The Prussic acid had permeated every vein and artery of the Lutheran Church in Germany. Whatever religious influence that could be brought to bear on the Danes was used; but they look with suspicion on any mixture of religion and politics. Besides, their kind of Lutheranism is more liberal than the German. With the proper apologies I must admit that they are not, at present, easily accessible to any religious considerations that will interfere with their individual comfort. The union between the Lutherans in Denmark and the Lutherans in Germany is not close. The Danes will not accept the doctrine, preached in Germany, that Martin Luther was the glorious author of the war, and that victory for Germany must be in his name! I had many friends in Germany. One, a Lutheran pastor, wrote in 1914:
'Your country, though pretending to be neutral, is against us, and you, once dear friend, are against us. You are no longer a child of light.'
The effect of the religious propaganda has been too greatly underrated for the simple and illogical reason that religion, in the opinion of the people of the outside world, moulded for long years by the German school of philosophy, had concluded that religion had ceased to be an influence in men's lives.
The Pope, because he had lost his temporal power,was effete, reduced to the position of John Bunyan's impotent giant! Lutheranism, in fact, all Protestant sects, were giving up the ghost, under the blows of Hæckel, Virchow, Rudolf Harnack and the rest of the school of higher critics! These men laid the foundation stones for the acceptance of Nietzsche—Schopenhauer being outworn—and the learned as well as the more ignorant of the cultured seemed to think that, as German scholars had settled the matter, faith in Christianity was only the prejudice of the weak.
The Kaiser knew human nature better than this. While he believed in his Prussian Holy Ghost—Napoleon had his star—he was not averse to seeing the spiritual foundations of the world, especially the dogmatic part, which supported Christianity, disintegrated. Discussing the effect of this, I was forced, in March of 1918, to say publicly, 'The Kaiser is the greatest enemy to Christianity in Europe.' The reception of many protests from apparently sincere persons confirmed me in my belief that the propaganda had been more insidious than most of us believed. Let us turn now to the effect of the ruthless propaganda in Germany itself. Note this letter:
'You, I can almost forgive, because, as I have told you often, you dwell religiously in darkness; but your Protestant country, which owes its best to us, I cannot forgive. In the name of Bethlehem, you kill our sons, and corrupt our cousins, Karl and Bernhard, whom you know in America. Karl, when he was in my house last week, was insolent; he dared to say that the Germans in America were Americans, that, if Martin Luther sympathised with our glorious struggle, he was in hell! This is wild American talk; but I fear that too many of our good people in America have been "Yankeefied" and lost their religion. However, our glorious Kaiser has not been idle all these years; the good Germans in yourmisled country, not bought by English gold, will arise shortly and demand that no more ammunition shall be sent to be used against their relatives. I saw your relation, Lagos, in Fiume; he cares nothing for Luther or the Prussian cause, but he is only a Hungarian, with Irish blood, and he will only speak of his Emperor respectfully, and say nothing against our enemies in America; his son has been killed in Russia; it is a judgment upon a man who is so lukewarm. The Austrian Emperor is forced to help us; he, too, is tainted with the blood of anti-Christ. I have heard that, when the war broke out, and they told him, he said: "I suppose we shall fight those damned Prussians again!" Was this jocose? Lagos laughed; it is no time to laugh; Karl and Bernhard will go back to where they belong, in Pennsylvania, accursed for their treachery,—vipers we have cherished, false to the principles of Luther.'
'You, I can almost forgive, because, as I have told you often, you dwell religiously in darkness; but your Protestant country, which owes its best to us, I cannot forgive. In the name of Bethlehem, you kill our sons, and corrupt our cousins, Karl and Bernhard, whom you know in America. Karl, when he was in my house last week, was insolent; he dared to say that the Germans in America were Americans, that, if Martin Luther sympathised with our glorious struggle, he was in hell! This is wild American talk; but I fear that too many of our good people in America have been "Yankeefied" and lost their religion. However, our glorious Kaiser has not been idle all these years; the good Germans in yourmisled country, not bought by English gold, will arise shortly and demand that no more ammunition shall be sent to be used against their relatives. I saw your relation, Lagos, in Fiume; he cares nothing for Luther or the Prussian cause, but he is only a Hungarian, with Irish blood, and he will only speak of his Emperor respectfully, and say nothing against our enemies in America; his son has been killed in Russia; it is a judgment upon a man who is so lukewarm. The Austrian Emperor is forced to help us; he, too, is tainted with the blood of anti-Christ. I have heard that, when the war broke out, and they told him, he said: "I suppose we shall fight those damned Prussians again!" Was this jocose? Lagos laughed; it is no time to laugh; Karl and Bernhard will go back to where they belong, in Pennsylvania, accursed for their treachery,—vipers we have cherished, false to the principles of Luther.'
An honest man, sincere enough, with no sense of humour, and a very good friend until one contradicted his Pan-Germanism. One might differ from him, with impunity, on any other question! 'Our pulpits are thundering for the Lord, Luther, and a German victory!'
There had been a movement in England for a union of the Anglican Church with the Lutheran branch of Protestantism in Denmark. It may have been extended to Norway and Sweden as well, but I do not know. There was much opposition on the part of the Germanised Lutherans: 'It would be giving up the central principle of Lutheranism to submit to re-consecration and reordination by the Anglican Bishops. It would be as bad as going to Rome or Russia or Abyssinia for Holy Orders. In Denmark, especially, Luther, through Bergenhagen, had cut off the falsely-claimed Apostolical succession. How could a national Church remain national and become English?'
If I remember rightly, Pastor Storm, a clergyman greatlydistinguished for his character, learning, and breadth of view, was in favour of such a union; he did not think it meant the Anglicanising of the Lutheran Church. Men like Pastor Storm were placed in the minority. The Germans were against it. Bishop Rördam, the primate, Bishop of Zeeland, told me that German influence could have had nothing to do with the decision; he said, 'It is true that, if we wanted the Apostolical succession we could go either to Rome or Russia. We are well enough as we are.'
