THE CURSE OF THE HOHENZOLLERN
I.--ROYALTIES MADE IN GERMANY.
It has become a trite and hackneyed claim of the Prussian
megalomaniacs that they are an Imperial people, a super-race
predestined by Nature and Providence to the domination of the world.
It certainly seems a grotesque claim to assert on the part of a people
who in their political and social life have shown themselves a
pre-eminently _servile_ people; who have ever been cringing to their
superiors; who never produced one single leader of free men, one
Cromwell, one Mirabeau, one Gambetta; who always believed in the
virtue of passive obedience; who always submitted to the policeman
rather than to a policy; who always obeyed a Prince rather than a
principle; who, as recently as the end of the eighteenth century,
allowed themselves to be sold like cattle by Hessian princelings; who
never rose to defend their sacred rights; who never fought a spirited
battle in a righteous civil war; and who have always been ready to
fight like slaves at the bidding of a sword-rattling despot.
And yet in one very important respect the Germans may rightly claim
that they are actually ruling the European world. German Princes are
actually seated on almost every throne of Europe. The French language
may still be the language of diplomacy, but the German language, which
was still a despised lingo to Frederick the Great, has become the
language of European royalties. Germany for two hundred years has done
a most thriving and most lucrative export trade in princelings. One
Hohenzollern Prince ruling in Roumania for thirty years asserted
German influence in that Latin country. Another Hohenzollern Prince
ruling in Athens, nicknamed "Tino" by his affectionate relative the
Kaiser, for three years stultified the will of his people, who were
determined to join the cause of the Allies. Still another German
Prince ruling in Sofia, who five years ago was mainly responsible for
the horrors of the second Balkan War, compelled the Bulgarian nation
to betray the cause of Russia, to whom the Bulgarian people owe their
political existence and liberation from the yoke of the Turk.
Even yet public opinion does not realize to what an extent European
Princes in the past have been made in Germany. We speak of the Royal
House of Denmark as a Danish House. The Danish House is in real fact
the German dynasty of Oldenburg. We speak of the House of Romanov as a
Russian dynasty. And it is true that the founder of the dynasty,
Michael Romanov, the son of Philarete, Archbishop of Moscow and
Patriarch of all the Russias, was a typical Muscovite, and was called
to the throne in 1611, in troubled times, by the unanimous voice of
the people. But, as all the Czars of Russia for two hundred years only
married German Princesses, _without one single exception_, the
Russian dynasty had become in fact a German dynasty. So far as mere
heredity is concerned, Nicholas II., through the German marriages of
all his ancestors, is of German stock to the extent of sixty-three
sixty-fourths, and of Russian stock only in the proportion of one
sixty-fourth.
II.--THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HOHENZOLLERN DYNASTY.
Of all the German dynasties seated on the thrones of Europe, the
Hohenzollern stand out, not merely as the most powerful, but also by
far the most striking and the most interesting. The Hohenzollern are
as unique in the history of royalty as the Rothschilds are unique in
the history of finance. The history of other dynasties has been
largely a history of Court scandal and intrigue, providing
inexhaustible material to the petty gossip of Court chroniclers. We
are all familiar with the amorous episodes of Louis XIV. and Louis
XV., with the mysteries of the Grand and Petit Trianon and of the Parc
aux Cerfs, with Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan, with
Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, that beautiful courtesan who
on the scaffold so pathetically asked the executioner: "Mr. Hangman, I
beseech you, do spare me." We are all familiar through Thackeray's
"History of the Georges" with the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the
Hanoverian dynasty. No doubt the Hohenzollern also have had their
_chronique scandaleuse_ and have also attracted the prurient curiosity
of memoir writers. The Court of Berlin in the days of the polygamist
King, Frederick William II., the successor of Old Fritz, was the most
dissolute Court of Europe, as Berlin is to-day the most depraved city
on the Continent. But somehow the scandals of the Hohenzollern seem to
be irrelevant episodes. Somehow we do not think of the annals of the
august House as a history of scandal. We only think of the
Hohenzollern as the political necromancers of modern Europe, as the
supreme masters of statecraft. The very name of the Hohenzollern
recalls to our minds a race of State-builders. Machiavelli selected
the House of Borgia to illustrate the principles of the statecraft of
the Renaissance. A modern Machiavelli would have to go to Potsdam to
study the philosophy of high politics.
From the beginning the Hohenzollern have been identified with the
Prussian State. Louis XIV. said of himself, "_L'état c'est moi_," but
Louis XIV. was an exception in modern French history. On the contrary,
every Hohenzollern could have applied to himself the words of the
Bourbon King.
If we take each individual Hohenzollern, we find the most obvious
differences between them. No dynasty more strikingly illustrates that
psychological and political peculiarity of royal houses, which may be
called the law of opposites, and which has almost the regularity of a
universal law according to which each ruler is the living contrast of
his predecessor. The successor of the Great Elector, Frederick I.
(1688-1713), the first King of Prussia, was an extravagant fop who
spent a year's income on the ceremony of coronation. On the contrary,
his successor, "Fat William" (1713-1740), the Sergeant-King, was a
miser, who on his coronation only spent 2,227 thalers and ninepence,
where his father had squandered over six millions, a maniac who
collected tall grenadiers as other Kings have collected pictures, who
tortured his children, and who wanted to punish with a death sentence
a juvenile escapade of the heir to the throne. Frederick the Great
(1740-1786), again, was the antithesis of Frederick William I., and
loved literature and art as intensely as his father detested them.
