The Great Sorrow
14
The German crazy-quilt, of many hues and colors, and how this
blanket was patched and mended through the years.
¶ From the 18th Century, and indeed before that time, to say nothing
of years to come as late as 1871, there was in fact no Germany. The
term was a mere geographical "designation." We shall hear more of
this, as Bismarck assumes the stupendous task of German unity, in a
real sense of the word; but we will never understand what Bismarck and
other statesmen who hoped for German unity had to deal with, unless we
take a broad survey of conditions in Germany from the year 1750; not
only from the political but also from the social and domestic side, as
represented in 300-odd German principalities that like a crazy-quilt
were thrown helter-skelter from Hamburg on the North to Vienna on the
South.
¶ Many of the holdings were gained through musty papers from rulers of
the ancient Holy Roman Empire, a nation Voltaire declared "neither
holy, nor empire, nor Roman."
¶ There were free cities, great landlords, and there were great
robber-barons--thieves of high or low degree.
¶ At Cologne, Treves and Mayence archbishops held the lower valley of
the Moselle, also some of finest parts of the Rhein valley.
¶ Next, came dukes, landgraves, margraves, cities of the Empire, and
then still smaller, duchies in duodecimo, down through some 800 minor
landlords who as the owners of some borough or village walked this
earth genuine game cocks on their own dunghills. Political conditions
were distressing; old feuds, old hates prevailed.
There were restrictions on commerce, statute labor, barbarous penal
laws, religious persecution and Jew-baiting.
* * * * *
¶ In short, to make 300-odd jealous princelings join hands in national
brotherhood is the complex problem that goes down through the years;
generation after generation; till at last the one strong man appears,
Otto von Bismarck, who in his supreme rise to power sees clearly that
the only hope for Germany is in a complete social and political
revolution, in which the changes in the German mind concerning
political unity in governmental affairs must be as unusual as the
transformations in the German mode of life.
* * * * *
¶ During the early part of the 18th Century, of which we are now
writing, a certain bold political doctrine still stood unchallenged.
It had come out of the dim and hoary past, and in effect it proclaimed
the power of the fist. For centuries unnumbered the idea prevailed
that a state defends itself against foreign foes, and otherwise
conserves its existence through the direct will of a strong ruler,
preferably a king brought up in arms.
Thus the "genius of the people" meant in effect the wisdom or the
ignorance of the line of kings.
Under this theory, Prussia by slow degrees and through many sacrifices
of blood and treasure, had become a great power.
¶ Fred: Wm. I., (1713-40), who was indeed a miser and a scoffer, freed
little Prussia from debt and rebuilt cities ruined by the wars. He
likewise established a system of compulsory education, made
schoolmasters state officers, and contributed mightily to a higher
standard.
And he went further still: he welcomed religious exiles from other
parts of Germany; he settled thousands of immigrants on the raw lands;
he saved his money, economized to the last pfennig, was prudent in a
worldly sense, and to the end of his life remained intolerable foe of
idleness.
¶ It was from this severe master that the Great Frederick (1740-86)
learned the trick of laying his cane over the backs of peasants and
crying out in rage: "Get to work!"
¶ Old Fritz continued his line of battle from 1740 to 1763, in various
unequal contests with the Allies. He fought Austria, France, Russia,
Sweden, Saxony, and Poland, and for a while he fought their allied
strength. The upshot was that Prussian enemies at home and abroad were
defeated and Prussia won first rank as a military and political power.
This idea of military discipline, united with large worldly sagacity
in the management of state affairs, marks and explains Prussia's rise
to power.
¶ But the decline was equally manifest under Fr: Wm. II, the Great
Frederick's nephew. Although he inherited a domain of six millions of
people, banded under an excellent administrative system, sustained by
the disciplined army of "Old Dessauer" (Prince Leopold), and although
Fr: Wm. II found the huge sum of 40,000,000 thalers in his fighting
uncle's treasure chest, yet within a few years all these splendid
advantages were frittered away in idle dalliance and the weak king
found himself twenty millions in debt.
