Chapter 31
Indeed, his own people are among the severest critics. One of them, Professor Quidde, early in the reign, made an extraordinarily ingenious, but quite unjustifiable, comparison of him to Caligula, which, though only consisting of classical quotations and making no mention of the Emperor, was seen by everybody to refer to him and has caused discussion ever since. While many foreign critics have done the Emperor justice, others in turn have made him out to be arrogant, snobbish, bombastic, superficial, incompetent, and insincere. To writers of this class he is always the German War Lord, ready to pounce, like a highwayman or pirate, on any unprotected person or property he may come across, regardless of treaty obligations, of international disaster, or of the dictates of humanity. One day they announce he is planning the annexation of Holland in order to get a further set of naval bases, the next that he means to take Belgium to make a road for his armies into France, a third that he is about to set at naught the Monroe doctrine and with his Dreadnoughts seize Brazil. All these things are conceivable and not impossible, but they are in the very highest degree improbable, and, as yet at least, ought not to be considered seriously. To sensible and better-informed people everywhere he is a Prussian king of the best type, a sincere friend of peace, with a mania for pushing the maxim "_Si vis pacem para bellum_" to extremes, politically the most influential man in Europe, and, with all his faults, one of the greatest Germans of his time.
The character of the Emperor, as monarch, is reflected very largely in the character of the Germany of to-day.
Germany is optimistic, ardently desirous of peace, bent on worthily maintaining the great place she has won, and deserved to win, among the nations, and so materially prosperous as to make many Germans tremble at the thought that the prosperity may be too great to last. This, however, is not to assert that in Germany everything is _couleur de rose_. There are not a few things in the Empire's social and political conditions which are antiquated or promise no good. Noxious as well as beneficial forces have been introduced into the social life of the country and are beginning to make themselves felt. German home-life is ceasing to be the admirable and exemplary thing it was before the present era of class rivalry, commercialism, the parvenu and the snob. The idealism which made the Empire a possibility is passing away. There is need, and a general demand, for franchise reform in Prussia, and a change in the spirit of Prussian bureaucratic administration would be acceptable, though it is, perhaps, hopeless to expect it. The opposition in Germany between the monarchic and the democratic principle, if not more marked than it was twenty or thirty years ago, is manifesting itself over a wider and perhaps deeper area. The relations between capital and labour are far from satisfactory adjustment. Social democracy is yearly gaining fresh adherents, and if guilty of no political violence, is yet a constant source of danger to domestic peace. The German middle class, that bourgeoisie which is the backbone and strength of the Empire, is losing its Spartan simplicity and its content with small and moderate pleasures; and the national virtues of thrift and self-denial are yielding to the temptations of wealth and luxury. Business credit is unduly stretched, speculation in land has attained disturbing proportions, and the banking world is in too many instances allied with hazardous or doubtful enterprises. Nevertheless the country as a whole is sound, intellectually, morally, and financially.
It would be difficult to mention any of the greater tasks of imperial administration to which the Emperor does not continue to devote personal attention. He is the life and soul of the army and navy, though it should not be forgotten that as regards the latter he has in Admiral Tirpitz an executive talent worthy of his own directive. His interest in the mercantile marine remains what it was when in 1887, as Prince William, he drew up an expert opinion which decided the Hamburg-Amerika Company to build their fast ocean-going steamers at home instead of abroad, and by the success of the experiment commenced the modern development of Germany's shipbuilding industry. Indeed, his attention to the Hamburg line, familiarly known as the "Hapag" line, from the initial letters of its legal title, "Hamburg-Amerika Packetfahrt-Aktien Gesellschaft," and to the Norddeutsche line from Bremen, has given rise to the unfounded belief that he is heavily interested in their financial success. Herr Albert Ballin, the Director of the Hamburg line, though a Jew, is among his intimates and advisers, and the Emperor is said to have caused umbrage more than once to Court officials and the aristocracy by giving directors of both lines precedence at his table. Without the Emperor's personal support it is probable that neither the firm of Krupp at Essen nor the splendid shipbuilding yards at Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin and elsewhere would continue to progress as they are doing. He neglects no opportunity of stimulating Germany's internal and external trade. He is at all times ready to encourage the introduction of useful achievements of modern science and invention. And lastly, by tactful treatment of other German rulers, and a wise policy of non-interference with their States, he is promoting a feeling of federal solidarity.