Frederick William II. (1786-1797), the successor of the great realist
and woman-hater, was a polygamist and a mystic. Frederick William III.
(1797-1840) was an exemplary husband and a well-meaning, business-like
bourgeois. He was succeeded by Frederick William IV. (1840-1861), a
romanticist and a dreamer who ended in madness. William I. (1861-1888)
was an honest, straightforward, methodical, reasonable,
self-controlled soldier. Frederick III. was an idealist, and, like
Frederick the Great, a lover of literature and art. William II. has
bewildered the world as a versatile and omniscient dilettante,
war-lord and peacemaker, Mohammedan and Christian--always a comedian,
yet always in earnest. And we all know how the heir to the throne is
the reverse of the Kaiser, and how this Crown Prince, with the fancies
of a degenerate, has deserved to be called the "Clown Prince."
It is therefore apparent that if we analyze the characteristics of
every one of the nine dynasts who have reigned in Prussia since the
Great Elector for the last two hundred and fifty years, we do not find
one single ruler who resembles his predecessor or his successor. Yet
all these Hohenzollerns, whether capable or incapable, whether mad,
half-mad, or sane, whether profligate or domesticated, whether
extravagant or miserly, have certain common traits. They have all been
inspired with the same dynastic policy. When we consider the
individual variations from the family type, there can be here no
question of physical heredity, like the lip of the Habsburg or the
tainted blood of the Spanish Bourbons. It is a question of political
environment, a question of dynastic tradition. Indeed, we must
carefully study that Hohenzollern family tradition of politics if we
want to grasp the full significance of the word, if we wish to
understand how such a dynastic tradition may become a formidable power
to European history. Maeterlinck in his "Life of the Bee" has an
eloquent and profound chapter on the "Spirit of the Hive." In the
domestic and international policy of the Prussian State, in the
Hohenzollern dynastic tradition, we discover such a collective spirit,
the "Spirit of the Prussian Hive," the evil spirit of war mania and
megalomania, the treachery, the brutality, the greed, and, above all,
the predatory instinct dignified into the name of _Real Politik_. And
Europe will only enjoy permanent peace and security if she succeeds in
destroying that Hohenzollern tradition, that sinister spirit which
lives in the wasps' and hornets' nest of Berlin, that spirit which has
"Potsdamized" Europe, and which has debased the moral currency of
European politics.
III.--LANDMARKS IN HOHENZOLLERN HISTORY.
No one would call the political history of Germany an interesting
history. It is only the history of free nations or the free play of
spiritual forces that is of abiding human interest, and the history of
Germany is neither the history of a free people nor the conflict of
spiritual forces. That history is so intolerably tedious that even the
magic of Treitschke's genius has not been able to relieve its dulness,
and that before the war no British or French publisher dared venture
on a translation of Treitschke's masterpiece. But if the political
history of Germany has all the tedium and monotony of parochialism, on
the contrary, the personal history of the Hohenzollern is intensely
instructive. One would hesitate to call it romantic. Yet there is an
element of romance, the romance of business, the interest which
attaches to the rise of a family from the humble obscurity of a petty
princeling to the power and prestige of world rulers, the same kind of
interest which belongs to the life-story of Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr.
Carnegie. What a progress those Hohenzollerns have made from the
distant days when they left their little Swabian southern home of
Zollern between the Neckar and the Upper Danube, the cradle of their
dynasty! _Nomen, omen!_ Does not the very sound of the word
_Hohenzollern_ suggest and inspire high ambitions? And does not the
very name of that little village of Zollern, which is apparently
derived from _Zoll_, suggest that all the world was henceforth to pay
a Zoll, or toll, to the dynasts of Hohenzollern?
And what a strange succession of incidents! In themselves those
incidents may seem insignificant. They left little trace in the
chronicles of olden times. Yet those petty incidents have proved
decisive events in the annals of modern humanity. We see those events
happening from generation to generation without any apparent
connection. Yet somehow they all made for the aggrandizement of the
family. We see successive Princes acquiring through marriage and
inheritance possessions in scattered and remote outposts of the Holy
Roman Empire. Yet somehow all those outposts became eventually
milestones on the highway to greatness. One ancestor becomes Burgrave
of Nuremberg--a considerable promotion! A subsequent Burgrave of
Nuremberg lends money to a needy Austrian Emperor, and becomes in 1417
Elector of Brandenburg--a much more considerable promotion! Again,
another ancestor inherits at the other extremity of Germany the petty
dukedom of Cleves, and that dukedom became the nucleus of Prussian
power in the Far West of Germany. Still another ancestor of a
collateral branch becomes Grand Master of the religious Order of the
Teutonic Knights, and this fact induces Master Martin Luther, who was
much more of a realist and a time-server and a trimmer than
theologians give him credit for, to advise the Hohenzollern Grand
Master to secularize his knights, to confiscate the whole Church
property of the Order, and to make himself the overlord of Eastern
Prussia.
Thus everything has worked for the aggrandizement of the future Kings
of Prussia, everything has brought grist to the mill of Sans-Souci.
IV.--A DYNASTY OF UPSTARTS.