By the time he died, 1797, Prussia was riding to a fall; and
disregarding plain measures for her own safety, she had reached the
sad place where the sturdy old Prussian spirit of prudence and
independence had become so compromised that Prussia almost deemed it
unessential to preserve her own political life!
¶ Thus, within three generations, Prussia repeated the old story of
human life, wherein the weak descendant eats up the strong sire's
goods. Frederick the Great died Aug. 17th, 1786. Within three years,
France struck at the German lands; and within 20 years the old
Constitution of the Empire was scoffed at by encircling enemies along
the frontiers, led by France, while at home political disputants
destroyed National spirit by exciting revolution after revolution.
"Everywhere," says Zimmermann, (Germany, p. 1618), "one felt the
morning breeze of the new dispensation." The cry of the people had to
be answered, and the common man wanted to know not only "Why!" but
"When!"
¶ For the ensuing 85 years clamor, disruption and disunion continue
often accompanied by bloodshed; till through Bismarck's great work
over which he toiled for 40-odd years, came the final answer of the
Imperial democracy, 1871.
* * * * *
¶ It is to be the labor of years with confusion worse confounded, as
we go along. The Feudal system, with which Germany has been for
centuries petrified, must be thrown off; the peasant laborers freed in
some sort, whether social or political, the absurd restrictions of
countless customs houses walling-in each petty principality, must be
destroyed. Before a new Germany may emerge, if Germany is to emerge at
all, a National faith must be stimulated, fighting blood stirred, wars
waged. Then, and then only, may this idea of German Unity, long the
puzzling mental preoccupation of the fathers, become a geographical
actuality and a political fact.
¶ The German peasants' sense of respect for vested authority, even
when held by hated kings, made the common people of the various German
states almost ox-like in their patience under harsh political
conditions.
Between the power of petty tyrants and of foreign despots, there was
no freedom worthy of the name.
The German lived for himself, aloof, suspicious, not caring
particularly to change his condition.
Compromise after compromise, failure after failure, sorrow after
sorrow must be recorded in the great story; but do not despair. In
amazing manner, through blood and iron, Otto von Bismarck, our blond
Pomeranian giant, will face, fight and finally conquer the bewildering
cross-forces of his time--till "German national faith" is supreme.
* * * * *
¶ Paying no attention to its neighbor, each German state stood off by
itself; each princeling had his army, in some instances only 25 men;
each ruler had his castle, in imitation of Versailles; each state its
custom house, its distinct court and rural costumes.
To go ten miles north or south was to find yourself in a new world;
you could scarcely understand the mush-talk of the peasants, whereas
the various Liliputian courts chattered in mongrel French, aped from
Versailles.
¶ The minor courts of Germany imitated the excesses of Versailles;
had dancing teachers from Paris, French barbers, French governesses,
and French prostitutes.
Every young man of wealth was sent to Paris to acquire what was called
"bon ton," that is to say, familiarity with the vices of the day; the
etiquette of the fan and the study of new ways to spend money wrung
from over-taxed peasants of German provinces was also regarded as very
important.
Even to speak German was held a mark of vulgarity; and what more
despicable than to be ashamed of one's ancestry?
¶ Unmoved by the sufferings of the peasants, Augustus III of Saxony
applied himself to grand operas, written by queens of French society.
While the peasants were living like beasts, Frederick Augustus, the
successor, spent his time hunting red deer. The dukes of Coburg and
Hildburghausen were miserable bankrupts. As a result of social
excesses, Charles VII of Bavaria left a debt of forty millions.
Charles Theodore, in some respects an enlightened monarch, is
particularly remembered for three strange facts: That he once gave an
opera in German and not in French; that he tried to sell off Bavaria,
his inheritance, and move to a more congenial locality; and third,
that he hired Rumford, the great chemist, to invent a soup, at low
cost, to feed the poor, whose miseries had been growing on account of
the bad government.
¶ Nor should we overlook the monarch at Zweibrucken, the Pfalzgraf
Charles. His mania took the form of collecting pipes and toys, of
which he had innumerable specimens from the ends of the earth. He kept
also one thousand five hundred horses and a thousand dogs and cats.
Every traveler had to take off his hat and bow at sight of the spire,
on pain of being beaten by the Count's constable.
