The War and Democracy Part 5

"But suddenly there came a change. One morning when we woke up in Dusseldorf and wanted to say, 'Good morning, Father,' we found our Father gone, and a kind of stupefaction over the whole city. Everybody felt as though they were going to a funeral, and people crept silently to the market-place and read a long proclamation on the door of the City Hall. It was grey weather, and yet thin old tailor Kilian stood in his alpaca coat, which he kept for indoor use only, and his blue woollen stockings hung down so that his miserable little bare legs were visible above them and his thin lips were trembling, while he murmured the words of the proclamation. A veteran soldier at his side read somewhat louder, and at every few words a tear trickled down into his honest white beard. I Stood by him and cried too, and asked him why we were crying. And then he told me: 'The Elector expresses you his grat.i.tude'--then he went on reading, and at the words 'for your loyal and trusted obedience, and releases you from your duties,'

his tears broke out afresh.... While we were reading, the Elector's arms were being taken down from the City Hall, the whole place became as terrifyingly quiet as though there were going to be an eclipse of the sun, and all the City Councillors went about hanging their heads as though no one had any more use for them...

"When I woke up next morning, the sun was s.h.i.+ning as usual, drums were beating in the streets, and when I came down to breakfast and said good-morning to my father I heard how the barber had whispered to him while he was shaving him that the new Grand Duke Joachim was to receive the homage of his subjects at the City Hall to-day, that he came of a very good family and had been given the Emperor Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and s.h.i.+ning sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the bear-skins, the tricolour c.o.c.kades, the gleaming bayonets, the merry skilful hors.e.m.e.n, and the huge great drum-major with his silver-embroidered uniform, who could throw his drum-stick with its gilt b.u.t.ton up to the first floor, and his eyes up even to the girls in the second floor windows. I was pleased that we were to have soldiers billeted on us--my mother was not--and I hurried to the market-place. There everything was quite different now. The world looked as if it had had a new coat of paint. A new coat-of-arms was hanging on the City Hall, the iron railings on the balcony were covered with tapestry hangings, French Grenadiers were standing sentry, the old City Councillors had put on new faces, and were wearing Sunday clothes, and looked at one another in French and said 'Bon jour,' ladies were looking out of all the windows, curious bystanders and smart soldiers thronged the square, and I and the other boys climbed on to the big horse of the Elector's statue and looked down on the gay crowd."[1]

[Footnote 1: Heine, _Collected Works_, i. 228 (Book _Le Grand_).]

Napoleon and his French soldiers, "marching through the world with songs and s.h.i.+ning sabres," brought the Germans more than this happy thrill of excitement and a supply of new and more elegant princes. They brought them that which gave strength to their own right arm--the spirit of Nationality.

"The soul of the German people," says a recent German writer, "has always lain very deep down, and has seldom come to the surface to become the spirit of the time and to inspire the movements of the world. Hardly ever except in times of the deepest adversity has it come to the surface: but then it has claimed its rights, or rather, discovered its duties."[1]

Napoleon, by humiliating her, laid bare the soul of Germany, as Germany herself has laid bare the soul of Belgium to-day. His arrogant pretensions roused the Germans as they had never been roused since the days of the Reformation; while at the same time his attempts to secure the support of the bigger German princ.i.p.alities by enlarging them at the expense of the smaller, simplified the map and laid the foundations of a United Germany.

The thinkers and dreamers of Germany, stung at last into a sense of political reality, awoke from their dreams of cosmopolitanism and devoted their powers to the needs of the German nation.

[Footnote 1: Daab's Preface to Paul de Lagarde, _German Faith, German Fatherland, German Culture_, p. vi. (Jena, 1913).]

The years between 1806 and 1813, between the disastrous battle of Jena and the overwhelming victory of Leipzig, are the greatest years in German history. Shaking off the torpor and the prejudices of centuries the German nation arose and vanquished its oppressors.