When the attempt at the union failed, those pastors in Germany who had watched the progress of the undertaking, rejoiced greatly. My former friend, the Lutheran pastor, wrote:
'The Anglican Church is a great enemy to our German Kultur, though German influence among its divines is becoming greater and greater. I am obliged to you for the American books on St. Paul. I read them slowly. I observe with joy that all the authorities quoted are from German sources; surely such good men as the authors of these books must see that your country is recreant to the memories of the great Liberator, Martin Luther, in not preaching against the export of arms from your country to the Entente and the starving of our children! I thank you for the books, and also for the one by the French priest, which is, of course, worthless, as he sneers at Harnack. Later, these French will know our Kultur with a vengeance! I gather from the volumes of Canon Sheehan, as you call him, that the influence on clerical education in Ireland is German. We have driven the French influence from your universities, too, and the theological schools of Harvard and Yale, thanks to the great Dr.Münsterberg, who is opposed by a creature called Schofield, are German. The power of our cultural Lutheranism is spreading against the errors of Calvin in the College of Princeton, and the Roman Catholic colleges in the States are becoming more enlightened by the presence of men like the late Magistrate Schroeder, who may be tolerated by us as theentering wedge of our Kultur. You have been frank; I am frank with you. I have received your translation of Goethe'sKnowest Thou the LandandThe Parish Priest's Work. As your ancient preceptor, I will say that both are bad.'
'The Anglican Church is a great enemy to our German Kultur, though German influence among its divines is becoming greater and greater. I am obliged to you for the American books on St. Paul. I read them slowly. I observe with joy that all the authorities quoted are from German sources; surely such good men as the authors of these books must see that your country is recreant to the memories of the great Liberator, Martin Luther, in not preaching against the export of arms from your country to the Entente and the starving of our children! I thank you for the books, and also for the one by the French priest, which is, of course, worthless, as he sneers at Harnack. Later, these French will know our Kultur with a vengeance! I gather from the volumes of Canon Sheehan, as you call him, that the influence on clerical education in Ireland is German. We have driven the French influence from your universities, too, and the theological schools of Harvard and Yale, thanks to the great Dr.Münsterberg, who is opposed by a creature called Schofield, are German. The power of our cultural Lutheranism is spreading against the errors of Calvin in the College of Princeton, and the Roman Catholic colleges in the States are becoming more enlightened by the presence of men like the late Magistrate Schroeder, who may be tolerated by us as theentering wedge of our Kultur. You have been frank; I am frank with you. I have received your translation of Goethe'sKnowest Thou the LandandThe Parish Priest's Work. As your ancient preceptor, I will say that both are bad.'
He is, after all, an honest man. Of course, I do not hear from him. His two sons are dead, in Russia; he probably talks less of 'judgments' now, poor soul! He was only part of the machine of which the Kaiser was the god!
The perverted state of mind of these honest men in whom a false conscience has been carefully cultivated was amazing. On December 23rd, 1915, a Danish Bishop wrote a letter of good-will to a colleague of his in Germany, saying, among other things, 'Even the victor must now bear so many burdens that for a generation he must lament and sigh under them.' The German pastor answered on December 27th:
'Do you remember, at the beginning of the war, you answered, to my well-grounded words, "We must, we will, and we shall win," "How can that ever be?" The question has been answered; from Vilna to Salonica, from Antwerp to the Euphrates, in Courland and Poland, our armies are triumphant; we take our own wherever we find it, and we hold it! I pity you,' the amiable pastor continued; 'I have the deepest commiseration for you neutrals, that you should remain outside of this wonderfully great experience of God's glory, you, above all, who call yourselves Scandinavians and are of the stock of the German Martin Luther. You hold nought of the mighty things that God has now for a year and a half been bestowing on the Fatherland. He who has little, from him shall be taken awaywhathe has. This war is not akaffeeklarch, and the work of a soldier is not embroidery. Our Lord God, who let His son die on the Cross is not the Chairman of a tea party, and He who came to bring, not peace, but a sword, is not a town messenger. He lives, He reigns, He triumphs! The chant of the Bethlehem angels, "peace onearth" is as veritable as when it was for the first time heard. There lay on the manger the Infant who as a Man was to conquer, that He might give peace to earth. Our Germans, who in 1870 bled, died and conquered, won for their own country and Scandinavia and Central Europe forty-four years of peace. For these nations and for a more permanent peace in this world our country is battling to-day. Gloria! Victoria! We will throw down our arms only when we have conquered, that this peace may reign.'
'Do you remember, at the beginning of the war, you answered, to my well-grounded words, "We must, we will, and we shall win," "How can that ever be?" The question has been answered; from Vilna to Salonica, from Antwerp to the Euphrates, in Courland and Poland, our armies are triumphant; we take our own wherever we find it, and we hold it! I pity you,' the amiable pastor continued; 'I have the deepest commiseration for you neutrals, that you should remain outside of this wonderfully great experience of God's glory, you, above all, who call yourselves Scandinavians and are of the stock of the German Martin Luther. You hold nought of the mighty things that God has now for a year and a half been bestowing on the Fatherland. He who has little, from him shall be taken awaywhathe has. This war is not akaffeeklarch, and the work of a soldier is not embroidery. Our Lord God, who let His son die on the Cross is not the Chairman of a tea party, and He who came to bring, not peace, but a sword, is not a town messenger. He lives, He reigns, He triumphs! The chant of the Bethlehem angels, "peace onearth" is as veritable as when it was for the first time heard. There lay on the manger the Infant who as a Man was to conquer, that He might give peace to earth. Our Germans, who in 1870 bled, died and conquered, won for their own country and Scandinavia and Central Europe forty-four years of peace. For these nations and for a more permanent peace in this world our country is battling to-day. Gloria! Victoria! We will throw down our arms only when we have conquered, that this peace may reign.'
Bishop Koch, of Ribe—Jacob Riis's old town in Denmark—was the writer of the first letter. It is not necessary to name the writer of the second; his name is legion! It is not for the right, for the defence of the poor, the helpless, the forsaken, for the old woman, pitifully weeping, in the hands of the bloody supermen, to whom, according to this pious pastor, Christ sent the sword, that Germany may rule, and force her dyes, and her 'by-products,' and her ruthless, selfish brutality on the world. If John the Baptist lived to-day, and had asked these good pastors to follow him in the real spirit of Christianity, one may be sure that they would have found some excuses for the energetic Salome, who gloated over the precursor's head.
Frequently the German pastors made flying visits to Copenhagen—after the war began—not in the old way, when in the summer they came, with hundreds of their countrymen, bearing frugal meals, and wearing long cloaks and cocks' feathers in their hats. The day of the very cheap excursion had passed. Now, they came to 'talk over' things, to assure their Danish brethren of the stock 'of Luther' that it was a crime to be neutral.