No dynasts in modern times, not even the Bourbons nor the Habsburgs,
have been more obsessed with the pride of race. A double avenue of
gaudy statues in Berlin has been erected in the Siegesallee, or Alley
of Victory, to illustrate the glories of the House. And Carlyle, in
his "History of Frederick the Great," devotes a whole volume--and a
very tedious volume--to the medieval ancestors of the dynasty. The
present Kaiser believes himself to be the lineal successor, not only
of the Hohenstaufen, but of the Cæsars of Ancient Rome. It was in that
spirit that he was graciously pleased recently to dedicate a monument
to his predecessor, Emperor Trajan! _Trajano Romanorum Imperatori,
Wilhelmus Imperator Germanorum!_ (To Trajan, Emperor of the Romans,
William, Emperor of the Germans!)
But all that Hohenstaufen-Hohenzollern genealogy is mythical history.
The real history of the Hohenzollern is of recent date, and begins in
1640 with the advent of the Great Elector (1640-1688). Compared with
the ancient House of Habsburg or of Bourbon, the Hohenzollern may well
be called the "parvenus" of royalty. Until the seventeenth century the
Electors of Brandenburg were twice vassals--lieges of the Holy Roman
Empire and vassals of the Kings of Poland; and when in 1701 the first
Hohenzollern King promoted himself to royal rank and ascended the
throne, he made ceaseless and humiliating attempts to secure
recognition. The old Houses refused to accept his title, and would
not acknowledge the upstart royal "brother."
But the very fact that the Hohenzollern are the "parvenus" of European
royalty has spurred them on to more strenuous endeavours and to still
higher ambitions. Their sole endeavour was to raise their position:
_sich considerable machen_, as the Great Elector said in his quaint
pidgin German. They were not born to the royal dignity. They had to
make it. They were not accepted as Kings. They had to assert
themselves and to impose their claims. The good sword of Frederick the
Great asserted his claims with such results that, except Napoleon, no
ruler ever since has disputed the right of the Hohenzollern to rank
amongst the dynasts of Europe.
V.--PRUSSIA AS AN UPSTART STATE.
Even as the Hohenzollern are an upstart dynasty, so the Prussian State
may be called an upstart State. It has not, like France, Great
Britain, or Spain, two thousand years of history behind it. Until the
end of the Middle Ages Christian civilization was bounded by the Elbe.
The Prussian populations were the last in Europe to be converted to
Christianity, and recent history has proved only too conclusively that
the conversion never struck deep roots. Until the end of the Middle
Ages the religious and military Order of the Teutonic Knights had to
wage war against the Prussian heathen, and the magnificent ruin of
Marienburg, the stately seat of the Teutonic Knights, still testifies
to the achievements of the Order. Marienburg is the only historic city
of Prussia; Berlin is but a mushroom growth of modern days. Whilst
London and Paris go back to the beginning of European history, Berlin
only three hundred years ago was a mean village inhabited by Wendish
savages.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that Prussia is not a nation, but
a State, and that State is an entirely artificial creation. France and
Great Britain are the slow and natural growths of many centuries. They
have definite geographical boundaries, their people have common
traditions, common ideals, common affinities. The Prussian State is
made up of a heterogeneous mosaic of provinces, the spoils of
successive invasions. What hold together the artificial fabric of the
Prussian State are only the dynasty, the bureaucracy, and the Army.
The bureaucracy and the Army are to Prussia what the Civil Service and
the British Army are to the Indian Empire. Suppress the British Army
and the Civil Service, and British rule ceases to exist. Suppress the
Hohenzollern dynasty, the Prussian bureaucracy, and the Junker Army,
and the Prussian structure crumbles to pieces.
Nature has been niggardly to Prussia. Everything has had to be made
with the hands of man. Brandenburg, Pomerania, Western and Eastern
Prussia are dreary wastes; Berlin is an oasis of brick and stone
amidst a Sahara of sand. The provinces of old Prussia have few
industrial resources. The very soil had to be made by intensive
agricultural methods. The very population had to be imported. Modern
Prussia is neither the gift of Nature nor the outcome of history. It
is the triumph of human statecraft. It is the achievement of the
"will to power." When that "will to power" relaxes the Prussian State
collapses.
VI.--THE PRUSSIAN STATE IS NOT A GERMAN STATE.
The modern Holy German Empire is born of the unholy nuptials of the
German people with the Prussian State. But the paradox is that the
Prussian State, which claims the right to rule the German States, who
themselves assert their right to rule over Europe, cannot even pretend
to be German. The contrast between the German and the Prussian has
often been pointed out.
The Southern and Western German is still to-day, as he was in the days
of Madame de Staël, artistic and poetic, brilliant and imaginative--a
lover of song and music. The Prussian remains as he has always been,
inartistic, dull, and unromantic. Prussia has not produced one of the
great composers who are the pride of the German race; and Berlin, with
all its wealth and its two million inhabitants, strikes the foreigner
as one of the most commonplace capitals of the civilized world. The
Southern and Western German is gay and genial, courteous and
expansive; the Prussian is sullen, reserved, and aggressive. The
Southern and Western German is sentimental and generous; the Prussian
is sour and dour, and only believes in hard fact. The Southern and
Western German is an idealist; the Prussian is a realist and a
materialist, a stern rationalist, who always keeps his eye on the main
chance. The Southern and Western German is independent almost to the
verge of anarchism; he has a strong individuality; his patriotism is
municipal and parochial; he is attached to his little city, to its
peculiarities and local customs; the Prussian is imitative, docile,
and disciplined; his patriotism is not the sentimental love of the
native city, but the abstract loyalty to the State. The Southern and
Western German is proud of his romantic history, of his ancient
culture; the Prussian has no culture to be proud of.
