The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 15

The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 15

To carry out Bismarck’s policy it was necessary to break down a

promising liberal movement that seemed on the point of giving Prussia

responsible government. It was his faith that a united Germany must

hew her way into the position of great power in Europe, and in order

to have a state that could do this there must be a strong central

authority, able to direct all the resources of the state to the

desired end. The large number of small nobles had long ago formed the

celebrated Junker autocracy, a body with like ideals. He gave their

restless energy a more definite political and military object, and made

them take places as parts of his great state machine.

 

He had his reward. In 1866 he fought a decisive war against Prussia’s

old enemy, Austria, and won it so quickly that even the Prussians were

astonished. In 1870-1871 he threw the state against France in a war

that left the land of Napoleon as completely at his feet as Prussia had

been at the feet of the Corsican. And then in the moment of exultation

over the victory he founded the German empire by uniting with Prussia

the numerous smaller German states. There is much to support the

suggestion that a similar stroke is held in reserve to create a

Mittel-Europa of Germany and Austria-Hungary as a final glory of the

present war, if Germany shows herself able to carry off the victory.

 

Bismarck’s ambition for Germany was to hold a position of arbiter in

Continental affairs. He felt that this was the best way to make his

country safe from hostile combinations, and it met his ideal of the

dignity to which Germany ought to attain. He achieved his desire in

the Three Emperors’ League and the Triple Alliance. Predominance in

influence was the height of his ambition. The conquest of new lands,

and the support of industry and trade by a policy of territorial

expansion, were not within his plans. He was a man of an older

generation to whom a predominance among the Great Powers was better

than chasing the rainbow of world empire.

 

In 1888 died Wilhelm I, the king whom Bismarck made Emperor. He was

an honest man who loved the simple and sound Germany in which he

was reared. At this time the leading men of 1871 were passing from

power and a group was coming on the scene who were young men in the

intoxicating times of Sedan and Metz. A new emperor came to the throne,

possessing great energy and the capacity of forming vast plans. He was

eleven years old when the empire was proclaimed at Versailles, the age

at which ordinary boys begin to wake from the dreams of childhood.

From such dreams Wilhelm II passed to dreams of imperial glory. The

idea of bigness of authority that he thus formed has remained with him

to this day. Add the effects of an impulsive disposition and an unusual

amount of confidence in himself and you will account for the peculiar

gloss spread over a character that is strong and otherwise wholesome.

 

Early in his reign he gave ground for alarm by several acts that are

hardly to be described in a less severe word than “bumptious.” He

dismissed Bismarck from the Chancellorship, seemingly for no other

reason than that he wished a chancellor who would be more obedient to

the imperial will, and he uttered many sentiments which caused sober

men to wonder what kind of emperor he was going to be. But as the years

passed it was noticed that all his aberrations fell short of disaster,

and as he was very energetic and devoted to efficiency in civil and

military matters the world came at last to regard him with real esteem.

 

When the present war began the kaiser became its leader, as was his

duty and privilege. Opinion in hostile countries pronounced him the

agent responsible for its outbreak. Around his striking personality

have collected many stories of dark complexion. At this time it is not

possible to test their accuracy, but it is safe to say that many of

them are chiefly assumption. On the other hand, it is undoubted that he

is now a firm friend of the military party, and that he supports the

autocracy in its purpose to carry the war to the bitter end. He has

been a diligent war lord and he has shown a willingness to share the

sacrifices of the people. Stories of apparent reliability that have

come out of Germany in recent months imply that he has steadily gained

in popularity during the conflict, while most of the other members of

his family have lost.

 

If it is important to clear thinking to see the kaiser in an impartial

light, it is equally necessary to understand the German _Kultur_. This

term is used in Germany to indicate the mass of ideas and habits of

thought of a people. It applies to art and industry, to religion and

war, to whatever the human mind directs. From the German’s standpoint

we have a _Kultur_ of our own. We have no corresponding term, nor

concept, and we cannot realize all he means in using the term if we do

not put ourselves in his place. Now it is true that the German has won

great success in intellectual ways. Scholarship, scientific invention,

the application of art to industry, and well planned efficiency in

social organization are his in a large degree. He is proud of his

achievements; and when the war began he felt that it was the German

mission to give this _Kultur_ to other peoples. From his standpoint, a

Germanized world would be a world made happy. It was an honest opinion,

and it went far to support his desire for expansion.