I had gone to the house of a very distinguished Lutheran clergyman, Professor Valdemar Ammundsen, to listen to a 'talk' by Pasteur Soulnier, of the LutheranChurch in Paris: Mr. Cyril Brown, the keen observer and clever writer, accompanied me. We were struck with the evidences ofChristiancharity and breadth of kindness shown by Pasteur Soulnier. He had only words of praise for his Catholic brethren in France; there was no word of bitterness or hatred in his discourse; but his voice broke a little when he spoke of Rheims, and he seemed like old Canon Luçon, the guardian of that beloved cathedral, who cannot understand that men can be such demons as the destroyers have shown themselves to be. We were late for dinner, and Mr. Brown and I stepped into a restaurant of a position sufficiently proper for diplomatic patronage, to dine.
The day after, as I was taking my walk, accompanied by my private secretary, a man took off his hat and addressed me. He spoke English with an accent.
'Pardon me; I do not know your name; but I know your friend, Pastor Lampe, one of the most learned of our young divines; I have seen you talking to him; I likewise recognised your companion at dinner last night, Mr. Cyril Brown; he is an American well known in Berlin. My name is Pastor X. I was formerly of Bremen. May I have a few words with you?'
'Certainly,' I said, interested, 'if you will walk to Friedericksberg.'
'Part of the way, sir,' he said.
My secretary whispered,—'Another spy? Shall I pump him?'
We had been frequently followed. Only a short time before, when I had escorted my wife and Frau Frederika Hagerup, lady-in-waiting to Queen Maud of Norway, for a short walk, we had been closely followed, by eavesdroppers. At the corner of the Amaliegade and SaintAnna's place, just opposite the Hotel King of Denmark, men had crawled up within earshot, and one had accompanied us the whole distance. Was this a similar case?
'Spy?' I said in French. 'Well let him talk!'
My young secretary shook his head; his way of dealing with suspected spies was to wring their necks, if possible. From a long experience with spies, it is my conclusion that much money is wasted on them. Some are very agreeable, and give the party of the second part much amusement. The German pastor, in his rusty black, looked so respectable, too! He took the right, which showed that he did not understand that I was a Minister. A well brought up German, who knew my rank, would have taken my left side even if he were about to strangle me!
'Bitte,' I said, 'but speak English!'
'I must beg pardon,' he answered; 'I could not forbear to tell you what I thought of your conversation at the restaurant last night. I should have interrupted you, but I was in the middle of my dinner.'
Hissacred dinner; ours did not count.
'I heard you say to Mr. Cyril Brown that the German nation at present is the greatest enemy to Christianity in the world.'
'No, no, Herr Pastor,' I interrupted; 'I said that the Emperor William is the worst enemy of Christianity in the world.'
'Ah, it is the same thing. You Americans call yourselves Christians,' he broke out, 'and yet your bombs from Bethlehem have shattered my son's leg and they killed thousands of our children. Your nation is Protestant. You ought to be with us against impious France and idolatrous Italy—I spit on Italy—thecocotteof the nations, the handmaid of the Papish prostitute of Rome!And yet you say that our most Christian nation is not Christian! How can you say it? We are not at war, yet you treat us as enemies!'
'We shall soon be at war. The Ambassador of the United States at Berlin is sending Americans out of that city. He feels, evidently, that, in spite of his influence with the Chancellor, you will begin your U-boat outrages, and then we must be at war! That is plain. But I think you have said enough. Herr Pastor, good-bye!'
'No, no,' he said. 'Answer me one question: why do you say that we Germans are un-Christian? Our Christianity is the most beautiful, the most learned, the most cultured!'
The young are relentless critics; I knew that my secretary was calling me names for 'picking up' this strange German clergyman in the street. Moreover, the secretary was beautifully attired; his morning coat was perfect; his tall hat tilted back at the right degree, and the triple white carnation in his buttonhole was a sight to see. (Dear chap! he is in the greasy automobile service in Flanders now!) And his cane! (If you walk out without a cane in polite Copenhagen, you are looked on as worse than nude.) Fancy! To be seen walking with a threadbare German pastor with a bulbous umbrella! He groaned; he knew that I would pause on the brink of an abyss for a little refreshing theological conversation!
'You cannot deny, Herr Pastor,' I said, 'that you people in Germany swear by Harnack, that Strauss'sLife of Jesusis a book that you look on with great admiration, that much of the foolish "higher criticism" like the attacks on Saint Luke,[10]which Sir William Ramsay has so carefully refuted, and all the sneering at the fundamentalsof Christianity have come from Germany, with the approval of the Emperor.'
'There are no English scientific theologians. I do not know your Ramsay. We are learned; we study; we see many of the Christian myths in an allegorical sense, but yet we adore the German God, who is with us, and we believe in Christ, though our learned ones may dissipate much that the populace hold. There must be a broad law for the Christian divine; a narrow one for the humble believer. We may not accept miracles, we of the learned, but we may not disturb the belief of the people in them. Culture must come from the top. The Catholics among us still accept the miracles, but they are most retrograde of the Germans. We are gaining upon them. It is theZeitgeist; when we have conquered, with their help, we shall teach them the real lesson of Christianity! The German God will not brook idolatry. Our scientists disprove myths, but we work in the line of Luther still. He disproved myths!'
'I do not hold a brief for Martin Luther,' I said, 'but I think that he would have cursed any man who denied the divinity of Christ. You talk of a German God. He is not a Christian God, and I repeat to you what you heard me say to my friend in the restaurant.'
'It is well, sir,' he said, 'to hear this coming from an American who defends the starving of our children and the supplying of arms to slaughter us. We have God on our side—the German God. We only!'
'Good day, sir,' I said; 'you corroborate my impression about your Christianity!'
I took off my hat, and crossed the street. He stood still; 'These Americans are rude!' my secretary heard him say.
This would seem impossible to me—if I had not beena part of the episode; if it seems impossible to you—the result probably of some misunderstanding on my part—let me quote a few examples of the result of the Prussian propaganda among a people whom we considered, at least, honest and not un-Christian. But, first: on the Long Line for my usual walk with Mr. Myron Hofer, one of the first Americans to rush from his post at the Legation and join the Aviation Corps, I saw the pastor again. Mr. Hofer saw him coming towards us, and said:
'You ought not to stand in the wind, if that man speaks to you; let us go on.'
'Go on,' I said, 'but come back to rescue me in a minute or two.'
'Excellency,' the pastor said, 'I have heard from Pastor Lampe who you are. Forgive me for addressing you!' And he passed on, hat in hand.