The Emperor's conception of his relations to the people remains to-day what he was brought up in and what it was when he mounted the throne. In England, America, and France the people are the real rulers, and their monarch or president is their highest official servant and representative. The idea is not perhaps constitutionally expressed, but it is universally and deeply felt in the countries named. In Germany the opposite theory obtains--for how long it must be left to the future to say. In Germany the Emperor is the real ruler, the genuine monarch, and the people are his subjects, the country his country. Hence, while an English king in an official document or public statement would not think of putting himself first and the people or country second, the German Emperor's official statements and speeches constantly repeat such expressions as "I and my people," "I and the army," "my capital," "me and the Fatherland," and a score more; so that Anglo-Saxons and other foreigners acquire the impression that the word "my" is no figure of rhetoric or pride, but a simple claim of ownership or possession. And the official relation between monarch and people is reflected in the people's ordinary life. To the foreigner it continually appears that the public are the servants of the official, not the contrary, whether officialism takes the shape of a post-office clerk, a tramcar conductor, a shop salesman, a policeman, or a waiter. All these functionaries are the possessors of an authority which the citizen is expected to, and usually does, obey. The explanation of such a state of things is a little abstruse, but an attempt may be made at giving it.
The period immediately preceding the reign of Frederick the Great was a period of absolute monarchy in Germany, a system introduced from France, where Louis XIV had proclaimed the doctrine _L'etat, c'est moi_, according to which the lives and property of the subject belonged to the Prince, whose will was to be obeyed without question or demur. There were now four hundred courts in Germany in imitation of the Court of Versailles, and the smaller the principality the greater the absolutism. Absolutism, however, required an army to support it; hence the establishment of standing and mercenary armies and the disuse of arms by the citizen. The result, to quote Professor Ernst Richard's work on "German Civilization," was that
"the pride of the burgher and the peasant was broken. A submissive servility hopelessly pervaded the masses, and even the best had lost all social and national feeling, all sense of being part of a greater body.... The luxurious life and the arrogance of the ruling classes were accepted as a matter of course, one might say as a divine institution. Thus those traits of character, which had come to light under the cruel stress of the Thirty Years War, fostered by the rule of despotism and the worst vices, took deeper root. To these belong that greed for social position, for titles and the smiles of the great; servility towards those who hold a higher position as bearers of official titles and dignity, a fear of publicity, above all a rather remarkable inclination to a peevish, petty, and sceptical attitude as regards the knowledge and ability of others. The exaltation of the position of the prince extended to his Court and his officials, as well as to the nobility, which had long since become a Court nobility."
But absolutism had to go with the changes in human thought under the influence of Rationalism, which brought with it the idea of the State, not the absolute prince, as ruler. This idea was embodied in the _Rechtstaat_, or State based on law, which was introduced by Frederick the Great, the "first servant of the State." The State, he said, exists for the sake of the citizens. "One must be insane," he wrote,
"to imagine that men should have said to one of their equals, 'We will raise you so that we may be your slaves, we will give you the power to guide our thoughts according to yours.' They rather said: 'We need you in order to execute our laws, that you show us the way, and defend us. But we understand that you will respect our liberties.'"
The _Rechtstaat_ exists in Germany to the present day, the Emperor is at the head of it, and the people are content to live within its confines. It is not, as has been seen, coterminous with the whole liberty of the subject, but is yet a vast bundle of rights and obligations which in public, and much of private, life leaves as little as possible to the unaided or undirected intelligence or goodwill of the citizen. It is an exaggeration, but still expresses a popular feeling even in Germany itself--and certainly describes an impression made on the Anglo-Saxon--to say that outside this bundle of laws and regulations, which, clearly and logically paragraphed, orders to a nicety all the public, and many of the private, relations of the citizens, everything is forbidden or discouraged by authority. Yet, as has been said, the people are satisfied with it, and it must be admitted that if it confines individual liberty within what to the Anglo-Saxon seem narrow limits, still, by directing the individual to common ends, it works great public advantage. It is in truth a very intelligent and practical form of Socialism, infinitely less oppressive to the people than would be the socialism of the professed Socialist.
It left, however, the German caste system of Frederick's day undisturbed; as Professor Richard says:
"The nobility retained its privileged position. It was considered a law of nature that the noblemen should assist the monarch in the administration of the State and as leaders of the army; the peasant should cultivate the fields and provide food; the commoner should provide money through industry and commerce."
To the Anglo-Saxon, of course, brought up with individualistic views of life and demanding complete personal freedom, the German _Rechtstaat_ would be galling, not to say intolerable. The Englishman, however, has his _Rechtstaat_ too, but the limits it places on his liberty are not nearly so restrictive in regard to public meeting, public talking, public writing, in short, public action of all sorts, as in Germany. Besides, the spirit of laws in England, as naturally follows from the Englishman's political history, is a much more liberal one than the German spirit, which is still to some extent under the influence of the age of absolutism.
