THE UNREST IN GERMANY.
IN the musical drama of Die Meistersinger Wagner represents Nuremberg as sleeping quietly in the midst of Germany. That beautiful old city is scarcely peaceful just now, for at the moment of writing she has in her midst the most reckless and provoking person- ality in Europe. It is never a dull season for the German Emperor. When he is not filling the chief part in Berlin he is "starring" in the provinces or on tour in foreign lands. It is not long since he was on his yacht in Norway ; then he made his eminently theatrical visit to St. Peters- burg; and we are told of a future engagement at Brussels and of a, grand expedition to the Holy Land. Meanwhile, it is the anniversary of battles gained over the French, it is the time of the manceuvres of the great army, and the Emperor is in the saddle half the day and speech-making at night, holding forth on the divine attributes of the Prussian Monarchy. The Kaiser seems to be attempting the Carlylea,n project of a sort of working King; but, praiseworthy as his industry may be, his career is too exciting, we might almost say too irritating. He gets on our nerves, he will not allow Europe a day's rest. To Germany his personality is trying to the very limits of endurance. By nature the German is rather lethargic, plodding, patient, cautious. But the Emperor is making a new Germany, bitter, irritable, conscious of the posses- sion of "nerves." The contagion of his unrest is imparted alike to his country and the world, and it is a virus of a rather serious character. There are causes enough in the modern world for agitation and annoyance and perpetual wear and tear without these unfortunate incidents of civilisation being artificially stimulated into more active energy. The world's statesmen should reassure, should administer a tonic that would both calm and invigorate. But the German Emperor worries and excites and throws the patient into a state of high fever ; and like Charles XII. of Sweden, he bids fair to leave a name which will at least point a moral if it does not adorn a tale. As regards the Kaiser's influence on Europe, an anony- mous writer in the Fortnightly Review has summed up the effect of his foreign policy in a few pregnant sentences, which we only notice in order to show what has been the outcome of a restless ambition which has overleaped itself. The visit of the Austrian Emperor to St. Peters- burg was the outward and visible sign of the failure of the Kaiser's foreign policy, and the break-up for practical purposes of that combination which was arranged by the political sagacity of Prince Bismarck. Up to the dismissal of the old Chancellor, Berlin was the political centre of Europe ; that position has now been transferred to St. Petersburg. Austria has effected 6. working under- standing with Russia which will before long become clear as it is worked out in the Balkan Peninsula. France is in close alliance with Russia. The Dreibund is sinking out of sight. The Emperor has chosen to aggravate the anti-English sentiment in Germany so as to create out of it a distinct policy. The outcome of all this ambitious and impulsive action is that Germany is isolated, her power weakened, the serious nature of her position exposed. Under the influence of his chosen political associate, Dr. von Miguel, the Kaiser has formed in his mind a great but inchoate and grandiose scheme of a world-Empire, and he is lending his energies and exciting his people to that end. German trade and population have grown with such rapidity since the war of 1870, German life has become generally so revolutionised, that to an impressionist mind like the Emperor's all things seem possible. As his ancestors created the kingdom of Prussia out of the Mark of Brandenburg, so he seems to conceive himself as creating out of the inheritance left him, a colossal Empire, rich, invincible, going forth conquering and to conquer, and he seems to conceive also of a divine blessing resting on him in this work. We do not by any means think that the religious tone of the Coblentz speech was cant. The Prussian Kings have always held the doctrine of Divine Right, with which, indeed, the Monarchy encountered the demo- cratic pretensions of the Frankfort Diet in 1849. But whereas the old Kaiser William I., while abating no jot of his supposed rights, adopted a tone of simple humility, the present Emperor seems to regard himself as in some sense a privileged partner of the Almighty, admitted to his counsels, favoured by his regard. It is not cant, but it is the mark of an unbalanced and crude fancy, of an overmastering passion, of a temperament dangerous to a ruler at all times, specially dangerous to a ruler of to-day. The Kaiser is manifestly failing in his policy, as he is irritating foreign nations by his presumptuous and rest- less methods. How utterly he misconceives his mission may be seen in his notions as to forming a world- Empire. A German world-Empire, indeed, where no man may call his soul his own, where scarce a vestige of personal liberty is endured to exist, where honest citizens can never sit at their ease without a suspicion of the spy or the policeman at their elbow, where cultivated men are imprisoned for U:se-majeste, an Empire officialised and regulated to death ! World-Empires are not made in that way ; no, not if all the armies and navies in the world could be combined in their support. So far as England and America have created great and extended common- wealths, they have created and sustained them by methods exactly the reverse of those made use of by the German Emperor.