¶ Charles Eugene, of Wuertemberg, slave to luxury, played pranks when
he was not indulging in vices. He liked to alarm peasants at night
with wild cries; and when a woman stuck her head out of the window,
the monarch would throw a hoop and try to drag her outside. In a deep
forest he built his castle "Solitude."
¶ On his 50th birthday, he wrote to his subjects, promising to mend
his life; the letter was read in all the churches. The people decided
that he was in earnest, promised him more money, of which he was in
sore need. His first step was to contract a left-handed marriage with
Francisca von Bernedin, whom he raised to the rank of countess.
¶ His next step was to build a queer bird-cage for his new mate.
Menzel says of this episode: "Records of every clime and of every age
were here collected. A Turkish mosque contrasted its splendid dome
with the pillared Roman temple and the steepled Gothic church. The
castled turret rose by the massive Roman tower; the low picturesque
hut of the modern peasant stood beneath the shelter of the gigantesque
remains of antiquity; and imitations of the pyramids of Cestius, of
the baths of Diocletian, a Roman senate-house and Roman dungeons, met
the astonished eye."
* * * * *
¶ Another amiable peculiarity of French-mongering German princelings
in their petty monarchies, was man-stealing. Hard-pressed for funds,
the practice was to kidnap peasants and sell them into foreign
military service. The vile trade was dignified by court authority;
followers of the game were known as "man merchants."
¶ The Wuertemberg monarch in order to raise funds to complete the
absurd castle for his mistress, took it into his head to sell 1,000
peasants to the Dutch, for the war in the Indies; and so deep lay the
curse of tyranny that no public protest was raised. It is true that
Schiller, the noble poet, who at this time was a student at Charles
College, fled in disgust, but Schaubert, another poet, was not so
fortunate; he was seized and imprisoned for ten years.
¶ The vile practice of man-stealing from the wretched peasantry long
continued as a monarchical privilege. The Landgrave Frederick of
Hesse-Cassel, on one occasion sent 12,800 Hessians to the British, to
fight in America. English commissioners came over and inspected the
captive men as though picking out stock at a cattle show. Should a
parent protest, a son, a wife or a widow, the answer was the lash.
Hanau furnished 1200 of these slave-soldiers, Waldeck several hundred.
Seume, who was himself a victim to the system, deported to America,
tells us in his Memoirs: "No one was safe; every means was resorted
to, fraud, cunning, trickery, violence. Foreigners were thrown into
prison, and sold."
"There is a Hessian prince of high distinction," says Huergelmer. "He
has magnificent palaces, pheasant-preserves, at Wilhelmsbad, operas,
mistresses, etc. These things cost money. He has, moreover, a hoard of
debts, the result of the luxury of his sainted forefathers. What does
the prince do in this dilemma? He seizes an unlucky fellow in the
street, expends fifty dollars on his equipment, sends him out of the
country, and gets a hundred dollars for him in exchange."
* * * * *
¶ Frederick of Bayreuth expended all his revenues in building a grand
opera house, for giving balls, parties, receptions and official
functions to aristocrats. His successor Alexander fell under the sway
of Lady Craven, a British adventuress, who led the peasants a merry
chase for the cash; man-stealing was the old game; and one order alone
from the British government called for 1,500 peasants.
* * * * *
¶ But why continue the recital of man's inhumanities?
Charles of Brunswick, a spendthrift, who sold subjects into captivity,
paid his ballet-master 30,000 a year. Frederick of Brunswick on one
occasion sold 4,000 peasants to Britain, for the army.
¶ The terrible famine of 1770-72 added to the discontent of the common
man, throughout Germany; he began to feel that it was the duty of
kings to feed the hungry; bark, grass, leaves, carrion were eaten;
disease spread; emigrations depopulated the Rheinlands; 20,000 left
Bavaria alone; while upwards of 180,000 Bavarians died of hunger; in
Saxony, the number that starved to death is placed at 100,000. Other
kingdoms suffered heavily.
¶ In many of the provinces were laws to prevent immigration; those who
tried to get Bavarians to leave the country were guilty of a crime,
punishable by hanging. A similar punishment was exacted for marrying
out of one's native province.
