And thus both their politics and their religion have made them a prey to visionaries and sentimentalists, to unscrupulous journalists like Harden and Reventlow, to unbalanced poets like Nietzsche, to political professors, and to fanatic doctrinaires. Of those academic politicians and fanatic doctrinaires, Treitschke has probably been the most dangerous and the most illustrious representative. He will ever remaina memorable example of the power for evil which may be wielded by a noble and passionate temperament untrained in and unrestrained by the realities of political life, who sees the State from the altitude of the professional tripod. The war will have helped to break the spell of the political professor, but the spell will continue to act until all the spiritual forces of Germany, until the Press and the Universities and the Churches, are emancipated from the intrusion of the State, until the German democracy reveals both the spirit and conquers the power to achieve its own salvation.
As a rule the deliberate military policy of a nation remains the secret of diplomacy and the afterthought of statecraft. As for the military feeling and the military spirit, so far as they exist amongst the people, they generally remain subconscious, unreasoned, and instinctive. It is therefore a piece of rare good fortune to the student of contemporary history when the designs of statesmen are carefully thought out and revealed by one who has authority to speak, and when the instinct of the masses is explained and made explicit by one who has the gift of lucid statement, of philosophical interpretation, and psychological insight. It is precisely those qualities and characteristics that give importance and significance to the recent book of General von Bernhardi on “Germany and the Coming War.” The authoris a distinguished representative of that Prussian Junkerthum which forms the mainstay of the military party and which rules the German Empire. He therefore speaks from the inside. And his previous works have earned him a high reputation as an exponent of the science of war, and have worthily maintained the traditions of Clausewitz and von der Goltz. Nor are these the only qualifications of the author. General von Bernhardi’s new book possesses other qualities which entitle him to a respectful hearing. He writes with absolute candour and sincerity; his tone is unexceptionable; he is earnest and dignified; he is moderate and temperate; he is judicial rather than controversial. Although the author believes, of course, that Germany stands in the forefront of civilization and has a monopoly of the highest culture, yet his book is singularly free from the one great blemish which defaces most German books on international politics—namely, systematic depreciation of the foreigner. Von Bernhardi does not assume that France is played out or that England is effete. He is too well read in military history not to realize that to belittle the strength or malign the character of an enemy is one of the most fruitful causes of disaster.
Altogether we could not have a better guide to the study of the present international situation from the purely German point of view, nor could we find another book which gives us more undisguisedly the “mentality,” the prejudices and prejudgments and opinions of the ruling classes. And it is a characteristically German trait that no less than one-third of the work should be given to the philosophy and ethics of the subject. General von Bernhardi surveysthe field from the vantage-ground of first principles, and his book is a convincing proof of a truth which we have expressed elsewhere that in Prussia war is not looked upon as an accident, but as a law of nature; and not only as a law of nature, but as the law of man, or if not as the law of man, certainly as the law of the “German superman.” It is not enough to say that war has been the national industry of Prussia. It forms an essential part of the philosophy of life, theWeltanschauungof every patriotic Prussian. Bernhardi believes in the morality, one might almost say in the sanctity, of war. To him war is not a necessary evil, but, on the contrary, the source of every moral good. To him it is pacificism which is an immoral doctrine, because it is the doctrine of the materialist, who believes that enjoyment is the chief end of life. It is the militarist who is the true idealist because he assumes that humanity can only achieve its mission through struggle and strife, through sacrifice and heroism. It is true that Bernhardi ignores the greatest of Prussian philosophers, whose immortal plea in favour of perpetual peace is dismissed as the work of his dotage. But if he dismisses Kant, he adduces instead a formidable array of thinkers and poets in support of his militarist thesis; Schiller and Goethe, Hegel and Heraclitus, in turn are summoned as authorities. Even the Gospels are distorted to convey a militarist meaning, for the author quotes them to remind us that it is the warlike and not the meek that shall inherit the earth. But Bernhardi’s chief authorities are the historian of the super-race, the Anglophobe Treitschke, and the philosopher of the superman, Nietzsche. Nine out often quotations are taken from the political treatises of the famous Berlin professor, and the whole spirit of Bernhardi’s book is summed up in the motto borrowed from Zarathustra and inscribed on the front page of the volume:
“War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has hitherto saved the shipwrecked of existence.
