PRINCE BISMARCK IN A RAGE.
MHERE is not much to interest the world in this Geffeken affair, and yet the whole world is in- terested in it. The truth is, we fancy, that Prince Bis- marck's position in Europe is so great and so separate, and his inner character still so obscure, that anything which throws light upon it is studied with avidity by all politicians on the Continent, and not only by those who are interested in foreign affairs. We cannot honestly say that the light thrown this time is altogether an agreeable one. The Prince is shown under it liable to fits of quite unreasonable rage. The Chancellor, it will be remembered, irritated by the publication of part of the late Emperor's Diary, ordered or sanctioned the prosecution of Dr. Geffeken, who had communicated it to the Press, on a charge of high treason. -Under the very strict laws of Germany, there was some colour for the accusation. for Dr. Geffcken had been indiscreet in not asking the consent of the reigning Emperor, and the Diary did contain passages calculated to diminish the loyalty of some of the Princes of Germany, and to make England suspect that the new Empire might prove an unsafe ally. The charge, however, was fully heard before the highest tribunal, the Supreme Court of the Empire, which sits at Leipsic, and its President, Herr von Simson, known throughout Europe as a jurist, decided that the prisoner must be acquitted, there being an entire absence of evidence that he intended to do wrong. It is a tradition of Prussia that judicial decisions should always be respected ; but Prince Bismarck was so irritated, that he claimedand received from the Emperor permission to pub- lish the Act of Accusation, which is, in fact, a complete statement of his reasons for ordering the prosecution, and also to la,y it, with all its supplementary documents, before the Federal Council. This proceeding, it appears, is without a precedent, and is regarded in Germany as a direct appeal to popular judgment against the judgment of the Supreme Court, and it has been followed at once by the resignation of Dr. Friedberg, Minister of Justice, upon whom the late Emperor had estowed the high dis- tinction of the Order of the Black Eagle. It will be succeeded, moreover, according to a rumour so much credited as to be universal, by the retirement of Herr von Simeon, the honoured President of the Supreme Court, who holds himself to be implicitly censured by the Chancellor's new course. Such an appeal to popular opinion is regarded in Germany with a sort of dismay, and marks in the strongest way the exaggeration of feeling with which the Chancellor regards any hostility on the part of 'any influential German towards himself. For there is absolutely nothing in the narrative embodied in the Act of Accusation to suggest that Dr. Geffcken was in the smallest degree disloyal to the Empire, or even doubt- ful that Prince von Bismarck ought to continue to rule it. It is stated, indeed, that he disliked the Prince, and had once described him in a private conversation as an utterly pitiless man, but he had, to the extent of his influence, directly and strongly supported his ascendency. Dr. Geffcken, who is a strong Conservative, had been asked as early as 1885 to assist in drawing up &proclamation to be issued by the Crown Prince Frederick in the event of his father's sudden death. He drew up one, therefore, which was in sub- stance the one issued when the event actually occurred three years after ; but he advised the Prince that its key-note must be the full recognition of the Chancellor's right to his position, and. his continuance in it. This recommendation, which was acted on, must have been sin- cere, for the very reason that Dr. Geffcken was, according to the Act of Accusation, "personally hostile to the Chan- cellor in almost every field of his policy." When a politician hates a Premier and detests his line of action, yet admits that his right to rule must be the key-note of policy for a new Sovereign's reign, he clearly accepts him as the necessary man, and supports while he condemns him. The Chan- cellor found, however, in the papers which he seized evi- dence that Baron von Roggenbach—the Baden Minister mentioned during the Emperor Frederick's life as his close intimate and possible adviser—Dr. Geffcken, and Sir Robert littorier were all opposed to his policy, and all likely to influence the Emperor Frederick in directions different from those he wished. He suspected them of having intrigued to displace him, and therefore struck at all,—at Dr. Geffeken by an arrest and trial ; at Sir R. Morier by reviving the absurd Bazaine story, which had. been told three years before ; and at Baron von Roggenbach by the publication of the Act of Accusation, which represents him as incidentally an enemy of the Chancellor, and therefore, in the Chancellor's theory, of the Empire. To most Englishmen, the whole story will be almost un- intelligible. To them it will seem that Dr. Geffcken, though he had no right to publish a diary sent him for his private perusal, without the consent of its writer's representatives, acted from an overweening loyalty to his deceased master and friend, who, having been also his Emperor, was by German law entitled, and solely entitled, to that very loyalty. They will think that, except as regards his Sovereign and the Empire, he had a right, not only to have his own opinion, but to press it on everybody ; and that even if he had recommended the dismissal of Prince Bismarck instead of emphatically supporting him, he would no more have been guilty of treason than of sacrilege or rick-burning. His counsel might have been unwise, or self- interested, or officious, or arrogant ; but if he were asked for counsel, it would have been entirely within his right to give it, and if he were not asked, it would only have been an impertinent presumption. That, however, is not the Chancellor's view, and it is worth while to speculate for a moment what that view really is. Of course, the essence of it must be that the existence, or at all events the grandeur of the Empire, is bound up with his per- sonal ascendency, and with a policy which only he can carry out ; but there is also something more. We take it that Prince Bismarck, always impatient of criticism from the half-informed, conscious of immense services to Germany, and aware, since the death or retirement of all to whom he paid deference, of being the sole depositary of the plans which built the Empire, has grown ulcerated in his temper towards the Liberal Opposition. He regards them as enemies alike to himself and the Empire, and cannot bring himself to tolerate either their arguments or their hostility to his policy. He strikes at them, therefore, as strongly as if they were invaders, actually, for instance, accusing Dr. Bamberger of deliberate enmity to the Empire, because he ridiculed the ill-success of German Colonial policy in West Africa, and interpreted some agree- ment with some barbarian differently from himself. He is all the more exasperated because, in his judgment, which is probably so far accurate, the Liberal Party received a great accession of moral strength from. the partial endorsement of their views by the Emperor Frederick. So humble-minded are the masses of Germany, that to be able to prove that an Emperor, a soldier- Emperor, a Hohenzollern Emperor, believed that Germany could be constitutional and yet strong, is a serious help to the Liberal leaders, and a serious exasperation to their great opponent. He rages under it, avails himself. of every weapon in his armoury, and at last, when even the Courts fail him, appeals to that tribunal of public opinion which Liberals think the ultimate one, but which he in all his calmer moods regards, and avows that he regards, with supreme aversion and contempt. It is a strange exhibition of littleness in a great man ; but it is one which is not unfrequently found in men who are at once sure of the rectitude of their own motives, made confident by enormous success, and embittered by a resistance alike of events and men which, as age creeps on, seems to them positively disloyal. We have little doubt that if the truth could be known, the Prince re- gards the American Government with positive hostility, and suspects it of enmity to him personally because it assumes such an energetic attitude of opposition in Samoa.
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