Charles V."
The defence claimed that the defendant could not be held guilty
of lèse-majesté against the Kaiser since the defendant "criticised
the Kaiser's ancestors and not the Kaiser himself." But the Court
held that it was the intent of the defendant to discredit the
"House of the Hohenzollerns, and that the Kaiser by implication,
being the living head of the Hohenzollern family, was thereby
insulted." The Court further states that the defendant's article
could not be regarded as a scientific or historical contribution
since the _Volkswacht's_ subscribers, consisting chiefly of
workingmen, had neither any understanding of nor interest in
dynastic intrigues of the sixteenth century.
Even those Americans who have expressed themselves freely about
the Kaiser will, after the war is over, be compelled to take
their "cures" in some country other than Germany, for in one
case it was held that an American citizen was rightfully
convicted in Baden of lèse-majesté because of statements made by
him in Switzerland.
The Court held that the judgment of the Lower Court must be
sustained, since the German Imperial Laws have precedence over
any treaties engaged in by the Grand Duchy of Baden and the
United States and "that the fact that the defendant had become a
citizen of the United States does not exempt him from prosecution
in the German Imperial Courts."
In another case a newspaper editor criticised a speech delivered
by the Kaiser before the Reichstag on December 6th, 1898. The
defendant did not refer to the person of the emperor himself, but
simply attacked and ridiculed the propositions and proposals made
by His Imperial Majesty. The defence pointed out that the
Kaiser's speech was not an act of the Kaiser's own personal will,
but only an act of government for which the Imperial Chancellor
should be responsible, and that the defendant was not conscious
of the fact that the criticism contained in his article could be
an insult to the person of the Kaiser.
It was held, however, by the Court that a criticism of the
Kaiser's speech at the opening of the Reichstag is _always_ to be
regarded as a criticism of the Kaiser's person, and that the plea
that the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible for acts of
government of this sort is not sustained.
In other words it is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or
ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips of the
Kaiser.
If the Kaiser announces that two and two make five, jail awaits
the subject who dares to ridicule that novel arithmetical
proposition.
It is because of these convictions for lèse-majesté that the
Berliners, when discussing the Emperor at their favourite table
or "Stammtisch" in the beer halls and cafés, always refer to him
as "Lehmann."