Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View. Collier Price
reason that the empire of Germany is governed by one man, who declaims his independence of the people and admits his responsibility to God alone. This may be either a good or a bad thing. Certainly in many matters of economical and comfortable government for the people- witness more particularly the development and wise control of their municipalities-they are a century ahead of us, but this is not the question under discussion. The point is, that a compact nation under strict centralized control, served by a trained horde of officials with no wish for a change, and backed by a standing army of over seven hundred thousand men, who are not only a defence against the foreigner, but a powerful police against internal revolution, cannot serve as a model in either its successes or failures for a democratic country like ours. Where in Germany legislative schemes succeed easily when this huge bureaucratic machine is behind them, they would fail ignominiously in a country lacking this machinery, and lacking these pitiably tame people accustomed to submission.
In France, for example, that thrifty and individualistic folk made a complete failure of the attempt to foist contributory old-age pensions upon them, and I doubt whether such sumptuary legislation can succeed with us. That, however, is neither here nor there. The gist of the matter is, that because such things succeed in Germany, gives not the slightest reason for supposing that they will succeed with us. If this outline of their history and this sketch of their government have done nothing else, it must have made this clear. It may also help to show how vapid is the talk about what the German people will or will not do; whether they will or will not have war, for example. We shall have war when the German Kaiser touches a button and gives an order, and the German people will have no more to say in the matter than you and I.
III THE INDISCREET
The casual observer of life in England would find himself forced to write of sport, even as in India he would write of caste, as in America he would note the undue emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany, wherever he turns, whether it be to look at the army, to inquire about the navy, to study the constitution, or to disentangle the web of present-day political strife; to read the figures of commercial and industrial progress, or the results of social legislation; to look on at the Germans at play during their yachting week at Kiel, or their rowing contests at Frankfort, he finds himself face to face with the Emperor.
The student visits Berlin, or Potsdam, or Wilhelmshöhe; or with a long stride finds himself on the docks at Hamburg or Bremen, or beside the Kiel Canal, or in Kiel harbor facing a fleet of war-ships; or he lifts his eyes into the air to see a dirigible balloon returning from a voyage of two hundred and fifty miles toward London over the North Sea, and the Emperor is there. Is it the palace hidden in its shrubbery in the country; is it the clean, broad streets and decorations of the capital; is it a discussion of domestic politics, or a question of foreign politics, the Emperor’s hand is there. His opinion, his influence, what he has said or has not said, are inextricably interwoven with the woof and web of German life.
We may like him or dislike him, approve or disapprove, rejoice in autocracy or abominate it, admire the far-reaching discipline, or regret the iron mould in which much of German life is encased, but for the moment all this is beside the mark. Here is a man who in a quarter of a century has so grown into the life of a nation, the most powerful on the continent, and one of the three most powerful in the world, that when you touch it anywhere you touch him, and when you think of it from any angle of thought, or describe it from any point of view, you find yourself including him.
Personally, I should have been glad to leave this chapter unwritten. I have no taste for the discussion and analysis of living persons, even when they are of such historic and social importance, and of such magnitude, that I am thus given the proverbial license of the cat. But to write about Germany without writing about the Emperor is as impossible as to jump away from one’s own shadow. When the sun is behind any phase or department of German life, the shadow cast is that of Germany’s Emperor.
This is not said because it is pleasing to whomsoever it may be, for in Germany, and in much of the world outside Germany, this situation is looked upon as unfavorable, and even deplorable; and certainly no American can look upon it with equanimity, for it is of the essence of his Americanism to distrust it. It is, however, so much a fact that to neglect a discussion of this personality would be to leave even so slight a sketch of Germany as this, hopelessly lop-sided. He so pervades German life that to write of the Germany of the last twenty-five years without attempting to describe William the Second, German Emperor, would be to leave every question, institution, and problem of the country without its master-key.
In other chapters dealing more particularly with the political development of Germany, and with the salient characteristics, mental and moral, of the people, we shall see how it has come about, that one man can thus impregnate a whole nation of sixty-five millions with his own aims and ambitions, to such an extent, that they may be said, so to speak, to live their political, social, martial, religious, and even their industrial, life in him. It is a phenomenon of personality that exists nowhere else in the world to-day, and on so large a scale and among so enlightened a people, perhaps never before in history.
Nothing has made scientific accuracy in dealing with the most interesting and most important factors in the world, so utterly inaccurate and misleading, as those infallibly accurate and impersonal agents, electricity and the sun. If one were to judge a man by his photographs, and the gossip of the press, one would be sure to know nothing more valuable about him than that his mustache is brushed up, and that his brows are permanently lowering. Personality is so evasive that one may count upon it that when a machine says “There it is!” then there it is not! You will have everything that is patent and nothing that is pertinent.
We are forever talking and writing about the smallness of the world, of how much better we know one another, and of how much more we should love one another, now that we flash photographs and messages to and fro, at a speed of leagues a second. Nothing could be more futile and foolish. These things have emphasized our differences, they have done nothing to realize our likeness to one another. We are as far from one another as in the days, late in the tenth century, when they complained in England that men learned fierceness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane.
As probably the outstanding figure and best-known, superficially known, man in the world, the German Emperor has escaped the notice of very few people who notice anything. His likeness is everywhere, and gossip about him is on every tongue. He is as familiar to the American as Roosevelt, to the Englishman as Lloyd-George, to the Frenchman as Dreyfus, to the Russian as his Czar, and to the Chinese and Japanese as their most prominent political figure. And yet I should say that he is comparatively little known, either externally or internally, as he is.
It is perhaps the fate of those of most influence to be misunderstood. Of this, I fancy, the Emperor does not complain. Indeed, those feeble folk who complain of being misunderstood, ought to console themselves with the thought that practically all our imperishable monuments, are erected to the glory of those whom we condemned and criticised; starved and stoned; burned and crucified, when we had them with us.
William II, German Emperor and King of Prussia, was born January 27, 1859, and became German Emperor June 15, 1888. He is, therefore, in the prime of life, and looks it. His complexion and eyes are as clear as those of an athlete, and his eyes, and his movements, and his talk are vibrating with energy. He stands, I should guess, about five feet eight or nine, has the figure and activity of an athletic youth of thirty, and in his hours of friendliness is as careless in speech, as unaffected in manner, as lacking in any suspicion of self- consciousness, or of any desire to impress you with his importance, as the simplest gentleman in the land.
Alas, how often this courageous and gentlemanly attitude has been taken advantage of! I have headed this chapter The Indiscreet, and I propose to examine these so-called indiscretions in some detail, but for the moment I must ask: Is there any excuse for, or any social punishment too severe for, the man who, introduced into a gentleman’s house in the guise of a gentleman, often by his own ambassador, leaves it, to blab every detail of the conversation of