What can one make of this bigotry and Phariseeism? Have these qualities developed only since the war? Will they disappear after the war? 'And the devils besought him, saying: If thou cast us out hence, send us unto the herd of swine. And he said to them: Go. But they going out went into the swine, and behold the whole herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea: and they perished in the waters.'
We all know that London was an unfortified city. Read this, from theEvangelische-lutherische Kirchenzeitung, written in 1915. It is an answer to the truthful charge that children, helpless women, old men, civilians going quietly about their business, had been slaughtered by the pitiless rain of death from the skies. The Danish Lutherans, among whom this pious sheet had been circulated with a view to exciting their sympathies, did not accept this.
'London has ceased to be a city without the defence of fortifications; it is filled with such numbers of aeroplanes and anti-aircraft guns, that, as we are all aware, the Zeppelins can attack it at night only. To attack London is to make an offensive on a den of murderers.'
'London has ceased to be a city without the defence of fortifications; it is filled with such numbers of aeroplanes and anti-aircraft guns, that, as we are all aware, the Zeppelins can attack it at night only. To attack London is to make an offensive on a den of murderers.'
'If you ask me,' says theProtestenblatt, Number 18, 'how shall I build up the kingdom of God,' my answer is: 'Be a good German! Stand fast by the Fatherland. Do your duty and fill your mission.Seek to submerge yourself in German spirit, in German mind.Be German in piety and will, which simply means, be true, faithful, and valiant. Help as best you can towards our victory; help to make our Fatherland grow and wax mighty.'[11]
It is true that there are Protestants in Germany who will not accept the 'Fatherland' as God and eternal life or as a life continued in the memories of later generations, as a Hessian peasant put it in a letter written from the Front. His attitude shows how barren all this rhetoric seems to the unhappy soldier who must obey. Those who knew the lives of truly religious Germans before the war must believe that these arrogant, feverish, diabolical utterances do not represent them. The Lutheran households where the fear of God and the love of one's neighbour reigned cannot have entirely disappeared; the old Christian spirit must fill some hearts. But here is a man, a Lutheran divine, whose pious books have 'circulated in the Army in millions of copies.' He is a very great clergyman; if you saw him in the streetsof Lübeck, or Hamburg, or Berlin, many hats would be raised; even officers in the Army would greet him with respect. He isGeheimkonsistorialrath! 'Likewise,' he writes, in his book,Strong in the Lord—'the blessings of the Reformation are at stake. Shall French ungodliness, shall Russian superstition, shall English hypocrisy rule the world? Never! For the blessing of our faith, for the freedom of our conscience, for our Germanism and for our Gospel, we shall fight and struggle and make every sacrifice.Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.And, if the world were full of devils, we shall maintain our Empire!'
According to Dr. Conrad, Germany is a great surgeon. She must cut; she must even kill, if necessary, the nation that stands in the way of her beneficient Kultur!
So strenuously has the name of Martin Luther been made use of by these fanatics, that the fact is lost sight of in Germany, that the question is not one of religion. There is scarcely a war even in modern times with which religion had so little to do as this; but to hear these shriekers from the pulpit, one would think that Martin Luther was the instigator of the war and that the Kaiser is his prophet! What the Catholic population in Germany—in Bavaria, in Silesia—what the Jews in Berlin and Munich think of all this, we have not yet discovered. A Cardinal holding the standard of Luther, with two Rabbis gracefully toying with its gilded tassels is a sight the preachers offer to us when they appeal to Luther as the representative of Germany. Luther was no democrat; he would scarcely have approved of President Wilson's speeches; but yet he would not have worshipped the trinity of the Kaiser, the Crown Prince and the Prussian Holy Ghost as the Godhead!
Think of the tremendous force that must have perverted these 'men of God!' Who can help believing in the miracle of the swine driven into the sea after this, or in the old Latin adage, 'Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad,' or in Shakespeare's 'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds?' Religion is made a mark to cover avarice and arrogant ambition, Christianity, to veil a god more material than the Golden Calf.
The learned Danes answered the shrieks of the preachers, and the specious reasonings of such scientists as Wilhelm von Bode, Wundt, Richard Dehmel, Wilhelm Röntgen, Ernest Haeckel, Sudermann, etc., with dead silence, erudition and art had been corrupted. 'In Italy,' Christopher Nyrop,[12]the Dane, says, 'which, when the manifesto of the German learned appeared, was not among the belligerent States, the amazement and the disappointment were so great that the ninety-three signers, "representatives of German Kultur," were namedVerräter der deutschen Kultur, traitors to German Kultur.' It was only necessary to change 'Vertreter' to 'Verräter.' And among them were Max Reinhart, Harnack, Gerhard Hauptmann, Siegfried Wagner!
The wonder and amazement were even greater when there was no protest from the Catholics or the Lutherans of Germany against the inexcusable outrage on Louvain or Rheims. The remonstrances of the Pope were unheeded. It was the policy of the German Government to suppress them as far as possible. It wanted to give the impression that the Holy Father was theirs,and too many thoughtless persons fell in with thisidea. That the German Catholics were misinformed byBethmann-Hollwegand the War Office makes their position worse.
The proofs offered by the Dean of the Cathedral of Rheims proved that this horror, the destruction of the sacred symbol of the French nation, was not 'a military necessity.'
The visits of Mr. John R. Mott to the Scandinavian countries were events; his was a name to conjure with. When an intimation of his coming appeared in the papers, our Legation was bombarded with requests for the opportunity of meeting him. 'We must,' my wife often said, 'make it understood that every American of good repute shall be welcome in our house; and it is our mission to give our Danish friends an opportunity to meet him.'
The Danes came to know this and, whenever there was an American in Copenhagen worth while—I do not mean merely having what is called 'social position'—we were always glad to arrange that the right persons should meet. We were not socially indiscriminate, but we were certainly eclectic. We wanted Mr. Mott for three meals a day, but he was always, like Martha, so busy about many things, that we could only secure him for a short breakfast or something like that, with one of his warmest admirers, Count Joachim Moltke, who is devoted to the moral improvement of young men, and Chamberlain and Madame Oscar O'Neill Oxholm. The only rift in the lute of the affection of certain Danish ladies for my wife was that she allowed Mr. Mott to leave Copenhagen on various occasions without 'making an occasion' for them to meet him. Among these ladies were Mademoiselle Wedel-Hainan, one of the ladies in-waiting to the Queen Dowager, and othersinterested in the cultivation of reverence for Christianity among their compatriots. The result of Mr. Mott's masterly work was shown when the war broke out. The 'red-blooded' who formerly looked at the Young Men's Christian Association as rather effeminate and effete must, in view of what it has done in Europe, forever close their lips.