¶ Also, the wretched condition of the roads added to the isolation of
the various German provinces. Exacting customs' duties, military
espionages, a weak postal system, contributed to keep Germans
unacquainted, except with near neighbors. He, indeed, was a bold man
who had gone over the mountains or beyond his native valley. Even a
journey of two days caused grave anxieties; the carriage was almost
certain to be overturned in some deep rut and the travelers injured or
killed; robbers lay in wait in the mountains; protection was almost
unheard of; life and property were insecure; every traveler had to be
his own policeman, and never issued forth on a journey without dagger,
pistol and sword.
* * * * *
¶ Thus, 300 princelings, great or small, were determined to rule in
their individual capacities; there was no Germany in fact, and that
much of the German Empire that had outlived the gradual ruin of the
old Holy Roman Empire, the great-ancestor of Germany, was now
approaching complete dissolution.
The power lay no more in states, but in 300-odd local political
bureaus, scattered everywhere, dominated often enough by an ambitious
French prostitute, or by some lucky ballet-master.
¶ Then, there was August of Saxony, who is said to have been the
father of 300 children. This foolish fellow's fetes cost thalers by
the wagon-load; one set of Chinese porcelains ran into the millions,
and it cost 6,000 thalers to gild the gondolas for a night in June, to
say nothing of the fancy ball.
¶ The Baden monarch, Charles William, built Carlsruhe in the deep
forest, the better that his orgies be kept from prying eyes.
¶ Eberhardt of Wuertemberg gave the whole conduct of his government
over to women and Jews--and by the way the Jews were the only saving
force. As for the Graevenitz woman, she was king in petticoats. She
mortgaged crown lands and raised hell generally. One day in church she
made a fuss about not being mentioned among royal rulers, and the
pastor immediately replied: "Madam, we mention you daily in our
prayers when we say: 'O Lord, deliver us from all evil!'" Once, in
time of famine, Charles William scattered loaves of bread; the rabble
maddened by hunger fought to the death for the dole!
¶ Also, there were Ernest of Hanover and Tony of Brunswick, two
precious rascals, with all their retinue of mistresses, mistresses'
maids, mothers, hangers-on, and pimps. Carl Magnus had his Grehweiler
palace costing 180,000 guelden. He grew so desperate that the Emperor
sent him to a fortress for ten years' imprisonment, for forging
documents to raise the wind. Count Limburg-Styrum was a princeling
whose army consisted of one colonel, six officers and two privates!
Count William of Bueckeburg had a fort with 300 guns, defending a
cabbage patch. Count Frederick of Salm-Kyrburg swindled the churches;
and in tiny Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, only 15 miles square, was a
royal palace of 350 rooms with clocks of all sizes, great and small,
in each apartment. This count went mad over clocks, but was popular
with the working class; often he would take a man off a job in order
to laugh and joke.
Also, Frederick had original taste in military affairs; his army
comprised 150 soldiers, with 28 guards on horseback. The prince prided
himself on being a wrestler, and one day when a yokel threw the
prince, the prince set up a great cry, "I slipped on a cherry
stone!"--and this regardless of the fact that it was not the time of
the year for cherries.
¶ There was another local ruler, Ludwig Guenther, who was fond of
painting horses, and on his death 246-odd horse pictures adorned the
walls of his palace.
* * * * *
¶ "Show a German a door and tell him to go through, and he will try to
break a hole in the wall."
¶ "Here, every one lives apart in his own narrow corner, with his own
opinions; his wife and children round him; ever suspicious of the
Government, as of his neighbor; judging everything from his personal
point of view, and never from general grounds."
¶ "The sentiment of individualism and the necessity for contradiction
are developed to an inconceivable degree in the German."
¶ The problem of directing this intense individualism is the problem
of German unity.
* * * * *
¶ With rough manners, blunders, extravagances, absurdities, the
hereditary princes continued to sponge on the peasants, generation
after generation, till wretchedness spread far over the German lands.
They had their châteaux, their dancing girls, their dogs, horses,
cats, mistresses and their royal armies.
¶ The misery of centuries of oppression existed; petty monarchs
exercised powers of life and death.
