THE RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA
Machiavelli, in _The Prince_, instructs rulers in the use of religion
as a means of obtaining absolute power; and from the point of view of
monarchs of the Renaissance and after, he would have been a fool, if
he had neglected this important bond in uniting the nations he
governed. It was not a question as to the internal faith of the
ruler; that was a personal matter; but outwardly he must conform to
the creed which gave him the greatest political advantages. There is
a pretty picture of Napoleon's teaching the rudiments of Christianity
to a little child at Saint Helena; but who imagines that he would
have hesitated to make the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca or to prostrate
himself before the idols of any powerful Pagan nation, if he could
have fulfilled his plans in the East? 'Paris vaut une Messe,' said
Henry IV. of Navarre and France with the cynicism of his tribe. Queen
Catherine di Medici and Queen Elizabeth had their superstitions. They
probably believed that all clever people have the same religion, but
never tell what it is--the religion to which Lord Beaconsfield
thought he belonged. It is against the subversion of religion, of
spirituality, to the State that democracy protests. Frankly, it is as
much against the despotism of Socialism as it is against the
Machiavellianism of His late Imperial Majesty, the German Emperor. He
hoped to become Emperor of Germany and the world, and to speak from
Berlin _urbi et ubi_. To be German Emperor did not content him.
The Kaiser's use of religion as an adjunct to the possession of
absolute power began very early in his reign. Bismarck could teach
him nothing, though Bismarck was as decided a Hegelian as he was a
Prussian in his idea of the function of the ruler.
Hegel, the learned author of the _Philosophy of Right_, was Prussian
to the core. He was on the side of the rulers, and he hated reforms,
or rather, feared reformers, because they might disturb the divinely
ordered authority. There must be a dot to the 'i' or it meant nothing
in the alphabet. This dot was the King. He was the darling of the
Prussian Government and the spokesman of Frederick William III. He
loathed the movement in Germany towards democratic reforms, and
watched England with distrustful eyes. The teaching of most Hegelians
in the Universities of the United States--and the Hegelian idea of
the State had made much progress here--was to minimise somewhat the
arbitrary and despotic ideas of their favourite Prussian philosopher.
No man living has yet understood the full meaning of all parts of his
philosophical teachings, but one thing was clear to all men who, like
myself, watched the application of Hegelianism to Prussia and to
Germany. The State must be supreme.
The Catholics in Germany saw the errors of Hegelianism as applied to
the State, but they were not sufficiently enlightened or clever, and
they neglected to oppose its progress efficiently. There are various
opinions about the activities of the Fathers of the Congregation of
Jesus (founded by Saint Ignatius Loyola as a _corps d'élite_ of the
counter-reformation) in Germany and in the world in general. Bismarck
heartily disapproved of them for the same reasons as Hegel
disapproved of them. They taught that Cæsar is not omnipotent, that
the human creature has rights which must be respected, and are above
the claims of the State. In a word, in Germany, they stood for the
one thing that the Prussian monarchs detested--dissent on the part of
any subject to their growing assertion of the divine right of kings.
Windthorst formed the Centrum, and opposed Bismarck valiantly, but
political considerations Prussianised the Centre, or Catholic party,
as they moved 'the enemies of Prussianism,' the Socialists, when the
crucial moment arrived, and burned incense to absolute Cæsar. It was
not a question of Lutheranism against Catholicism in Germany in 1872,
not a question of an enlightened philosophy, founded on modern
research against obscurantism, as most of my compatriots have until
lately thought, but a clean-cut issue between the doctrine of the
entire supremacy of the State and the inherent rights of the citizen
to the pursuit of happiness, provided he rendered what he owed to
Cæsar legitimately. That the victims of the oppression were Jesuits
blinded many of us to the motive of the attack. The educational
system of the Jesuits had enemies among the Catholics of Germany,
too, so that they lost sight of the principle underneath the Falk
laws, so dear to Bismarck. Frederick the Great and Catherine of
Russia protected the Jesuits, it is true, but they were too absolute
to fear them. Besides, as Intellectuals, they were bound to approve
of a society, which in the eighteenth century had not lost its
reputation for being the most scientific of religious bodies.
The Falk laws were, in the opinion of Bismarck and the disciples of
the _Kulturkampf_, the beginning of the moulding of the Catholic
Church in Germany as a subordinate part of the autocratic scheme of
government. They had nothing to fear from the Lutherans--they were
already under control--and nothing to fear from the unbelieving
Intellectuals, of the Universities, for they had already accepted
Hegel and his corollaries. The main enemies of the ultra-Kaiserism
were the Catholic Church and Socialism--Socialism gradually drawing
within its circle those men who, under the name of Social Democrats,
believed that the Hohenzollern rule meant obscurantist autocracy.
The Socialists, pure and simple, are as great an enemy to democracy
as the Pan-Germans. The varying shades of opinion among the Social
Democrats,--there are liberals among them of the school of Asquith,
and even of the school of Lloyd George, constitutional monarchists
with Jeffersonian leanings, Lutherans, Catholics, non-believers, men
of various shades of religious opinion are all bent on one
thing,--the destruction of the ideals of Government advocated by
Hegel and put into practice by the Emperor and his coterie.
Both the Socialist and the Social Democrat came to Copenhagen. They
talked; they argued. They were on neutral soil. It was impossible to
believe, on their own evidence, that the Socialism of Marx, of Bebel,
of the real Socialists in Germany, could remedy any of the evils
which existed under imperialistic régime in that country.
