“Unser König absolut,Wenn er unseren Willen tut!”
“Unser König absolut,Wenn er unseren Willen tut!”
“Unser König absolut,Wenn er unseren Willen tut!”
“Unser König absolut,
Wenn er unseren Willen tut!”
“Let our King be absolute, if only he does what we want!”
The leader of the Conservative party, both in the Prussian Diet and in the Reichstag, is Herr von Heydebrand, often called “the uncrowned King of Prussia.” He is no Teuton giant, like some of the rough and boorish gentleman-farmers of the eastern provinces, but a little old man, very simple and retiring, whose usual posture is one of silent attention. The Conservative chief does not speak very often: when he does, his incisive eloquence and his terse, logical way of putting things produce a sensational effect. His speech against the Convention of 4th November 1911 and the policy of an accommodation with France, is still fresh in the memory of every German. In the caustic questions he addressed to the Chancellor—asking what was the use of the colossal land and sea armaments of the Empire, if Germany was forced to beat a retreat at the critical moment, and why the German sword had been flourished at Agadir, only to be ignominiously put back in its sheath from fear of perfidious Albion—Herr von Heydebrand revealed to us the swelling chorus that the war-song of his party had reached. After this speech the Conservative party clamoured incessantly, both with tongue and with pen, for revenge on France and her accomplices.
The Centre has almost as much claim as the Conservative party to be ranged with the Right. It was formed in the Rhine provinces, where many prince-bishops once held their court, in Bavaria, in Baden, and in Silesia, with the object of counteracting, in the name of the Catholic minority, the intolerant spirit of the Protestant majority, and of securing for the Church the liberty that is her due. Although some official party-writers have tried hard to make us believe the contrary, the Centre is a religious party. It regards the interests of the Church as paramount. Still, like the rest, it has been won over to the nationalist idea, and it works towards maintaining the federal character of the Empire.
The deputies of the Centre number eighty-nine. This figure is low, if we consider that in 1911 Germany contained about 24,000,000 Catholics as against 40,000,000 Lutherans and Evangelicals. The way in which the electoral districts have been parcelled out is no doubt the reason why this party has fewer representatives than it might fairly expect. For all that, it seems to have reached its zenith, and while for the time being it does not lose its principal seats at the battles of the polls, on the other hand it no longer gains any from its rivals. Among the working-classes its great enemy is Socialism. Hence, in order to retain its adherents in the manufacturingcentres, the Catholic Right has considerably broadened its Conservative programme. It is feeling the influence of that Christian Democracy which reigns supreme in the southern States. As the Protestant journals have taken good care to point out, it is quite obvious to-day that the party contains two opposite currents, and that a certain antagonism exists between the controlling bodies in Cologne and in Breslau, the latter being more conservative and more amenable to the dictates of Rome, while the former tries to shake off the Vatican leading-strings in internal politics. This cleavage came to light in the discussion that arose among German Catholics over the setting-up of mixed labour syndicates, composed of Catholic and Protestant workmen.
For seventeen years, from 1890 to 1907, the Centre in the Reichstag laid down its conditions and even issued its commands, as the price of letting those bills pass which the Government considered of vital importance. Defeated by Prince von Bülow’sbloc,8it took its revenge two years later, by wrecking the Chancellor’s scheme for financial reform. If after this the Centre did not hold undisputed sway in divisions, it remained a doubtful ally for the Government, and in momentous conflicts its desertion could still affect the issue.
No one can deny that the German Centre and the Belgian Catholic party have many points in common. Both acknowledge the same ideal, and fight with the same energy to protect the consciences of the faithful from the inroads of advanced teachings and the ravages of free thought. The electoral successes of the Belgian Clericals were greeted by the Catholic Press of Germany with no less enthusiasm than their own. The Belgians, who for the most part cling to the same beliefs as the German Catholics, might have expected some sympathy from their brethren in the faith, when their country was outraged in such dastardly fashion. Yet no cry of Christian pity went up from the deputies of the Centre when their Protestant Emperor pounced upon his victim; no plea for mercy was uttered by them on behalf of our stricken people; no protest against the murder of our priests or against the destruction of our old churches, where many of them had knelt in pious reverence when they came to visit our land. If they spoke of Belgium at all, it was only to propose annexation as was done by the deputy Erzberger, one of their leading men in the Reichstag, in a manifesto that was eagerly recorded by the whole German Press. In vindicating his hateful suggestion, this good Catholic appealed to no right but the brutal right of the conqueror, to no interest but the interest which the German Empire has in possessing the seaboard of Flanders with its splendid port on the Scheldt.He thought to cover the nakedness of his greed by means of those lying charges with which, like his Protestant colleagues, he tried to sully the heroic resistance of the Belgians.
As in most countries, the Liberal party falls into two divisions: the moderate or “national” Liberals, and the progressive or “ultra” Liberals. Their forces are of about equal strength in the Reichstag. The former section stands for the manufacturing interests, the latter for the commercial, and both for the monarchist middle class, which is opposed to any interference by a religious authority, whatever creed it may represent.
The National Liberals can point to a glorious past, for during the first years of the Empire they formed the solid kernel of the majority which faithfully voted for all the bills brought in by Bismarck. Notwithstanding some passing fits of ill-humour and sulkiness, they have continued to register their votes for laws of national interest and for world-policy, for the increase of armaments and for colonial expenditure. One might have imagined that a certain affinity of thought, a similar leaning towards a secular régime which would entirely prevent the clergy from directing moral education, a like distaste for aristocratic influences, would have made them lookwith a less unfriendly eye upon a foreign Liberal Government such as that of the French Republic. One might have been tempted to believe that they would make some effort, now and then, to bridge the gulf of hatred that kept the two countries apart. As a matter of fact, they have bent their energies towards widening that gulf. The German suspicions as to the revengeful designs of the French Republic were never more strongly encouraged than by the speeches of the National Liberal leader, Herr Bassermann, on foreign affairs, a subject on which he was one of the most popular speakers in the Reichstag. These utterances were a series of indictments, no less unjust than spiteful, against a nation which he had never taken the trouble to study, or which he had only seen through the spectacles of an aggravated Germanism. Thus the war must have satisfied the heartfelt desires of Herr Bassermann and his followers.
For a long time the Progressive Democrats, who opposed the spread of militarism, voted against any increase of military burdens. It was the triumph of Prince von Bülow’s tactical skill that he induced these extremist representatives of the middle classes to change front and to swell the ranks of the Conservatives and National Liberals, so as to form a Governmental and militarist majority. Henceforth the Progressives were always meek supporters of any increase in the Imperial forces. That they adopted this course at first in the interests of national defenceis fairly obvious; but they cannot have been blind to the aggressive character of the 1913 army bill. They accepted in advance all the consequences of this measure, because they too had rallied to the cause of world-policy and colonial expansion. These ideas were floating in the atmosphere of the Reichstag, as well as in the air that all who were concerned with statecraft breathed in Berlin.
