THE SYSTEM
People of other countries have been wondering why it is that
the German government is able so easily to impose its will upon
the German people. I have set out in another chapter, in detail,
the political system from which you have seen that the Reichstag
is nothing but a debating society; that the Prussians do not
really have universal suffrage but, by reason of the vicious
circle system of voting, the elective franchise remains in the
hands of the few; and that the government of the country through the
_Landräte_, _Regierungspräsidenten_ and _Oberpräsidenten_
is a central system from above downwards and not the election
of the rulers by the people; and, in the chapter on militarism
and Zabern, I have told by what means the control of the army
is kept in the hands of the class of nobles.
These are not the only means by which the system controls the
country. These alone would not suffice. From the time when he
is four years old, the German is disciplined and taught that
his government is the only good and effective form. The teachers
in the schools are all government paid and teach the children
only the principles desired by the rulers of the German people.
There are no Saturday holidays in the German schools and their
summer holidays are for only three to five weeks. You never see
gangs of small boys in Germany. Their games and their walks are
superintended by their teachers who are always inculcating in
them reverence and awe for the military heroes of the past and
present. On Saturday night the German boy is turned over by the
State paid school teacher to the State paid pastor who adds divine
authority to the principles of reverence for the German system.
There is a real system of caste in Germany. For instance, I was
playing tennis one day with a man and, while dressing afterwards,
I asked him what he was. He answered that he was a _Kaufmann_,
or merchant. For the German this answer was enough. It placed him
in the merchant class. I asked him what sort of a _Kaufmann_
he was. He then told me he was president of a large electrical
company. Of course, with us he would have answered first that
he was president of the electrical company, but being a German
he simply disclosed his caste without going into details. It is
a curious thing on the registers of guests in a German summer
resort to see Mrs. Manufactory-Proprietor Schultze registered
with Mrs. Landrat Schwartz and Mrs. Second Lieutenant von Bing.
Of course, there is no doubt as to the relative social positions
of Mrs. Manufactory-Proprietor Schultze and Mrs. Second Lieutenant
von Bing. Mrs. Manufactory-Proprietor Schultze may have a steam
yacht and a tiara, an opera box and ten million marks. She may
be an old lady noted for her works of charity. Her husband may
have made discoveries of enormous value to the human race, but
she will always be compelled to take her place behind Mrs. Second
Lieutenant von Bing, even if the latter is only seventeen years
old.
Of course, occasionally, officers of the army and navy condescend
to marry into the merchant caste, and if a girl has a choice
of three equally attractive young men, one a doctor, earning
ten thousand dollars a year; one a manufacturer, earning the
same amount; and one an army officer with a "von" before his
name and three thousand dollars a year, there is no hesitation
on her part: she takes the noble and the army officer.
For years all the highest official positions of the government
have been held by members of the Prussian noble class, and when
Zimmermann, of a substantial family in East Prussia, but not of
noble birth, was made Foreign Minister, the most intense surprise
was exhibited all over Germany at this innovation.
One of the most successful ways of disciplining the people is
by the _Rat_ system. _Rat_ means councillor, and is
a title of honour given to any one who has attained a certain
measure of success or standing in his chosen business or profession.
For instance, a business man is made a commerce _Rat_; a
lawyer, a justice _Rat_; a doctor, a sanitary _Rat_;
an architect or builder, a building _Rat_; a keeper of the
archives, an archive _Rat_; and so on. They are created in
this way: first, a man becomes a plain _Rat_, then, later on,
he becomes a secret _Rat_ or privy councillor; still later,
a court secret _Rat_ and, later still, a _wirklicher_,
or really and truly secret court _Rat_ to which may be added
the title of Excellency, which puts the man who has attained
this absolutely at the head of the _Rat_ ladder.
But see the insidious working of the system. By German custom
the woman always carries the husband's title. The wife of a
successful builder is known as Mrs. Really Truly Secret Court
Building _Rat_ and her social precedence over the other women
depends entirely upon her husband's position in the _Rat_
class. Titles of nobility alone do not count when they come in
contact with a high government position. Now if a lawyer gets to
be about forty years old and is not some sort of a _Rat_,
his wife begins to nag him and his friends and relations look at
him with suspicion. There must be something in his life which
prevents his obtaining the coveted distinction and if there is
anything in a man's past, if he has shown at any time any spirit of
opposition to the government, as disclosed by the police registers,
which are kept written up to date about every German citizen,
then he has no chance of obtaining any of these distinctions
which make up so much of the social life of Germany. It is a
means by which the government keeps a far tighter hold on the
intellectual part of its population than if they were threatened
with torture and the stake. The Social Democrats, who, of course,
have declared themselves against the existing system of government
and in favour of a republic, can receive no distinctions from
the government because they dared to lift their voices and their
pens in criticism of the existing order. For them there is the
fear of the law. Convictions for the crime of _Lèse-Majesté_
are of almost daily occurrence and, at the opening of the war, an
amnesty was granted in many of these cases, the ministry of war
withdrawing many prosecutions against poor devils waiting their
trial in jail because they had dared to speak disrespectfully of
the army. The following quotation from a German book, written
since the war, shows very clearly that this state of affairs
existed: "In the beneficent atmosphere of general amnesty came the
news that the Minister of War had withdrawn pending prosecutions
against newspapers on account of their insults to the army or
its members." (Dr. J. Jastrow, "Im Kriegszustand.")