At this time, in 1909, we had expectations of another visitor. Cardinal Gibbons almost promised to make the Northern trip; he would come to Copenhagen, it was intimated in a Baltimore newspaper. Great interest was shown among these agreeable Athenians, the cosmopolitan Danes. The question of etiquette bothered me; Sweden had still remote relations with the Holy See, though the Catholic religion is still practically proscribed in that country. At least, the King of Sweden writes, I think, a letter once a year to his 'cousin,' the Pope, or is it to his 'cousins,' the Cardinals; but Denmark, though very liberal since 1848 in its religious attitude, has not such vaguely official relations. I was informed that no Cardinal had visited Denmark since the Reformation. I made inquiries in the proper quarters at once. Of course, I might give Cardinal Gibbons his rank as a Prince of the Church, and even the most exalted who should go in after him at our dinner would be pleased. He could not come. His one hasty trip to Europe, after his friends had raised my hopes of his visiting us, was to be present at the Conclave that elected BenedictXV.PiusX.had died of a broken heart, and the heart of the Cardinal was sore and troubled at the horrors thrust upon the world. What he has done to fill our army and navy with courageous men contemporaneous history shows.
But the great visit, the epoch, which dulled even theglories of the coming of the Atlantic Squadron, was that of ex-President Roosevelt. To the Danes it was almost as if Holger Dansker, who, as everybody knows, is waiting in the vaults of Hamlet's castle at Elsinore to protect Denmark, had burst into the light.
From the European point of view, which took no account of our home politics, ex-President Roosevelt was not only the most important figure in America, but in the world, and the most picturesque. Even under the New Democracy, men will probably count more than nations in the minds of our brethren across the sea. However large collectiveness may loom in the future, there will be some man or other who will show above it, who will be a part greater than the whole. Mr. Roosevelt had made the Panama Canal possible; he had succeeded when De Lesseps had failed; he had forced, more than any other President before him, the respect of Europe; the Radicals wanted to greet him because he had curbed the power of the capitalists; kings and prime ministers welcomed him because they—even the Kaiser—feared his potentialities. That he would be the next President of the United States nobody in Europe doubted. These people were not welcoming, as they thought, a man like General Grant, who had merely done a great thing. The American who was coming was not only a man of splendid past, but one with a future that was rising up like thunder. You can imagine the excitement in Copenhagen when it was announced that he would pay that city a short visit. From Copenhagen he was to go to Christiania to make a Nobel Prize speech. The death of Björnson occurred just at this time; it was mourned in both Norway and Denmark as a national loss; but even this did not affect the reception of the ex-President.
'We would have rejoiced in our sorrow for nobody else,' the Norwegian Minister said.
King FrederickVIII.had made all his arrangements to go to the Riviera; his health was not good. He sent for me; he was doubtful whether the rumours of Mr. Roosevelt's visit were well founded or not.
'If he comes, this most distinguished citizen of yours, I will see that he is received with the greatest courtesy; I will do as much for him as if he were an Emperor. He and his family shall be given the Palace of ChristianVII.during their stay. My son, the Crown Prince, will go to greet him; I regret, above all things, that I cannot be here.'
Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt came; he saw; he conquered, but Mrs. Roosevelt won all hearts. The young folks, Kermit and Ethel, fled from all gaieties and ceremonies and explored the town; if I remember they courted not the smiles of kings and princes; but they searched intensively forspecimensof old pewter.
Mr. Roosevelt's trunks did not arrive in time; he and Mrs. Roosevelt were obliged to wear their travelling clothes. In the long history of court life in Denmark this had occurred only once on a gala occasion, and the guest had been Her Majesty the Queen of England, when she was Princess of Wales. She had accepted the result with the utmost simplicity. Mrs. Roosevelt, the ladies of the court said, was 'royal' in the charming way in which she accepted this unpleasant accident; she has contradicted practically the stories that American ladies have the plebeian habit of 'fussiness.' The Crown Princess declared that Mrs. Roosevelt was 'adorable,' and the Crown Prince referred to the pleasure of this visit nearly every time, during the last eight years, I met him. 'He is a Man,' he said.
The Marshal of the Court arranged the etiquette admirably, and there was not the slightest hitch. Some of my colleagues who knew that Mr. Roosevelt, as an ex-President, had no official rank, wondered how the technical details of the reception of a 'commoner' had been arranged. The Court and the Foreign Office offered all the courtesies usually bestowed on royal highnesses. The Legation and the Consulate were particularly proud of the decorations of the railway station, and grateful to the Minister of Commerce who was responsible for them.
As usual, Admiral de Richelieu was both thoughtful and generous. The best part of the programme, the voyage and breakfast on theQueen Maud—we went to Elsinore—and a hundred other agreeable details were arranged perfectly by him and Commander Cold, director of the Scandinavian-American Line.
A great dinner, such as only Danes can manage to perfect at short notice, was offered to him by the Mayor and the Municipality of Copenhagen. His speech was eagerly looked for. It charmed the Moderates; the extreme Socialists, who had claimed him for their own, were disappointed. 'Your Radicalism is our Conservatism,' said Chamberlain Carl O'Neill Oxholm.
Later, we heard that the Kaiser was disappointed in Mr. Roosevelt. This was from one of the Berlin court circles. Mr. Roosevelt (this was saidsub rosa) had not been too Radical, but too frank. After all, there was no reason why a man who had represented the people of one of the greatest nations on earth should be too reverential to the All Highest!
When Mr. Roosevelt left Denmark, he left an impression of force, of virility, of dignity, of honesty that became part of the history of the country.
In 1911 Loubet, the French ex-President, came with his son Paul and a staff of delegates to the International Congress of Public and Private Charities. He was very genial and frank—qualities inherited by his son. His conversation was directed to the rapid reconstruction of France after 1870. 'A country that can do that has little to fear,' he said, 'if we can avoid the pitfalls of professional politicians. That may be our difficulty. Our enemies are glad that there should be dissensions among us, vital dissensions, not the healthy differences of opinion you have in your country.'
'Et "la revanche?"'
'Ah,Monsieur le Ministre,' answered one of his staff, 'how can he speak of that, with the German Minister, Mr. Waldhausen, so near us? He is beckoning to you now. It is not "revanche" we want, but the return of our territory. If that could be done without war! Paul, his son, will talk international politics with you, if you like. As to local politics, the Royalists do wrong in mixing religion and politics; it forces the hand of the Opposition, and makes the attitude of us Republicans misunderstood. In spite of all dissensions, France is one at heart; but the voice of the country is not for war. Of course, we may have to fight in our colonies.'