In 1884 the Socialist party comprised, in round numbers, 550,000 electors; in 1912 it had 4,250,000 out of a total of nearly 12,000,000 for the whole country. In 1884 the party was represented in the Reichstag by 24 deputies, in 1912 by 110 out of 397. These figures tell their own tale as to the progress made by Socialism in Germany.
Every German statesman looked upon the Socialists as a great danger, and, taking his cue from the Emperor, expressed his fears somewhat too loudly in speech and writing. What was the use of sounding the fire-alarm, as if the house were already in flames, when as a matter of fact it was not even threatened? Why all this scare, which seems to us rather absurd to-day? German political science had tried every remedy against the Socialist taint and found it wanting, from the repressive system of Bismarck to the social reform policy of Posadowsky. In reality,however, the microbe of Social Democracy was perfectly harmless. Prince von Bülow, in his book, comes to the conclusion that the danger would become serious if Socialism, after making havoc among the proletariate, wormed its way into the middle classes, those steadfast bulwarks against all change. In point of fact it had already made considerable advance in this direction, and it drew its leaders from the intellectuals of the struggling bourgeoisie. I have heard it prophesied in Berlin that the Empire would be lost on the day that the Socialist propaganda pierced the chain-armour of Prussian discipline and found its way into the army. But some fifty per cent. of the young soldiers were adherents of Socialism; have they fought any the less sturdily on that account? This exaggerated fear, or rather this annoyance, felt by the Emperor was surely due to the unceremonious behaviour of Socialist deputies in the Reichstag and their refusal to shout the traditional “Hoch!” in his honour—a mere piece of schoolboy impertinence.
It needed no profound study of the movement to realize that Social Democracy was becoming transformed from day to day. It had passed through several phases since those heroic times when, in spite of the threat of imprisonment, it had boldly declared war upon capitalist society and the imperialist system. The generation of veteran revolutionaries, of Liebknecht, Bebel, and Engels, had passed away. Thosewho took their place, men like Franck, Bernstein, Heine, and Sudekum, became opportunists or “revisionists.”9The change grew more perceptible than ever when Bebel, the last apostle of the Marxian gospel, was snatched away by a heart-attack from the benches of the Reichstag and the leadership of the party. It was he who had been its patient organizer, finding an invaluable ally in that spirit of discipline for which the Germans are peculiarly noted. The heirs of this great speaker and great fighter ostensibly retained the teachings of Karl Marx: the class struggle, the acquisition of political power in order to bring about a social revolution and establish a collective ownership of the means of production. But their actual programme aimed at more practical reforms, especially in the way of guarantees for the worker against the employer, and of rates and taxes.
Social Democracy had become a wealthy middle-class institution, with funds amounting to £5,000,000, several powerful unions, and 4,216 local committees, paying subsidies, not merely to its numerous children, but even to foreigners, on condition that they accepted its edicts. With such resources, the battle againstthe rich employer class was far from unequal, and the propaganda went on apace. No revolutionary step was taken, no general strike was declared, no attack was made on the sacrosanct person of the Emperor. The Socialist tactics consisted in penetrating further and further into parliamentary life, not in order to raise a futile opposition to the Government, but in order to use the effective sounding-board of the Reichstag as a means of obtaining a wider audience for the Socialist message. The uninterrupted climb of Social Democracy, its remarkable gains at each general election, gave its leaders every right to anticipate a glorious future. They saw themselves, at no distant date, heading a parliamentary majority and forcing the Imperial Government to come to terms.
Their conduct at the declaration of war, which they had done nothing to prevent, was a source of profound amazement to the world outside Germany. Not the least indignant were those foreign Socialists who had been accustomed to revere their German colleagues as unfailing oracles. Had not the latter held undisputed sway at all the international congresses, imposing their theories and their decrees with that masterful and uncompromising spirit that they showed in no less degree than the capitalist classes whom they were fighting? As a matter of fact, there was no reason to feel surprise or indignation. The Reichstag deputies, like their electors, are Germans first and Socialists afterwards. Before leaving school, they are fully convinced that theirs is a superior race. Moreover, for the labouring masses of Germany the war—a brief and triumphant war, such as they confidently expected—was a good stroke of business, just as it was for their masters. It would enable the products of German industry to flow more abundantly into the conquered countries, it would win rich colonies for the Empire, it would ensure the final supremacy of the German Labour party in the sphere of international Socialism. It might have been remembered that the disciples and successors of Marx had always turned a deaf ear to the proposal of foreign comrades, that a declaration of war should be answered by a general strike; and that when charged by their opponents in the Reichstag with lack of patriotism, they had replied that, if Germany were attacked, every German Socialist would put a rifle to his shoulder as readily as his middle-class countryman.
It was quite in the nature of things, then, that the body of Socialist deputies, instead of raising an outcry against the war, should have voted as one man for the military credits demanded by the Chancellor on the 4th of August, and that it should have accepted without a murmur the Government’s statements as to an attack by Russia and by France. In spite of some individual protests, it will continue to grant the necessary milliards of marks, just as itselectors, enrolled under the Imperial banner, will continue to shed their proletarian blood like water, in order to secure the triumph of imperialism and aristocracy. Still, we have a right to be astonished when we read the pronouncements made at Stuttgart last winter by one of the prominent Socialist members of the Reichstag, Herr Wolfgang Heine. They reveal a new trend in the party, a rallying to the Empire and to those great centralizing forces, the clamps of the mighty German framework—the army and the monarchy. Conservative writers had given us to understand that a yawning chasm had always existed and always would exist between kingship and social democracy. The Imperial Government would not disarm until its enemy surrendered and swore allegiance to the monarchy and to the order of things for which the monarchy stands. And now, through the agency of war, the miracle has come to pass! Social democracy will no longer sap the dynastic and military foundations of the State; it has declared itself imperialistic.
Will the miracle last long? Will the old revolutionary demon never again seize the soul of the new convert? When peace returns—we shall see. There is every reason to think that the truce between the two inveterate foes rests on an uncertain basis. As the price of its assistance in the European conflict, Socialism will exact concessions in the shape of political reforms, involving a change in the Imperialconstitution and in that of the Prussian State. The grant of universal suffrage to Prussia is the least that it can ask for. Then will come the day of reckoning for the Hohenzollern autocrat. Let us suppose that William II., his position weakened by a disappointing war, should find no strength to resist the clamours of the German proletariate. The power would pass from his enfeebled hands to those of a Reichstag brimming over with enthusiasm and consumed with ambition. And if, in spite of the failure of his bold enterprises, he should reject the popular demands, what a struggle we can foresee between a shrunken Cæsar and a party swollen in numbers through all the mistakes, all the suffering, all the ruin that the war has accumulated! Victory alone (and even that for how long, and by what compromises?) could seal the reconciliation between two such rivals as autocracy and Socialism. Defeat, or merely a profitless peace, would have prolonged effects upon the internal situation in Germany.