“‘What is good?’ you ask. To be brave is good.”[16]
It is no less characteristic of contemporary German political philosophy that from beginning to end Bernhardi maintains consciously, deliberately, a purely national attitude, and that he does not even attempt to rise to a higher and wider point of view. Indeed, the main issue and cardinal problem, the relation of nationality to humanity, the conflict between the duties we owe to the one and the duties we owe to the other, is contemptuously relegated to a footnote (p. 19). To Bernhardi a nation is not a means to an end, a necessary organ of universal humanity, and therefore subordinate to humanity. A nation is an end in itself. It is the ultimate reality. And the preservation and the increase of the power of the State is the ultimate criterion of all right. “My country, right or wrong,” is the General’s whole system of moral philosophy. Yet, curiously enough, Bernhardi speaks of Germany as the apostle, not only of a national culture, but of universal culture, as the champion of civilization, and he indulges in theusual platitudes on this fertile subject. And he does not even realize that in so doing he is guilty of a glaring contradiction; he does not realize that once he adopts this standpoint of universal culture, he introduces an argument and assumes a position which are above and outside nationalism. For either the German nation is self-sufficient, and all culture is centred in and absorbed in Germany, in which case Prussian nationalism would be historically and philosophically justified; or culture is something higher and more comprehensive and less exclusive, in which case national aims must be estimated and appraised with reference to a higher aim, and a national policy must be judged according as it furthers or runs counter to the universal ideals of humanity.
General von Bernhardi starts his survey of the international situation with the axiom that Germany imperatively wants new markets for her industry and new territory for her sixty-five millions of people. In so doing, he only reiterates the usual assumption of German political writers. And he also resembles the majority of his fellow-publicists in this respect, that he does not tell us what exactly are the territories that Germany covets, or how they are to be obtained, or how the possession of tropical or subtropical colonies can solve the problem of her population. But he differs from his predecessors in that he clearly realizes and expresses, without ambiguity or equivocation, that the assertion of her claims must involve the establishment of German supremacy, and he admits that those claims are incompatible with the antiquated doctrine of the balance of power. Andvon Bernhardi also clearly realizes that, as other nations will refuse to accept German supremacy and to surrender those fertile territories which Germany needs, German expansion can only be achieved as the result of a conflict—briefly, that war is unavoidable and inevitable.
FOOTNOTES:[13]Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10th Speech.[14]Treitschke, “History of Germany,” Vols. I. and II. (Jarrold.) Treitschke, “Politics,” with Introduction by A. J. Balfour: 2 vols, (Constable, London.)[15]These pages were published in 1912.[16]Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10th Speech.
[13]Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10th Speech.
[13]Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10th Speech.
[14]Treitschke, “History of Germany,” Vols. I. and II. (Jarrold.) Treitschke, “Politics,” with Introduction by A. J. Balfour: 2 vols, (Constable, London.)
[14]Treitschke, “History of Germany,” Vols. I. and II. (Jarrold.) Treitschke, “Politics,” with Introduction by A. J. Balfour: 2 vols, (Constable, London.)
[15]These pages were published in 1912.
[15]These pages were published in 1912.
[16]Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10th Speech.
[16]Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” First Part, 10th Speech.
Amongstthe many discoveries brought about by the war of the nations, an educated British public has suddenly discovered the unsuspected existence of Heinrich von Treitschke. And not only have we discovered the national Prussian historian—we have also unwittingly discovered Prussian history. We have certainly had revealed to us for the first time its secret and hidden meaning. We are only just beginning to realize that for nearly two hundred years it is Prussia, and not Russia, which has been the evil influence in European politics. Prussia has not been a natural political growth. She has been an artificial creation of statesmen. She has been pre-eminently the predatory State. She has never taken the sword to defend a disinterested idea. The ravisher of Silesia, of Schleswig-Holstein, of Alsace-Lorraine, the murderer of Poland, she has never expanded except at the expense of her neighbours. She has corrupted the German soul; she has been the mainstay of reaction and militarism in Central Europe. She has been the bond of that freemasonryof despotism, of that Triple Alliance of the three empires which subsisted until the fall of Bismarck, which has been for generations the nightmare of European Liberals.
In attempting to reread modern history in the light of that new interpretation of Prussian history, we are naturally driven to ask ourselves who is primarily responsible for that sinister influence which Prussia has exercised for the last two centuries. To the unprejudiced student there can be no doubt that the one man primarily responsible is Frederick the Great, the master-builder of Prussian militarism and Prussian statecraft. He it is who has been poisoning the wells; he it is who first conceived of the State as a barracks; he it is who has “Potsdamized” the Continent and transformed Europe into a military camp. Strangely enough, all civilized nations to-day have proclaimed Prussia accursed. Yet we continue to hero-worship the man who made Prussia what she is. A halo still surrounds the Mephistophelian figure which incarnates the Hohenzollern spirit. A legend has gathered round the philosopher of Sans Souci. A combination of circumstances has caused writers almost unanimously to extol his merits and to ignore his crimes. British historians naturally favour the ally of the Seven Years’ War. Russian and Austrian writers are indulgent to the accomplice of the partition of Poland. Anti-clerical writers glorify the Atheist. Military writers extol the soldier. Political writers extol the statesman. But the most adequate explanationof the Frederician legend is the circumstance that public opinion has been systematically mobilized in favour of Frederick the Great by the great French leaders of the eighteenth century, the dispensers of European fame.