¶ The South German mocked the North German's pronunciation. One set
vowed that the "g" in "goose" is hard, the other proclaimed that the
"g" is soft. One side went about mumbling with hard "g's," "A
well-baked goose is a gracious gift of God," whereupon the other side
replied that all the "g's" are "j's," that the "gute ganz" is really
"jute janz," and "Gottes" "Jottes." And duels were fought over it.
¶ Nor was this all. An intense local pride expressed itself in
grotesque dialects, unsoftened by intercourse with the outer world;
also, there were outlandish fashions in dress and other domestic
affairs.
¶ In Brunswick the women wore green aprons, curious black caps, the
men buff coats, red vests with four rows of buttons, caps with crazy
pompons, buckled slippers and gay ribbon garters.
¶ In lower Saxony the women wore flat straw hats, like a dinner plate,
hair plastered down, head-dresses of gigantic black ribbons, aprons of
gay stripes, and ten petticoats coming only a little below the knee.
The men wore farce-comedy costumes, not unlike coachmen.
¶ In Pomerania-Rugen the women admired scarlet petticoats,
knee-length, capes like turko-rugs, black veils, green garters and
blue stockings. The men wore aprons like butchers, caps and
long-tailed coats.
¶ The Hessian women preferred turbans of red, vestees of gay stuffs,
blue, green or yellow knee-length skirts.
* * * * *
¶ The Baden men folk liked reds, greens and yellows, vests adorned
with many ribbons, top boots, high white collars and funny-looking
black coats. The women had their green aprons, puffed sleeves, and ten
short petticoats.
¶ In East Prussia men wore double and triple vests. As for the women,
they looked like animals in the zoo.
¶ In Wuertemberg, a typical landlord wore a blue peajacket with two
rows of large silver buttons, two vests of high contrasting colors, a
black sash, salmon-colored trousers, polished boots;--and carried a
meerschaum pipe.
¶ In Bavaria one saw green vests, yodlers' hats with tiny feathers,
green leggings, or military boots; and among the women gay vestees,
bright shawls and white kerchiefs.
* * * * *
¶ Thus, the dead-weight of centuries still lay like a mountain on the
various German states.
¶ This dead-weight of olden times kept the German states bickering
among themselves.
For long years past, the people were divided by political brawls,
altercations, affrays, squabbles, feuds, often with the loss of life.
The general disposition was choleric, pugnacious, litigious.
There was bad blood over principles and procedure, policies and plans.
To transform aloofness to neighborliness, tumult to conciliation,
quarreling to friendliness, hostility to good will, dissent must give
way to assent, distrust to faith, denial to admission, misgiving to
conviction, political atheism to political revelation.
Such are some of the peculiarities of the human animal; and in
political life human animals are prone to fight for self-interest,
like dogs over a bone.
* * * * *
¶ We are not going to try to tell you of the many efforts by rash
reformers, in the half-century of the dead-weight, leading to the rise
of Prussia.
Again and again, far-sighted Germans, sick unto death at the way
things were going, urged equality for all men before the law, equal
taxation, restriction of the power of the nobles.
Strange as it may seem, the peasants themselves stood in the way. They
did not care to change their condition, miserable as it was. They
dreaded the future, preferred present miseries than to risk new ills.
For example, on one occasion, a certain political idealist excited the
peasants in revolt, assassinated 120 nobles, destroyed 264 castles.
This was in the time of Joseph II, of Austria, the ruler filled with
amazing ideas of equality. The peasants themselves were the first to
protest, much as they detested the nobles; and the unsupported leaders
died on the wheel, while 150 miserable followers were buried alive.
And yet, at that very moment, the idealistic Joseph, who with an
excess of zeal, tried for political equality, made enemies of his
nobles, enemies of his peasants, likewise. The great reformer was held
a fanatic, intent on destroying government. Too far ahead of his time,
his plans for political semi-equality failed.
¶ This monarch, thinking to make a lesson, had swindling nobles placed
in the stocks, like common thieves.
Joseph was one of the first great democrats, in the modern sense. To
him, the cause of the common man was sacred. He believed in genuine
equality, but alas, he did not know how to bring about the political
Millennium.
