1910-1911-1912
The visits of Mr. John R. Mott to the Scandinavian countries were
events; his was a name to conjure with. When an intimation of his
coming appeared in the papers, our Legation was bombarded with
requests for the opportunity of meeting him. 'We must,' my wife often
said, 'make it understood that every American of good repute shall be
welcome in our house; and it is our mission to give our Danish
friends an opportunity to meet him.'
The Danes came to know this and, whenever there was an American in
Copenhagen worth while--I do not mean merely having what is called
'social position'--we were always glad to arrange that the right
persons should meet. We were not socially indiscriminate, but we were
certainly eclectic. We wanted Mr. Mott for three meals a day, but he
was always, like Martha, so busy about many things, that we could
only secure him for a short breakfast or something like that, with
one of his warmest admirers, Count Joachim Moltke, who is devoted to
the moral improvement of young men, and Chamberlain and Madame Oscar
O'Neill Oxholm. The only rift in the lute of the affection of certain
Danish ladies for my wife was that she allowed Mr. Mott to leave
Copenhagen on various occasions without 'making an occasion' for them
to meet him. Among these ladies were Mademoiselle Wedel-Hainan, one
of the ladies in-waiting to the Queen Dowager, and others interested
in the cultivation of reverence for Christianity among their
compatriots. The result of Mr. Mott's masterly work was shown when
the war broke out. The 'red-blooded' who formerly looked at the Young
Men's Christian Association as rather effeminate and effete must, in
view of what it has done in Europe, forever close their lips.
At this time, in 1909, we had expectations of another visitor.
Cardinal Gibbons almost promised to make the Northern trip; he would
come to Copenhagen, it was intimated in a Baltimore newspaper. Great
interest was shown among these agreeable Athenians, the cosmopolitan
Danes. The question of etiquette bothered me; Sweden had still remote
relations with the Holy See, though the Catholic religion is still
practically proscribed in that country. At least, the King of Sweden
writes, I think, a letter once a year to his 'cousin,' the Pope, or
is it to his 'cousins,' the Cardinals; but Denmark, though very
liberal since 1848 in its religious attitude, has not such vaguely
official relations. I was informed that no Cardinal had visited
Denmark since the Reformation. I made inquiries in the proper
quarters at once. Of course, I might give Cardinal Gibbons his rank
as a Prince of the Church, and even the most exalted who should go in
after him at our dinner would be pleased. He could not come. His one
hasty trip to Europe, after his friends had raised my hopes of his
visiting us, was to be present at the Conclave that elected Benedict
XV. Pius X. had died of a broken heart, and the heart of the
Cardinal was sore and troubled at the horrors thrust upon the world.
What he has done to fill our army and navy with courageous men
contemporaneous history shows.
But the great visit, the epoch, which dulled even the glories of the
coming of the Atlantic Squadron, was that of ex-President Roosevelt.
To the Danes it was almost as if Holger Dansker, who, as everybody
knows, is waiting in the vaults of Hamlet's castle at Elsinore to
protect Denmark, had burst into the light.
From the European point of view, which took no account of our home
politics, ex-President Roosevelt was not only the most important
figure in America, but in the world, and the most picturesque. Even
under the New Democracy, men will probably count more than nations
in the minds of our brethren across the sea. However large
collectiveness may loom in the future, there will be some man or
other who will show above it, who will be a part greater than the
whole. Mr. Roosevelt had made the Panama Canal possible; he had
succeeded when De Lesseps had failed; he had forced, more than any
other President before him, the respect of Europe; the Radicals
wanted to greet him because he had curbed the power of the
capitalists; kings and prime ministers welcomed him because
they--even the Kaiser--feared his potentialities. That he would be
the next President of the United States nobody in Europe doubted.
These people were not welcoming, as they thought, a man like General
Grant, who had merely done a great thing. The American who was coming
was not only a man of splendid past, but one with a future that was
rising up like thunder. You can imagine the excitement in Copenhagen
when it was announced that he would pay that city a short visit. From
Copenhagen he was to go to Christiania to make a Nobel Prize speech.
The death of Björnson occurred just at this time; it was mourned in
both Norway and Denmark as a national loss; but even this did not
affect the reception of the ex-President.