It was not for nothing that Frederick the Great for forty years courted the good graces of Voltaire d’Alembert. He knew full well that Voltaire would prove to him a most admirable publicity agent. And never was publicity agent secured at a lower cost. Those literary influences have continued to our own day to perpetuate the legend of Frederick. Nearly a hundred years after Rossbach Frederick had the strange good fortune to captivate the wayward genius of Carlyle. It is difficult to understand how Carlyle, who all through life hesitated between the Christian Puritanism of John Knox and the Olympian paganism of Goethe, could have been fascinated by the Potsdam cynic. We can only seek for an explanation in the deeply rooted anti-French and pro-German prejudices of Carlyle. Frederick was the arch-enemy of France, and that fact was sufficient to attract the sympathies of Teufelsdröckh. It is Carlyle’s Gallophobia which has inspired one of the most mischievous masterpieces of English literature.
The conspiracy of European historians has thus attached greatness to the very name of the third Hohenzollern King. Great the Hohenzollern King certainly was, but his greatness is that of a Condottiere of the Italian Renascence, of a Catharine de’ Medici. It is the greatness of a personality who is endowed, no doubt, with magnificent gifts, but who has prostituted all those gifts to the baser usages.
It is passing strange how every writer remains silent about the ugly and repellent side of Frederick. The son of a mad father, he was subjected to a terrorism which would have predestined a less strong nature to the lunatic asylum. The terrorism only hardened Frederick into an incurable cynic. It only killed in him every finer feeling. His upbringing must almost inevitably have brought out all the darker sides of human nature.
The first twenty years of his life were one uninterrupted schooling in hypocrisy, brutality, and depravity. A debauchee in his youth, a sodomite in later life, a hater of women and a despiser of men, a bully to his subordinates, a monster of ingratitude, revelling in filth so continuously in his written and spoken words that even a loyal Academy of Berlin has found it impossible to publish his unexpurgated correspondence, he appears an anachronism in a modern Europe leavened by two thousand years of Christianity. Ever scheming, ever plotting, ever seeking whom he might devour, deceiving even his intimate advisers, he has debased the currency of international morality. As a man Frederick has been compared with Napoleon. The comparison is an insult to the Corsican. Napoleon was human, he was capable of strong affections, of profound attachment and gratitude. But neither friendship nor love had any place in Frederick’s scheme of the universe.
To-day we are holding the poor Prussian professor mainly accountable for the greatest and latest crime of Prussian militarism. But those dogmatic professors are only the abject disciples of the Hohenzollern King. There is not one aphorism which is not to be found in the thirty volumes of Frederick’s writings. He has perfected the theory of the military State, and he has acted consistently on the theory. It is highly significant that his very first public act, almost never mentioned by his biographers, was his spoliation of the Prince-Bishop of Liége (an historical precedent tragically suggestive at the present day). The Prince-Bishop of Liége had committed the heinous crime of resisting the impressment of his subjects kidnapped by the recruiting sergeants of the Prussian King. On the strength of that theory, Frederick attacked the defenceless daughter of the Austrian Emperor who had saved his life at Custrin. On the strength of that theory he betrayed every one of his allies. On the strength of that theory he committed his most odious crime—he murdered the Polish nation.
We are told that Frederick the Great was an incomparable political virtuoso. We are told that he showed heroic fortitude in disaster, after Kollin and Kunersdorff. But so did Cæsar Borgia after the sudden death of Alexander VI. We are told that he was tolerant of all creeds. But that was only becausehe disbelieved all creeds, and he believed, with Gibbon, that “all creeds are equally useful to the statesman.” We are reminded that he was an amazing economist, husbanding and developing the national finances. But his finances were only the sinews of war. We are told that he protected literature and art, but, like religion, he found literature an instrument useful for his political designs. We are reminded that he was himself the servant of the State. But in serving the State he only served his own interests, because the State was incarnated in himself, and in husbanding his resources he was only acting like a miser who is adding to his hoard. We are finally told that as the result of his life-work Frederick succeeded in creating the most marvellous military machine of modern times. We forget that, as is the way with most military machines, the Prussian machine ten years after Frederick’s death had become a pitiful wreck in the hands of his immediate successor, and that it required the genius of Bismarck to manufacture another Prussian military machine to be used once more for the enslavement of Europe.