¶ He threw open the parks to the people; he proclaimed free speech and
free thought; he abolished serfdom; he labored to construct a
state-machine with one system of justice and one National plan.
Joseph, though overbrimming with emotions for the common man's
political salvation, failed to allow for the ignorance of his people,
their stubborn avowal of local self-interests.
¶ And it fell out that his people thought that Joseph was trying to
enslave them the more; ingratitude and misapprehensions followed,
destroying the liberal reformer's most cherished plans for his beloved
Austria-Germany.
The word was passed alone that Joseph was a tyrant. You see, as
frequently happens, the people preferred old abuses to new ways. The
general population hugged their chains and refused to be delivered.
This singular belief in the past, rather than in the future, is indeed
a human weakness and has checked and restrained the rise of
intellectual freedom since the world began.
* * * * *
¶ It might all have been a good lesson to republicans, but the
nobility assumed a threatening attitude and the peasants did not
understand a monarch like Joseph.
Their idea of a king was a man going upstairs on horseback and eating
spiders. A king must have powers of life and death and bags of gold. A
citizen king was absurd.
The peasantry, on whom Joseph had endeavored to bestow many large
democratic privileges, rose against him. He died Feb. 20, 1790, "a
century too early," says Jellenz, and as Remer adds, "misunderstood by
a people unworthy of such a sovereign."
* * * * *
¶ Germany, in the sad period between 1750 and 1806 had long been a
European political jest; these are hard words, but it is the language
of truth.
She had sunk so low that she saw no degradation in going off to fight
French or British wars, while at home remaining a mere political
nonentity.
She had sunk so low, under French influences, and through her own lack
of self-control, that she forgot her great ancestors and her noble
traditions.
She had sunk so low that her very children were brought up to despise
the language of the Fatherland; the children scoffing at the parents,
aped foreign ways rather than support German originality, strength and
national genius; young men coming of age preferred to leave the land
of their birth, mocked the simple German virtues, and occupied
themselves in idle dalliance in Paris, or failing in this, set up
imitations of French courts in the petty German monarchies.
Thus, finally Germany became insensible, indifferent and debased by
stupid and selfish ideals from beyond the Vosges; till at last Germany
became, literally, a land without a people, a people without a land.
¶ Worse still, the time came when, under these false teachings, a
sense of shame no longer lived, to arouse great national interests and
to recall degenerate sons to their solemn duties to their Fatherland.
Hundreds of noble Germans, at one time or another, during these dark
years, tried in vain by voice or pen to restore national
consciousness, but failed. The problem of German liberty seemed
incapable of solution; and as for the still larger problem of German
unity--that became a mere dream.
* * * * *
¶ We glorify here and now, the genius and the manhood of Bismarck as
the one man who had the strength of purpose to recall to Germans the
heroic tale of a free and united Fatherland.
It took him thirty years or more, through well-nigh superhuman
striving; he preached, he cursed, he vilified, he used the iron rod.
He would have absolutely nothing to do with the political ideas from
over the Vosges; he knew too well the curse of olden times, and his
one great central emotion was to end that condition--as he hoped
forever.
You are to read of the battles of a giant, filled with immense
compassion for the follies and weaknesses of his misled countrymen,
filled, too, with fanatical zeal to punish, that good might come of it
at last.
Bismarck used the strong military arm, the hell fires and the
lightnings.
His nature scorned any further mere palliation of the weaknesses of
human nature. Like all supermen, Bismarck struck straight from the
shoulder; in turn to be misunderstood, cursed and reviled by the very
people he would serve; but in the end aroused German manhood to a just
comprehension of the power and dignity of a free and united
Fatherland.
* * * * *
¶ For upwards of 100 years before Bismarck's great hour, the French
had been accustomed to exploit Germany. To fill the pocketbook, to
provide soldiers for wars, or to afford opportunities for buccaneering
expeditions, were all the same.
We do not say this to bring up any "moral" issue, but we make the
statement merely as one uses the word dung or manure.
That is to say, certain historical facts stink to heaven.