'We would have rejoiced in our sorrow for nobody else,' the Norwegian
Minister said.
King Frederick VIII. had made all his arrangements to go to the
Riviera; his health was not good. He sent for me; he was doubtful
whether the rumours of Mr. Roosevelt's visit were well founded or
not.
'If he comes, this most distinguished citizen of yours, I will see
that he is received with the greatest courtesy; I will do as much for
him as if he were an Emperor. He and his family shall be given the
Palace of Christian VII. during their stay. My son, the Crown Prince,
will go to greet him; I regret, above all things, that I cannot be
here.'
Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt came; he saw; he conquered, but Mrs. Roosevelt
won all hearts. The young folks, Kermit and Ethel, fled from all
gaieties and ceremonies and explored the town; if I remember they
courted not the smiles of kings and princes; but they searched
intensively for specimens of old pewter.
Mr. Roosevelt's trunks did not arrive in time; he and Mrs. Roosevelt
were obliged to wear their travelling clothes. In the long history of
court life in Denmark this had occurred only once on a gala occasion,
and the guest had been Her Majesty the Queen of England, when she was
Princess of Wales. She had accepted the result with the utmost
simplicity. Mrs. Roosevelt, the ladies of the court said, was 'royal'
in the charming way in which she accepted this unpleasant accident;
she has contradicted practically the stories that American ladies
have the plebeian habit of 'fussiness.' The Crown Princess declared
that Mrs. Roosevelt was 'adorable,' and the Crown Prince referred to
the pleasure of this visit nearly every time, during the last eight
years, I met him. 'He is a Man,' he said.
The Marshal of the Court arranged the etiquette admirably, and there
was not the slightest hitch. Some of my colleagues who knew that Mr.
Roosevelt, as an ex-President, had no official rank, wondered how the
technical details of the reception of a 'commoner' had been arranged.
The Court and the Foreign Office offered all the courtesies usually
bestowed on royal highnesses. The Legation and the Consulate were
particularly proud of the decorations of the railway station, and
grateful to the Minister of Commerce who was responsible for them.
As usual, Admiral de Richelieu was both thoughtful and generous. The
best part of the programme, the voyage and breakfast on the _Queen
Maud_--we went to Elsinore--and a hundred other agreeable details
were arranged perfectly by him and Commander Cold, director of the
Scandinavian-American Line.
A great dinner, such as only Danes can manage to perfect at short
notice, was offered to him by the Mayor and the Municipality of
Copenhagen. His speech was eagerly looked for. It charmed the
Moderates; the extreme Socialists, who had claimed him for their own,
were disappointed. 'Your Radicalism is our Conservatism,' said
Chamberlain Carl O'Neill Oxholm.
Later, we heard that the Kaiser was disappointed in Mr. Roosevelt.
This was from one of the Berlin court circles. Mr. Roosevelt (this
was said _sub rosa_) had not been too Radical, but too frank. After
all, there was no reason why a man who had represented the people of
one of the greatest nations on earth should be too reverential to the
All Highest!
When Mr. Roosevelt left Denmark, he left an impression of force, of
virility, of dignity, of honesty that became part of the history of
the country.
In 1911 Loubet, the French ex-President, came with his son Paul and a
staff of delegates to the International Congress of Public and
Private Charities. He was very genial and frank--qualities inherited
by his son. His conversation was directed to the rapid reconstruction
of France after 1870. 'A country that can do that has little to
fear,' he said, 'if we can avoid the pitfalls of professional
politicians. That may be our difficulty. Our enemies are glad that
there should be dissensions among us, vital dissensions, not the
healthy differences of opinion you have in your country.'
'Et "la revanche?"'
'Ah, Monsieur le Ministre,' answered one of his staff, 'how can he
speak of that, with the German Minister, Mr. Waldhausen, so near us?
He is beckoning to you now. It is not "revanche" we want, but the
return of our territory. If that could be done without war! Paul, his
son, will talk international politics with you, if you like. As to
local politics, the Royalists do wrong in mixing religion and
politics; it forces the hand of the Opposition, and makes the
attitude of us Republicans misunderstood. In spite of all
dissensions, France is one at heart; but the voice of the country is
not for war. Of course, we may have to fight in our colonies.'