But with the twilight of that glorious day the bats returned. The defeat of Napoleon was not only the defeat of French domination but the defeat of the French Revolution, and of the principles of Democracy and Nationality which inspired it. The unity of spirit which the Germans had achieved on the battlefield they were unable to transform after the victory into a unity of government or inst.i.tutions. The Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe after the Revolutionary wars, did so, not in accordance with the principle of nationality or the wishes of the peoples of Europe but according to what was called "legitimacy," that is to say, the interests of the princes. There was only one idealist at the Conference, the Russian Emperor Alexander, and he was put off with empty phrases.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Germany of 1815.]

For Germany the result of the Conference was the reestablishment, in smaller numbers and with larger units of territory, of the old undemocratic princ.i.p.alities, and of a Confederation embodying their dynastic interests.

Several of the larger States, such as Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, and Hanover, which Napoleon had raised to the status of kingdoms, were confirmed in their new dignities, and the kingdom of Prussia, the largest of them all, acquired, out of the debris of the old Archbishopric of Cologne and other small ecclesiastical and temporal States, the important provinces of Westphalia and the Rhineland, which have made possible for her the industrial growth of the last half century. Cologne, Dusseldorf, Elberfeld, Essen, and other great industrial centres of Western Germany will next year be celebrating the centenary of their Prussian connection.

But the chief State in the Confederation and its undisputed head was Austria, which had for centuries enjoyed the prestige of supremacy over the German States; and it was the Austrian statesman Metternich who was mainly responsible for the Vienna settlement.

The German Confederation of 1815-1866 went far outside the boundaries of modern Germany. It included lands belonging to three non-German monarchs.

The King of Holland was a member of it in virtue of the Dutch provinces of Limburg and Luxemburg; the King of Denmark for the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein; and the Emperor of Austria (who, then as now, ruled over Hungary, Austrian Poland, and the Southern Slav provinces) for Bohemia, Moravia, and German-speaking Austria up to and beyond Vienna. The Confederation was in fact in no sense a national State, and was never intended to be so. It was a loosely knit a.s.sortment of princ.i.p.alities and free cities. Germany was still broken up and divided in a manner almost inconceivable to the inhabitants of an old-established unity like Great Britain or France. At least five different kinds of money, for instance, were in use in the different States of the Confederation, and, as stamp-collectors know, the postal system was bewildering in its complexity. More important was the deep gulf between different parts of the country due to religious divisions. The Reformation, which left England with a National Church, left Germany hopelessly divided; and the division between the Protestants in the north and east, and the Catholics in the west and south, is still, half a century after the establishment of the United Empire, a source of difficulty.

Yet the Confederation has one undeniable achievement to its credit. It paved the way for German unity by facilitating the Zollverein, or Customs Union, which was extended between 1830 and 1844 to practically all the German States except those under Austrian rule. But the far-reaching importance of this development was not at that time appreciated. Western Europe was tired after the great Napoleonic struggle and was not in a mood for big designs. To all outward appearance Germany seemed to have relapsed, after the thrill and glamour of the Wars of Liberation, into the stuffy atmosphere of the old eighteenth century life. Only a very patient, a very docile, and a very philosophic and law-abiding people would have endured such an anti-climax; and it is these qualities, together with a certain clumsiness and helplessness due to their complete inexperience of the responsibilities of a larger citizens.h.i.+p, which go far to explain the subsequent history of Germany.

But in the evil days after the Congress of Vienna the _idea_ of German unity lived on, and formed a constant theme of discussion and speculation, like the idea of the unity of Poland and of the Southern Slavs in the present generation. The stirring memories of the Great Revolution were like a constant refrain at the back of men's minds all through that dreary time.

In 1830, when the French established a Liberal Monarchy and the Belgians freed themselves from the unwelcome supremacy of Holland, there was much excitement throughout Germany. But nothing serious occurred until 1848, when the Liberal and Nationalist movement, which had been gathering force throughout the educated cla.s.ses of Western Europe for a generation, at length came to a head. The whole of Germany was in a ferment, a strong Republican movement manifested itself, and in almost every one of the many capital cities there was a rising with a demand for a free const.i.tution and parliamentary government, and for the consolidation of German national unity in accordance with the same democratic ideals. The princes had no alternative but to give way, and, as a result, local Const.i.tutions were granted, and a national Parliament was summoned to meet at Frankfurt, to draw up a national German Const.i.tution on democratic lines.