That contrast of temperament between Prussians and Germans corresponds
to a difference of race. The Prussians are not really Teutons. They
are alien intruders. The Prussians, the Pruzi or Pruteni, are
Lithuanians. The population of Brandenburg is Slav. Berlin,
Brandenburg, or Brannybor, are Slav-Wendish names. The ruler of the
Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg, a State which is even more Prussian than
Prussia, and which is a strange survival of feudalism, bears until
this day the name of "Prince of the Wendes."
Century after century the Burgraves of Brandenburg and Kings of
Prussia had to attract colonists to their dreary dominions. The
recruiting sergeant went out all over Europe to fill the ranks of the
Prussian Army. One-third of Frederick the Great's Army was made up of
foreigners. Frederick the Great on his accession found himself at war
with the Prince-Bishop of Liége, because that worthy prelate would not
allow his subjects to be impressed by the Prussian press-gang.
Prussian colonizing agents scoured the neighbouring countries for
agricultural labourers, foresters, and artisans. Twenty thousand
Bohemians were imported by the Sergeant-King. In the eighteenth
century by far the most important element introduced into Prussia was
of French origin. The majority of the French Huguenots of the lower
classes were attracted to Prussia. The population of Berlin, which was
only 6,000, was doubled by the French exodus. The very language spoken
at Berlin was a savoury mixture of French and German. _Ein plus
machen_ meant in the language of the Grand Elector to have a surplus
revenue. To express his ideal of kingship, the _Elector_ said: _Ich
stabilire die souveraineté auf einen rocher von Bronce._ _Dem Regiment
obligat_ expressed the obligation of military service. At the
accession of Frederick the Great, out of a population of 2,400,000,
600,000 were refugees. It is one of the most impressive instances of
historical retribution that modern Prussia should thus have been built
up with the assistance of French exiles, and that modern France should
have been crushed by the descendants of the French Protestants who
were expelled by the bigotry of Louis XIV.
The colonization of Prussia has proceeded until this day. Before the
war immigration into Germany was exceeding the emigration. Polish
labour continues to migrate to the Eastern provinces. Hence the odious
expropriations of Polish land in the district of Posen. The ablest
literary and industrial and political talent from all parts of Germany
has been attracted for generations to the Prussian capital. Prussian
jingoes claim for Prussia the credit of every administrative
improvement, of every political achievement of modern Germany. As a
matter of fact, the Prussian State has achieved little by itself. Its
originality is never to initiate, but skilfully to exploit the
creations of others. It is a safe rule to assume that every statesman
or leader who has made an original contribution to Prussian history is
not of Prussian origin. The greatest philosopher of Prussia, Kant, was
a Scotsman. Her greatest statesman, Stein, was a Westphalian. Of the
two greatest Prussian Generals, one, Blücher, was a Mecklenburger; the
other, Moltke, was a Dane. The national historian of Prussia,
Treitschke, is a Saxon of Bohemian descent.
VII.--PRUSSIA AS A MILITARY STATE.
That colony of many heterogeneous populations is above all a military
State, a _Kriegstaat_. It was created through war and has been
organized for war. In the eighteenth century the whole of Prussia was
one vast camp and barracks. The King of Prussia is primarily the
_Kriegsherr_, or war-lord. The ruling caste of Junkers is a caste of
warriors. The very _schoolmasters in the eighteenth century were
nearly all recruited from the invalided non-commissioned officers_.
Historians single out Fat William, the Sergeant-King, as the supreme
type of the martinet King. But it is not only Fat William, but all the
Kings of Prussia who have been martinet Kings and recruiting
sergeants. Prussia has made war into an exact science. Prussia has
created the "nation in arms."
Geographical conditions and the ambitions of the Hohenzollern have
combined to make war a permanent necessity. Prussia was a "mark" or
frontier land, and the margraves or mark-grafs were the earls and
protectors of the Mark. The frontiers of Prussia were open on every
side. She was surrounded by enemies. George William, the father of the
Great Elector, during the Thirty Years' War tried to maintain
neutrality. He soon found out that neutrality did not pay, and his
territory was overrun by hostile bands. Pomerania was occupied and
retained by the Swedes. Poles, Russians, and Austrians in turn invaded
the country. After the Battle of Kunersdorff, in 1761, Prussia was at
her last gasp, and Frederick the Great found himself in so desperate a
position that he had resolved on committing suicide. Again, after
Jena, Berlin was occupied by the French, and for five years remained
under the yoke. Insecurity has been for generations the law of
Prussian existence. The Prussian State has known many ups and downs
and has passed through many tragic vicissitudes. They managed to turn
geographical and military necessities to the advantage of their
dynastic ambitions. What was at first commanded by the instinct of
self-preservation became afterwards a habit, a tradition, and a
systematic policy. They discovered that the best way to maintain an
efficient defensive was to transform it into a vigorous offensive.
They discovered that the best means of living safely was to live
dangerously. They discovered, in the words of Treitschke, that "the
one mortal sin for a State was to be weak."
