FOOTNOTES:[22]Georges Bourdon, “L’Enigme Allemande,” Librairie Plon, Paris.
[22]Georges Bourdon, “L’Enigme Allemande,” Librairie Plon, Paris.
[22]Georges Bourdon, “L’Enigme Allemande,” Librairie Plon, Paris.
A fewmonths ago[23]it was my good fortune to discuss the international situation with Monsieur Emile Ollivier, the veteran statesman, the Napoleonic Prime Minister with the light heart whose name will ever be identified, and identified unjustly, with a disastrous war. A few days ago it was again my privilege to discuss the European situation with another Continental statesman whose name will for ever be identified with the cause of peace. I am not at liberty to disclose the identity of the illustrious speaker. Suffice it to say that he is a statesman whose every word compels attention all over the world and imposes respect, a man of infinite wit, of penetrating intellect, and whose commanding personality has on more than one occasion directed the course of world politics, and has helped to save Europe from an impending catastrophe. For more than an hour the speaker discussed with me, if an almost uninterrupted monologue may be called a discussion, the anxious problems of modern Germany. Without reticence or afterthought, he gave me the benefit of his mature wisdom and of a lifelong experience.
You ask me to give you the key of the international situation. That key is in Germany, or rather in Berlin. For Prussia controls Germany, and will more and more control it in the future.
The Germans are nervous and uneasy, and that is why they ceaselessly increase their armaments. They are nervous because the whole European situation has been radically changed, to their detriment. The whole balance of power has been upset by the results of the Balkan War. They are nervous because they are tragically isolated. Germany has no friends, no allies, and has therefore to defend herself on two, or rather on three, fronts. She has to defend herself at once against France, against Russia, and against England.
It is true that the Triple Alliance still subsists. But it subsists only in name. For Germany can count neither on Italy nor on Austria. She cannot count on Italy. For Italy is a hopeless coquette, and she transfers her erratic affections wherever her interest leads her. Nor can Germany count on Austria. No longer can Austria be called the “loyal secundant.” For Austria has ceased to be controlled by her Teutonic population. She is at the mercy of the Slavs, both inside and outside of her empire. She is abandoned by Roumania, who is seeking the support of Russia. She is detested by the Serbians, who have the best organized army in the Balkans. It would have been the vital interest of Austria to win over Serbia, and it would have been so easy towin her over. An equitable treaty of commerce, the concession of a port on the Adriatic, and Serbia would have become the ally of Austria. Serbia was prepared to forget the shameful policy hitherto pursued by Austria. All that was required was some give-and-take, some fairness.
But that sense of fairness, of international equity, is exactly what both Prussia and Austria are so lamentably deficient in. The Austrians, like the Prussians, may be individually most pleasant. Politically and collectively they are consistently disagreeable. They never seem to understand the first principle of diplomacy—namely, that no treaty can be of any permanent value which is only advantageous to one side.
And then there is the utter tactlessness of the Germans. It is partly explainable by their belief in force. When you believe in force you do not trouble to persuade or conciliate. It is also partly explainable by the absence in Prussia of an old tradition of refinement and culture. As Bismarck once said cynically and frankly to Thiers: “Mon cher ami! Nous autres Prussiens, nous sommes encore des barbares” (We Prussians, we are still barbarians).
The Prussian, therefore, in diplomacy is a blunderer and a bully. He has the art of making himself unpleasant. And he seems to enjoy doing so. It is significant that the Germans are the only people who have coined a special word to express the pleasurefelt by inflicting pain. The curious and expressive German wordSchadenfreudecannot be translated into any other language.
And that is why in politics the Germans fail to make friends. They are feared by all nations. They are respected by some. They are loved by none.
And they fail to make friends at home quite as lamentably as abroad. They fail to win over the nations living under their own German laws. They are making such inconceivable blunders as the expropriation of the Poles and the colonization scheme of Posen. It is a striking fact that with the single possible exception of the Galicians—who fear Russia even more than they detest Austria—there is not a single non-German-speaking people either in the German Empire or in the Austrian Empire who has accepted the rule of the Teuton. Alsatian and Dane, Pole and Tchech, Croatian and Roumanian—all the subject races are equally disaffected. They may disagree in everything, but they agree in their opposition to Teutonic rule.
What a tragedy this German world empire of the twentieth century! Once Germany was made up of little cities and great Universities. To-day she is made up of big cities and impotent Universities. Where are the spiritual and artistic glories of the past? The moral and intellectual influence of Germany has reached its lowest ebb.
It is this striking isolation of Germany which compels her to arm. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that this very isolation is making for peace. Nobody either in Europe or Germany wants war. Neither the Emperor nor his Ministers want war. War is too great a risk. It is too much of a gamble. In warfare it is always the unexpected that happens. War may be the national industry of Prussia. But it is the mostspeculativeof all industries.
At the same time, whilst we are all wishing for peace, we must ever be on our guard. With the militarist tendencies of a bureaucratic and despotic State, with the economic pressure of an increasing population, one is always at the mercy of an incident. Twenty-five years ago the Schnaebele incident brought Europe to the verge of war. Similar frontier incidents in this age of aeroplanes can happen any day. They did happen yesterday. They did not lead to serious consequences. They might lead to fatal consequences to-morrow. They might be magnified by a sensational Press and by bellicose partisans such as the Pan-Germanists. The Pan-Germanists may be only a small minority to-day, but they are noisy, and they are just the kind of people ever looking out for just such “unpleasant incidents.”
Yes, let us be on our guard! Let us not trust to a false sense of security, and let us not put our trust in politics and politicians. Politics are so petty, and politicians so impotent. How many so-called statesmenare there to-day who have the courage of their convictions, and who would not be carried away by the impulses and emotions of the moment?
Such were the weighty words of the European statesman. They were uttered without animus and without passion. They were uttered with the serene detachment of the philosopher and of the experienced man of the world. And they express the deliberate opinions of a confirmed pacifist. And they express the substantial truth.
It would be well if our German friends would ponder and meditate those sober and sobering utterances. It would be well if they would try and give their own explanation of their tragic isolation and of their universal political unpopularity. It would be well if they in turn would ask themselves why political Germany is left without a friend in the wide world? As Maximilian Harden once said: “Uns lebt kein Freund auf der weiten Welt.” Might not the result of such sobering reflections be to induce the Germans to turn over a new leaf? Might it not help to precipitate the downfall of a medieval military bureaucracy? And might it not help to falsify the ominous prophecy of our European statesman that Prussia will more and more control the politics of the German Empire?
We loved the glorious Germany of the past. Let the Germany of to-morrow make herself again as cordially liked as she is feared to-day. But let her understand that no nation will allow herself to bebullied into sympathy. Sympathy must be spontaneous. In the words of one of her greatest thinkers: “Die Liebe ist wie der Glaube, man kann sie nicht erzwingen” (Love is like Faith. You cannot secure it by force).
