GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY.
[To TIM EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.] SIE,—In your note to the letter of Mr. William Harbutt Dawson in the Spectator of November 23rd you say that you "do not consider our article was in any way calculated to crate ill-feeling in Germany." I, for one, have read the article with considerable annoyance. Its whole tendency, I felt, was to create distrust, enlarging, as it did, on the "cause of
• quarrel" inherent in "a conflict of ideals," or in "the dis- parity of ideal and temperament between ourselves and Germany." By way of illustrating that "disparity," you quote a number Of extracts from the Emperor's speeches based, as you allege, on "a theory of the divine right of Monarchy" which "we might at any time have to take into account?' Now I submit, in the first place, that not one of your quotations has any bearing that England need "take into account" in her relations with Germany. Not only that, but I go so far as to say that those extracts do not bear out "a theory of divine right" at all in the only sense in which it might serve as a bogey, for any one, English or German,— ' viz., a right over and above that vested in the Emperor by the Imperial Constitution. The Emperor has never attempted to violate the rights of the other parties to the Constitution, and if.he chooses to consider his "position and task" so circum- scribed "as appointed by heaven," surely that is altogether a private affair of his own.
I must not trespass on your space with an analysis of every one of your quotations. Besides, my point is not so much that you have misinterpreted the Emperor as that you make out that your quotations, interpreted in the absolutist sense in which you present them, reflect tbe "ideal and temperament "of "Germany." I take the strongest poisible objection to the argument, which shows utter ignorance of the nation at large, as well as of its representative bodies, in particular the Bundesrath and the Reichstag. I resent your persistent description of our body politic as a "virtual absolutism,"—a catchword which ought not to be used by any one honestly endeavonring to give English readers a _notion of German "political ideals." Are you not aware that the Emperor is absolutely powerless for legislation without the assent of the Bundesrath and the Reichstag ? And that he is "virtually" powerless for any war for which the Reichstag should refuse to vote the supplies ? The Emperor, to his great credit, has taken the lead in indoctrinating us with the necessity of having a respectable navy; but it is the Reichstag that had to grant him the funds. On the other hand, many a favourite scheme of the Emperor's has been thrown out by those commanding the purse-strings; and the Emperor, again to his credit, has submitted with a good grace. And that Reichstag of ours is elected by universal suffrage, which England, perhaps partly owing to its Parliamentary form of government, has not yet dared to grant its people. If your point were to show that in our Reichstag, and in the nation at large, reactionary tendencies have preponderated for a long time past, I should be prepared to agree with you ; we are all familiar with tidelike alternations of liberalism and reaction under any form of government. But to style the German system outlined above "a virtual absolutism" is an un- justifiable misnomer; and to say that the German people "elect to live under a. virtual absolutism" is an uncalled-for opprobrium which more than wipes out your, protestations of admiration for our "splendid qualities?'—I am, Sir, &c., , [We publish our correspondent's letter, but cannot for a moment admit that our remarks were unfair or discourteous, either to the German Emperor or the German people.— ED. Spectator.]
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