The great ship in the background has just been launched. Though the war
left Germany no man to spare, every effort has been made to materially
increase the country's merchant marine. To-day Germany's mercantile
fleet is stronger than ever.]
For the first time in the history of Central Europe, the several
governments had to publicly admit that the masses were indispensable in
their scheme instead of merely necessary. That they were necessary had
been realized in the manner in which the farmer looks upon the draft
animal. The several governments had also done the best they could to
have this policy be as humane as possible. There were sick benefits and
pensions. Such things made the populace content with its lot. So long as
old age had at least the promise that a pension would keep the wolf from
the door, small wages, military service, heavy taxes, and class
distinctions were bound to be overlooked by all except the wide-awake
and enterprising. The few that were able to examine the scheme from
without, as it were, might voice their doubts that this was the best
manner in which the ship of state could be steered, but their words
generally fell on the ears of a populace to which government was indeed
a divine-right institution.
I have met Germans and Austro-Hungarians who were able to grasp the idea
that the government ought to be their servant instead of their master.
Their number was small, however. Generally, such men were socialists
rather than rationalists.
It is nothing unusual to meet persons, afflicted with a disease, who
claim that nothing is wrong with them. The "giftie" for which Burns
prayed is not given to us. It was so with the Germans and the thing
called militarism. I have elsewhere referred to the fact that militarism
as an internal condition in the German Empire meant largely that
thinking was an offense. But the Prussian had accepted that as something
quite natural. We need not be surprised at that. Prussia is essentially
a military state. The army made Prussia what it is. Not alone did it
make the state a political force, but it also was the school in which
men were trained into good subjects. In this school the inherent love of
the German for law and order was supplemented by a discipline whose
principal ingredient was that the state came first and last and that the
individual existed for the state.
The non-Prussians of the German Empire, then, knew that militarism, in
its internal aspect, was a state of things that made independent thought
impossible. To that extent they hated the system, without overlooking
its good points, however. The fact is that much of what is really
efficient in Germany had its birth in the Prussian army. Without this
incubator of organization and serious effort, Germany would have never
risen to the position that is hers.
As a civilian I cannot but resent the presumption of another to deny me
the right to think. Yet there was a time when I was a member of an
organization that could not exist if everybody were permitted to think
and act accordingly. I refer to the army of the late South African
Republic. Though the Boer was as free a citizen as ever lived and was of
nothing so intolerant as of restraint of any sort, it became necessary
to put a curb upon his mind in the military service. That this had to be
done, if discipline was to prevail, will be conceded by all. The same
thing is practised by the business man, whose employees cannot be
allowed to think for themselves in matters connected with the affairs of
the firm. On that point we need not cavil.
The mistake of the men in Berlin was that they carried this prohibition
of thinking too far. It went far beyond the bounds of the
barrack-yard--permeated, in fact, the entire socio-political fabric.
That was the unlovely part of militarism in Prussia and Germany. The
policy of the several governments, to give state employment only to men
who had served in the army, carried the command of the drill sergeant
into the smallest hamlet, where, unchecked by intelligent control, it
grew into an eternal nightmare that strangled many of the better
qualities of the race or at best gave these qualities no field in which
they might exert themselves. The liberty-loving race which in the days
of Napoleon had produced such men as Scharnhorst and Lüchow, Körner and
others, and the legions they commanded, was on the verge of becoming a
non-thinking machine, which men exercising power for the lust of power
could employ, when industrial and commercial despots were not exploiting
its constituents.
The war showed some of the thinkers in the government that this could
not go on. Bethmann-Hollweg, for instance, saw that the time was come
when Prussia would have to adopt more liberal institutions. The Prussian
election system would have to be made more equitable. Agitation for that
had been the burning issue for many a year before the war, and I am
inclined to believe that something would have been done by the
government had it not feared the Social-Democrats. The fact is that the
Prussian government had lost confidence in the people. And it had good
reason for that. The men in responsible places knew only too well that
the remarkable growth of socialism in the country was due to
dissatisfaction with the rule of Prussian Junkerism. They did not have
the political insight and sagacity to conclude that a people, which in
the past had not even aspired to republicanism, would abandon the
Social-Democratic ideals on the day that saw the birth of a responsible
monarchical form of government. What they could see, though, was that
the men coming home after the war would not permit a continuation of a
government that looked upon itself as the holy of holies for which the
race was to spill its blood whenever the high priest of the cult thought
that necessary.