Since the creation of the Empire, the Chancellors have had to govern the Reichstag with coalition majorities. This system has great advantages, but still greater drawbacks. On the one hand, the Government does not commit itself to the policy of any one party; on the other hand, to carry thebills which it regards as important, it is compelled to be eternally bargaining with parties and groups.
Bismarck at first relied upon the National Liberals, who were the most numerous in the earlier assemblies of his ministry; they were his allies in his campaign against Rome. After a time he became dissatisfied with the Liberals, who were considerably reduced in numbers at the general election following upon the attempts to assassinate William I., and made overtures to the Conservatives, both Protestant and Catholic. The latter having been defeated, together with the Progressives, over the so-called “act for the military septennium,” the Chancellor, with an eye to the 1887 elections, formed the famousKartell,10composed of Conservatives and National Liberals. This was the first attempt to arrange a marriage of convenience between the two opposite principles of government, immobility and progress. The experiment was as quickly dropped in Germany as elsewhere.
Twenty years later Prince von Bülow, faced with the same difficulties, and always compelled to reckon with the Centre, came to grief through the latter’s stubborn refusal to grant the necessary credits for additions to the colonial forces. He thought it a master-stroke to confront the Centre and the Socialists with a majority composed this time of Conservatives, National Liberals, and Progressives. This combination was invested with the French name of “bloc.” The 1907 elections gave him a short-lived triumph over the Socialists alone, for the Centre came out unscathed from the ordeal of the polls. But the team of three which the Chancellor hoped to drive with a sure hand was too ill-assorted to keep together for very long. The horse on the right, summoned by the neigh of his stable-companion, the Centre, on the Opposition meadows, was the first to kick over the traces and escape. Protestant and Catholic Conservatives then formed a newbloc, “blue” and “black,” against the financial reforms of the Government. It was essential for Prince von Bülow to carry his bill in the Reichstag, for this was the only way in which he could make himself appear indispensable to the Emperor, whose feelings towards him were anything but friendly after the affair of theDaily Telegraphinterview. Accordingly, he treated the matter as a test case, as if he had been a mere parliamentary minister, threatening to resign if his bill were thrown out. The result of the voting made this threat a reality. He handed in his resignation to the Emperor, who was graciously pleased to accept it.
If the Centre, in accordance with its conventions, has so far been the factor most capable of shifting the balance in the Reichstag, the party which hashad most influence on the trend of the Government’s home policy is the Conservative party. A study of German history since Bismarck’s dismissal teaches us that a Chancellor cannot retain his power very long in the teeth of the agrarians, although they are less numerous than the other parliamentary groups. Caprivi and Bülow, each in his turn, attempted the impossible. The former injured the interests of the eastern landowners by his concessions to foreign States, in that he lowered the import duties on cereals, with a view to concluding with them commercial treaties that would favour the development of national industries. The latter tried to saddle the agrarians with a proportional share of the burdens involved in his financial reforms—a perfectly equitable scheme, supported by all the Liberal elements.
On the other hand, as we have seen, a Chancellor who is backed by the Conservatives can defy public opinion and parliamentary opposition. Such was the experience of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg in the debate over the Zabern affair, in which he championed (not very eloquently, by the way) the inalienable right of the army to take the law into its own hands. He received an overwhelming vote of censure with philosophic calm, telling the majority that its vote did not affect him, because he was responsible for his acts, not to Parliament, but to the Emperor. What really made him feel proof against their attacks was the similarity of his views to those of the Junkersand of all those Prussian reactionaries who resisted tooth and nail whenever any one dared to assail the privileges of the army.
This ambition on the part of the Conservative chiefs to act as the power behind the political throne received a severe set-back two years ago. The blow was all the more effective in that it wounded them in their tenderest spot. Hitherto, they had managed to keep real estate, above all when it passed to an heir, exempt from the new taxes. The financial covering for the 1913 army bill, however, was passed by a coalition of the Centre, the Socialists, and the Liberal groups, not in accordance with the Government proposal, but with amendments which brought landed property within the scope of the new taxation. The fact that this vote had an influence on recent events compels me to enter into some detail, in order to explain the mechanism of the financial section of this important bill.
“We must conduct affairs in such a way,” says the official German secret report, published in the 1914 Yellow Book and dated March 19, 1913, the day after the army bill of that year was passed, “that, under the weighty pressure of powerful armaments, enormous sacrifices, and a strained political situation, an outbreak of hostilities would be looked upon as adeliverance, because, like the war of 1870, it would be followed by several decades of peace and prosperity.”
The new financial burdens were indeed heavy, even for a nation which, like the German, was visibly growing richer and richer. The expenditure involved in the new army bill was of two kinds. The one, amounting to some £50,000,000, graduated over a period of three years, would not be renewed; the other represented a permanent annual disbursement, estimated at £24,510,000 until 1915, and £11,600,000 after that date.
Where were these vast sums to be found in a country already overburdened with taxation? The Imperial Treasury had no more than £5,000,000 left over from the receipts of preceding years. The Chancellor could not resort to fresh taxes on food and drink. Moreover his hands were tied by a motion, put forward by Herr Bassermann and Herr Erzberger in the previous year, and passed by the Reichstag. This motion bound the Government to frame, before March 31, 1913, a scheme of taxation on property, in other words on wealth. “But a general Imperial tax on property,” the Finance Minister, Herr Kühn, had declared in the course of the debate, “would have been an encroachment upon the financial sovereign rights of the federated States, and the Imperial Government could not enter upon this path without injuring the federal character of theEmpire.” It must not be forgotten that Prussia, being the most important of the federated States, would have been the first to suffer from a blow directed at her fiscal independence.
An internal loan of £50,000,000 was not feasible, in view of the state of the market, in which even the most promising loans of German municipalities found great difficulty in getting placed. It was out of the question, on the other hand, to appeal to the foreign investor. He would not have lent a penny for the increase of German armaments, which were already causing a great deal of anxiety abroad.
The Finance Minister thought he had solved the problem by submitting to the approval of the Reichstag a large batch of finance measures of the most varied type.
First of all he proposed certain devices for the covering of permanent expenditure. Then he moved an increase in the assessment of matricular contributions paid by the federated States, on whose shoulders a fresh share of the burden was thus thrown. Finally, to redeem the promise made to the Reichstag in 1912 with regard to a property-tax, Herr Kühn suggested imposing a tax on increments of wealth and capital in those federated States which should not themselves have introduced such a tax by 1916, and whose resources were not enough to pay the higher rate of matricular contributions that was now demanded.