The Socialist or the Social Democrat was feared in Germany, until he
applied the razor to his throat, or, rather, attempted hari-kari when
he voted for war. The Socialists can never explain this away. His
prestige, as the apostle of peace and good-will, is gone; he is no
longer international; he is out of count as an altruist. The Social
Democrat is in a better position; he never claimed all the attributes
of universal benignity; he was still feared in Germany, but in that
harmless debating society, the Reichstag, with the flower of the
German manhood made dumb in the trenches, he could only threaten in
vain.
In our country, pure Socialism is misunderstood. It is either cursed
with ignorant fury or looked on as merely democracy, a little
advanced, and perhaps too individualistic. It ought to be better
understood. Socialism means the negation of the individual will; the
deprivations of the individual of all the rights our countrymen are
fighting for. It is a false Christianity with Christian precepts of
good-will, of love of the poor, of equality, fraternity,
liberty,--phrases which have, on the lips of the pure Socialist, the
value of the same phrases uttered by Robespierre and Marat.
'I find,' said a Berlin Socialist, whom I had invited to meet Ben
Tillett, the English Labour Agitator, 'that Danish Socialism is
merely Social Democracy. Given a fair amount of good food and
comfort, schools, and cheap admittance to the theatres, the
Copenhagen Socialists seem to be contented. You may call it
"constructive Socialism," but I call it Social Degeneracy. We,
following the sacred principles of Marx and Bakounine, different as
they were, must destroy before we can construct. In the future, every
honest man will drive in his own car, and the best hospitals will not
be for those that pay, but for those who cannot pay. Cagliostro said
we must crush the lily, meaning the Bourbons; we must crush all that
stands in the way of the perfect rule which will make all men equal.
We must destroy all governments as they are conducted at present; we
have suffered; all restrictive laws must go!'
Ben Tillett could not come to luncheon that day, so we missed a tilt
and much instruction. The European Socialist's only excuse for
existence is that he has suffered, and he has suffered so much that
his sufferings must cry to God for justice. As to his methods, they
are not detestable. They are so reasonable, so Christian, that some
of us lose sight of his principles in admiring them. The Kaiser has
borrowed some of the best of the Socialistic methods in the
organisation of his superbly organised Empire, and that makes Germany
strong. But sympathy with the Socialists anywhere is misplaced. Their
principles are as destructive as their methods are admirable. Their
essential article of faith is that the State, named the Socialistic
aggregation, shall be supreme and absolute.
As to the other enemies of despotism in Germany, the Jesuits, they
were downed simply because Bismarck and the Hegelian Ideal would not
tolerate them. They exalted, as Hegel said, the virtue of
resignation, of continency, of obedience, above the great old Pagan
virtues, which ought to distinguish a Teuton. The Jesuits, German
citizens, few in number, apparently having no powerful friends in
Europe or the world, were cast out, as the War Lord would have cast
out the Socialist if he had dared. But the Socialists were a growing
power; they had shown that they, like the unjust steward in the
parable, know how to make friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness.
The Jesuits went; the Catholic party, the Centre was placated by the
request of Germany to have the Pope arbitrate the affair of the
Caroline Islands and by the colonial policy of Bismarck in 1888 in
supporting the work of Cardinal Lavigerie in Africa. The Catholic
population of Germany, more than one-third of the whole, accepted
the dictum that the State had the right to exile German citizens
because they disagreed with the Government as to the freedom of the
human conscience. However, as the Catholic Germans were divided in
sentiment as to the value of the Jesuit system of education, which in
this country seems to be very plastic, they were at last fooled by
the Centrum, their party, into the acceptance of a compromise.
To Copenhagen, there came, after the opening of the war, an old
priest, who had been caught in the net in Belgium; 'That Christians
should forgive such horrors as the Germans commit! Why do not the
Christian Germans protest? I confessed a German Colonel, a Catholic,
who had lain a day and a night in a field outside a Belgian town. He
was dying when some of your Americans found him, and brought him to
me. "I suffered horrors during the night," he said, "horrors almost
unbearable. I groaned many times; I heard the voices of men passing;
these men heard me." "There is a wounded man," one said, and they
came to me. "He's a German," the other said, "qu'il crève" (let him
die). And they passed on. "This," I thought, in my agony, "this, in a
Christian land where the story of the Good Samaritan is read from the
pulpits; yet they leave me to die. But when I remembered, Father, the
atrocities for which I had been obliged to shoot ten of my own
soldiers, I understood why they had passed me by."' The good priest,
who had many friends in Germany, repeated over and over again: 'Whom
the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad; the Catholics in
Germany must be mad!'
Bismarck had used Falk and the Liberals to divide and control. He
later found it necessary to placate Windthorst and the Centrum, then
a 'confessional,' or religious party. It has changed since that
time; it is now, like the Social Democratic block, made up of persons
of various shades of religious opinion, but having similar political
ideas. It represents a determination not to allow the State to be
absolute, and, no doubt, if the United States had realised its
position, it might have been strengthened by intelligent propaganda
to be of use in breaking the Prussian autocracy. But hitherto even
travelled Americans have regarded it as a remnant of the Middle Ages,
and hopelessly reactionary. It was part of the Kaiser's policy to
make the rest of the world think so, for he had adopted and adapted
this Bismarckian chart while throwing the pilot of many stormy seas
overboard. Bismarck lived to see the heritage of despotism, which he
had destined for his oldest son, seized by a young monarch, whose
capabilities he had underrated. Then, the Danes say, he uttered the
sneer, 'I will freshen the Hohenzollern blood with that of Struense!'