The task before the Frankfurt Parliament was similar to that which has confronted British statesmen several times during the last century, in framing the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Union of South Africa--the task of welding a number of separate State governments with the free consent of their populations into a h.o.m.ogeneous and democratic central authority. But in the case of an old and still largely feudal country like Germany the task was infinitely more difficult, for it could not be successful without a levelling-up of the political ideals of the backward States, such as Prussia, and the elimination of many ancient a.s.sociations and dynastic interests. The Frankfurt Const.i.tution did actually come into being, and it was n.o.bly planned. It guaranteed to every German citizen the rights of civil liberty, equality before the law, and responsible parliamentary government, both central and local. But the mind of the German nation was not yet equal to its new responsibilities. The Frankfurt Parliament, like the first Russian Duma, was out of touch with realities; it wasted precious time on the discussion of abstract questions of principle, and failed to meet the practical needs of the moment.

While it sat and talked, the enthusiasm which had created it gradually evaporated. Meanwhile the more reactionary States, and the princes whose prerogatives were endangered, became more and more openly hostile. All through 1849 the Parliament was losing members by defection, and by the end of the year its influence had sunk to vanis.h.i.+ng point.

The movement which collapsed thus ignominiously was not a popular agitation in the English sense of the term: like other movements of its generation it sprang, not from the people but from the well-to-do, and its strength lay among the professional and educated cla.s.ses. The Frankfurt Parliament was a predominantly middle-cla.s.s a.s.sembly: lawyers and professors, always an important element in German national life, were strongly represented in it and largely responsible for its failure. Its collapse was a bitter disappointment, and drove many of its leaders into exile abroad, more particularly to the United States, where some of them, such as Carl Schurz, lived to play a noteworthy part under more democratic political inst.i.tutions.

After the failure of the Frankfurt Const.i.tution it slowly became clear to far-sighted Germans that there was only one way in which German unity could come about. If, unlike the separate provinces of Canada and South Africa, the German States would not voluntarily sink their ident.i.ty in a larger whole, unity could only come through their acceptance of the supremacy of one of the existing States.

There were only two possible candidates for the supremacy, Austria and Prussia. Austria was still, at that time, as she had been for centuries, in a position of undisputed heads.h.i.+p. But her German policy was always hampered because she had also to consider her non-German subjects.

Prussia, a younger and more h.o.m.ogeneous State, with a better organised administration and a better disciplined people, was preparing to a.s.sert herself. In 1862, at a moment when liberalism was gathering strength in Prussia, Count Bismarck became chief Minister of the Prussian Crown and the dominating force in Prussian policy. Bismarck was a Conservative and a reactionary, wholly out of sympathy with the ideals of 1848. His immediate object was to secure the supremacy of Prussia among the German States.

In the very first months of his leaders.h.i.+p he made it clear, in a famous sentence, by what methods he hoped to achieve his end. "The great questions are to be settled," he told the Prussian Diet, with a scornful hit at the Confederation, "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and iron."

He was not long in translating words into action. In 1864 the King of Denmark died, and difficulties at once arose as to the succession to the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which still belonged to the German Confederation. Austria and Prussia intervened jointly in the name of the Confederation, and, as a result, the Duchies were separated from Denmark, Schleswig being administered by Austria and Holstein by Prussia. The object of this rather clumsy plan, which originated with Bismarck, was to create difficulties which would enable him to pick a quarrel with Austria. In 1866 this manoeuvre proved successful. Bismarck goaded Austria into war and succeeded, after a six weeks' campaign, in expelling her from the German State system, following this up by rounding off her own dominions with the annexation of a number of the smaller pro-Austrian States, amongst them the kingdom of Hanover. His victory also had the effect of completely checking the growing agitation for the establishment of responsible government in Prussia.[1]

[Footnote 1: On this point see Bismarck's _Recollections_, and the good short account in Powicke's _Bismarck_.]

Having made Prussia supreme in Germany, Bismarck was now in a position to solve the problem of German unity. He resolved to employ the same well-tried method. In 1870 the somewhat high-handed manner of Napoleon III.

made it possible for him to bring about a war between the German States and France, in which Germany, under Prussian leaders.h.i.+p, was completely victorious. In the flush of their success, after the capture of Paris in January 1871, the lesser States of Germany agreed to enter into a Federal Union under Prussian supremacy and to accept the King of Prussia as its head, with the t.i.tle of Emperor.

