HOW THE GERMAN EMPEROR MIGHT WIN THE UNITED STATES. T HE
German Emperor is a statesman of great and varied abilities. No one can mark without wonder and admiration "his pride of life, his tireless powers," his energy, his imagination, and, above all, the ingenuity and resource with which, when he has decided upon a policy, he carries it out. Nothing is too great or too small to be attempted by him if he thinks it will work to the realisation of any project he has set before him. His eye is always on the object, and he thinks no detail unworthy of his eager, and even anxious, consideration. But though we cannot but admire these really great qualities, we cannot also fail, to notice certain mental limitations which often tend to spoil his best-laid plans. We say "mental limita- tions," but perhaps the phrase is not quite fair, for the limitations we mean might more accurately be described as limitations due to his position and education rather than to any lack of brain-power. Where we notice these limitations most strongly, and where they are most striking and most interesting, is in the German Emperor's dealings with the United States. It is clear that he has never yet arrived at a proper understanding of the American people. He is most sincerely anxious to win their respect and regard, and not merely from any politic or selfish reasons. He no doubt admires them very greatly, and would like to stand well with them. Probably in his heart of hearts he believes that the future of the world belongs in equal parts to the United States and to the German world-Power, and he would like for the good of both States to arrive at an agreement which would, he thinks, be useful and beneficial to both. We mean that he has no desire to trick or "take in" the United States, or to get them to sacrifice any interests which he thinks they can reasonably hold to be essential to their welfare. His attitude, in fact, is that of the business man who says : "There is plenty of room for both our firms, and when I say I desire to make things easy for you I am not trying to bamboozle you, but mean genuine and honest co-operation." This is the attitude of the German Emperor. In all probability he has not for the moment got any definite business proposal to make to the American people—or rather, if he has, he now realises that the time is not yet ripe—but till he makes that proposal, and in order to lead up to it, he earnestly desires to win their admiration and respect. He wants them to feel con- fidence in him and in his aims and policy.
It is in his attempts to carry out this object, an object in itself eminently sound, reasonable, and legiti- mate, that the Emperor shows his limitations. To win the confidence and respect of a nation, as of a man, the essential thing is to understand that nation, —and the true nation, and the nation as a whole, and not merely the most prominent and obvious portion of the nation. We can realise how completely the Emperor misjudges the American people by observing the means he takes to win their confidence and respect. He began his friendly campaign some years ago by reminding America how many millions of men who had once been his subjects or the subjects of his predecessors dwelt in the United States, and how great a tie of amity this constituted. This winter he sant his brother, Prince Henry, on an official visit to the -United States, and he heaped upon the American President and the American people all those little and intimate civilities by which Continental Monarchs set such immense store, and which in their minds denote more than almost anything else the desire to be specially friendly,—i.e., something more than merely courteous. Again, the Emperor has only this week presented a statue of Frederick the Great to the United States in order to remind the Americans of the interest which the King of Prussia took in the founda- tion of the Republic, and of the fact that his sympathies in the War of Independence were entirely on their side. Now all these acts and many other signs of favour- ever-to-be-remembered-with-gratitude exhibitions of Im- perial condescension and generous goodwill, as all loyal Germans would honestly account them—though so sincerely intended, have 'failed to touch the American people. The Americans were not so small-minded as to be annoyed by the blundering reference to the great body of German voters in the States, but all the same it jarred a little, or rather, did not strike the right note. What all Americans instinctively insist on is the homogeneity of their people. They have always, and very rightly, determined to turn their faces away from the idea of any foreign element in the body politic remaining unassimilated. They have no use, as they say, for hyphen- ated Americans, a fact acknowledged by the rapidity with which the foreign immigrant Anglicises his name.—Our readers may recall Dr. Drummond's poem of the French- Canadian, Jean Baptiste Trudeau, who becomes John B. Waterhole, and explains that if you go to live in the States, "you must have Yankee name."—Again, though Prince Henry's visit was immensely enjoyed by a quick and eager people fond of all Shows, but specially fond of displaying their own kindly and boundless hospitality, it was not regarded by them with any very great seriousness. The Americans delighted to honour Prince Henry, but it never even occurred to them to think that they were being specially honoured by the visit. They imagined that all Germany was envying the Prince for enjoying such a "lovely time" and "hustling around" so magnificently. The Emperor need not have been anxious, as we understand he was, lest the Americans should have thought they were being patronised. The possi- bility never occurred to them. If they thought about it at all, they thought how " mad " the Emperor must be that he could not see all tl:e wonderful things his brother had the luck to see. In the case of their new statue the Americans are, we feel certain, genuinely pleased to have in their capital a marble image of the great crowned cynic. The Germans need have no fear lest, as the Berliner Tagebtatt expresses it, "many a Republican on the other side of the Atlantic may find it difficult to reconcile himself to the erection of a statue of a crowned head in the capital of the Republic." The American Republican will find no such difficulty. He would be pleased to see the statues of all the Kings of Europe ranged round the Capitol and respectfully listening to the strains of ' " Hail, Columbia ! " But though the American will feel nothing in the least incongruous in seeing the second King of Prussia in Washington, he must not be expected to show any marked signs of gratitude for the honour done him. He will be pleased and polite and enthusiastic, as he always is unless something is said or done which is or which he imagines to be insulting, but he will not be more. In other words, the recent acts of the Kaiser, though they will meet with all, and more than all, the enthusiastic response that such acts of international politeness require, will not have moved the real emotions of the American people in the least. it will never occur to them that the Emperor has laid them under any sort of obligation, and that they must do something friendly to. him in a business way if he ever asks them just to prove that they are not churlish or ungrateful and have not forgotten his kindness and goodwill. They will feel no more ground for that sort of reciprocity than one feels towards a man to whom one has just said" Good morning," or whom one has asked to dinner, or from whom one has accepted a cigarette.