The German propaganda for controlling the Church in the United States
had been well thought out in 1866. The emigrants from Germany, just
after 1848, were not open to the influence of Prussian ideas; they
had had more than sufficient of them, but when the great crowd of
Germans came in later, it was time to inject the proper spirit of
Prussianism into their veins.
It is well known that the Emperor William had his eyes on the
Vatican. He was wise enough to see that if the Catholic Church lost
in one place, she was certain to gain in another; it was not
necessary for him to read Macaulay's eloquent passage on the Papacy,
as most statesmen who speak English do. But his indiscretions in
speech and writing, whether premeditated or not, for the _Zeitgeist_
and the orthodox Lutherans must be propitiated--were constantly
nullifying his plans.
As to the spiritual essence of the Catholic Church, the emperor did
not recognise it. Papal Rome was dangerous to him as long as it
remained independent; he coquetted with Harnack and with the most
advanced of the higher critics who whittled the Bible into a
pipestem. How he squared himself with the orthodox Lutherans,
apparently nearly two-thirds of the population, can only be shown by
his constant allusions to the Prussian God. As a State Church,
yielding obedience almost entirely to the governing power of the
country, he had little fear of Lutheranism in its varying shades of
opinion. The Jews he evidently always distrusted. He regarded them as
Internationalists and not to be recognised until they became of the
State Church; then they might aspire, for certain considerations, to
be _rath_ and even to wear the precious _von_.
The emperor wanted control of the Vatican. He knows history (at least
we thought so in Copenhagen), and he was sympathetic with his
ancestors in all their quarrels with the Holy See on the subject of
the investitures; the emperor had wisely foreseen that difficulties
of the same kind between the Vatican and himself might easily break
out, were not the Vatican modernised or controlled. He knew that the
claims of the Popes to dethrone rulers could never be revived since
they were not inherent in the Papacy, but only admitted by the
consent of Christendom, which had ceased to exist as a political
entity; but the question of the right of a lay emperor to control the
policy of the Holy Father in matters of the religious education,
marriage, church discipline of Catholics might at any time arise. He
knew the _non possumus_ of Rome too well to believe that in a
spiritual crisis she could be moved by the threats of any ruler. If
His Imperial Majesty could have forced the principle of some of his
ancestors that the religion of a sovereign must be that of his
subjects, the question might be settled. If he could have arranged
the religion of his subjects as easily as he settled the question as
to the authenticity of the Flora of Lucas in Berlin in favour of
Director Bode, how clear the way would have been! As it was, he knew
too well what he might expect from Rome in a crisis where he,
following the Prussian _Zeitgeist_, might wish to infringe on the
spiritual prerogatives. To understand the world every European
diplomatist of experience knows the Vatican must not be ignored, and,
while the War Lord, the future emperor of the world, hated to
acknowledge this, he was compelled to do it. The Vatican, that had
nullified the May laws and defeated Falk, their sponsor, might give
the emperor trouble at any time. Catholics of the higher classes all
over Europe were ceasing to be Royalists. The Pope, Leo XIII., had
even accepted the French Republic, and for the part of Cardinal
Rampolla and of Archbishop Ireland in this the Kaiser hid his
rancour. He must be absolute as far as the right of his family and
those of the hereditary succession went, and quite as absolute in his
control over such laws as were for the increase of the Kultur of his
people.
At one time, since the present war opened, it was rumoured at
Copenhagen that plural marriages were to be allowed, to increase the
population of a nation so rapidly being depleted. I was astonished to
hear a German Lutheran pastor--he was speaking personally, and not
for his church--say that there was nothing against this in the
teachings of Luther or Melanchthon. He quoted the affair of a
Landgraf of Hesse in the sixteenth century.
'But the Kaiser would not consent to this,' I said. 'Why not?'
responded the pastor. 'He knows his Old Testament; he has the right
of private interpretation especially when the good of the State is to
be considered.'
'Over a third of the Germans are Catholics; the Pope would never
consent to that.'
'There would be an obstacle,' he admitted; 'but the Kaiser, in the
interests of the nation, would have his way. Our nation must have
soldiers. You Americans,' he added, bitterly, 'are killing our
prospective fathers in the name of Bethlehem. We must make up the
deficit by turning to the Hebraic practice.'
'You cannot bring the Catholics to that, and I doubt whether any
decent people would consent to it, in spite of your quotation from
Luther's precedent. No Pope could allow it.'
'A Pope can do anything--whom you shall forgive,' he laughed, 'is
forgiven.'
'A Pope cannot do anything; the moment he approved of plural
marriages in the interest of any nation, he would cease to be Pope.
He cannot abrogate a law both divine and natural, and I doubt----'
'Do not doubt the power of the head of the German people, the
Shepherd of his Church. The German people are the religious, the
spiritual counterparts of the true Israelites, were begotten by the
spirit, mystical Jehovah who made Israel the prophet-nation;
mystically He has designated the German tribes as their successors.