In order to meet the non-recurring expenses, the Government bill—this is its truly original feature—proposed an extraordinary tax on property and income, to be paid for the next two years. ThisWehrbeitrag(Defence Contribution) was really a special war levy, imposed on capitalists in the midst of peace, when the political sky of Germany was not in any way overcast. It was a tax on the patriotism of the well-to-do classes, an urgent appeal to national sentiment. That the response would be enthusiastic the Government did not doubt for a moment. The assessment of property began at the very low minimum of £500, that of income at the very high minimum of £2,500.
In the debate on the first reading the Finance Minister’s scheme was coldly received by the Liberal elements. It soon became clear that the vote for financial cover, which the Chancellor wished to obtain by the beginning of July at the latest, would not be passed unless he resigned himself to accepting drastic amendments. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, anxious to push the matter through as quickly as possible, acknowledged that the Government proposals might be modified.
The Budget Committee went to work with a vengeance. For theWehrbeitrag, it raised the minimum of taxable property to £2,500 with an income of over £100, and, making the tax progressive, it taxed incomes of over £250, provided they exceededby £50 a sum representing five per cent. of the taxpayer’s capital. For the valuation of real estate it adhered to the principle of fictitious capitalization, multiplying the incomes by 25 instead of 20, a co-efficient proposed by the Government and considered too favourable to the landed proprietors. The Princes were subjected to the extraordinary tax in the same way as private citizens; the assurance given by princely families, that they would contribute of their own free will, was not regarded as sufficient. On the other hand, against the advice of the Liberals, estates held in mortmain were exempted. The tax was to be collected in three instalments: the first, one month after the preliminary assessment,i.e.on December 31, 1913, the second in 1915, and the third on February 15, 1916.
A large number of the taxpayers were called upon to contribute to this “Defence Levy,” within two years, a third or more of their income. For manufacturers, bankers, commercial companies, and others who had capital in reserve, this sacrifice was not very hard to make. A landed proprietor, however, who lived on the income derived from his estate, would be compelled either to cut down expenses or to raise money on a mortgage. In the same way, a person who depended on the modest proceeds of his investments would have to sell or mortgage a portion of his holdings.
For permanent expenditure, the Committee rejected the increase in matricular assessments proposed by the Government, on the pretext that the Empire ought not to beg for alms from the federated States. On the other hand, it accepted, with some modifications of detail, the principle of taxing increments of wealth and capital. It exempted princely families, but not limited companies.
At the second and third readings, the Reichstag adopted the resolutions of its committee. On 30th June, the date recommended by the Government, the bill for financial cover was passed, as I have said above, by a notable majority, composed of the Liberal and Socialist groups, with which the Centre had combined, the Conservatives forming the bulk of the opposition.
It was a great victory for the more advanced elements, Progressive and Socialist. The Centre and the National Liberals rallied to their standard, being convinced that it was impossible to revive the Bassermann-Erzberger proposal. In point of fact, the bill passed by the Reichstag proceeded, to a great extent, upon the same lines as the measure proposed by these two deputies. A series of direct taxes, on an enormous scale, now swelled the resources of the Empire, while their yield, in accordance with the Bismarckian policy, was almost entirely reserved for the individual States. The Socialists would have liked to go further and throw the whole weight of this burden upon the shoulders of the privileged classes.
After all, the Reichstag vote was, in a way, a breachof the federal compact, and an invasion by the Imperial Parliament of the rights of individual States. It marked a stage in the journey towards complete unification of the Empire by means of fiscal processes. This encroachment by the central power was not accepted without a murmur by Saxony and the southern States. Their deputies in the Reichstag were forced to bow to the higher necessities pleaded by the Government, and to ratify a measure which claimed to be in the interests of the nation as a whole. It may be said that from this time onward the fiscal independence of the federated States ceased to exist.
The anger of the Conservatives found vent in the columns of their newspapers and the speeches of their leaders. Their representatives in the Reichstag, clinging to the Government scheme, had voted in sheer desperation against the new tax on increments of wealth and capital, nominally because it infringed the autonomy of the individual States, really because, in striking at increments in wealth due either to a rise in site-values or to inheritance in direct line, it assailed their position, privileged till then, as landed proprietors.
It was not to be expected that the Conservatives would accept this defeat without any thought of seeking revenge. The aristocracy who direct the party had supported all the costly proposals for augmentingthe military forces, in order to ensure Germany’s triumph in the next war. Their sins now recoiled upon their own heads. From this time forth, the landowners would suffer the common lot of taxpayers, and in the grim struggle that they wage with such amazing vigour against an ungenerous soil, would no longer be able to devote the entire surplus of their income to the improvement of their farms. Their rout was due to the growth of the Socialist vote, to the place won in the Reichstag by Social Democracy, whose magnetic force was attracting both the Christian Democrats of the Centre and the more advanced Liberals. The problem now before them was this: should they submit to the domination of the Left, or should they counteract it, and endeavour to build a dam, once for all, against those Socialist floods that threatened to sap the very foundations of the monarchy?
If we bear in mind the views that the Conservative party has in common with the military aristocracy, making the two bodies scarcely distinguishable; its ascendancy over the Imperial Government, whose Chancellors, like Bülow, have called themselves Conservatives by blood and tradition; its influence at Court; the dictatorial spirit of its chiefs, actuated by the most diverse motives, Prussian patriotism, class cohesion, material interests; and finally, the short space of time that elapsed between the passing of the 1913 finance bill and the declaration of war onRussia—if we bear all this in mind, we shall come to the conclusion that the squirearchy took every advantage of that narrow interval, brought great pressure to bear upon the Sovereign, and decided him to precipitate the course of events.
The somewhat forced enthusiasm with which the introduction of the Defence Levy was hailed in Berlin drawing-rooms was speedily quenched after the Reichstag vote, and black looks appeared on all sides as the first term for payment drew near. The growing burdens exacted by the army and navy now made their weight felt everywhere, and caused a general demand for some limit to the constant advance of armaments and taxation. Yet the people saw no chance of relief except as the result of a war. “... That the outbreak of hostilities may be looked upon as a deliverance,” says the secret report already quoted. This was the idea that was gradually making its way into the German mind. On the day after mobilization, while having a talk with the Bavarian minister, I expressed my surprise at the fact that the war-demonstrations of the previous evening had been noisier in Munich than in Berlin. “Isn’t it perfectly natural?” he replied. “We are crushed by a weight of taxation, ordinary and extraordinary. The moment seems favourable. France and Russia are not ready. The Bavarians think it better that war should come than that the present intolerable state of things should continue.”