Thus, at length, Germany became a National State, with a national const.i.tution. The term Empire is misleading, for to English ears it suggests the government of dependencies. Germany is not an Empire in that sense: she is a Federation, like the United States and Switzerland, of independent States which have agreed to merge some of their prerogatives, notably the conduct of foreign affairs and of defence, in a central authority. Since some of these independent States were, and still are, monarchies, a higher t.i.tle had to be provided for the Chief of the Federation. An ace, as it were, was needed to trump the kings. After much deliberation the t.i.tle Emperor was agreed upon; but it is noteworthy that the Kaiser is not "the Emperor of Germany": he bears the more non-committal t.i.tle of "German Emperor."

The German Imperial Const.i.tution, devised by Bismarck in 1871, falls far short of the Frankfurt experiment of 1848. It does indeed provide for the creation of a Reichstag, or Imperial Parliament, elected by all male citizens over twenty-five. But the Reichstag can neither initiate legislation nor secure the appointment or dismissal of Ministers. In the absence of ministerial responsibility to Parliament, which is the mainspring of our English Const.i.tutional system, the Reichstag might be described as little more than an advisory body armed with the power of veto. Like the English Parliament in the days of Charles I.'s s.h.i.+p-money, the Reichstag could in the last resort refuse supplies, and so bring the machinery of government to a standstill. But this situation has never yet arisen or seemed likely to arise. The Government has ridden the Reichstag with a strong hand, turning awkward corners by concessions to the various groups in turn, and the Reichstag has responded to this treatment. Bismarck "took his majorities where he could get them"; and Prince Bulow's book contains some illuminating pages about the clever methods which that statesman adopted to "manage" his Parliaments.

Above the Reichstag is the Bundesrat or Federal Council, on which all the Federated States are represented, Prussia having seventeen members as against forty-two from the other States. The Bundesrat sits in secret; its members are selected by the different State Governments and vote according to instructions received. All Bills originate in the Bundesrat before they are submitted to the Reichstag, and are re-submitted to the Bundesrat, to be pa.s.sed or vetoed, after alteration in the Reichstag. The twenty-six members of the German Federation represented in the Bundesrat comprise four kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony), a number of Grand Duchies and smaller ducal States, three Free Cities (Hamburg, Lubeck, and Bremen), and the Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine. All these (except the last named) preserve their own local Parliaments and inst.i.tutions, and the second largest, Bavaria, even preserves in peace-time, like the British self-governing Dominions, her own military organisation and has also her own postal system. But Prussia in size, influence, and military strength is by far the most important, and for practical purposes her power preponderates over that of all the other States combined. The real control of legislation naturally lies with the State which controls two-fifths of the votes in the Bundesrat, where legislation is initiated and can be vetoed; it is wielded by the Kaiser, as King of Prussia, and by his Imperial Chancellor, President of the Bundesrat and always a Prussian Minister. The Imperial Chancellor, who is the only Imperial Minister, is chosen by the Kaiser and is responsible to him alone: he countersigns all the Kaiser's orders and edicts, and has the function, it may be added, of explaining away his indiscretions.

It is inevitable, under these circ.u.mstances, that the policy and legislation of the central government should largely reflect Prussian views and ideals. On the other hand, the temper of the rest of Germany must always be kept in mind. As Prince Bullow, the late Imperial Chancellor, says: "If the Empire is governed without reference to Prussia, ill-will towards the Empire will grow in that country. If Prussia is governed without reference to the Empire, then there is the danger that mistrust and dislike of the leading State will gain ground in non-Prussian Germany....

The art of governing in our country will always have to be directed chiefly towards maintaining the harmony between Germany and Prussia, in the spirit as well as in the letter."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, pp. 191-192.]

Why should the government of Germany be such an "art"? And why should there be any difficulty in maintaining a harmonious spirit between Prussia and non-Prussian Germany? To answer these questions we must widen the scope of our inquiry. So far we have considered only the growth and development of the German State. It is now time to turn from the German State to the German people.