How, then, should the German Emperor set about winning the confidence and respect of the American people? Surely there must be some way in which they can be won. Most certainly there is a way, and if the German Emperor could only first learn to understand the American people, and then would make the sacrifices required, he would be able to accomplish the feat. The first tiling which the Kaiser must banish from his mind is the notion that the true American people, the people who control that better and higher public opinion which in the last resort governs in America, care for flattery. America in one sense will accept any amount of flattery, and accept it eagerly, but it will fall like water off a duck's back. What will win their confidence and respect is the carrying out of, and doing homage to, certain ideals of which the Americans believe themselves to be the special guardians. These are the ideals of civil and religious liberty, the equality of all before the law, and the abolition of special and personal privileges. If the American people were to see the German. Emperor paying, as we have said, homage to these principles, he would soon win their confidence and respect. If we can imagine it possible that the Emperor should abolish prosecutions for lese-majeste, should stop all Press prosecutions, should institute a free Press, should free the Universities from official control and censorship, and should get rid of a system which obliges a half-drunken officer to draw on and cut down a sober civilian who has the temerity to protest against the officer's insolence, we do not doubt that the American people would be carried away with a flood of enthusiasm for the Emperor. He would seem to them the crowned exponent of true and honest American ideals. As long, however, as the German Emperor stands forth in Europe as the representative of all that is essentially antagonistic to the American ideal of human rights,—as long, that is, as men are sent to prison for making derogatory remarks about him or members of the Imperial house, as long as the newspapers dare not comment with entire frank- ness on the Imperial speeches, as long as the Kaiser's public utterances clearly show that he holds a want of obedience to and veneration of him not merely as a breach of human law, but of divine law, an impiety as well as a crime,— in a word, as long as he poses as a semi-divine person who rules over a nation of bondmen, who are virtuous or wicked bondmen according as they do or do not respect him, so long will the German Emperor fail to touch the hearts of the American people, and to win their confidence and respect.
It is an easy task to show that we are not dealing in mere abstractions, but are stating facts. Who was the Sovereign who won the confidence and respect of the American people? It was Queen Victoria. She certainly did not win them by any attempts to flatter the American people, or by any conscious or deliberate efforts. She respected them, it is true, as they respected her, but she never set herself to conquer their affections. The affection was mutual, but it was intrinsic. But the Queen could never have gained and held the confidence and respect of the American people had she shown by word or deed her contempt for human rights and human liberty, and let the world see that she regarded herself as of a different flesh from ordinary mortals. She lost no sympathy in America because she was surrounded by the picturesque restrictions of a mediaeval etiquette, and because a tradition of a thousand years had enveloped her throne with a gorgeous symbolism, for the Americans realised that behind all the magnificence and ceremonial she was a free Queen who presided over the destinies of a free people. Let the Kaiser give up his autocratic pretensions, and cease to require the slavish obedience demanded by jure-divino Royalism, and he will soon find the way to the hearts of the American people, and will win, first their confidence and respect, and then their affection. If he cannot, or will not, do that—and needless to say, short of a miracle, he will never change the nature of a rule which he honestly believes to be the only system suited. to Germany—he must abandon his attempts to win over the Americans. He will still find them friendly and courteous and responsive in the inter- change of the ordinary courtesies of nations, but the moment it comes to a question of doing business he will have to show that the bargain is not only a good one for America, but that it is better for her than for him. If he cannot show that, and if he asks America to forego any special points of policy—such as those connected with the Monroe doctrine—he may as well try to negotiate with the winds and waves. The Americans will show no malice over past difficulties—such as the Manila Bay inci- dent—for they are not a vindictive or grudging people; but, again, they will think nothing of the obliga- tions sought to be imposed on them by fine speeches, Imperial visits, and gifts of statues. When it comes to treaties, it will be business, and nothing but business.
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