FOOTNOTES:[23]Written in the spring of 1914.
[23]Written in the spring of 1914.
[23]Written in the spring of 1914.
Thecomplicated and contradictory relations between Russia and Germany can be summed up very briefly. On the one hand, there existed before the war the closest intercourse between the Russian and the German Courts, and that close intercourse extended to the army, to the bureaucracy, to the Universities, to the industrial and commercial classes. On the other hand, the Russian and the German people are mutually repelled. There is a temperamental antagonism between the two nations, between the dour disciplined Prussian and the easygoing disciplined Russian. In the province of ideas, of art and literature, French influence is dominant amongst the intellectual and in the upper classes, but as literature counts for very little, and as trade and industry, as the bureaucracy and the Court, count for a very great deal, and as all these social and political forces hitherto were almost entirely controlled by the Germans, it may be said that before the war German influence was supreme in the Russian Empire.
Until Peter the Great, the Romanov Family was a national dynasty. It had remained national from sheer necessity, as no European Court would have cared to intermarry with Tatar and Barbarian Princes. Even at the end of Peter the Great’s reign the prestige of Russia had scarcely asserted itself in the politics of the West. Peter the Great expressed a keen desire to pay a visit to the Court of Louis XIV. He was politely given to understand that his visit would not be acceptable, even as a poor relation will be told that his visit is not welcome to a kinsman in exalted position. After the death of Louis, the Tsar again asked to be received at Versailles. This time his overtures were accepted, but even at the Court of the Regent his visit caused the greatest embarrassment to the masters of ceremonies. The situation was a tragi-comic one. French etiquette could not decide whether the Tatar Prince was to receive the honours which belong of right only to the ruler of a civilized people.
For the first time in modern Russian history, Peter the Great’s daughter, Anne, married a German Prince in 1725. With that year begins that close dynastic alliance with the German Courts which has lasted until our own day. Germany has been carrying on a most thriving export trade of Princes and Princesses with almost every European monarchy—an export trade of which she is reaping the enormous political advantages in the present crisis. But in Russia alone she has obtained a monopoly of thisroyal export trade.All the Russian Tsars have married German Princesses.For one hundred and fifty years the rule suffered no exception until Alexander II. married a daughter of the Danish Dynasty, which itself is in reality the German Dynasty of Oldenburg.
I need not emphasize the supreme importance of those close family relations between the Courts of Russia and Germany,and especially between the Courts of Russia and Prussia. It is the peculiarity of an autocratic government that the smallest causes are productive of the greatest consequences, and amongst those smaller causes none are likely to produce more far-reaching results than the personal likes and dislikes of the ruler and his family. In the Empire of the Tsars the sympathies of the ruler and of the Imperial family for a hundred and fifty years have generally been German. Women have no less influence in Russia than in other countries, and as every Russian Princess has, for a hundred and fifty years, been German in origin, German by training, German by pride of birth, German by prejudice, the Teutonic influences have necessarily been supreme in the Russian Court. Nor must we forget that every German Princess coming to Petrograd would bring with her a numerous suite of ladies-in-waiting and Court officials, so that the German Court colony was automatically increasing. Indeed, it is no mere chance that the capital, the military harbour, and the chief Imperial residences should all have German names—Kronstadt, Oranienbaum, Schluessenburg, Petersburg, and Peterhof. Peterhof has been the Russian Potsdam. Petersburg has beenthe outpost of Germany in the Russian Empire, thefeste Burgof Prussia until the eve of the war.
From what has been said, it is obvious that the national Romanov Dynasty, founded in 1613 by Michael Romanov, Patriarch of all the Russias, ceased to be a Romanov Dynasty at the death of Empress Elizabeth in 1761. With Peter III. it is a German Dynasty which ascends the throne. Peter III., son of a Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, is a Romanov in the proportion of one-half; Paul, son of a Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, in the proportion of one-fourth; Alexander I. and Nicholas I., sons of a Princess of Würtemberg, in the proportion of one-eighth; Alexander II., son of a Princess of Hohenzollern, to the extent of one-sixteenth; Alexander III., son of a Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the extent of one thirty-second; and the late ruler, Nicholas II., who married a Princess of the House of Oldenburg, to the extent of one sixty-fourth. One sixty-fourth of the blood of the late Tsar is Russian Romanov blood. In the proportion of sixty-three sixty-fourths it is the blood of Holstein, of Anhalt, of Oldenburg, of Hesse, of Würtemberg, of Hohenzollern, which flows through the veins of the late Emperor of all the Russias.
The history of Russia proves only too conclusively that again and again the national interests of Russia have been sacrificed to the German dynastic influences.At the end of the Seven Years’ War, Frederick the Great was at his last gasp. Prussia was on the verge of ruin.The Russian Army had entered Berlin; the power of the new military monarchy had been totally broken at Kunersdorf. The death of Elizabeth and the accession of her mad nephew, Peter III., retrieved a desperate situation. For the mad nephew was a German Prince, a Duke of Holstein, and a passionate admirer of Frederick the Great. Peter III. was murdered in 1762. He only reigned a few months, but he reigned sufficiently long to save Prussia from destruction and to surrender all the advantages secured by Russian triumphs and dearly paid for by Russian blood.
There is no more fantastic fairy-tale and there is no more fascinating drama than the life-story of Catherine the Great, which recently has been so brilliantly told by Mr. Francis Gribble. A Cinderella amongst German royalties, a pauper Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine became the mightiest potentate of her age. Although the nominee of Frederick the Great, she pursued consistently a national Russian policy. And she had good reasons for doing so. For no throne was less secure than the throne of the Romanovs. She had had to remove her husband by murder for fear of being removed herself. She continued to be surrounded by a rabble of unscrupulous adventurers and intriguers. Her only safety lay in becoming a patriotic Russian, and in seeking the support of Russian sentiment and Russian opinion. WhilstFrederick the Great surrounded himself with French advisers, and contemptuously refused even to speak the German language; whilst he declared to the German scholar who presented him with a copy of the “Nibelungen Lied” that this national German epic was not worth a pipe of tobacco, Catherine the Great systematically encouraged Russian literature. Whilst Frederick the Great remained the consistent Atheist on the throne, Catherine the Great professed the utmost zeal for Russian Orthodoxy. All through her reign she avoided as far as possible a conflict with Frederick and his successor. She divided with them the spoils of Poland, or, as Frederick the Great put it in his edifying theological language, she partook of the Eucharistic body of the Polish kingdom in unholy communion with Prussia and Austria. But Catherine saw to it that Russia secured the greater part of the spoils.