Annexations, concessions, raids, riots at the hands of the French
conspired to keep Germany disunited, belligerent and mutinous; and as
the years passed Germany, to a large extent, seduced by French ways,
lost a sense of her dignity. France had looked to Germany to furnish
allies to help fight Prussia, Austria or England; then England turned
the trick against France. It is discouraging to add that even the
great Goethe was so seduced by the glamour of Napoleon's genius that
he wrote these strange words in praise of the French tyrant:
Doubts that have baffled thousands, he has solved:
Ideas o'er which centuries have brooded,
His giant mind intuitively compressed.
¶ Thus, you have before you this spectacle: Germany's greatest
poetical genius forgets the sad reality of his broken, dispirited and
disrupted country and leaves her to her wretched fate; passing his
time as a sentimental voluptuary in the splendor of the Weimar court,
where he concerns himself with such works as "Elective Affinities," a
frank endorsement of adultery.
¶ On the other side, the noble Schiller, poet of the people, recalled
to his fellow countrymen the faded glory of Germany. "Schiller stands
forth," says Menzel, "as the champion of liberty, justice and his
country."
In a word, it took Germany 100 years to learn by suffering that if she
is ever to regain her fallen prestige as a nation, she must fight her
enemies at home and abroad; she must restore the military ideal of
ancient times. And here, in a nutshell, is the very root of all this
cry about militarism: The man who will not fight for what he regards
as his political rights, remains a slave his whole life long; for it
is the essential nature of man to exercise tyrannous power over human
lives, whenever such practice holds out promise of advantage.
Therefore, Bismarck again trained Germany to be a fighting nation; and
if an ideal of a free and united people is no justification, then
words have no meaning.
15
The French peasant's son, returning from the wars brings his
wife a diamond necklace.
¶ The cross-angles of politics, for years, lead as far as one cares to
go, in this German family fight. Each petty state has its intrigues
and its grievances; you become befuddled; it is all weariness of the
flesh.
¶ However, behind all the political jargon, mighty forces are taking
form; and little by little, certain outstanding facts come to view,
involving every king, knight, bishop, prince and pauper on the German
map, from the North Sea to the Black Sea.
After 1789, the German was down with that new disease, French
constitutionalism; liberty, fraternity and equality. No human being
knew exactly what it meant. It was a political fever that had to be
gone through with; and blood-letting was the only cure.
Monarchs seemingly secure on their thrones from the days of old, now
shivered like ghosts as the mobs marched the streets of Vienna and
Berlin, waiving new flags and crying "Liberty!"
¶ The word "liberty" went to the crook-backed German peasant's brain
like wine; he grew mad with the idea of an impossible world, in which
he could decree as he desired and all would bow to him, though he in
return would bow to nobody; in short, liberty for him, but death to
the others; and were it possible to confiscate the property of the
princes and redistribute the loot among the peasants, so much the
better.
¶ Before we go into this thing, let us remember that as the French
armies marched over Europe, the doom of kings had been cracking and
rumbling.
The soldiers carried everywhere the idea of French equality, that is
to say, to the popular mind an opportunity to share the loot.
Napoleon himself, reflecting on his own career and on the follies of
the French revolution, said: "Let us now turn ourselves to something
practical; the bombastic ideas of the Revolution have exhausted
themselves in grotesque efforts at self-government. All the Revolution
means is an opportunity for a man of talents to show what he can do."
¶ And the French soldiers, returning from the wars, brought their
wives and daughters gold rings, bracelets and diamond necklaces, the
loot of the capitals of Europe.
¶ As for Napoleon, he, of course, took the lion's share; but a diamond
necklace to a soldier's wife is indeed a powerful argument on the
importance of the new democratic era, in which peasants' sons wear
gold lace and their womankind ride in carriages.
Also, many of the generals of France were sons of peasants; and an
account of Napoleon's marshals would show the humble origin of men of
the hour, sons of soap boilers, tavern keepers, stable-bosses.
¶ One may imagine the result of such surprising overturnings of caste,
in old-world conditions. Henceforth the peasants of all lands will
naturally regard their respective kings as so many dogs, to be shot to
death at the first splendid opportunity! And Germany is no exception.
¶ Forward march, ye sons of the soil, there are stormy days ahead for
you, through your "new" ideas.