BOOKS. .
THE FOUNDATIONS OF GERMANY.*
Em ma= once bid the whole world " beware when the great God let loose a thinker on this planet." If he were alive now, ho would perhaps extend the warning to the case where an individual is let loose on the world who is not a great thinker but who at the same time wields enormous power. The Hohenzollern have been singularly prolific of men of this type. Their case is almost unique in history. AB a rule, the influence of great thinkers, though not productive of such immediate or striking results as that of the great men of action, has been far more profound and permanent. The great thought is immortal. It speeds on its way, and for good or evil stamps its impression on posterity. The deeds of the men of action, inasmuch as they are mortal and are usually not, afforded the time necessary to complete the structure whose foundations they have essayed to lay, have frequently only exerted an ephemeral influence. Moreover, men of this type have rarely controlled the thoughts of others from their graves. Alexander the Great founded an Empire, which crumbled to pieces on the morrow of his death. The administrative system known as Caesarism survived for many years and cannot yet be said to be extinct, but its hold on the world has been-due not so much to the action of its original founder as to the accident that his immediate successor was a man of marked ability, and was able, during an unusually long tenure of office; to establish the system on very solid foundations. Of Napoleonism nothing survives but a bureaucracy, which has taken deep root in France, and a judicial Code, which has been very frequently copied by other countries. Cavour created modern Italy, but he cannot be said to exercise any posthumous influence on Italian thought. The ease of the Ilohenzollems dilfers widely from any of these. It cannot be said of them, as was said of Ariosto, that " Iddio lo fete e poi ruppe la stampa." On the contrary, with rare exceptions, for some two centuries the standard pattern of Hohenzollern has been turned out from the Royal nurseries of Prussia with disastrous
Each generation has received its impulse from those which preceded it. Each has made a continuous, persistent, and sinister effort to secure the predominance of principles diametrically opposed to the current upon which the opinions of the rest of the civilized world have been drifting. The attempt has, most unfortunately, been successful. To allege that the Hohenzollern by their individual action founded, first the Prussian Monarchy and later the German Empire, is to state only part of the case. They have done much more than this. They have moulded the opinions of a whole nation. They have yielded nothing to modern thought. On the contrary, they have, as occasion has required, used the philosophers, thinkers, historians, and moralists of their own country to force German thought into an unnatural channel, which has been carved out at the dictate of Hohenzollern ambition and thoughtlessness. The performance is certainly remarkable. Whether it is creditable or the reverse to its authors depends on the point of view from which the subject is approached.
Mr. Ellis Barker's instructive work, entitled The Foundations of
* The Foundations of Germany. Sy J. Ellis Barker, London ; thulth, Elder, and Co. 17e. 6d. neta Germany, brings out very clearly this aspect of German affairs. In our own times, the Hohenzollern have had the extraord nary good fortune of finding, in the person of Prince Biamarck, a man of genius who was able to apply whatever was sane in their principles with a ruthlessness which was equal to, and an ability far superior to, that displayed by any recent scion of the Hohenzollern stock. They will also eventually awake to the fact that they have suffered the dire misfortune of seeing those principles woefully misapplied since the statesmanlike Influence of Bismarck was withdrawn and all the worst features of the Hohenzollern character have been allowed to run riot without any control being exercised over them. It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that Prince Bismarck was the founder of modern Germany. The foundations were laid long before he was born. Moreover, as Mr. Ellis Barker very truly remarks, " Modern Germany has paid lip-worship to Bismarck, but has discarded his teaching." The Great Elector, who died in 1688—the year in which England finally shook off the tentative absolutism of the Stuarts and inaugurated an era of genuine Constitutional government—was the first master-builder. To him belongs the credit, or discredit, of having " ruthlessly and tyrannously suppressed existing self-government in his possessions, and having given to his scattered and parochially-minded subjects a strong sense of unity." He was succeeded by Frederick III., who, In 1701, assumed the Royal crown and title as King Frederick I.
Nature sometimes indulges in freaks, such as molanism and albinism. Frederick I. was a Hohenzollern freak. He departed in most things from the normal type of his race, but " ho maintained and even increased the Prussian Army. That was his only merit." He was a spendthrift and a voluptuary. Under his rale "maladministration became general." On his death, in 1713, a brusque reversion to the hereditary type took place. His successor, Frederick William L, is described by Mr. Ellis Barker as " a coarse-minded, ignorant brute, as uncultured as was President Kruger, but possessing, like Kruger, great natural abilities." His ruling passion was parsimony. His predecessor spent 6,000,000 thalers on his coronation. His own expenditure on this account was 2,457 thalers and 9 pfennings. No detail escaped his attention. His Ministers were ordered to meet at 7 a.m. in summer and at 8 in winter. At 11 a.m. the head-cook asked whether they required dinner. In that case, they were to have " four good dishes, namely, a good soup, a good piece of boiled beef with vegetables, a good dish of fish, and a good piece of roast beef, mutton or veal. In addition there should be a quart bottle of good Rhine wine for every person." Further, in order to reduce the number of servants, " every one of the Ministers was to receive together four plates and a glass, and a large basket was to be provided into which the soiled plates could be put." All Prussian clergymen were instructed in every sermon that they preached to insists on " the duty of paying the taxes punctually." Sermons were to be short. " If a sermon lasted longer than an hour, the clergyman was to be fined two thalers." Usurers who advanced money to minors were whipped, or even condemned to death. All their property was confiscated. Newspapers were considered " superfluous and wholly mischievous." Frederick L despised high education. " He made learned professors court fools, and made his court fools university professors." Under his rule, Prussia became a " land of boors and soldiers."