'Tripoli?' I asked.
'No,' he answered smiling. 'That's the leading question. We must
fight as you fought the Red Indians. We have no fear of war at
present--our ways are the ways of peace.'
'Naturally,' I answered, 'since the German Minister tells me that
Germany will never fight France unless attacked, and he sees no signs
of that.'
'The Belgians are growing restless because Hamburg is taking all the
Brazilian coffee trade,' he said, absent-mindedly.
'Which means, interpreted,' I answered, 'that we might well look
after our interests in Brazil.'
'Like all Frenchmen,' he said, 'I am ignorant of foreign geography,
but our Ambassador in Washington is different; he knows the world,
and the United States.'
I thanked him; I was always glad to hear Frenchmen speak well of Mr.
Jusserand. He deserved all the praise they could give him.
'My friend,' said Paul Loubet, 'says the world and the United States,
which means, I suppose, that Europe is one world and the United
States another.' 'It almost seems so in Europe; but your acquisition
of the Philippines will probably make you more and more a part of the
European world.' 'I am afraid that George Washington and Lafayette
would not have liked this,' said the ex-President.
One of the French delegates asked me whether it was true that the
Germans would try to make terms with us for a cession of some foreign
territory for one of the Philippine Islands. Waldhausen was at my
elbow; I, smiling, put the question to him.
'It is Arcadian,' he said.
'Germany never gives up what she holds,' said the Frenchman, also
smiling. 'Otherwise, you might induce her to surrender Heligoland to
England, for a consideration, with the understanding that England
should give it back to Denmark.'
Waldhausen laughed.
'Such generosity is too far in advance of our time. I am afraid
Admiral von Tirpitz might object.'
Von Tirpitz, for those behind the scenes in German politics, was much
in the public eye. It was well understood that as far as the naval
programme was concerned, he was Germany. If the seizing of Slesvig
and the completion of the Kiel canal made the German Fleet possible,
with the acquiring of Heligoland, the efforts of Admiral von Tirpitz
had made it a Navy. Through all the financial difficulties of the
German Government, difficulties that alone prevented it from
attacking France, von Tirpitz had held fast to the axiom that
Germany's future was on the ocean. He was not the kind of marine
minister who sticks fast to his desk and 'never goes to sea.' He had
become the 'captain of the King's navee' by knowing his business,
and, more than that, by studying the caprices of his Imperial
Master's mind, as well as its fixed determination. Many times I had
been told by candid friends in the diplomatic corps that the German
Emperor had no respect for our navy, that he knew every ship by
heart, that nevertheless, he examined as far as possible any new
inventions adopted by our naval experts who were most kind in
permitting German naval attachés and experts to examine them. In 1911
the coming of the Atlantic Squadron had excited interest in the naval
position of our country. One scarcely ever saw an American flag on
the ocean. Whatever Columbia did or wanted to do, she did not rule
the seas; so our flag on the ships of the Atlantic Squadron was a
delight to all Americans and somewhat of a surprise to foreigners.
At Kiel the general impression seemed to be that the Atlantic
Squadron represented our whole navy! The Kaiser and von Tirpitz knew
better, of course. Privately the Kaiser expressed his amusement at
our attempt to build warships--he and von Tirpitz had secrets of
their own. However, America was important enough to be given a
sedative until his designs on France and Russia were completed. One
might suspect this, then; but who could believe it!
My correspondents in Germany--people who know are wonderful helps to
a man in the diplomatic service--concerned themselves largely with
von Tirpitz and General von Freytag-Loringhoven. Von Tirpitz was the
German Navy and the very intelligent writings of General the Baron
von Freytag-Loringhoven made us almost think that he was the Army.
'Is he related to Freytag?' I had asked.
'What, the novelist?'
'The author of _Debit and Credit_?' I added.
'Certainly not; he is one of the greatest of the Baltic baronial
families.'