He lives in us. This war is His doing; our Kultur, which is saturated
with our religion, is inspired by Him. He must destroy that the elect
may live.'
'Again, I repeat, Germany can no more accept such debasing of the
moral currency than she can encourage the production of illegitimate
children at the present moment. I do not believe that there is a
hospital in Berlin, especially arranged for the caring for the
offspring of army nurses and soldiers. It is a calumny.'
'We must have boy children,' said the pastor, 'but that is going too
far. Still, _Deutschland über alles_. We may one day have a German
Pope with modern ideas.'
My friend of St. Peter's Lutheran German Church was out of town. I
asked another friend to report the conversation to him. Our mutual
friend said that Pastor Lampe smiled and said, 'There are extremists
in every country. Tell the American Minister to read Dr. Preuss in
the _Allgemeine Evangelische_, _Lutherische Kirchenzeitung_.'
But I am out of due time; Dr. Preuss's famous _Passion of Germany_,
in full, appeared later, in 1915.
It is true that Austria's vote at the Conclave had defeated Cardinal
Rampolla as a candidate for the Papacy. The Emperor of Austria had
permitted himself to be used as a tool of the German Emperor, not
willingly, perhaps, for Rampolla stood for many things political
which the Absolutists hated. Nevertheless, he had done it, to the
disgust of the College of Cardinals, who thus saw a forgotten weapon
of the lay power used against themselves. They abolished the right of
veto, which Austria as a Catholic Power had retained. But the
Conclave elected a Pope who did not please the Kaiser. He was a
kindly man of great religious fervour, impossible to be moved by
German cajoling or threats. The knowledge of the crime of Germany
killed him. Nevertheless, the Emperor William had curbed the power
of Rampolla, as he hoped to destroy that of Archbishop Ireland in the
Great Republic of the West. A powerful Church with a tendency to
democracy was what he feared, and Archbishop Ireland, a frankly
democratic prelate, the friend of France, the admirer of Lafayette,
had dared to raise his powerful hand against the religious propaganda
of the All Highest in the United States of America, where one day
German Kultur was to have a home. The great Napoleon had thought of
his sister, the Princess Pauline, as Empress of the Western
hemisphere. Why not one of our imperial sons for the crude Republic
which had helped Mexico in the old, blind days to eject Maximilian?
Napoleon had made his son, later the Duke of Reichstadt, King of
Rome. Why should not one of the sons of our Napoleonic Crown Prince
be even greater, a German Pope--at least a German Prince of the
Church expounding Harnack with references to Strauss's _Life of
Jesus_? Why not? The vicegerent of the Teutonic God?
From many sources it leaked out that the Kaiser looked on the Most
Reverend John Ireland as an enemy of his projects both in Europe and
the United States. The Archbishop of St. Paul was known to be the
friend of Cardinal Rampolla. All who knew the inside of recent
history were aware that he had been consulted by Leo XIII. on vital
matters pertaining to France, in which country the ultra-Royalists,
who had managed to wrap a large part of the mantle of the Church
around them, were making every possible mistake and opposing the
Pope's determination to recognise the Republic. Archbishop Ireland
had been educated in France; he had served in the Civil War as
chaplain; he knew his own country as few ecclesiastics knew it. He,
growing up with the West, in the most American part of the West, had
brought all the resources of European culture, of an unusual
experience in world affairs, to a country at that time not rich in
men of his type. In the East, the Catholic Church had had prelates
like Cardinal Cheverus, Archbishop of Boston, a number of them, but
St. Paul was little better than a trading station when John Ireland
finished the first part of his education in France. The tide of
emigration had not yet begun to raise questions on the answers to
which the future of the country depended. It required far-sighted men
to consider them sanely. From the beginning Archbishop Ireland
reflected on them. He saw the danger of rooting in new soil the bad,
old weeds, the seeds of which were poisoning Europe. He was familiar
with the _coulisses du Vatican_, knew that Rome ecclesiastically
would try to do the right thing. But Rome ecclesiastically depends
very largely on the information it receives from the countries under
consideration.
The attitude of the opponents of the Catholic Church is due, as a
rule, to their ignorance of anything worth knowing about the Church
and their utter disregard of its real history. Their narrow attitude
is illustrated by the story that President Roosevelt, in a Cabinet
Meeting was once considering the form of a document which official
etiquette required, should be addressed to the Pope. 'Your Holiness,'
said the President. A member of the Cabinet objected. This title from
a Protestant President! 'Do you want me to call the Pope the Son of
the Scarlet Lady?' asked the President. The objection was as valid as
that of the Puritan who objected to sign a letter 'Yours faithfully'
because he was not _his_ faithfully!
In the celebrated _Century_ article of 1908, the handling of which
showed that the editors of the _Century_ held their honour higher
than any other possession, an allusion to Archbishop Ireland
appeared. I have been informed that it showed the animus of the
Kaiser against the Archbishop, who with Cardinal Gibbons, the Bishops
Keane, Spalding, O'Gorman, and Archbishop Riordan seconded by the
present Bishop of Richmond, Denis O'Connell, had defeated, after a
frightful struggle, the attempt of Kaiserism to govern the Catholic
Church in this country. Its beginnings seemed harmless enough.
A merchant named Peter Paul Cahensly of Limburg, Prussia, suggested
at the Catholic Congress of Trier, the establishment of a society for
protecting German emigrants to the United States, both at the port of
leaving and the port of arriving. Another Catholic Congress met in
Bamburg, Bavaria, three years later. Connection was made with the
Central Verein, which at its convention took up the matter zealously.
