10 DECEMBER 1870, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

DER KAISER VON DEUTSCHLAND.

II OW little the world changes! Hark once again to the 1 shouts of the chiefs of the tribes as they raise Tchengis Khan on their shields on the field of battle, and salute him Emperor of the World ! That is one view of this elevation of King William to the Imperial throne, and a poetical one ; but then it is also a cynical and a partially untrue one. It would be far truer to fall back on much more prosaic morality, to repeat a sentence which would do for a copybook, and say, see how far one gets by the aid of even a humble every-day virtue like fidelity to one's work ; or to contrast, after Hogarth's fashion, the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns, the Idle and the Industrious Apprentices to the trade of govern- ing mankind. The condition of existence for the Kaisers after the Thirty Years' War ended, was that they should become again what the Roman Caesar was supposed to have been,—the large-hearted arbiter of mankind, the ulti- mate judge to whom nations when wronged could appeal, a Sovereign to whom Kings could bow without loss of dignity, or fear that the decision would be aught but a fair award. That was the raison d' etre of that " Roman " Kaisership of which the House of Austria was so proud, of that pretension to such precedence among Sovereigns as a Sovereign has among his nobles, of that antique and stately ceremonial which conquering kings strove in vain to relax, and which Popes could not break through. The Hapsburg Kaisers saw this was their function, always claimed this position as theirs, and persistently refused to perform the work for which this transcendent state was assigned to them. Great or little, Charles V. or Charles VI., Reformers like Joseph, or Reactionaries like Francis, they were steadily selfish, perseveringly unjust, unanimously nar- row, governed kindly only in their own States, used their semi-divine claims to obedience only to aggrandize themselves ; could no more be trusted to arbitrate between states, or creeds, or even men, than the most corrupt of judges or the most fanatic of priests. They could be bribed into injustice by the hope of territory, driven into it by the threat of a Bishop, or deluded into it by any worldly-wise and flattering diplomatist. And so, when the first storm came, they saw they had no meaning, and resigned that wonderful "Romische" Crown, link of the old and new civilizations, symbol of the claim to the de jure sovereignty of earth, and slunk away mere Emperors of Austria ; and when the second storm came were driven even from German position, flung out of Germany, made to resign even the hope of primacy among their former vassals. The condition of existence for the Hohenzollerns, on the other hand, with their long strips of sandy provinces and four millions of people and absence of all hereditary rights, was that they should work at their trade of ruling like millowners, or traffic-managers, or non-commissioned

officers ; should organize their " hands " so as to get the largest amount of result from the smallest amount of expense, should accumulate and not squander property of all kinds, should actually do the work they were made Kings to do. Up to their lights they did it all faithfully, laboriously, persistently. They drilled their hands with such stern steadiness, and yet such justice, so far as either of them knew justice, that they were obeyed as if served by machines, and yet with devoted willingness. Their armies, badly paid, cruelly disciplined, little rewarded, fought for them as the soldiers of great monarchs have seldom fought ; their greatest leaders, men who had won pitched battles, bore rebuke like children; their half-starved, close-watched civil servants actually governed as few bureaucrats attempt to govern ; their diploma- tists, unrewarded with rank or wages, or even praise, tricked or threatened, bullied or cajoled, with unrivalled fidelity and suc- cess. The line never produced in it a man of genius—for even Frederic was but a fair General of Division and able manager of property—but every man of it save one gave himself to his labour, worked at his trade, would have efficiency, and did have it ; would be master, but never took master's ease ; if he got a new property, made it a reason not for enjoyment, but for toiling the more on that. Their ideal, a state organized like a camp or a factory, was not perhaps a high one ; but it was honestly their ideal, and they realized it, by means which, though often utterly bad, were but once bad by the standard of their own age, or of that sturdy " bacon-and- greens conscience " by which the most of them were guided. The one infidel among them died worn out with toil, never having done less than eight hours' work a day. The one dreamy mystic among them rejected the Imperial throne when actually in his hand, because he thought only Kings