Noless than three books on Goethe have been issued in the course of the last few months, and the fact is sufficient evidence that the cult of the Olympian Jupiter of Weimar, which was first inaugurated eighty years ago by Carlyle, is in no danger of dying out in England. Professor Hume Brown has given us a penetrating and judicious study of Goethe’s youth, such as one had a right to expect from the eminent Scottish historian.[17]Mr. Joseph McCabe has given us a comprehensive survey of Goethe’s life, and an objective and critical appreciation of his personality.[18]Both are in profound sympathy with their subject, but neither is a blind hero-worshipper. In Mr. McCabe’s life we are not only introduced to the scientist who is ever in quest of new worlds to conquer, we are also made acquainted with the pagan epicure ever engaged in amorous experiments! We are not only introduced to the sublime poet and prophet, we are also introduced to the incurable egotist, who could only find time to visit his oldmother once every ten years, whilst, as boon companion of a petty German Prince, he always found time for his pleasures. We are not only admitted to contemplate the pomp and majesty of his world-wide fame, we are also admitted to the sordid circumstances of Goethe’s “home.” And our awe and reverence are turned into pity. We pity the miserable husband of a drunken and epileptic wife rescued from the gutter; we pity even more the unhappy father of a degraded son, who inherited all the vices of one parent without inheriting the genius of the other.
The first quality which strikes us in Goethe, and which dazzled his contemporaries, and continues to dazzle posterity, is his universality. He appears to us as one of the most receptive, one of the most encyclopædic intellects of modern times. A scientist and a biologist, a pioneer of the theory of evolution, a physicist and originator of a new theory of colour, a man of affairs, a man of the world and a courtier, a philosopher, a lyrical poet, a tragic, comic, satiric, epic, and didactic poet, a novelist and an historian, he has attempted every form of literature, he has touched upon every chord of the human soul.
It is true that, in considering this universality of Goethe, it behoves us to make some qualifications. His human sympathies are by no means as universal as his intellectual sympathies. He has no love for the common people. He has the aloofness of the aristocrat. He has a Nietzschean contempt for the herd. He takes little interest in the religiousaspirations of mankind or in the struggles of human freedom. The French Revolution remains to him a sealed book, and his history of the campaign in France is almost ludicrously disappointing.
With regard to what has been called his “intellectual universality,” the elements which compose it cannot be reduced to unity and harmony. It would be difficult to co-ordinate them into a higher synthesis, for thatuniversality is at the same timediversity and mutability. Goethe is essentially changeable and elusive. In his works we find combined the antipodes of human thought. There is little in common between the poet of Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther on the one hand and the poet of Tasso and Iphigenia on the other hand. The intellect of Goethe is like a crystal with a thousand facets reflecting all the colours of the rainbow.
And it may well be asked, therefore, whether this encyclopædic diversity can aptly be called universality. Universality must ultimately result in unity and harmony, and it is impossible to assert that Goethe’s mind ever achieved unity and harmony, that it was ever controlled by one dominant thought.
At any rate, whether a defect or a quality, there can be no doubt that this encyclopædic diversity has turned to the great advantage of his glory. It is precisely because Goethe is an elusive Proteus that all doctrines may equally claim him. Romanticists turn with predilection to the creator of Werther or the first “Faust.” Classicists admire the plastic beauty of Tasso and Iphigenia. The cosmopolitan sees in Goethe theWeltbürger, the citizen of the world, the incarnation ofdie Weltweisheit. The patriotacclaims in him the poet who has sung the myths and legends dear to the German race. The sensuous and voluptuous libertine is enchanted by the eroticism of the “Roman Elegies.” The domesticated reader is drawn by that chaste idyll, Herman and Dorothea. The Spinozist and Pantheist are attracted by the general tendencies of his philosophy. The Christian is at liberty to interpret “Faust” in a sense which is favourable to his religion. The Liberal politician can point to the author of Goetz and Egmont. The Conservative and Reactionary can claim all the works of Goethe’s maturity, when the poet had become the perfect courtier.
There is a second quality which Goethe possesses in a supreme degree, and by which he is distinguished from his contemporaries—namely, mental sanity and serenity. Most of his fellow-poets reveal some morbid characteristics, are afflicted with someWeltschmerz, with some internal spiritual malady. They live in an atmosphere of strife and discord. The marvellous vitality of Goethe has escaped from the contagion. Like his fellow-poets, he passed through the crisis of theSturm und Drang. But it seems as if he had only known it in order to give to his experiences a final artistic expression. He communicated the “Wertherian malady” to a whole generation, but he himself emerged triumphant and unscathed. The hurricane which wrecked so many powerful intellects spared his own. After the Italian journey he never ceased by example and precept to recommend harmony and balance, and he became so completelythe perfect type of intellectual and artistic sanity that the world has forgotten the Bohemian days of Frankfurt and Leipzig, the merry days of Weimar, the repulsive vulgarity of his drunken mistress and wife, the degradation of his son, and has agreed only to contemplate the Olympian majesty of Weimar. Whether the repose and sanity of Goethe were unmixed virtues, or whether they were partly the result of indifference, of impassivity or selfishness, is another question. Certain it is that there is no other trait in Goethe’s personality which has done more to raise him in the esteem of posterity. He has proved to the world that internal discord and distraction and morbid exaltation are not the necessary appanage of genius, and that, on the contrary, the most powerful genius is also the most sane, the most balanced, the most self-possessed, the most harmonious.