But the zeal waned, and in 1888, Herr Cahensly came to New York in
the steerage so that he could know how the German emigrant lived at
sea. He arranged that the German emigrants should be looked after in
New York and then left for home. It was reasonable enough that
Cahensly should interest himself in the welfare of the Germans at the
point of departure, but entirely out of order that he should attempt
any control of the methods for taking care of the emigrants on this
side.
It was suspected that Cahensly had talked over a plan for retaining
the Catholic Germans, especially in the West, where they formed large
groups, as still part of their native country. This had already been
tried among the Lutherans, and had for a time succeeded. The Swedish
Lutherans, segregated under the direction of German-educated
pastors, were considered to have been well taken care of. The war has
shown that the Americans of Swedish birth in the West showed
independence.
The suspicions entertained by the watchful were corroborated when, in
1891, Cahensly presented a memorial to the Papal Secretary of State,
Cardinal Rampolla, making the plea that the 'losses' to the Church
were so great, owing to the lack of teaching and preaching in German,
that a measure ought to be taken to remedy this evil by appointing
foreign Bishops and priests, imported naturally, so that each
nationality would use the language of its own country.
The object aimed at was to put the English language in the
background, to have the most tender relations, those between God and
little children, between the growing youths and Christianity,
dominated by a mode of thought and expression which would alienate
them from their fellows. In business, a man might speak such English
as he could; but English was not good enough for him in the higher
relations of life. He might earn money in 'this crude America,' but
all the finenesses of life must be German. I think I pointed out in
the New York _Freeman's Journal_ at the time, that, if there were a
special German Holy Ghost, as some of these Germanophiles seemed to
believe, he had failed to observe that there was little in the
'heretical' English language so devoid of all morality as the dogmas
proposed to govern the conduct of life in some of the Wisconsin
papers, printed in German.
Some clear-sighted Americans, Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland
at their head, saw what this meant. Kaiserism was concealed in the
glow of piety. The proceedings of the Priester Verein Convention, in
Newark, September 26, 1892, is on record. The Ordinary of the
Diocese, Bishop Wigger, had protested against the stand the German
Priests' Society proposed to take; he had announced his disapproval
in advance of 'Cahenslyism'; he was stolidly against the appointment
of 'national,' that is, trans-Atlantic Bishops selected because they
spoke no language but their own.
The choice of the 'Germanisers' was the Reverend Dr. P. J.
Schroeder--Monseigneur Schroeder, rather; he had been imported by
Bishop Keane, afterwards Archbishop, to lecture at the Catholic
University. Bishop Keane, like most Americans before the war,
believed that Germany held many persons of genius who honoured us by
coming over. When Dr. Schroeder's name was mentioned, a caustic
English prelate had remarked: 'I thought the Americans had enough
mediocrities in their own country without going abroad for them.' But
Mgr. Schroeder had a very high opinion of himself. American Catholics
were heretical persons, of no metaphysical knowledge; they could not
count accurately the number of angels who could dance on the point of
a needle! He arrogantly upheld the German idea. English-speaking
priests were neither willing nor capable. The emigrants in the United
States would be Germans or nothing--_aut Kaiser aut nullus_.
The German priests in the West claimed the right to exclude from the
Sacraments all children and their parents who did not attend their
schools, no matter how inefficient they were. The controversy became
international.
In Germany, to deny the premises of Mgr. Schroeder was to be
heretical, worthy of excommunication; in this country there was a
camp of Kaiserites who held the same opinion. It is true that
Bismarck had opened the _Kulturkampf_ in the name of the unity of
the Fatherland. It is true that the Kaiser would gladly have claimed
the right his ancestors had struggled for--of investing Bishops with
the badges of authority--and that he gave his hearty approbation to
the exile of the Jesuits. Nevertheless, he was the Kaiser! Compared
with him, the President of the United States was an upstart, and
Cardinal Gibbons was to the ultra-Germans almost an anathema as
Cardinal Mercier is! There was a fierce struggle for several years.
Bombs, more or less ecclesiastical, were dropped on Archbishop
Ireland's diocese.
To hear some of these bigots talk, we would have thought that this
brave American was Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun. But the right won.
Cahenslyism was stamped out, and here was another reason why the
Kaiser did not love Archbishop Ireland, and another reason why
Bavaria and Austria, backed up by Prussia, protested against every
attempt on the part of Rome to give him the Cardinal's hat. This
would have meant the highest approval of a prelate who stood for
everything the Kaiser and the Bavarian and Austrian courts detested.
The _curia_ is made up of the councillors of the Pope; a layman might
be created Cardinal--it is not a sacerdotal office in itself--and
while the Pope would reject with scorn the request that a temporal
Government should nominate a bishop, he might accept graciously a
request that a certain prelate be made a cardinal from the ruler of
any nation.
If President Roosevelt had been willing to make such a request to Leo
XIII.--he was urged to do it by many influential Protestants who saw
what Archbishop Ireland had done in the interest of this
country--there is no doubt that his request would have been granted.
The Cardinals are 'created' for distinguished learning. One might
quote the comparatively modern example of Cardinals Newman and
Gasquet; for traditional reasons, because of the importance of their
countries in the life of the Church; and they might be created, in
older days, for political reasons. But the wide-spread belief that a
Cardinal was necessarily a priest leads to misconceptions of the
quality of the office.