--2. _The Real Germany_.--The difficulty of establis.h.i.+ng German Unity has lain in the fact that there have really always been two Germanies, different in history, in temper, in ideals, and in their stages of development in civilisation. There has been Prussia, or North-Eastern Germany; and there has been the real Germany, the Germany of the South and West. It is only since 1870, and especially within the reign of the present Kaiser, that, through education and common experience; the two have become fused into one; but even now, beneath the uniform surface of German life and public opinion, there is a great inner distinction.

Let us take what we have called the real Germany first. This Germany, the Germany of the Rhine country, of Frankfurt and Heidelberg and Cologne and Nuremberg, is the Germany which so many Englishmen know and admire. This Germany is an integral part of the civilisation of Western Europe, and is closely akin to ourselves. It has grown and developed alongside with France and the Netherlands and England, sharing in all the great spiritual and social movements of the West. It has pa.s.sed, with them, through the Middle Ages, the Revival of Learning, the Reformation, and the long struggle against the domination of France. Its famous cities with their Cathedrals and Town Halls breathe the same proud, free, munic.i.p.al spirit as those of their great neighbours in the Netherlands, Ghent, Antwerp, Louvain, Bruges, Ypres and the rest. Its scholars and teachers, poets, painters, and musicians, from Luther to Goethe, have made their special German contribution to the civilised life of the West--a contribution as great and as unique as that of Renaissance Italy or Elizabethan England. Its people are very similar in character to their neighbours of kindred stock. As industrious as the Dutch, as persevering as the Scotch, as steady and good-hearted as the English, good workers, good citizens, devoted in their family relations, they have found it easy to live at peace and on a good understanding with their neighbours, and when they have migrated abroad, they have by common confession made the best of settlers, both in the United States and in the British Dominions.

Yet they have developed certain characteristic qualities in their social and political life, which distinguish them sharply from their western neighbours. History, which has deprived them, until recently, of a wider citizens.h.i.+p, has left them timid, docile, dreamy and unpractical in just that sphere of action where Englishmen have learnt for centuries to think and to act for themselves. Patriotism with Englishmen is an instinct. We do not much care to wave flags or make speeches or sing songs about it: we a.s.sume it as the permanent background of our national life and our national consciousness. With the Germans this is not so. In Germany, partly owing to German history, partly owing to the const.i.tution of the German mind, patriotism is not an instinct but an _idea_. Now ideas do not grow up in men's minds by a natural process. They have to be implanted. The Germans have needed to be _taught_ to be patriotic. The makers of German patriotism a century ago were teachers and philosophers. They did not simply appeal to their patriotic instincts, as Englishmen would have done: they argued the point and _proved_ that Germany was worth fighting for: they founded a school of patriotic German philosophy. There are few more curious doc.u.ments in history, or more instructive for the light they shed on future events, than the famous _Speeches to the German Nation_ addressed to his fellow-countrymen by the philosopher Fichte in 1808, when his country was under the heel of Napoleon. They are not speeches at all, but philosophical lucubrations, discussing in abstract terms the whole subject of the nature of patriotism and of Germany's right to exist as a nation. One argument, for instance, on which he lays great stress, is that Germany is marked out to be a great political power because of the peculiar excellence of the German language, which he shows to his satisfaction to be superior to French, Italian, and other Latin languages. Again, he points out that there is no word in the German language for "character" (_Karakter_), a word borrowed from the Greek; the reason is, he explains, that there is no need for one, because to have character and to be German are the same thing--a curious foretaste of the German arrogance of to-day. Yet these speeches, which, issued in England at such a crisis, would have found no readers, reverberated through Germany and helped to create the self-confident spirit which freed her from the invader. Then, as now, under the inspiration of ideas which they had accepted from professors and philosophers, Germans fought for the German language and for German culture. But whereas in 1814 they fought to preserve them, in 1914 they are fighting to impose them.

