THE POLITICAL COMEDY OF EUROPE.*
Mr. DANIEL JOHNSON has done a remarkable thing,—he has frightened Prince Bismarck ! He is very plain-spoken as to his opinions, extremely candid as to his views, and, doubtless, not a little ambitions in his aims. The unscrupulous boldness of his indictment of the German Empire and its founders invites the enmity of those whom it attacks ; but the author can hardly have hoped for such a result as that which he has attained. The suppression of a political satire means world-wide publicity for it, and far greater influence for its author than he could gain in the peaceable, common-place course of ordinary cir- culation. To suppression of The Political Comedy of Europe Prince Bismarck has resorted ; the Berlin police are fer- reting out every copy of the work, thus giving it interest and importance with the people, who will not fail to associate it with those democratic and socialistic publications of which not all the vigilance of the police avails to deprive them, and the French Republic has again submitted to the dictation of the conqueror of France. At the " request " of the German Government—" request " is a fine word, but, under the circum- stances, it imposes on nobody—the French Government has re- fused colportage to the French version of The Political Comedy of Europe, and caused it to be removed from the railway book- stalls. As the author (who calls himself Daniel Johnson) is an ardent admirer of Republican France, and foresees in the spread of democracy a sweet hope for the future, a happy out- come of the armed terrorism of the present condition of the Great Powers, his little book is clearly harmless to the subjects of the Republican Government. It is uncom- monly amiable of the French Ministry to share the anxiety of the German Chancellor for the political morals of travelling children of the Fatherland, who might learn from the American Punchinello unpleasant truths about the cost of glorious victories. Mr. Daniel Johnson will not achieve so great a success for the English version of his clever work. It will, no doubt, be widely read, but we ba7ve no reason to be afraid of it. Our withers are not, it is true, quite unwrung ; but Afghanistan and Zululand are a long way off, and this particular " Comedy " is European. Many of us are of the author's way of thinking with respect to the huge arma- ments which are the devouring locusts of Europe, and the selfish ambitions which are the curse of the age, and we cannot but admit that there is reason in the sequence of Mr. Johnson's forecasts for the future. We wish we could see as clearly the outcome of it all as does the author of The Political Comedy, when he shuts up his Punchinello's peep-show upon a glimpse of the German and French Unions (Republic is to be a dis- carded title), clasping hands over the Valley of the Rhine, " now a free territory."
From Denver City the author addresses a brief dedication of his work to "the statesman whose policy has done the most towards the growth and ripening of the European Democracy, the Prince-Chancellor•of Germany ;" and he also sends greetings to the German democracy, with "a wish that it may acquire wisdom and the practical spirit necessary to its triumph, which alone can insure peace to all nations, and security to Europe." Good Germans, who are taking to Paris again almost as heartily as good Americans, must not have these naughty notions put before them in a cheap and convenient form, or bring them home in their travelling-bags to the still better Germans, who stay at home to cultivate loyal senti- ments, and crops of corn-flowers for imperial anniversaries. They miss some pleasant reading through the complaisance of
• The Political Comedy of Europe. By Daniel Johnson. London : Sampson Low and Co.
the French Government, for the form of the work is ingenious, and the idea is well carried out, although the " Comedy " bears few of the characteristic marks of American humour. Except for the spelling of certain words according to American, rather than English, custom, Mr. Daniel Johnson might, so far as the inter- nal evidence of his nationality is concerned, be one of ourselves.
He borrows a "situation" from Hernan , and his utterances, when they are especially extravagant, remind the reader of Victor Hugo's declamatory politics ; but the author of The Political Comedy of Europe is not a Frenchman. His sympa- thies in the political order are too wide, his tone is much too cosmopolitan, to render that point doubtful. The strength and thoroughness of his political hatreds are of no country; they are those of the advanced democrat, pure and simple. The quaintest conceit in the Comedy illustrates this ; when, during an inter- lude of tableaux, the scene being Hades, Pluto calls Thiers, and giving him a pair of pincers and a hammer, bids him "undo the chains which still bind Napoleon I. to the pillory, and sub- stitute for him the monster who is now ravaging the earth."
Pluto, according to Mr. Johnson, is a god of nice perception, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, for he thus addresses the " malin vieillard" of the Communists, the " illustro homme d'Etat " of M. Jules Simon :-
" Adolphe Thiers, you have rendered signal services to your country ; but a spite, unworthy of so grand a nature, blinded you, when, to crush Napoleon III., you insisted that he was the true cause of the Prussian war against France, and that Prussia was not in any way guilty. To expiate this, you shall loose with your own hand the chains of Napoleon I., and you shall hereafter confine in that pillory the Prince-Chancellor Bismarck."
The author does not hate the Emperor of Germauy so heartily as he hates Prince Bismarck ; he makes the Emperor despicable as the tool of the stronger man, and ridiculous as an object of gross flattery and a victim of superstitious credulity and inflated vanity. He also handles the Imperial Crown Prince with severity, taking a very inimical view of these personages in relation to the past historical events of their lives, and in- dulging in dark anticipations of their future conduct, as conspirators, under the command of Prince Bismarck, against the freedom and welfare of mankind. The Comedy, which is in five acts, extends from 1863, when Count Bismarck opens the Schleswig-Holstein question, after his favourite fashion, to 1890, when Flitz, the wandering American-German, who plays the commentator and connecting-link, relates the history of Europe at that period, with all its springs and motives, to the then Presi- dent of the United States. In the audience before whom the play is acted and the tableaux are displayed, are Johnson, Durand (a Frenchman residing at Denver), and a German, and the colloquies of the three in the entr'actes are curious and interesting. The book leaves an impression of the writer's deep and passionate earnestness, of his indisputable but not quite satisfactory ability, and of his generous aspirations for the welfare of everybody who is not imperial, royal, or princely. He is a worshipper of the idea of democracy, and he sees, with the eye of faith, a stream of tendency in all human events towards the establishment of his own religion.
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