If the French Republic were to follow the example of England and
China, send an envoy to the Holy See, and make a 'diplomatic'
_rapprochement_, neither Rome nor any nation in Europe would be
shocked if His Holiness should consent to a suggestion from the
President of the French Republic and 'create,' let us say, Abbé Klein
a Cardinal.
Archbishop Ireland with his group of Americans saved us from the
insults of the propaganda of Kaiserism. This name was synonymous with
all things political and much that is social, loathed by the
absolutes in Austria, Bavaria and, of course, Germany. The creation
of Archbishop Ireland as a Cardinal would have been looked on by
these powers as a deadly insult to them, on the part of the Pope.
They made this plain.
The failure of the Cahensly plan caused much disappointment in
Germany. The Kaiser, in spite of his flings at the Catholic
Church--witness a part of the suppressed _Century_ article and the
letter to an aunt 'who went over to Rome'--was quite willing to
appear as her benefactor. Much has been made of his interest in the
restoration of the Cathedral of Cologne. This, after all, was simply
a national duty. A monarch with over one-third of his subjects
Catholics, taking his revenues from the taxes levied on them, could
scarcely do less than assist in the preservation of this most
precious historical monument.
He seemed to have become regardless of the opinion of his subjects.
He had heart-to-heart talks with the world; one of these talks was
with Mr. William Bayard Hale; the _Century Magazine_ bought it for
$1,000.00. It was to appear in December 1908. That its value as a
'sensation' was not its main value may be inferred from the character
of the editors, Richard Watson Gilder, Robert Underwood Johnson and
Clarence Clough Buel--a group of scrupulously honourable gentlemen.
This conversation with Mr. Hale took place on the Kaiser's yacht. It
was evidently intended for publication, for the most indiscreet of
sovereigns do not talk to professional writers without one eye on the
public.
Speaking of his _Impressions of the Kaiser_, the Hon. David Jayne
Hill says: 'It seemed like a real personal contact, frank, sincere,
earnest and honest. One could not question that, and it was the
beginning of other contacts more intimate and prolonged; especially
at Kiel, where the sportsman put aside all forms of court etiquette,
lying flat on the deck of the _Meteor_ as she scudded under heavy
sail with one rail under water; at Eckernforde, where the old tars
came into the ancient inn in the evening to meet their Kaiser and
drink to his Majesty's health a glass of beer.'
'Did you ever see anything more democratic in America?' the Kaiser
asked, gleefully, one time. 'What would Roosevelt think of this?' he
inquired at another.
'Hating him, as many millions no doubt do,' Mr. Hill continues, 'it
would soften their hearts to hear him laugh like a child at a good
story, or tell one himself. Can it be? Yes, it can be. There is such
a wide difference between the gentler impulses of a man and the rude
part ambition causes him to play in life! A rôle partly self-chosen,
it is true, and not wholly thrust upon him. A soul accursed by one,
great, wrong idea, and the purposes, passions, and resolutions
generated by it. A mind distorted, led into captivity, and condemned
to crime by the obsession that God has but one people, and they are
his people; that the people have but one will, and that is his will;
that God has but one purpose, and that is his purpose; and being
responsible only to the God of his own imagination, a purely tribal
divinity, the reflection of his own power-loving nature, that he has
no definite responsibility to men.'
Nevertheless, in Copenhagen, we understood from those who knew him
well that he was a capital actor, that he never forgot the footlights
except in the bosom of his family, and even there, as the young
princes grew older, there were times when he had to hide his real
feelings and assume a part. In 1908, he was determined that the
United States should be with him; he never lost an opportunity of
praising President Roosevelt or of expressing his pleasure in the
conversation of Americans. I think I have said that he boasted that
he knew Russia better than any other man in Germany, and it seemed as
if he wanted to know the United States to the minutest particular.
It is a maxim among diplomatists that kings have no friends, and that
the only safe rule in conducting one's self towards them are the
rules prescribed by court etiquette. It is likewise a rule that
politeness and all social courtesies shall be the more regarded by
their representatives as relations are on the point of becoming
strained between two countries. How little the Kaiser regarded this
rule is obvious in the case of Judge Gerard, who however frank he
was at the Foreign Office--and the outspoken methods he used in
treating with the German Bureaucrats were the despair of the lovers
of protocol--was always most discreet in meetings with the Kaiser. I
was asked quietly from Berlin to interpret some of his American
'parables,' which were supposed to have an occult meaning. There was
a tale of a one-armed man, with an inimitable Broadway flavour, that
'intrigued' a high German official. I did my best to interpret it
diplomatically. But, though our Ambassador, the most 'American' of
Ambassadors, as my German friends called him, gave out stories at the
Foreign Office that seemed irreverent to the Great, there was no
assertion that he was not most correct in his relations with the
German Emperor. Yet, one had only to hear the rumours current in
Copenhagen from the Berlin Court just after the war began, to know
that the emperor had dared to show his claws in a manner that
revealed his real character. Judge Gerard's book has corroborated
these rumours.