Just as patriotism in Germany is wholly different from what it is in England, so also is democracy, and all those elements in the national life which feed and sustain it. British democracy does not depend upon our popular franchise or on any legal rights or enactments. It depends upon the free spirit and self-respect of the British people. We have been accustomed for centuries to the unrestrained discussion of public affairs; and we treat our governors as being in fact, as they are in name, our "ministers"

or servants. There is a force called public opinion which, slow though it may be to a.s.sert itself, British statesmen have been taught by experience to respect. It is as true of British as it is of American democracy that "you can fool half the people all the time; and you can fool all the people half the time; but you cannot fool all the people all the time." But the German people, as a people, lacks this irreplaceable heritage of political self-respect. It has never yet dared to tread the path of democracy without leading strings. It has not yet learned to think for itself in politics, or formed the habit of free discussion and practical criticism of public affairs. This is the vital fact which must be borne in mind in all comparisons between German and British democracy. The Germans have a Parliament, elected by Universal Male Suffrage. But this Parliament is powerless to control policy, because the nation behind it does not give it sufficient support. It is because of the absence of the driving force of a public opinion in Germany that the German people submit complacently to the infringements on political liberty which form part of the normal _regime_ of German life--the domineering arrogance of officers and officials, the restraints upon the Press and the shameless manufacture of news and inspiration of opinion from official sources, the control of the Universities, the schools, and the public services by the State in the interest of "orthodox" political opinions, and the ridiculous laws which have sent editors and cartoonists to prison in scores for criticising the behaviour and utterances of the Emperor or the Crown Prince. In England and in America underground attempts are sometimes made to injure the careers of men whose opinions are considered "dangerous" by those who employ them.

In Germany such interference with freedom of political thought is not the exception: it has become the rule. No man can make a successful career in the public service (and education is a public service) unless he is considered politically "orthodox" (_gesinnungstuchtig_); and orthodoxy does not simply mean abstention from damaging criticism or dangerous opinions: it means, in practice, deference to the opinions of those who "know better," that is, to the clique of Prussian generals and bureaucrats who, together with the Kaiser, control the policy of the country.

British readers who do not know Germany may think the foregoing indictment of German political incapacity severe. It is not so severe as Prince Bullow's. The portion of the late Imperial Chancellor's book which deals with domestic policy opens with these crus.h.i.+ng sentences: "The history of our home policy, with the exception of a few bright spots, is a history of political mistakes. Despite the abundance of merits and great qualities with which the German nation is endowed, political talent has been denied it.... We are not a political people." A page or two later he goes even further and quotes with approval a dictum that the Germans are "political donkeys." That a modern statesman should think this of his fellow-countrymen is remarkable enough; that he should say it outright is a still more remarkable proof of his unshakeable belief in their submissiveness. Therein lies the whole tragedy of the present situation.

The German people, so kindly and, alas! so docile, is suffering, not for its sins, but for its deficiencies; not for its own characteristic acts or natural ambitions, but for what it has too tamely allowed others, Prussian statesmen and soldiers, with alien ideals and an alien temper, to foist upon it, until it has become an integral part of its natural life and consciousness. Germany has been indoctrinated and Prussianised not only into acquiescence, but into sympathy with the policy of its rulers.