If I had asked a Bourbon, in the reign of Louis XIV., whether he was
related to Crébillon, he could not have been more shocked. Von
Freytag-Loringhoven cut a great figure in Berlin. He had Russian
affiliations, being of a Baltic family; his father had been well
known in diplomacy. He knew Russia as well as he knew Germany; he was
technical and experienced, and his writings were supposed to give
indications of the ideas of the General Staff. The Russians in
Copenhagen talked much of von Freytag-Loringhoven. I must repeat
that, in interesting myself in German personalities, I was not
considering them in relation to the future of my own country. There
were some among my friends, like James Brown Scott--men of
foresight--who seemed to have a wider vision. I was interested
because I feared that the autonomy of a little nation was at stake,
and because the absorption of that little nation would mean the
assumption of the Danish Antilles.
That Germany had consulted Russia about a question to make war with
England a pretext for seizing Denmark, we suspected. The end of the
Japanese War had curbed Russia's eastern ambition for a time. How
were we to be sure that the Baltic and the North Sea might not,
under German tutelage, attract her?
If von Freytag-Loringhoven's utterances were to be taken seriously,
it was evident that war was in the air; and why was von Tirpitz
building up the German Navy? The distributors of rumours in Denmark
said that all hopes of a Scandinavian confederacy were to be ended by
a quarrel with England, a move on France, and the division of
Scandinavia into two parts, one nominally Russian, the other,
Denmark, to be actually German, while Norway should gradually be
terrorised into submission. This shows how excited public opinion
was. The German propaganda spread pleasant reports of the peaceful
intentions of the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and the personages in
power in Germany. Above all, we were told how charming the Crown
Princess Cecilia was, and how potent her influence would be in
warding off any attempts of the Pan-Germans on Denmark, even if
Germany and England should fly at each other's throats.
People in the court circle, who knew how little royal family
alliances count to-day in actual politics, admitted that the Crown
Princess was most charming and sympathetic; she is the sister of the
Queen of Denmark, and she had become as German as it was possible for
the daughter of a Russian mother to be. Her sister, Queen
Alexandrina, had become thoroughly Danish, but then her tendencies
had always been towards democracy and the simplicities of life.
The German news vendors alternately praised the Crown Prince and
depreciated him. If he were violent, it was against the wishes of his
father--he was a second Prince Hal trying on the imperial crown. As a
rule, however, he was brought out of the background to show his
virtues. On several occasions he had evinced more knowledge of what
was going on than his father. This was notable in the Eulenberg
scandal, when he fearlessly laid bare a horrible ulcer which was
beginning to eat into the heart of the army. On this subject he and
Max Harden, of the _Zukunft_, were in amazing alliance. Whatever may
be said of the Crown Prince's political ambitions--and we believed
and do believe that they meant world conquest--he is very much of a
man. In 1911, it was understood that he would not condescend to wear
the peace-mask that seemed to conceal his father's face. Dr. von
Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor, was temporising as usual. The
Moroccan affair led to nothing because Germany's financial backers
were not ready for war. The Chancellor was attacked by von
Heydebrand; the Danish press gave graphic accounts of the scene when
the Crown Prince, from the royal box, applauded every insult that the
powerful Junker heaped on the Chancellor, who was merely the tool of
the Kaiser. It was the time of the Emperor to temporise; the time had
not come to strike; Germany was not rich enough. Russia was still
doubtful. France, in the imperial opinion, was not sufficiently
corrupted, and the dissensions between Ulster and the rest of Ireland
had not yet reached that poisonous growth which, in that opinion,
would force mutiny and sedition to poison the English. The Crown
Prince probably, in his frankness, voiced more than his own inner
sentiments. At any rate, to us near the frontier, it seemed so.
However, the incident was used to the credit of the Crown Prince.
Fair and open dealing for him! England might interfere in Morocco and
other places to prevent his country from taking a place 'in the sun';
but let us have it out!
In the secret councils of the Social Democrats was the hope that, if
a Hohenzollern must succeed the Kaiser, it would not be the Crown
Prince. In spite of his amiabilities and his apparently youthful
point of view of life--though there were fewer indiscretions to his
credit than are generally attributed to Crown Princes--it was known
that he was military to the core, and that in his time the soldier of
the world would never lack employment. While the Kaiser was
constantly insisting that more soldiers and more sailors and Krupp
von Bohlen's newest instruments of destruction were pawns in the game
of peace, his son made no pretence of agreeing with him. Clever or
not, he had held that a straight line was the shortest way from one
given point to another. And the Zabern incident and several others
showed that the Crown Prince meant, when his chance came, to make war
after the Napoleonic method and to exalt the sword above the pen and
the ploughshare.