On his death, in 1740, the apotheosis of Hohonzollerndom took place. Mr. Grant Robertson, in his England under the Hanoverian, says that Frederick the Great, though not " a lovable character . . . enriched Europe with a new and much-needed conception of kingship, the absolutism of the enlightened and royal expert, with a new ideal of national life expressed in a new type of State." Mr. Grant Robertson further propounds the very doubtful proposition that the Great Frederick " added to the science of government and the civilization of Europe." This was the view very generally accepted until, under the auspices of William II., the ultimate results of Frederick's teaching were revealed to an amazed and bewildered world. For if Frederick enriched the world by showing all that could be done by the enforcement of that rigid discipline which, as Mr. Ellis Barker points out, is the corner-stone on which the whole German edifice rests, he certainly impoverished it in another direction. Himself wholly devoid of any moral sense, he demoralized a whole nation. In spite of his unquestionable ability, he was, in fact, an odious character. There was probably an element of truth in Voltaire's caustic remark that Frederick had never known what it was to be grateful, except perhaps to the horse which carried him out of the range of fire at Mollwitz.
Mr. Ellis Barker has very wisely thought that neither Frederick him- self, nor the mentality of the existing generation of Germans; which has been moulded on lines which ho and his forerunners originally conceived, :can be rightly understood without a careful study of Frederick's own literary compositions. They are very voluminous. They are little known in this country. Mr. Ellis Barker has rendered a service both to historical research and to current political thought by drawing .marked attention to them. They have been extolled in exaggerated terms by German writers. Thus, Scherer, in his History of German Literature, says : "Frederick the Great must be reckoned among the emelt original and brilliant writers of the Germany of his day. . . . The Germans had a classic in their great King, but unfortunately a classic in the French language." Frederick's writings scarcely deserve so high an encomium. The literary style is, indeed, lucid. Moreover& Frederick's compositions show that ho had studied, and often misread, history, which was, ho thought, " the school of princes." But what is most remarkable about them is their outrageous mendacity, and still more the nauseous veil of cant which is thrown over that mendacity. Probably no human being has over penned such a conclusive testimony to his own hypocrisy as is contained in Frederick's Anti-Nachiavel. In that extraordinary work he laid the greatest emphasis on the principle that policy should bo based on morality. He declared that " while Spinoza undermined the foundations of faith, Machiavelli undermined those of statesmanship." In a fit of wholly fictitious enthusiasm for the cause of morality, ho exclaimed : " Let Cesar Borgia be the model of those who admire Machiavelli. My model is Marcus Aurelius." Yet all the while he was consumed with an insatiable desire for " glory." On the morrow of his enunciation of moral principles in which ho never believed, he lulled both Austria and Saxony to rest by a series of false- hoods in order that ho might the more easily work out their ruin. Thu same individual who laid down the exemplary principle that it " was very bad policy on the part of rulers to act like rascals and to deceive the world," passed his whole life in deceiving every one with whom he came in contact. In his time, Mr. Ellis Barker says, " spying, corruption and bribery were brought to the highest perfection." Yet he had the audacity to record that " it had always been his principle that to a Sovereign his good name should be more precious than his life," and in his Memoirs, which wore intended to gull future generations, he'wrote : "During my whole life I have never deceived any one. Still less shall I deceive posterity." Nevertheless, posterity was for a long time deceived. It has taken the resuscitation in an extreme form of the ideas which emanated from the pseudo-philosopher of Potsdam to undeceive the world.
Some of the conclusions at which Mr. Ellis Barker seems to arrive will scarcely command general assent in this country. It is quite true that in the matter of efficient organization a democracy cannot hope to compete with an absolutist government. When Mr. Ellis Barker says that " organization must be met with organization," ho is on very safe ground. We must endeavour to improve our admittedly faulty organization. But when he goes on to say that " absolutism must be met by absolutism," he propounds a far more questionable proposition. We know that absolutism is based on Frederick the Great's monstrous maxim that " when kings play for provinces, men are mere gambling counters." We know, also, the results of that principle. They have been indicated by Mr. Ellis Barker himself in one very typical case. Almost the whole tribe of Hereroa in South-West Africa has been ruthlessly destroyed at the bidding of one of the Hohenzollern disciples. The incident may very profitably be compared with the loyal conduct shown by the natives of India in supporting the cat'su of their democratic rulers. It is quite true that democracy is now on its trial, but it would be altogether premature to conclude that what Mr. Ellis Barker calls the system of " wise governmentalisin " is going to triumph. All the available evidence, indeed, points to its speedy downfall, and it deserves to fall, "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," for the system which the Hohenzollern have foisted on Germany Le an insult both to the Germans themselves and to the whole human race. It humiliates mankind, for-it makes all men mere brainleass marionettes whose acts and thoughts are regulated like machinery by some fellow-creature who may be, and often is, posseased of no qualities at all worthy to be invested with such supreme power.
Cuohtea.
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