The German conception of the _Rechtstaat_ entails, as one of its consequences, a sharp contrast between the rights and privileges of the Crown and the rights and privileges of the people; and therefore, while the Emperor is never without apprehension that the people may try to increase their rights and privileges at the expense of those of the Crown, the people are not without apprehension that the Crown may try to increase its rights and privileges at the expense of the political liberties of the people. To this apprehension on the part of the people is to be attributed their widespread dissatisfaction with the Emperor's so-called "personal regiment," which, until recently, was the chief hindrance to his popularity. In truth the Emperor is in a difficult position. To be popular with the people he must be popular with the Parliament, but if he were to seek popularity with the Parliament he would lose popularity and prestige with the aristocracy and large landowners, who have still a good deal of the old-time contempt for the mere "folk," the burgher, and he would lose it with the military officer class, which is aristocratic in spirit, and is, as the Emperor is constantly assuring it, the sole support of throne and Empire. In addition to this it has to be remembered that a large majority of South Germany is Catholic, and, generally speaking, no great lover of Prussia, its people, and their airs of stiff superiority.
The personal relations of the Emperor to his people, and in especial to the vast burghertum, are precisely those to be expected from his traditional and constitutional relations. He is not popular, but he is widely and sincerely respected. His preference for the army, intelligible though it is, and the cleavage that separates Government and people, explain to some extent the want of popularity, using that word in its "popular" sense; while the consciousness of all the nation owes to his "goodwill," his initiative and energy, his conscientiousness in all directions, is quite sufficient to account for the respect. It is, in truth, in part at least, the respect which excludes the popularity. No one is ever likely to be popular, anywhere, who is constantly endeavouring to teach people how to live and what to think, and at the same time seems to have no social weaknesses to reconcile him with those--no small number--who are fond of cakes and ale. Some of the Emperor's acts and speeches have postponed, if not precluded, eventual popularity--his breach with Bismarck, for example, the whole "personal regiment," and speeches like that at Potsdam in 1891, when he told his recruits that if he had to order them to shoot down their brothers, or even their parents, they must obey without a murmur. Speeches of this last kind live long in public memory. In his dealings with his people the Emperor is neither arrogant--"high-nosed" is the elegant German expression: "arrogant" is no German word, Prince Bülow would doubtless say-- towards his subjects, nor are they cringing towards him, though this statement does not exclude the excusable embarrassment an ordinary mortal may be expected to feel in the presence of a monarch. The Emperor himself desires no "tail-wagging" from his subjects, and though there is something of the autocrat in him, there is nothing of the despot.
Certainly for the present, Germans, with rare exceptions, are satisfied with him. They are prospering under him. The shoe pinches here and there, and if it pinches too hard they will cry out and perhaps do more than cry out. They do not consider the Emperor perfect, but they forgive his errors, and particularly the errors of his impetuous youth, even though on three or four occasions they brought the country into danger. Monarchy has been defined as a State in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting things: a republic, as a State in which the attention is divided between many who are all doing uninteresting things: Germans find their Emperor interesting, and that is a stage on the road to popularity.
The imperial ego, which is quite consistent with the German view of monarchical rule and conformity with the _Rechtstaat_, is specially advertised by the pictures and statues of the Emperor which are to be found all over Germany, to the apparent exclusion of the pictures and statues of national and local men of distinction. The Emperor's picture almost monopolizes the walls of every public and municipal office, every railway-station refreshment-room, every shop, every restaurant throughout the Empire. Wherever it turns the eye is confronted by the portrait or bust of the Emperor, and if it is not his portrait or bust, it is the portrait or bust of one or other of his ancestors. An exception should be made in the case of Bismarck, the reproduction of whose rugged features, shaggy eyebrows, and bulky frame are not infrequent; statues and portraits, too, of Moltke and Roon, though much more rarely met with than those of Bismarck, are to be seen, while those of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Lessing, Wagner, or other German "Immortal," are still rarer. Only once, or perhaps twice, in all Germany is there to be found a public statue of Heine--for Heine was a Jew and said many unpleasant, because true, things about his country. The travelling foreigner in Germany after a while begins to wonder if he is not in some far Eastern country where ancestor-worship obtains, and where one tremendous personality overshadows, obscures, and obliterates all the rest. In truth, however, this is not the lesson of the imperial images for the foreigner. They teach him that he is in a country with a system of government and views of the State different from his own, that the Empire is ruled in a military, not a civic spirit, and that the counterfeit presentment of the Emperor, always in dazzling uniform, is the sign of the national acceptance of system, views, and spirit.