The Social Democrats in Denmark were not flattered when he said that
'one day the Social Democrats would go to court!' But he was right;
they went to court as their old Emperor went to Carrossa, when they
accepted the war! The German writers said, too, that in France his
admiration for Napoleon endeared him to the French. If he appeared in
Paris, he would be as popular as King Edward of England was when he
was Prince of Wales! 'Who knows,' one of their writers said, 'he may
make the hopes of the Duke de Reichstadt his own, and live to see
them fulfilled'? I called the attention of an Austrian friend to
this. This gentleman, high in favour in 1909, but somewhat gloomed in
1914, owing to a _bon mot_, said: 'But the French remember that the
heir of Napoleon, who might have completed his father's conquests,
was the son of an Austrian mother.' He was _gemütlich_, like his
grandfather, they said, and how sweetly amiable to the American
ladies who had married into the superior race! More than one titled
American hoped to be saved from the position of morganaticism in the
future through the kindness of His Imperial Highness. But the fixity
of will has been underrated. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe; his
eyes were on the kingdoms of Solomon and of the jewelled monarchs of
the East. Why he failed, the Crown Prince believed he had discovered.
There was no reason, therefore, why a Prussian Napoleon might not
succeed, and no necessity to repeat the defeats of Moscow and
Waterloo. The Prince would begin by fighting Waterloo first and then
putting Russia out of commission!
In 1913 Mr. Frederick Wile, then correspondent of the London _Daily
Mail_, wrote: 'He is the idol of the German Army almost to a greater
degree than his father. His _Hunting Diary_ is amusing. He writes of
his sympathy with his 'sainted' ancestor Frederick the Great, in the
dictum that everybody should be allowed to pursue happiness and
salvation in his own sweet way.' Holy Moses!
* * * * *
It was not difficult to get near to the characters of the
important men in power in Germany. A night's run took one to Berlin,
and at Flensberg, a few hours from our Legation, one could see the
German war vessels. There were constant visits of Germans of
distinction; Prince Eitel Friedrich often came in his yacht, and the
Waldhausens--Madame Waldhausen was a Belgian--were constantly
entertaining guests of all countries. Princess Harald, the wife of
Prince Harold, brother of the King of Denmark, attracted many
Germans, with whom she was in sympathy.
At court very few Germans appeared, unless they were of high official
rank. Both King Christian X. and the Queen seemed to prefer to speak
English, and nothing irritated the King, who speaks English and
French and German well, more than any attempt on the part of a
diplomatist to speak to him in Danish. It is best, I think, for
diplomatists at court to use French. One is always more guarded in
speaking a foreign language, but every member of the Danish Court
spoke English and seemed to like it. Prince Valdemar and the Princess
Marie always spoke English in their family. Prince Valdemar's French
was not so good as his English, and, in the beginning, the Princess
Marie found the learning of Danish slow work, and she had, during the
exile of her family in England, become entirely at home in the
English language. Prince Axel, their son, who recently visited
America as the guest of the American Navy, spoke English admirably.
Like all his family, he is in love with freedom.
Nevertheless, German was much spoken in Denmark, and the intercourse
between the two countries close. The point of view of Germany, or,
rather, the Germans, was better understood in Denmark than perhaps in
any other country, the more so because the Danes, naturally satirical
and entirely disillusioned as to the altruism of great European
nations, looked with clear eyes at the progress, or, rather, the
evolution of Germany. Whatever progress Germany had made, many of
them, like the learned Dr. Gudmund Schütte, who reluctantly agreed
that the reconquest of Slesvig would be 'to commit suicide in order
to escape death,' never seemed to utter a word of German without
remembering the loss of their provinces.