VIII.--PRUSSIA AS A PREDATORY STATE.
Not only is Prussia a military State, it is also a predatory State.
All the great Powers of Europe have been in a sense military States.
But to them all war has only been a means to an end, and often a means
to higher and unselfish ends. The Spaniards were a military nation,
but their wars were crusades against the Moor. The Russians have been
a military nation, but their wars were crusades against the Turk or
wars for the liberation of the Serbians, the Bulgarians, and the
Greeks. The French have been a military nation, but they fought for a
chivalrous ideal, for adventure, for humanity. Even Napoleon's wars of
conquest were really wars for the establishment of democracy. The
Corsican was the champion and the testamentary executor of the French
Revolution.
The peculiarity of the Prussian State is that it has been from the
beginning a predatory State. The Hohenzollerns have ever waged war
mainly for spoliation and booty. Not once have they waged war for an
ideal or for a principle.
The German Kaiser delights to appear in the garb of the medieval
knight. He wears three hundred appropriate uniforms. A German wit has
said that he wears the uniform of an English Admiral when he visits an
aquarium, and that he dons the uniform of an English Field-Marshal
when he eats an English plum-pudding. Amongst those three hundred
disguises there is none which is more popular in Germany than that of
the Modern Lohengrin bestriding the world in glittering armour. The
Kaiser lacks the democratic gift of humour, and does not seem to be
aware of the incongruity of the Lohengrin masquerade. A Prussian King
cannot honestly play the part of a knight in quest of the Holy Grail.
Chivalry and Prussianism, the crusading spirit and the predatory
spirit, are contradictory terms.
The most exalted Order of the Prussian dynast is the Order of the
Black Eagle. The Hohenzollerns could not have chosen a more fitting
emblem than that of the sinister bird of prey. For they have been
pre-eminently the men of prey amongst modern dynasts. Every province
of their dominions has been stolen from their neighbours. They
secularized and stole the Church property of the Teutonic Order. They
stole Silesia from Austria. They acquired Posen by murdering a noble
nation. They stole Hanover from its lawful rulers. They stole
Schleswig-Holstein from the Danes. They wrested Alsace-Lorraine from
the French.
Circumstances in modern times seem to have singularly favoured their
designs of conquest. To outward appearance they were threatened by
powerful enemies, but those enemies looked far more formidable than
they appeared. On the Far Western boundary, the feeble ecclesiastical
Princes of Cologne, Treves, and Mayence ruled over the smiling fields
and vineyards of the Rhine provinces. On every side Germany was broken
up into petty principalities. The Holy Roman Empire of Germany, which
was neither Holy nor Roman nor German, and which had ceased to be an
empire, was only the shadow of a great name. Austria was perpetually
distracted by internal and external dangers. Poland was an unruly
republic. The very weakness of their neighbours was a temptation to
the Hohenzollern.
The one redoubtable enemy to the Hohenzollern dynasty was Russia. But
after the disastrous defeat of the Seven Years' War inflicted by
Russian arms, Prussia learned to control by deceit and policy a Power
which she dared not challenge, and could not hope to overcome, on the
battlefield. From the middle of the eighteenth century Prussia
concluded a dynastic alliance with the Russian dynasty. The
Hohenzollerns liberally provided their Russian brethren with German
Princes and Princesses. The Prince of Holstein, who became Tsar Peter
III., was the first German Prince of the Romanov dynasty. The little
Cinderella Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine the Great,
was the first of an uninterrupted line of German Princesses. The
Teutonic barons of the Baltic provinces for one hundred and fifty
years were able to control the Russian foreign policy. Nesselrode for
forty years was the Foreign Minister of the Tsar, although he only
spoke German and did not know a word of Russian. Nicholas I. and
Alexander II., with unswerving loyalty, supported the interests of
their Prussian brother-in-law and nephew.
On two occasions the Russian Tsars actually saved the Hohenzollern
from complete destruction. In 1761, when Russian armies occupied
Berlin, an apologetic Tsar begged to be forgiven for daring to
vanquish his illustrious cousin. In 1807, at Tilsit, Prussia was only
saved from dismemberment through the quixotic intervention of Tsar
Alexander I. And the Russian Tsar proved so powerless against
Prussian intrigues that, although Alexander I. had concluded a close
alliance with Napoleon, the German-Russian Court at St. Petersburg
boycotted Napoleon's Ambassador, Savary, and eventually succeeded in
breaking the Franco-Russian coalition.
But the Hohenzollerns did not only wage a predatory war for conquest
and spoliation. Their methods have been as predatory as their aims.
War to them was not merely a policy. It was a business, and often a
lucrative business. In the Middle Ages war had been largely a trade. A
huge commerce in prisoners was transacted, and an enterprising Italian
Condottiere would often recoup himself through the ransom of one
single rich prisoner. The Prussians have continued those medieval
methods until this day. _Treitschke lays it down in his "Politik" that
war must be made to pay, and need not exhaust a Prussian Treasury._
The poor Belgians to-day are learning to their cost the full meaning
of those Prussian predatory methods. The Prussian invaders are
extorting millions of money, as well as enormous food-supplies, from a
starving people. They are dislocating whatever remains of the internal
trade. They are breaking up thousands of miles of Belgian railways,
and they are sending them to the Polish theatre of war. But, brutally
as the poor Belgians have been treated, one shudders to think of the
cruelty and the greed of the Prussian in the new conquered Russian
territories, and of the pitiful plight of the Poles and the
Lithuanians.