'Tripoli?' I asked.
'No,' he answered smiling. 'That's the leading question. We must fight as you fought the Red Indians. We have no fear of war at present—our ways are the ways of peace.'
'Naturally,' I answered, 'since the German Minister tells me that Germany will never fight France unless attacked, and he sees no signs of that.'
'The Belgians are growing restless because Hamburg is taking all the Brazilian coffee trade,' he said, absent-mindedly.
'Which means, interpreted,' I answered, 'that we might well look after our interests in Brazil.'
'Like all Frenchmen,' he said, 'I am ignorant of foreign geography, but our Ambassador in Washington is different; he knows the world, and the United States.'
I thanked him; I was always glad to hear Frenchmen speak well of Mr. Jusserand. He deserved all the praise they could give him.
'My friend,' said Paul Loubet, 'says the world and the United States, which means, I suppose, that Europe is one world and the United States another.' 'It almost seems so in Europe; but your acquisition of the Philippines will probably make you more and more a part of the European world.' 'I am afraid that George Washington and Lafayette would not have liked this,' said the ex-President.
One of the French delegates asked me whether it was true that the Germans would try to make terms with us for a cession of some foreign territory for one of the Philippine Islands. Waldhausen was at my elbow; I, smiling, put the question to him.
'It is Arcadian,' he said.
'Germany never gives up what she holds,' said the Frenchman, also smiling. 'Otherwise, you might induce her to surrender Heligoland to England, for a consideration, with the understanding that England should give it back to Denmark.'
Waldhausen laughed.
'Such generosity is too far in advance of our time. I am afraid Admiral von Tirpitz might object.'
Von Tirpitz, for those behind the scenes in German politics, was much in the public eye. It was well understood that as far as the naval programme was concerned, he was Germany. If the seizing of Slesvig and the completion of the Kiel canal made the German Fleet possible,with the acquiring of Heligoland, the efforts of Admiral von Tirpitz had made it a Navy. Through all the financial difficulties of the German Government, difficulties that alone prevented it from attacking France, von Tirpitz had held fast to the axiom that Germany's future was on the ocean. He was not the kind of marine minister who sticks fast to his desk and 'never goes to sea.' He had become the 'captain of the King's navee' by knowing his business, and, more than that, by studying the caprices of his Imperial Master's mind, as well as its fixed determination. Many times I had been told by candid friends in the diplomatic corps that the German Emperor had no respect for our navy, that he knew every ship by heart, that nevertheless, he examined as far as possible any new inventions adopted by our naval experts who were most kind in permitting German naval attachés and experts to examine them. In 1911 the coming of the Atlantic Squadron had excited interest in the naval position of our country. One scarcely ever saw an American flag on the ocean. Whatever Columbia did or wanted to do, she did not rule the seas; so our flag on the ships of the Atlantic Squadron was a delight to all Americans and somewhat of a surprise to foreigners.
At Kiel the general impression seemed to be that the Atlantic Squadron represented our whole navy! The Kaiser and von Tirpitz knew better, of course. Privately the Kaiser expressed his amusement at our attempt to build warships—he and von Tirpitz had secrets of their own. However, America was important enough to be given a sedative until his designs on France and Russia were completed. One might suspect this, then; but who could believe it!
My correspondents in Germany—people who know arewonderful helps to a man in the diplomatic service—concerned themselves largely with von Tirpitz and General von Freytag-Loringhoven. Von Tirpitz was the German Navy and the very intelligent writings of General the Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven made us almost think that he was the Army.
'Is he related to Freytag?' I had asked.
'What, the novelist?'
'The author ofDebit and Credit?' I added.
'Certainly not; he is one of the greatest of the Baltic baronial families.'
If I had asked a Bourbon, in the reign of LouisXIV., whether he was related to Crébillon, he could not have been more shocked. Von Freytag-Loringhoven cut a great figure in Berlin. He had Russian affiliations, being of a Baltic family; his father had been well known in diplomacy. He knew Russia as well as he knew Germany; he was technical and experienced, and his writings were supposed to give indications of the ideas of the General Staff. The Russians in Copenhagen talked much of von Freytag-Loringhoven. I must repeat that, in interesting myself in German personalities, I was not considering them in relation to the future of my own country. There were some among my friends, like James Brown Scott—men of foresight—who seemed to have a wider vision. I was interested because I feared that the autonomy of a little nation was at stake, and because the absorption of that little nation would mean the assumption of the Danish Antilles.
That Germany had consulted Russia about a question to make war with England a pretext for seizing Denmark, we suspected. The end of the Japanese War had curbed Russia's eastern ambition for a time. How were we tobe sure that the Baltic and the North Sea might not, under German tutelage, attract her?
If von Freytag-Loringhoven's utterances were to be taken seriously, it was evident that war was in the air; and why was von Tirpitz building up the German Navy? The distributors of rumours in Denmark said that all hopes of a Scandinavian confederacy were to be ended by a quarrel with England, a move on France, and the division of Scandinavia into two parts, one nominally Russian, the other, Denmark, to be actually German, while Norway should gradually be terrorised into submission. This shows how excited public opinion was. The German propaganda spread pleasant reports of the peaceful intentions of the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and the personages in power in Germany. Above all, we were told how charming the Crown Princess Cecilia was, and how potent her influence would be in warding off any attempts of the Pan-Germans on Denmark, even if Germany and England should fly at each other's throats.
People in the court circle, who knew how little royal family alliances count to-day in actual politics, admitted that the Crown Princess was most charming and sympathetic; she is the sister of the Queen of Denmark, and she had become as German as it was possible for the daughter of a Russian mother to be. Her sister, Queen Alexandrina, had become thoroughly Danish, but then her tendencies had always been towards democracy and the simplicities of life.