Besides the _Rat_ system and the military system, there
exists the enormous mass of Prussian officials. In a country
where so many things are under government control these officials
are almost immeasurably more numerous than in other countries.
In Prussia, for example, all the railways are government-owned,
with the exception of one road about sixty miles long and a few
small branch roads. This army of officials are retainers of the
government, and not only, of course, themselves refrain from
criticising the system, but also use their influence upon the
members of their own family and all with whom they come in contact.
They are subject to trial in special secret courts and one of
them who dared in any way to criticise the existing system would
not for long remain a member of it. Of course, the members of the
Reichstag have the privilege of free speech without responsibility,
and there are occasional Socialists, who know that they have
nothing to expect from the government, who dare to speak in
criticism.
All the newspapers are subject to control as in no other country.
In the first place their proprietors are subject to the influence
of the _Rat_ system as is every other German, and the newspaper
proprietor, whose sons perhaps enter the army, whose daughters
may be married to naval officers or officials, and who seeks
for his sons promotion as judge, state's attorney, etc., has
to be very careful that the utterances of his newspaper do not
prevent his promotion in the social scale or interfere with the
career of his family and relations.
Since the war while a preventive censure does not exist in Germany
nevertheless a newspaper may be suppressed at will; a fearful
punishment for a newspaper, which, by being suppressed for, say,
five days or a week, has its business affairs thrown into the utmost
confusion and suffers an enormous direct loss.
Many of the larger newspapers are either owned or influenced by
concerns like the Krupps'. For instance, during this war, all
news coming from Germany to other countries has been furnished
by either the Over-Seas Or Trans-Ocean service, both news agencies
in which the Krupps are large stockholders. The smaller newspapers
are influenced directly by the government.
In the Middle Ages there was often declared a sort of truce to
prevent fighting in a city, which was called the _Burgfrieden_
or "peace of the city," and, at the beginning of this war, all
political parties were supposed to declare a sort of
_Burgfrieden_ and not try to obtain any political advantage.
There was, therefore, intense indignation among the Social Democrats
of Germany when it was discovered, in the spring of 1916, that
the Minister of the Interior was making arrangements to send out
news service to be furnished free to the smaller newspapers, and
that he was engaged in instructing the various _Landräte_
and other officials of the Interior Department how effectively to
use this machinery in order to gull the people to the advantage
of the government, and to keep them in ignorance of anything
which might tend to turn them against the system.
Besides the _Rat_ system there is, of course, the system
of decorations. Countless orders and decorations are given in
Germany. At the head is the Order of the Black Eagle; there are
the Order of the Red Eagle, the Prussian Order of the Crown,
the orders, "_Pour le Mérite_," the Order of the House of
Hohenzollern, and many others, and in each of the twenty-five
States there are also orders, distinctions and decorations. These
orders in turn are divided into numerous classes. For instance, a
man can have the Red Eagle order of the first, second, third or
fourth class, and these may be complicated with a laurel crown,
with an oak crown, with swords and with stars, etc. Even domestic
servants, who have served a long time in one family, receive
orders; and faithful postmen and other officials who have never
appeared on the police books for having made statements against
the government or the army are sure of receiving some sort of
order.
Once a year in Berlin a great festival is held called the
_Ordensfest_, when all who hold orders or decorations of any
kind are invited to a great banquet. The butler, who has served
for twenty-five years, there rubs shoulders with the diplomat who
has received a Black Eagle for adding a colony to the German
Empire, and the faithful cook may be seated near an officer who
has obtained "_Pour le Mérite_" for sinking an enemy warship.
All this in one sense is democratic, but in its effect it tends
to induce the plain people to be satisfied with a piece of ribbon
instead of the right to vote, and to make them upholders of a
system by which they are deprived of any opportunity to make
a real advance in life.
This system is the most complete that has ever existed in any
country, because it has drawn so many of the inhabitants of the
country into its meshes. Practically, the industrial workers
of the great towns and the stupid peasants in the country are
the only people in Germany left out of its net.
