KING WILLIAM AND PROVIDENCE.
THERE is, we imagine, a feeling of annoyance in the minds of even the most Prussianizing of the English public,— we should not wonder if it existed even in the heart of " W. R. G." himself,—at King William's profuse expressions of gratitude to Providence for his various victories. As a matter of taste, of course, an accomplished man of the world when he gets a great victory carefully refrains from anything that looks like exultation ; and the sugges- tion that God is on your side, and is opposed to your enemies, is generally supposed to savour of exultation. But then the King of Prussia is hardly an accomplished man of the world ; and as far as we understand the religious feeling expressed in his telegrams after victory, it is almost the opposite of exultation,—a reverent admission that though these great events may have been brought about by the instrumentality of German intelligence and foresight,—yet had not German intelligence and foresight been used by a far higher purpose than any of which man is capable, Germany would have been shivered at the first blow ; that it is God, and not General Von Moltke, or the fidelity of the Hohenzollerns to their duty, who has struck France with palsy and broken to pieces the formidable power which sixty years ago set Europe at defiance. If we had any criticism to pass on the telegram in which King William announces to Queen Augusta the fall of Metz, it would be that the tone of gratitude is, if anything, rather less hearty than formerly. " Providence be thanked " sounds hardly so personal in its gratitude as the "Thank God for his mercy " of the telegram after the battle of Worth, though this, no doubt, is refining beyond what is reasonable. Anyhow, we should certainly not think better of the King, but less well, if he could ascribe his victories to the prudence of German combina- tions, and the superiority of Germans in valour and strategy to the French, as final causes, and were to cease to regard himself as a creature wielded by God for far greater purposes than any which Prussian statesmen can conceive. We all recognize now the honesty and the power of Cromwell's religious belief in the work given him to achieve by God. Why not the King of Prussia's ? The boastfulness would be far greater, and not less, if he looked at these great events as mere results of Prussian foresight, of German valour, and of French folly and cowardice.
But then, it will be asked, how is this genuinely religious view of the matter consistent with the high-handed dealings -of the King of Prussia in relation to peace ? Can a man who sincerely ascribes to God the ordering of such events as these, believe that he is continuing to work out the Divine purpose when he presses hard on a conquered people, refuses any terms of peace short of what involves permanent subju- gation and therefore a real injustice to one part of the con- quered nation, and continues the work of military destruc- tion and wholesale slaughter, after all the blameless objects of the war have been abundantly attained? We do not for a moment doubt that it may be so. Of course, we hold that he is profoundly mistaken in what he is now doing ; that he is, in all probability, directly sowing for himself, as the French sowed at Jena, the seeds of future calamities to Ger- many, that he may even become the instrument of Heaven's designs for the ultimate humiliation of Germany, as he has till now been for France. But not the less do we hold the religious feeling the King displays to be thoroughly sincere, and not only thoroughly sincere, but one of the principal secrets of his power. That Germany has not any distinct conception that she is in the wrong in pressing these humiliating demands is clear enough. Had she any such idea, the epoch of weakness would be already beginning, for that flush of conscious arrogance which al- ways accompanies the first unscrupulous use of power is one of the most disturbing of intellectual influences. You can see clearly in his correspondence how it clouded and confused the marvellous intellect of the first Na- poleon, and we have an impression that a trace of the ,same disturbing influence may be traced in the recent de- spatches and conversations of Count Bismarck. But we do not believe that any clear consciousness of arrogance has yet reached the heart of Germany, and still less that of the worthy German who occupies the Prussian throne. The sen- timental feeling for a people formerly German, whom it is in- tended to rescue (by force) from the infection of Celtic ideas, pervades Germany, and quite blinds the Germans (though not perhaps without a feeling almost of satisfaction at being thus blinded) to any sense of wrong in the imposed terms. The grave feeling of military responsibility for his people probably still more completely possesses the King, and so entirely preoccupies one who was educated in a military and conservative school, as to render him inaccessible to what must appear to him the newfangled and unpractical consideration that two or three millions of civilians object to be permanently subjugated. We do not feel any doubt in the world that King William, being what he is, thinks it almost a sacred duty to fight till ' he obtains a military frontier such as he supposes adequate for the defence of the South ; and if he has his moments of hesita- tion, they are probably forced upon him by the bloodiness of the war, and the necessary sacrifice especially of German life, rather than by any doubt as to the practical justice of his terms of peace. The narrowness of mind which calls him a hypocrite for believing that God is on his side, is even greater than the narrowness of mind which is attributed to him when it is supposed that he believes God to be on his side. Mr. Alison was once said to have written a big book to prove that God was a Tory,—which was narrow enough ; but it would be still narrower to suppose Alison a hypocrite for thinking so.
Besides, King William has as yet never really assumed that God is on his side. He has only assumed that God has ordained victory, and such blessings as victory in- volves, to Germany ; but that does not in any way imply that the King may not recognize that God has also ordained for Germany the evil as well as good consequences which victory often brings, and which French victory certainly brought to France in the beginning of the nineteenth century. If he does clearly recognize this, he will not ever suffer himself to suppose that God is on his side simply because the victory is accorded to him. Many defeats have been full of blessing ; many victories of destruction. The disasters of the campaign of 1812 really gave a new spring of life to Germany. The disasters of 1870 may yet give a new spring of life to France,—though the signs of it are not many as yet. But from the fact that King William is thankful for the obvious blessings of victory, it rather seems to us to follow that he does not mistake them for signs of Divine partizanship than that he does. He would hardly be so thankful for these obvious blessings if he did not feel how much latent danger there is in not recognizing their true origin. It is not that sense of awe and gratitude which, as far as we can see, really fills the King, which blinds men to the dangers of success, but rather the absence of any such sense of awe and gratitude. We should think far better of the hopes of France if there were more evidence in the French leaders of the religious humility which, however mixed it may be with poorer elements, moderates instead of enhancing the exultation of King William.
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