William of Germany. Stanley Shaw
but constitutionally not a step has been taken in the direction of popular, that is to say parliamentary, rule.
England and Germany are both constitutional monarchies, but both the monarch and the Constitution in Germany are different from the monarch and the Constitution in England. The British Constitution is a growth of centuries, not, like the German Constitution, the creation of a day. The British Constitution is unwritten, if it is stamped, as Mary said the word "Calais" would be found stamped on her heart after death, on the heart and brain of every Englishman. The German Constitution is a written document in seventy-eight chapters, not fifty years old, and on which, compared with the British Constitution, the ink is not yet dry. In England to the people the Constitution is the real monarch: in Germany the monarchy is to the people what the British Constitution is to the Englishman; and while in England the monarch is the first counsellor to the Constitution, in Germany the Constitution is the first counsellor to the monarch.
The consequence in England is representative government, with a political career for every ordinary citizen; the consequence in Germany is constitutional monarchy, properly so-called, with a political career for no common citizen. Neither system is perfect, but both, apparently, give admirable national results. And yet, of course, an Englishman cannot help thinking that if Herr Bebel were made Minister to-morrow, Social Democracy would cease to exist.
The people acquiesce in the Hohenzollern view, not indeed with perfect and entire unanimity, for the small Progressive party demand a parliamentary form of government, if not on the exact model of that established in England. The Social Democrats, evidently, would have no government at all. Many English people suppose that Germans generally must desire parliamentary rule and would help them to get it, for multitudes of English people are firmly persuaded that it is England's mission to extend to other peoples the institutions which have suited her so well, without sufficiently considering how different are their circumstances, geographical position, history, traditions, and national character. A very similar mistake is made in Germany by multitudes of Germans, who believe it is Germany's mission to impose her culture, her views of man and life, on the rest of the world.
The Prussian view of monarchy, expressed in the words "von Gottes Gnaden" ("By the Grace of God"), is a political conception, which, under its customary English translation, "by Divine Right," has often been ridiculed by English writers. Lord Macaulay, it will be remembered, in his "History of England," asserts that the doctrine first emerged into notice when James the Sixth of Scotland ascended the English throne. "It was gravely maintained," writes Macaulay,
"that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other systems of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a divine institution anterior to the Christian, and even to the Mosaic, dispensation; that no human power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive the legitimate prince of his rights; that his authority was necessarily always despotic; that the laws by which, in England and other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and that any treaty into which a king might enter with his people was merely a declaration of his present intention, and not a contract of which the performance could be demanded."
The statement exactly expresses the ideas on the subject attributed abroad to the Emperor.
The distinguished German historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, writes of King Frederick William IV, the predecessor of Emperor William I, as follows:—
"He believed in a mysterious enlightenment which is granted 'von Gottes Gnaden' to kings rather than other mortals. All the blessings of peace, which his People could expect under a Christian monarch, should Proceed from the wisdom of the Crown alone; he regarded his high office like a patriarch of the Old Testament and held the kingship as a fatherly power established by God Himself for the education of the people. Whatever happened in the State he connected with the person of the monarch. If only his age and its royal awakener had understood each other better! He had, however, in his strangely complicated process of development, constructed such extraordinary ideals that though he might sometimes agree in words with his contemporaries he never did as to the things, and spoke a different language from his people. Even General Gerlach, his good friend and servant, used to say: 'The ways of the King are wonderful;' and the not less loyal Bunsen wrote about a complaint of the monarch that 'no one understands me, no one agrees with me,' the commentary—'When one understood him, how could one agree with him?'"
It was this king, be it parenthetically remarked, who said, when his people were clamouring for a Constitution, in 1847: "Now and never will I admit that a written paper, like a second Providence, force itself between our God in Heaven and this land"—and a few months later had to sign the document his people demanded.
Von Treitschke, writing on the last birthday of Emperor William I, thus spoke of the doctrine:
"A generation ago an attempt was made by a theologizing State theory to inculcate the doctrine of a power of the throne, divine, released from all earthly obligations. This mystery of the Jacobins never found entrance into the clear common sense of our people."
Prince Bismarck's view of the doctrine was explained in a speech he made to the Prussian Diet in 1847. He was speaking on "Prussia as a Christian State." "For me," he said,
"the words 'von Gottes Gnaden,' which Christian rulers join to their names, are no empty phrase, but I see in them the recognition that the princes desire to wield the sceptre which God has assigned them according to the will of God on earth. As God's will I can, however, only recognize what is revealed in the Christian gospels, and I believe I am in my right when I call that State a Christian one which has taken as its task the realization, the putting into operation, of the Christian doctrine. … Assuming generally that the State has a religious foundation, in my opinion this foundation can only be Christianity. Take away this religious foundation from the State and we retain nothing of the State but a chance aggregation of rights, a kind of bulwark against the war of all against all, which the old philosophers spoke of."
On the second occasion, thirty years later, the Chancellor's theme was
"Obedience to God and the King."
"I refer," he said,
"to the wrong interpretation of a sentence which in itself is right—namely, that one must obey God rather than man. The previous speaker must know me long enough to be aware that I subscribe to the entire correctness of this sentence, and that I believe I obey God when I serve the King under the device 'With God for King and Country.' Now he (the previous speaker) has separated the component parts of the device, for he sees God separated from King and Fatherland. I cannot follow him on this road. I believe I serve my God when I serve my King in the protection of the commonwealth whose monarch 'von Gottes Gnaden' he is, and on whom the emancipation from alien spiritual influence and the independence of his people from Romish pressure have been laid by God as a duty in which I serve the King. The previous speaker would certainly admit in private that we do not believe in the divinity of a State idol, though he seems to assert here that we believe in it."
In these passages, it may be remarked, Bismarck avoids an unconditional endorsement of the Hohenzollern doctrine of divine "right" or even divine appointment. Indeed all he does is to express his belief in the sincerity of rulers who declare their desire to rule in accordance with the will of God as it appears in Holy Scripture. In addition to his dislike of a "Christianity above the State," the fact that he did not subscribe to the doctrine of divine right, as these words are interpreted in England, is shown by another speech in which he said, "The essence of the constitutional monarchy under which we live is the co-operation of the monarchical will and the convictions of the people." But what, one is tempted to ask, if will and convictions differ?
In recent times, Dr. Paul Liman, in an excellent character sketch of the Emperor, devotes his first chapter to the subject, thus recognizing the important place it occupies in the Emperor's mentality. Dr. Liman, like all German writers who have dealt with the topic, animadverts on the Hohenzollern obsession by the theory and attributes it chiefly to the romantic side of the Emperor's nature which was strongly influenced in