--3. _Prussia_.--This brings us to the consideration of the second and more powerful of the two Germanies--namely, Prussia. In order to understand Prussia and the Prussian spirit we must plunge ourselves into an atmosphere wholly different from that of the Germany that has just been described. The very names of the two countries mark the measure of the difference. Germany means the country of the Germans, as England means the country of the English. But the name Prussia commemorates the subjugation and extinction by German conquerors and crusaders from the west of the Prussians or Bo-Russians, a tribe akin to the Letts and Lithuanians. The old Duchy of Prussia, which now forms the provinces of East and West Prussia at the extreme North-East of the present German Empire, consisted of heathen lands colonised or conquered, between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, by a great religious and military organisation known as the "Knights of the Teutonic Order." While Southern and Western Germany was pa.s.sing, with the rest of Western Europe, through the transition between mediaeval and modern Europe, what is now North-Eastern Germany was still in a wholly primitive stage of development, and the Knights of the Teutonic Order, with crusading fervour, were spreading Christianity and German "culture" by force of arms, converting or repelling the Slavonic population and settling German colonists in the territory thus reclaimed for civilisation. The great British admirer of Prussia, Thomas Carlyle, in the first volume of his _Frederick the Great_, gives a vivid account of their activities in their forts or "burgs" of wood and stone, and helps us to realise what memories lie behind the struggle between German and Slav to-day, and why the word "Petersburg" has become so odious to the Russians as the name of their capital. "The Teutsch Ritters build a Burg for headquarters, spread themselves this way and that, and begin their great task. The Prussians were a fierce fighting people, fanatically anti-Christian: the Teutsch Ritters had a perilous never-resting time of it.... They built and burnt innumerable stockades for and against: built wooden Forts which are now stone Towns. They fought much and prevalently, galloped desperately to and fro, ever on the alert. How many Burgs of wood and stone they built in different parts, what revolts, surprisals, furious fights in woody, boggy places they had, no man counted; their life, read in Dryasdust's newest chaotic Books (which are of endless length, among other ill qualities) is like a dim nightmare of unintelligible marching and fighting: one feels as if the mere amount of galloping they had would have carried the Order several times round the Globe.... But always some preaching, by zealous monks, accompanies the chivalrous fighting. And colonists come in from Germany; trickling in, or at times streaming. Victorious Ritterdom offers terms to the beaten Heathen; terms not of tolerant nature, but which will be punctually kept by Ritterdom." Here we see the strange stern, medieval, crusading atmosphere which lies behind the unpleasant combinations, so familiar to us to-day in France and Belgium, of Uhlans and religion, of culture and violence, of "Germanisation" and devastation. When we hear the German professors of to-day preaching of the spread of German culture by the German arms, and when we feel disgust at the exaggerated religious phraseology which pervades the Kaiser's oratory and seems to accord so ill with his policy and ambitions, we must remember the peculiar origins of the Prussian State and how comparatively recent those origins are. "I have once before had occasion," said the Kaiser at Marienburg in East Prussia on June 5, 1902, "to say in this place how Marienburg, this unique Eastern bulwark, the point of departure for the culture of the lands east of the Vistula, will always be a symbol for our German mission. There is work for us again to-day. Polish arrogance wishes to lay hands on Germanism, and I am constrained to call my people to the defence of its national possessions.

Here in Marienburg I proclaim that I expect all the brothers of the Order of St. John to be at my service when I call upon them to protect German ways and German customs." The Kaiser's crusading appeals are not hypocritical or consciously insincere: they are simply many centuries out of date--a grotesque medley of medieval romanticism and royal megalomania.

What was possible for the warrior knights in North-East Germany five or six centuries ago is a tragic absurdity and an outrageous crime to-day among a spirited and sensitive people like the Poles--still more so in a highly civilised national State such as Belgium or France. It is an absurdity that only a theatrical monarch could conceive and a crime that only a military autocracy could attempt to enforce.

In the sixteenth century the Reformation, spreading throughout the North of Europe, undermined the basis of the Teutonic Order. The Grand Master of the time transformed himself into a Lutheran Prince holding the hereditary Duchy of Prussia as a va.s.sal of the King of the neighbouring Slavonic State of Poland. In 1611 the Duchy was amalgamated with the territory of Brandenburg farther west, and in 1647 the enlarged Prussian territories won their emanc.i.p.ation from Poland. Prussia now became a distinct State, essentially German in character (as opposed to the Poles and Lithuanians on its Eastern border), but still remaining for a time outside the community of the other German States.

The union between Prussia and Brandenburg had brought Prussia under the rule of the House of Hohenzollern, which, although originally a South German family, had borne rule in Brandenburg since 1415. Under the Hohenzollerns Prussia rapidly increased in territory and influence until in 1701 the ruler of the day, the grandfather of Frederick the Great, took on himself the t.i.tle of King. Under Frederick the Great, Prussia's career of conquest and aggrandis.e.m.e.nt continued. Seizing a convenient opportunity, he invaded and annexed the Austrian province of Silesia, and later joined with Austria and Russia in promoting the shameful Part.i.tion of Poland. The old conquering and "civilising" policy of the Teutonic Knights was continued, but under new conditions and in a brutal and cynical spirit which rendered it impossible of success. "The surest means of giving this oppressed nation better ideas and morals," wrote Frederick the Great, in words quoted with approval by Prince Bulow, "will always be gradually to get them to intermarry with Germans, even if at first it is only two or three of them in every village." This spirit in Prussian policy may have extinguished the ancient Prussians, but it has not yet begun to Germanise the Poles, and has gone far to de-Germanise the Alsatians. But it explains the utterances and justifies the sincerity of those who believe that to-day, as in the early days of her history, Prussia is fighting on behalf of "culture."