Without going here into the purely formal and artistic qualities of Goethe’s works, there is one fact which, perhaps more than any other, impressed itself on the imagination of the world, and that is the realization of his own personality, the achievement of his own destiny. Of all his poems, the rarest and most perfect is the poem of his life. Hitherto no such life had ever been allotted to a favourite of the Muses. He seemed to have received a bountiful abundance of all the gifts of the fairies—superb health, comfort, and wealth, the love of an adoring mother and sister, the loyalty of illustrious friends, the favour of Princes, the homage of women, and theadmiration of men. To him was opened every province of human activity. He exhausted every form of enjoyment. His life until the end was like the unfolding of a glorious version of a happy dream. At eighty years of age he remained the one surviving giant of the golden age of German literature. In his lifetime he was considered by Europe, as well as by Germany, as the most glorious exemplar of his race, and the city of his adoption had become a pilgrimage attracting worshippers from all parts of Europe. Death was merciful to him. The last act of his life was as beautiful as the others. It was not preceded by the gradual dissolution of his physical and intellectual strength; rather was it like the burning out of a flame. He passed away in an apotheosis, and the last words uttered by the dying poet, “Mehr Licht, mehr Licht” (More light, more light), have become for all future generations the final expression of his philosophy and the symbol of his personality.
FOOTNOTES:[17]“The Youth of Goethe.” By P. Hume Brown. 8s. net (Murray.)[18]“Goethe, the Man and his Character.” By Joseph McCabe. 15s. net. (Eveleigh Nash.)
[17]“The Youth of Goethe.” By P. Hume Brown. 8s. net (Murray.)
[17]“The Youth of Goethe.” By P. Hume Brown. 8s. net (Murray.)
[18]“Goethe, the Man and his Character.” By Joseph McCabe. 15s. net. (Eveleigh Nash.)
[18]“Goethe, the Man and his Character.” By Joseph McCabe. 15s. net. (Eveleigh Nash.)
AllEnglish students interested in Germany owe a deep debt of gratitude to the unremitting labours of Mr. William Harbutt Dawson in the fields of Teutonic scholarship. He is one of a gallant band of some half-dozen publicists who, amidst universal neglect, have done their utmost to popularize amongst us a knowledge of German life and German people. Mr. Dawson’s last book is certain to take rank as a political classic. It is a lucid exposition of “Municipal Life and Government in Germany” (Longmans and Co., 12s. 6d. net). City administration and city regulations are a subject which no literary art can make very exciting, but, difficult and forbidding though it be, it is a subject which yields in importance and interest to no other. There is certainly no other subject which will reveal to us more of the secrets of German greatness.
For the greatness of Germany is not to be explained by her unwieldy army, her red-tape bureaucracy, her impotent Reichstag, her effete Churches. Her army,Parliament, and Churches are symptoms of weakness and not of strength. The true greatness of Germany is largely due to a factor ignored by most writers, ignored even by Mr. Dawson in all his previous works—namely, the excellence of German municipal institutions, the intensity of her civic life. We have been too much accustomed to think of Germany only as a despotic empire. She might be far more fittingly described as a country of free institutions, a federation of autonomous cities. We fondly imagine that ours is the only country where self-government prevails. Readers who might still entertain this prejudice will carry away from Mr. Dawson’s book the novel political lesson that Germany, much more than Great Britain, deserves to be called a self-governing nation, and that, at least in her civic government, which, after all, affects 70 per cent. of her population, Germany enjoys a measure of political liberty which is absolutely unknown in our own country.
The tradition of municipal freedom in Germany is as old as German culture. It still lingers in the haunting charm of the German cities to-day. The Holy Roman Empire possessed only the trappings and the shadow of power; the reality belonged to the burghers of the towns. TheStädtewesengives its original character to the German Middle Ages. The Hansa towns and the Hanseatic League recall some of the most stirring memories of German history. The League still survives in the three independentrepublics of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. The dominant fact that German medieval civilization was a civilization of free cities is driven home to the most superficial tourist. In every corner of the German Empire, in north and south, on the banks of the Rhine and the Elbe, in Rothenburg and Marienburg, in Frankfurt and Freiburg, the thousand monuments of the past prove to us the all-important truth that in Germany, as in Italy and in Flanders, it is the service of the city which has made for national greatness.