 

The Germans are a docile people with respect to their superiors,

and this trait is a condition of their _Kultur_. It is traditional

in Germany for the peasant to obey his lord, the lord to obey his

over-lord, and the over-lord to obey his ruler. To the kaiser look

all the people in a sense which no citizen of the United States can

understand without using a fair amount of imagination. The lords and

over-lords constitute the _Junkers_, who in the modern military system

make up the officer class. A high sense of authority runs through the

whole population, the upper classes knowing how to give orders and the

lower classes knowing how to take them.

 

Before the battle of Jena, 1806, the Prussian army was made up of

peasants forced to serve under the nobles, who took the offices.

Townsmen were excluded from the army. The peasant’s forced service

lasted twenty years. The system was as inefficient as it was unequal,

and a commission was appointed to reform it. The result was the modern

system of universal service, put into complete operation in 1813. After

a hundred years it is possible to see some of the effects of the system

on the ideals of the people. It has taught them to work together in

their places, formed habits of promptness and cleanliness, and lessened

the provincialism of the lower classes. It has been a great training

school in nationalism, preserving the love of country and instilling in

the minds of the masses a warm devotion to the military traditions of

the nation.

 

It has also produced results of a questionable value. By fostering

the military spirit it has developed a desire for war, on the same

principle that a boy in possession of a sharp hatchet has a strong

impulse to hack away at his neighbor’s shrubbery. It is probable

that the temptation to use a great and superior army was a vital fact

in bringing on the present war. Furthermore, the wide-spread habit

of docility leaves a people without self-assertion and enables their

rulers to impose upon them. As to the influence of universal service in

promoting militarism, that has been frequently mentioned.

 

On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that not all states that

have had universal military training have been saddled with these

evils. France, for example, has had universal training without becoming

obsessed with the passion for war and without the loss of popular

individualism. It seems well to say that universal training itself does

not produce the evils sometimes attributed to it. In Germany, at least,

it seems that it was the purpose for which the army existed, and not

the army itself, that developed militarism and brought other unhappy

effects.

 

Probably the German army before the war was the most efficient great

human machine then in existence. There was less waste in it and less

graft than in any other army. Since the army included all the men of

the empire at some stage or other of their existence, it was a great

training school in organization. Its effects on German history are

hardly to be exaggerated.

 

I have said that military organization alone was not sufficient to make

the modern Germany. It was also necessary to give the nation a definite

national purpose, and this was the task of its intellectual leaders.

The purpose itself was expressed in the idea of German nationality.

By a bold stretch of fancy every part of Europe that had once been

ruled by Germans, that spoke the German language, or that could be

considered as a part that ought to speak that language was fixed upon

as territory to be brought within the authority of the Fatherland.

It was in accordance with this principle that Schleswig-Holstein was

taken from Denmark in 1864 and Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. Here the

march of annexation paused. Bismarck was too wise to carry the theory

to an extreme; but a growing number of writers and speakers in the

empire took up the idea and kept it before the people with winning

persistence. It is thus that Pan-Germanism has come to be one of the

great facts in German public opinion. By preaching race unity with

patriotic zeal the intellectual leaders have established a powerful

propaganda of expansion.

 

Of the men most prominently associated with this movement especial

attention must be given to Heinrich von Treitschke, for years professor

of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Berlin, whose

remarkable influence reached all classes of people. He was a handsome

man with an open face that invited admiration without appearing to

care whether it was given or not. When he spoke the auditor heard “a

raucous, half-strangled, uneasy voice” and noticed that his movements

were mechanical and his utterances were without regard to the pauses

that usually stand for commas and periods, while his pleasant facial

__EXPRESSION__ had no apparent relation to what he was saying. The

explanation was that he was so deaf that he did not hear himself speak.

That such a speaker could fire the heart of a nation is evidence that

he was filled with unusual earnestness and sympathy.

 

He had great love of country, and if he exalted royalty and strong

government it was because he thought that Germany would reach her

highest authority through them. It was no selfish or incompetent king

that he worshiped, but one that lived righteously and sought diligently

to promote the interest of the people. He held that the nobility should

serve as thoroughly as the common men. Strong government in his idea

did not mean privilege, as ordinarily understood, but vital energy in

all the organs of administration, efficiently directed by a will that

was not hampered by the contrarywise tugging of individual opinions.

 

Treitschke’s penetrating eloquence was heard throughout the land.

Editors, preachers of religion, schoolmasters, authors, members of

the legislative assemblies, high officials, and even ministers of

state came to his class-room and went away to carry his ideas into