We may, however, take leave of this scheme of "hatching vain Empires," for the Kaiser is much more likely to lose the Empire he has than to persuade people to come into an Empire which is not in existence. If this energetic ruler is causing unrest and irritation outside Germany, far deeper and more serious is the unrest he is causing within. We have dealt quite recently with his unwise patronage of Prussian Junkerdom, and the impres- sion he has conveyed that the German Empire exists for the good of the Prussian landowner. What a medley of ill-assorted notions appears to run riot in the Kaiser's mind ! Dreibund on one side, Russian Alliance on another, anti- English policy on a third ! Prussian Junkerdom mingled with schemes for extending German trade. Colonies to be secured and organised on the lines of a Prussian drill - sergeant ! Piety and militarism, the "sword of the Lord and of Gideon " ! The loyalty of the people to be secured by threatening to shoot them down ! The Emperor will have men his brothers on pain of Jeath ! In all these strange vagaries we can see no definite line of policy, but merely restless impressionism, as unintelligible as some specimens of the art which goes by that name, and having the additional disadvantage of being very dangerous. We need not look at the pictures of an impressionist artist, but we may all be more or less affected by the policy of an impressionist Emperor, and the German people are being seriously affected. The action of the Prussian Landtag on the Bill dealing with political associations was the first sign of dangerous growing discontent in Prussia itself, where the cities seem as strongly democratic as the country districts are hopelessly reactionary. Now it seems that a hostile feeling towards Prussia is growing rapidly in South Germany,— a feeling which may easily slide into a disintegrating Particularism. The United States tried to counteract disintegration by giving the smaller States equal political rights with the larger, so that Nevada, with forty thousand people, has the same vote in the Senate as New York, with nearly seven millions. But in Germany the spirit of Federalism has been dissolved in a universal Prussianising tendency, under the guidance and patronage of the Emperor. State rights may not be actually interfered with, but everything is done to show that the Prussian landowner and the Prussian soldier are lords of United Germany. No wonder that, according to the well- informed writer in this month's Contemporary Review who signs himself " Germanicus," South Germans are begin- ning to sigh for the easier days when Austria held the hegemony of the Germanic Confederation before Sadowa. Professor Reinhold, lately appointed to a Chair of Economics in the University of Berlin especially to counteract the heretical tendencies of Professors Schmoller and Wagner, the Katheder-Sozialisten, and therefore likely to be friendly to the Emperor's ideas, has made this remarkable confession : "Real Conservatives in South Germany are frequently heard to say that it was very stupid to kick Austria out of the German Bund —Austria, whose absolutist system was at least patri- archal and good-natured ; Austria, who was liked by everybody—and to exchange that despotism for another equally absolutist regime, but with the difference that the modern Prussian feudalism is simply unbearable, and its representatives personally insolent." If these things are done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry ? If this is the real mood of the simple, old-fashioned Bavarian -Catholic, what is likely to be the mood of the large and discontented Democratic party in South Germany, the mood of Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, the mood of the con- quered and annexed Provinces ? Union under Austria is impossible now, but a South German Secessionist move- ment is by no means impossible, and it is towards some such denouement that it seems to us the Kaiser's policy tends.
We have referred to the appointment of Professor Reinhold, who was removed from Wiesbaden to fill a chair in the University of Berlin. He has turned out to be a kind of political Balaam. Called to curse the popular opposition to the Kaiser's Prussianising and absolutist policy, he has blessed it altogether in the form of a farewell address at Wiesbaden, which seems to us the most significant event in German affairs. In the first place, Professor Reinhold declared that social reforms could not be successfully carried out by an absolutist Monarchy, but that the will and intelligence of the people must themselves be enlisted as a factor in reform. Next, he declared that the Kaiser had destroyed the very opposition to the Social Democratic movement, on which the security of his own rule depended, by the per- verseness with which political affairs were managed. A policy which failed to recognise the natural rights of a free people was not only doomed to failure, but was causing grave anxiety as to the future of Germany. The good intentions of the Government were undoubted, but paternal methods, and narrow, official pedantry had obscured these motives in the eyes of the people, who were intensely irritated without being consciously benefited. Such language, coming from a prominent teacher selected purposely to pitch the tune of political Conservatism in Germany's greatest University, reveals more clearly than even the Socialist victories at the polls the growing forces of just discontent.
We deeply regret this dangerous unrest in Germany. If the Kaiser can be conceived as really having his way in the long-run, the future liberty of Europe is seriously threatened. If, on the other hand, his rule should be overthrown by the forces of revolution, who shall tell what may be the future of the German people, split up into rival and hostile sections, and hemmed in by Great Powers on both sides? Germany is as necessary to the wellbeing of Europe as is France, her weakness or dis- integration could cause satisfaction to no thoughtful mind which knows the benefits which Germany has conferred on the human race. But the splendid heritage won by the sword, by discipline, by intelligence, is being seriously endangered by the meddling ambition and confused aspirations of one man, and he claims a kind of political infallibility. Dr. Johnson said that it did not matter what kind of government one lived under. But the career of William II. affords proof positive of the actual harm which bad government may inflict upon men. The unrest of Germany is the most serious factor in the European situation.
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