War and anarchy put an end to municipal prosperity. Protestantism brought with it the confusion of spiritual and temporal power, which brought with it the despotism of the Princes, which meant the suppression of civic liberty. The Thirty Years’ War completed the ruin of the cities. The end of the seventeenth century put in the place of city governance the tyranny of a hundred petty Princes. Everywhere we see the ancient town halls crumbling into ruin, and we see arising pretentious palaces built on the model of the Palace of Versailles. Germany had to go through the bitter humiliation of Jena before she realized the necessity of reverting to her glorious civic traditions. The statesmanship of Stein (see Seeley’s “Life and Times of Stein”) understood that such return was the prime condition of a German political renaissance. By his memorable Municipal Law of 1808 Stein restored civic liberty. He made local self-government the corner-stone of German internal policy. The ordinance of Stein remains tothis day the organic law and Great Charter of the German city. It has stood the test of one hundred years of change, and even the iron despotism of the Hohenzollern has not been able to challenge it. In every other political institution Germany is lamentably behind. Only in her municipal life is she in advance of most European countries.
As we hinted at the outset, the municipality has far greater powers in Germany than in Great Britain. It is true that the police authority is under the control of the central power, that education inspection is under the control of the Church, which is another kind of spiritual police. It is true that the City Fathers are debarred from mixing with party politics. But within those limitations, and in the province of economics and social welfare, municipal powers are almost unrestricted. It is thus that German towns have been the pioneers in school hygiene. Every German child is under the supervision of the school dentist and the school oculist. It is thus that German cities have established their public pawnshops, and have saved the poor man from the clutches of the moneylender. It is thus that they have initiated gratuitous legal advice for the indigent. They have even established municipal beerhouses andRathhauskeller. In one word, they have launched out in a hundred forms of civic enterprise.
One of the most striking fields of municipal enterprise is the policy of Land Purchase. The people were encouraged to enter on this policy by the evils of private land speculation, and by the shocking housing conditions in some of the big cities, and especially in Berlin, where the curse of the barrack system still prevails.
Nearly every German city is an important landowner, owning on an average 50 per cent. of the municipal area.
“While the powers of English urban districts in relation to land ownership are severely restricted by law, German towns are free to buy real estate on any scale whatever, without permission of any kind, unless, indeed, the contracting of a special loan should be necessary, in which event the assent of the City Commissary is necessary. This assent, however, entails no local inquiry corresponding to the inquiries of the Local Government Board, simply because the German States have no Local Government Board, and no use for them; the proceeding is almost a formality, intended to remind the communes that the State, though devolved upon them their wide powers of self-government, likes still to be consulted now and then, and it is arranged expeditiously through the post. For, strange as it may sound to English ears, the Governments of Germany, without exception, far from wishing to hamper the towns in their land investments, have often urged the towns to buy as much land as possible and not to sell” (Dawson, p. 123).
“Within the present year the little town of Kalbe, on the Saale, expended just £14 a head on its 12,000 inhabitants in buying for £468,000 a large estate for the purpose of creating a number of smallholdings and labourers’ allotments. During the period 1880 to 1908 Breslau expended over one million and a half pounds in the purchase of land within the communal area. Berlin has an estate more than three times greater than its administrative area. In 1910 alone seventy-three of the large towns of Germany bought land to the aggregate extent of 9,584 acres and to the aggregate value of over four million pounds sterling. Charlottenburg now owns 2,500 acres of land as yet not built upon, with a value of over a million and a quarter pounds, and the value of all its real estate is about four and a half million pounds sterling. In 1886 Freiburg, in Baden, owned nearly 11,000 acres of land with a value of £925,000. In 1909 its estate was only 2,000 acres larger, but its value was then £2,300,000.”
“Since 1891 Ulm, under the rule of a mayor convinced of the wisdom of a progressive land policy and strong enough to carry it out, has bought some 1,280 acres of land at different times for £316,000, while it has sold 420 acres for £406,000, showing a cash profit of £900,000, apart from the addition of 860 acres to the town estate. As a result of Ulm’s land policy, its assets increased between 1891 and 1909 from £583,500 to £1,990,000, an increase of £1,407,000, equal to £25 a head of the population. Another result is that of the larger towns of Würtemberg only one has a lower taxation than Ulm. It is solely owing to its successful land policy that this enterprising town,without imposing heavy burdens on the general body of ratepayers, has been able to undertake a programme of social reforms which has created for it an honourable reputation throughout Germany.”
In quite a different direction, in the encouragement of Art and Literature, the German municipality plays a leading part.