IX.--PRUSSIA AS A FEUDAL STATE.
Prussia in her fiscal and commercial policy may be called a typical
modern State. The Hohenzollerns have been compelled to utilize all the
resources of commerce and industry, not because they are liberal or
progressive, but merely in order to increase the national revenue, in
order to provide for an ever-swelling military expenditure. On the
contrary, in her political constitution Prussia has remained a
medieval and feudal State. She is the Paradise of the Junker. But
Prussian Junkerthum is not merely a squirearchy of independent
landowners. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in his "Common Sense about the War," in
which one ounce of common sense is mixed with three ounces of
nonsense, would make us believe that there is little difference
between German Junkerthum and British Junkerthum, and that there is
little to choose between the English Junker, Sir Edward Grey, and a
Pomeranian squire. Mr. Shaw must have studied Prussian conditions to
very little purpose when he makes so ludicrous a comparison. To call
such a quiet, silent country gentleman, such a law-abiding
Parliamentarian as Sir Edward Grey, to call even him a typical
Prussian Junker is a travesty of the facts. A more striking contrast
to the complete Junker of Pomerania than the "Complete Angler" of the
Foreign Office could not well be imagined. The glorified Prussian
Junker is Bismarck. The typical Junker is Prince Blücher. A perfect
modern type is that fiery Freiherr von Oldenburg, who advised the
Kaiser to send a troop of Uhlans, as in the old Cromwellian days, to
clear out the politicians of a disloyal Reichstag.
The Prussian Junkers are the lieges of the war-lord. They are all the
more loyal to the throne as they are poor, and therefore dependent on
the King for their very subsistence. There are few large estates in
Prussia, and they yield but a meagre revenue. The relations of the
Junkers to the Hohenzollerns are the relations of William the
Conqueror to his companions-in-arms. The Junkers originally held their
broad acres, their _Rittergut_, by military tenure. Some of their
feudal privileges have gone, but they continue to be the leading
political power in the State under the Kaiser's Majesty. They are the
pillars of the throne. They owe military service. To recall the words
of the Sergeant-King, they are "_dem Regiment obligat_." And they are
rewarded for their military services by privileges innumerable. They
are the controlling influence in the Landtag, which is a
representative assembly only in name. They occupy the higher posts in
the Civil Service and in the Diplomatic Service. In each district the
Landrat is the supreme authority, the electioneering agent of the
Government and the representative of the Prussian King.
And the Junker caste have been as selfish, as rapacious, as their
Hohenzollern overlords. Nothing could be more sordid than their
attitude in the recent campaign for financial reform. They have
shifted the burden of taxation upon the weaker shoulders of the
peasant and artisan. They have compelled von Bülow to reverse the
Liberal Free Trade policy of Caprivi, and to impose heavy corn duties,
merely to increase their own rents.
X.--PRUSSIA AS A DESPOTIC STATE.
In a military State like Prussia, which is mainly organized for war,
where war is the vital function, not only does the King hold his power
by the Divine right of the sword, but even in times of peace all
political power is concentrated into his hands: "_L'état c'est moi!_"
In such a State a Parliamentary Government is an absurdity, and, as a
matter of fact, there is no Parliamentary Government, neither in
Prussia nor in the Empire. There is no responsible Cabinet. The
Chancellor is accountable, not to the majority of the Reichstag, but
to the Kaiser. The Germans imagine that because they have the fiction
of universal suffrage they possess the most democratic Government in
Europe. And an enthusiastic German triumphantly reminded me of the
fact at a mass meeting which I recently held in San Francisco on
behalf of the Allies. I reminded him that Bismarck himself has given
us in his "Memoirs" the Machiavellic reasons which induced him to
invent the fiction of universal suffrage. The man of blood and iron
tells us that he only adopted universal suffrage as a temporary device
to convert the German States to the Prussian policy, and as a means of
influencing the people against the federal dynasties.
The Reichstag is essentially different from a British House of
Commons. As a political body it is the most contemptible assembly in
Europe. It is a mere debating club, a convenient machine to vote the
Government taxes. And even the power of voting has been largely taken
from it. It has become part of the German constitutional practice that
the military estimates must be passed without discussion. It is only
considerable increases of the army and navy which have to be submitted
to the Reichstag, and those increases are generally voted for a number
of years. In 1887 a characteristic episode happened. Bismarck had
decided on formidable additions to the army, and he wanted those
additions voted and guaranteed for seven years. The military
"Septennate Law" frightened even a docile Reichstag, and the Catholic
party refused to vote it. Bismarck, who for ten years had fought the
Pope, and who had thundered against the interference of a foreign
ecclesiastical potentate in temporal matters, now asked the Pope to
interfere in favour of the Army Bill. To the discredit of the Papacy,
Leo XIII. fell into the trap. Leo XIII. exerted pressure on the
Catholic party. But they still were recalcitrant. Bismarck and the
Pope proved equally persistent. Finally, at the behest of the Iron
Chancellor and with the assistance of the Vicar of Christ, the
Reichstag passed that fatal military law, which was the beginning of
the colossal European armaments, which were to increase the political
tension of Europe until breaking-point, and which was to result in the
present catastrophe. Thus is Parliamentary Government carried on in
the Empire of the Hohenzollern!