I had a shooting place very near Berlin, in fact I could reach
it in three quarters of an hour by motor from the Embassy door,
and there I had an opportunity of studying the conditions of
life of the peasant class.
Germany is still a country of great proprietors. Lands may be held
there by a tenure which was abolished in Great Britain hundreds of
years ago. In Great Britain, property may only be tied up under
fixed conditions during the lives of certain chosen people, in
being at the death of the testator. In the State of New York,
property may only be tied up during the lives of two persons,
in being at the death of the person making the will, and for
twenty-one years (the minority of an infant) thereafter. But
in the Central Empires, property still may be tied up for an
indefinite period under the feudal system, so that great estates,
no matter how extravagant the life tenant may be, are not sold
and do not come into the market for division among the people.
[Illustration: AMBASSADOR GERARD ON THE WAY TO HIS SHOOTING
PRESERVE.]
[Illustration: A KEEPER AND BEATERS ON THE SHOOTING PRESERVE.
IT SHOWS THE EARLY INNOCULATION OF DISCIPLINE INTO THE GERMAN
SMALL BOY.]
For instance, to-day there exist estates in the Central Empires
which must pass from oldest son to oldest son indefinitely and,
failing that, to the next in line, and so on; and conditions
have even been annexed by which children cannot inherit if their
father has married a woman not of a stated number of quarterings
of nobility. There is a Prince holding great estates in Hungary.
He is a bachelor and if he desires his children to inherit these
estates there are only thirteen girls in the world whom he can
marry, according to the terms of the instrument by which some
distant ancestor founded this inheritance.
This vicious system has prevented extensive peasant proprietorship.
The government, however, to a certain extent, has encouraged peasant
proprietorship, but only with very small parcels of land; and it
would be an unusual thing in Germany, especially in Prussia,
to find a peasant owning more than twenty or thirty acres of
land, most of the land being held by the peasants in such small
quantities that after working their own lands they have time
left to work the lands of the adjoining landed proprietor at a
very small wage.
All the titles, of the nobility are not confined to the oldest
son. The "Pocketbook of Counts," published by the same firm which
publishes the "Almanac de Gotha," contains the counts of Austria,
Germany and Hungary together, showing in this way the intimate
personal relation between the noble families of these three
countries. All the sons of a count are counts, and so on, ad
infinitum. Thus in Hungary there are probably seventy Counts
Szecheny and about the same number of Zichy, etc. Some of the
German noble families are not far behind. In fact it may be said
that almost any person, in what is known as "society" in the
Central Empires, has a title of some sort. The prefix "von" shows
that the person is a noble and is often coupled with names of
people who have no title. By custom in Germany, a "von" when
he goes abroad is allowed to call himself Baron. But in Germany
he could not do so. These noble families in the Central Empires,
by the system of _Majorat_ which I have described, hold
large landed estates, and naturally exert a great influence upon
their labourers. As a rule the system of tenant farming does not
exist; that is, estates are not leased to small farmers as was
the custom in Ireland and is still in Great Britain, but estates
are worked as great agricultural enterprises under superintendents
appointed by the proprietor. This system, impossible in America or
even in Great Britain, is possible in the Central Empires where
the villages are full of peasants who, not so many generations
ago, were serfs attached to the land and who lived in wholesome
fear of the landed proprietors.
This is the first method by which influence is exercised on the
population. There is also the restricted franchise or "circle
voting" which gives the control of the franchise to a few rich
proprietors.
As a rule, the oldest son enters the army as an officer and may
continue, but if he has not displayed any special aptitude for
the military profession he retires and manages his estate. These
estates are calculated by their proprietors to give at least four
per cent interest income on the value of the land. Many younger
sons after a short term of service in the army, usually as officers
and not as _Einjähriger_ leave the army and enter diplomacy
or some other branch of the government service. The offices of
judge, district attorney, etc., not being elective, this career
as well as that leading to the position of _Landrat_ and
over-president of a province is open to those who, because they
belong to old Prussian landed families, find favour in the eyes
of the government. Much is heard in Germany and out of Germany
of the Prussian Squire or Junker.
There is no leisure class among the Junkers. They are all workers,
patriotic, honest and devoted to the Emperor and the Fatherland.
If it is possible that government by one class is to be suffered,
then the Prussian Junkers have proved themselves more fit for rule
than any class in all history. Their virtues are Spartan, their
minds narrow but incorruptible, and their bravery and patriotism
undoubted. One can but admire them and their stern virtues. This
class, largely because of its poverty and its constant occupation,
does not travel; nor does the casual tourist or health seeker in
Germany come in contact with these men. The Junkers will fight
hard to keep their privileges, and the throne will fight hard
for the Junkers because they are the greatest supporters of the
Hohenzollerns.