The German news vendors alternately praised the Crown Prince and depreciated him. If he were violent, it was against the wishes of his father—he was a second Prince Hal trying on the imperial crown. As a rule, however, he was brought out of the background to showhis virtues. On several occasions he had evinced more knowledge of what was going on than his father. This was notable in the Eulenberg scandal, when he fearlessly laid bare a horrible ulcer which was beginning to eat into the heart of the army. On this subject he and Max Harden, of theZukunft, were in amazing alliance. Whatever may be said of the Crown Prince's political ambitions—and we believed and do believe that they meant world conquest—he is very much of a man. In 1911, it was understood that he would not condescend to wear the peace-mask that seemed to conceal his father's face. Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor, was temporising as usual. The Moroccan affair led to nothing because Germany's financial backers were not ready for war. The Chancellor was attacked by von Heydebrand; the Danish press gave graphic accounts of the scene when the Crown Prince, from the royal box, applauded every insult that the powerful Junker heaped on the Chancellor, who was merely the tool of the Kaiser. It was the time of the Emperor to temporise; the time had not come to strike; Germany was not rich enough. Russia was still doubtful. France, in the imperial opinion, was not sufficiently corrupted, and the dissensions between Ulster and the rest of Ireland had not yet reached that poisonous growth which, in that opinion, would force mutiny and sedition to poison the English. The Crown Prince probably, in his frankness, voiced more than his own inner sentiments. At any rate, to us near the frontier, it seemed so. However, the incident was used to the credit of the Crown Prince. Fair and open dealing for him! England might interfere in Morocco and other places to prevent his country from taking a place 'in the sun'; but let us have it out!
In the secret councils of the Social Democrats was thehope that, if a Hohenzollern must succeed the Kaiser, it would not be the Crown Prince. In spite of his amiabilities and his apparently youthful point of view of life—though there were fewer indiscretions to his credit than are generally attributed to Crown Princes—it was known that he was military to the core, and that in his time the soldier of the world would never lack employment. While the Kaiser was constantly insisting that more soldiers and more sailors and Krupp von Bohlen's newest instruments of destruction were pawns in the game of peace, his son made no pretence of agreeing with him. Clever or not, he had held that a straight line was the shortest way from one given point to another. And the Zabern incident and several others showed that the Crown Prince meant, when his chance came, to make war after the Napoleonic method and to exalt the sword above the pen and the ploughshare.
The Social Democrats in Denmark were not flattered when he said that 'one day the Social Democrats would go to court!' But he was right; they went to court as their old Emperor went to Carrossa, when they accepted the war! The German writers said, too, that in France his admiration for Napoleon endeared him to the French. If he appeared in Paris, he would be as popular as King Edward of England was when he was Prince of Wales! 'Who knows,' one of their writers said, 'he may make the hopes of the Duke de Reichstadt his own, and live to see them fulfilled'? I called the attention of an Austrian friend to this. This gentleman, high in favour in 1909, but somewhat gloomed in 1914, owing to abon mot, said: 'But the French remember that the heir of Napoleon, who might have completed his father's conquests, was the son of an Austrian mother.' He wasgemütlich, like his grandfather, theysaid, and how sweetly amiable to the American ladies who had married into the superior race! More than one titled American hoped to be saved from the position of morganaticism in the future through the kindness of His Imperial Highness. But the fixity of will has been underrated. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe; his eyes were on the kingdoms of Solomon and of the jewelled monarchs of the East. Why he failed, the Crown Prince believed he had discovered. There was no reason, therefore, why a Prussian Napoleon might not succeed, and no necessity to repeat the defeats of Moscow and Waterloo. The Prince would begin by fighting Waterloo first and then putting Russia out of commission!
In 1913 Mr. Frederick Wile, then correspondent of the LondonDaily Mail, wrote: 'He is the idol of the German Army almost to a greater degree than his father. HisHunting Diaryis amusing. He writes of his sympathy with his 'sainted' ancestor Frederick the Great, in the dictum that everybody should be allowed to pursue happiness and salvation in his own sweet way.' Holy Moses!
It was not difficult to get near to the characters of the important men in power in Germany. A night's run took one to Berlin, and atFlensberg, a few hours from our Legation, one could see the German war vessels. There were constant visits of Germans of distinction; Prince Eitel Friedrich often came in his yacht, and the Waldhausens—Madame Waldhausen was a Belgian—were constantly entertaining guests of all countries. Princess Harald, the wife of Prince Harold, brother of the King of Denmark, attracted many Germans, with whom she was in sympathy.
At court very few Germans appeared, unless they were of high official rank. Both King ChristianX.and the Queen seemed to prefer to speak English, and nothing irritated the King, who speaks English and French and German well, more than any attempt on the part of a diplomatist to speak to him in Danish. It is best, I think, for diplomatists at court to use French. One is always more guarded in speaking a foreign language, but every member of the Danish Court spoke English and seemed to like it. Prince Valdemar and the Princess Marie always spoke English in their family. Prince Valdemar's French was not so good as his English, and, in the beginning, the Princess Marie found the learning of Danish slow work, and she had, during the exile of her family in England, become entirely at home in the English language. Prince Axel, their son, who recently visited America as the guest of the American Navy, spoke English admirably. Like all his family, he is in love with freedom.
Nevertheless, German was much spoken in Denmark, and the intercourse between the two countries close. The point of view of Germany, or, rather, the Germans, was better understood in Denmark than perhaps in any other country, the more so because the Danes, naturally satirical and entirely disillusioned as to the altruism of great European nations, looked with clear eyes at the progress, or, rather, the evolution of Germany. Whatever progress Germany had made, many of them, like the learned Dr. Gudmund Schütte, who reluctantly agreed that the reconquest of Slesvig would be 'to commit suicide in order to escape death,' never seemed to utter a word of German without remembering the loss of their provinces.
The most astonishing things were the intellectualgreatness and exact training of the German thinkers and doers, and, at the same time, their lack of independence. With the outside world, as far as one could gather from the press and conversations with the English, French and Americans—though my fellow countrymen, as a rule, showed little interest in foreign affairs—it was plain that the German political parties were supposed to be static: the Conservatives Junkerish, the Centrists intensely Catholic, following the slightest signal of the Pope, the Socialists devoted to the ideas of Bebel, and the Liberal-Nationalists fixed in their opinion that a moderate constitutional monarchy was to be, in Germany, the solution of all problems.
We knew better than that in Denmark. Through the whole Catholic world the German propagandists spread the opinion that the Centre party was strictly 'denominational.' Nothing could be more untrue. The traditions of Windthorst, who had boldly defined to Bismarck the difference between what was due to Christ and what toCæsar, were rapidly disappearing. The fiction remained that the Centre was constantly opposing the policy of the emperor, when at every session of the Reichstag, the Centre became more and more 'political' and more subservient to the designs of the Government. One could see the changing policy in the pages of theSocial Democrat, the Socialist organ in Denmark. The Danish Socialists were always influenced by their German brethren; but destructive Socialism finds, up to the present time, no place in the Social Democratic scheme, and this is due, not only to the Danish temperament, but to the dislike on the part of Social Democrats to the growing power of Syndicalism.