Not only did the military clique make capital of this discontent for the furtherance of their ends, but, we may surmise, the Conservatives exploited it for a political purpose which is not hard to guess. A successful war was the only way of stopping the downward rush of the Empire along the democratic slope, and of regaining the mastery of the Reichstag for the moderate parties. A victorious monarch, invested with a halo of dazzling glory by his subjects throughout all Germany, could allow himself anything. Was it not after a series of military triumphs that Bismarck had overcome the last resistance of the separatists? But the great man had made the mistake—a mistake for which his successors paid dear—of introducing universal suffrage for the elections to the Reichstag. Little by little, the popular vote was threatening to bring forth a hideous monster, a Parliament in which the majority would be led by the advocates of a social revolution. The Conservatives, in spite of a promise made by the Emperor, had managed to prevent an electoral reform for the Prussian Chamber of Deputies. We shall hardly overrate the daring of their leaders, if we credit them with the design of inducing William II., after the victory, to modify the 1871 constitution in a reactionary spirit.
A certain country, not strong enough to earn the respect of the Imperial Government, had shown that it is possible to mitigate the evils attendant onuniversal suffrage by means of minority representation, compulsory polling, and plural voting. In Germany, a reform involving one of these methods, or applying some other powerful brake to the electoral car, would have been easy to introduce at an auspicious moment. Even under a constitutional government, the bulk of the German nation, with many of its cravings satisfied, and with a long vista of world-wide supremacy and economic affluence before its eyes, would have offered no resistance to the Hohenzollern who returned from abroad with the laurels of a conqueror.
This, I admit, is a mere hypothesis, but there is nothing improbable in it for one who knows the pugnacious bent of Prussian Conservatism.
Yet every medal has its reverse, even the one stamped in advance with the effigy of William II., Emperor of Europe. If Germany emerges humbled and weakened for many a long year from a conflict in which the best-laid plans of victory will have been wrecked by unforeseen elements, the scaffolding of her ambitions will come down with a crash. When its rulers are called to account for their overweening confidence, the German people—if we exclude the chance of a revolution, an idea for which this country of innate discipline has little taste—will probably demand a limitation of the Emperor’s power in the form of a parliamentary system of real political liberty. In 1913, Count von Schwerin-Lowitz, President of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, said, in a Conservative meeting at some rural centre, that the Prussians, having been accustomed for centuries to feel themselves ruled by the iron hand of their kings, and being quite satisfied with their admirable officials, would never adapt themselves to the unstable guidance of a full parliamentary system. That may be: but Prussia proper—the Prussia that has known this “iron hand” for centuries—is not such a very large part of Germany. Of course, Parliamentarism, like every human institution, has its faults, great or small according to the temperament of the race concerned. Yet these faults, even in their worst form, seem trifling in comparison with the disasters of a European war, caused by the whim, the ambition, or the bad statesmanship of an autocrat. Few men will have done more harm to the monarchical principle than William II., who poses as its champion and knight-errant. Fortunately, the King of the Belgians, face to face with this Cæsar born out of his time, has shown how a really modern king may typify the soul of his people, a people resolved to fight to the death in order to preserve its independence.
In countries with parliamentary institutions, the sovereign has to reckon first and foremost with the feelings of the great mass, and with a more active, more potent, and more enlightened public opinion. With all due deference to German scribes, we may saythat a world-war of conquest and pillage would have been so unpopular in France and in England, that in neither of those lands of freedom would the Government have set such a war in motion. I feel convinced that the Germans, delivered from the shackles of their present constitution, and governed no longer by officials, but by responsible ministers owing their position to popular suffrage, would return to their better nature, to an ideal of progress on peaceful lines.
PUBLIC OPINION: ECONOMIC CAUSES OF THE WAR.
IARRIVED in Berlin some time after the unravelling of the Morocco tangle. I knew already that the Convention of November 4, 1911, had aroused grievous disappointment in Germany. But what was the state of public opinion? Was it still overexcited, overheated through the incidents of the past summer? Or was it beginning to cool down again and revert to its normal temperature of ill-humour towards the western neighbour-country and of that general bitterness which had marked Franco-German relations for the last eight years? I decided to investigate this matter, and the study proved rather a long one.
My first thought was to seek information from the commercial world, since it is regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a barometer very sensitive to the ups and downs of public feeling. I had recommendations to several big bankers in Berlin. Moreover, our Consul-General, Herr F. von Mendelssohn, joint-director of one of the oldest and most respected banking firms in the German capital, proved exceedingly helpful,inviting me several times to his house to meet various interesting figures in the highest circles of commerce and finance. All these gentlemen seemed to me strongly in favour of peace. The same pacific note rang through all their conversation. According to them, the calm of Europe had at no time been seriously threatened during the Agadir crisis. Whatever may have been the verdict afterwards passed on Kiderlen-Wächter’s diplomatic work, it was too soon then to form a fair estimate of its gains and losses. Industrious Germany wished to live on good terms with France. Peace was essential to business, and German financiers, in particular, had every interest in keeping up their profitable connection with their French colleagues.
After a few months in Berlin, I came to the conclusion that these pacifists represented at that time (1912) the most widespread but least noisy opinions, the opinions of the majority. By this I mean, not the majority of the governing classes, but the majority of the nation as a whole. The bulk of the population, in fact, the rank and file of industrial workers attached to Socialist or Christian-Democratic unions, the little democratic artisans of the towns, the peasants of the country districts, clung, by instinct as much as by reason, to the peace that allowed them to live and prosper. They dreaded war, because it meant loss of work and wages, and was at best an unknown quantity. No one in Germany feared the other miseries that war brings in its train—invasion, devastation, or famine; for no one, either among the proletariate or among the middle classes, had any doubts of victory. For all that, in this nation of workers, the general desire was not to make conquests, but to go on earning money and getting rich. The statements that I heard from some of the humblest contributors to the nation’s wealth all agreed on this point.
Going up the social ladder, we should also reckon among the advocates of peace, I think, most of the manufacturers, great and small, and of the traders, wholesale as well as retail. The industrial employers who depend on borrowed capital—their name is legion in Germany—needed credit, and therefore an unbroken calm. Any external crisis, leading to a stoppage of business, would have made it difficult for them to meet their bills, and if it lasted for some time, would have faced them with the prospect of ruin. Heads of great undertakings who acted as their own bankers foresaw in war a temporary shrinkage in their profits, and the likelihood of being cut off from countries beyond the seas. We should not be doing justice to their insight if we believed that they shared all the illusions of the Imperial Government as to England’s indifference and her complete aloofness from European conflicts. Very different ideas must have flitted across the minds of the great shipowners of Hamburg and Bremen and the directors of the Deutsche Bank and Disconto-Gesellschaft, those enterprising men who were always busily working out fresh projects. The care that they took to reassure their London friends as to the pacific aims of German statesmanship proves to us the value they attached, if not to the peace of Europe, at any rate to the peace of the seas.
