Blood and Iron Part 8

-- "Here, every one lives apart in his own narrow corner, with his own opinions; his wife and children round him; ever suspicious of the Government, as of his neighbor; judging everything from his personal point of view, and never from general grounds."

-- "The sentiment of individualism and the necessity for contradiction are developed to an inconceivable degree in the German."

-- The problem of directing this intense individualism is the problem of German unity.

-- With rough manners, blunders, extravagances, absurdities, the hereditary princes continued to sponge on the peasants, generation after generation, till wretchedness spread far over the German lands.

They had their chateaux, their dancing girls, their dogs, horses, cats, mistresses and their royal armies.

-- The misery of centuries of oppression existed; petty monarchs exercised powers of life and death.

-- The South German mocked the North German's p.r.o.nunciation. One set vowed that the "g" in "goose" is hard, the other proclaimed that the "g" is soft. One side went about mumbling with hard "g's," "A well-baked goose is a gracious gift of G.o.d," whereupon the other side replied that all the "g's" are "j's," that the "gute ganz" is really "jute janz," and "Gottes" "Jottes." And duels were fought over it.

-- Nor was this all. An intense local pride expressed itself in grotesque dialects, unsoftened by intercourse with the outer world; also, there were outlandish fas.h.i.+ons in dress and other domestic affairs.

-- In Brunswick the women wore green ap.r.o.ns, curious black caps, the men buff coats, red vests with four rows of b.u.t.tons, caps with crazy pompons, buckled slippers and gay ribbon garters.

-- In lower Saxony the women wore flat straw hats, like a dinner plate, hair plastered down, head-dresses of gigantic black ribbons, ap.r.o.ns of gay stripes, and ten petticoats coming only a little below the knee.

The men wore farce-comedy costumes, not unlike coachmen.

-- In Pomerania-Rugen the women admired scarlet petticoats, knee-length, capes like turko-rugs, black veils, green garters and blue stockings. The men wore ap.r.o.ns like butchers, caps and long-tailed coats.

-- The Hessian women preferred turbans of red, vestees of gay stuffs, blue, green or yellow knee-length skirts.

-- The Baden men folk liked reds, greens and yellows, vests adorned with many ribbons, top boots, high white collars and funny-looking black coats. The women had their green ap.r.o.ns, puffed sleeves, and ten short petticoats.

-- In East Prussia men wore double and triple vests. As for the women, they looked like animals in the zoo.

-- In Wuertemberg, a typical landlord wore a blue peajacket with two rows of large silver b.u.t.tons, two vests of high contrasting colors, a black sash, salmon-colored trousers, polished boots;--and carried a meerschaum pipe.

-- In Bavaria one saw green vests, yodlers' hats with tiny feathers, green leggings, or military boots; and among the women gay vestees, bright shawls and white kerchiefs.

-- Thus, the dead-weight of centuries still lay like a mountain on the various German states.

-- This dead-weight of olden times kept the German states bickering among themselves.

For long years past, the people were divided by political brawls, altercations, affrays, squabbles, feuds, often with the loss of life.

The general disposition was choleric, pugnacious, litigious.

There was bad blood over principles and procedure, policies and plans.

To transform aloofness to neighborliness, tumult to conciliation, quarreling to friendliness, hostility to good will, dissent must give way to a.s.sent, distrust to faith, denial to admission, misgiving to conviction, political atheism to political revelation.

Such are some of the peculiarities of the human animal; and in political life human animals are p.r.o.ne to fight for self-interest, like dogs over a bone.

-- We are not going to try to tell you of the many efforts by rash reformers, in the half-century of the dead-weight, leading to the rise of Prussia.

Again and again, far-sighted Germans, sick unto death at the way things were going, urged equality for all men before the law, equal taxation, restriction of the power of the n.o.bles.

Strange as it may seem, the peasants themselves stood in the way. They did not care to change their condition, miserable as it was. They dreaded the future, preferred present miseries than to risk new ills.

For example, on one occasion, a certain political idealist excited the peasants in revolt, a.s.sa.s.sinated 120 n.o.bles, destroyed 264 castles.

This was in the time of Joseph II, of Austria, the ruler filled with amazing ideas of equality. The peasants themselves were the first to protest, much as they detested the n.o.bles; and the unsupported leaders died on the wheel, while 150 miserable followers were buried alive.

And yet, at that very moment, the idealistic Joseph, who with an excess of zeal, tried for political equality, made enemies of his n.o.bles, enemies of his peasants, likewise. The great reformer was held a fanatic, intent on destroying government. Too far ahead of his time, his plans for political semi-equality failed.

-- This monarch, thinking to make a lesson, had swindling n.o.bles placed in the stocks, like common thieves.

Joseph was one of the first great democrats, in the modern sense. To him, the cause of the common man was sacred. He believed in genuine equality, but alas, he did not know how to bring about the political Millennium.

-- He threw open the parks to the people; he proclaimed free speech and free thought; he abolished serfdom; he labored to construct a state-machine with one system of justice and one National plan.

Joseph, though overbr.i.m.m.i.n.g with emotions for the common man's political salvation, failed to allow for the ignorance of his people, their stubborn avowal of local self-interests.

-- And it fell out that his people thought that Joseph was trying to enslave them the more; ingrat.i.tude and misapprehensions followed, destroying the liberal reformer's most cherished plans for his beloved Austria-Germany.

The word was pa.s.sed alone that Joseph was a tyrant. You see, as frequently happens, the people preferred old abuses to new ways. The general population hugged their chains and refused to be delivered.

This singular belief in the past, rather than in the future, is indeed a human weakness and has checked and restrained the rise of intellectual freedom since the world began.

-- It might all have been a good lesson to republicans, but the n.o.bility a.s.sumed a threatening att.i.tude and the peasants did not understand a monarch like Joseph.

Their idea of a king was a man going upstairs on horseback and eating spiders. A king must have powers of life and death and bags of gold. A citizen king was absurd.

The peasantry, on whom Joseph had endeavored to bestow many large democratic privileges, rose against him. He died Feb. 20, 1790, "a century too early," says Jellenz, and as Remer adds, "misunderstood by a people unworthy of such a sovereign."

-- Germany, in the sad period between 1750 and 1806 had long been a European political jest; these are hard words, but it is the language of truth.

She had sunk so low that she saw no degradation in going off to fight French or British wars, while at home remaining a mere political nonent.i.ty.

She had sunk so low, under French influences, and through her own lack of self-control, that she forgot her great ancestors and her n.o.ble traditions.

She had sunk so low that her very children were brought up to despise the language of the Fatherland; the children scoffing at the parents, aped foreign ways rather than support German originality, strength and national genius; young men coming of age preferred to leave the land of their birth, mocked the simple German virtues, and occupied themselves in idle dalliance in Paris, or failing in this, set up imitations of French courts in the petty German monarchies.

Thus, finally Germany became insensible, indifferent and debased by stupid and selfish ideals from beyond the Vosges; till at last Germany became, literally, a land without a people, a people without a land.

-- Worse still, the time came when, under these false teachings, a sense of shame no longer lived, to arouse great national interests and to recall degenerate sons to their solemn duties to their Fatherland.

Hundreds of n.o.ble Germans, at one time or another, during these dark years, tried in vain by voice or pen to restore national consciousness, but failed. The problem of German liberty seemed incapable of solution; and as for the still larger problem of German unity--that became a mere dream.