The most astonishing things were the intellectual greatness and
exact training of the German thinkers and doers, and, at the same
time, their lack of independence. With the outside world, as far as
one could gather from the press and conversations with the English,
French and Americans--though my fellow countrymen, as a rule, showed
little interest in foreign affairs--it was plain that the German
political parties were supposed to be static: the Conservatives
Junkerish, the Centrists intensely Catholic, following the slightest
signal of the Pope, the Socialists devoted to the ideas of Bebel, and
the Liberal-Nationalists fixed in their opinion that a moderate
constitutional monarchy was to be, in Germany, the solution of all
problems.
We knew better than that in Denmark. Through the whole Catholic world
the German propagandists spread the opinion that the Centre party was
strictly 'denominational.' Nothing could be more untrue. The
traditions of Windthorst, who had boldly defined to Bismarck the
difference between what was due to Christ and what to Cæsar, were
rapidly disappearing. The fiction remained that the Centre was
constantly opposing the policy of the emperor, when at every session
of the Reichstag, the Centre became more and more 'political' and
more subservient to the designs of the Government. One could see the
changing policy in the pages of the _Social Democrat_, the Socialist
organ in Denmark. The Danish Socialists were always influenced by
their German brethren; but destructive Socialism finds, up to the
present time, no place in the Social Democratic scheme, and this is
due, not only to the Danish temperament, but to the dislike on the
part of Social Democrats to the growing power of Syndicalism.
The leaders of the Socialists and of the Centrists are not great men.
Of the Centre, which had rightfully boasted of Windthorst and
Mallinkrot as the opponents of ultra-Imperialism, Hertling and
Erzberger were the most important. All Germany recognised the
intellectual ability of Hertling. Baron von Hertling, Professor of
the University of Munich, represented apparently everything that the
fashionable Prussian philosophical system did not. 'Glory is the only
religion of great men' is a doctrine he abhors; philosophically, he
is the direct enemy of Kant and Hegel, above all, of Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer. Nobody denies those qualities of mind that had made his
name as well known philosophically in learned circles as that of
Cardinal Mercier. He had been prime minister of Bavaria, and he, of
all men, might have been expected to see the abyss to which
Imperialism was tending. It was easy, in Denmark, to perceive that,
in the Reichstag, all parties--there were some individual exceptions,
like Liebknecht--had begun to be slaves of the emperor as represented
by his subservient grand-viziers, the Chancellors. Both the Centre,
from which much was expected, and the mixed party, called the Social
Democrats, from which stronger resistance to Imperialism had been
hoped, gradually became the upholders of the doctrine of conquest.
Erzberger, of the Centre, is a later development of the change that
took place in the attitude of Hertling. With Lieber and Spahn,
veteran politicians, the Centre position became one of compromise.
The Centre had managed to grow stronger and stronger after the
_Kulturkampf_, against which it had started as a party of defence.
Matthias Erzberger, who had begun as a school teacher, wisely chose
the Centre Party as a road to power. He has gained step by step by
his unconquerable audacity. In 1911 even the Chancellor seemed to
fear him. He is a bold speculator, and his rivals, even in his own
party, predicted that he would come to grief through his Napoleonic
idea of finance. From 1911 the parties in the Reichstag became more
and more Imperialistic, the Prussian tone more and more insolent as
regards foreign countries. The _cameraderie_ of the Kaiser at times,
his fits of arrogant indiscretion--checked suddenly after the
'interviews' of 1908--continued to give us 'lookers-on in Vienna'
grave concern. In spite of the encomiums made by nearly all my best
European friends--many of them English--and all my compatriots who
had been received at court, we in Denmark distrusted the Kaiser. I
must say that my Danish friends, except the Chamberlain and Madame de
Hegermann-Lindencrone, seldom praised him. To them he had been most
courteous. I remembered that the most chivalrous of men,
Hegermann-Lindencrone, never would speak ill of a sovereign to whose
court he had been accredited. Count Carl Moltke, a good Dane, never,
even in confidence, allowed a word of censure to pass his lips when
the Kaiser was mentioned by his critics; I often wondered what he
thought!
As to the Emperor Francis Joseph, I had reason to have a great
respect and affection for him--even of gratitude. It is the fashion
to tear his reputation to pieces now, a fashion that will pass.