At the top of the scale, in Berlin society—a very exclusive set, in spite of the constant efforts of the newly rich to gain admittance—I met some sincere pacifists. The old German nobility, which figures in that Golden Book the Almanac de Gotha, is naturally more cosmopolitan than the country squires, and it gladly keeps up family connections with the foreign aristocracy. This class did not appear to have any hatred for the French or for the English. Such hatred was rather to be found among the middle classes: it was the envy that mushroom opulence feels for old-established wealth. The personal feelings of a few Serene Highnesses, however, counted for very little, and the same may be said of those great lords, courtiers, but not counsellors, to His Imperial Majesty, who applauded everything that he did, and offered him nothing but flattery and obeisance.
The bellicose minority, more active and strenuous, included, in the first place, the war party of which I have spoken in Chapter III. But by the side of the violently aggressive Germans there were more lukewarm spirits; by the side of the Pan-Germans and the disciples of Von der Goltz and Bernhardi there were men of a philosophic cast, who saw war coming as an inevitable necessity, a crisis decreed by fate, essential to the well-being and development of the Empire. The shades of difference among them were as varied as the colours in a prism.
Among the nobles of South Germany, for instance, the military traditions of their families were tinged with regret for the old days of independence and with a certain ill-feeling towards Prussia. It was the same with the aristocracy of Hanover, an impoverished caste (apart from a few great landowners), devoted to the profession of arms, and still loyal to the memory of their generous treatment by the English dynasty, which they liked to contrast with the stinginess of the Hohenzollerns. In the Rhine provinces, the former contact with France had left unmistakable traces upon the upper classes, among whom French culture did not arouse the same scorn and detestation as in the north and east of the Empire. For all these patricians a fresh war—in other words fresh victories—meant an even more complete triumph for Prussian supremacy, and an end of all autonomy for the smaller States. If the heart of the soldier in them beat faster at the thought of Germany’s latter-day glory, the eyes of the provincial grew sombre as they saw the shadows threaten to engulf all that was left to them of a still cherished past.
The great Liberal middle class has always prided itself on a patriotism no less watchful than that of the landed gentry. Its representatives in the Reichstag, as I have pointed out, voted for all the army bills as unfailingly as the Conservatives. This was not the quarter from which any aid could be expected, especially after Agadir, in an attempt to draw closer to France. Yet it seems to me that not a few middle-class millionaires must have been led, by their personal share in financial and industrial concerns, to wish for a continued spell of peace. In such matters it is impossible to dogmatize; but can we believe that these cool heads, these astute calculators, inclined to the view that, under the whip-lash of victory, German wealth would take a tremendous leap forward, and that the products of the national labour would swamp the markets of the globe? For my part, I think that they were too shrewd to have any hope of stifling English and American competition otherwise than by unremitting efforts in their own sphere.
On the other hand, those who supplied the Empire with its guns and its rifles, with the armour-plates of its navy and the equipment of its soldiers, must have rubbed their hands with glee when they saw the signs that heralded a fresh war, since its first effect would be to increase tenfold the output of their workshops. Other manufacturers persisted in looking on all Frenchmen as revolutionaries, dangerous modelsfor the German labourer to copy. Their hatred of the republican system was enhanced by the fear of strikes, for which these undesirable neighbours set the example. In spite of the formidable barriers raised by the most monarchical State in the world, they still dreaded the wind of emancipation and liberty that might in the long run cross the Vosges and bring unrest to the disciplined spirit of the German toilers.
It would be a gross overstatement to say that the followers of the liberal vocations were for the most part in favour of a new European conflict. Many of them were by nature men of peace; many, again, were far too much immersed in professional duties and research work to trouble their heads about politics. Yet all the highly-educated element in Germany, all those whose minds had been trained by intensive methods, issued from the same mould, that of the public schools and universities, where the fire of a white-hot patriotism was kept alive. Almost all of the younger generation, from one end of the Empire to another, had been faced, while still at their lessons, with the dilemma which Bernhardi summed up for his readers in the words: “Weltmacht oder Niedergang!” (“World Power or Downfall!”) Among university students and even the pupils of theGymnasien(highest-grade schools), knotty problems were hotly discussed. Had the era of great wars vanished for ever? Had not Germany,girt, like the Siegfried of her legends, with an invincible sword, come too late into the lists, at a time when the struggle to carve the world had reached its end? Was Germany therefore to rest content, in cowardly fashion, with her humble lot, or should she throw down the gauntlet to those who held these rich spoils in fee? As time went on, these questions grew more and more pressing, while no change took place in the relative position of the great Powers.
German literature, drawing inspiration from Tolstoi, the Scandinavian masters, and the French writers, was extremely fond of painting social distress. Although much given to criticism, often severe, of the privileged classes, it never, so far as I know, inveighed against war and the abuse of might. Vivid sketches of officers, scathing satires on their vices and on the brutalities of Prussian discipline—of these there was enough and to spare. They were often very well written; some have been translated into French and produced with success on the Parisian stage. No eminent playwright or novelist of the day in Germany, however, spoke out boldly on behalf of peace and disarmament. Their pens pricked individual types, and often drew blood; but they always respected, nay, even glorified the army, as a sacred institution, the solid pillar of the Germanic union, the instrument of its greatness to come.
The university professors, taken as a whole, were one of the most fiery elements of the nation. Notonly did they inflame with their teachings the youthful minds entrusted to their care, and stamp them with an indelible imprint of nationalism, but they did not shrink from criticising the policy, too timid for their liking, pursued by the Imperial Government. I have in my possession letters from provincial savants, in which the Convention of November 4, 1911, is branded as a disgrace, and the name of Kiderlen-Wächter held up to the scorn of every German. One of them wrote: “Such a scandal will not occur again. Germany, conscious of herself and realizing her strength, will no longer tolerate a peaceful settlement of such affairs.”
When all is said and done, the resolute champions of war—the only war in question being one with France, the opponent whose name was constantly cropping up in the patriotic books and journals—formed, so far as I could see, a rather small minority of the nation. This impression, which I gathered from my stay in Berlin and my travels about the provinces, both rich and poor, remains firmly fixed in my mind. When I call up the picture of this tranquil people, going steadily about its business every week-day, or comfortably seated every Sunday at the café tables and drinking the national glass of beer, I can remember nothing but those placid faces, on which violent passions, antipathy to the foreigner, and even the feverish stress of the battle for existence, had left none of those markswhich I have sometimes observed elsewhere as a looker-on at the human crowd.