had a moral right to give it him. And now the hour having arrived, the simplest, solidest, perhaps even stolideet of them all—though there must be flashes of deep insight in

him too—having reached the reward of all their labour and all the devotion they had secured in their great servants, having used the huge armaments they had amassed, and the credit they had built up, and the property they had gathered, to such pur- pose that his people scarcely lament either lives or treasure, heavily mounts the steps of the Imperial Throne, turns ar

frowning face to the shouting crowd, and reluctantly seats, himself upon the pinnacle of the world. "I had rather be King of Prussia," says King William, as they place on

his head the crown which makes him, but seventh from the little Kur-fiirst of those sandy steppes out there in the far north-east, a King of Kings. He is a strange and somewhat dim figure, that old man who has never been despot in the• sense of wishing to secure his will by pure volition, but who' said, " I will be pivot of the State,"—as who should say,, " I will be master in my house ;" who has been so hated and so loved, whose stubbornness made an army as genius might have done ; who seems to have in high measure but one capacity, but that the supreme one for Kings, the faculty- of recognizing among men far down below the genius he requires, and who stands, an average man among men of the first rank of brain, the heavy, over-weighted, but calm master of them all. He is a dim figure, as we say, to us, that drill-serjeant who can recognize and yet use such captains ; but it is hard not to fancy that at the- bottom of his strange reluctance to grasp the prize is a vague consciousness that the work not only of him, but of his House, is done ; that the typical Hohenzollern is not the fit occupant of an Imperial throne ; that if the Hohenzollern Emperors are to reign as the Hohenzollern Kings have reigned, if two centuries hence a Kaiser Fritz is to summon all Ger- many to some mighty task, and find all Germany rise at his call, silent, regimented, and yet burning with inner fire, the Kaisers must be men of larger sympathies, deeper insight, and less selfish nature than the Kings of Prussia have ever been. It is by doing his duty as he saw it that the Elector has become Emperor, but the duty of Emperors is other than mere drill, and the justice desired of them not the justice defined in the old sentence, "justice to all men, but to Hohen- zollerns first." " Let Fritz have it," says the King ; and he who chose Bismarck and Von Moltke, who gives to his ablest enemy of 1866 the supreme command north-east of Paris, and trusts to the only Prince of his House who might founft an Orleans branch—for Frederick Charles is head of a party— the command of the most active of his armies, may be right once more, though such insight might seem above him, and the Crown Prince may be the man best fitted to wear the new Imperial Crown and play the part Germany, deep in its heart, expects from the successor of Frederick Barbarossa. If he is—and all Germany suspects him of hating war and loving liberty—Europe may yetlhave no reason to repent of the bizarre, possibly the most important event of our time,— the recrowning of the German Emperor in the year which has seen the Pope-King discrowned. But if he is not— ?

The effect of the change of title depends so absolutely on the reign of the first Emperor who shall bear it for any time-

that it is scarcely worth discussion. Two points only may be

accepted as certain. One is that the Kaisership will make unity slightly easier, by giving Germany a visible Head, sup- ported by traditionary reverence as well as popular feeling,. and by removing the jealousy of the sub-kings, which, mean- ingless now, might be full of menace hereafter should Ger- many ever again be struggling in the grasp of a foe. Men hate or love their admitted superiors, but they are not jealous of them. And the second is, that a German Emperor will in his heart consider all German men his subjects, will sigh for the lost valley of the Danube, and look wistfully northward along the Baltic coast. Whether he will desire to " recover his subjects " by conquest or by attraction—by the sword, as in Holstein, or by the drawing force of a nobler and more mas- sive national life, as in Gotha and Baden—is the doubt with which Europe for years to come will be disturbed ; but that he will so desire there is no room for doubt whatever, and it will be well for the freedom and the diversity of Europe if he desires no more. Beaten in Paris or victorious, the Kaiser of Germany reigns from the Baltic to the Italian frontier, from the Silesian. plateau to far beyond the Rhine.