Passive obedience and discipline are the cardinal virtues inculcated
by the Hohenzollern. "_Verboten_," "_Nicht raisonniren_," are their
watchwords. A Hohenzollern brooks no opposition. "_Wir bleiben doch
der Herr und Koenig und thun was wir wollen_," said the
Sergeant-King. And two hundred years after, the Kaiser expresses the
same imperial sentiments: "_Wer mir nicht gehorcht, den zerschmettere
ich_" (Whoever refuses to obey, I shall smash). Bismarck, who created
the German Empire, was dismissed like a lackey. Baron von Stein, who
reformed the Prussian State, and who stands out as the greatest
statesman of his age, was ignominiously dismissed. Ingratitude has
always formed part of the Hohenzollern code of royal ethics.
We are told by the apologists of the Hohenzollern that the same
discipline, the same obedience to duty, are practised by the rulers
themselves. "_Ich Dien_" is the Hohenzollern motto. Of all the
servants of the Prussian State, there is none who serves it more
loyally, more strenuously, than the King of Prussia. "I am the
Commander-in-Chief and the Minister of Finance of the King of
Prussia," said the Sergeant-King of himself. How often have the
Prussian Kings been held up as shining examples of devotion to duty!
Behold how hard a Hohenzollern King has to work for the State! In the
same way the business man who rules his staff with a rod of iron might
say to his discontented workmen: "See how strenuously I labour for the
success of the business!" The workmen would probably answer that the
ceaseless toil of the business man is not wholly disinterested, that
the millionaire manufacturer is not a philanthropist; and the
apologists of the Hohenzollern might be reminded that a King of
Prussia in every generation has been wont to work mainly for himself.
XI.--THE HOHENZOLLERN AS THE CHAMPIONS OF PROTESTANTISM.
Treitschke urges as one of the chief claims of the Hohenzollerns that
they have been in modern Europe the champions of the Protestant
religion and at the same time the apostles of toleration. Is not the
Kaiser the supreme head of his Church and the Anointed of the Lord?
Does not he still preach edifying sermons to his soldiers and sailors?
And does he not at the same time extend his Imperial protection over
believers of every creed?
The truth is that the Hohenzollerns have never been the champions of
Protestantism, but have astutely and consistently exploited it for
their own purposes. They did espouse the Lutheran and Calvinistic
faith, but their conversion enabled them to appropriate the vast
dominions of the Church, a spoliation which might have presented some
difficulties if they had remained Catholic. We saw that, during the
Thirty Years' War, during the supreme crisis of Protestantism, William
George, Elector of Brandenburg, remained neutral and allowed the
Northern hero, Gustavus Adolphus, and Cardinal Richelieu to champion
the cause of the Protestant religion.
Not only did the Hohenzollerns not defend the Protestant religion;
they perverted it and debased it by subjecting it to the Prussian
State. Such subjection is the negation of Protestantism, as it is the
negation of Christianity. Christianity in a political sense has always
meant the separation of the spiritual and the temporal powers. It is
the essence of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism that it actually does
protest. It is of the essence of Nonconformity that it refuses to
conform. Prussian Protestantism has ceased to protest, and conforms to
whatever is demanded by the State. The Lutheran parson is the obedient
servant of the Hohenzollern. "_Cujus regio illius religio_": spiritual
allegiance must follow temporal allegiance.
The ultimate outcome of the confusion of spiritual and temporal powers
in Prussia has been that Prussia has become the Atheist State, and it
is because the Prussian State is an Atheist State and absolutely
indifferent to the interests of religion that it has come to practise
in its own peculiar way the political virtue of toleration. As the
Prussian wars of conquest had brought together many heterogeneous
populations professing different religions, toleration became a vital
necessity for the State. It is not a virtue of the dynasty, and the
Hohenzollerns certainly deserve no credit for it. The Prussian
doctrine of toleration has always been of a negative and conditional
kind. Prussian Kings have adopted the religious theory of Gibbon. All
religions are equally true to the believer. They are equally true to
the unbeliever. _They are equally useful to the State._
All religions have proved equally useful and have been exploited with
equal indifference by the Prussian dynasty. The attitude of Frederick
the Great to religion is characteristic of the Hohenzollern attitude.
Frederick the Great was surrounded by a band of French, Swiss, and
Scottish Atheists. His main relaxation from the cares of State was to
bandy cynical and obscene jests on Christianity with the Table Round
at the private supper-parties of Potsdam. But his royal hatred and
contempt for all positive religion did not prevent him from cordially
inviting the Jesuits to his dominions because he found them useful
pedagogues to teach and conciliate his newly conquered Polish
subjects. It is one of the paradoxes of history that the same
religious order which had been suppressed by the Pope and expelled by
the Catholic Kings of France and Spain was protected by the Atheist
King of Prussia and the Atheist Empress of Russia. According to the
same opportunist Hohenzollern tradition, Bismarck in turn fought the
Pope, imprisoned Bishops and Cardinals, and then used the influence of
the Pope and the hierarchy to further his Machiavellian policy. Even
so in more recent times the Kaiser appeared at one and the same time
as a devout pilgrim to the Holy Land, as the special friend of Abdul
Hamid--Abdul the Damned--and as the self-appointed protector of three
hundred million Mohammedans.