How is it that this same nation responded as one man to the call of its Emperor and hurled itself with enthusiasm at its enemies? Because it thought it had been challenged, and that the frontiers, the welfare, the very existence of the Empire were in danger. Middle-class citizens, Socialist workmen or peasants, all were convinced that they were defending their country against the attack of Tsarism combined with warlike France and perfidious Albion; that the war had been desired, prepared, planned by the Powers of the Triple Entente, impelled by an ignoble envy or a traditional hatred.
The Imperial Government’s master-stroke lay in showing the Austro-Serbian crisis in this light to German credulity, and in appearing itself as the blameless guardian of peace. We possess an official document which supplies the proof of this clever presentment of the facts—the White Book, laid by the Chancellor upon the table of the Reichstag on the 3rd of August.
This date should be carefully noted. Two days after the expiry of the ultimatum to Russia, the White Book was already finished. With its carefully selected reports and telegrams, and its long prefatorymemorandum in which the facts were skilfully doctored, it was printed, handed out to members of the Reichstag, and issued to the public, all within twenty-four hours. To accomplish this long and detailed work in so short a space of time seems an incredible feat. There is no reason, however, to marvel at the miracle, if, as we may well believe, the official explanation was drawn up in advance, while the discussions were still going on and the Imperial Government, anticipating that Russia would not comply with the summons to demobilize, had already decided to declare war on that Power. From this it will be seen that, however much the Chancellor and Herr von Jagow may have been personally inclined towards a peaceful settlement of the dispute, they were none the less ready to obey orders from above, and to prepare everything at their offices, with a view to putting the public off the scent in Germany and in neutral countries.
On every page the White Book is at pains to throw the blame for the catastrophe on Russia. Such is the monotonous burden of this diplomatic chant. No clear light is thrown on the various conciliatory efforts and devices of the Entente Cabinets. The pacific rôle played by Germany is carefully put in the foreground, and the right of calling a whole people to account for an isolated crime is claimed on behalf of Austria-Hungary as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The military measures ofprecaution taken by Russia and France are antedated, and denounced as preparations for a war with Germany. Nevertheless, the White Book contains a telegram of 29th July which does not fit in with its line of argument. In this telegram it looks very much as if William II. were trifling with his brother, the Tsar; he advises Russia, with regard to the Austro-Serbian War, to go on playing the part of a spectator, and says that if she does so a direct understanding between Vienna and St. Petersburg will afterwards be not only feasible but desirable. An understanding about what, one may ask, when Serbia has become a mere prey, delivered up to the fury of the Austro-Hungarian soldiery? The German public, never liable to murmur at anything that the authorities may say, accepted as gospel truth the most reckless assertions of the Wilhelmstrasse.
It would be going too far to say that the people were surprised at the outbreak of hostilities. The vociferous appeal to their patriotism in the previous year, when memories of the war of liberation were evoked, had not been made in vain. Their crushing military burdens had not been imposed with the idea of persuading them that peace would be maintained. Finally, it was not for nothing that William II., since his accession, had adopted in his speeches a very warlike manner of declaring that the harmony of Europe must be preserved. When he spoke of peace, his hand seemed ready to draw the sword, andhe solemnly told his subjects that, with a view to answering any attack or insult—which no one in Europe was contemplating—they should keep their bayonets sharp and their guns in good trim. Rhetorical metaphors, some may argue. At any rate, it is a bad way of keeping up friendly relations with neighbour-countries to picture the latter, time after time, as meditating an assault on Germanism, and as held back only by a wholesome fear of its armed strength.
We are assured by many admirable writers that the war was inevitable, because the old murderous passions were not yet quenched in the German breast. A religion of valour, a love of war, a zest in the combat—these manly virtues, it is said, are still inherent in a race of warriors, scions of Arminius, descendants of the Goths, the Vandals, and the Burgundians. Some, in order to find an explanation of the present fighting, have even gone back to Odin. However this may be, Germany, during the past two or three hundred years, has waged fewer wars than France, as Prince Bülow remarks in his book; the Frenchman has shown himself more combative than the German. Too little account is taken of the long period of weakness and depression that preceded and followed the religious struggles and the wars of Frederick the Great. Madame de Staël, no doubt, read the German soul of her day accurately enough, when she discovered in it an ample fund of dreaminess, sentimentality, and idealism, whereas France at that time was throbbing with revolutionary ardour. After 1813, this sentimentalism seemed out of date; as the new Germany awoke, it gradually faded away like a dream. But it was above all as a result of the Prussian victories that a warlike enthusiasm, carefully fostered by a whole school of professors of heroism, flowed into the veins of a certain element in the German nation. When the struggle began, the youths moulded by this teaching set the example to their comrades in the field. In France and in Belgium, young soldiers have been seen to advance at the head of furious charges, singing under the very fire of machine-guns, their arms linked together, their eyes lost in a dream of glory and sacrifice....
Beside this scene, which is not without its grandeur, we must set others of a very different type. In many German souls, those of officers and men alike, the war has aroused the predatory instincts of their ancestors. Rifling the invaded country, ransacking houses, great and small, from cellar to loft, organizing convoys of booty to be sent to Germany—this is the seamy side of the fighting of to-day. This atavism, as persistent as original sin, is certainly not a thing to be proud of.
And if only the war had done nothing worse than inflame these ugly greeds! Alas! it has stirred up the ancestral cruelty that still lurked in the human slime of the hostile armies. The high command atBerlin knew its men, when it enjoined the corps commanders to show no mercy, and these officers were fully aware, for their part, that their orders would be obeyed to the letter. Twelve centuries of Christianity, long years of peace, educational progress, and the blessings of civilization—all this has not succeeded in curing the German soldier of that thirst for blood which has reappeared, time and again, like some ineradicable taint.
The war-philosophy of the university professors and the influence it has had on generations of students would deserve a volume to itself. Whence comes this implacable hatred of France among those who lived through the war of 1870 and among their pupils? We could understand it more easily if we found it in a conquered nation. And why have these intellectuals such a loathing for England? It is not enough to say that France, forty-five years ago, was not weakened enough to satisfy them, and that in the English they detest the rulers of a colonial empire which they covet for themselves. The origin of these hatreds may be traced, and their lastingness may be ascribed, to the teaching of history as it is practised in the universities, under the impulse of the Prussian school of historians, from Niebuhr, Ranke, Mommsen, and Siebel, down to Treitschke, Giesebrecht, Häuser,Droysen, Lamprecht, and Delbrück. If mere teachers in secondary schools andGymnasientrain their boys to hate foreign races, which they depict as enemies or rivals, the fact is highly deplorable; but has not the same excess of blind patriotism, unfortunately, been observed in other countries as well? What is peculiar to German universities is the way in which their experts in historical criticism have directed their teaching of the history of their country to a definite object.