A similar lesson is taught by the Emperor's speeches. In England the King rarely speaks in public, and then with well-calculated brevity and reserve. In five words he will open a museum and with a sentence unveil a monument. The Emperor's speeches fill four stout volumes--and he is only fifty-four. The speeches deal with every sort of topic, and have been delivered in all parts of the Empire--now to Parliament, now to his assembled generals, now at the celebration of some national or individual jubilee, now at the dedication of a building or the opening of a bridge. The style is always clear and logical, in this respect contrasting favourably with the German style of twenty years ago, when the language wriggled from clause to clause in vermiform articulations until the thought found final expression in a mob of participles and infinitives. Metaphors abound in the speeches, some of them slightly far-fetched, but others of uncommon beauty, appropriateness, and pith. There is no brilliant employment of words, but not seldom one comes across such terse and happy phrases as the famous "We stand under the star of commerce," "Our future lies on the water," "We demand a place in the sun."
On the English reader the speeches will be apt to pall, unless he is thoroughly saturated with Prussian historic, military, and romantic lore and can place himself mentally in the position of the Emperor. The tone, never quite detached from consciousness of the imperial ego, hardly ever descends to the level of familiar conversation nor rises to heights of eloquence that carry away the hearer. With three or four exceptions, there is no argumentation in the speeches, for they are not meant to persuade or convince, but to enjoin and command. They do not contain any of the important and interesting facts and figures of which, nevertheless, the Emperor's mind must be full, and they are wanting in wit and humour, though nature has endowed the Emperor with both.
On the other hand, it should be remembered that they are the speeches of an Emperor, not of a statesman. The speeches have no political timeliness or object save that of rousing and directing imperial spirit among the people by appeals to their imagination and patriotism. Had the Emperor been actuated by the spirit of a Minister or statesman, he would have been far more alive to the fact than he appears to have been, that every word he uttered would instantly find an echo in the Parliament, Press, and Stock Exchange of all other countries.
The Emperor's fundamental mistakes, as disclosed by his speeches, appear to an Englishman to have been in assuming when they were made that the Empire was in a less advanced stage of consolidation and settlement than it in fact was, and in underrating the intelligence, knowledge, and patriotism of his people. From this point of view his early speeches in particular sound jejune or superfluous. What would the Englishman say to a king who began his reign by a series of homilies on Alfred the Great or Elizabeth or Queen Victoria; by using strong language about the Labour party or the Fabian Society; by appeals to throne and altar; by describing to Parliament the chief duties of the monarch; by recommending the London County Council to build plenty of churches; by calling journalists "hunger-candidates"; by frequent references to the battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar? Yet, _mutatis mutandis_, this is not so very unlike what the young Emperor did, and not for a year or two, but for several years after his accession. To an Englishman such addresses would appear rather ill-timed academic declamation.
Yet there was much, and perhaps is still much, to account for, if not quite justify, the Emperor's rhetoric. The peculiarity of Germany's monarchic system placed, and places, the monarch in a patriarchal position not very different from that of Moses towards the Israelites--a leader, preacher, and prophet. Again, the Empire, when the Emperor came to the throne, was not a homogeneous nation inspired by a centuries-old national spirit, but suffered, as it still in a measure suffers, from the particularism of the various kingdoms and States composing it: in other words, from too local a patriotism and stagnation of the imperial idea. Thirdly, the Empire had no navy, while an Empire to-day without a navy is at a tremendous and dangerous disadvantage in world-politics, and the mere conception that a navy was indispensable had to be created in a country lying in the heart of Europe and with only one short coast-line.
The Englishman is as loyal to his King as the German is to his Emperor, and England, as little as Germany, is disposed to change from monarchy to republicanism. But the Englishman's political and social governor, guide, and executive is not the King, but the Parliament; because while in the King he has a worthy representative of the nation's historical development and dignity, in the Parliament he sees a powerful and immediate reflection of himself, his own wishes, and his own judgments. Moreover, with the spread of democratic ideas, the position of a monarch anywhere in the civilized world to-day is not what it was fifty years ago. The general progress in education since then; the drawing together of the nations by common commercial and financial interests; the incessant activity of writers and publishers; the circulation and power of the Press--themselves almost threatening to become a despotism--such facts as these tend to change the relations between kings and peoples. Monarchs and men are changing places; the ruler becomes the subject, the subject ruler; it is the people who govern, and the monarch obeys the people's will.