Prussia remains to-day, what she has been for the last two centuries, an aggressive military monarchy. "Prussia attained her greatness," says Prince Bulow, "as a country of soldiers and officials, and as such she was able to accomplish the work of German union; to this day she is still, in all essentials, a State of soldiers and officials." Power rests in the hands of the monarch and of a bureaucracy of military and civil officials, responsible to him alone, and traditionally and fanatically loyal to the monarch who is, before all things, their War Lord.

The Prussian outlook is so foreign to Western habits of thought that it is well that we should try to understand it at its best. Prussia proper has not been rich, like the rest of Germany, in poets and imaginative writers; but she is fortunate to-day in possessing in the greatest living Greek scholar, Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, a man who by birth and breeding is able to put the highest interpretation upon the aims and spirit of the Prussian State. To Wilamowitz Prussia is not only nearer and dearer than Athens. She is better, and more advanced. At the close of a wonderful address on "the glory of the Athenian Empire," in which he has employed all the resources of his wide learning to paint a picture of Ancient Greece at her best, Wilamowitz breaks into this impa.s.sioned peroration: "But one element in life, the best of all, ye lacked, n.o.ble burghers of Athens.

Your sages tell us of that highest love which, freed from all bodily entanglements, spends itself on inst.i.tutions, on laws, on ideas. We Prussians, a rough, much-enduring tribe of Northerners, may be compacted of harder stuff; but we believe that love is on a higher level when the fullest devotion to an inst.i.tution and an idea is inseparably linked with an entirely personal devotion to a human being; and at least we know how warm such a love can make a loyal heart. When our children have scarce learned to fold their hands before G.o.d, we set a picture before them, we teach them to recognise the n.o.ble features; we tell them, 'This is our good King.' Our young men, when they are of age to bear arms, look with joy and pride on the trim garb of war, and say, 'I go in the King's coat.' And when the nation a.s.sembles to a common political celebration, the occasion is no Feast of the Const.i.tution, no Day of the Bastille, no Panathenaic Festival.

It is then that we bow in reverence and loyalty before him who has allowed us to see with our own eyes that for which our Fathers dreamed and yearned, before him who ever extends the bounds of the Kingdom in Freedom, Prosperity, and Righteousness, before his Majesty the Emperor and King."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Speeches and Lectures_, 3rd edition, Berlin, 1913, p. 65. The "good King" referred to is the old Emperor William, as the address dates from 1877.]

Here, far better expressed than in the Kaiser's speeches, we see the spirit of the Prussian Junker at its best. It is narrow, old-fas.h.i.+oned, and, to democratic ears, almost grotesque. Yet, if it survives uncorrupted by the dangers to which progress always exposes a military caste, it will not be easy either to crush by defeat or to transform by humiliation.

It is among the old Prussian n.o.bility and the large landed proprietors in the original Prussian provinces, who have come to be known as the "Junkers," that this spirit prevails. They stand for the old stern repressive military discipline and unchanging Conservatism in its extremest form, regarding with well-founded suspicion and misgiving symptoms of development in any direction whatsoever. No party in Germany acquiesced more unwillingly in the changes necessitated by her commercial and industrial development. Even their militarism stopped short at the Army, and it required a substantial increase in the protective tariff safeguarding their agricultural interests to purchase their reluctant adhesion to the Kaiser's policy of naval expansion. Even now the German Navy, the pride of the commercial and industrial cla.s.ses throughout the German Empire, is regarded by them with uneasy suspicion as a parvenu service, in which the old Prussian influences count for less in promotion than technical skill and practical efficiency.

The inst.i.tutions of the Prussian State represent the spirit of its ruling caste. If the German Empire is not democratic, Prussia lags far behind it.