There is a curious and uncanny similarity between the character and the reign of Peter III. and the character and reign of his son, Paul I. Both reigns were brief, yet both reigns had an incalculable influence on European affairs. Both rulers sacrificed national interests to dynastic interests. Both rulers were insane, and both rulers engaged in insane enterprises. Both father and son were murdered with the complicity or connivance of their own family. The Russian armies, on the advent of Peter III., had secured and achieved a dramatic victory over Prussia, but the admiration of Peter III. for Frederick theGreat prevented the Russians from reaping the fruits of victory. Suvoroff crossed the Alps and achieved an equally sensational victory over France, but Paul I. was prevented from taking advantage of his victories by his admiration for Napoleon.
The reign of Alexander I. once more strikingly illustrates the enormous part which subterranean German influences have played in the foreign policy of Russia. After the costly victories of Eylau and Friedland, Napoleon I. had concluded with Alexander I. the Peace of Tilsit. The treaty was fatal to Europe, for it divided the Continent practically between the Russian and French Empires. But it was highly advantageous to Russia, and enormously added to Russian power and Russian prestige.
It was certainly in Russia’s interest to maintain the Alliance. It was broken largely through one of those small dynastic incidents which are of such vast importance under an absolute despotism. One of Napoleon’s main objects was to establish a Napoleonic Dynasty and to be adopted by marriage into one of the ruling families of Europe. The Corsican parvenu passionately desired a matrimonial alliance with the House of Romanov, and repeatedly applied for the hand of one of Alexander’s sisters; the dowager Tsarina, Alexander’s mother, a daughter of the King of Würtemberg, as persistently refused. She had all the pride of birth of a German Princess, and all the hatred of a reactionary against the armed soldier ofthe Revolution. Foiled at the Court of Petersburg, Napoleon was more successful at the Court of Vienna. A few months after Napoleon’s last overtures had been rejected by Russia, the Habsburgs, who, after the Bourbons, were the most august, the most ancient dynasty of Europe, eagerly accepted what the Romanovs had refused. The war of 1812 with Russia was the result of that pro-German policy of the Russian Court.
During the reigns of Nicholas I. and Alexander II. the German-Austrian influence reached its zenith at the Court of Petersburg. Nicholas I. was the brother-in-law of the Prussian Hohenzollern. An able and an honest man in his private relations, he was in his political capacity a Prussian martinet, as even Treitschke is compelled to admit, and he organized his Empire on the strictest Frederician principles. The Court, the Army, and the bureaucracy were Prussianized as they had never been before. A German bureaucrat, Nesselrode, who could not even speak the Russian language, for forty years controlled as Foreign Minister the policy of the Russian Empire. Even as his grandfather, Peter III., even as his brother, Alexander I., had saved Prussia from destruction, so Nicholas I. saved Austria from a similar fate. Francis Joseph had ascended a throne shaken to its foundations. Hungary was in open rebellion. The young Austrian Emperor appealed to Russia for help. Nicholas I. sent an army to quell the revolution, and established his cousin on the Hungarianthrone. It is unnecessary to add that Francis Joseph was as loyal and as grateful to Russia as Frederick the Great had been!
Alexander I. had refused to accept Napoleon I. as a brother-in-law. Even so did Nicholas I. refuse to recognize Napoleon III. as Emperor of the French. It was a gratuitous insult inspired by Prussia; it was opposed to Russian interests, and it was one of the main causes of the Crimean War.
Under Alexander II. the alliance of the three reactionary empires of Central Europe was welded even more firmly than under his predecessor. Bismarck, during his tenure of the Prussian Embassy at Petersburg, was the chosen favourite of the Russian Court, and if he had chosen could have become a Minister of the Tsar. An understanding with Russia became the chief dogma of his political creed, and it remained so until the end. It was Bismarck’s adherence to the Russian-Prussian Alliance which was one of the causes of his dismissal.
Alexander II. did nothing to guard against the German peril. He might have been the umpire of Central Europe, as Alexander I. had been fifty years before. He demanded no compensation for the enormous accession of power and territory which Germany had received through the victorious wars of 1863, 1866, and 1870. He insisted on no guarantees. When, after Sedan, Thiers came to St. Petersburg to obtain the intervention of the Russian Empire, he was dismissed with empty words. One year afterThiers’s fruitless journey, Emperor William paid an official visit to his nephew Alexander II., and the Tsar once more proclaimed the indissoluble solidarity of Russia with Germany. Until the end of his reign the German-Austrian-Russian Alliance, the famous dynastic Alliance of the Three Emperors, remained the keystone of European policy and the mainstay of Russian reaction.
The influence of Germany at the Russian Court was strengthened by the influence of Germany on the Russian bureaucracy. An agricultural community without a middle class, Russia has had to recruit her Civil Services almost entirely from the outside and mainly from Germany, and more especially from the German Baltic provinces of Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland. Teutonic barons from those Baltic provinces have filled the higher ranks of the Diplomatic Service and of the Civil Service for a hundred and fifty years. The Russian Tsars found the German barons far more serviceable tools than the Russian boiars. In a previous age one Emperor after another had been removed by a rebellious aristocracy. The highest nobles in the land had been implicated in the Decabrist conspiracy at the end of Alexander I.’s reign. Even under Alexander II. there were always a few members of the nobility to be found as accomplices in the revolutionary plots. But there never was one single German from the Baltic provinces implicated in a conspiracy against reaction. It is easy to understand, therefore, why aRussian autocrat should have preferred the services of the German Baltic barons. The Russian nobleman is casual, lavish, a bad economist, easygoing, generous, and he is corrupt because easygoing and generous. He is also much more independent. The Junker is punctual, precise, disciplined, generally poor, always ambitious. He is also tolerably honest. He is the ideal bureaucrat.
German influence has been no less dominant in the Russian academies and in scientific institutions. The Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg was organized on the pattern of the Academy of Berlin. It was an official institution with high privileges, and it remained consistently German. Until recently its proceedings were published in the German language, and German scientists were invariably preferred rather than Russian scientists. Mendelieff, one of the most creative scientific minds of his generation, was a member of every European academy except the Academy of Petersburg.
The Germans have been an even greater power in the Russian Universities. They took full advantage of the prestige which German science had acquired in Europe, and they largely filled the ranks of the liberal professions. German doctors, German veterinary surgeons, GermanFeldschers, German foresters, German engineers, were to be found in every part of the Empire. A casual reading of the Post Office directories of Moscow, or Petersburg, or Kiev, provides a most instructive commentary on the extent of the German domination.