The workingmen in the cities are hard workers and probably work
longer and get less out of life than any workingmen in the world.
The laws so much admired and made ostensibly for their protection,
such as insurance against unemployment, sickness, injury, old
age, etc., are in reality skilful measures which bind them to
the soil as effectively as the serfs of the Middle Ages were
bound to their masters' estates.
I have had letters from workingmen who have worked in America
begging me for a steerage fare to America, saying that their
insurance payments were so large that they could not save money
out of their wages. Of course, after having made these payments
for some years, the workingman naturally hesitates to emigrate
and so lose all the premiums he has paid to the State. In peace
times a skilled mechanic in Germany received less than two dollars
a day, for which he was compelled to work at least ten hours.
Agricultural labourers in the Central Empires are poorly paid.
The women do much of the work done here by men. For instance,
once when staying at a nobleman's estate in Hungary, I noticed
that the gardeners were all women, and, on inquiring how much they
received, I was told they were paid about twenty cents a day. The
women in the farming districts of Germany are worked harder than
the cattle. In summer time they are out in the fields at five or
six in the morning and do not return until eight or later at night.
For this work they are sometimes paid as high as forty-eight
cents a day in harvest time. Nevertheless, these small wages
tempt many Russians to Germany during the harvest season. At the
outbreak of the war there were perhaps fifty thousand Russians
employed in Germany; men, women and girls. These the Germans
retained in a sort of slavery to work the fields. I spoke to
one Polish girl who was working on an estate over which I had
shooting rights, near Berlin. She told me that at the commencement
of the war she and her family were working in Germany and that
since the war they all desired to return to Poland but that the
Germans would not permit it.
This hard working of women in agricultural pursuits tends to
stupefy and brutalise the rural population and keeps them in a
condition of subjection to the Prussian Church and the Prussian
system, and in readiness for war. Both Prussian Junkers and the
German manufacturers look with favour upon the employment of
so many women in farm work because the greater the number of
the labourers, the smaller their wages throughout the country.
When I first came to Germany I, of course, was filled with the
ideas that prevailed in America that the German workingman had
an easy time. My mind was filled with pictures of the German
workingmen sitting with their families at tables, drinking beer
and listening to classical music. After I had spent some time in
Germany, I found that the reason that the German workingmen sat
about the tables was because they were too tired to do anything
else.
I sincerely hope that after the war the workingmen of this country
will induce delegates of their German brothers to make a tour
of America. For when the German workingmen see how much better
off the Americans are, they will return to Germany and demand
shorter hours and higher wages; and the American will not be
brought into competition with labour slaves such as the German
workingmen of the period before the war.
As one goes through the streets of Berlin there are no evidences
of poverty to be seen; but over fifty-five per cent of the families
in Berlin are families living in one room.
The Germans are taken care of and educated very much in the same
way that the authorities here look after the inmates of a poor-house
or penitentiary. Such a thing as a German railway conductor rising
to be president of the road is an impossibility in Germany; and
the list of self-made men is small indeed,--by that I mean men
who have risen from the ranks of the working-men.
The Socialists, representing the element opposed to the
Conservatives, elect a few members to the Prussian Lower House
and about one-third of the members to the Reichstag, but otherwise
have no part whatever in the government. No Socialist would have
any chance whatever if he set out to enter the government service
with the ambition of becoming a district attorney or judge. Jews
have not much chance in the government service. A few exceptions
have been made. At one time Dernburg, who carried on the propaganda
in America during the first year of the war, and who is a Jew, was
appointed Colonial Minister of the Empire.
In my opinion, the liberalisation of Prussia has been halted
by the fact that there has been no party of protest except that
of the Socialists, and the Socialists, because they have, in
effect, demanded abolition of the monarchy and the establishment
of a republic as part of their programme, have been unable to
do anything in the obtaining of the reforms.
Up to the beginning of the war there was great dissatisfaction.
The people were irritated by certain direct taxes such as the
tax upon matches, and because every Protestant in Prussia was
compelled to pay a tax for the support of the church, unless
he made a declaration that he was an atheist.
The only class in Germany which knows something of the outside
world is the _Kaufmann_ class. Prussian nobles of the ruling
class are not travellers. They are always busy with the army and
navy, government employments or their estates; and, as a rule,
too poor to travel. The poor, of course, do not travel, and the
_Kaufmann_, although he learns much in his travels in other
countries to make him dissatisfied with the small opportunity
which he has in a political way in Germany, is satisfied to let
things stand because of the enormous profits which he makes
through the low wages and long hours of the German workingman.
Lawyers and judges amount to little in Germany and we do not
find there a class of political lawyers who, in republics, always
seem to get the management of affairs in their own hands.