“The budgets of most large and many small German towns contain an item, greater or less according to local circumstances, which is intended to cover ‘provision for the intellectual life of the town.’ This item is independent of expenditure on schools, and, if analyzed, will be found often to include the maintenance of or subsidies to municipal theatres, bands, and orchestras, as well as grants to dramatic and musical societies of a miscellaneous order. In this provision the theatre takes an altogether dominant position, and the fact is significant as reflecting the great importance which in Germany is attributed to the drama as an educational and elevating influence in the life of the community. It may be that the practice of subsidizing the theatre is not altogether independent of the fact that the repertory theatre is universal in Germany, except in the smallest of provincial towns, with the result that a far more intimate tie exists between the drama and the community than is possible in the case of travelling companies.”
“If the question be asked, Is the higher drama encouraged by the municipal theatre? the answermust be an emphatic affirmative of the high standard of education in Germany. Speaking generally, no theatres in Germany maintain the drama at a higher level than the municipal theatres in the large towns. The lower forms of the drama will find no home here, for public taste looks for the best that the stage can offer, and as the demand is, so is the supply. Many a provincial theatre of this kind presents more Shakespearean plays in a week than the average English theatre outside London presents in a couple of years. A glance at the repertory of any of the municipal theatres which have been named is enough to convince one that an elevated aim is steadily kept in view. For example, in a recent year the two Mannheim municipal theatres presented 161 separate works, including 93 dramas, 62 operas and operettas, and 6 ballets, and of these works 442 repetitions were given in the aggregate, making for the year 604 performances, a number of which were at popular prices. The dramas given included fifteen by Schiller, ten by Shakespeare, three by Goethe, three by Lessing, five by Molière, four by Hans Sachs, four by Sheridan, eleven by Grillparzer, two each by Kleist and Hebbel, and several by Ibsen, while the operas included three by Beethoven, three by Cherubini, six by Mozart, three by Weber, and several by Wagner. Could an English provincial theatre—could all English provincial theatres together—show a record equal to this? That plays of this kind are given is proof that the German public looks to the municipal theatre for the cultivation of the highest possible standard of dramatic taste and achievement.”
The German city has managed to combine efficiency with freedom. She has managed to establish a strong executive and yet to safeguard the will of the people. In France the Mayor is appointed by the State, and he is the tool of the Ministry. In Great Britain the City Fathers are honorary and unpaid. In Germany they are salaried servants, and yet elected by the people. In Great Britain magistrates are temporary, ephemeral figure-heads. They are not even allowed time to serve their apprenticeship. They remain in office one, two, or at most three years, receive a knighthood in the larger provincial towns, and retire into private life. In Germany the Burgomaster and Aldermen are permanent servants, at first elected for twelve years, and on re-election appointed for life. Their whole life is identified with the interests of the city.
There lies the originality of German civic government, and there lies the secret of municipal efficiency. The German Mayor and council are experts. City government is becoming so technical a science that there are now schools of civic administration established in several parts of the German Empire. The city administrator is not a grocer or a draper temporarily raised to office, nor are they only town clerks and officials. They have both the confidence of the people and the responsibility of power, and they are given time to achieve results, to follow up a systematic policy.
The whole secret of German municipal government is told by Mr. Dawson in a footnote of his book:
“The chief Mayor of Duisburg is about to seek well-earned rest after thirty-four years of work. When in 1880 he took over the direction of the town’s affairs, Duisburg had 34,000 inhabitants. To-day Duisburg, with the amalgamated Ruhrort and Meiderich, has a population of 244,000. This remarkable development is specially due to the far-sighted municipal policy pursued by the chief Mayor, who made it his endeavour to attract new industries to the State for the creation of the docks—as the result of which Duisburg is the largest inland port in the world—and the incorporation of Ruhrort and Meiderich in 1905.”
This footnote illustrating the history of Duisburg might serve equally well as an illustration for the history of other German towns. On reading that footnote I could not help thinking of a famous English statesman whose recent death has closed a stirring chapter of British history. German and Austrian municipalities give the widest scope for political genius and attract the ablest men. If the same conditions had prevailed in this country, Mr. Chamberlain would have been content to identify himself with the prosperity of his adopted city, as the Mayor of Duisburg identified himself with the greatness of Duisburg; as Lueger identified himself with the greatness of Vienna. And ifBirmingham had given full scope to the genius of Mr. Chamberlain, how different would have been the life-story of the late statesman, and how different would be the England in which we are living to-day!
FOOTNOTES:[19]Written in 1913.
[19]Written in 1913.
[19]Written in 1913.
Thereare many urgent reforms needed in our national education; those who are best qualified to speak could make many a startling revelation if they only dared to speak out. And there is ample evidence that almost every part of our educational machinery requires the most thorough overhauling. In the words of Bacon, “Instauratio facienda ab imis fundamentis.” But I doubt whether there does exist any more glaring proof of the present inefficiency of our Secondary Schools and Universities than their scandalous attitude towards the study of the German language and literature.