The leaders of the Socialists and of the Centrists are not great men. Of the Centre, which had rightfullyboasted of Windthorst and Mallinkrot as the opponents of ultra-Imperialism, Hertling and Erzberger were the most important. All Germany recognised the intellectual ability of Hertling. Baron von Hertling, Professor of the University of Munich, represented apparently everything that the fashionable Prussian philosophical system did not. 'Glory is the only religion of great men' is a doctrine he abhors; philosophically, he is the direct enemy of Kant and Hegel, above all, of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Nobody denies those qualities of mind that had made his name as well known philosophically in learned circles as that of Cardinal Mercier. He had been prime minister of Bavaria, and he, of all men, might have been expected to see the abyss to which Imperialism was tending. It was easy, in Denmark, to perceive that, in the Reichstag, all parties—there were some individual exceptions, like Liebknecht—had begun to be slaves of the emperor as represented by his subservient grand-viziers, the Chancellors. Both the Centre, from which much was expected, and the mixed party, called the Social Democrats, from which stronger resistance to Imperialism had been hoped, gradually became the upholders of the doctrine of conquest.
Erzberger, of the Centre, is a later development of the change that took place in the attitude of Hertling. With Lieber and Spahn, veteran politicians, the Centre position became one of compromise.
The Centre had managed to grow stronger and stronger after theKulturkampf, against which it had started as a party of defence. Matthias Erzberger, who had begun as a school teacher, wisely chose the Centre Party as a road to power. He has gained step by step by his unconquerable audacity. In 1911 even the Chancellorseemed to fear him. He is a bold speculator, and his rivals, even in his own party, predicted that he would come to grief through his Napoleonic idea of finance. From 1911 the parties in the Reichstag became more and more Imperialistic, the Prussian tone more and more insolent as regards foreign countries. Thecameraderieof the Kaiser at times, his fits of arrogant indiscretion—checked suddenly after the 'interviews' of 1908—continued to give us 'lookers-on in Vienna' grave concern. In spite of the encomiums made by nearly all my best European friends—many of them English—and all my compatriots who had been received at court, we in Denmark distrusted the Kaiser. I must say that my Danish friends, except the Chamberlain and Madame de Hegermann-Lindencrone, seldom praised him. To them he had been most courteous. I remembered that the most chivalrous of men, Hegermann-Lindencrone, never would speak ill of a sovereign to whose court he had been accredited. Count Carl Moltke, a good Dane, never, even in confidence, allowed a word of censure to pass his lips when the Kaiser was mentioned by his critics; I often wondered what he thought!
As to the Emperor Francis Joseph, I had reason to have a great respect and affection for him—even of gratitude. It is the fashion to tear his reputation to pieces now, a fashion that will pass.
At any rate, even his detractors will be glad to hear the story that, when the war broke out and he was ill and very drowsy, one of his Chamberlains said, 'Our army is in the field, sire!' 'Fighting those damned Prussians again!' he said, contentedly; and went to sleep again! He liked France, but he disliked the French Government. 'Your President,' he said to adistinguished French sailor, with a touch of contempt, 'is a bourgeois!' He did not mean a 'commoner'—with him 'bourgeois' implied a man who was not a soldier; and the emperor could not understand that a European country should be well ruled by a man who could not himself take the field; at any time, the Emperor would have gladly taken it against these 'Prussian parvenus,' I am sure.
More and more, the representatives of the stolen provinces, like Slesvig and Alsace-Lorraine, became disheartened by their weakness in the Reichstag. The representatives of Poland received no political support from the Centre; yet these Poles were ardent Catholics, and their representative, Prince Radziwell, made eloquent speeches. The delegates from Alsace-Lorraine, the Abbé Wetterlé being the most audacious, were as little regarded as 'Hans Peter,' H. P. Hanssen, the one Danish representative in the Reichstag. If the Centre had not posed as Catholic, which implied, if not an unusual regard for the liberties of the oppressed, at least a certain Christian charity for the persecuted, censure might have been silent. If the Socialists had not been the open and apparently unrelenting opponents of political oppression, the good Samaritan might have tried to succour their victims, while reflecting that the robbers who had inflicted the wound were at least not hypocrites; but here were von Hertling and Martin Spahn and Groeber and the rest of the Centre, who knew what the tyranny of Bismarck had meant; here were the followers of the later Bebel—willing to join the Centrists on many political questions, the friends of the Imperial autocracy! Here were two groups, antagonistic and irreconcilable in principle, but both united when it was expedient to support plans of world conquest!
The Centre still used religion as a tool to uphold the Government. The Pope and the Kaiser were as antagonistic on many questions as Popes and Kaisers have ever been since Christianity was imperfectly accepted by the Teutons. Windthorst, a great man of the type of O'Connell, but greater, had forced Bismarck to revoke some of the infamous May laws in 1888. Still, certain German citizens, the members of the congregation of the Redemptionists, were exiled. The Centre protested—for effect. The Jesuits were at last admitted on condition that they were not allowed to speak in the churches, and that under no circumstances should they be permitted to speak in public on religious subjects. Prince von Bülow publicly admitted that there was a lack of toleration shown to Catholics, and there were certain parts of Germany in which professors of the Catholic faith were still under disabilities. The question of the admission of the Jesuits and the other religious congregations ought to have been considered as justly as it would have been in the United States. The Centrists' representatives gave the impression of being violently interested in the preservation of the rights of German citizens to preach and teach any doctrines that were not immoral or seditious, and then, at a breath from the Government, allowed these priests to be treated as the Danish Lutheran pastors were treated in Slesvig.[13]
I am not writing from the point of view of any creed at this moment, but only from that of a democracywhich encourages reasonable freedom of speech, the use of equal opportunities, and preserves to everybody alike the free exercise of his religion. The Centre has shown as little sympathy with democracy of this kind as the Socialists. The latter party deserve no sympathy from any class of Americans. Their methods are, as worked out in Denmark and Germany, admirable. Religious bodies, interested in actively loving their neighbours as themselves, have much to learn from them, but the German Socialists played a worse part during the war than Benedict Arnold in our Revolution. They did not act the part of Judas only because they never acknowledged Christ.
The bane of every civilised country seems to be party politics. After theological hatreds, the ordinary variety of political hatreds and compromises is the worst. The Centre has become corrupt and time-serving, the Socialists expedient and slavish, all because the Imperial Head, the Chancellor, could scatter the spoils!