Securely entrenched in the Russian Court, in the Army, in the bureaucracy, in the Universities, in the Diplomatic Service, the Germans secured a no less commanding influence in trade and industry. As we have already pointed out, Russia, until recent years, had remained an agricultural country without a middle class. The trade remained almost entirely in foreign hands. Already in the Middle Ages Russian cities, like Novgorod, were affiliated to the German Hanseatic League. In the sixteenth century adventurous English explorers and traders, whose exploits are amongst the most thrilling of Hakluyt’s voyages, tried to oust their German competitors, but they utterly failed. The Russians themselves are excellent traders, and the merchant guilds of Moscow have been for centuries a powerful commercial organization. Even to-day you will meet in Moscow unassuming Russian merchants leading the simplest of lives and possessed of enormous wealth. But the Russian merchant is generally conservative, un-enterprising, a bad linguist, and servilely attached to ancient usages. He is scarcely a match for the foreigner. In recent years British and Belgian traders as well as Jews and Armenians have shared in the enormous trade of the Russian Empire,but the Germans have secured the lion’s share.
And what is true of Russian trade is equally true of Russian industry. The liberal economic policy of Witte has created in one generation powerful industrial centres in Central Russia, and especially inPoland. Here, again, the Germans have benefited more than all their competitors together. Lodz, the “Manchester of Russian Poland,” has ceased to be either Polish or Russian, and has become a German manufacturing town. Caprivi, Bismarck’s successor, negotiated with the Russian Government a treaty of commerce which gave enormous advantages to German industry, and if the German Government had continued to show the wisdom of Bismarck and Caprivi, Germany would certainly have profited more than any other country by the commercial expansion of the Russian Empire.
It might have been expected that a German influence so absolutely supreme in every sphere of society, in every walk of life, should have extended to the lower classes. But the common people were never affected by German methods and remained untainted by the German spirit. To the Russian moujik, the German remained theNiemets, the mute, the alien enemy. The Russian peasant, with his simple ways and his child-like faith, a mystic and an idealist, has an instinctive antipathy to the modern Prussian, who is an implacable realist, selfish, calculating, and aggressive. The persistence with which the Russian people have resisted and escaped Prussian influence is not the least convincing proof of the soundness of the Slav character.
We have seen German influence supreme in the province of the practical, the tangible, the useful. It is all the more remarkable that it should be insignificant in the sphere of the ideal and of the beautiful. In Art and Literature the influence of Germany has been purely superficial, although the beautiful Russian language has often been spoiled by the influence of a cumbrous German syntax. With the exception of Nietzsche, no German writer has left his mark on Russian literature. The literary influence of Great Britain has been much more extensive, and has grown enormously during the last generation. But it is the literature of France which has been the dominant factor in the literary life of modern Russia. The fascination of French culture has been as old as Russian culture. Catherine II. was the friend of Diderot and Voltaire, and herself translated French masterpieces into Russian. The French language has been the language of diplomacy and society. Readers of “War and Peace” will remember how the noblemen of the Petersburg salons denounced the French usurper in the language of Voltaire.
We have sufficiently proved that Germany has been a formidable factor in the whole past history of the Russian Empire. We may hope that after the war German influence will be a thing of the past.After the war it is not German political ideas and German institutions, but French and British ideas and institutions which will mould the destinies of the Russian Empire. The elective affinities between the Russian democracy and the French and British democracies will assert themselves and will eliminate the mischievous and reactionary influence of Germany.
We have seen how entirely German power has been artificial and imposed from above, how it has been the outcome of the dynastic connection.But in the meantime the German influence supreme before the war still subsists and still constitutes a danger which it would be extremely unwise and unstatesmanlike to ignore or to under-rate.We must therefore guard ourselves, so that when the day of settlement comes the subtle and subterranean German forces shall not make themselves felt, and that the Teutonic Monarchies shall be frustrated in their supreme effort to retain a power which has been so fatal to the liberties of Europe and to the free development of the Russian people.
Inthe year of grace 1878, after the great Turkish-Russian war, a young and unknown Prussian diplomat of twenty-nine years of age called Bernhard von Bülow found himself, as assistant to his father, the Foreign Secretary of the German Empire, suddenly summoned to co-operate in the making of a new Europe. In the same year, on the same arena, an equally unknown young Scotch politician called Arthur James Balfour, born in the same year, 1849, also found himself, as assistant to his uncle, Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, unexpectedly chosen to play the identical part of an international peacemaker. And now, after a lapse of thirty-eight years, the two erstwhile Secretaries of the Congress of Berlin, to-day the only surviving statesmen of that momentous crisis, Prince von Bülow and Mr. Arthur James Balfour, are about to meet in another European Congress, and be called upon once more to recast the map of the world. But this time the Scotsman and the German will meet no more as Allies working out a common policy.They will meet as the leading champions of hostile and irreconcilable world policies, united only in a joint endeavour to undo the evil work of Bismarck and Beaconsfield which claimed to bring to Europe “peace with honour,” and which ultimately brought Europe nothing but war with dishonour.
Prince von Bülow’s whole career has been one steady and rapid ascent to high office and exalted honour. Before his fall he had earned the well-deserved nickname of “Bernhard the Lucky.” He seemed to have found in his cradle all the gifts of the fairies. His most striking characteristic is an amazing and totally un-German versatility and resourcefulness. As a soldier he volunteered in the Franco-German War, and retired from service as a Prussian Lieutenant. As a diplomat he has occupied responsible positions in every capital of Europe except London, and the exception, by the way, is probably the reason why he has always been less familiar with the English mind than with the Continental mind. An unrivalled Parliamentary tactician as well as a persuasive Parliamentary orator, he managed with even more than the skill of Mr. Asquith or Mr. Balfour the most unmanageable representative assembly of the Continent, and for twelve years he played off one against the other the ten or more parties of the Reichstag. As Fourth Chancellor of the New German Empire he has been associated with all the leading measures of the “new course,” and he succeeded for ten years in retaining the confidence and affectionateregard of the most fickle and most despotic of masters. A man of the world and a patron of learning and art, he has enlisted all the graces and amenities of social life in the service of his ambition.
Like most of the men who have built up the Prussian power; like Stein, who came from Nassau; like Moltke, who came from Denmark; like Treitschke, who came from Saxony, Prince von Bülow is not a Prussian. Like Blücher, his family originates from the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg, that strange paradise of a medieval and feudal Junkerthum. But, like most of the naturalized servants of the Hohenzollern, von Bülow proved even more Prussian than any native of Pomerania or Brandenburg. The son of one of Bismarck’s trusted lieutenants, he always remained a loyal pupil of the Iron Chancellor. It is significant that the first visit which Bülow paid on his accession to power was a visit to the fallen statesman. He was brought up on Bismarckian traditions and ideals. He is not a creative genius like the hermit of Friedrichsruhe. He has been accused of being a trimmer, but he was a trimmer like the great Lord Burleigh, always keeping in mind the final goal to be reached. He had to work with different materials and under conditions entirely different from those which prevailed under Bismarck. He had to embark on aWeltpolitik, whereas Bismarck was content with a Continental policy. He had to initiate the colonial and naval policy of William, while Bismarck systematically kept clear of colonial ventures. But as faras circumstances permitted, the “new course” of Bülow was but the continuation of the old course of Bismarck. Like Bismarck, he fought the Socialists. Like Bismarck, he in turn fought and conciliated the Clericals. Like Bismarck, he enforced in Poland the inexorable policy of expropriation and appropriation. Like Bismarck, he remained true to the Austrian alliance. Like Bismarck, he tried to work in close co-operation with Russia, and tried to build up again the reactionary alliance of the three Central Empires. And in these many difficult tasks, which had become much more difficult even than in the ’seventies or ’eighties, Bülow was as little hampered as his predecessor by any moral principles or scruples. He proved even more Machiavellian than his predecessor, adhering as steadfastly to the same implacable realism.