"We are fighting for our country!" is the reply that has been given me
by thousands of German soldiers. Not a one has ever told me that he was
fighting for the Emperor, despite the fact that against their King and
Emperor these men held no grudge. And here I should draw attention to
the fact that the German Emperor means comparatively little to the South
Germans, the Bavarian, for instance. He has his own monarch. While the
Emperor is _de jure_ and _de facto_ the War Lord, he is never more than
a sort of commander-in-chief to the non-Prussian part of the German
army.
Liberal government is bound to come for Germany from the war. There can
be no question of a change in the form of government, however. Those who
believe that the Germans would undertake a revolution in favor of the
republican form of government know as little of Germany as they know of
the population said to be on Mars. The German has a monarchical mind.
His family is run on that principle. The husband and father is the lord
of the household--_Der Herr im Hause_. Just as the lord of the family
household will have less to say in the future, so will the lord of the
state household have less to say in the years to come. There will be
more co-operation between man and woman in the German household in the
future and the same will take place in the state family. The government
will have to learn that he is best qualified to rule who must apply the
least effort in ruling--that he can best command who knows best how to
obey.
This is the handwriting on the wall in Germany to-day. A large class is
still blind to the "_Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_," but that class must
either mend its way or go down in defeat. The German at the front has
ceased to think himself the tool of the government. He is willing to be
an instrument of authority so long as that authority represents not a
wholly selfish and self-sufficient caste.
The indications for their development lie in the fact that the German
generally does not hold the Prussian element in the empire responsible
for the war. The Bavarian does not hate the Prussian. The West German
does not entertain dislike for the men east of the Elbe river. What
Bismarck started in 1870 is being completed by the European War. All
sectionalism has disappeared. Three years' contact with the German army,
and study of the things that are German, has convinced me that to-day
there is no Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon, Würtemberger, Badenser,
Hanoverian, or Hessian. I have never met any but Germans, in contrast to
conditions in the Austro-Hungarian army, where in a single army corps I
could draw easily distinction between at least four of the races in the
Dual Monarchy.
It must be borne in mind that these people speak one language and have
been driven into closer union by the defense of a common cause. What is
true of racial affinity in the Anglo-Saxon race is true in the case of
the German race; all the more true since the latter lives within the
same federation.
I must make reference here to the fact that even the German socialists
are no great admirers of the republican form of government. Of the many
of their leaders whom I have met, not a single one was in favor of the
republic. Usually they maintained that France had not fared well under
the republican form of government. When the great success of
republicanism in Switzerland was brought to their attention, they would
point out that what was possible in a small country was not necessarily
possible in a large one. Upon the American republic and its government
most of these men looked with disdain, asserting that nowhere was the
individual so exploited as in the United States. It was that very
exploitation that they were opposed to, said these men. Government was
necessary, so long as an anarchic society was impossible and
internationalism was as far off as ever, as the war itself had shown.
Germany, they asserted, was in need of a truly representative government
that would as quickly as possible discard militarism and labor earnestly
for universal disarmament. A monarch could labor better in that vineyard
than the head of a republic, so long as his ministers were responsible
to the people.
Upon that view we may look as the extreme measure of reform advocated by
any political party in Germany to-day. It is that of the Scheidemann
faction of Social-Democrats, a party which latterly has been dubbed
"monarchical socialists." The extreme doctrinarians in the socialist
camp, Haase and Liebknecht, go further than that, to be sure, but their
demands will not be heeded, even after the pending election reforms
have been made. The accession to articulate party politics in Germany,
which these reforms will bring, will go principally to the Liberal
group, among whom the conservative socialists must be numbered to-day.
Not socialism, but rationalism will rule in Germany when the war is
over.
One of the results of this will be that the Prussian Junker will have
passed into oblivion a few years hence. Even now his funeral oration is
being said, and truly, to be fair to the Junker:
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft' interred with their bones.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.
A table of contents was added.
Hyphen removed: air[-]tight (p. 148), bread[-]winner (p. 354),
fountain[-]head (p. 31), hall[-]mark (p. 31).
P. 51: "quantitity" changed to "quantity" (a large quantity of crude
rubber).
P. 115: "sharps" changed to "sharks" (For the food sharks).
P. 154: "Kaffee-ersatz-ersatz" changed to "Kaffee-ersatz".
P. 227: "General Höefer" changed to "General Höfer".
P. 366: "fron" changed to "from" (prevented them from increasing).