The German Emperor as Shown in His Public Utterances. German Emperor William II
Moses. William II is in very truth casting against fate those terrible ‘iron dice’ to which the now-forgotten Bismarck once alluded. If he win he may have within and without the frontiers altars such as were raised to Augustus; should he lose, exile, the traditional exile, in England awaits him—a degraded exile, the exile with which he so sternly threatens those who deny his infallibility.
“M. Renan is therefore quite right: there is nothing more attractive at this period of the century than to witness the final development of William II. In the course of years (may God make them slow and lengthy!) this youth, ardent, pleasing, fertile in imagination, of sincere, perhaps heroic, soul, may be sitting in calm majesty in his Berlin Schloss presiding over the destinies of Europe—or he may be in the Hôtel Métropole in London sadly unpacking from his exile’s handbag the battered double crown of Prussia and Germany.”
This drama of a life is twenty-three years nearer its climax than it was when Renan bade the world good night. With a certain finality of pathos a Greek poet whom Renan loved, thinking doubtless of his unhappy countrymen who had fallen in the long wars between Athens and Sparta, had said: “They that have died are not sick, nor do they possess any evil things.” If this be true, quite possibly, then, the world was kinder to this aged Frenchman than he shall ever know. For the disasters which were to follow the rising star of the Emperor, which he regarded so curiously, were to be far greater than he had ever dreamed. It may be, therefore, that it is he and not some of his younger countrymen who are to be congratulated on the bournes which marked the time of his coming and his passing.
The question of the responsibility of the Emperor and the limits of his power is one which perhaps only time can decide. Undeniably Germany has a written Constitution. But that Constitution is of comparatively recent date (April 16, 1871). It is not looked upon, as is the American Constitution, as the source of Germany’s political life. It is the empire and not the Constitution that is holy. Struggles for personal liberty find little place in the history of Prussia. They have no Cromwell, no Washington, no Robespierre, and, significantly too, they have had in times past no Ravaillac and no Guiteau. There, still, a certain majesty doth hedge about a king. The old idea of fealty, of deutsche Treue, which led the retainers of Teutonic chiefs or rulers to submit uncomplainingly to every abuse and all oppression and to follow their lords into misfortune and into exile, though it has doubtless waned, nevertheless retains some vestiges of its traditional force even to-day.
When, therefore, in 1878, by a curious coincidence, two attempts were made upon the life of Emperor William I (one by Hödel, an irresponsible person of diseased mind and body, who had been dismissed from the Social Democratic party; and another by Nobiling, who was not a Social Democrat), Bismarck immediately and easily seized this occasion to crush Social Democracy and increase the imperial power. He dissolved the Reichstag, and in one month the law-courts inflicted no less than five hundred years of imprisonment for lèse-majesté. Within eight months the authorities dissolved two hundred and twenty-two workingmen’s unions, suppressed one hundred and twenty-seven periodical and two hundred and seventy-eight other publications, and innumerable bona-fide co-operative societies were compelled by the police to close their doors without trial and with no possibility of appeal. With equal despatch numerous Social Democrats were expelled from Germany on a few days’ notice. This traditional attitude toward the Social Democrat, who from our standpoint is the German radical and liberal, appears again in the present Emperor when he declares (May 14, 1889) that every Social Democrat is synonymous with enemy of the country. How Social Democracy has grown in spite of the Emperor’s attempt to check it will be evident from a consideration of the following figures, in which the forty political parties are grouped into their four larger divisions:
| 1871 | 1881 | 1893 | 1907 | 1912 | |
| Right, or Conservative | 895,000 | 1,210,000 | 1,806,000 | 2,151,000 | 1,149,916 |
| Liberal | 1,884,000 | 1,948,000 | 2,102,000 | 3,078,000 | 3,227,846 |
| Clerical | 973,000 | 1,618,000 | 1,920,000 | 2,779,000 | 2,012,990 |
| Social Democrats | 124,000 | 312,000 | 1,787,000 | 3,259,000 | 4,238,919 |
In spite of this representation in the Reichstag, the power of the German political parties is slight. The power lies far more with the Emperor and the Bundesrat. According to Article II of the Constitution, the Emperor represents the empire internationally and can declare war if defensive (in German eyes the present is a defensive war), can make peace as well as enter into treaties with other nations, and appoint and receive ambassadors. When treaties are related to matters regulated by imperial legislation, and when war is not merely defensive, the Emperor must have the consent of the Bundesrat, in which, together with the Reichstag, are vested the legislative functions of the empire. But de facto, and through her power of veto, Prussia controls the Bundesrat, and as King of Prussia the Emperor controls Prussia.
That, even so, the Constitution is not the real and final source of political power, but a convenient political instrument, which in the mind of so great an authority as Bismarck might still easily be changed without consulting the people, we may gather from the fact that the Great Chancellor frequently debated the question of limiting the suffrage. “The blind Hödhur[1] [the German elector] does not know how to manipulate in his coarse hands the Nuremberg toy [the Reichstag] which I gave him, and through his voting he is ruining the Fatherland.” According to Hohenlohe, Bismarck considered setting aside the Reichstag and returning to the old Bundestag.
[1] In Norse mythology Hödhur was the powerful blind god who slew Balder.
The late Price Collier, an enthusiastic admirer of Germany, is therefore quite justified in saying: “This Reichstag is really only nominally a portion of the governing body. It has the right to refuse a bill presented by the government, but if it does so it may be summarily dismissed, as has happened several times, and another election usually provides a more amenable body.” And if the following judgment seems somewhat downright, it is none the less substantially true:
“The fact that the members of the Reichstag are not in the saddle but are used unwillingly and often contemptuously as a necessary and often stubborn and unruly pack-animal by the Kaiser-appointed ministers, the fact that they are pricked forward or induced to move by a tempting feed held just beyond the nose has something to do, no doubt, with the lack of unanimity which exists. The diverse elements debate with one another and waste their energy in rebukes and recriminations which lead nowhere and result in nothing. I have listened to many debates in the Reichstag where the one aim of the speeches seemed to be merely to unburden the soul of the speaker. He had no plan, no proposal, no solution, merely a confession to make. After forty-odd years the Germans, in many ways the most cultivated nation in the world, are still without real representative government.”
History, to be sure, may