But, if Prince von Bülow has revealed the same aims and is imbued with the same political philosophy as Bismarck, he has tried to attain his end by very different means. He has none of the cynical sincerity of his master. Bismarck carried into diplomacy the directness and brutality of the soldier. Bülow introduced into politics the tortuous practices of Italy. He reminds one of Cavour much more than of the master-builder of German unity. Whilst Bismarck won his spurs in the embassies of Germany and Russia, Bülow received his main training as Ambassador in Latin countries. He served for five years in Paris. In Bucharest he imbibed the Byzantine influences ofthe East. He spent six years in the Eternal City, which for three thousand years has been the centre of statecraft, and which even to-day remains the best training-school of diplomacy. His marriage with an Italian Princess is another indication of the natural affinities of his temperament, and an additional proof that he constitutionally preferred the subtle methods of Rome to the more brutal methods of Brandenburg. Bismarck was always using threats which he had no intention of carrying out. Bülow is equally fond of using promises which he is as little disposed to fulfil. Bismarck was always showing the mailed fist. Bülow prefers to show the velvet glove. Bismarck wielded the sword of the berserker. Bülow prefers the rapier of the fencer. Bismarck was stern, irascible, uncontrolled, titanic, and his whole career was one long and hard struggle against bitter enemies. Bülow was ever amiable, courteous, smiling, suave, patient, elusive. He managed equally to conciliate the Kaiser and Bismarck, Herr Harden and theKölnische Volkszeitung, the Catholics and the Jews, the industrials and the agrarians. When the hour of disfavour came, Bismarck retired with his mastiffs among the pine-woods of Lauenburg, nursing his rancour and revenge. Bülow retired with quiet and graceful dignity among the statues and the flowers of the Villa Malta.
In no other aspect of his versatile career did Prince von Bülow show more resourcefulness than in his skilful handling of the Press. He was the firstGerman statesman who knew how to discipline and to exploit public opinion in the interests of Imperial policy. It is true that already Bismarck had made frequent use of the Press as an instrument of government, as is abundantly shown by his close association with Lothar Bucher, with his famulus Moritz Busch, and with Maximilian Harden. But Bismarck, whilst using the journalists, profoundly despised them, with the result that “Bismarck’s Reptile Press” became a byword in Europe. Under Bülow’s régime the humble pressman rose to influence and affluence and basked in Ministerial favour. With the assistance of Mr. Hammann, Prince von Bülow made the Berlin Press Bureau a sinister power in Europe as well as in Germany; for the Chancellor was as anxious to conciliate the foreign journalist as the German. M. Huret sang his praises in theFigaro. Even the arch-Germanophobe Monsieur André Tardieu was coaxed into writing a whole volume of panegyric on the irresistible Chancellor. Before the caprice of his Imperial master sent him into premature retirement, Bülow had succeeded in marshalling all the intellectual forces of the German Empire. Whilst Bismarck had frittered away his energies quarrelling with von Virchow, with Windhorst, and with the professors of the National Liberal party, Bülow had managed to make the shining luminaries of the Universities, the Harnacks, the Schmollers, and the Dernburgs, into the most enthusiastic advocates of his policy.
There are few more bewildering subjects to the student of politics than the many concatenations of events which brought about the present world catastrophe. If that fateful interview had not been published in theDaily Telegraph, there would have been no political hurricane in Germany. If there had been no hurricane, Prince von Bülow would not have fallen from power. If Prince von Bülow had not fallen from power, there would probably have been no world war. It is certain that Bülow’s retirement from office in 1909 was a disaster to the German Empire. It is equally certain that his return to office in 1914 and his peace mission to Italy was an ominous danger to Europe. And it is also certain that he will be even more dangerous to Europe in the eventful days to come when he will be called back to office, and be once more the leader and spokesman of German policy. In the future Congress which will liquidate the world war Bülow will be the greatest asset of the enemy. In the Congress of Berlin Bismarck, towering like a giant, dictated his policy to subservient Europe. The day of German hegemony is past, and no German plenipotentiary will be able again to impose his will by the same methods. But the resources of diplomacy will be all the more necessary to the German Empire in the future settlement, and of the art of diplomacy Bülow is perhaps the greatest master that the world has seen since the days of Talleyrand. It is highly doubtful whether there is any statesman amongst the Allies whopossesses to the same extent those special characteristics which will win victory in the international arena. If high moral ideals and perfect political integrity were the qualities most valuable to the diplomatist, Viscount Grey and Mr. Balfour would be more than a match for Prince von Bülow; but if an intimate knowledge of the European chess-board and of the psychology of European politics, if infinite wit, if nimbleness and ingenuity, are the qualities which are likely to decide the issue, Prince von Bülow will prove indeed a formidable opponent. It is almost inevitable that the European Powers shall enter the future Congress with different aims and with divergent policies. And one needs be no prophet to predict that it will be Bülow’s object to play off one Power against another; even as for twenty years he played off one party against another in the Reichstag, so he will play off Serbia against Italy, and Italy against France, and Russia against England. In those unavoidable conflicting interests of the belligerent Powers Bülow will seek his opportunity. It will be for the Allies to foresee and to forestall the danger. Let the Allies enter the Congress with a clearly defined and settled policy. Let them compose their differences before they meet their opponents. Then, but only then, will there be no scope for the uncanny virtuosity of Prince von Bülow. Only on those terms will Viscount Grey and Jules Cambon and Sasonov defeat the manœuvres of the Italianized Prussian Machiavelli and frustrate the hopes of “Bernhard the Lucky.”
Herr von Bethmann-Hollwegis to-day the most tragic figure amongst the statesmen of Europe. For three years he has borne a crushing burden, a burden which even Bismarck, the man of blood, was unable to bear in the piping days of peace; a burden from which the Iron Chancellor had to seek periodical liberation amidst the heather and the pine-forests of his native Brandenburg. As Prime Minister of Prussia, as Chancellor of the German Empire, as Foreign Secretary of the Teutonic Alliance, he has to keep a firm grip of all the threads, both of internal and of external policy. Distracted between Catholics and Protestants, between agrarians and industrials, between Germany and Austria, he has been made responsible for all the blunders of his subordinates. A rich man, and the scion of an historic house, he has led the life of a galley-slave; an honest man, he has been doomed to perpetual prevarication; a humane man, he has had to condone every atrocity; an independent man, he must cringe before his master; a peaceful man, he must submit to the continuationof insensate slaughter; a highly gifted intellectual, he has had to pursue a policy of insane stupidity. Twenty-five years ago a professor of the University of Munich, Dr. Quidde, compared the Kaiser to Caligula. The analogy between William and Caligula or Nero points to another analogy, that between Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg and Seneca, the ill-fated counsellor of the Cæsars. Read in theAnnalsof Tacitus the speech of Seneca to Nero, and you will perhaps understand the position of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg in the Imperial Palace of Potsdam.