XII.--HOW THE GERMAN PEOPLE WERE SUBJECTED TO PRUSSIA.
We have analyzed the principles which ever directed the Prussian
State. We have described the characteristics of the Hohenzollern
dynasty who created that Prussian State. How is it that the German
nation should have surrendered their destinies to a power which is so
constitutionally selfish, so inherently evil, which has trampled down
all the principles that a modern world holds dear and sacred?
The subjection of Germany to Prussia has been a triumph of
Hohenzollern diplomacy and deceit, and has been the outcome of a
tragic misunderstanding on the part of a politically uneducated and
inexperienced people. The German people were tired of their political
impotence, of their miserable dynastic quarrels, of their abject
subservience to their parasitic princelings. The German people, broken
up in a hundred petty States, had the legitimate and praiseworthy
ambition of becoming a united people. German unity had been for
generations a cherished dream of German patriots. History had
abundantly proved that the Austrian Empire could not assist in the
realization of that dream. Then came the opportunity of the Prussian
tempter. Prussia offered her mighty sword. Prussia alone had the
military power and a strong political organization. The German States
yielded to the temptation. They trusted that, in concluding an
alliance with Prussia, they would retain their liberties. Indeed, they
hoped that once German unity was realized, Germany would assimilate
and absorb the Prussian State. Alas! it was the Hohenzollern State
which was to annex and subject the German Empire. Little did the
Germans know Prussian tenacity. Little did they know the rapacity of
the Black Eagle. Still less did they know the black magic of the
necromancer Bismarck.
Treitschke reminds us in his "Politik" of an incident which is
characteristic of the relation of the German Empire to Prussia. On one
occasion even Bismarck, the Prussian Junker, expressed a misgiving
that a particular law would not be acceptable to the Federal States of
the Empire. Emperor William contemptibly dismissed the objection. "Why
should the Federal States object when they are only the prolongation
of Prussia?" Treitschke, the Saxon, accepts the Prussian theory of
Emperor William. He tells us proudly that the Federal States have
ceased to be independent States--indeed, that they have lost the
essential characteristics of a State, that they are only called States
by courtesy, that there is only one State in the German Empire, and
that all the other Federal communities only continue their precarious
existence by virtue and with the consent of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
It is one of the most appalling misunderstandings of history. Like
Faust, the German people have sold their soul to Mephistopheles:
Bismarck. And they have sold it for power. They are now paying the
price. As in the wonderful old ballad of Burger, the Prussian horseman
has taken the maiden "Germania" on his saddle. The death's-head hussar
has carried her away on his wild career through space until he has
brought her to the gates of Hell.
It has thus been the fate of the German nation, as of other European
nations, to work and fight for the aggrandizement of the King of
Prussia. A section of the people, the Social Democrats and the
Liberals, have made fitful and impotent efforts to free themselves
from the tyranny of the Hohenzollern. What they have not succeeded in
doing, Europe is now doing for them. In the fulness of time, Europe
has arisen to crush the Hohenzollern, to kill the "Spirit of the
Prussian Hive." The war will result in the enfranchisement of Germany
as it will result in the enfranchisement of Poland and Serbia. Did the
history of the world ever present so tragic a paradox? Twelve million
heroes are fighting the German Government. Millions of the manhood of
the civilized world are laying down their lives on all the
battlefields of Europe and all the high seas of the world, mainly in
order to make the German people free.
XIII.--JUDGMENT ON THE HOHENZOLLERN STATE.
In 1807, after the crushing defeat inflicted by Napoleon on the
Prussian armies at Jena, when the Military Monarchy crumbled to pieces
in one day like a house of cards, Joseph de Maistre, the most profound
and the most prophetic political thinker of his age, wrote the
following significant lines from St. Petersburg. To realize the full
significance of the judgment, one must remember that Count de Maistre
was a fanatic supporter of the old monarchic order. He hated Napoleon
with a bitter hatred, but he hated Prussia more:
"Ever since I have started to reason, I have felt a special aversion
for Frederick II., whom a frenzied generation has been in a hurry to
proclaim a great man, but who was really no more than a _great
Prussian_. Posterity will consider this Prince as one of the greatest
enemies of the human species that has ever lived. His monarchy, which
had inherited his spirit, had become an argument against Providence.
To-day that argument has been converted into a tangible proof of
eternal justice. This famous structure built with blood and mud, with
debased coin and base libels, has crumbled in the twinkle of an
eye."[12]
[12] De Maistre, "Lettres et Opuscules."
Those words were written exactly one hundred and ten years ago, and
the world is once more anxiously looking forward to another Jena which
will deal a final blow to the Hohenzollern monarchy. When that
catastrophe comes, Europe, enlightened by the awful experiences of the
last hundred years, and delivered from the black magic of the
political necromancers of Potsdam, will unanimously echo the prophetic
judgment pronounced by Joseph de Maistre. For to-day, even more than
in 1807, Prussia has become an "argument against Providence." Even
more than in 1807 the Prussia of 1917 "is built with blood and mud."
Even more than in 1807 the chastisement of Prussia is demanded by
"eternal justice." The whole civilized world will breathe more freely
when the sinister and diabolical power will be broken for ever and
will oppress and degrade humanity no more.