The fact that I had served under three administrations gave me an
unusual position in the diplomatic corps, irrespective entirely of
any personal qualities, and--this is a digression--I was supposed to
be able to find in Ambassador Gerard's parables in slang their real
menace. A very severe Bavarian count, who deplored the war
principally because it prevented him from writing to his relations in
France, from paying his tailor's bill in London, and from going for
the winter to Rome, where he had once been Chamberlain at the
Vatican, said that he had heard a story repeated by an attaché of the
Foreign Office and attributed to Ambassador Gerard, a story which
contained a disparaging allusion to the Holy Father. As a Catholic,
I would perhaps protest to Ambassador Gerard against this
irreverence which he understood had given the Foreign Minister great
pain, as, I must know, the German Government is most desirous of
respecting the feelings of Catholics.
'Impossible,' I said. 'Our Ambassador is a special friend of Cardinal
Farley's and he has just sent several thousand prayer-books to the
English Catholic prisoners in Germany.' Thus the story was told.[8]
[8] I regret that I cannot give the story in the rhyme, which was
Bavarian French.
It seemed that among the evil New Yorkers with whom the Ambassador
consorted, there was an American, named Michael, whose wife went to
the priest and complained that Michael had acquired the habits of
drinking and paying attention to other ladies. 'Very well,' said the
priest, 'I will call on Thursday night, if he is at home, and I'll
take the first chance of remonstrating with him.'
The evening came; the priest presented himself, and entered into a
learned conversation on the topics of the hour, while Michael hid
himself behind his paper, giving no opportunity for the pastor to
address him. However, he knew that his time would come if he did not
make a move into the enemy's country.
'Father,' he said, lowering his paper, 'you seem to know the reason
for everything that's goin' on to-day; maybe you'll tell me the
meanin' of the word "diabetes"?'
'It is the name of a frightful disease that attacks men who beat
their wives and spend their money on other women, Mike.'
'I'm surprised, Father,' said Michael, 'because I'm readin' here that
the Pope has it.'
It was necessary for me to explain that this was one of our folklore
stories, and could be traced back to _Gesta Romanorum_--merely one of
the merry jests of which the German literature itself of the Middle
Ages was so full, of the character, perhaps, of Rheinhard the Fox!
This is an example of the way our Ambassador played on the Germans'
sense of humour, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tried to play on
Hamlet's pipe!
* * * * *
The German propaganda went on in the United States. Look at France,
look at Italy, in comparison with Germany's respect for religion! The
Falk laws were no longer of importance; Catholics were to be
encouraged to go into the political service, having hitherto been
'rather discouraged' and even under suspicion, as von Bülow admitted.
The German was obsessed by the one idea--the preponderance of the
Fatherland.[9] He was conscientious, he had for years cultivated a
false conscience which judged everything by one standard: Is this
good for the spread of German Kultur?
[9] The Army Bill of 1913 'met with such a willing reception from
all parties as has never before been accorded to any requisition
for armaments on land or at sea.'--Von Bülow's _Imperial Germany_,
p. 201.
'What do you think of all this?' I asked one of the most
distinguished diplomatists in Europe, now resident in Berlin, the
representative of a neutral country. 'There will be no peace in
Europe until Germany gets what she wants. She knows what she wants,
and since 1870 she has used every possible method to attain it.'
To return to the indiscretions of the Kaiser--indiscretions that were
not always uncalculated. Mr. Clarence Clough Buel, one of the editors
of _The Century_, felt obliged, in justice, to give an authoritative
explanation of Dr. Hale's suppressed 'interview.' His account was
printed in _The New York World_ for December 26, 1917: 'The proof of
this interview had been passed by the German Foreign Office, with not
more than half a dozen simple verbal changes. They were made in a
bold, ready hand, but as there was no letter, we could not be sure
that the proofs had been revised by the Emperor. The usual
hair-splitting of great men and officialdom had been anticipated, so
with considerable glee, the trifling plate changes were rushed, and
the big "sixty-four" press was started to toss off 100,000 copies.'
The London _Daily Telegraph_ 'interview' of October 28, 1908, was a
thunderbolt, and the editors of _The Century_, at the urgent request
of the German Government, suppressed the edition. I had been informed
by Mr. Gilder of the facts. I was very glad of it, as I was enabled
to explain this very interesting episode at the Danish Foreign
Office. Mr. Clarence Buel writes (it was his duty to read the last
galley proofs):--'But in the last cold reading I had grave suspicion
that the Kaiser's reference to the Virgin Mary might be construed by
devout Catholics as a slur on an important tenet of their faith. So
the sacred name was deleted, and the Kaiser's diction slightly
assisted in the kindly spirit for which editors are not so often
thanked by the writing fraternity as they should be. This incident is
mentioned to show the protective attitude of the magazine, and also
to indicate that the original "leak" as to the contents of the
interview came from an employee of the printing office. Only some one
familiar with the galley proofs could have known that the Virgin Mary
had figured in the manuscript, for the name did not appear in the
printed pages and consequently could not have reached the public
except for the killing of the interview. Let it be said, with
emphasis, that there was nothing in the Kaiser's references to the
part taken by the Vatican in looking out for the interests of the
Church in world politics which could have caused serious irritation
in any part of Europe. As a student at the Berlin University, I had
attended some of the debates in the Landtag during the famous
_Kulturkampf_ over the clerical laws devised by bold Bismarck to
loosen the Catholic grip on the cultural life of Prussian Poland.