The internal political crisis in Germany, which started at the beginning of last autumn, has come to a head because the Chancellor will not speak out. There was a time when political crises in Germany were due, not to the silence of the German rulers, but to their utterances and indiscretions. In recent months the Kaiser, the man of the three hundred uniforms and of the three thousand speeches, has committed no such indiscretions as marked his reign from his ascent to the throne; he has been almost as reticent as his unhappy father, who did not speak because he had cancer in the throat. And now the silver-tongued von Bethmann-Hollweg has also discovered the political virtue of silence. The people have been loudly clamouring for a few words of comfort, but above the thunder of the distant guns we only hear the scribblers of a servile Press, who are beating the air with their croakings.
Why this ominous, obstinate, sphinx-like silence of the Chancellor, more pregnant with meaning than the most eloquent speeches? It would be so easy for so resourceful a man to utter a few oracular sentences, a few ambiguous phrases, a few patriotic trumpet-calls. Was not the last great speech which he delivered in the Reichstag covered with frantic applause? But the days are past for ambiguous utterances, however patriotic, however oracular. The Chancellor knows that any clear, outspoken utterance on the peace aims of the German Government would seal the doom of the Government; he knows that any statement of terms would reveal the glaring discrepancy between those terms and the solemn promises so often made to the German people. The people still passionately believe in the promises and assurance of an early and final victory. Only such a belief is still sustaining the drooping spirits of the nation, only such an assurance enables them to submit to the starvation of their women and children, to their tragic isolation in a hostile world, to the appalling sacrifices on the battlefield.
And now the conspiracy of lies and the conspiracy of silence is about to be exposed. The inexorable truth must be proclaimed. The German present is dark, but the future is desperate. The U-boat campaign has failed, the hope of a separate peacewith Russia has vanished, the menace of America is drawing near. Greater exertions and more appalling sacrifices are needed, and yet all the motives for further sacrifices have vanished. The rulers were fighting for conquest and plunder. But it is now obvious that there can be no conquest nor plunder. The German people were misled into the belief that they were struggling in self-defence against the “Slav peril,” but since the Ides of March in Petrograd the Russian bugbear has disappeared. They were misled into the belief that they were struggling for liberty. But the Germans are now the only people still deprived of political liberty. Even the much-despised Slav has ceased to be a slave. The only slaves in Europe to-day are the subjects of the Hohenzollern.
This German war has been described as a tragedy of Prussian craft and graft, and the Teuton rulers have been denounced rightly for their cruelty and brutality. But posterity would be more inclined to see in this war a tragedy of German virtue. For the virtues of the German have been more terrible than his vices. For this catastrophe has been possible, not because the German people are so wicked, but because they have been so good, because they have practised too well the “three” theological virtues of blind faith, passive obedience, and inexhaustible patience; because they have been so pathetically loyal to their misrulers; because they have shown the sentimentality of a woman and the credulity of a child. The German Michel has been the politicalPeter Pan of Europe, the boy that won’t grow up. He has been the boy that has been let loose and has lit the match to the powder magazine. He has been the incurable romanticist who has continued to believe in fairy-tales in a world of stern realities. And now this child-like faith in fairy-tales has been dispelled by disaster. The vision of a holy German Empire, of the pomp and circumstance of war, its glory and glamour, is shattered. The spell is broken. The German Michel is awakening from his dreams. Walhalla is shaken to its foundation. Tor is ready with his hammer. Revolution is knocking at the door!
BothFrench and British publicists have remained strangely silent and reticent on the problem and prospects of a revolution in Germany. It may be that they are afraid to conjure up the ghost of political rebellion, lest that ghost might cause havoc in other countries than Germany. It may also be that they are unwilling to tackle a very complex and delicate question. Yet the more we consider the problem, the more central, the more vital it will appear. German policy, German diplomacy, German strategy, are now entirely dominated by the dread of a social upheaval. Measures which might seem to be dictated solely by military considerations are in reality imposed by the necessity of deceiving and distracting public opinion and of striking the popular imagination.
And this obsession of an impending revolution is fully justified. To the outside view the war may seem above all a conflict of nations, involving a reconstruction of the map of Europe, raising international issues and resulting in a new international order. But in reality the conflict is concerned with nationaland internal issues, and it must result in a new national order. If this war has not been fought in vain, if we are to achieve the objects for which we entered it, if we are ultimately to crush German militarism, which is only a vague and confusing synonym for German reaction, then it inexorably follows that the war must end in a German revolution. The road to peace must indeed pass through Berlin, but that Berlin will have ceased to be the Berlin of the Junkers—it must be the insurrectionary Berlin of 1848. Just as there can be no real war of attrition in the struggle between Germany and Europe, so there can be no war of attrition in the struggle between the German people and despotism. As there could be no compromise or surrender of principles before, there can be no compromise and no surrender after. On the conclusion of peace, it must come to a final trial of strength between the rulers and their subjects, between the masses and the classes. The issues must be fought out in a decisive battle. Even though we achieve a crushing military victory, militarism would not be crushed if the Hohenzollern were still able to command the allegiance of a still patient and passive German people: just as Napoleonic militarism was not crushed at Waterloo and revived in 1849, because Napoleon still retained the allegiance of the French people. It is inconceivable that the German reactionaries will abdicate of their own free will. It is equally inconceivable that the reaction will develop slowly and gradually into a free democratic government, as von Bethmann-Hollweg would make us believe in the historic speech of February 27. No doubt this war has hastened on the day of retribution.And the pathos of the war lies in this, that it has been a vicarious sacrifice, and that millions of Frenchmen and Britons have died to prepare the liberation of a nation of slaves.But ultimately it is the German people themselves who must work out their own salvation.They will have to turn against their oppressors some of that combativeness, of that fanaticism, of that idealism, which hitherto they have only directed against their European brethren.
I stated at the outset that publicists have maintained a conspiracy of silence on the coming German revolution, because they were afraid to conjure up a sinister spectre, and because they are repelled by a difficult and delicate subject. But there may be another and a more plausible reason for their silence—namely, that most people simply cannot believe in the very possibility of a German revolution. And if you press them to state their definite reasons for such a belief, you will probably find that all the arguments given can ultimately be brought under the four following headings:
1. Militarism and reaction are too deeply rooted in Germany. The reactionary forces are far too strong to leave any chance to a successful revolution.