The Prussian school writes German history as if it were the development of a single idea, the evolution of a movement which, beginning in the Middle Ages, goes on down to the unification of Germany achieved by Bismarck, and, starting from the first German Emperor, Charlemagne, comes to a head in the Kings of Prussia, the present emperors. According to this theory, the Hohenzollern Empire is not a new creation, but a new phase of a primeval sovereignty. After the division of Charlemagne’s heritage, the first reconstruction of his empire was the work of the Ottonian dynasty—a work carried on by the Henries and brought to its zenith by the Hohenstaufen. For three and a half centuries of almost ceaseless fighting, Germany was supreme in Europe, and ruled almost a third of the ancient Roman Empire. Frederick Barbarossa, the most popular of these old Cæsars, reigned over Germany, Italy, and the Kingdom of Arles, before perishing in anattempt to add to his titles that of King of Jerusalem. The Germany of the past, say the Prussian historians, is to be revived in the Germany of the future.
They are compelled to explain, however, the long decline that, like an arctic night, followed this brilliant epoch. Nothing could be easier. They show us the Germans absorbed from the Middle Ages in the pursuit of a spiritual and religious ideal, solely engaged in rescuing freedom of thought and freedom to interpret the Scriptures from the tyranny of the Church. The noble aim pursued by the Lutheran Reformation could not be realized without internal struggles that drained Germany of her sap for many a long year, while the Imperial sceptre came near to falling from the enfeebled grasp of the Hapsburgs. The fact that the first nation of Europe was devoting all its efforts to solving the religious problem and to establishing its spiritual control on the ruins of Roman superstition, enabled other nations—Spain, France, and England—to fight during that period for the temporal mastery of the world. The Prussian school would have us believe that in this way the Germans were cheated of their destiny. They could not at the same time follow the noblest of all ideals and fulfil their duty as a civilizing force. Without the Reformation, which nevertheless gives them an inestimable claim to the gratitude of the human race, their dominion would now extend from the Straitsof Dover to the Bosphorus and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. It would also include vast colonies, for the German mariners would not have let themselves be forestalled by others in the exploration and conquest of the New World.
At last, however, the God-given mission of carrying on the work of Charlemagne and the first elective Cæsars has been entrusted to a new line of rulers marked out by fate. Successive princes of the great Hohenzollern house have patiently built up again the edifice that time had destroyed. In reuniting the scattered limbs of the Germanic body, in making it once more alive and whole, they have restored all its ancient vigour. Once more it is master of its destiny, free to pursue its irresistible onward march.
It would not be difficult to pick holes in these scientific arguments, which are used, among other things, as a warrant for regaining territories that once were fiefs of the Imperial Crown, but have been severed from Germany for hundreds of years. The Hohenstaufen Empire included races that it was impossible to amalgamate or unify. A colossus with feet of clay, it soon lost its solidity and was shattered into fragments. The power of the emperors dwindled away in Germany itself, choked by the parasitic growth of feudal princedoms and free cities, while around it in Europe strong and cohesive nations were being formed. With malice aforethought, the Prussian theory ignores the fact that countries onceattached to the Holy Roman Empire managed to secure and lead a separate existence long before the Reformation, and, like the Netherlands for instance, have since then preserved their own language and customs, which were not the language or the customs of Germany. Others, like the two Burgundies or the Kingdom of Arles, retain no trace of their short-lived reincorporation in the Germanic scrap-heap.
After all, the most striking feature in this wilful distortion of events and processes is not its fantastic character, but the goal that its authors sought to attain. That goal was not so much to produce work of scientific value, as, by throwing an artificial light upon the past, the light of an exaggerated patriotism, to equip their countrymen for the coming struggles. The plan that they followed was to arouse the nationalist sentiment—never far below the surface—of the academic youth, by foretelling the resurrection of a great age that had vanished, by making the conquests of recent years seem paltry in comparison with those yet to be won—in short, by showing that the triumphal march of the past century was not yet ended, and that it must lead to yet more fruitful victories. The Prussian school could only succeed in their task by inspiring their pupils with a hatred of those rival nations which it was essential to crush, before the Germany of their dreams could come into her own.
The most notable representative of this school was Heinrich von Treitschke, compiler-in-chief of the Hohenzollern saints’ calendar. Since the beginning of the war, much attention has been paid to him in England and in France; people have even begun to read him. From his books on history and politics we try to gain an insight into those glowing ideas which have played their part in bringing on the present conflict. In reading them we are struck with their literary merit; we are amazed at their wealth of document, their profound study of the original sources; we cannot help admiring the infinite care with which this true artist paints a historical portrait in all its details. His influence on German thought, however, and on all classes of German society, is mainly due to his overpowering eloquence, which may probably be set down to his Slavonic blood. During the last twenty years of his life he made a great name for himself as professor at Berlin University, and saw one of his dearest wishes fulfilled—that of becoming the real educator of the younger generation.
Entering upon his professorship and his political work during the Schleswig-Holstein crisis, at the time when Germany was in the throes of her national unification, he was from the first an ardent admirer of the Hohenzollerns and of Bismarck. He scornfullycompared the wisdom and resolution of William I. and his minister with the hopeless mediocrity of the minor German sovereigns, who, he maintained, showed an alarming family likeness in this respect. The greatness of Prussia, the glory of a nation that was also an army, the Heaven-sent mission of that peerless dynasty, the Hohenzollerns—these were the articles of the faith preached to his countrymen by this apostle of the Bismarckian policy. The history of Germany, as traced by his pen, culminated in her union under Prussian sway. After extolling this achievement of the Hohenzollern sword, the prophetic writer passes on to the vision of a Germany that will become the first Power in the world, once her flag has crossed all the seas in triumph. What limit shall be set to her dominion? Treitschke, in offering these dazzling vistas to the imagination of his hearers and readers, was probably the true father of that world-policy for which William II. and Prince von Bülow are generally held responsible.
One finds in his works all the stock commonplaces, beloved of German military writers, regarding the necessity and moral value of war. He glorifies war as the foster-mother of heroic ideas, and for him the issue of battles is the judgment of God. But among all the historians who have bowed down before the Prussian Baal, he stands out from the ruck by virtue, not only of his superior talents, but also of his extraordinary aversion for England. The prideand envy of this Saxon who became a Prussian heart and soul could not endure that England should own a fifth of the habitable globe. It seemed to him that so vast an empire was out of all proportion to the real strength of the British nation—a nation of shop-keepers, which had won its territories, not by any remarkable genius or courage, but through fraud and hypocrisy, aided by the stupidity of other peoples. It is hardly surprising that he is accused in England of having undermined the friendly relations that formerly subsisted between the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans, and of having brought about that explosion of hatred which drove them apart three years after his death, at the beginning of the Boer War.