The plain and unvarnished truth is that at the beginning of this, the twentieth century, when Germany is the supreme political and commercial Power on the Continent of Europe, the study of German is steadily going back in the United Kingdom. In some parts it is actually dying out. In many important Secondary Schools it is being discontinued. Even in the Scottish Universities, which pride themselves on being more modern and more progressive than the English Universities, there does not exist one single Chair of German. In Oxford a Chair of German was only established through the munificence of a patriotic German merchant.
And even when there are teachers there are very few students. In one of the greatest British Universities, with a constituency of 3,500 students, there has been, for the last ten years, an average of five to six men students. And the reluctance of young men to study German is perfectly intelligible. The study of German does not pay. It brings neither material rewards nor official recognition. All the prizes, all the scholarships and fellowships, go to other subjects, and mainly to the classics. Let any reader ofEverymanstand up and say that I am exaggerating; I would only be too delighted to discover that I am wrong.
Such being the attitude of those who are primarily responsible for our national education, can we wonder at the attitude of the general public? Can we expect it to take any more interest in German culture than the educational authorities? Let those who have any doubt or illusion on the subject make inquiries at booksellers’, at circulating libraries and public libraries, at London clubs. I have tried to make such an investigation, and all those institutions have the same sorry tale to tell. It is impossible to get an outstanding book which appears in Germany, for it does not pay the publisher to stock such a book. At Mudie’s, for every hundred French books there may be two German books. At the Royal Societies Club, with a membership of several thousands, every one of whom belongs to some learned society, you may get theRevue de Deux Mondes, or theTemps, or theFigaro, but you cannot get a German paper. For the last twenty years I have not once seen a copy of theZukunft, or theFrankfurter Zeitung, ortheKölnische Zeitung, at an English private house, at an English club, at an English bookseller’s, at an English library.
A few months ago the most popular and most enterprising daily paper of the kingdom published some articles on the German elections, which were justly rousing a great deal of attention in this country. I was very much impressed by the cleverness of those articles, but my admiration knew no bounds when the author confessed that he was writing without knowing a word of German, and that when attending political meetings he had to make out the meaning of the language by the gestures and facial expression of the orators. Have we not here, my classical friends, an exhilarating instance of the results of your monopoly?Ab uno disce omnes.
We are constantly being told that “knowledge is power,” and that the knowledge of a foreign language means not only intellectual power, but commercial and political power. Yet those in authority do not budge an inch to get possession of such power. We are constantly warned by political pessimists that Germany is making gigantic strides, and that we ought to keep a vigilant outlook. Yet we do nothing to obtain first-hand information of the resources of a nation of sixty-five millions, who is certainly a formidable commercial rival, and who to-morrow may meet us in deadly encounter.[20]On the other hand, we are told with equal persistence by political optimists that we ought to be on the most friendly terms with a great kindred people from whom nothing separates us except regrettable ignorance and superficialmisunderstandings. Yet, in order to dispel that ignorance and to remove those misunderstandings, we do not make the first necessary step—namely, to learn the language of the people whom we are said to misunderstand.
It is true that Members of Parliament and journalists are ready enough to proceed to Germany on a mission of goodwill, and to be entertained at banquets and international festivities. But how futile must be those friendly demonstrations when we consider that the enormous majority of those Parliamentarians and journalists are unable to read a German newspaper! And how must it strike a citizen of Hamburg or Frankfurt when their English guests have to reply in English to the toasts of their German hosts! And how must a patriotic German feel when he discovers that not five out of a hundred have taken the trouble to master the noble language of the country whose friendship they are seeking!
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending, at the house of a prominent political leader, a representative gathering of politicians, diplomats, and journalists, who were met to consider the best means of promoting Anglo-German friendship. In answer to a speech of mine, an eminent German publicist and editor of an influential monthly review delivered an eloquent address in broken French. To hear a German address in French an audience of Germanophile Englishmen was certainly a ludicrous situation! But the speaker realized that it would be hopeless to use the German language, even to an assembly specially interested in supporting Anglo-German friendship.
How long, my classical friends, are we going to submit to these disastrous results of your monopoly?Quousque tandem!How long are we going to stand this scandal of international illiteracy and ignorance, fraught with such ominous peril for the future? How long is this nation going to be hoodwinked by an infinitesimal minority of reactionary dons and obscurantist parsons, determined to force a smattering of Greek down the throats of a reluctant youth? How long is modern culture to be kept back under the vain pretence of maintaining the culture of antiquity, but in reality in response to an ignoble dread of enlightenment and progress, and in order to protect vested interests and to maintain political, intellectual, and religious reaction?