2. A revolution is impossible under modern conditions of warfare. A few machine-guns, a few crack regiments of the Kaiser’s bodyguard, would at once drench the rebellion in rivers of blood.
3. The Social Democrats, the so-called “revolutionaryparty,” have themselves repudiated revolutionary methods.
4. The German temperament has not the initiative, the resilience, which are the prime conditions of a successful revolution. The whole German historical tradition is against any revolutionary solution, and any radical reform must be imposed from outside.
Let us carefully and dispassionately examine each of those arguments.
In the first place we are told that Prussian reaction is too strong, and that for the German people to attack the Hohenzollern stronghold would be as hopeless as for a madman or a prisoner to break down the walls of his prison or cell. The prisoner would only break his head, and the madman would only get himself put into a “strait-waistcoat.” The German rebel is confronted by the impregnable structure of a solid and efficient Government, a Government based on the prestige of the past, and surrounded by the glamour of triumphant victories achieved in great national wars.
The argument might have been valid after 1863 and 1870, when the Catholics fought the battle of Liberalism and when the Social Democrats fought the battle of democracy against Bismarck. But the argument ceases to be valid to-day. For this is not a national war for the Germans. When the conspiracy of lies and the conspiracy of silence come to an end, when the diplomatic intrigues, when the pan-Germanic plot, are revealed in their naked andhideous horror, it will be clear, even to the blindest and dullest German mind, that this war was waged neither in defence of national existence nor in defence of national interests. It began primarily as a war against Russia, who for a hundred and fifty years was the close ally of Prussia. It began as a war against the Russian people, who were by far the best customers for German industries. It developed into a war against England, who, like Russia, was for one hundred and fifty years the ally of Germany, who fought on many a battlefield with the Germans, who never on any single battlefield fought against Germany.
Neither can this war be described as a national war for the German people, nor has it resulted in a German victory. Here, also, when the conspiracy of silence is broken, the net result of the war will prove to be universal ruin, bankruptcy, millions of cripples walking the streets of every German city, the loss of the goodwill of the world. “Tout est perdu sauf l’honneur,” said the French King after the disaster of Pavia. “Everything is lost, even honour,” will be the verdict of the German people after the war.
In so far, therefore, as Prussian reaction was hitherto based on the glamour of victory, that glamour is dispelled. The Hohenzollerns were supposed to be the unsurpassed practitioners ofRealpolitik. They have only proved reckless and romantic visionaries. The Prussian Government was supposed to be a marvellously efficient instrument. Its efficiency has mainly shown itself in wanton destruction. The Prussian Government was supposed to be the perfecttype of a stable government. Its work of five hundred years has been destroyed in three years. The Germans had sold their birthright to the Hohenzollern for a mess of pottage. They have lost their birthright, but they have not secured the pottage. The German people had entered into tacit contract. The rulers have broken the contract. The German people were ready to surrender their personal liberty for the advantages which the contract gave them. They preferred the security of despotism to the risks of liberty. But the German people have discovered that the security was illusory, that the advantages were negative, and that the risks of despotism are infinitely greater than the perils of liberty.
But, even granting that the prestige and glamour of the Hohenzollern Monarchy are dispelled, we shall be told that it does not necessarily follow that a revolution would have any chances of success. For it may still be objected that a revolution is impossible under modern conditions of warfare, that under those conditions all the advantages are with the Government and are not with the people, that it has become very much easier to-day than in a previous generation to stamp out a rebellion, and that the risks are very much greater.
I believe that argument to be entirely fallacious. I do not believe that the chances are with the Government. I believe that they are all the other way. Modern conditions are more favourable to the prospects of a popular rising than they were, say, in1789, in 1848, or in 1871. In olden days armies did not side with the people. They were non-national. They were professional. They were made up of mercenaries. The Swiss mercenaries allowed themselves to be massacred in defence of the monarchy. The Hessian mercenaries allowed themselves to be massacred in the service of the Hanoverian Kings. Nor had the people any military training. To-day the armies are national armies. They are the people themselves. They have received a military training. They have imbibed the military spirit. If only the people can be gained over to the revolution, three-fourths of the battle is won.
In this connection it is essential that we should clearly understand the fundamental differences between a foreign war and a civil war. A foreign war is a trial of strength between one nation in arms and another nation in arms. A rebellion is a trial of strength between a nation and a Government. In a foreign war the armies will always be on the side of the Government. In a revolution the armies may or may not side with the people. They will side with the people if the people are determined to fight.
The problem of revolution, therefore, is not primarily one of military force, but of moral and political force. The people will dispose of the necessary military strength if they dispose of the necessary moral and political strength. In normal times the people are generally unconscious of their moral and political strength, even as they are unconscious of their military strength. But in times of revolution, with their political consciousness awakened by their grievances and their sufferings, with a quickenedsense of political realities, the attitude of the people to their rulers undergoes a radical change. They suddenly discover that they are the source of all power. Once that revelation has come to them, and once the subjects refuse to support their rulers and are determined to resist them, the whole fabric of government collapses like a house of cards. There lies the reason for the fundamental differences between the slow development of foreign warfare and the sudden and catastrophic termination of civil war. The Bastille fell as if by magic and as by a flourish of trumpets, like the walls of Jericho. The Revolution of 1848 overthrew in twenty-four hours the strongest French Government of modern times. And there, also, lies the reason why, in a civil war, the greatest possible results are achieved with the minimum of sacrifice. To attain the aims of a foreign war may require the sacrifice of millions of lives. The aims of a civil war have often been obtained by the sacrifice of a few hundred.
All revolutions have the same beginnings. The German Revolution of 1848 started in the same way as the French Revolution of 1848. The insurrection of the people of Berlin very nearly succeeded in 1848 in establishing a German democracy. The proudest of the Prussian Kings, the most intoxicated with the dreams or delusions of absolute power, was humbled to the dust. In an agony of terror, bareheaded, Frederick William IV. of Hohenzollern had to salute the funeral procession of the heroes of liberty, and the King’s army had to withdraw from Berlin, and Prince William, the future Emperor, had to escape to England.
And the rising of the German people to-day will have a much better chance than in 1848. If it be indeed true that a few machine-guns may decide the issue, it will be by no means difficult for the insurgent people to secure possession of those machine-guns. If it be true that a military training is essential to success, millions of Germans have received that training. Let only the merest fraction of the people raise the standard of rebellion, and let the spirit of rebellion be rife, and that spirit will spread like wild-fire, and the Hohenzollern Monarchy after this war will be brought to the ground like a decaying tree in a November gale.