Knowing the nature of that controversy, and the usual, familiar
attitude of (Protestant) Europeans toward religious topics, I could
believe that everything in the article bearing on Church and State,
from the over-lord of most Lutherans, was offered in a respectful
spirit, and would hardly make a ripple across the sea.'
Mr. Buel admits that the Kaiser criticised the action of the Pope and
spoke slurringly of the Virgin Mary. Mr. Buel evidently means that
the Foreign Offices of the world would not have been stirred by the
censure of the Kaiser or by even some frivolous comments on the
Blessed Virgin. Mr. Buel, who is discretion itself, having been one
of those who practically gave his word of honour that the 'interview'
should be suppressed, was evidently desirous that public curiosity
should not be too greatly excited as to its tenor. He does not excuse
the Kaiser, but as he is a very liberal Protestant himself, speeches
coming from a ruler, that would excite indignation even among
Catholics in Europe, naturally do not strike him as insulting. It
leaked out long ago that in the 'interview' His Imperial Majesty
alluded to Archbishop Ireland in rather disrespectful terms.
Only the staunch Americanism of the Catholics of this country saved
them from this insidious propaganda. If this spirit did not exist
among them, they would have been led to believe that the Central
Powers were the only European countries in the world where a Catholic
was free to practise his religion.
We know what the German propaganda working on politicians did in
Canada among the French-speaking population. We saw, in the beginning
of the war, how the Protestants of Ulster were used. There is a
passage in Mr. Wells's _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_ which
illuminates this.
'England will grant Home Rule,' said a Prussian closely connected
with the Berlin Foreign Office, 'and then Sir Edward Carson and his
Ulsterites will, with his mutineering British army, keep England too
busy to fight us.' They believed this in very high quarters in
Germany.
But when the British Government did not put the Home Rule Bill in
force, the propagandists turned to certain Irish Intellectuals. 'You
had better be governed by Germany than England,' said the followers
of Sir Roger Casement, and the sentiment, whether uttered
academically or not, found a hundred echoes.
But first had been heard the German-inspired cry of the Ulsterites,
'We had rather be governed by Germany than the Irish, by the Kaiser
rather than the Irish Roman Catholic Bishops.' Most of us knew that
there was no such danger, for Home Rule would have naturally cut into
the political power of the Irish Bishops by strengthening the secular
element forced into the background by the unfortunate conditions in
Ireland, which had prevented the Catholic laymen from acquiring
higher education, and obliging the clergy to become political
leaders. It made no difference. The fermenters of religious
dissension in Ireland played into the hands of the Prussians; there
was laughter in Hell.
We knew that the slogan, 'Better be governed by Germany than by
Ulster,' was not echoed in our own country among men of Irish blood.
But when Germany, through her agents, began to suggest an Irish
Republic, protected by the Imperial Eagle, a small party formed in
the United States, not pro-German, but anti-English. This was before
we went into the war. 'Every defeat of the English is a gain for
Ireland,' the German propagandist repeated over and over again. It
sank in; the Ulsterites thundered, and Sinn Fein, which had been
non-political, became suddenly revolutionary.
In our country the effect of all this was marked. Every sentiment of
religion and patriotism was played upon. Only those who received the
confidences of some of those deceived Revolutionists of the unhappy
Easter Day know how bitter was the feeling against England generated
by the conspiracies in the interest of Prussian domination. Then we
gloriously took our stand and went in. The practical answer came. The
Swedish Lutherans and the Sinn Fein Catholics took up their arms
without waiting to be drafted; Ireland must look after herself until
the invaders were driven out of France and Belgium!
If the Secret Service is ever permitted to take the American public
and the world into its confidence, the strength, the cleverness, and
the permeativeness of the propaganda, especially religious, in the
United States, will be shown to be astounding. 'What, son of Luther,
strikes at the German breast of your forefathers!' To use a phrase
that would not be understood at the Berlin Foreign Office, the
Prussian propagandist had us 'coming and going.'
One could not help admiring the skill of these people. We, in our
honest shirt sleeves were left gaping. Shirt sleeves and dollar
diplomacy were beautiful things in the opinion of people who believed
that the little red schoolhouse and the international Hague
Conference were all that were needed to keep us free and make the
world safe for democracy! There are no such beautiful things now. If
we are to fight the devil with fire, we ought to know previously what
kind of fire the devil uses. That requires the use of chemical
experts, and the German experts, before this war, were not employed
on the side of the angels. We have won; but do not let us imagine
that we have killed the devil.
The propaganda still went on, and honest people were influenced by
it. 'The Pope belongs to us,' the German propagandists said. 'He has
not reprimanded Cardinal Mercier,' replies some logical person, 'and
Cardinal Mercier has done more harm to German claims even in Germany
than any other living man.' 'The Pope sympathises with our claims; he
is the friend of law and order, consequently, he is with us.' Easily
impressed folk among the Allies accepted this. They believed the tale
that the Italian rout in the autumn of 1917 was due to Catholic
officers, who were paraded through every city in Europe with
'traitor' placarded on each back! A foolish story to direct attention
from the efforts of the paid conspirators who did the mischief. They
saw only the surface of things. They seemed to think that the theorem
of Euclid that a straight line is the shortest distance from one
point to another holds in the political underworld. The Pope was
attacked, which pleased the propagandists. 'O Holy Father, see how I,
Head of the German Lutheran Church, love you, and see! your wicked
enemies are my enemies.' And so the German propagandist divided and
discouraged!