A FRENCH FRIAR ON GERMANY.* This well-written book, of which
an excellent translation lies before us, proves that it is not impossible for a Frenchman both to understand and appreciate Germany. It is true that the author says many hard things of the Germans. He asserts, for instance, that while deceit is the exception with his country- men, frankness is the exception beyond the Rhine, where 'violence, ruse, and cunning have kneaded together with a cement of French blood a sort of false unity, which one successful blow from France would suffice to destroy. But each chapter adds proofs of the unsoundness of this view, and the book is in effect a confession of the superior strength of German intellect, character, and organisation, however bitter are the denunciations of the great Chancellor's victorious policy and of the Teuton docility that made its success possible.
The real nature of the rivality that exists between France and Germany is not, however, fully apprehended by Father Didon. The two races are less antipathetic than is commonly supposed. Between the Frankish conquerors and the Gallo-Roman tillers of the soil alliances were far from uncommon; and it is not im- probable that, north of a diagonal drawn from Belfort to Nantes, more Teuton blood than Celtic runs in the veins of the popula- tion. The Germans, it must be remembered, are not racially represented by the Prussians, who are largely of non-Teutonic origin. Under Napoleon, the true Germans of the Rhineland and of the Central States readily adopted the ideas of their con- querors, and cheerfully fought in their armies; while the French code prevailed in the Rhine country up to a quite recent period. Soil, climate, and some indeterminate originality or idiosyncrasy of the stock have, no doubt, a considerable influence upon the general evolution of the race ; but in the production of a national character history is, in all probability, a principal factor. The antagonism rather than antipathy which exists be- tween France and Germany—and which is much more pronounced on the French side than on the German—is of a political and accidental, not of an essential nature. Nor is it a mere "struggle for preeminence," at any rate east of the Rhine. Prince Bismarck's autocratic expressions and high-handed pro- cedure are apt to mislead. The position he has won for Germany has been viewed by him mainly as a means, not as an end—as a means of maintaining the unity accomplished at so great a cost. Here is just the difference between the supremacy of France under Louis XIV. or Napoleon, and that of the Empire under the Chancellor. France aimed at a real hegemony of Europe to gratify her ambition ; Germany has sought an hege- mony in, rather than of, Europe, not with any view of driving Europe along German ways, but principally to affirm her own unity. No Frenchman, however, can be got to see this; for him " supremacy " is a word which has only a French meaning, which ought not, indeed, to exist in any language but his own.
To the theory advanced above may be opposed the present colonial policy of Germany. That policy, however, is by no means new so far as commercial Germany is concerned ; it is new only in being taken up by the Chancellor. What end he proposes to attain by it, it is not easy to say. Of all statesmen, he is the one whose intentions, while seeming to lie close to the surface, in reality need the deepest penetration to reach them. Possibly it means nothing more than a bid for the support of the mercantile classes ; possibly the Chancellor is not above indulging in a grudge against England, whose democratic evolution he both dislikes and dreads. Or he may have in far- off prospect the absorption of Holland, and be paving the way for a plea for such a measure by laying the beginnings of a colonial empire. Perhaps—bat one may guess ad infinitum with little profit, and it is better to rest content with the certainty that Prince Bismarck is not the mere crafty politician Father Didon, who entirely misreads his character and genius, takes him to be, and has quite a different policy from that ascribed to him in this book, where he is accused of aiming at rendering France "powerless, isolated, or artfully embroiled in distant adventures until she can safely be quartered and annihilated as a nation."
It is in the non-political chapters—which happily form the bulk of the volume—that Father Didon is at his best. For his own countrymen he claims a certain ethic and assthetic superiority ; but he rises almost into eloquence in his portrayal of the intellectual might of Germany, which is rightly attributed
* The Germans. By the Rev. Father Didon, of the Order of Preaching Friars. Translated by R. L. de Beaufort, LL.B. London and Edinburgh : Blackwood and Sons.
to the excellence of her University system. "Her vices," he adds, "are rather those of barbarism than of decrepitude. She presents a peculiar mixture of primitive rudeness and civilisa-
tion. Her uncouth nature proceeds from her blood itself ; her civilised and superior qualities from her education.' There is some truth in this view ; but, after all, the ITniversities did as little for Germany as for the rest of the world until the present century was in its teens. France has, in fact, sown the- wind, and reaped the whirlwind. It was French tyranny that called the Tugend-Bund into existence, as those patriotic Alsacians, MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, have well shown in their charming narratives, and which woke the dormant idea of unity, at which Goethe sneered, into activity. And German uncouth- ness is almost sufficiently explained by her extraordinary history. It is only within the last seventy years that German lands have been sufficiently free from the ravages of war to allow of the growth of culture. Father Didon does not trace the beginnings of the existing University system, nor does he give more than a general, though a very interesting and lively, picture of German University life. There are twenty-two Universities in the Empire, the oldest being that of Leipzig, founded in 1409 by a sort of migration from Prague, and the youngest and most important the famous University of Berlin. The students number some twenty-five thousand, but it is the host of over two thousand professors who instruct them that gives to the national life of Germany its unique character. German savants are rarely amateurs ; they are distinctly professional men,beginning as Privat-docenten and ending as full professors, well remunerated by class-fees or official salaries. In no other country in the world is so ample, well-paid, and honourable a career open to science and learning. It is in the Universities, and in the Universities alone, that the- German intellect finds full and free play. This concentration is not without its disadvantages. German pre-eminence in science and scholarship is accompanied by a distinct inferiority in pure literature and political thought. Professors study the world and mankind, but not men. They rarely make good statesmen;. they dwarf rather than develop the imaginative faculty, and accumulate knowledge rather than throw before them the light of broad generalisation and original genius.
Father Didon was especially struck by the large freedom of the German University system, to which the narrow officialism of his own country affords a sorry contrast. Each University acts for and by itself, and if the Government intermeddle at all, it is with matters of administration merely. The emula- tion consequent upon this liberty keeps each University and each professor at the highest point of efficiency. A striking instance of the activity thus produced even in so esoteric a department of learning as theology, is seen in the list given of the principal Lives of Christ published in Germany during the last ninety years. Twenty-nine such works are enumerated, and the list might be lengthened. "What parallel," exclaims the- Preaching Friar, sadly, "can we offer, with our five faculties of theology and our eighty-nine higher seminaries F" What parallel can we offer?
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