We shall be told that if a revolution were such an easy task, it is inconceivable that the German people should not have risen before; and it is perfectly true that, since the bloody days of 1848, there has been no serious riot, not to mention any rebellion, in the German Monarchy. But the reason for this passive acquiescence in and for this servile surrender to despotism is due to the German revolutionaries themselves. One of the secrets of recent German history is that the revolutionists themselves have repudiated revolutionary methods. It is the Social Democrats who deserted the cause of democracy. In France Socialists were pacifists abroad and aggressive at home. In Germany the Socialists were pacifists at home and aggressive abroad.
That is why, as I anticipated in my “Anglo-German Problem” (1912), the German Socialists areultimately responsible for the war, even more than the Junkers. The Junkers and the Government knew that they had no reason to dread a renewal of 1848. They felt that they had a perfectly free hand. They knew the temper of the Social Democrats and the meaning of the Marxian creed. For it was an essential part of the Gospel according to St. Marx that the revolution, if it ever came, would come peacefully, inevitably, with the people raising their little finger, through the mere automatic pressure of economic concentration. Capitalism itself, so the Socialists said, was working for the triumph of Socialism. Once the process of concentration of production was complete, once all the capital was gathered in a few hands, the German revolution would come of itself, and Kaiser Bebel and Kaiser Liebknecht would simply substitute themselves for Kaiser William as the rulers of an absolute collectivist State.
That attitude of passive acquiescence, that sordid materialistic creed, explains the ignominious collapse of the Social Democrats at the outbreak of the war. It explains the paradoxical fact that to-day von Bethmann-Hollweg in his tragic isolation is only supported by Scheidemann and the Socialist majority. The failure is not due to any lack of numbers. For the Social Democrats had millions of devoted followers. The failure is not due to lack of organization, for the Social Democrats were the most admirably organized party known to modern history. It was not due to lack of discipline, for the Social Democrats were subjected to an iron discipline. The failure is entirely due to a lack of spirit, and thelack of spirit itself is entirely due to the sinister and dreary Marxian creed. Between Marxian Socialism and Prussianism there is no opposition of principles. Indeed, one might almost say that the present war socialism, with its bread rations, its organization of industry, its suppression of every individual liberty, its hundred thousand regulations, is the nearest approach to the ideal of the Marxist.
But as the result of the war, that Gospel according to St. Marx is totally and finally discredited. It is now admitted that the Socialists have been mere voting machines and doctrinaire opportunists. It is admitted that no democracy can be built with such ignoble material. It is admitted that, relinquishing the servile and materialistic Socialism of Marx, we must revert to the heroic conception of the British, French, and Italian Revolutions. It is admitted that the salvation of a people cannot be attained by the mere mumbling of catchwords and the waving of red flags; that it cannot be attained by the mere proclamation of an iron law of wages; that it can only be achieved by the display of an iron courage and by miracles of heroism and self-sacrifice.
But again granting that the German Socialist creed is partly responsible for the failure of German Democracy, it will be objected that this creed is a typically German creed. Granting that the spirit of heroism and sacrifice is an essential condition of any successful revolution, it will be objected that it is precisely this heroism which is lacking in the Germantemperament and in the German race. In a famous passage of his “Governance of England,” Chancellor Fortescue, who wrote about the time of the Wars of the Roses, comparing the large number of crimes of violence and burglary in England with the small number of such crimes in France and Scotland, concluded that neither the French nor the Scotch had the courage and spirit to be burglars.
“It is not pouerte that kepith Ffrenchmen ffro rysinge, but it is cowardisse and lakke off hartes and corage, wich no Ffrenchman hath like vnto a Englysh man. It hath been offten tymes sene in Englande, that iij or iiij, theves ffor pouerte haue sett apon vj or vij trewe men, and robbed hem all. But it hath not bene sene in Ffraunce, that vj. or vij. theves haue be hardy to robbe iij. or iiij. trewe men. Wherfore it is right selde that Ffrenchmen be hanged ffor robbery and manslaughter, then there be hanged in Ffraunce ffor such maner of crime in vij yeres. There is no man hanged in Scotlande in vij yere to gedur ffor robbery. And yet thai ben often tymes hanged ffor larceny, and stelynge off good in the absence off the owner thereoff. But ther hartes serue hem not to take a manys gode, while he is present, and woll defende it; wich maner off takynge is callid robbery. But the Englysh man is off another corage. Ffor yff he be pouere, and see another man havynge rychesse, wich may be taken ffrom hym be myght, he will not spare to do so, but yff that pouere man be right trewe. Wherfore it is not pouerte, but it is lakke off harte and cowardisse, that kepith the Ffrenchmen ffro rysynge.”
That “lack of spirit” which Lord ChancellorFortescue so quaintly and so unjustly denounces in the French and Scottish temperaments, may it not be more justly attributed to the German temperament? Are not the Germans constitutionally incapable of accomplishing a revolution? They lack the red corpuscles in their veins. They have no phosphorus or mercury in their composition. They have no élan, no resilience or vitality. They are strong, but only when they act gregariously, not when they act as free and irresponsible individuals. They can fight, but only when they are driven, and only in a quarrel which is not their own. They fight to-day against the English as the slaves of the Kaiser even as they fought for the English as the mercenaries of the Landgrave of Hesse.
I submit that all those generalizations are essentially shallow. It is not true that the creed of Social Democracy is an essentially German creed. As a matter of fact, the founders of German Socialism, and some of their chief leaders, are Jews. Lasalle and Marx were Jews. Bernstein and Adler are Jews. It is not true that the Germans are constitutionally incapable of heroism. As a matter of fact, no people has ever fought more heroically than the millions of blinded and misguided wretches who challenged a world in arms, and went to their doom singing religious hymns and patriotic songs. And it is not true that there is some mysterious fatality in temperament or race. The race theory is a Prussian theory, and it is a sinister theory, the prolific mother of many political and moral heresies. National temperament changes with circumstances, and the German temperament has often changed in the course ofhistory. If the Germans may be described to-day as a nation of practical materialists, at one time they were described as a nation of dreamers. If the German Government may be described to-day as a despotic State, at one time it was described as a Government of free cities.
The truth is that national character has little to do with race. It is the result of political institutions and religious beliefs. And it is the political institutions and religious beliefs of modern Germany which largely explain the failure of Democracy.
We have already pointed out the baneful influence of the Socialist creed. But there is another creed which has exercised an even more baneful influence. If we attempt to trace, farther back in history, the main source of German character, we are driven to the conclusion that it is Lutheranism which is responsible for the perversion of the German soul, that it is Lutheranism that is thefons et origo malorum. Before the war all our ideas about religion and philosophy in Germany were made up of unmeaning formulas. And I make the confident forecast that all those ideas will have to be transvalued in the light of the present catastrophe.
If I were asked to sum up the achievements of Lutheranism, I would say that it has accomplished two things equally fatal to Germany and Europe.