At any rate, even his detractors will be glad to hear the story that,
when the war broke out and he was ill and very drowsy, one of his
Chamberlains said, 'Our army is in the field, sire!' 'Fighting those
damned Prussians again!' he said, contentedly; and went to sleep
again! He liked France, but he disliked the French Government. 'Your
President,' he said to a distinguished French sailor, with a touch
of contempt, 'is a bourgeois!' He did not mean a 'commoner'--with him
'bourgeois' implied a man who was not a soldier; and the emperor
could not understand that a European country should be well ruled by
a man who could not himself take the field; at any time, the Emperor
would have gladly taken it against these 'Prussian parvenus,' I am
sure.
More and more, the representatives of the stolen provinces, like
Slesvig and Alsace-Lorraine, became disheartened by their weakness in
the Reichstag. The representatives of Poland received no political
support from the Centre; yet these Poles were ardent Catholics, and
their representative, Prince Radziwell, made eloquent speeches. The
delegates from Alsace-Lorraine, the Abbé Wetterlé being the most
audacious, were as little regarded as 'Hans Peter,' H. P. Hanssen,
the one Danish representative in the Reichstag. If the Centre had not
posed as Catholic, which implied, if not an unusual regard for the
liberties of the oppressed, at least a certain Christian charity for
the persecuted, censure might have been silent. If the Socialists had
not been the open and apparently unrelenting opponents of political
oppression, the good Samaritan might have tried to succour their
victims, while reflecting that the robbers who had inflicted the
wound were at least not hypocrites; but here were von Hertling and
Martin Spahn and Groeber and the rest of the Centre, who knew what
the tyranny of Bismarck had meant; here were the followers of the
later Bebel--willing to join the Centrists on many political
questions, the friends of the Imperial autocracy! Here were two
groups, antagonistic and irreconcilable in principle, but both united
when it was expedient to support plans of world conquest!
The Centre still used religion as a tool to uphold the Government.
The Pope and the Kaiser were as antagonistic on many questions as
Popes and Kaisers have ever been since Christianity was imperfectly
accepted by the Teutons. Windthorst, a great man of the type of
O'Connell, but greater, had forced Bismarck to revoke some of the
infamous May laws in 1888. Still, certain German citizens, the
members of the congregation of the Redemptionists, were exiled. The
Centre protested--for effect. The Jesuits were at last admitted on
condition that they were not allowed to speak in the churches, and
that under no circumstances should they be permitted to speak in
public on religious subjects. Prince von Bülow publicly admitted that
there was a lack of toleration shown to Catholics, and there were
certain parts of Germany in which professors of the Catholic faith
were still under disabilities. The question of the admission of the
Jesuits and the other religious congregations ought to have been
considered as justly as it would have been in the United States. The
Centrists' representatives gave the impression of being violently
interested in the preservation of the rights of German citizens to
preach and teach any doctrines that were not immoral or seditious,
and then, at a breath from the Government, allowed these priests to
be treated as the Danish Lutheran pastors were treated in
Slesvig.[13]
[13] 'My old commander, the late General Field-Marshal Freiheer von
Loë, a good Prussian and a good Catholic, once said to me that, in
this respect, matters would not improve until the well-known
principle of French law "_que la recherche de la paternité était
interdite_" is changed to "_la recherche du confessional était
interdite_."'--Von Bülow: _Imperial Germany_, p. 185.
I am not writing from the point of view of any creed at this moment,
but only from that of a democracy which encourages reasonable
freedom of speech, the use of equal opportunities, and preserves to
everybody alike the free exercise of his religion. The Centre has
shown as little sympathy with democracy of this kind as the
Socialists. The latter party deserve no sympathy from any class of
Americans. Their methods are, as worked out in Denmark and Germany,
admirable. Religious bodies, interested in actively loving their
neighbours as themselves, have much to learn from them, but the
German Socialists played a worse part during the war than Benedict
Arnold in our Revolution. They did not act the part of Judas only
because they never acknowledged Christ.
The bane of every civilised country seems to be party politics. After
theological hatreds, the ordinary variety of political hatreds and
compromises is the worst. The Centre has become corrupt and
time-serving, the Socialists expedient and slavish, all because the
Imperial Head, the Chancellor, could scatter the spoils!